‘‘New Problems’’ resumes this month with the first of a series of problems from Kirk McDonald of Princeton University. ‘‘New Problems’’ continues to solicit interesting and novel worked problems for use in undergraduate physics courses beyond the introductory level. We seek problems that convey the excitement and interest of current developments in physics and that are useful for teaching cours...

Most rheumatologists use slow acting antirheumatic drugs (SAARDs) for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This review looks at the perils and pitfalls associated with the introduction of new compounds in RA, the attempts that have been made to optimise available drugs, and the dilemmas of early and combination treatment. Finally, a brief mention is made of immunotherapy, which seems unlikel...

Unaccustomed eccentric exercise has been shown to impair muscle function, although little is known regarding this impairment on muscle power. The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in neuromuscular properties of the ankle dorsiflexors during and after an eccentric contraction task and throughout recovery in 21 (10 men, 11 women) recreationally active young adults (25.8+/-2.3 yr). ...

EEG rhythms reflect the synchronized activity of underlying biological neuronal network oscillations, and certain predominant frequencies are typically linked to certain behavioral states. For instance, slow wave activity characterized by sleep slow oscillation (SO) emerges normally during slow-wave sleep (SWS). In this mini-review we will first give a background leading up to the present day a...

According to the "stop-and-go" hypothesis of slow axonal transport, cytoskeletal and cytosolic proteins are transported along axons at fast rates but the average velocity is slow because the movements are infrequent and bidirectional. To test whether this hypothesis can explain the kinetics of slow axonal transport in vivo, we have developed a stochastic model of neurofilament transport in axon...

Computationally intense spatial filtering, called beamforming, is central to acoustic imaging. Typically, in order to achieve an update rate similar to slow scan television, beamforming must operate in real-time, which leads to massive parallel processing. This paper surveys appropriate work in the field of synchronous data flow (SDF) as applied to the beamforming problem and defines the object...

Hashing has been widely used for approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search in big data applications because of its low storage cost and fast retrieval speed. The goal of hashing is to map the data points from the original space into a binary-code space where the similarity (neighborhood structure) in the original space is preserved. By directly exploiting the similarity to guide the hashing cod...

Of late, an increasing number of studies have shown a strong relationship between sleep and memory. Here we summarize a series of our own studies in humans supporting a beneficial influence of slow-wave sleep (SWS) on declarative memory formation, and try to identify some mechanisms that might underlie this influence. Specifically, these experiments show that declarative memory benefits mainly ...

Long-awaited evidence for in vivo functions of the major neuronal microtubule associated proteins indicates that they are directly involved in neurite extension. Companion evidence reveals an intrinsic role for glial intermediate filaments in glial cell extension along neurites and for neurofilaments in establishing axonal caliber. New fluorescence and photoactivation experiments require a re-t...

We analyze 8 years of continuous GPS data from the Hilina slump (HS) on Kīlauea volcano's south flank and identify 3 new slow earthquake (SE) events. The new SEs are very similar to the previously identified one from November 2000, suggesting they share a common source. The series of SEs are separated by regular periods of 774 (±7) days. None of the newly identified events are associated with i...