Predictors of weight change following smoking cessation

Smoking behavior and weight change over a 5-year period were studied in 1,749 adult males of the Normative Aging Study. While men who quit smoking generally gained more weight than those in other smoking categories, 36% either lost weight or maintained the same weight after quitting. The major research focus was to predict the direction of weight change after smoking cessation. Among the characteristics most related to weight gain after quitting were heavier tar consumption, younger age, and leanness of body build. Conversely, traits related to weight loss were lighter smoking, older age, and stoutness of build.     

beta-Amyloid precursor protein isoforms show correlations with neurones but not with glia of demented subjects

Post-mortem cerebral cortex from 15 demented patients was specially collected to minimise autolysis and two membrane fractions and one soluble fraction were quantitatively examined for the major species of beta-amyloid precursor protein (APP) of high apparent molecular mass (> or = 80 kDa) together with the major mRNA species encoding APP isoforms. The number of pyramidal neurones and astrocytes, putative biochemical indices of interneurones and pyramidal neurones, and choline acetyl transferase activity were also determined. Multiple regression analysis has been used to investigate intercorrelations of APP species with biochemical and morphometric measures, free of any effects of confounding demographic variables. Subjects with Alzheimer's disease showed a loss of cholinergic activity and D-aspartate uptake compared with patients with other causes of dementia. The major finding of the study is that measures of neurones rather than astrocytes most closely correlate with the concentration of APP. Pyramidal cell numbers were positively correlated with mRNA for APP695. APP in the soluble fraction showed a negative correlation with pyramidal cell numbers and cholinergic activity. These results indicate that neurones within the cerebral cortex are the major source of APP, and that secretion of APP is dependent upon cortical pyramidal neuronal activity and cholinergic activity.     

Chemokine-induced fever: intracerebroventricular actions of MIP-1 and MIP-1 alpha in rats

The central pyrogenic actions in the rat of doublet macrophage inflammatory protein-1 (MIP-1) and MIP-1 alpha were determined by their intracerebroventricular infusion. Doses of 560 pg and 11.2 ng of MIP-1 or 10.0 ng MIP-1 alpha infused into the third cerebral ventricle induced a long lasting fever. However, MIP-1 alpha was much less potent than MIP-1 in terms of intensity and longer latency. Overall, these cytokines are pyrogenic when acting on the walls of the third ventricle; however, a dose 10 times greater than that injected directly into the anterior hypothalamus is required to evoke fever, as based on earlier experiments. Finally, circulating MIP-1 could act centrally by its entry through the choroid plexus into the ventricular system of the brain.     

The effect of adrenergic agonists on the systemic response to hemorrhage

An in vivo antitumor screening of extracts of Gomphrena martiana indicated positive activity in the petroleum ether extract, and its further bioactivity-directed fractionation resulted in a lipophilic flavonoid fraction. Upon inoculation of various doses of 5,6,7-trisubstituted flavones on two murine tumor lines, Sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich's carcinoma, a decrease of tumor growth was observed. An in vitro KB cultured cell screen indicated cytotoxicity.     

Thickness dependent electronic structure of ultra-thin tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) films

Microstructural properties of ultrathin (1-10 nm) tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) films are investigated by Near Edge X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The CK-edge NEXAFS spectra of 1 nm ta-C films provided evidence of surface defects (C―H bonds) which rapidly diminish with increasing film thickness. A critical thickness for stabilization of largely sp³ matrix structure distorted by sp² sites is observed via the change of π*C═C peak behavior. Meanwhile, an increase in the film thickness promotes an enhancement in sp³ content, the film roughness remains nearly constant as probed by spectroscopic techniques and AFM, respectively. The effect of thickness on local bonding states of ultrathin ta-C films proves to be the limiting factor for their potential use in magnetic and optical storage devices.     

High degree of N-functionalization in macroscopically assembled carbon nanotubes

Journal of Materials Science - Nitrogen doping of carbon nanomaterials has emerged as a method to develop novel material properties, though limitations in the form of extended treatment times,...     

Optimized hydrogen positions for aluminium and iron containing hydroxide minerals

The structures of a number of hydroxide and oxyhydroxide minerals have previously been reported without the hydrogen positions explicitly defined. Here we use two atomic scale computer simulation techniques, one based on classical ionic potentials, the other on density functional theory (DFT), to predict these positions. The aim is not only to provide data that can be used as the basis for future experimental structure optimizations but also model parameters that can be used to predict complex hydroxide structures. The efficacy of the approach is demonstrated through the comparison of predicted and experimental data for minerals whose hydrogen positions are known.     

Catechol O-methyltransferase inhibitor tolcapone has minor influence on performance in experimental memory models in rats

DNA-based immunization is a promising new technique for generating antibodies in laboratory animals for diagnostic purposes in biological science. The main advantages are the elimination of time and labor and the technically demanding steps of antigen purification. The DNA sequence of the protein of interest, cloned in a suitable in vivo expression vector that is administered intramuscularly or intradermally, is sufficient to induce an immune response in animals. We report the induction of antibodies to tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) coat protein (CP) as a highly immunogenic structural protein and potato virus Y (PVY) P1 protein (P1) as a nonstructural protein. The appropriate nucleotide sequences were introduced in a mammalian expression vector (pSG5) and injected intramuscularly into New Zealand White rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus). By 10 days post-injection (dpi) a specific immune response was detected against TMV-CP, while it took about 5 weeks for a response to PVY P1. In both cases the antibody titers were significantly above the corresponding pre-immune serum, however, they were considerably below the titer of the matching conventionally produced antiserum. To our knowledge, this is the first report of DNA-based immunization in order to generate antibodies to plant viral proteins, but further improvements are necessary to increase antibody titers before this promising new technique can be introduced broadly in plant science for diagnostic purposes.     

Evidence of visual processing negativity with attention to orientation and color in central space

The aim of this study was to determine whether the visual frontal processing negativity reported in our earlier paper (Karayanidis, F. and Michie, P.T. Electroenceph. clin. Neurophysiol., 1996, 99: 38-56) is related to selection of spatial location, or occurs regardless of the stimulus features used to define the target. Subjects were instructed to respond to infrequent target stimuli of a particular combination of orientation, color and size. All stimuli were presented at central fixation. Posteriorly, orientation selection enhanced P125 amplitude over the right hemisphere but neither orientation nor color selection had an effect on N190. Posterior selection negativities emerged for orientation, color and their conjunction. At anterior sites, widespread effects of orientation and color processing were evident. The effect of location selection on the anterior N1 seen in our previous study was not evident with orientation selection. Instead, selection of orientation, color and their conjunction resulted in P145-250 frontally. Two later anterior negativities emerged. The early negativity (vPNe) was affected independently by orientation and color selection while the late negativity (vPNl) was affected only by selection of feature conjunction. Thus, the present results show that, like its auditory counterpart, the visual processing negativity occurs with a variety of stimulus classification features and is not exclusively related to spatial selection.