Ultrafast Raman laser mode-locked by nanotubes

We demonstrate passive mode-locking of a Raman fiber laser using a nanotube-based saturable absorber coupled to a net normal dispersion cavity. This generates highly chirped 500 ps pulses. These are then compressed down to 2 ps , with 1.4 kW peak power, making it a simple wavelength-versatile source for various applications

NC laboratory school principals’ efforts to implement culturally responsive parent, family, and community engagement

In this qualitative study, I examined the efforts of three North Carolina laboratory school principals to implement culturally responsive parent, family, and community engagement. While there is already a significant body of literature on culturally responsive school leadership and parent and family engagement, there remains a need to examine how school principals attempt to tap into the expertise of nondominant families and communities in non-traditional schools, especially given the complexities of educational systems (Ishimaru, 2020). The principals in this research are experienced educators who currently serve at lab schools created through collaborations between the North Carolina General Assembly and University of North Carolina System as early as 2014. The idea of a laboratory school is not unique to the now nine schools operating through the UNC System. The concept of a lab school was the brainchild of American philosopher John Dewey, who strived to develop theories of child development and education (Whitman, 2020). Like the lab schools Dewey created as early as 1896, the three schools represented in my study are associated with a university and have a 3-part mission: facilitate research to learn more about how children grow and develop, educate pre-service education professionals, and serve the education profession (Wilcox-Herzog & McLaren, 2012). In addition to Dewey’s vision, NC laboratory schools also have the responsibility of celebrating the knowledge, skills, power, and resources of the school community. In this qualitative study, I captured the efforts of three NC laboratory school principals’ attempts to implement culturally responsive parent, family, and community engagement. I worked diligently to answer the following research questions: (1) How do NC lab school principals describe their attempts to lead for parent, family, and community engagement (PFCE) in their schools? (2) How do participants discuss the current state of PFCE in their school? (3) What is the relationship between a principal’s appointment in a NC lab school and their training in and practice of culturally responsive leadership? The theoretical framework for the study was adopted from the 4-tenets of Ann Ishimaru’s work in equitable collaboration (Ishimaru, 2020). For this study, I relied on two individual interviews with each NC lab school principal and one focus group session as primary data collection methods. Due to COVID19 restrictions at the time of my study, all interviews and the focus group took place over Zoom. This study affords readers an opportunity to examine the profiles of each principal participant and explore parent, family, and community engagement at each school. My findings reveal that NC lab school principals work with various partners to engage parents, families, and the community. I also found that NC lab school principals typically rely on single events to engage parents, families and community. In addition, I also discovered that NC lab school principals have both seized and missed opportunities to enhance culturally responsive parent, family, and community engagement, as well as finding that NC lab school principals have limited training in culturally responsive leadership. The principal participants in my study acknowledged that in their respective school, there was commitment to celebrating the knowledge, skills, power, and resources of the school community and they recognized that shifting the paradigm to more equitable collaboration was not an easy task and could not be done by the principal alone

Experimental demonstration of mode structure in ultralong Raman fiber lasers

We present the first experimental demonstration of a resolvable mode structure with spacing c/2nL in the RF spectra of ultralong Raman fiber lasers. The longest ever demonstrated laser cavity (L=84km), RF peaks of ∼100 Hz width and spacing ∼1 kHz have been observed at low intracavity powers. The width of the peaks increases linearly with growing intracavity power and is almost independent of fiber length. © 2007 Optical Society of America

Effects of epidural lidocaine analgesia on labor and delivery: A randomized, prospective, controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Whether epidural analgesia for labor prolongs the active-first and second labor stages and increases the risk of vacuum-assisted delivery is a controversial topic. Our study was conducted to answer the question: does lumbar epidural analgesia with lidocaine affect the progress of labor in our obstetric population? METHOD: 395 healthy, nulliparous women, at term, presented in spontaneous labor with a singleton vertex presentation. These patients were randomized to receive analgesia either, epidural with bolus doses of 1% lidocaine or intravenous, with meperidine 25 to 50 mg when their cervix was dilated to 4 centimeters. The duration of the active-first and second stages of labor and the neonatal apgar scores were recorded, in each patient. The total number of vacuum-assisted and cesarean deliveries were also measured. RESULTS: 197 women were randomized to the epidural group. 198 women were randomized to the single-dose intravenous meperidine group. There was no statistical difference in rates of vacuum-assisted delivery rate. Cesarean deliveries, as a consequence of fetal bradycardia or dystocia, did not differ significantly between the groups. Differences in the duration of the active-first and the second stages of labor were not statistically significant. The number of newborns with 1-min and 5-min Apgar scores less than 7, did not differ significantly between both analgesia groups. CONCLUSION: Epidural analgesia with 1% lidocaine does not prolong the active-first and second stages of labor and does not increase vacuum-assisted or cesarean delivery rate

