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Recent evidence has shown that exposure to airborne particulate matter (PM) is associated with cognitive delay, depression, anxiety, autism, and neurodegenerative diseases; however, the role of PM in the etiology of these outcomes is not well-understood. Therefore, there is a need for controlled animal studies to better elucidate the causes and mechanisms by which PM impacts these health outcomes. We assessed the effects of gestational and early life exposure to traffic-related PM on social- and anxiety-related behaviors, cognition, inflammatory markers, and neural integrity in male rat juveniles. Gestating and lactating rats were exposed to PM from a Boston (MA, USA) traffic tunnel for 5 hours/day, 5 days/week for 6 weeks (3 weeks gestation, 3 weeks lactation). The target exposure concentration for the fine fraction of nebulized PM, measured as PM2.5, was 200 μg/m(3). To assess anxiety and cognitive function, F1 male juveniles underwent elevated platform, cricket predation, nest building, social behavior and marble burying tests at 32–60 days of age. Upon completion of behavioral testing, multiple cytokines and growth factors were measured in these animals and their brains were analyzed with diffusion tensor MRI to assess neural integrity. PM exposure had no effect on litter size or weight, or offspring growth; however, F1 litters developmentally exposed to PM exhibited significantly increased anxiety (p =0.04), decreased cognition reflected in poorer nest-organization (p =0.04), and decreased social play and allogrooming (p= 0.003). MRI analysis of ex vivo brains revealed decreased structural integrity of neural tissues in the anterior cingulate and hippocampus in F1 juveniles exposed to PM (p

PIF1 is a 5’ to 3’ DNA helicase that can unwind double-stranded DNA and disrupt nucleic acid-protein complexes. InSaccharomyces cerevisiae, Pif1 plays important roles in mitochondrial and nuclear genome maintenance, telomere length regulation, unwinding of G-quadruplex structures, and DNA synthesis during break-induced replication. Some, but not all, of these functions are shared with other eukaryotes. To gain insight into the evolutionarily conserved functions of PIF1, we createdpif1null mutants inDrosophila melanogasterand assessed their phenotypes throughout development. We found thatpif1mutant larvae exposed to high concentrations of hydroxyurea, but not other DNA damaging agents, experience reduced survival to adulthood. Embryos lacking PIF1 fail to segregate their chromosomes efficiently during early nuclear divisions, consistent with a defect in DNA replication. Furthermore, loss of the BRCA2 protein, which is required for stabilization of stalled replication forks in metazoans, causes synthetic lethality in third instar larvae lacking either PIF1 or the polymerase delta subunit POL32. Interestingly,pif1mutants have a reduced ability to synthesize DNA during repair of a double-stranded gap, but only in the absence of POL32. Together, these results support a model in which Drosophila PIF1 functions with POL32 during times of replication stress but acts independently of POL32 to promote synthesis during double-strand gap repair.

In the present paper we introduce lake Bolătău, located in Obcina Feredeului, Eastern Carpathians (Romania), with seasonally controlled sedimentation and significant potential for generating precipitation sensitive proxy record. Two sediment cores were compared against each other in order to achieve a better understanding of the lateral discontinuity of observed microfacies and an accurate interpretation of the sedimentological data.

The energy level structure and dynamics of biomolecules are important for understanding their photoinduced function. In particular, the role of carotenoids in light-harvesting is heavily studied, yet not fully understood. The conventional approach to investigate these processes involves analysis of the third-order optical polarization in one spectral dimension. Here, we record two-dimensional correlation spectra for different time-orderings to characterize all components of the transient molecular polarization and the optical signal. Single- and double-quantum two-dimensional experiments provide insight into the energy level structure as well as the ultrafast dynamics of solvated beta-carotene. By analysis of the lineshapes, we obtain the transition energy and characterize the potential energy, surfaces of the involved states. We obtain direct experimental proof for an excited state absorption transition in the visible (S-2 -> S-n2). The signatures of this transition in pump-probe transients are shown to lead to strongly damped oscillations with characteristic pump and probe frequency dependence.

Air-dried apple rings were prepared from ‘Golden Delicious’ apples selected at harvest as less mature and more mature according to the absorption coefficient measured at 670nm by time-resolved reflectance spectroscopy (TRS), stored in air for 5months, and subjected to air-drying with (OSMO) and without (noOSMO) osmodehydration pre-treatment (60% sucrose syrup). Selected rings were submitted to microstructural analysis by X-ray computed tomography (X-CT), to subsurface structure analysis by optical coherence tomography (OCT) and to texture and sound emission analysis by bending–snapping test. Higher crispness index, higher number of sound events and higher average sound pressure level (SPL) characterized the OSMO rings. Total porosity was related to SPLav60, pore fragmentation index to fracturability and specific surface area to the work required to snap the ring. A differentiation of the drying treatments, as well as of the products according to the TRS maturity class at harvest was obtained analyzing by principal component analysis (PCA) microstructure parameters and texture and acoustic parameters. The differences in mechanical and acoustic characteristics between OSMO and noOSMO rings were due to the different subsurface structure as found with OCT analysis.There is an increasing demand of dried crispy fruit as they are considered by consumers healthy, natural and tasty foods. The textural characteristics, exerting a strong effect on crispy and crunchy sensory characteristics, have a great impact at consumption of dried crispy fruit. As their textural characteristics depend on both fruit maturity at processing and processing conditions, food industry is demanding nondestructive techniques which could be used for on-line/off-line sorting of fruit into classes each one more suited for obtaining a specific product. Furthermore, the textural properties of dried foods depend on microstructure, defined as the spatial arrangement of structural components and their interactions. Due to the microscopic complexity, unambiguous methodologies that relate quality to food microstructure do not exist today, in contrast to what already existing for several engineering materials. Hence there is the need of developing methods that measure directly the microstructural properties of dried foods. publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Characterizing the tissue of apple air-dried and osmo-air-dried rings by X-CT and OCT and relationship with ring crispness and fruit maturity at harvest measured by TRS journaltitle: Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ifset.2013.09.001 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ispartof: Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies vol:24 pages:121-130 status: published

The two-exciton manifold of a double-wall cylindrical molecular aggregate is studied using a coherent third order optical technique. Experiments reveal the anharmonic character of the exciton bands. Atomistic simulations of the exciton-exciton scattering show that the excitons can be treated as weakly coupled hard-core bosons. The weak coupling stems from the extended exciton delocalization made possible by the nanotube geometry.

This is the first in a series of two papers investigating the effect of electron-phonon coupling in two-dimensional Fourier transformed electronic spectroscopy. We present a series of one- and two-dimensional nonlinear spectroscopic techniques for studying a dye molecule in solution. Ultrafast laser pulse excitation of an electronic transition coupled to vibrational modes induces a propagating vibrational wave packet that manifests itself in oscillating signal intensities and line-shapes. For the two-dimensional electronic spectra we can attribute the observed modulations to periodic enhancement and decrement of the relative amplitudes of rephasing and non-rephasing contributions to the total response. Different metrics of the two-dimensional signals are shown to relate to the frequency-frequency correlation function which provides the connection between experimentally accessible observations and the underlying microscopic molecular dynamics. A detailed theory of the time-dependent two-dimensional spectral line-shapes is presented in the accompanying paper [T. Mancal et al., arXiv:1003.xxxx]., 13 pages, 8 figures