Oxygen Consumption and Respiration Following Two Yoga Relaxation Techniques

The present study was conducted to evaluate a statement in ancient yoga texts that suggests that a combination of both calming and stimulating measures may be especially helpful in reaching a state of mental equilibrium. Two yoga practices, one combining calming and stimulating measures (cyclic meditation) and the other, a calming technique (shavasan), were compared. The oxygen consumption, breath rate, and breath volume of 40 male volunteers (group mean ± SD, 27.0 ± 5.7 years) were assessed before and after sessions of cyclic meditation (CM) and before and after sessions of shavasan (SH). The 2 sessions (CM, SH) were 1 day apart. Cyclic meditation includes the practice of yoga postures interspersed with periods of supine relaxation. During SH the subject lies in a supine position throughout the practice. There was a significant decrease in the amount of oxygen consumed and in breath rate and an increase in breath volume after both types of sessions (2-factor ANOVA, paired t test). However, the magnitude of change on all 3 measures was greater after CM: (1) Oxygen consumption decreased 32.1% after CM compared with 10.1% after SH; (2) breath rate decreased 18.0% after CM and 15.2% after SH; and (3) breath volume increased 28.8% after CM and 15.9% after SH. These results support the idea that a combination of yoga postures interspersed with relaxation reduces arousal more than relaxation alone does.     

Escherichia coli tol-pal Mutants Form Outer Membrane Vesicles

Mutations in the tol-pal genes induce pleiotropic effects such as release of periplasmic proteins into the extracellular medium and hypersensitivity to drugs and detergents. Other outer membrane defective strains such as tolC, lpp, and rfa mutations are also altered in their outer membrane permeability. In this study, electron microscopy and Western blot analyses were used to show that strains with mutations in each of the tol-pal genes formed outer membrane vesicles after growth in standard liquid or solid media. This phenotype was not observed in tolC and rfaD cells in the same conditions. A tolA deletion in three different Escherichia coli strains was shown to lead to elevated amounts of vesicles. These results, together with plasmid complementation experiments, indicated that the formation of vesicles resulted from the defect of any of the Tol-Pal proteins. The vesicles contained outer membrane trimeric porins correctly exposed at the cell surface. Pal outer membrane lipoprotein was also immunodetected in the vesicle fraction of tol strains. The results are discussed in view of the role of the Tol-Pal transenvelope proteins in maintaining outer membrane integrity by contributing to target or integrate newly synthesized components of this structure.     

Auxin — Calcium Interaction in Adventitious Root Formation in the Hypocotyl Explants of Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.)

Auxin-calcium interaction has been studied to understand their involvement in adventitious root initiation from the hypocotyl explants of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.). When hypocotyl explants were cultured on MS medium (containing calcium), 1 mg l^-1 IAA was found to be optimal for root induction. However, the hypocotyl explants washed in EGTA (10_-5M) solution for the removal of extracellular calcium, when cultured on medium containing IAA and calcium, exhibited enhanced rooting response. When EGTA-washed explants were cultured on the medium supplemented with lanthanum chloride (10^-6 and 10^-5M), it resulted in the inhibition of the rooting response and this inhibitory effect could be alleviated by the simultaneous addition of IAA. Similar observations have been made by using calcium channel blockers, verapamil and TMB-8, and also a calmodulin inhibitor, trifluoperazine. A net influx of extracellular calcium in the differentiating cells is thus presumed to accompany the auxin-induced response. These results have been discussed in light of initial lack of polarity in the decapitated hypocotyl segments subjected to auxin treatment.     

Studying vertical dependence to improve NFS performance in wireless networks

Wireless networks experience a high level of errors and losses. These physical layer characteristics have an impact on the performance of the higher layers. In addition, the performance of each protocol layer is contingent on the behavior of the other layers. Vertical dependency is a term which describes this inter-dependence between layers. In the wireless and mobile environment, the effects of vertical dependence are particularly pronounced due to the dynamic nature of the environment and due to the fact that traditional assumptions about protocol layer interactions do not always hold. In this paper, we consider the vertical dependencies between various layers in the protocol stack, studying the performance of the Network File System under various error models and improvement techniques. Our experimental results demonstrate the dependency of the application performance on the details of the error characteristics and other protocol layers. After studying the vertical dependencies, we improve NFS performance by implementing changes to the application level reliability mechanisms. Understanding of the vertical dependencies enables development of effective methods for performance enhancement and efficient reaction to errors and changes on the wireless media. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Targeting Brucella melitensis with polymeric nanoparticles containing streptomycin and doxycycline

