Intraseptal scopolamine has differential effects on Pavlovian eye blink and heart rate conditioning.

Evaluated the effects of intraseptal scopolamine hydrobromide (40 μg) injections on Pavlovian (classical) conditioning, with tones used as the CS and a periorbital electric shock train as the UCS, using New Zealand albino rabbits. Eyeblink (EB) and heart rate (HTR) CRs were concomitantly recorded. Although injections of scopolamine into the medial septum impaired the acquisition of the Pavlovian conditioned eyelid reflex, these injections enhanced the magnitude of accompanying Pavlovian conditioned HTR decelerations. However, scopolamine applied to the lateral septal area had no effect on EB conditioning, relative to the vehicle; like medial injections, scopolamine also enhanced the magnitude of the accompanying HTR decelerations. Results are compatible with those of previous investigations indicating that medial septal dysfunction impairs somatomotor conditioning but leaves autonomic conditioning intact and that septal dysfunction produces a parasympathetic bias of the cardiovascular system. (49 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transmission electron microscopic analysis of kidney glomeruli obtained by fine-needle aspiration

Aspiration biopsy of tumors and transplanted organs is a popular atraumatic method for diagnosis and also for the management of patients. Apart from the cytological analyses, it is clear that large aggregates of cells are obtained and these may be examined by electron microscopy. A study was carried out with dogs to assess the yield of intact glomeruli and tubules, resulting from a standard fine-needle aspiration procedure. Employing a 20-gauge needle, yields of approximately ten intact glomeruli were obtained with a tissue processing protocol that utilized filtration through a nylon mesh and backwashing, to resuspend the trapped aggregates. Processing for electron microscopy was carried out in microcentrifuge tubes. The ultrastructural preservation was excellent and the extension of these studies to investigations of not only renal transplantation, but also for diagnosis in human renal diseases of a broad spectrum, is suggested.     

Data management and analysis for high-throughput DNA sequencingprojects

The rapid advances in molecular biology have begun to shift many of the bottlenecks in genome research from the laboratory to the data analysis facility. The pace at which this has occurred creates a situation in which software development always has to catch up with the flow of data. Since such large-scale processes were not anticipated, the analysis infrastructure has not been fully established. Furthermore, most systems that have been built were designed by the biologists who collected the data. More recently, computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers have taken an interest in this problem. This has had a positive effect, since it has created a tight synergy between the informatics and the biology. Several principles affected the design of the system developed at TIGR. Each of the sample preparation, sequencing, and analysis steps had to be managed, scheduled, and tracked. This information had to be made readily available to those who needed it for carrying out their tasks. Different skill levels of the users had to be taken into account. The degree of human intervention at each step had to be evaluated and built into the design. A mixed processing environment of Macintosh and Unix platforms had to be integrated. Most importantly, the system had to save time, reduce error, and ensure uniformity of the analysis and quality of the results. In the authors' experience, the tools they have built work well because of their early decisions as to which systems to use for development. The authors settled on a robust relational database management system (Sybase) and a portable development environment (C, C++)     

Data mining of resilience indicators

In recent years, the Asia-Pacific region has experienced several financial setbacks, including speculative attacks in 1998 and the SARS outbreak in 2003. Financial stresses of this nature are unanticipated, and not all of the dangers can be predicted by the examination of market information and macroeconomic indicators. The Early Warning System (EWS) that has been adopted by the International Monetary Fund may not be able to predict future financial crises for all possible scenarios, because shocks come in many different forms. To supplement the EWS, this paper proposes a data mining framework to measure the resilience of an economy. The resilience framework does not predict a crisis, but rather assesses the current state of health of an economy and its ability to withstand a financial shock should one occur. The framework is based on a feedback system consisting of two stages. The first stage assigns a resilience score to each economy based on a fuzzy logic scoring scheme that is built on the ambiguous reasoning of experts. The second stage uses the classification tree approach to estimate thresholds for each economic indicator, and examines the quality of the fuzzy score. The result from the second stage is then passed back to the first stage as feedback. The final result is obtained when the feedback system reaches its equilibrium state. The proposed resilience framework is applied to the external-sector and the public-sector economies of several countries to illustrate its applicability.     

Shirley浅尝摄影

我在德国学者与摄影几乎毫不相关的专业——计算机科学，成天打交道的，除了数字就是计算机，家里几乎都是学理工科出身的。小的时候，我虽然也曾在闲暇时学习间乐绘画，算是与艺术沾上点边，自己也是很感兴趣，但真到选择专业的时候，却被告知，这碗饭并不好吃，生活也就还是被拉回“正常”的轨道。对艺术，对设计的好感也就因为找不到宣泄的地方暂时搁置下来，摄影，在那个时候还没有在我的生活中出现过。     

Luminescent Amphiphilic Aminoglycoside Probes to Study Transfection

We report the characterization of amphiphilic aminoglycoside conjugates containing luminophores with aggregation-induced emission properties as transfection reagents. These inherently luminescent transfection vectors are capable of binding plasmid DNA through electrostatic interactions; this binding results in an emission “on” signal due to restriction of intramolecular motion of the luminophore core. The luminescent cationic amphiphiles effectively transferred plasmid DNA into mammalian cells (HeLa, HEK 293T), as proven by expression of a red fluorescent protein marker. The morphologies of the aggregates were investigated by microscopy as well as ζ-potential and dynamic light-scattering measurements. The transfection efficiencies using luminescent cationic amphiphiles were similar to that of the gold-standard transfection reagent Lipofectamine® 2000.     

IN-SITU OBSERVATION OF CRACK TIP DEFORMATION IN A DUPLEX STAINLESS STEEL

The development of dislocation structures in the plastic zone ahead of a crack tip has been in-vestigated in a duplex stainless steel during in-situ deformation experiments in a scanningtransmission electron microscope.It was found that the dislocation distribution wassignificantly different in the ferrite and in the austenite.In the ferrite grains,the dislocationsemitted by the crack tip may cross-slip out of the original slip planes and form a broad plasticzone.However,in the austenite,the dislocation free zone is small and the dislocations emittedby the crack pile up in its slip plane.The selection of slip systems at the crack tip depends onthe crack tip Schmid factors in both phases.But after large deformation,the selection of thesecond slip systems at the craek tip in austenite does not depend on the Schmid factors.     

LOCALIZED CORROSION OF MICROCRYSTALS OF 1Crl8Ni9Ti STAINLESS STEEL

The resistances against localized corrosion of 1Cr18Ni9Ti microcrystals with normal grainsize and bcc structure obtained hy magnetron sputtering have been compared.The two kindsof microcrystals with (110) and (211) textures respectively were obtained under differentsputtering conditions.Both microcrystals were found to have better resistance against local-ized corrosion than the crystal with normal grain.The microcrystal with (110) preferredorientation has larger resistance to localized corrosion than that with (211) preferredorientation.     

TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE UPON VISCOSITY OF Ni-P ALLOY ON AMORPHOUS FORMATION

The viscous flow of amorphous alloys near T_gis closely related to the viscosity of liquid alloys.On the basis of the measured surface tension and density for Ni-P binary alloys,the correla-tion between the viscosity of the melt and viscous flow process of the amorphous alloy is inves-tigated.The relationship between viscosity and temperature for Ni-P alloys going from liquidto amorphous solid may be described by the following formula: