Interpulse Durations Research Articles

Pulse Picking PIV: A Single-Cavity Fiber Laser System For Highly Flexible Repetition Rates And Pulsing Schemes

A novel single-cavity laser system with flexible pulsing schemes suitable for particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements is presented. The system is based on the concept of picking selected pulse pairs from an ultra-high repetition rate fiber laser which enables time-resolved and conventional dual-pulse PIV at highly flexible recording frame rates. Pulse picking PIV laser systems allow for the use of high-quality low speed dual-frame PIV cameras as well as highspeed cameras in both dual-frame and continuous recording modes, enabling the investigation of highly-transient phenomena at limited fields of view using time-resolved PIV as well as statistical PIV measurements with larger fields of view and higher spatial resolutions. The single-cavity output additionally avoids the alignment of laser beams of laser pulses, which is otherwise necessary in conventional dual-cavity PIV laser systems. Two pulse picking systems were set up and tested: An acousto-optic deflector selecting pulses using the diffraction across an acoustic wave and an electro-optic modulator rotating the polarization state of selected pulses in a Pockels cell. The performance of both systems was evaluated in terms of achievable inter-pulse durations, beam profile alterations, and pulse energy losses caused by the introduction of additional optical elements in the beam path.

Channel adjustments to a succession of water pulses in gravel bed rivers

AbstractGravel bed rivers commonly exhibit a coarse surface armor resulting from a complex history of interactions between flow and sediment supply. The evolution of the surface texture under single storm events or under steady flow conditions has been studied by a number of researchers. However, the role of successive floods on the surface texture evolution is still poorly understood. An experimental campaign in an 18 m‐long 1 m‐wide flume has been designed to study these issues. Eight consecutive runs, each one consisting of a low‐flow period of variable duration followed by a sudden flood (water pulse) lasting 1.5 h, have been conducted. The total duration of the experiment was 46 h. The initial bed surface was created during a 280 h‐long experiment focused on the influence of episodic sediment supply on channel adjustments. Our experiments represent a realistic armored and structured beds found in mountain gravel bed rivers. The armor surface texture persists over the duration of the experiment. The experiment exhibits downstream fining of the bed‐surface texture. It was found that sorting processes were affected by the duration of low‐flow between flood pulses. Since bed load transport is influenced by sediment sorting, the evolution of bed load transport is impacted by the frequency of the water pulses: short interpulse durations reduce the time over which fine material (transported as bed load) can be winnowed. This, in turn, contributes to declining reduction of the bed load transport over time while the sediment storage increases.

Detecting epigenetic motifs in low coverage and metagenomics settings.

BackgroundIt has recently become possible to rapidly and accurately detect epigenetic signatures in bacterial genomes using third generation sequencing data. Monitoring the speed at which a single polymerase inserts a base in the read strand enables one to infer whether a modification is present at that specific site on the template strand. These sites can be challenging to detect in the absence of high coverage and reliable reference genomes.MethodsHere we provide a new method for detecting epigenetic motifs in bacteria on datasets with low-coverage, with incomplete references, and with mixed samples (i.e. metagenomic data). Our approach treats motif inference as a kmer comparison problem. First, genomes (or contigs) are deconstructed into kmers. Then, native genome-wide distributions of interpulse durations (IPDs) for kmers are compared with corresponding whole genome amplified (WGA, modification free) IPD distributions using log likelihood ratios. Finally, kmers are ranked and greedily selected by iteratively correcting for sequences within a particular kmer's neighborhood.ConclusionsOur method can detect multiple types of modifications, even at very low-coverage and in the presence of mixed genomes. Additionally, we are able to predict modified motifs when genomes with "neighbor" modified motifs exist within the sample. Lastly, we show that these motifs can provide an alternative source of information by which to cluster metagenomics contigs and that iterative refinement on these clustered contigs can further improve both sensitivity and specificity of motif detection.Availabilityhttps://github.com/alibashir/EMMCKmer

Adaptive plasticity in wild field cricket's acoustic signaling.

Phenotypic plasticity can be adaptive when phenotypes are closely matched to changes in the environment. In crickets, rhythmic fluctuations in the biotic and abiotic environment regularly result in diel rhythms in density of sexually active individuals. Given that density strongly influences the intensity of sexual selection, we asked whether crickets exhibit plasticity in signaling behavior that aligns with these rhythmic fluctuations in the socio-sexual environment. We quantified the acoustic mate signaling behavior of wild-caught males of two cricket species, Gryllus veletis and G. pennsylvanicus. Crickets exhibited phenotypically plastic mate signaling behavior, with most males signaling more often and more attractively during the times of day when mating activity is highest in the wild. Most male G. pennsylvanicus chirped more often and louder, with shorter interpulse durations, pulse periods, chirp durations, and interchirp durations, and at slightly higher carrier frequencies during the time of the day that mating activity is highest in the wild. Similarly, most male G. veletis chirped more often, with more pulses per chirp, longer interpulse durations, pulse periods, and chirp durations, shorter interchirp durations, and at lower carrier frequencies during the time of peak mating activity in the wild. Among-male variation in signaling plasticity was high, with some males signaling in an apparently maladaptive manner. Body size explained some of the among-male variation in G. pennsylvanicus plasticity but not G. veletis plasticity. Overall, our findings suggest that crickets exhibit phenotypically plastic mate attraction signals that closely match the fluctuating socio-sexual context they experience.

