4,079 research outputs found
Experimental procedures for molecular weight determination by light scattering
Molecular weight determination of polymers from angular dependence of light scatterin
Sites of Biosynthesis of Outer and Inner Membrane Proteins of Neurospora crassa Mitochondria
Outer and inner membranes of Neurospora crassa mitochondria were separated by the combined swelling, shrinking, sonication procedure. Membranes were characterized by electron microscopy and by marker enzyme activities. A red carotenoid pigment was found to be concentrated in the outer membrane. The inner mitochondrial membrane was resolved into about 20 protein bands on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, whereas the outer membrane shows essentially one single protein band. Only negligible incorporation of radioactive amino acids occurs into outer membrane when isolated mitochondria are synthesizing polypeptide chains. In agreement with this observation labeling of outer membrane protein is almost entirely blocked, when whole Neurospora cells are incubated with radioactive amino acids in the presence of cycloheximide, an inhibitor of cytoplasmic protein synthesis. Finally, the essential electrophoretic protein band from outer membrane does not become labeled when mitochondria are incubated with radioactive amino acids either in vitro or in vivo in the presence of cycloheximide. It is concluded that the vast majority, if not all, of the outer membrane protein is synthesized by the cytoplasmic system and that polypeptide chains formed by the mitochondrial ribosomes are integrated into the inner mitochondrial membrane
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Flash pyrolysis of coal through solar heating
A laboratory technique for studying flash pyrolysis by radiantly heating small stationary samples of powdered coal with the beam of a carbon dioxide laser is described. With this technique flux levels equivalent to those available from solar furnaces are attainable, experimental parameters are easily controllable and experimental turn around time is short. The pyrolysis of a Western subbituminous coal was studied with laser and solar heating. The pyrolysis products were a gas composed principally of H/sub 2/, CH/sub 4/, CO, and CO/sub 2/, tar, and char. Under laser heating, the gas yield increased with flux up to about 250 W/cm/sup 2/. Under conditions of complete pyrolysis, tar and gas yields were inversely proportional to each other, and char yield was almost constant. Solar coal pyrolysis experiments at the White Sands Solar Furnace gave results in general agreement with the laser pyrolysis experiments, except that gas yields were higher
Coherent Behavior and Nonmagnetic Impurity Effects of the Spin Disordered State in NiGaS
Nonmagnetic impurity effects of the spin disordered state in the triangular
antiferromagnet NiGaS was studied through magnetic and thermal
measurements for NiZnGaS (0.0\le x\le 0.3). Only 1 %
substitution is enough to strongly suppress the coherence observed in the spin
disordered state. However, the suppression is not complete and the robust
feature of the T^2 dependent specific heat and its scaling behavior with the
Weiss temperature indicate the existence of a coherent Nambu-Goldstone mode.
Absence of either conventional magnetic order or bulk spin freezing suggests a
novel symmetry breaking of the ground state.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
AMPA Receptor Phosphorylation and Synaptic Colocalization on Motor Neurons Drive Maladaptive Plasticity below Complete Spinal Cord Injury.
Clinical spinal cord injury (SCI) is accompanied by comorbid peripheral injury in 47% of patients. Human and animal modeling data have shown that painful peripheral injuries undermine long-term recovery of locomotion through unknown mechanisms. Peripheral nociceptive stimuli induce maladaptive synaptic plasticity in dorsal horn sensory systems through AMPA receptor (AMPAR) phosphorylation and trafficking to synapses. Here we test whether ventral horn motor neurons in rats demonstrate similar experience-dependent maladaptive plasticity below a complete SCI in vivo. Quantitative biochemistry demonstrated that intermittent nociceptive stimulation (INS) rapidly and selectively increases AMPAR subunit GluA1 serine 831 phosphorylation and localization to synapses in the injured spinal cord, while reducing synaptic GluA2. These changes predict motor dysfunction in the absence of cell death signaling, suggesting an opportunity for therapeutic reversal. Automated confocal time-course analysis of lumbar ventral horn motor neurons confirmed a time-dependent increase in synaptic GluA1 with concurrent decrease in synaptic GluA2. Optical fractionation of neuronal plasma membranes revealed GluA2 removal from extrasynaptic sites on motor neurons early after INS followed by removal from synapses 2 h later. As GluA2-lacking AMPARs are canonical calcium-permeable AMPARs (CP-AMPARs), their stimulus- and time-dependent insertion provides a therapeutic target for limiting calcium-dependent dynamic maladaptive plasticity after SCI. Confirming this, a selective CP-AMPAR antagonist protected against INS-induced maladaptive spinal plasticity, restoring adaptive motor responses on a sensorimotor spinal training task. These findings highlight the critical involvement of AMPARs in experience-dependent spinal cord plasticity after injury and provide a pharmacologically targetable synaptic mechanism by which early postinjury experience shapes motor plasticity
Transverse Demagnetization Dynamics of a Unitary Fermi Gas
Understanding the quantum dynamics of strongly interacting fermions is a
problem relevant to diverse forms of matter, including high-temperature
superconductors, neutron stars, and quark-gluon plasma. An appealing benchmark
is offered by cold atomic gases in the unitary limit of strong interactions.
