CHARACTERIZATION OF PLANT POLYADENYLATION TRANSACTING FACTORS-FACTORS THAT MODIFY POLY(A) POLYMERSE ACTIVITY

Plant polyadenylation factors have proven difficult to purify and characterize, owing to the presence of excessive nuclease activity in plant nuclear extracts, thereby precluding the identification of polyadenylation signal-dependent processing and polyadenylation in crude extracts. As an alternative approach to identifying such factors, a screen was conducted for activities that inhibit the non-specific activity of plant poly(A) polymerases (PAP). One such factor (termed here as Putative Polyadenylation Factor B, or PPF-B) was identified in a screen of DEAE-Sepharose column fractions using a partially purified preparation of a plant nuclear poly(A) polymerase. This factor was purified to near homogeneity. Surprisingly, in addition to being an effective inhibitor of the nuclear PAP, PPF-B inhibited the activity of a chloroplast PAP. In contrast, this factor stimulated the activity of the yeast PAP. Direct assays of ATPase, proteinase, and nuclease activities indicated that inhibition of PAP activity was not due to depletion of substrates or degradation of products of the PAP reaction. The major polypeptide component of PPF-B proved to be a novel linker histone (RSP), which copurified with inhibitory activity by affinity chromatography on DNA-cellulose. The association of inhibitory activity with a linker histone and the spectrum of inhibitory activity, raise interesting possibilities regarding the role of PPF-B in nuclear RNA metabolism. These include a link between DNA damage and polyadenylation, as well as a role for limiting the polyadenylation of stable RNAs in the nucleus and nucleolus. The Arabidopsis genome possesses genes encoding probable homologs of most of the polyadenylation subunits that have been identified in mammals and yeast. Two of these reside on chromosome III and V and have the potential to encode a protein that is related to the yeast and mammalian Fip1 subunit (AtFip1-III and AtFip1-V). These genes are universally expressed in Arabidopsis tissues. AtFip1-V stimulates the non-specific activity of at least one Arabidopsis nuclear PAP, binds RNA, and interacts with other polyadenylation homologs AtCstF77 and AtCPSF30. These studies suggest that AtFip1- V is an authentic polyadenylation factor that coordinates other subunits and plays a role in regulating the activityof PAP in plants

Crystallographic properties and elemental migration in two-stage prepared CuIn1−xAlxSe2 thin films for photovoltaic applications

Two-stage fabrication of CuIn1−xAlxSe2 thin films for photovoltaic absorbers using sputtered Cu–In–Al metallic precursors has been investigated. Precursors containing different relative amounts of Al were selenised and their structural and chemical properties characterised. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses revealed that the Al was only incorporated into the chalcopyrite structure for precursor composition ratios x = [Al]/([Al] + [In]) ⩾ 0.38, while chemical analysis of the cross-section indicated partial segregation of Al near the back of the film. Precursor films in the range of compositions that yielded no Al incorporation were then selenised at four different temperatures. Glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy, plasma profiling time-of-flight mass spectrometry and XRD analyses provided an insight into the diffusion processes and reactions taking place during the selenisation stage. The effect of post-selenisation annealing without additional Se was also investigated, and led to partial incorporation of the Al into the CuInSe2 lattice but no rediffusion

Development of a Human Body Model for the Analysis of Side Impact Automotive Thoracic Trauma

