The depth to which seawater and fresh water circulate through modern carbonate platforms may be estimated with Sr/Sr isotope ratios of dissolved Sr that is enriched through carbonate mineral dissolution and recrystallization. In 23 water samples from onshore San Salvador Island and Long Island, Bahamas, carbonate mineral dissolution and aragonite-to-calcite transformations elevate Sr concentrat...

AIMS We determined late atrial function following a surgical linear endocardial radiofrequency (RF) ablation procedure that aimed to restore and maintain sinus rhythm (SR) in atrial fibrillation (AF). We tested the hypothesis that successful restoration of SR is accompanied by measurable mechanical atrial function that is at normal or near normal levels. METHODS Forty-seven patients who under...

We report generation of an ultrafast supercontinuum extending into the mid- infrared in gas-filled single-ring hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (SR-PCF) pumped by 1.7 µm light from an optical parametric amplifier. The simple fiber structure offers shallow dispersion and flat transmission in the near and mid-infrared, enabling the generation of broadband spectra extending from 270 nm to 3.1 µm...

Previous reports document a short latency of cancer onset in young children exposed to low doses of radioactivity. The standard mortality ratio (SMR) for cancer in children dying before age ten rose in the period 6-10 years after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents in populations most exposed to fallout. SMRs near most nuclear power plants were elevated 6-10 years after startup, parti...

For several decades, the United States has been without an ongoing program measuring levels of fission products in the body. Strontium-90 (Sr-90) concentrations in 2089 deciduous (baby) teeth, mostly from persons living near nuclear power reactors, reveal that average levels rose 48.5% for persons born in the late 1990s compared to those born in the late 1980s. This trend represents the first s...

The differential energy spectrum of splash albedo protons has been measured at high geomagnetic latitude near Fort Churchill, Manitoba, at three periods of the solar cycle in 1966, 1967, and 1969 and at low latitude near Palestine, Texas, in 1967 by using a balloon-borne solid state detector telescope. We observed splash albedo proton fluxes between 4 and 315 MeV of 81 + 11, 70 + 11, and 48 + 8...

Intracellular calcium signals regulate multiple cellular functions. They depend on release of Ca2+ from cellular stores into the cytosol, a process that appears to be tightly controlled by changes in [Ca2+] within the store. A method to image free [Ca2+] within cellular organelles was devised, which provided the first quantitative confocal images of [Ca2+] inside the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR)...

This investigation tested the notion that fatiguing stimulation induces intrinsic changes in the contractile apparatus and sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) and that these changes are initiated by elevated intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i). Immediately after stimulation of frog semitendinosus muscle, contractile apparatus and SR function were measured. Despite a large decline in tetanic forc...

The desmid green alga Closterium moniliferum belongs to a small number of organisms that form barite (BaSO(4)) or celestite (SrSO(4)) biominerals. The ability to sequester Sr in the presence of an excess of Ca is of considerable interest for the remediation of (90)Sr from the environment and nuclear waste. While most cells dynamically regulate the concentration of the second messenger Ca(2+) in...

The behavior of some high temperature superconductors (HTSC), such as La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO(4) and Bi(2)Sr(2-x)La(x)CuO(6 + delta), at very high magnetic fields, is similar to that of thin films of amorphous InOx near the magnetic-field-tuned superconductor-insulator transition. Analyzing the InOx data at high fields in terms of persisting local pairing amplitude, we argue by analogy that the local p...