Here we study the dynamics of a transversely magnetized unitary Fermi gas in an
inhomogeneous magnetic field. We observe the demagnetization of the gas, caused
by diffusive spin transport. At low temperatures, the diffusion constant
saturates to the conjectured quantum-mechanical lower bound ,
where is the particle mass. The development of pair correlations,
indicating the transformation of the initially non-interacting gas towards a
unitary spin mixture, is observed by measuring Tan's contact parameter.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. Accepted versio
Functional and Biogenetical Heterogeneity of the Inner Membrane of Rat-Liver Mitochondria
Rat liver mitochondria were fragmented by a combined technique of swelling, shrinking, and sonication. Fragments of inner membrane were separated by density gradient centrifugation. They differed in several respects: electronmicroscopic appearance, phospholipid and cytochrome contents, electrophoretic behaviour of proteins and enzymatic activities.
Three types of inner membrane fractions were isolated. The first type is characterized by a high activity of metal chelatase, low activities of succinate-cytochrome c reductase and of glycerolphosphate dehydrogenase, as well as by a high phospholipid content and low contents of cytochromes aa3 and b.
The second type displays maximal activities of glycerolphosphate dehydrogenase and metal chelatase, but contains relatively little cytochromes and has low succinate-cytochrome c reductase activity.
The third type exhibits highest succinate-cytochrome c reductase activity, a high metal chelatase activity and highest cytochrome contents. However, this fraction was low in both glycerolphosphate dehydrogenase activity and phospholipid content. This fraction was also richest in the following enzyme activities: cytochrome oxidase, oligomycin-sensitive ATPase, proline oxidase, 3-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase and rotenone-sensitive NADH-cytochrome c reductase.
Amino acid incorporation in vitro and in vivo in the presence of cycloheximide occurs predominantly into inner membrane fractions from the second type.
These data suggest that the inner membrane is composed of differently organized parts, and that polypeptides synthesized by mitochondrial ribosomes are integrated into specific parts of the inner membrane
Auger decay of degenerate and Bose-condensed excitons in CuO
We study the non-radiative Auger decay of excitons in CuO, in which two
excitons scatter to an excited electron and hole. The exciton decay rate for
the direct and the phonon-assisted processes is calculated from first
principles; incorporating the band structure of the material leads to a
relatively shorter lifetime of the triplet state ortho excitons. We compare our
results with the Auger decay rate extracted from data on highly degenerate
triplet excitons and Bose-condensed singlet excitons in CuO.Comment: 15 pages, revtex, figures available from G. Kavoulaki
Notes on the Third Law of Thermodynamics.I
We analyze some aspects of the third law of thermodynamics. We first review
both the entropic version (N) and the unattainability version (U) and the
relation occurring between them. Then, we heuristically interpret (N) as a
continuity boundary condition for thermodynamics at the boundary T=0 of the
thermodynamic domain. On a rigorous mathematical footing, we discuss the third
law both in Carath\'eodory's approach and in Gibbs' one. Carath\'eodory's
approach is fundamental in order to understand the nature of the surface T=0.
In fact, in this approach, under suitable mathematical conditions, T=0 appears
as a leaf of the foliation of the thermodynamic manifold associated with the
non-singular integrable Pfaffian form . Being a leaf, it cannot
intersect any other leaf const. of the foliation. We show that (N) is
equivalent to the requirement that T=0 is a leaf. In Gibbs' approach, the
peculiar nature of T=0 appears to be less evident because the existence of the
entropy is a postulate; nevertheless, it is still possible to conclude that the
lowest value of the entropy has to belong to the boundary of the convex set
where the function is defined.Comment: 29 pages, 2 figures; RevTex fil
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