Development of brainstem-evoked responses in congenital auditory deprivation

To compare the development of the auditory system in hearing and completely acoustically deprived animals, naive congenitally deaf white cats (CDCs) and hearing controls (HCs) were investigated at different developmental stages from birth till adulthood. The CDCs had no hearing experience before the acute experiment. In both groups of animals, responses to cochlear implant stimulation were acutely assessed. Electrically evoked auditory brainstem responses (E-ABRs) were recorded with monopolar stimulation at different current levels. CDCs demonstrated extensive development of E-ABRs, from first signs of responses at postnatal (p.n.) day 3 through appearance of all waves of brainstem response at day 8 p.n. to mature responses around day 90 p.n.. Wave I of E-ABRs could not be distinguished from the artifact in majority of CDCs, whereas in HCs, it was clearly separated from the stimulus artifact. Waves II, III, and IV demonstrated higher thresholds in CDCs, whereas this difference was not found for wave V. Amplitudes of wave III were significantly higher in HCs, whereas wave V amplitudes were significantly higher in CDCs. No differences in latencies were observed between the animal groups. These data demonstrate significant postnatal subcortical development in absence of hearing, and also divergent effects of deafness on early waves II–IV and wave V of the E-ABR

Effect of alloying elements in melt spun Mg-alloys for hydrogen storage

In this paper we report the effect of alloying elements on hydrogen storage properties of melt-spun Mg-based alloys. The base alloys Mg90Si10, Mg90Cu10, Mg65Cu35 (at%) were studied. We also investigated the effect of rare earths (using MM: mischmetal) and Al in Mg65Cu25Al10, Mg65Cu25MM10 and Mg65Cu10Al15MM10 alloys. All the melt-spun alloys without MM show a crystalline structure, and the Mg65Cu25MM10 and Mg65Cu10Al15MM10 alloys showed an amorphous and partially amorphous structure respectively. At 350˚C all the alloys had a crystalline structure during the hydrogen absorption-desorption tests. It was observed that Si and Cu in the binaries alloys hindered completely the activation of thehydrogen absorption. The partial substitution of Cu by MM or Al allowed activation. The combined substitution of Cu by MM and Al showed the best results with the fastest absorption and desorption kinetics, which suggests that this combination can be used for new Mg-alloys to improve hydrogen storage properties.Fil: Rozenberg, Silvia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Tecnologías y Ciencias de la Ingeniería ; ArgentinaFil: Saporiti, María Fabiana Sonia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Tecnologías y Ciencias de la Ingeniería ; ArgentinaFil: Lang, Julien. Université du Québec a Montreal; CanadáFil: Audebert, Fernando Enrique. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Tecnologías y Ciencias de la Ingeniería "Hilario Fernández Long". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Tecnologías y Ciencias de la Ingeniería "Hilario Fernández Long"; ArgentinaFil: Botta, Pablo Martín. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencia y Tecnología de Materiales. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencia y Tecnología de Materiales; ArgentinaFil: Stoica, Mihai. Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden; AlemaniaFil: Huot, Jacques. Université du Québec a Montreal; CanadáFil: Eckert, Jürgen. The Erich Schmid Institute of Materials Science; Austri

The Nf=0 heavy quark potential from short to intermediate distances

We study the potential of a static quark anti-quark pair in the range 0.05fm \leq r \leq 0.8fm, employing a sequence of lattices up to 64^4. Lattice artifacts in potential and force are investigated theoretically as well as numerically and continuum quantities are obtained by extrapolation of the results at finite lattice spacing. Consistency of the numerical results with the form of scaling violations predicted by an analysis `a la Symanzik is found. The scale r_0/a is determined for the Wilson action up to beta=6.92.Comment: 24 pages (incl. tables), Late