Noncanonical suppression of GH-dependent isoforms of cytochrome P450 by the somatostatin analog octreotide

Octreotide is a potent somatostatin analog therapeutically used to treat several conditions including hyper GH secretion in patients with acromegaly. We infused, over 30 s, octreotide into male rats every 12 h for 6 days at levels considerably greater than typical human therapeutic doses. Unexpectedly, resulting circulating GH profile was characterized by pulses of higher amplitudes, longer durations, and greater total content than normal, but still contained an otherwise male-like episodic secretory profiles. In apparent disaccord, the normally elevated masculine expression levels (protein and/or mRNA) of CYP2C11 (accounting for >50% of the total hepatic cytochrome P450 content), CYP3A2, CYP2C7, and IGF1, dependent on the episodic GH profile, were considerably downregulated. We explain this contradiction by proposing that the requisite minimal GH-devoid interpulse durations in the masculine profile that solely regulate expression of at least CYP2C11 and IGF1 may be sufficiently reduced to suppress transcription of the hepatic genes. Alternatively, we observed that octreotide infusion may have acted directly on the hepatocytes to induce expression of immune response factors postulated to suppress CYP transcription and/or upregulate expression of several negative regulators (e.g. phosphatases and SOCS proteins) of the JAK2/STAT5B signaling pathway that normally mediates the upregulation of CYP2C11 and IGF1 by the masculine episodic GH profile.

Timescale-Invariant Representation of Acoustic Communication Signals by a Bursting Neuron

Acoustic communication often involves complex sound motifs in which the relative durations of individual elements, but not their absolute durations, convey meaning. Decoding such signals requires an explicit or implicit calculation of the ratios between time intervals. Using grasshopper communication as a model, we demonstrate how this seemingly difficult computation can be solved in real time by a small set of auditory neurons. One of these cells, an ascending interneuron, generates bursts of action potentials in response to the rhythmic syllable-pause structure of grasshopper calls. Our data show that these bursts are preferentially triggered at syllable onset; the number of spikes within the burst is linearly correlated with the duration of the preceding pause. Integrating the number of spikes over a fixed time window therefore leads to a total spike count that reflects the characteristic syllable-to-pause ratio of the species while being invariant to playing back the call faster or slower. Such a timescale-invariant recognition is essential under natural conditions, because grasshoppers do not thermoregulate; the call of a sender sitting in the shade will be slower than that of a grasshopper in the sun. Our results show that timescale-invariant stimulus recognition can be implemented at the single-cell level without directly calculating the ratio between pulse and interpulse durations.

When Love Comes Calling: Measuring Sexual Selection on Sagebrush Crickets

Male sagebrush crickets exhibit differential mating success based on their previous mating experience: virgin males have a higher probability of obtaining a mating than do non-virgin males. Measures of lifetime mating success in male sagebrush crickets have revealed that the median mating frequency is one, with many males failing to secure a mate at all and a small minority obtaining two to four mates. The purpose of this study was to investigate the acoustic and morphological characteristics that make male sagebrush crickets attractive to females. Male crickets were captured from Deadman’s Bar in Grand Teton National Park and their songs were recorded on subsequent evenings. Five song characteristics were measured including pulse duration, interpulse duration, dominant frequency, train duration, and intertrain duration. Multivariate selection analysis revealed significant linear and nonlinear selection on male song, with each of the five measured song characters contributing to male attractiveness. There was significant directional selection favoring longer pulse durations and shorter interpulse durations, which could be an honest indicator of male quality because these song characters likely impose high energetic costs. Significant stabilizing selection favored males with ~ 13.2 kHz calls and intermediate intertrain durations, which may be imposed by the auditory sensitivity of females.

