Atomic force microscopy study of early morphological changes during apoptosis

Apoptosis is defined by a distinct set of morphological changes observed during cell death including loss of focal adhesions, the formation of cell membrane buds or blebs, and a decrease in total cell volume. Recent studies suggest that these dramatic morphological changes, particularly apoptotic volume decrease (AVD), are an early prerequisite to apoptosis and precede key biochemical time-points. Here we use atomic force microscopy to observe early stage AVD of KB cells undergoing staurosporine-induced apoptosis. After a 3-h exposure to 1 microM staurosporine, a 32% decrease in total cell height and a 50% loss of total cell volume is observed accompanied by only a 15% change in cell diameter. The observed AVD precedes key biochemical hallmarks of apoptosis such as loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, phosphatidyl serine translocation, nuclear fragmentation, and measurable caspase-3 activity. This suggests that morphological volume changes occur very early in the induction of apoptosis.     

Semigroups and abstract Gevrey spaces

Conditions are found under which a closed linear operator A in a Banach space X generates a continuous semigroup in a linear topological space Y which is dense in X. The space Y is an abstract Gevrey space associated with the operator A. This is an abstract setting for some results for hyperbolic systems with data in spaces of Gevrey functions.     

A terabit capacity passive polymer optical backplane based on a novel meshed waveguide architecture

An optical backplane based on a meshed polymer waveguide architecture enabling high-speed board-to-board optical interconnection is presented. This planar array of multimode polymer waveguides can provide passive strictly non-blocking links between server line cards fitted with optical transmitter and receiver arrays. This architecture offers a scalable and low-cost solution to the bandwidth limitations faced by electrical backplanes and is suitable for PCB integration. The reported backplane demonstrator uses a matrix of 100 waveguides each capable of 10 Gb/s operation to interconnect 10 cards for a total capacity of a terabit per second aggregate data rate in multicast mode. Characterisation of the backplane demonstrator reveals low link losses of 2 to 8 dB for a multimode fibre input and crosstalk values below −35 dB. Error free data transmission at 10 Gb/s is achieved with a power penalty of only 0.2 dB at a bit-error-rate of 10⁻⁹. Additionally, lossless operation of a Gigabit Ethernet link over the backplane is achieved even when using the worst-case highest loss links.     

On the Solution of the Generalized Wave and Generalized Sine-Gordon Equations

The generalized wave equation and generalized sine-Gordon equations are known to be natural multidimensional differential geometric generalizations of the classical two-dimensional versions. In this paper we associate a system of linear differential equations with these equations and show how the direct and inverse problems can be solved for appropriately decaying data on suitable lines. An initial-boundary-value problem is solved for these equations.     

Radionuclide analysis using solid phase extraction disks

The use of solid phase extraction (SPE) disks was studied for the quantification of selected radionuclides in aqueous solutions. The extraction of four radionuclides using six types (two commerical, four test materials) of 3M Empore^TM RAD disks was studied. The radionuclides studied were: technetium-99 (two types of disks), cesium-137 (two types), strontium-90 (one type), plutonium-238 (one type). Extractions were tested from DI water, river water and seawater. Extraction efficiency, kinetics (flow rate past the disk), capacity, and potential interferences were studied as well as quantification methods.     

Deciding finiteness for matrix groups over function fields

LetF be a field andt an indeterminate. In this paper we consider aspects of the problem of deciding if a finitely generated subgroup of GL(n,F(t)) is finite. WhenF is a number field, the analysis may be easily reduced to deciding finiteness for subgroups of GL(n,F), for which the results of [1] can be applied. WhenF is a finite field, the situation is more subtle. In this case our main results are a structure theorem generalizing a theorem of Weil and upper bounds on the size of a finite subgroup generated by a fixed number of generators with examples of constructions almost achieving the bounds. We use these results to then give exponential deterministic algorithms for deciding finiteness as well as some preliminary results towards more efficient randomized algorithms. Supported in part by NSF DMS Awards 9404275 and Presidential Faculty Fellowship.