9,661 research outputs found
A pharmacological cocktail for arresting actin dynamics in living cells.
The actin cytoskeleton is regulated by factors that influence polymer assembly, disassembly, and network rearrangement. Drugs that inhibit these events have been used to test the role of actin dynamics in a wide range of cellular processes. Previous methods of arresting actin rearrangements take minutes to act and work well in some contexts, but can lead to significant actin reorganization in cells with rapid actin dynamics, such as neutrophils. In this paper, we report a pharmacological cocktail that not only arrests actin dynamics but also preserves the structure of the existing actin network in neutrophil-like HL-60 cells, human fibrosarcoma HT1080 cells, and mouse NIH 3T3 fibroblast cells. Our cocktail induces an arrest of actin dynamics that initiates within seconds and persists for longer than 10 min, during which time cells maintain their responsivity to external stimuli. With this cocktail, we demonstrate that actin dynamics, and not simply morphological polarity or actin accumulation at the leading edge, are required for the spatial persistence of Rac activation in HL-60 cells. Our drug combination preserves the structure of the existing cytoskeleton while blocking actin assembly, disassembly, and rearrangement, and should prove useful for investigating the role of actin dynamics in a wide range of cellular signaling contexts
Fast Characterization of Dispersion and Dispersion Slope of Optical Fiber Links using Spectral Interferometry with Frequency Combs
We demonstrate fast characterization (~1.4 microseconds) of both the
dispersion and dispersion slope of long optical fiber links (~25 km) using dual
quadrature spectral interferometry with an optical frequency comb. Compared to
previous spectral interferometry experiments limited to fiber lengths of
meters, the long coherence length and the periodic delay properties of
frequency combs, coupled with fast data acquisition, enable spectral
interferometric characterization of fibers longer by several orders of
magnitude. We expect that our method will be useful to recently proposed
lightwave techniques like coherent WDM and to coherent modulation formats by
providing a real time monitoring capability for the link dispersion. Another
area of application would be in stabilization of systems which perform
frequency and timing distribution over long fiber links using stabilized
optical frequency combs.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, Minor changes to tex
Enhancement and evaluation of Skylab photography for potential land use inventories, part 1
The author has identified the following significant results. Three sites were evaluated for land use inventory: Finger Lakes - Tompkins County, Lower Hudson Valley - Newburgh, and Suffolk County - Long Island. Special photo enhancement processes were developed to standardize the density range and contrast among S190A negatives. Enhanced black and white enlargements were converted to color by contact printing onto diazo film. A color prediction model related the density values on each spectral band for each category of land use to the spectral properties of the various diazo dyes. The S190A multispectral system proved to be almost as effective as the S190B high resolution camera for inventorying land use. Aggregate error for Level 1 averaged about 12% while Level 2 aggregate error averaged about 25%. The S190A system proved to be much superior to LANDSAT in inventorying land use, primarily because of increased resolution
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Cholinergic neural activity directs retinal layer-specific angiogenesis and blood retinal barrier formation.
Blood vessels in the central nervous system (CNS) develop unique features, but the contribution of CNS neurons to regulating those features is not fully understood. We report that inhibiting spontaneous cholinergic activity or reducing starburst amacrine cell numbers prevents invasion of endothelial cells into the deep layers of the retina and causes blood-retinal-barrier (BRB) dysfunction in mice. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which drives angiogenesis, and Norrin, a Wnt ligand that induces BRB properties, are decreased after activity blockade. Exogenous VEGF restores vessel growth but not BRB function, whereas stabilizing beta-catenin in endothelial cells rescues BRB dysfunction but not vessel formation. We further identify that inhibiting cholinergic activity reduces angiogenesis during oxygen-induced retinopathy. Our findings demonstrate that neural activity lies upstream of VEGF and Norrin, coordinating angiogenesis and BRB formation. Neural activity originating from specific neural circuits may be a general mechanism for driving regional angiogenesis and barrier formation across CNS development
Transform-limited pulses are not optimal for resonant multiphoton transitions
Maximizing nonlinear light-matter interactions is a primary motive for
compressing laser pulses to achieve ultrashort transform limited pulses. Here
we show how, by appropriately shaping the pulses, resonant multiphoton
transitions can be enhanced significantly beyond the level achieved by
maximizing the pulse's peak intensity. We demonstrate the counterintuitive
nature of this effect with an experiment in a resonant two-photon absorption,
in which, by selectively removing certain spectral bands, the peak intensity of
the pulse is reduced by a factor of 40, yet the absorption rate is doubled.
Furthermore, by suitably designing the spectral phase of the pulse, we increase
the absorption rate by a factor of 7.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Gaussian-shaped Optical Frequency Comb Generation for Microwave Photonic Filtering
Using only electro-optic modulators, we generate a 41-line 10-GHz
Gaussian-shaped optical frequency comb. We use this comb to demonstrate
apodized microwave photonic filters with greater than 43-dB sidelobe
suppression without the need for a pulse shaper.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure
Single Shot Amplitude and Phase Characterization of Optical Arbitrary Waveforms
Using a time-gated dual quadrature spectral interferometry technique, for the
first time we demonstrate single-shot characterization of both spectral
amplitude and phase of ~1THz bandwidth optical arbitrary waveforms generated
from a 10 GHz frequency comb. Our measurements provide a temporal resolution of
1ps over a record length of 100ps. Singleshot characterization becomes
particularly relevant when waveform synthesis operations are updated at the
repetition rate of the comb allowing creation of potentially infinite record
length waveforms. We first demonstrate unambiguous single shot retrieval using
rapidly updating waveforms. We then perform additional single-shot measurements
of static user-defined waveforms generated via line-by-line pulse shaping.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. Added new references and minor changes to tex
U(2) and Maximal Mixing of nu_{mu}
A U(2) flavor symmetry can successfully describe the charged fermion masses
and mixings, and supress SUSY FCNC processes, making it a viable candidate for
a theory of flavor. We show that a direct application of this U(2) flavor
symmetry automatically predicts a mixing of 45 degrees for nu_mu to nu_s, where
nu_s is a light, right-handed state. The introduction of an additional flavor
symmetry acting on the right-handed neutrinos makes the model
phenomenologically viable, explaining the solar neutrino deficit as well as the
atmospheric neutrino anomaly, while giving a potential hot dark matter
candidate and retaining the theory's predictivity in the quark sector.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figur
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