The effect of ambient temperature on forager sound production and thoracic temperature in the stingless bee, Melipona panamica

Foragers of the stingless bees genus Melipona may produce intranidal sounds that are correlated with food location and quality. In this study, we provide the first detailed analysis of pulsed sounds produced by Melipona panamica foragers while feeding on a carbohydrate food source. We trained foragers to a 2.5-M sucrose feeder under normal, ambient temperature (23–33°C) and lower temperature (11–25°C) conditions. We recorded forager sounds under both conditions and tested the effect of temperature of the thorax, feeder plate, and air on sound temporal characteristics. Forager energetic expenditure and the number of pulses per visit were significantly higher in the cold condition than in the normal condition. Foragers spent a longer time at the feeder under the cold condition than during the normal condition. Interpulse durations were significantly shorter in the cold condition than in the normal condition and became progressively and significantly shorter at the end of each performance. Thus, pulse production increased before departure. Foragers increased their thoracic temperatures above ambient at all experimental air temperatures. Under chilled conditions, foragers had a significantly greater difference between thorax temperature and ambient air temperature than under normal conditions. Foragers must achieve a minimum flight muscle temperature before take-off, and thus forager sounds may be linked to muscle warm-up.

Short-Term Dynamics of a Mixed Chemical and Electrical Synapse in a Rhythmic Network

In the rhythmically active pyloric circuit of the spiny lobster, the synapse between the lateral pyloric (LP) neuron and pyloric constrictor (PY) neuron has an inhibitory depressing chemical and an electrical component. To understand how the dynamics of the LP-->PY synapse affect the relative firing times between these two neurons in an ongoing rhythm, we characterized the dynamics of the LP-->PY synapse after a pharmacological block of ongoing activity. When a train of voltage pulses was applied to the voltage-clamped LP neuron, the inhibitory chemical component of the postsynaptic potential (PSP) in the PY neuron rapidly depressed. Thus, after the first few pulses, the PSP was either hyperpolarizing or depolarizing, depending on the interpulse duration, with shorter interpulse durations producing depolarizing PSPs. To characterize the synaptic response during rhythmic activity, we played back prerecorded realistic waveforms in the voltage-clamped LP neuron. After an initial transient, the resulting PSP in PY was always depolarizing, suggesting that in an ongoing rhythm, the electrical component of the synapse is dominant. However, our results indicate that the chemical component of the synapse acts to delay the peak time of the PSP and to reduce its amplitude, and that these effects become more important at slower cycle periods.

Rate-dependent QT shortening mechanism for the LQT3 deltaKPQ mutant.

For the congenital long QT (LQT) syndrome involving mutations of the cardiac sodium channel gene SCN5A, LQT3, the initiation of sudden cardiac death tends to be bradycardia- or pause-dependent, contrary to other LQT syndromes that tend to be adrenergic dependent. Enhanced shortening of the prolonged QT interval with increased heart rate has been reported in LQT3 patients. We hypothesized that the rate-dependent shortening of the QT interval may be attributed to the kinetic properties of inactivation the late sodium current (I(Na)) in LQT3. The deltaKPQ mutant of the human heart voltage-gated sodium channel alpha-subunit was stably transfected into a mammalian cell line (HEK293). I(Na) was recorded using a whole-cell patch-clamp technique. A train of 50 depolarizing pulses or a train of 50 ventricular action potential waveforms was applied with different interpulse durations. Peak I(Na) for the 50th pulse compared with that of I(Na) in the first pulse was decreased <2% for interpulse durations as short as 20 ms, but late I(Na) amplitude measured at the end of the pulse was decreased 95, 78, 68, 56 and 47% with 1000, 500, 200, 100, 20 ms interpulse intervals, respectively. Using the action potential waveform a similar rate-dependent reduction of late I(Na) was found with minimal reduction of peak I(Na). Late I(Na) amplitude in the deltaKPQ mutation is strongly rate dependent. Rate-dependent reductions of late I(Na) may cause shortening the QT interval at higher rates. This provides a mechanism correlating the genotype with the clinical phenotype, and provides a rationale for the effectiveness of pacemaker therapy in LQT3 patients.

Simultaneous, long-term monitoring of valve and cardiac activity in the blue mussel Mytilus edulis exposed to copper

Valve and cardiac activity were simultaneously measured in the blue mussel (Mytilus edulis) in response to 10 d copper exposure. Valve movements, heart rates and heart-rate variability were obtained non-invasively using a Musselmonitor® (valve activity) and a modified version of the Computer-Aided Physiological Monitoring system (CAPMON; cardiac activity). After 2 d exposure of mussels (4 individuals per treatment group) to a range of dissolved copper concentrations (0 to 12.5 M as CuCl2) median valve positions (% open) and median heart rates (beats per minute) declined as a function of copper concentration. Heart-rate variability (coefficient of variation for interpulse durations) rose in a concentration-dependent manner. The 48 h EC50 values (concentrations of copper causing 50% change) for valve positions, heart rates and heart-rate variability were 2.1, 0.8, and 0.06 M, respectively. Valve activity was weakly correlated with both heart rate (r = 0.48 ± 0.02) and heart-rate variability (r = 0.32 ± 0.06) for control individuals (0 M Cu2+). This resulted from a number of short enclosure events that did not coincide with a change in cardiac activity. Exposure of mussels to increasing copper concentrations (≥0.8 M) progressively reduced the correlation between valve activity and heart rates (r = 0 for individuals dosed with ≥6.3 M Cu2+), while correlations between valve activity and heart-rate variability were unaffected. The poor correlations resulted from periods of valve flapping that were not mimicked by similar fluctuations in heart rate or heart-rate variability. The data suggest that the copper-induced bradycardia observed in mussels is not a consequence of prolonged valve closure.

