Impact of inactivity and exercise on the vasculature in humans

The effects of inactivity and exercise training on established and novel cardiovascular risk factors are relatively modest and do not account for the impact of inactivity and exercise on vascular risk. We examine evidence that inactivity and exercise have direct effects on both vasculature function and structure in humans. Physical deconditioning is associated with enhanced vasoconstrictor tone and has profound and rapid effects on arterial remodelling in both large and smaller arteries. Evidence for an effect of deconditioning on vasodilator function is less consistent. Studies of the impact of exercise training suggest that both functional and structural remodelling adaptations occur and that the magnitude and time-course of these changes depends upon training duration and intensity and the vessel beds involved. Inactivity and exercise have direct “vascular deconditioning and conditioning” effects which likely modify cardiovascular risk

What a Mess! Participation as a Simple Managerial Rule to “Complexify” Organizations

This paper adopts a view of organizations as complex adaptive systems and makes a case for making organizations more complex internally through the use of a fairly simple managerial rule—using participative decision making. Participation in decision making enhances connectivity in organizations, which in turn, gives the organization the opportunity to self-organize and co-evolve in more effective ways than when there is minimal connectivity (i.e., autocracy). The paper uses a specific body of research to support the arguments about why participation can benefit the practice of management in modern organizations

Magnetic source localization of early visual mismatch response

Previous studies have reported a visual analogue of the auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) response that is based on sensory memory. The neural generators and attention dependence of the visual MMN (vMMN) still remain unclear. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) and spatio-temporal source localization to determine the generators of the sensory-memory-based vMMN response to non-attended deviants. Ten participants were asked to discriminate between odd and even digits presented at the center of the visual field while grating patterns with different spatial frequencies were presented outside the focus of attention. vMMN was calculated as the difference between MEG responses to infrequent gratings in oddball blocks and the same gratings in equiprobable blocks. The peak latency of the vMMN response was between 100 and 160 ms. The neuromagnetic sources of the vMMN localized in the occipital cortex differed from the sources evoked by the equiprobable gratings and were stimulus-dependent. Our results suggest the existence of separate neural systems for pre-attentive memory-based detection of visual change and provide new evidence that the vMMN is feature-specific. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media

Charakterisierung optischer Laserkomponenten. Teilprojekt: Degradationsfreie optische Komponenten fuer hoechste Belastungen Abschlussbericht

For characterization of optical components in high-power lasers the following test methods have been developed: method for high-precision locating of directional reflection, method for absorption measurements of high local resolution, method for destruction threshold measurements with high local resolution, method for scattered light measurements-especially for small angle scattering, method for focus measurements, method for determination of the dynamic precision of 'flying optics' applied to a robot control system. In addition, theoretical investigations on the imaging properties of optical systems have been carried out and the connection between the data gathered from the different testing methods is discussed. (WEN)SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: F95B1051+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Forschung und Technologie (BMFT), Bonn (Germany)DEGerman