Treatment and eradication of intracellular pathogens such as Brucella is difficult because infections are localized within phagocytic cells and most antibiotics, although highly active in vitro , do not actively pass through cellular membranes. Thus, an optimum strategy to treat these infections should address targeting of active drugs to the intracellular compartment where the bacteria replicate, and should prolong the release of the antibiotics so that the number of doses and associated toxicity can be reduced. We incorporated streptomycin and doxycycline into macromolecular nanoplexes with anionic homo- and block copolymers via cooperative electrostatic interactions among the cationic drugs and anionic polymers. The approach enabled simultaneous binding of both antibiotics into the nanoplexes, and their use resulted in an improvement in performance as compared with the free drugs. Administration of two doses of the nanoplexes significantly reduced the Brucella melitensis load in the spleens and livers of infected BALB/c mice. The nanoplexes were more effective than free drugs in the spleens (0.72-log and 0.51-log reductions, respectively) and in the livers (0.79-log and 0.42-log reductions, respectively) of the infected mice. Further research regarding the design of optimum nanoplex structures will be directed towards alterations in both the core and the shell properties to investigate the effects of the rates and pathways of entry into immune cells where the brucellae replicate.     

Characterization of IgM of Indian major carps and their cross-reactivity with anti-fish IgM antibodies

Indian major carps (IMC), rohu (Labeo rohita), catla (Catla catla) and mrigal (Cirrhinus mrigala) were immunized with bovine serum albumin and the serum immunoglobulin M (IgM) was purified by affinity chromatography. The heavy and light chain of IgM of all the three species of IMC were about 88 and 26 kDa, respectively. Anti-fish IgM antibody against all the three species were raised in mice and the reaction of anti-fish IgM antibodies with IgM of all the three species of IMC were studied by Western blot. The anti-fish IgM antibodies reacted strongly with the heavy chain of the same species against which it was raised while the reactions with the heavy chain of other species were milder indicating some degree of epitope sharing among the heavy chains of IgM of IMCs. However, there was no cross-reaction with the light chain of any of the IgM.     

Proteomic analysis of oil body membrane proteins accompanying the onset of desiccation phase during sunflower seed development

A noteworthy metabolic signature accompanying oil body (OB) biogenesis during oilseed development is associated with the modulation of the oil body membranes proteins. Present work focuses on 2-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2-D PAGE)-based analysis of the temporal changes in the OB membrane proteins analyzed by LC-MS/MS accompanying the onset of desiccation (20–30 d after anthesis; DAA) in the developing seeds of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.). Protein spots unique to 20–30 DAA stages were picked up from 2-D gels for identification and the identified proteins were categorized into 7 functional classes. These include proteins involved in energy metabolism, reactive oxygen scavenging, proteolysis and protein turnover, signaling, oleosin and oil body biogenesis-associated proteins, desiccation and cytoskeleton. At 30 DAA stage, exclusive expressions of enzymes belonging to energy metabolism, desiccation and cytoskeleton were evident which indicated an increase in the metabolic and enzymatic activity in the cells at this stage of seed development (seed filling). Increased expression of cruciferina-like protein and dehydrin at 30 DAA stage marks the onset of desiccation. The data has been analyzed and discussed to highlight desiccation stage-associated metabolic events during oilseed development.     

Location Contexts of User Check-Ins to Model Urban Geo Life-Style Patterns

Geo-location data from social media offers us information, in new ways, to understand people''s attitudes and interests through their activity choices. In this paper, we explore the idea of inferring individual life-style patterns from activity-location choices revealed in social media. We present a model to understand life-style patterns using the contextual information (e. g. location categories) of user check-ins. Probabilistic topic models are developed to infer individual geo life-style patterns from two perspectives: i) to characterize the patterns of user interests to different types of places and ii) to characterize the patterns of user visits to different neighborhoods. The method is applied to a dataset of Foursquare check-ins of the users from New York City. The co-existence of several location contexts and the corresponding probabilities in a given pattern provide useful information about user interests and choices. It is found that geo life-style patterns have similar items—either nearby neighborhoods or similar location categories. The semantic and geographic proximity of the items in a pattern reflects the hidden regularity in user preferences and location choice behavior.