Molecular and physiological responses in shore crabs Carcinus maenas following exposure to copper

The effects of acute (24 h) and chronic (four weeks) copper exposure and subsequent recovery in ‘clean’ conditions on cardiac activity were examined in shore crabs ( Carcinus maenas). Cardiac activity was monitored by Automated Interpulse Duration Assessment (AIDA) which enables detection of irregularities in cardiac rhythms in selected invertebrates. Mean interpulse durations, maximum interpulse durations and coefficients of variation were significantly affected by exposure to copper for 24 h and four weeks ( p < 0.05). Recovery of normal cardiac activity was evident following a six week recovery period in ‘clean’ conditions. However, high levels of mortality were seen among crabs exposed to the two highest copper concentrations (0.6 and 0.8 mgl −1 Cu).The extent of recovery was assessed by subjecting the surviving crabs to a physiological challenge. There were no apparent differences in circulatory response to physiological challenge between crabs previously exposed to copper and control crabs ( p > 0.05). Gill copper concentrations were significantly elevated in crabs that had previously been exposed to copper, despite their return to ‘clean’ seawater for six weeks ( p < 0.01). Midgut gland wet weight/dry weight (WW/DW) ratios, haemolymph total protein and midgut gland metallothionein concentrations did not reflect the previous copper exposure. The findings of the present study indicate that AIDA may be a valuable tool for use in toxicity testing.

Automated interpulse duration assessment (AIDA) in the shore crab Carcinus maenas in response to copper exposure

The effects of acute (24 h) and chronic (4␣weeks) copper exposure and subsequent recovery in “clean” conditions on cardiac activity were examined in shore crabs ( Carcinus maenas). Cardiac activity was monitored by automated interpulse duration assessment (AIDA) which permits detection of irregularities in cardiac rhythms in selected invertebrates. Mean interpulse durations, maximum interpulse durations and coefficients of variation were significantly affected by exposure to copper for 24 h and 4 weeks. Mean interpulse durations decreased reflecting an increase in heart rate, whereas maximum interpulse durations and coefficients of variation increased with increasing exposure concentration. Recovery of normal cardiac activity was evident following a 6-week recovery period in “clean” conditions. However, high levels of mortality were seen among crabs exposed to the two highest copper concentrations (0.6 and 0.8 mg l−1 Cu). The extent of recovery was assessed by subjecting the surviving crabs to a physiological challenge. There were no apparent differences in circulatory response to physiological challenge between crabs previously exposed to copper and control crabs. Gill copper concentrations were significantly elevated in crabs that had previously been exposed to copper, despite their return to “clean” sea water for 6 weeks. Midgut gland wet weight/dry weight ratios, haemolymph total protein and midgut gland metallothionein concentrations did not reflect the previous copper exposure. The findings of the present study indicate that AIDA may be a valuable tool for use in toxicity testing.

General Anesthetic Effects on Compound Muscle Action Potentials Elicited by Single or Dual Spinal Cord Stimulation

The aim of this study was to determine the optimal conditions, during general anesthesia, to obtain reproducible monitoring of compound muscle action potentials (CMAPs) as a means to evaluate motor tract integrity. The CMAPs were recorded in the soleus muscle of cats and were elicited by either single or double pulse stimulations (with various amplitudes and interpulse durations) of the spinal cord via an epidural electrode. The effects of various depths of general anesthesia with halothane, enflurane, isoflurane, or propofol on such recordings were also determined. For each agent, the CMAP amplitudes were significantly greater following double pulse stimulations (2-ms optimal interpulse duration) relative to single pulses. The CMAP amplitudes elicited by double pulse stimulations were the same at propofol concentrations of 50, 100, 150, and 200 micrograms/kg/min, whereas those for each volatile anesthetic, at all concentrations studied (0.5%, 1.0%, 1.5%, or 2.0%), were significantly lower. It was concluded that to obtain reliable CMAP amplitudes, general anesthesia with propofol should be employed and the potentials should be evoked by double pulse stimulations.

Design of a staggered-p.r.f. moving target indication filter

To avoid blind speed phenomena, staggered-p.r.f. m.t.i. systems are used in modern radars for detection of high-speed targets. In this paper a procedure is presented which considers both the effect of filter weights and the interpulse durations. The goal of this procedure is to yield an m.t.i. response with minimum variations in the pass-band and maximum attenuation in the stop-band.