oscillations

Researchers develop the first climate-based model to predict Dengue fever outbreaks

...rature variations in the Pacific related to El Nio can be linked to a debilitating disease," Fuller said. "Now we see more clearly that global climate oscillations such as El Nio are important drivers of disease as well" The study contributes to the rapidly emerging field of climate and infectious disease, which...

Evolution and epilepsy

...e a car hitting a bump in the road." says Cooper. "The potassium channels are like the shock absorbers on the car's suspensionthey dampen some of the oscillations caused when the sodium channels open and calm the nerve, just as shock absorbers reduce bouncing and help maintain control on a bumpy road." The fact...

UNC study supports role of circadian clock in response to chemotherapy

...onal Academy of Sciences , provides the first solid evidence that the daily oscillations of the cell's repair machinery can affect the potency of cancer drugs. T... levels of one of them the enzyme XPA rose and fell in synchrony with the oscillations of the circadian clock. Thus, the researchers demonstrated that the cell's ...

Snoring or soaring? Strength of fruit-fly immune system varies

...ct measured amounts of germs into the wee winged ones, the investigators have shown that the insects' immune response waxes and wanes with the diurnal oscillations called circadian rhythms. Mimi Shirasu-Hiza, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of David Schneider, PhD, assistant professor of microbio...

June 2008 highlights

...by sperm into the egg is crucial for promoting the oscillations in free calcium necessary to bring about a cascade...tes pronuclei where its ability to promote calcium oscillations ceases. One would reasonably think that a factor w...clear translocation does not occur in the rat, yet oscillations cease appropriately. Thus mechanisms controlling P...

'Power napping' in pigeons

...e for sleep loss in a manner similar to humans (Journal of Sleep Research, Online-Publication February 27, 2008). During SWS, the synchronous, slow oscillations of neurons are reflected in the EEG (Electroencephalogram), as large slow-waves with a frequency of less than 4 Hz, hence the name slow-wave sleep. Th...

Deafness and seizures result when mysterious protein deleted in mice

...BA. The presence of VGLUT3 suggested that these neurons might also release the excitatory glutamate. Since inhibitory neurons contribute to a range of oscillations in brain wave activity, the team hypothesized that disruption of these systems might affect brain wave activity in the cortex. In fact, an EEG (el...

Lack of Light and Seasonal Depression - What's the Link? From the Harvard Health Letter

...ion usually experience their dark moods in an on-again, off-again fashion. In that respect, seasonal affective disorder (SAD) differs only in that the oscillations follow a seasonal schedule, with the depression usually starting in the fall and lasting through the spring. Lack of light is often blamed for SAD, bu...

New T-ray Source Could Improve Airport Security, Cancer Detection

...ed. When the width of the cavities was precisely tuned to the frequencies set by the voltage, the natural resonances of the structure synchronized the oscillations and thus amplified the T-ray output, in a method similar to the production of light in a laser. "Once you apply the voltage," Welp said, "some junct...

Penn researchers pinpoint the brain waves that distinguish false memories from real ones

..., the findings may also provide a clearer picture of how to assist those suffering with epilepsy. In epilepsy's 2.6 million American sufferers, brain oscillations become so strong that they sweep across the brain, producing seizures. Although seizures are controlled with medication in two-thirds of people with ...

oscillations in Biological News

Theory of oscillations may explain biological mysteries

New mathematical studies of the interactions between oscillating biological populations may shed light on some of the toughest questions in ecology, including the number and types of species in an ecosystem, according to an article in the December 2006 issue of BioScience. The article, by John Vand...

Caltech scientists reveal how neuronal activity is timed in brain's memory-making circuits

... PASADENA, Calif.Theta oscillations are a type of prominent brain rhythm that orchestr...rmation of new memories. For several decades these oscillations were believed to be "in sync" across the hippocamp...rchers showed that instead of being in sync, theta oscillations actually sweep along the length of the hippocampus...

MIT: Making waves in the brain

...s in the April 26 online issue of Nature. Gamma oscillations reflect the synchronous activity of large intercon...es ranging from 20 to 80 cycles per second. "These oscillations are thought to be controlled by a specific class o...r in the McGovern Institute. In contrast, no gamma oscillations were induced when the fast-spiking interneurons we...

Smoke from cigarettes, cooking oil, wood, shift male cardiovascular system into overdrive

...g to the pollutants. Results The study found that, particularly among men, exposure to smoke changed breathing patterns, raised blood pressure oscillations in peripheral arteries and shifted control of heart rate toward sympathetic domination. The sympathetic nervous system becomes active during times of ...

Smoke from cigarettes, cooking oil, wood, shift male cardiovascular system into overdrive

...g to the pollutants. Results The study found that, particularly among men, exposure to smoke changed breathing patterns, raised blood pressure oscillations in peripheral arteries and shifted control of heart rate toward sympathetic domination. The sympathetic nervous system becomes active during times of ...

