Functional electrical stimulation as a safe and effective treatment for equine epaxial muscle spasms: Clinical evaluations and histochemical morphometry of mitochondria in muscle biopsies

Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) has been used extensively over several decades to reverse muscle atrophy during rehabilitation for spinal cord injury patients. The benefits of the technology are being expanded into other areas, and FES has been recently utilized for injury rehabilitation and performance enhancement in horses. Six retired horses (age from 10 to 17 yrs) that had been previously used mainly for dressage riding were selected for this study. Clinical evaluation found epaxial muscle spasms in all horses with minimal to no pelvic extension when manually palpated. FES treatments were performed on the sacral/lumbar region 3 times per week for a period of 8 weeks, obtaining a total of 22 treatments per horse. The Modified Ashworth Scale for grading muscle spasms found a one grade improvement after approximately four FES treatments, indicating improved functional movement of the sacral/lumbar region, supporting the evidence by clinical palpations that a reduction in epaxial muscle spasms occurred. Skeletal muscle biopsies Pre and Post FES treatments were obtained from the <em>longissimus lumborum</em> muscle. Cryosections were stained with a Hemotoxylin-Eosin (H-E), and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide tetrazolium reductase reaction (NADH-TR). The eventual size change of the muscle fibers were evaluated by morphometry in the H-E and NADH-TR stained cryosections, while in the NADH-TR slides the histochemical density and distribution of mitochondria were also determined. The main results of the morphometric analyses were: 1) As expected for the type of FES treatment used in this study, only a couple of horses showed significant increases in mean muscle fiber size when Pre- vs Post-FES biopsies were compared; 2) In the older horses, there were sparse (or many in one horse) very atrophic and angulated muscle fibers in both Pre- and Post-FES samples, whose attributes and distribution suggests that they were denervated due to a distal neuropathy; 3) The hypothesis of generalized FES-induced muscle fiber damage during epaxial muscle training is not supported by our data since: 3.1) Denervated muscle fibers were also present in the Pre-FES biopsies and 3.2) Only one horse presented with several long-term denervated muscles fibers Post-FES; 4) Preliminary data indicate an increased density and distribution of mitochondria in Post-FES biopsies, suggesting that the clinical improvements in the FES treated horses may be related to daily increased muscle contraction and perfusion induced by FES training. In conclusion, FES in horses is a safe treatment that provides clinical improvements in equine epaxial muscle spasms

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) - 2018 Summary Report

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is a TeV-scale high-luminosity linear $e^+e^-$ collider under development at CERN. Following the CLIC conceptual design published in 2012, this report provides an overview of the CLIC project, its current status, and future developments. It presents the CLIC physics potential and reports on design, technology, and implementation aspects of the accelerator and the detector. CLIC is foreseen to be built and operated in stages, at centre-of-mass energies of 380 GeV, 1.5 TeV and 3 TeV, respectively. CLIC uses a two-beam acceleration scheme, in which 12 GHz accelerating structures are powered via a high-current drive beam. For the first stage, an alternative with X-band klystron powering is also considered. CLIC accelerator optimisation, technical developments and system tests have resulted in an increased energy efficiency (power around 170 MW) for the 380 GeV stage, together with a reduced cost estimate at the level of 6 billion CHF. The detector concept has been refined using improved software tools. Significant progress has been made on detector technology developments for the tracking and calorimetry systems. A wide range of CLIC physics studies has been conducted, both through full detector simulations and parametric studies, together providing a broad overview of the CLIC physics potential. Each of the three energy stages adds cornerstones of the full CLIC physics programme, such as Higgs width and couplings, top-quark properties, Higgs self-coupling, direct searches, and many precision electroweak measurements. The interpretation of the combined results gives crucial and accurate insight into new physics, largely complementary to LHC and HL-LHC. The construction of the first CLIC energy stage could start by 2026. First beams would be available by 2035, marking the beginning of a broad CLIC physics programme spanning 25-30 years

Measurement of differential cross sections for Higgs boson production in the diphoton decay channel in pp collisions at root s=8TeV

Peer reviewe

High Surface Area ZnO-Nanorods Catalyze the Clean Thermal Methane Oxidation to CO2

ZnO nanostructures were synthesized by a combination of non-aqueous and aqueous sol-gel techniques to obtain morphologically different ZnO nanostructures, nanorods, and nanopyramids, featuring oxygen vacancies-rich exposed lattice faces and exhibiting different catalytic properties and activity. In particular, ZnO nanorods with high surface area (36 m2/g) were obtained through a rapid, scalable, and convenient procedure. The materials were tested for complete methane oxidation as an important benchmark reaction that is sensitive to surface area and to the availability of oxygen vacancies. Simple ZnO nanorods derived from nanosized quantum dots showed the best catalytic performance that compared well to that of several literature-reported perovskites, mixed metal oxides, and single-metal oxides in terms of T50 (576 &deg;C) and T90 (659 &deg;C) temperatures. Such a result was attributed to their high surface-to-volume ratio enhancing the availability of catalytically active sites such as oxygen vacancies whose abundance further increased following catalytic application at high temperatures. The latter effect allowed us to maintain a nearly stable catalytic performance with over 90% conversion for 12 h at 700 &deg;C despite sintering. This research shows that ZnO-based nanomaterials with a high surface area are viable alternatives to oxides of commonly applied (but of potentially limited availability) transition metals (La, Mn, Co, Ni) for the complete combustion of methane when working at moderate temperatures (600&ndash;700 &deg;C)

High Surface Area ZnO-Nanorods Catalyze the Clean Thermal Methane Oxidation to CO₂

ZnO nanostructures were synthesized by a combination of non-aqueous and aqueous sol-gel techniques to obtain morphologically different ZnO nanostructures, nanorods, and nanopyramids, featuring oxygen vacancies-rich exposed lattice faces and exhibiting different catalytic properties and activity. In particular, ZnO nanorods with high surface area (36 m2/g) were obtained through a rapid, scalable, and convenient procedure. The materials were tested for complete methane oxidation as an important benchmark reaction that is sensitive to surface area and to the availability of oxygen vacancies. Simple ZnO nanorods derived from nanosized quantum dots showed the best catalytic performance that compared well to that of several literature-reported perovskites, mixed metal oxides, and single-metal oxides in terms of T50 (576 °C) and T90 (659 °C) temperatures. Such a result was attributed to their high surface-to-volume ratio enhancing the availability of catalytically active sites such as oxygen vacancies whose abundance further increased following catalytic application at high temperatures. The latter effect allowed us to maintain a nearly stable catalytic performance with over 90% conversion for 12 h at 700 °C despite sintering. This research shows that ZnO-based nanomaterials with a high surface area are viable alternatives to oxides of commonly applied (but of potentially limited availability) transition metals (La, Mn, Co, Ni) for the complete combustion of methane when working at moderate temperatures (600–700 °C)