Run Scenarios for the Linear Collider

Scenarios are developed for runs at a Linear Collider, in the case that there is a rich program of new physics.Comment: 12 pages, 10 tables, Latex; Snowmass 2001 plenary repor

Deep Brain Stimulation Reveals a Dissociation of Consummatory and Motivated Behaviour in the Medial and Lateral Nucleus Accumbens Shell of the Rat

Following the successful application of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and promising results in clinical trials for obsessive compulsive disorder and major depression, DBS is currently being tested in small patient-populations with eating disorders and addiction. However, in spite of its potential use in a broad spectrum of disorders, the mechanisms of action of DBS remain largely unclear and optimal neural targets for stimulation in several disorders have yet to be established. Thus, there is a great need to examine site-specific effects of DBS on a behavioural level and to understand how DBS may modulate pathological behaviour. In view of the possible application of DBS in the treatment of disorders characterized by impaired processing of reward and motivation, like addiction and eating disorders, we examined the effect of DBS of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) on food-directed behavior. Rats were implanted with bilateral stimulation electrodes in one of three anatomically and functionally distinct sub-areas of the NAcc: the core, lateral shell (lShell) and medial shell (mShell). Subsequently, we studied the effects of DBS on food consumption, and the motivational and appetitive properties of food. The data revealed a functional dissociation between the lShell and mShell. DBS of the lShell reduced motivation to respond for sucrose under a progressive ratio schedule of reinforcement, mShell DBS, however, profoundly and selectively increased the intake of chow. DBS of the NAcc core did not alter any form of food-directed behavior studied. DBS of neither structure affected sucrose preference. These data indicate that the intake of chow and the motivation to work for palatable food can independently be modulated by DBS of subregions of the NAcc shell. As such, these findings provide important leads for the possible future application of DBS as a treatment for eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa

Oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis of gene IX of bacteriophage M13.

The synthetic oligodeoxyribonucleotide pCGAAAGACTACAC has been applied as a site-specific mutagen to introduce a T leads to G transversion mutation at nucleotide position 1223 of the M13 DNA sequence. The in vitro-induced conversion of a TAT codon into a TAG at this position resulted in gene IX mutants with an amber mutant character thereby confirming that this reading frame defines a gene of an essential phage protein. The gene IX amber mutants obtained grew well on SuI (Ser) and SuIII (Tyr) suppressing strains but could not be propagated on SuII (Gln) and SuVI (Leu) strains. Complementation studies show that amber mutants in genes V and VII exert a polar effect on gene IX expression suggesting that these three contiguous genes form an operon. In addition, we demonstrate the in vitro synthesis of gene IX-protein in a coupled transcription-translation system