Gender-Specific Neuromuscular Adaptations to Unloading in Isolated Rat Soleus Muscles

Introduction: The potential of gender to affect unloading-induced neuromuscular adaptations was investigated. Methods: Twenty male and 20 female rats were assigned to control (CTL), or unloaded (UL) conditions. After 2 weeks of unloading, soleus muscles were removed, and neuromuscular function was assessed during a train of alternating indirect (neural) and direct (muscle) stimuli. Results: In rested muscle, strength showed significant (P female) and treatment (CTL \u3e UL). By the end of the testing protocol, when muscles showed fatigue, gender-related and treatment-related differences in strength had disappeared. Neuromuscular transmission efficiency and strength suffered a greater decline during the testing protocol in males than females. Unloaded male muscles displayed greater contractile velocity than female muscles both when rested and fatigued. Conclusions: Gender affected unloading-induced neuromuscular adaptations. The greater strength of rested male muscles was due to greater muscle mass and neuromuscular transmission efficiency

Optimizing ISOCAM data processing using spatial redundancy

We present new data processing techniques that allow to correct the main instrumental effects that degrade the images obtained by ISOCAM, the camera on board the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). Our techniques take advantage of the fact that a position on the sky has been observed by several pixels at different times. We use this information (1) to correct the long term variation of the detector response, (2) to correct memory effects after glitches and point sources, and (3) to refine the deglitching process. Our new method allows the detection of faint extended emission with contrast smaller than 1% of the zodiacal background. The data reduction corrects instrumental effects to the point where the noise in the final map is dominated by the readout and the photon noises. All raster ISOCAM observations can benefit from the data processing described here. These techniques could also be applied to other raster type observations (e.g. ISOPHOT or IRAC on SIRTF).Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, to be published in Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Serie

Engaging Older Youth: Program and City-Level Strategies to Support Sustained Participation in Out-of-School Time

With support from The Wallace Foundation, the Harvard Family Research Project and P/PV conducted a study of almost 200 out-of-school-time (OST) programs in six cities to better understand how they promote sustained participation among older youth.The resulting data indicated that two of the most important practices distinguishing high-retention programs were: ample leadership opportunities for youth and high levels of staff efforts to keep informed about participants' lives outside the programs. The study also compares and contrasts effective practices for middle school- versus high school-aged youth, noting the shortcomings of "one-size-fits-all" strategies. Finally, Engaging Older Youth details the influence of city-level OST initiatives on programs and identifies the types of city-level services that likely support participation

GHIGLS: HI mapping at intermediate Galactic latitude using the Green Bank Telescope

This paper introduces the data cubes from GHIGLS, deep Green Bank Telescope surveys of the 21-cm line emission of HI in 37 targeted fields at intermediate Galactic latitude. The GHIGLS fields together cover over 1000 square degrees at 9.55' spatial resolution. The HI spectra have an effective velocity resolution about 1.0 km/s and cover at least -450 < v < +250 km/s. GHIGLS highlights that even at intermediate Galactic latitude the interstellar medium is very complex. Spatial structure of the HI is quantified through power spectra of maps of the column density, NHI. For our featured representative field, centered on the North Ecliptic Pole, the scaling exponents in power-law representations of the power spectra of NHI maps for low, intermediate, and high velocity gas components (LVC, IVC, and HVC) are -2.86 +/- 0.04, -2.69 +/- 0.04, and -2.59 +/- 0.07, respectively. After Gaussian decomposition of the line profiles, NHI maps were also made corresponding to the narrow-line and broad-line components in the LVC range; for the narrow-line map the exponent is -1.9 +/- 0.1, reflecting more small scale structure in the cold neutral medium (CNM). There is evidence that filamentary structure in the HI CNM is oriented parallel to the Galactic magnetic field. The power spectrum analysis also offers insight into the various contributions to uncertainty in the data. The effect of 21-cm line opacity on the GHIGLS NHI maps is estimated.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, 2015 July 16. 32 pages, 21 figures (Fig. 10 new). Minor revisions from review, particularly Section 8 and Appendix C; results unchanged. Additional surveys added and made available; new Appendix B. Added descriptions of available FITS files and links to four illustrative movies on enhanced GHIGLS archive (www.cita.utoronto.ca/GHIGLS/

Explanatory Supplement of the ISOGAL-DENIS Point Source Catalogue

We present version 1.0 of the ISOGAL-DENIS Point Source Catalogue (PSC), containing more than 100,000 point sources detected at 7 and/or 15 micron in the ISOGAL survey of the inner Galaxy with the ISOCAM instrument on board the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). These sources are cross-identified, wherever possible, with near-infrared (0.8-2.2 micron) data from the DENIS survey. The overall surface covered by the ISOGAL survey is about 16 square degrees, mostly (95%) distributed near the Galactic plane (|b| < 1 deg), where the source extraction can become confusion limited and perturbed by the high background emission. Therefore, special care has been taken aimed at limiting the photometric error to ~0.2 magnitude down to a sensitivity limit of typically 10 mJy. The present paper gives a complete description of the entries and the information which can be found in this catalogue, as well as a detailed discussion of the data processing and the quality checks which have been completed. The catalogue is available via the VizieR Service at the Centre de Donn\'ees Astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS, http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR/) and also via the server at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (http://www-isogal.iap.fr/). A more complete version of this paper, including a detailed description of the data processing, is available in electronic form through the ADS service.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures. A&A in press. Full length version with 32 figures and detailed description of the data processing is available here: http://www-isogal.iap.fr/Publications/ExplSupplFull.ps.g

Analysis of Diffusion of Ras2 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae Using Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching

Binding, lateral diffusion and exchange are fundamental dynamic processes involved in protein association with cellular membranes. In this study, we developed numerical simulations of lateral diffusion and exchange of fluorophores in membranes with arbitrary bleach geometry and exchange of the membrane localized fluorophore with the cytosol during Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching (FRAP) experiments. The model simulations were used to design FRAP experiments with varying bleach region sizes on plasma-membrane localized wild type GFP-Ras2 with a dual lipid anchor and mutant GFP-Ras2C318S with a single lipid anchor in live yeast cells to investigate diffusional mobility and the presence of any exchange processes operating in the time scale of our experiments. Model parameters estimated using data from FRAP experiments with a 1 micron x 1 micron bleach region-of-interest (ROI) and a 0.5 micron x 0.5 micron bleach ROI showed that GFP-Ras2, single or dual lipid modified, diffuses as single species with no evidence of exchange with a cytoplasmic pool. This is the first report of Ras2 mobility in yeast plasma membrane. The methods developed in this study are generally applicable for studying diffusion and exchange of membrane associated fluorophores using FRAP on commercial confocal laser scanning microscopes.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Biology (2010). 28 pages, 7 figures, 3 table

Multichannel Imaging to Quantify Four Classes of Pharmacokinetic Distribution in Tumors

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108598/1/jps24086.pd