1,346 research outputs found
Inner ear tissue preservation by rapid freezing: improving fixation by high-pressure freezing and hybrid methods
In the preservation of tissues in as ‘close to life’ state as possible, rapid freeze fixation has many benefits over conventional chemical fixation. One technique by which rapid freeze-fixation can be achieved, high pressure freezing (HPF), has been shown to enable ice crystal artefact-free freezing and tissue preservation to greater depths (more than 40μm) than other quick-freezing methods. Despite increasingly becoming routine in electron microscopy, the use of HPF for the fixation of inner ear tissue has been limited. Assessment of the quality of preservation showed routine HPF techniques were suitable for preparation of inner ear tissues in a variety of species. Good preservation throughout the depth of sensory epithelia was achievable. Comparison to chemically fixed tissue indicated that fresh frozen preparations exhibited overall superior structural preservation of cells. However, HPF fixation caused characteristic artefacts in stereocilia that suggested poor quality freezing of the actin bundles. The hybrid technique of pre-fixation and high pressure freezing was shown to produce cellular preservation throughout the tissue, similar to that seen in HPF alone. Pre-fixation HPF produced consistent high quality preservation of stereociliary actin bundles. Optimising the preparation of samples with minimal artefact formation allows analysis of the links between ultrastructure and function in inner ear tissues
Role of carbon dioxide and ion transport in the formation of sub-embryonic fluid by the blastoderm of the Japanese quail
1. The explanted blastoderm of the Japanese quail was used to explore the role of ions and carbon dioxide in determining the rate of sub-embryonic fluid (SEF) production between 54 and 72 h of incubation.
2. Amiloride, an inhibitor of Na+/H+ exchange, at concentrations of 10-3 to 10-6 M substantially decreased the rate of SEF production when added to the albumen culture medium. N-ethylmaleimide, an inhibitor of V type H+ ATPase, also decreased this rate but only to a small extent at the highest dose applied, 10-3 M. Both inhibitors had no effect on SEF production when added to the SEF. 3. The inhibitors of cellular bicarbonate and chloride exchange, 4-acetamido-4-'isothiocyano-2, 2-'disulphonic acid (SITS) and 4,4'diisothiocyanostilbene-2,2-'disulphonic acid (DIDS), had no effect upon SEF production.
4. Ouabain, an inhibitor of Na+/K+ ATPase, decreased SEF production substantially at all concentrations added to the SEF (10-3 to 10-6 M). Three sulphonamide inhibitors of carbonic anhydrase, acetazolamide, ethoxzolamide and benzolamide, decreased SEF production when added to the SEF at concentrations of 10-3 to 10-6 M. Benzolamide was by far the most potent. Neither ouabain nor the sulphonamides altered SEF production when added to the albumen culture medium.
5. Using a cobalt precipitation method, carbonic anhydrase activity was localised to the endodermal cells of the area vasculosa. The carbonic anhydrase activity was primarily associated with the lateral plasma membranes, which together with the potent inhibitory effect of benzolamide, suggests the carbonic anhydrase of these cells is the membrane-associated form, CA IV.
6. The changes in SEF composition produced by inhibitors were consistent with the production of SEF by local osmotic gradients.
7. It is concluded that a Na+/K+ ATPase is located on the basolateral membranes of the endodermal cells of the area vasculosa , and that a sodium ion/hydrogen ion exchanger is located on their apical surfaces. Protons for this exchanger would be provided by the hydration of CO2 catalysed by the membrane-associated carbonic anhydrase. Furthermore, it is proposed that the prime function of the endodermal cells of the area vasculosa is the production of SEF
An efficient method for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations on irregular domains with no-slip boundary conditions, high order up to the boundary
Common efficient schemes for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, such
as projection or fractional step methods, have limited temporal accuracy as a
result of matrix splitting errors, or introduce errors near the domain
boundaries (which destroy uniform convergence to the solution). In this paper
we recast the incompressible (constant density) Navier-Stokes equations (with
the velocity prescribed at the boundary) as an equivalent system, for the
primary variables velocity and pressure. We do this in the usual way away from
the boundaries, by replacing the incompressibility condition on the velocity by
a Poisson equation for the pressure. The key difference from the usual
approaches occurs at the boundaries, where we use boundary conditions that
unequivocally allow the pressure to be recovered from knowledge of the velocity
at any fixed time. This avoids the common difficulty of an, apparently,
over-determined Poisson problem. Since in this alternative formulation the
pressure can be accurately and efficiently recovered from the velocity, the
recast equations are ideal for numerical marching methods. The new system can
be discretized using a variety of methods, in principle to any desired order of
accuracy. In this work we illustrate the approach with a 2-D second order
finite difference scheme on a Cartesian grid, and devise an algorithm to solve
the equations on domains with curved (non-conforming) boundaries, including a
case with a non-trivial topology (a circular obstruction inside the domain).
This algorithm achieves second order accuracy (in L-infinity), for both the
velocity and the pressure. The scheme has a natural extension to 3-D.Comment: 50 pages, 14 figure
Continuous Wavelets on Compact Manifolds
Let be a smooth compact oriented Riemannian manifold, and let
be the Laplace-Beltrami operator on . Say 0 \neq f
\in \mathcal{S}(\RR^+), and that . For , let
denote the kernel of . We show that is
well-localized near the diagonal, in the sense that it satisfies estimates akin
to those satisfied by the kernel of the convolution operator on
\RR^n. We define continuous -wavelets on , in such a
manner that satisfies this definition, because of its localization
near the diagonal. Continuous -wavelets on are analogous to
continuous wavelets on \RR^n in \mathcal{S}(\RR^n). In particular, we are
able to characterize the Hlder continuous functions on by
the size of their continuous wavelet transforms, for
Hlder exponents strictly between 0 and 1. If is the torus
\TT^2 or the sphere , and (the ``Mexican hat''
situation), we obtain two explicit approximate formulas for , one to be
used when is large, and one to be used when is small
Two-Loop -Diagrams from String Theory
Using the {\em cutting and sewing} procedure we show how to get Feynman
diagrams, up to two-loop order, of -theory with an internal SU(N)
symmetry group, starting from tachyon amplitudes of the open bosonic string
theory. In a properly defined field theory limit, we easily identify the
corners of the string moduli space reproducing the correctly normalized field
theory amplitudes expressed in the Schwinger parametrization.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figure
Non-local SFT Tachyon and Cosmology
Cosmological scenarios built upon the generalized non-local String Field
Theory and -adic tachyons are examined. A general kinetic operator involving
an infinite number of derivatives is studied as well as arbitrary parameter
. The late time dynamics of just the tachyon around the non-perturbative
vacuum is shown to leave the cosmology trivial. A late time behavior of the
tachyon and the scale factor of the FRW metric in the presence of the
cosmological constant or a perfect fluid with is constructed explicitly
and a possibility of non-vanishing oscillations of the total effective state
parameter around the phantom divide is proven.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX; v2: JHEP3 class is used, references adde
Perturbative Computation of the Gluonic Effective Action via Polyaokov's World-Line Path Integral
The Polyakov world-line path integral describing the propagation of gluon
field quanta is constructed by employing the background gauge fixing method and
is subsequently applied to analytically compute the divergent terms of the one
(gluonic) loop effective action to fourth order in perturbation theory. The
merits of the proposed approach is that, to a given order, it reduces to
performing two integrations, one over a set of Grassmann and one over a set of
Feynman-type parameters through which one manages to accomodate all Feynman
diagrams entering the computation at once.Comment: 21 page
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