Mama whales teach babies where to eat

...hey adapt if they learn from their mother where to feed or will they die?" Previous research by Rowntree and colleagues showed that when climate oscillations increase sea temperatures, southern right whales give birth to fewer calves because the warm water reduces the abundance of krill, which are small, sh...

Behind closed eyes

...sensory percept. This difference appears to be the reason we don't experience hallucinations or hear voices that aren't there during rest. The resting oscillations appear to be strongest when we sense nothing at all during dream-free sleep. The slow fluctuation pattern can be compared to a computer screen-sa...

Here's venom in your eye: Spitting cobras hit their mark

... producing complex venom patterns. "The venom-delivery system functions to propel the venom forward while the [head and neck] muscles produce rapid oscillations of the head that disperse the venom, presumably maximizing the chance that a portion of the spat venom will contact the eye," the authors write. T...

Rare disease provides clues about enzyme role in arrhythmias

... was responsible for the heart rhythm problems. In contrast, when we inhibited the enzyme using a peptide, the disease features healed, the electrical oscillations resolved and the action potential was corrected." Even though the calcium channel defect in Timothy syndrome is relatively tiny, the defect serious...

'Fish technology' draws renewable energy from slow water currents

...000 houses. Such an array could rest on a river bed or it could dangle, suspended in the water. But it would all be under the surface. Because the oscillations of VIVACE would be slow, it is theorized that the system would not harm marine life like dams and water turbines can. Bernitsas says VIVACE energy ...

oscillations in Biological Technology

Scientists moving closer to 'artificial noses'

... a molecule docks onto one of the strings, then it becomes heavier, and its oscillations become measurably slower. Until recently, however, such "nano-electromechan... was produced between two gold electrodes right up close to the string. The oscillations were measured by two other electrodes. "We created this setup using etching...

Bridging the gap in nanoantennas

...d small metal bridges inside the gap (Figure b). They mapped the near-field oscillations of the different antennas with a modified version of the scattering-type ne...mall as 50 nm without disturbing the antenna. "By monitoring the near-field oscillations of the different antennas with our novel near-field microscope, we were abl...

Plasmonic whispering gallery microcavity paves the way to future nanolasers

...lasma) carried in quantized particle-like packets called plasmons, as they travel along metallic surfaces. When photons excite the collective electron oscillations at the interfaces between metal and dielectric (insulator) materials, they can form yet another quasi-particle called a surface plasmon polariton(SPP)...

Ultrafast lasers give CU-Boulder researchers a snapshot of electrons in action

...rnal Science, the CU team describes how they shot a molecule of dinitrogen tetraoxide, or N2O4, with a short burst of laser light to induce very large oscillations within the molecule. They then used a second laser to produce an X-ray, which was used to map the electron energy levels of the molecule, and most imp...

Genetic clock makers at UC San Diego publish their 'timepiece' in Nature

...ith the positive loop coming later to regularize it," said Hasty. Wild oscillations More and more studies are being published showing that gene function os...previously difficult to synchronize cell populations to the extent that the oscillations can be seen in gene expression arrays. "Based on our finding that all yo...

NeuroFocus Chief Science Advisor Wins Humboldt Prize

...Dr. Knight's work in delineating the contribution of the frontal cortex in orchestrating human behavior and the recent discovery that ultra fast brain oscillations track behavior in the human cortex that earned him nomination and selection as a 2008 Humboldt Research Award winner. In announcing the Award to Dr. K...

Atomic force microscopy reveals liquids adjust viscosity when confined, shaken

...e they were vibrated. A nanometer-size spherical silicon tip was used to approach a mica surface immersed in water or silicon oil, while small lateral oscillations were applied to the cantilever support. Some researchers have measured the force it takes to squeeze out a fluid, but we took a different approach,...

Physicists discover how fundamental particles lose track of quantum mechanical properties

...eries, such as the time-dependent disappearance and reappearance of quantum oscillations of the spins in the diamond lattice. To our surprise, when looking at longer times, the oscillations disappeared then re-appeared, said co-author Ronald Hanson, a postdoctoral ...

'High Q' NIST nanowires may be practical oscillators

...electron beam, apparently due to the GaN materials intrinsic piezoelectric ability to covert voltage to mechanical force. Q measures the damping of oscillations in a mechanical system as a function of frequencythe higher its Q, the longer a bell rings after being struck. Ordinarily, Q factors of mechanical res...

oscillations in Biological Definition

Mathematical biology

...nted 1993). ISBN 0898710170 S.I. Rubinow, Introduction to mathematical biology . John Wiley, 1975. ISBN 0471744468 A. Goldbeter, Biochemical oscillations and cellular rhythms . C.U.P., 1996. ISBN 0521599466 E. Renshaw, Modelling biological populations in space and time . C.U.P., 1991. ISBN 0521448...