Occupant thoracic injury incurred during side impact automotive crashes constitutes a significant portion of all fatal and non-fatal automotive injuries. The limited space between the impacting vehicle and occupant can result in significant loads and corresponding injury prior to deceleration of the impacting vehicle. Within the struck vehicle, impact occurs between the occupant and various interior components. Injury is sustained to human structural components such as the thoracic cage or shoulder, and to the internal visceral components such as the heart, lungs, or aorta. Understanding the mechanism behind these injuries is an important step in improving the side impact crash safety of vehicles. This study is focused on the development of a human body numerical model for the purpose of predicting thoracic response and trauma in side impact automotive crash. The human body model has been created using a previously developed thoracic numerical model, originally used for predicting thoracic trauma under simple impact conditions. The original version of the thorax model incorporated three-dimensional finite element representations of the spine, ribs, heart, lungs, major blood vessels, rib cage surface muscles and upper limbs. The present study began with improvements to the original thorax model and furthered with the development of remaining body components such that the model could be assessed in side impact conditions. The improvements to the thoracic model included improved geometry and constitutive response of the surface muscles, shoulder and costal cartilage. This detailed thoracic model was complimented with a pelvis, lower limbs, an abdomen and a head to produce the full body model. These components were implemented in a simplified fashion to provide representative response without significant computational costs. The model was developed and evaluated in a stepwise fashion using experimental data from the literature including side abdominal and pelvic pendulum impact tests. The accuracy of the model response was investigated using experimental testing performed on post mortem human subjects (PMHS) during side and front thoracic pendulum impacts. The model produced good agreement for the side thoracic and side shoulder pendulum impact tests and reasonable correlation during the frontal thoracic pendulum impact test. Complex loading via side sled impact tests was then investigated where the body was loaded unbelted in a NHTSA-type and WSU-type side sled test system. The thorax response was excellent when considering force, compression and injury (viscous criterion) versus time. Compression in the thorax was influenced by the arm position, which when aligned with the coronal plane produced the most aggressive form of compressive loading possible. The simplified components provided good response, falling slightly outside experimental response corridors defined as one standard deviation from the average of the experimental PMHS data. Overall, the predicted model response showed reasonable agreement with the experimental data, while at the same time highlighting areas for future developments. The results from this study suggested that the numerical finite element model developed herein could be used as a powerful tool for improving side impact automotive safety

Nutrition in Early Childcare Programs: The Benefits and Barriers

Introduction: 1 in 5 Vermont children experience food insecurity. Inadequate nutrition threatens cognitive, social, and emotional development in the first years of life. 49.1% of Vermont children arrive at kindergarten underprepared. It has been shown that undernourished children have reduced activity levels and withdraw from their environment, removing them from critical learning opportunities and social interactions. Supporting the provision of healthy food in early childcare programs may help address the issue of food insecurity and promote healthy childhood development. Currently, there are no existing data on both Vermont childcare providers and parents of these children on their perceptions of the importance of providing food in early childcare programs as well as the associated benefits and barriers to do so.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1228/thumbnail.jp

Age-related impairments and influence of visual feedback when learning to stand with unexpected sensorimotor delays

Background:While standing upright, the brain must accurately accommodate for delays between sensory feedback and self-generated motor commands. Natural aging may limit adaptation to sensorimotor delays due to age-related decline in sensory acuity, neuromuscular capacity and cognitive function. This study examined balance learning in young and older adults as they stood with robot-induced sensorimotor delays.Methods:A cohort of community dwelling young (mean = 23.6 years, N = 20) and older adults (mean = 70.1 years, N = 20) participated in this balance learning study. Participants stood on a robotic balance simulator which was used to artificially impose a 250 ms delay into their control of standing. Young and older adults practiced to balance with the imposed delay either with or without visual feedback (i.e., eyes open or closed), resulting in four training groups. We assessed their balance behavior and performance (i.e., variability in postural sway and ability to maintain upright posture) before, during and after training. We further evaluated whether training benefits gained in one visual condition transferred to the untrained condition.Results:All participants, regardless of age or visual training condition, improved their balance performance through training to stand with the imposed delay. Compared to young adults, however, older adults had larger postural oscillations at all stages of the experiments, exhibited less relative learning to balance with the delay and had slower rates of balance improvement. Visual feedback was not required to learn to stand with the imposed delay, but it had a modest effect on the amount of time participants could remain upright. For all groups, balance improvements gained from training in one visual condition transferred to the untrained visual condition.Conclusion:Our study reveals that while advanced age partially impairs balance learning, the older nervous system maintains the ability to recalibrate motor control to stand with initially destabilizing sensorimotor delays under differing visual feedback conditions

Using Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation to Induce Post-Roll Illusion in a Fixed-Base Flight Simulator

INTRODUCTION: The illusions of head motion induced by galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) can be used to compromise flight performance of pilots in fixed-base simulators. However, the stimuli used in the majority of studies fail to mimic disorientation in realistic flight because they are independent from the simulated aircraft motion. This study investigated the potential of bilateral-bipolar GVS coupled to aircraft roll in a fixed-base simulator to mimic vestibular spatial disorientation illusions, specifically the “post-roll illusion” observed during flight.METHODS: There were 14 nonpilot subjects exposed to roll stimuli in a flight simulator operating in a fixed-base mode. GVS was delivered via carbon rubber electrodes on the mastoid processes. The electrical stimulus was driven by the high-pass filtered aircraft roll rate to mimic the semicircular canals’ physiological response. The post-roll test scenarios excluded outside visual cues or instruments and required subjects to actively maintain a constant bank angle after an abrupt stop following a passive prolonged roll maneuver. The anticipated outcome was an overshot in roll elicited by the GVS signal. RESULTS: The responses across subjects showed large variability, with less than a third aligning with the post-roll illusion. Subjective ratings suggest that the high-pass filtered GVS stimuli were mild and did not induce a clear sense of roll direction. However, uncontrolled head movements during stimulation might have obscured the intended effects of GVS-evoked illusory head movements. CONCLUSION: The mild and transient GVS stimuli used in this study, together with the uncontrolled head movements, did not convincingly mimic the post-roll illusion.</p

