Possible mechanism for changes in glycogen metabolism in unloaded soleus muscle

Carbohydrate metabolism has been shown to be affected in a number of ways by different models of hypokinesia. In vivo glycogen levels in the soleus muscle are known to be increased by short-term denervation and harness suspension. In addition, exposure to 7 days of hypogravity also caused a dramatic increase in glycogen concentration in this muscle. The biochemical alterations caused by unloading that may bring about these increases in glycogen storage in the soleus were sought

A high pass, mechanical velocity filter for fast neutral molecular beams

Design and transmission characteristics of high pass, mechanical velocity filter for fast neutral molecular or atomic beam

Identification and verification of frequency-domain models for XV-15 tilt-rotor aircraft dynamics

Frequency-domain methods are used to extract the open-loop dynamics of the XV-15 tilt-rotor aircraft from flight test data for the cruise condition (V = 170 knots). The frequency responses are numerically fitted with transfer-function forms to identify equivalent model characteristics. The associated handling quality parameters meet or exceed Level 2, Category A, requirements for fixed-wing military aircraft. Step response matching is used to verify the time-domain fidelity of the transfer-function models for the cruise and hover flight conditions. The transient responses of the model and aircraft are in close agreement in all cases, except for the normal acceleration response to elevator deflection in cruise. This discrepancy is probably due to the unmodeled rotor rpm dynamics. The utility of the frequency-domain approach for dynamics identification and analysis is clearly demonstrated

Responses of skeletal muscle to unloading, a review

Suspension models were used to study muscle response to reduced activity. During 6 days of tail casting, the soleus (SOL) atrophies while the extensor digitorum longus grows relatively normally. After discounting those changes in both muscles due primarily to increased secretion of adrenal hormones, the following conclusions regarding the specific responses of the SOL could be drawn: (1) Atrophy is probably due primarily to increased protein degradation; (2) Decreased synthesis of glutamine may result from reduced availability of ammonia due to diminished use of ATP; (3) Greater muscle glycogen seems to reflect an increased response to insulin of glucose uptake which leads to greater glucose metabolism; and (4) Faster catabolism of branched-chain amino acids can be attributed to enhanced flux through ketoacid dehydrogenase. Studies by others using tail casted suspended rats showed in the SOL: (1) a gradual switch from type 1 to type 2 fibers; (2) increased acid protease activity; and (3) altered muscle function and contractile duration. Using harness suspended rats, others showed in the SOL: (1) significant atrophy; (2) increased numbers of glucocorticoid receptors; and (3) no change in muscle fatigability

Response of rat hindlimb muscles to 12 hours recovery from tail-cast suspension

Previous work has shown a number of biochemical changes which accompany atrophy or reduced muscle growth in hindlimb of tail-casted, suspended rats. These results clearly show that altered muscle growth was due to changes in protein turnover. Accordingly, the rise in soleus tyrosine following unloading reflects the more negative protein balance. Other major changes we found included slower synthesis of glutamine as indicated by lower ratios of glutamine/glutamate and reduced levels of aspartate which coincide with slower aspartate and ammonia metabolism in vitro. In conjunction with the study of SL-3 rats, which were subjected to 12 h of post-flight gravity, a study of the effects of 12 h eight bearing on metabolism of 6-day unloaded hindlimb muscles was carried out

Muscle protein and glycogen responses to recovery from hypogravity and unloading by tail-cast suspension

Previous studies in this laboratory using the tail-bast hindlimb suspension model have shown that there are specific changes in protein and carbohydrate metabolism in the soleus muscle due to unloading. For example, 6 days of unloading caused a 27% decrease in mass and a 60% increase in glycogen content in the soleus muscle, while the extensor digitorum longus muscle was unaffected. Also, fresh tissue tyrosine and its in vitro release from the muscle are increased in the unloaded soleus, indicating that this condition causes a more negative protein balance. With these results in mind, studies to investigate the effect of hypogravity on protein and carbohydrate metabolism in a number of rat hindlimb muscles were carried out

Interfering trajectories in experimental quantum-enhanced stochastic simulation

Simulations of stochastic processes play an important role in the quantitative sciences, enabling the characterisation of complex systems. Recent work has established a quantum advantage in stochastic simulation, leading to quantum devices that execute a simulation using less memory than possible by classical means. To realise this advantage it is essential that the memory register remains coherent, and coherently interacts with the processor, allowing the simulator to operate over many time steps. Here we report a multi-time-step experimental simulation of a stochastic process using less memory than the classical limit. A key feature of the photonic quantum information processor is that it creates a quantum superposition of all possible future trajectories that the system can evolve into. This superposition allows us to introduce, and demonstrate, the idea of comparing statistical futures of two classical processes via quantum interference. We demonstrate interference of two 16-dimensional quantum states, representing statistical futures of our process, with a visibility of 0.96 $\pm$ 0.02.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Suppression of biodynamic interference in head-tracked teleoperation

The utility of helmet-tracked sights to provide pointing commands for teleoperation of cameras, lasers, or antennas in aircraft is degraded by the presence of uncommanded, involuntary heat motion, referred to as biodynamic interference. This interference limits the achievable precision required in pointing tasks. The noise contributions due to biodynamic interference consists of an additive component which is correlated with aircraft vibration and an uncorrelated, nonadditive component, referred to as remnant. An experimental simulation study is described which investigated the improvements achievable in pointing and tracking precision using dynamic display shifting in the helmet-mounted display. The experiment was conducted in a six degree of freedom motion base simulator with an emulated helmet-mounted display. Highly experienced pilot subjects performed precision head-pointing tasks while manually flying a visual flight-path tracking task. Four schemes using adaptive and low-pass filtering of the head motion were evaluated to determine their effects on task performance and pilot workload in the presence of whole-body vibration characteristic of helicopter flight. The results indicate that, for tracking tasks involving continuously moving targets, improvements of up to 70 percent can be achieved in percent on-target dwelling time and of up to 35 percent in rms tracking error, with the adaptive plus low-pass filter configuration. The results with the same filter configuration for the task of capturing randomly-positioned, stationary targets show an increase of up to 340 percent in the number of targets captured and an improvement of up to 24 percent in the average capture time. The adaptive plus low-pass filter combination was considered to exhibit the best overall display dynamics by each of the subjects