Cutaneous eccrine glands of the foot pads of the rock hyrax (Procavia capensis, Hyracoidea, mammalia)

In order to find correlations between skin gland morphology and specific ethological features, the cutaneous glands of the foot pads of Procavia capensis were studied by histological and various histochemical methods and by electron microscopy. In the foot pads, abundant specific eccrine skin glands occur, which consist of coiled tubular secretory portions and coiled ducts. The wall of the secretory part is composed of cuboidal glandular cells and myoepithelial cells. Among the glandular cells two types occur: clear and dark cells. Clear cells have numerous mitochondria and form a basal labyrinth, indicating fluid transport. Dark cells, which stain strongly with periodic acid-Schiff, contain a highly developed perinuclear Golgi apparatus, large amounts of rough endoplasmic reticulum and many secretory granules indicating production of glycoproteins. Cytokeratin (CK) 19 was found in secretory compartments and ducts, CK14 only in duct cells. Single cells of the secretory coils and ducts may be stained with antibodies against antimicrobial peptides. Some glandular cells contain proliferating cell nuclear antigen-positive nuclei especially in the ducts indicating an increased cell proliferation. Terminal transferase (TdT)-mediated d-UTP nick-end labeling-positive nuclei can be detected predominantly in the secretory coils and rarely in the transitional portions between ducts and end pieces. We suppose that proliferating cells migrate from the ducts to the secretory coils. The secretory product of the eccrine cutaneous glands seems to improve the traction between the foot pads of these animals and the steep and smooth rock formations among which they live

Apocrine glands in the eyelid of primates contribute to the ocular host defense

Apocrine glands of Moll are regular components of primate eyelids. We studied the distribution and localization of these glands in three different primate species, the common marmoset, the rhesus monkey, and the hamadryas baboon. In addition, we tested the primate glands of Moll with antibodies against antimicrobial proteins, cytoskeletal proteins and the androgen receptor. The glands of Moll differ in abundance and distribution in different monkeys. In the common marmoset, a representative of the New World monkeys, Platyrrhini, the apocrine glands are frequently found at the lid margin and in the overlying epidermis of the lid. In the rhesus monkey and the hamadryas baboon, representatives of Old World monkeys, Catarrhini, apocrine glands are rarer and located predominantly at the margin of the lid. The immunohistochemical analysis indicates the presence of a variety of antimicrobial proteins, e. g. lysozyme, beta-defensin-2, adrenomedullin, lactoferrin, and IgA, in these glands. Interestingly, there are basically no androgen receptors in the nuclei of apocrine glands at the lid margin in all three monkey species. In the common marmoset, however, androgen receptors are found in apocrine glands of the overlying epidermis of the lid. We speculate that the glands of Moll are derived from apocrine glands as found in the skin of the entire body in New World monkeys which developed at the lid margins of higher primates and humans into specialized glands secreting agents of host defense in the eye. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel

Development of Rebunching Cavities at IAP

A focus of work at IAP has been the development and optimization of spiral loaded cavities since the 1970s [A. Schempp et al, NIM 135, 409 (1976)]. These cavities feature a high efficiency, a compact design and a big variety of possible fields of application. They find use both as bunchers and post accelerators to vary the final energy of the beam. In comparison to other available designs, the advantage of these structures lies in their small size. Furthermore they can easily be tuned to the required resonance frequency by varying the length of the spiral. Due to the small size of the cavities the required budget can also be kept low. Here, two slightly different types of spiral loaded cavities, which were built for the REX-ISOLDE project at CERN and the intensity upgrade program at GSI are being discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 9 figures PRST-AB special LINAC 2000 edition with additional information in comparison to the 3 pages LINAC paper physics/000708

Histological investigations on the thyroid glands of marine mammals (Phoca vitulina, Phocoena phocoena) and the possible implications of marine pollution

In 1988 and 1989, thousands of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) died in the North Sea from phocine distemper infection. The morphology of thyroid glands from 40 harbor seals found dead on the North Sea coastlines of Schleswig-Holstein, Federal Republic of Germany, during an epizootic of phocine distemper, was compared with the morphology of thyroid glands from five healthy harbor seals collected in Iceland. Thyroid glands from seven harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) found dead in 1990 on the North Sea coastlines also were evaluated. Colloid depletion and fibrosis were found in the thyroid glands of harbor seals which died during the epizootic, but not in animals from Iceland. Thyroid glands of the porpoises showed similar lesions, but to a lesser degree, than those observed in the North Sea seals

Moments of nonclassicality quasiprobabilities

A method is introduced for the verification of nonclassicality in terms of moments of nonclassicality quasiprobability distributions. The latter are easily obtained from experimental data and will be denoted as nonclassicality moments. Their relation to normally-ordered moments is derived, which enables us to verify nonclassicality by using well established criteria. Alternatively, nonclassicality criteria are directly formulated in terms of nonclassicality moments. The latter converge in proper limits to the usually used criteria, as is illustrated for squeezing and sub-Poissonian photon statistics. Our theory also yields expectation values of any observable in terms of nonclassicality moments.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Pulsed squeezed vacuum characterization without homodyning

Direct photon detection is experimentally implemented to measure the squeezing and purity of a single-mode squeezed vacuum state without an interferometric homodyne detection. Following a recent theoretical proposal [arXiv quant-ph/0311119], the setup only requires a tunable beamsplitter and a single-photon detector to fully characterize the generated Gaussian states. The experimental implementation of this procedure is discussed and compared with other reference methods.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Characterization of quantum angular-momentum fluctuations via principal components

We elaborate an approach to quantum fluctuations of angular momentum based on the diagonalization of the covariance matrix in two versions: real symmetric and complex Hermitian. At difference with previous approaches this is SU(2) invariant and avoids any difficulty caused by nontrivial commutators. Meaningful uncertainty relations are derived which are nontrivial even for vanishing mean angular momentum. We apply this approach to some relevant states.Comment: 10 pages, Two column. New section II and some clarifying comment

Measuring the Density Matrix by Local Addressing

We introduce a procedure to measure the density matrix of a material system. The density matrix is addressed locally in this scheme by applying a sequence of delayed light pulses. The procedure is based on the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) technique. It is shown that a series of population measurements on the target state of the population transfer process yields unambiguous information about the populations and coherences of the addressed states, which therefore can be determined.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur