Effect of dietary ingestion of oxalic acid on growth and reproduction in male and female Long-Evans rats

Male and female Long-Evans rats placed on a diet of Purina laboratory chow supplemented with 2.5 and 5.0% oxalic acid for a period of 70 days revealed decreased body weights and restricted growth rates. Ingestion of 5.0% oxalic acid depressed absolute organ weights of several visceral and endocrine tissues but enhanced the organ/body weight ratios of both male and female rats. Vaginal smears indicated disrupted estrous cycles.     

Resetting of tremor by mechanical perturbations: a comparison of essential tremor and parkinsonian tremor

With the use of a computer-controlled torque motor, experiments were carried out on 11 patients with essential tremor and 13 with parkinsonian tremor to determine the effect of mechanical displacements at the wrist joint on the established pattern of tremor. Analysis of the timing of tremor bursts in electromyographic recordings before and following the stimuli revealed that the phase of essential tremor could be readily reset by external perturbations. In the majority of the parkinsonian patients the same type of stimuli had very little effect on the pattern of tremor. Differences between predicted and actual times of occurrence of tremor bursts following the stimuli were used to calculate a normalized resetting index, with 0 representing no resetting and 1, complete resetting. For the patients with essential tremor the mean resetting index was 0.64 +/- 0.14 (SD); for the parkinsonian patients the generation of essential tremor. Reflex mechanisms are less important in parkinsonian tremor, which is more likely dependent on oscillations originating in the central nervous system.     

A test of some predictions from the personality assessment system

Bovine brain gangliosides incorporated into phospholipid liposomes provide receptors for wheat germ agglutinin. Purified monosialogangliosides were mixed with egg phosphatidylcholine, and unilamellar liposomes were generated. Addition of wheat germ agglutinin induced the liposomes to fuse, and gel filtration analysis revealed that the lectin was incorporated into the fused liposomes. The fusion process was studied by following the changes in the 90 degrees light scattering. Increasing the proportion of the monosialoganglioside in the liposomes was found to increase both the extent of the lectin-induced liposome fusion and the rate of the reaction; below a threshold of approx. 5 mol%, the process was extremely slow. The increase in light scattering could be prevented by the addition of the hapten inhibitor, N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (1 mM). Addition of the inhibitor, subsequent to the lectin, caused a partial decrease in light scattering due to the dissociation of unfused vesicle aggregates. Electron microscopic examination revealed that the ganglioside-containing liposomes were vesicles, 244 +/- 25 A (S.D.) in diameter. Upon addition of wheat germ agglutinin, the vesicles appeared to fuse to form larger vesicles, corresponding to dimers and trimers of the initial vesicles. Inhibition studies with a variety of monosaccharides indicated that the sialic acid moieties present in the ganglioside acted as the lectin-receptor sites. This was confirmed by the observation that wheat germ agglutinin did not interact with phosphatidylcholine vesicles containing desialyated ganglioside.