Giardia trophozoites attach to the intestinal microvilli (or inert surfaces) using an undefined "suction-based" mechanism, and remain attached during cell division to avoid peristalsis. Flagellar motility is a key factor in Giardia's pathogenesis and colonization of the host small intestine. Specifically, the beating of the ventral flagella, one of four pairs of motile flagella, has been propos...

Homodyne crosstalk causes severe system performance degradation in optical networks by beating with the desired signal. This is more critical in ring and bus networks when consecutive nodes lead to a cumulative homodyne crosstalk. In this paper we present a polarization control technique to reduce the beating and therefore improve the network performance.

The modification of ciliary beating by neurotransmitters in sea urchin larvae at the four-armed pluteus stage was analyzed in terms of the direction of beating and fluctuation in the beat period. Application of dopamine to Pseudocentrotus depressus causes the cilia to turn their beat plane but retain its characteristic planar feature up to the complete 'reversal' of the beat direction. This new...

It is now well understood that ATP-driven active sliding between the doublet microtubules in the sperm axoneme generates flagellar movement. However, much remains to be learned about how this movement is controlled. Detailed analyses of the flagellar beating of the mammalian spermatozoa revealed that there were two beating modes at a constant rate of microtubule sliding: that is, a nearly const...

We have developed a miniaturized bead-beating device to automate nucleic acids extraction from Gram-positive bacteria for molecular diagnostics. The microfluidic device was fabricated by sandwiching a monolithic flexible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane between two glass wafers (i.e., glass-PDMS-glass), which acted as an actuator for bead collision via its pneumatic vibration without additi...

OBJECTIVE Cardiac surgery trainees might benefit from simulation training in coronary anastomosis and more advanced procedures. We evaluated distributed practice using a portable task station and experience on a beating-heart model in training coronary anastomosis. METHODS Eight cardiothoracic surgery residents performed 2 end-to-side anastomoses with the task station, followed by 2 end-to-si...