PTPN22 regulates NLRP3-mediated IL1B secretion in an autophagy-dependent manner

A variant within the gene locus encoding PTPN22 (protein tyrosine phosphatase, non-receptor type 22) emerged as an important risk factor for auto-inflammatory disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and type 1 diabetes, but at the same time protects from Crohn disease, one of the 2 main forms of inflammatory bowel diseases. We have previously shown that loss of PTPN22 results in decreased NLRP3 (NLR family pyrin domain containing 3) activation and that this effect is mediated via enhanced NLRP3 phosphorylation. However, it is unclear how phosphorylation of NLRP3 mediates its inhibition. Here, we demonstrate that loss of macroautophagy/autophagy abrogates the inhibitory effect on NLRP3 activation observed upon loss of PTPN22. Phosphorylated, but not nonphosphorylated NLRP3 is found in autophagosomes, indicating that NLRP3 phosphorylation mediates its inactivation via promoting sequestration into phagophores, the precursors to autophagosomes. This finding shows that autophagy and NLRP3 inflammasome activation are connected, and that PTPN22 plays a key role in the regulation of those 2 pathways. Given its role in inflammatory disorders, PTPN22 might be an attractive therapeutic target, and understanding the cellular mechanisms modulated by PTPN22 is of crucial importance.</p

Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in QCD:a finite-size scaling study on the lattice

Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in QCD with massless quarks at infinite volume can be seen in a finite box by studying, for instance, the dependence of the chiral condensate from the volume and the quark mass. We perform a feasibility study of this program by computing the quark condensate on the lattice in the quenched approximation of QCD at small quark masses. We carry out simulations in various topological sectors of the theory at several volumes, quark masses and lattice spacings by employing fermions with an exact chiral symmetry, and we focus on observables which are infrared stable and free from mass-dependent ultraviolet divergences. The numerical calculation is carried out with an exact variance-reduction technique, which is designed to be particularly efficient when spontaneous symmetry breaking is at work in generating a few very small low-lying eigenvalues of the Dirac operator. The finite-size scaling behaviour of the condensate in the topological sectors considered agrees, within our statistical accuracy, with the expectations of the chiral effective theory. Close to the chiral limit we observe a detailed agreement with the first Leutwyler-Smilga sum rule. By comparing the mass, the volume and the topology dependence of our results with the predictions of the chiral effective theory, we extract the corresponding low-energy constant.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figure

Estrés oxidativo y antioxidantes en la conservación espermática

El estrés oxidativo de los espermatozoides, se refiere al daño que pueden sufrir en la integridad de sus componentes estructurales y fisiológicos; cuyo efecto está directamente relacionado con la disminución de la sobrevivencia y capacidad fecundante después de ser eyaculados. El estrés oxidativo, es provocado por la formación de gran cantidad de especies reactivas al oxígeno (ROS) o moléculas que contienen radicales libres, las cuales se hacen presentes durante el manejo y manipulación del eyaculado, comprometiendo la viabilidad de los espermatozoides. La pérdida de la funcionalidad de los espermatozoides –capacidad fecundante- por la presencia de grandes cantidades de ROS, después de ser eyaculados, es motivo de gran interés y preocupación en el tema de la conservación seminal de machos reproductores, cuyo objetivo es mantener, mejorar y optimizar la eficiencia reproductiva en las Unidades de Producción Animal, en cualquier parte del mundo. En este trabajo se presenta una revisión sobre estrés oxidativo, antioxidantes, técnicas para valorar el estrés oxidativo en espermatozoides y al final un glosario de términos relacionados con el tema.Oxidative stress of spermatozoa, it refers to damage that may have on the integrity of their structural and physiological components, whose purpose is directly related to the decrease in the survival and fertilizing capacity after he ejaculates. Oxidative stress is caused by the formation of large amounts of reactive oxygen species (ROS), or molecules containing free radicals, which are present during the handling and manipulation of the ejaculate and jeopardize the viability of spermatozoa. The loss of the functionality of sperm-fertilizing capacity, the presence of large amounts of ROS, after he ejaculates, is of great interest and concern on the issue of preservation of seminal male breeding, which aims to maintain, improve and to optimize reproductive efficiency in animal production units, anywhere in the world. This paper presents an overview on oxidative stress, antioxidants, techniques for assessing oxidative stress in spermatozoa and in the end a glossary of terms related to the topic

