Insufficient maternal protein intake has been postulated to cause impaired fuel metabolism and diabetes mellitus in adult mammalian progeny, but the mechanism remains unclear.
To investigate the ...effect of a maternal low protein whey-based diet during pregnancy and lactation on pancreatic function and skeletal muscle glucose metabolism in the offspring.
Sprague-Dawley rats: 8 mothers and 46 offspring.
Female rats were fed throughout pregnancy and lactation with otherwise-complete isoenergetic diets sufficient (20% whey protein; control: n=3) or insufficient (5% whey protein; low-protein: n=5) in whey protein. From weaning all offspring ate control diet.
Food intake and weight gain were measured for both mothers and offspring, and in vitro functional studies of endocrine pancreas and skeletal muscle were performed on offspring at 40 and 50 days of age, respectively.
Food intake (P=0.004) and weight gain (P=0.006) were lower in low protein than control mothers during early gestation. Offspring of low protein mothers had significant lower body weight from 5 to 15 days of age, although there was no significant difference in food consumption. Glucose, arginine- and glucose/arginine-stimulated insulin secretion from perfused pancreases isolated from low protein offspring were decreased by between 55 and 65% compared with control values. Studies in skeletal muscle demonstrated no difference in insulin sensitivity between the two groups.
Dietary whey protein insufficiency in female rats during pregnancy and lactation can evoke major changes in insulin secretion in progeny, and these changes represent a persistent functional abnormality in the endocrine pancreas.
A detector for neutron imaging Britton, C.L.; Bryan, W.L.; Wintenberg, A.L. ...
IEEE transactions on nuclear science,
06/2004, Letnik:
51, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
A bright neutron source such as the spallation neutron source (SNS) places extreme requirements on detectors including excellent 2-D spatial imaging and high dynamic range. Present imaging detectors ...have either shown position resolutions that are less than acceptable or they exhibit excessive paralyzing dead times due to the brightness of the source. A detector concept known as MicroMegas (MicroMEsh GAseous Structure) has been developed at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, for high-energy physics charged-particle tracking applications and has shown great promise for handling high data rates with a rather low-cost structure. We are attempting to optimize the MicroMegas detector concept for thermal neutrons and have designed a 1-D neutron strip detector utilizing solid converters which we have tested. In addition, we are performing research into the compatibility of various converter coatings. Our goal is to develop a manufacturable detector that could be scaled to a 1 m/sup 2/, 2-D array for use at the SNS and other facilities.
The detection, identification, and localization of illicit radiological and nuclear material continue to be key components of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear security efforts around the world. ...Networks of radiation detectors deployed at strategic locations in urban environments have the potential to provide continuous radiological/nuclear (R/N) surveillance and provide high probabilities of intercepting threat sources. The integration of contextual information from sensors such as video, Lidar, and meteorological sensors can provide significantly enhanced situational awareness, and improved detection and localization performance through the fusion of the radiological and contextual data. In this work, we present details of our work to establish a city-scale multi-sensor network testbed for intelligent, adaptive R/N detection in urban environments, and develop new techniques that enable city-scale source detection, localization, and tracking.
The discovery of rare genetic variants is accelerating, and clear guidelines for distinguishing disease-causing sequence variants from the many potentially functional variants present in any human ...genome are urgently needed. Without rigorous standards we risk an acceleration of false-positive reports of causality, which would impede the translation of genomic research findings into the clinical diagnostic setting and hinder biological understanding of disease. Here we discuss the key challenges of assessing sequence variants in human disease, integrating both gene-level and variant-level support for causality. We propose guidelines for summarizing confidence in variant pathogenicity and highlight several areas that require further resource development.
The MiniBooNE-DM Collaboration searched for vector-boson mediated production of dark matter using the Fermilab 8-GeV Booster proton beam in a dedicated run with 1.86×10^{20} protons delivered to a ...steel beam dump. The MiniBooNE detector, 490 m downstream, is sensitive to dark matter via elastic scattering with nucleons in the detector mineral oil. Analysis methods developed for previous MiniBooNE scattering results were employed, and several constraining data sets were simultaneously analyzed to minimize systematic errors from neutrino flux and interaction rates. No excess of events over background was observed, leading to a 90% confidence limit on the dark matter cross section parameter, Y=ε^{2}α_{D}(m_{χ}/m_{V})^{4}≲10^{-8}, for α_{D}=0.5 and for dark matter masses of 0.01<m_{χ}<0.3 GeV in a vector portal model of dark matter. This is the best limit from a dedicated proton beam dump search in this mass and coupling range and extends below the mass range of direct dark matter searches. These results demonstrate a novel and powerful approach to dark matter searches with beam dump experiments.
Noise due to scattered light has been a frequent disturbance in the Advanced LIGO gravitational wave detectors, hindering the detection of gravitational waves. The non stationary scatter noise caused ...by low frequency motion can be recognized as arches in the time-frequency plane of the gravitational wave channel. In this paper, we characterize the scattering noise for LIGO's third observing run O3 from April, 2019 to March, 2020. We find at least two different populations of scattering noise and we investigate the multiple origins of one of them as well as its mitigation. We find that relative motion between two specific surfaces is strongly correlated with the presence of scattered light and we implement a technique to reduce this motion. We also present an algorithm using a witness channel to identify the times this noise can be present in the detector.
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