Glucose isomerase from an Arthrobacter species

Imperial Users onl

Physical Activity Modulates Corticospinal Excitability of the Lower Limb in Young and Old Adults

Aging is associated with reduced neuromuscular function, which may be due in part to altered corticospinal excitability. Regular physical activity (PA) may ameliorate these age-related declines, but the influence of PA on corticospinal excitability is unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of age, sex, and PA on corticospinal excitability by comparing the stimulus-response curves of motor evoked potentials (MEP) in 28 young (22.4 ± 2.2 yr; 14 women and 14 men) and 50 old adults (70.2 ± 6.1 yr; 22 women and 28 men) who varied in activity levels. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to elicit MEPs in the active vastus lateralis muscle (10% maximal voluntary contraction) with 5% increments in stimulator intensity until the maximum MEP amplitude. Stimulus-response curves of MEP amplitudes were fit with a four-parameter sigmoidal curve and the maximal slope calculated (slopemax). Habitual PA was assessed with tri-axial accelerometry and participants categorized into either those meeting the recommended PA guidelines for optimal health benefits (\u3e10,000 steps/day, high-PA; n = 21) or those not meeting the guidelines (n = 41). The MEP amplitudes and slopemax were greater in the low-PA compared with the high-PA group (P \u3c 0.05). Neither age nor sex influenced the stimulus-response curve parameters (P \u3e 0.05), suggesting that habitual PA influenced the excitability of the corticospinal tract projecting to the lower limb similarly in both young and old adults. These findings provide evidence that achieving the recommended PA guidelines for optimal health may mediate its effects on the nervous system by decreasing corticospinal excitability

Using activity based costing and simulation to reduce cost at a Police communications centre

Purpose: This study is based at a police force’s communications centre which undertakes a vital role in receiving and processing emergency and non-emergency telephone calls from the public and other agencies. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a method for addressing the conflict between the need to reduce cost and the requirement to meet national standards in terms of a timely response to customer calls. Design/methodology/approach: In a two-stage methodology an activity-based costing (ABC) approach is used as a framework to show how costs are generated by the three “drivers” of cost which relate to the design efficiency of the process, the demand on the process and the cost of resources used to undertake the process. The study then provides an analysis from a resource driver perspective using discrete-event simulation to model workforce staffing scenarios. Findings: Cost savings within the police communications centre are identified from an analysis of the three drivers of cost. Further analysis from a resource driver viewpoint using a simulation study of an alternative workforce schedule predicted an overall reduction in staffing cost of 9.4 per cent. Originality/value: The study outlines an innovative method that identifies where cost can be reduced using ABC and then provides an assessment of strategies that aim to reduce cost whilst maintaining service levels in a police operation using simulation

Physical Activity Modulates Corticospinal Excitability of the Lower Limb in Young and Old Adults

Aging is associated with reduced neuromuscular function, which may be due in part to altered corticospinal excitability. Regular physical activity (PA) may ameliorate these age-related declines, but the influence of PA on corticospinal excitability is unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of age, sex, and PA on corticospinal excitability by comparing the stimulus-response curves of motor evoked potentials (MEP) in 28 young (22.4 ± 2.2 yr; 14 women and 14 men) and 50 old adults (70.2 ± 6.1 yr; 22 women and 28 men) who varied in activity levels. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was used to elicit MEPs in the active vastus lateralis muscle (10% maximal voluntary contraction) with 5% increments in stimulator intensity until the maximum MEP amplitude. Stimulus-response curves of MEP amplitudes were fit with a four-parameter sigmoidal curve and the maximal slope calculated (slopemax). Habitual PA was assessed with tri-axial accelerometry and participants categorized into either those meeting the recommended PA guidelines for optimal health benefits (\u3e10,000 steps/day, high-PA; n = 21) or those not meeting the guidelines (n = 41). The MEP amplitudes and slopemax were greater in the low-PA compared with the high-PA group (P \u3c 0.05). Neither age nor sex influenced the stimulus-response curve parameters (P \u3e 0.05), suggesting that habitual PA influenced the excitability of the corticospinal tract projecting to the lower limb similarly in both young and old adults. These findings provide evidence that achieving the recommended PA guidelines for optimal health may mediate its effects on the nervous system by decreasing corticospinal excitability

Bamboo traps as refugia for Pristimantis olivaceus (Anura: Craugastoridae) and as breeding site for Osteocephalus castaneicola (Anura: Hylidae)

No abstract available

Application of Imaging Flow Cytometry for the Characterization of Intracellular Attributes in Chinese Hamster Ovary Cell Lines at the Single Cell Level

Biopharmaceutical manufacturing using Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells requires the generation of high-producing clonal cell lines. During cell line development, cell cloning using fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) has the potential to combine isolation of single cells with sorting based on specific cellular attributes that correlate with productivity and/or growth, identifying cell lines with desirable phenotypes for manufacturing. This study describes the application of imaging flow cytometry (IFC) to characterize recombinant cell lines at the single cell level to identify cell attributes predictive of productivity. IFC assays to quantify organelle content, and recombinant heavy (HC) and light (LC) chain polypeptide and mRNA amounts in single cells were developed. The assays were then validated against orthogonal standard flow cytometry, western blot and qRT-PCR methods. We describe how these IFC assays may be used in cell line development and show how cellular properties can be correlated with productivity at the single cell level, allowing the isolation of such cells during the cloning process. Our analysis found HC polypeptide and mRNA to be predictive of productivity early in the culture, however specific organelle content did not show any correlation with productivity

Massive Science with VO and Grids

There is a growing need for massive computational resources for the analysis of new astronomical datasets. To tackle this problem, we present here our first steps towards marrying two new and emerging technologies; the Virtual Observatory (e.g, AstroGrid) and the computational grid (e.g. TeraGrid, COSMOS etc.). We discuss the construction of VOTechBroker, which is a modular software tool designed to abstract the tasks of submission and management of a large number of computational jobs to a distributed computer system. The broker will also interact with the AstroGrid workflow and MySpace environments. We discuss our planned usages of the VOTechBroker in computing a huge number of n-point correlation functions from the SDSS data and massive model-fitting of millions of CMBfast models to WMAP data. We also discuss other applications including the determination of the XMM Cluster Survey selection function and the construction of new WMAP maps.Comment: Invited talk at ADASSXV conference published as ASP Conference Series, Vol. XXX, 2005 C. Gabriel, C. Arviset, D. Ponz and E. Solano, eds. 9 page

A toolbox to quickly prepare flood inundation models for LISFLOOD-FP simulations

Hydrodynamic floodplain inundation models have been popular for many years and used extensively in engineering applications. Continental scale flood studies are now achievable using such models due to the development of terrain elevation, hydrography and river width datasets with global coverage. However, deploying flood models at any scale is time-consuming since input data needs to be processed from different sources. Here we present LFPtools, which is an open-source Python package which encompasses most commonly used methods to prepare input data for large scale flood inundation studies using the LISFLOOD-FP hydrodynamic model. LFPtools performance was verified over the Severn basin in the UK where a 1 km flood inundation model was built within 1.45 min. Outputs of the test case were compared with the official flood extent footprint of a real event and satisfactory model performance was obtained: Hit rate = 0.79, False alarm ratio = 0.24 and Critical success index = 0.63