We previously discovered a splice variant of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) mRNA, and designated the variant protein pChAT because of its preferential expression in peripheral neuronal structures. In this study, we examined the immunohistochemical localization of pChAT in rat cochlea and compared the distribution pattern to those of common ChAT (cChAT) and acetylcholinesterase. Some neuronal ...

We consider drawings of graphs that contain dense subgraphs. We introduce intersection-link representations for such graphs, in which each vertex u is represented by a geometric object R(u) and each edge (u, v) is represented by the intersection between R(u) and R(v), if it belongs to a dense subgraph, or by a curve connecting the boundaries ofR(u) andR(v), otherwise. We study a notion of plana...

The anatomical mechanisms for processing auditory signals are extremely complex and incompletely understood, despite major advances already made with the use of electron microscopy. A major enigma, for example, is the presence in the mammalian cochlea of a double hair cell receptor system. A renewed attempt to discover evidence of synaptic coupling between the two systems in the primate cochlea...

The active dense tensegrity is desired to possess significant differences in bending stiffness (K) when considering the bending direction (up or down). Dense tensegrity structure was manufactured using tetrahedrashaped particles as the compression elements, and carbon fibers were used as the tensional cables such that an assembly in a dense planar array was obtained. Three types of polyhedral e...

We report the fabrication of novel multiferroic nanostructured bismuth ferrite (BiFeO(3)) fibers using the sol-gel based electrospinning technique. Phase pure BiFeO(3) fibers were prepared by thermally annealing the electrospun BiFeO(3)/polyvinylpyrrolidone composite fibers in air for 1 h at 600 °C. The x-ray diffraction pattern of the fibers (BiFeO(3)) obtained showed that their crystalline st...

The internal cell wall structure of the bacterium Lactobacillus helveticus has been observed in situ in aqueous solution using an atomic force microscope (AFM). The AFM tip was used not only for imaging but presumably to remove mechanically large patches of the outer cell wall after appropriate chemical treatment, which typically leaves the bacteria alive. The surface exposed after this "surger...

PURPOSE To determine the possible changes in the distribution of cholesterol in gap junction plaques during fiber cell differentiation and maturation in the embryonic chicken lens. The possible mechanism by which cholesterol is removed from gap junction plaques is also investigated. METHODS Filipin cytochemistry in conjunction with freeze-fracture TEM was used to visualize cholesterol, as rep...