Extended X-Ray Emission from QSOs

We report Chandra ACIS observations of the fields of 4 QSOs showing strong extended optical emission-line regions. Two of these show no evidence for significant extended X-ray emission. The remaining two fields, those of 3C 249.1 and 4C 37.43, show discrete (but resolved) X-ray sources at distances ranging from ~10 to ~40 kpc from the nucleus. In addition, 4C 37.43 also may show a region of diffuse X-ray emission extending out to ~65 kpc and centered on the QSO. It has been suggested that extended emission-line regions such as these may originate in the cooling of a hot intragroup medium. We do not detect a general extended medium in any of our fields, and the upper limits we can place on its presence indicate cooling times of at least a few 10^9 years. The discrete X-ray emission sources we detect cannot be explained as the X-ray jets frequently seen associated with radio-loud quasars, nor can they be due to electron scattering of nuclear emission. The most plausible explanation is that they result from high-speed shocks from galactic superwinds resulting either from a starburst in the QSO host galaxy or from the activation of the QSO itself. Evidence from densities and velocities found from studies of the extended optical emission around QSOs also supports this interpretation.Comment: Accepted by ApJ. 9 pages including 5 figure

EMG feedback tasks reduce reflexive stiffness during force and position perturbations

Force and position perturbations are widely applied to identify muscular and reflexive contributions to posture maintenance of the arm. Both task instruction (force vs. position) and the inherently linked perturbation type (i.e., force perturbations-position task and position perturbations-force tasks) affect these contributions and their mutual balance. The goal of this study is to explore the modulation of muscular and reflexive contributions in shoulder muscles using EMG biofeedback. The EMG biofeedback provides a harmonized task instruction to facilitate the investigation of perturbation type effects irrespective of task instruction. External continuous force and position perturbations with a bandwidth of 0.5–20 Hz were applied at the hand while subjects maintained prescribed constant levels of muscular co-activation using visual feedback of an EMG biofeedback signal. Joint admittance and reflexive impedance were identified in the frequency domain, and parametric identification separated intrinsic muscular and reflexive feedback properties. In tests with EMG biofeedback, perturbation type (position and force) had no effect on joint admittance and reflexive impedance, indicating task as the dominant factor. A reduction in muscular and reflexive stiffness was observed when performing the EMG biofeedback task relative to the position task. Reflexive position feedback was effectively suppressed during the equivalent EMG biofeedback task, while velocity and acceleration feedback were both decreased by approximately 37%. This indicates that force perturbations with position tasks are a more effective paradigm to investigate complete dynamic motor control of the arm, while EMG tasks tend to reduce the reflexive contribution

The representation of tropical upper tropospheric water in EC Earth V2

Tropical upper tropospheric humidity, clouds, and ice water content, as well as outgoing longwave radiation (OLR), are evaluated in the climate model EC Earth with the aid of satellite retrievals. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder and Microwave Limb Sounder together provide good coverage of relative humidity. EC Earth's relative humidity is in fair agreement with these observations. CloudSat and CALIPSO data are combined to provide cloud fractions estimates throughout the altitude region considered (500-100 hPa). EC Earth is found to overestimate the degree of cloud cover above 200 hPa and underestimate it below. Precipitating and non-precipitating EC Earth ice definitions are combined to form a complete ice water content. EC Earth's ice water content is below the uncertainty range of CloudSat above 250 hPa, but can be twice as high as CloudSat's estimate in the melting layer. CERES data show that the model underestimates the impact of clouds on OLR, on average with about 9 W m(-2). Regionally, EC Earth's outgoing longwave radiation can be similar to 20 W m(-2) higher than the observation. A comparison to ERA-Interim provides further perspectives on the model's performance. Limitations of the satellite observations are emphasised and their uncertainties are, throughout, considered in the analysis. Evaluating multiple model variables in parallel is a more ambitious approach than is customary