Emotional ratings and skin conductance response to visual, auditory and haptic stimuli

The human emotional reactions to stimuli delivered by different sensory modalities is a topic of interest for many disciplines, from Human-Computer-Interaction to cognitive sciences. Different databases of stimuli eliciting emotional reaction are available, tested on a high number of participants. Interestingly, stimuli within one database are always of the same type. In other words, to date, no data was obtained and compared from distinct types of emotion-eliciting stimuli from the same participant. This makes it difficult to use different databases within the same experiment, limiting the complexity of experiments investigating emotional reactions. Moreover, whereas the stimuli and the participants’ rating to the stimuli are available, physiological reactions of participants to the emotional stimuli are often recorded but not shared. Here, we test stimuli delivered either through a visual, auditory, or haptic modality in a within participant experimental design. We provide the results of our study in the form of a MATLAB structure including basic demographics on the participants, the participant’s self-assessment of his/her emotional state, and his/her physiological reactions (i.e., skin conductance)

Biological marks of early-life socioeconomic experience is detected in the adult inflammatory transcriptome.

Consistent evidence is accumulating to link lower socioeconomic position (SEP) and poorer health, and the inflammatory system stands out as a potential pathway through which socioeconomic environment is biologically embedded. Using bloodderived genome-wide transcriptional profiles from 268 Italian participants of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort, we evaluated the association between early life, young and later adulthood SEP and the expression of 845 genes involved in human inflammatory responses. These were examined individually and jointly using several inflammatory scores. Our results consistently show that participants whose father had a manual (as compared to nonmanual) occupation exhibit, later in life, a higher inflammatory score, hence indicating an overall increased level of expression for the selected inflammatory-related genes. Adopting a life course approach, these associations remained statistically significant upon adjustment for later-in-life socioeconomic experiences. Sensitivity analyses indicated that our findings were not affected by the way the inflammatory score was calculated, and were replicated in an independent study. Our study provides additional evidence that childhood SEP is associated with a sustainable upregulation of the inflammatory transcriptome, independently of subsequent socioeconomic experiences. Our results support the hypothesis that early social inequalities impacts adult physiology

Abnormal septal convexity into the left ventricle occurs in subclinical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

BACKGROUND: Sarcomeric gene mutations cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). In gene mutation carriers without left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy (G + LVH-), subclinical imaging biomarkers are recognized as predictors of overt HCM, consisting of anterior mitral valve leaflet elongation, myocardial crypts, hyperdynamic LV ejection fraction, and abnormal apical trabeculation. Reverse curvature of the interventricular septum (into the LV) is characteristic of overt HCM. We aimed to assess LV septal convexity in subclinical HCM. METHODS: Cardiovascular magnetic resonance was performed on 36 G + LVH- individuals (31 ± 14 years, 33 % males) with a pathogenic sarcomere mutation, and 36 sex and age-matched healthy controls (33 ± 12 years, 33 % males). Septal convexity (SCx) was measured in the apical four chamber view perpendicular to a reference line connecting the mid-septal wall at tricuspid valve insertion level and the apical right ventricular insertion point. RESULTS: Septal convexity was increased in G + LVH- compared to controls (maximal distance of endocardium to reference line: 5.0 ± 2.5 mm vs. 1.6 ± 2.4 mm, p ≤ 0.0001). Expected findings occurred in G + LVH- individuals: longer anterior mitral valve leaflet (23.5 ± 3.0 mm vs. 19.9 ± 3.1 mm, p ≤ 0.0001), higher relative wall thickness (0.31 ± 0.05 vs. 0.29 ± 0.04, p ≤ 0.05), higher LV ejection fraction (70.8 ± 4.3 % vs. 68.3 ± 4.4 %, p ≤ 0.05), and smaller LV end-systolic volume index (21.4 ± 4.4 ml/m(2) vs. 23.7 ± 5.8 ml/m(2), p ≤ 0.05). Other morphologic measurements (LV angles, sphericity index, and eccentricity index) were not different between G + LVH- and controls. CONCLUSIONS: Septal convexity is an additional previously undescribed feature of subclinical HCM