Denitrification and total nitrate uptake in streams of a tropical landscape

Author Posting. © Ecological Society of America, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of Ecological Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Ecological Applications 20 (2010): 2104-2115, doi:10.1890/09-1110.1.Rapid increases in nitrogen (N) loading are occurring in many tropical watersheds, but the fate of N in tropical streams is not well documented. Rates of nitrate uptake and denitrification were measured in nine tropical low-order streams with contrasting land use as part of the Lotic Intersite Nitrogen eXperiment II (LINX II) in Puerto Rico using short term (24-hour) additions of K15NO3 and NaBr. Background nitrate concentrations ranged from 105 to 997 μg N/L, and stream nitrate uptake lengths were long, varying from 315 to 8480 m (median of 1200 m). Other indices of nitrate uptake (mass transfer coefficient, Vf [cm/s], and whole-stream nitrate uptake rate, U [μg N·m−2·s−1]) were low in comparison to other regions and were related to chemical, biological, and physical parameters. Denitrification rates were highly variable (0–133 μg N·m−2·min−1; median = 15 μg N·m−2·min−1), were dominated by the end product N2 (rather than N2O), and were best predicted by whole-stream respiration rates and stream NO3 concentration. Denitrification accounted for 1–97% of nitrate uptake with five of nine streams having 35% or more of nitrate uptake via denitrification, showing that denitrification is a substantial sink for nitrate in tropical streams. Whole-stream nitrate uptake and denitrification in our study streams closely followed first-order uptake kinetics, indicating that NO3 uptake is limited by delivery of substrate (NO3) to the organisms involved in uptake or denitrification. In the context of whole-catchment nitrogen budgets, our finding that in-stream denitrification results in lower proportional production of N2O than terrestrial denitrification suggests that small streams can be viewed as the preferred site of denitrification in a watershed in order to minimize greenhouse gas N2O emissions. Conservation of small streams is thus critical in tropical ecosystem management.This research was part of the Lotic Intersite Nitrogen eXperiment II (LINX II) funded by the National Science Foundation (DEB-0111410). Additional support was provided by the National Science Foundation to the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology at the University of Puerto Rico and the International Institute of Tropical Forestry (DEB-0218039 and DEB-0620919) through the Luquillo Long Term Ecological Research (LUQ LTER) program

Chiropractic at the crossroads or are we just going around in circles?

Chiropractic in Australia has seen many changes over the past 30 years. Some of these changes have advanced the professional status of chiropractic, improved undergraduate training and paved the way for a research culture. Unfortunately, other changes or lack of changes, have hindered the growth, public utilisation and professional standing of chiropractic in Australia. This article explores what influences have impacted on the credibility, advancement and public utilisation of chiropractic in Australia

Regional differences in mitochondrial DNA methylation in human post-mortem brain tissue

Background: DNA methylation is an important epigenetic mechanism involved in gene regulation, with alterations in DNA methylation in the nuclear genome being linked to numerous complex diseases. Mitochondrial DNA methylation is a phenomenon that is receiving ever-increasing interest, particularly in diseases characterized by mitochondrial dysfunction; however, most studies have been limited to the investigation of specific target regions. Analyses spanning the entire mitochondrial genome have been limited, potentially due to the amount of input DNA required. Further, mitochondrial genetic studies have been previously confounded by nuclear-mitochondrial pseudogenes. Methylated DNA Immunoprecipitation Sequencing is a technique widely used to profile DNA methylation across the nuclear genome; however, reads mapped to mitochondrial DNA are often discarded. Here, we have developed an approach to control for nuclear-mitochondrial pseudogenes within Methylated DNA Immunoprecipitation Sequencing data. We highlight the utility of this approach in identifying differences in mitochondrial DNA methylation across regions of the human brain and pre-mortem blood. Results: We were able to correlate mitochondrial DNA methylation patterns between the cortex, cerebellum and blood. We identified 74 nominally significant differentially methylated regions (p < 0.05) in the mitochondrial genome, between anatomically separate cortical regions and the cerebellum in matched samples (N = 3 matched donors). Further analysis identified eight significant differentially methylated regions between the total cortex and cerebellum after correcting for multiple testing. Using unsupervised hierarchical clustering analysis of the mitochondrial DNA methylome, we were able to identify tissue-specific patterns of mitochondrial DNA methylation between blood, cerebellum and cortex. Conclusions: Our study represents a comprehensive analysis of the mitochondrial methylome using pre-existing Methylated DNA Immunoprecipitation Sequencing data to identify brain region-specific patterns of mitochondrial DNA methylation

Electrostatic properties of inner nanopore surfaces of anodic aluminum oxide membranes upon high temperature annealing revealed by EPR of pH-sensitive spin probes and labels

Anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes are versatile nanomaterials that combine the chemically stable and mechanically robust properties of ceramics with homogeneous nanoscale organization that can be tuned to desirable pore diameters and lengths. The AAO substrates feature high surface area that is readily accessible to large and small molecules, making these nanostructures uniquely suited for many possible applications. Examples include templated self-assembly of macroscopically aligned biological membranes and substrates for heterogeneous catalysis. For further development of such applications, one would like to characterize and tune the electrostatic properties of the inner pore surface as well as the local acidity within the nanochannels. Here, we employed electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy of a small molecule – ionizable nitroxide – as a reporter of the average local acidity in the nanochannels and the local electrostatic potential in the immediate vicinity of the pore surface. The former was achieved by measuring EPR spectra of this molecular probe diffusing in an aqueous phase confined in the AAO nanochannels while for the latter the nitroxide was covalently attached to the hydroxyl group of the alumina surface. We show that the local acidity within the nanochannels is increased by as much as ≈1.48 pH units vs. the pH of bulk solution by decreasing the pore diameter down to ca. 31 nm. Furthermore, the positive surface charge of the as-prepared AAO could be decreased and even switched to a negative surface charge upon annealing the membranes first to 700 °C and then to 1200 °C. For as-prepared AAO, the local electrostatic potential reaches ψ= (163 ± 5) mV for the nitroxide label covalently attached to AAO and located about 0.5 nm away from the surface. Overall, we demonstrate that the acid-based properties of the aqueous volume confined by the AAO nanopores pores can be tuned by either changing the pore diameter from ca. 71 to 31 nm or by thermal annealing to switch the sign of the surface charge. These observations provide a simple and robust means to tailor these versatile high-surface-area nanomaterials for specific applications that depend on acid-base equilibria. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.Russian Foundation for Basic Research. Government Council on Grants, Russian Federation. U.S. Department of Energy. Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation. National Science Foundation. North Carolina State Universit