Effects of cell-cycle arrest agents on cleavage and development of loach (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus) embryos

The aim of this study was to determine the lowest concentration of nocodazole and colchicine to arrest blastomere division during the cleavage stage of loach embryos and to assess the reversibility and toxicity of the treatments in the treated embryos. Eight-cell loach embryos were incubated for 4, 8, 12, or 16 h in 1/10x Holtfreter supplemented with either nocodazole, an inhibitor of tubulin polymerization, or colchicine, an inhibitor of tubulin assembly. Complete arrest of cell cycle was observed, at a colchicine concentration of 0.996 mM and at a nocodazole concentration of 0.275 muM, respectively (the lowest effective concentration). No major morphological alteration in chromatin was observed. Reversibility and toxicity of both agents were dose and exposure period dependent. For both agents, prolonging cleavage arrest for more than 4 h (at the effective concentrations) is detrimental to development of embryos. Nocodazole treatment was less cytotoxic, whereas the concentrations of colchicine which induce cleavage arrest were detrimental to development beyond the blastula stage. Toxic effects beyond the blastula stage could be minimized for both agents by reducing the period of treatment and concentration.

The toxic effects of microcystin-LR on embryo-larval and juvenile development of loach, Misguruns mizolepis Gunthe

Microcystin-LR, a specific and potent hepatotoxin, was tested for its effects oil loach embryo-larval and juvenile development, The results of this study showed that loach embryos were more sensitive when exposed to microcystin-LR at a later than at an earlier stage of development, Juveniles were far less sensitive to MC-LR than were embryos and larvae. Mortality and developmental abnormality were proven to be dose-dependent and to be stage-specific sensitive. Among the abnormal changes noted were: pericardial edema and tubular heart, bradycardia, homeostasis, poor yolk resumption. small head, curved body and tail, and abnormal hatching, Liver and heart were the main targets of microcystin-LR toxicity. Ultrastructural analysis documented a complex set of sublethal effects of microcystin-LR on loach hepatocytes, chiefly including morphological alteration in nuclear and RER of loach liver cells. fit addition, microcystin-LR was lethal to loach juvenile in the subacute (7 days) exposure (LC50) = 593.3 mug/l). (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Morphological Evolution During Synthesis of New AlPO4 Center dot H2O Crystal

A new crystal of aluminophosphate, AIPO(4)(.)H(2)O, is synthesized from two-batch aqueous solution under hydrothermal conditions. Three types of the crystal habits, i.e. the tetragonal double pyramid, the tetragonal prism and the plate-type tetragonal prism, are found from batch-A solution. Two types of the crystal habits, i.e. the hexagonal pyramid and the strip-type tetragonal prism, are found from batch-B solution. The change of crystal morphology is originated from the fluctuation of the synthesis conditions, such as the supersaturation, the temperature and the impurity content. It causes change of the step energies, the defect density and the step roughness, and further, change of the growth rates. Since the crystal morphology is sensitive to the mass transport mechanism, the crystal habits could be changed under the microgravity.

Morphological Stability of Epitaxial Thin Elastic Films by Van Der Waals Force

The morphological stability of epitaxial thin elastic films on a substrate by van der Waals force is discussed. It is found that only van der Waals force with negative Hamaker constant (A < 0) tends to stabilize the film, and the lower bound for the Hamaker constant is also obtained for the stability of thin film. The critical value of the undulation wavelength is found to be a function of both film thickness and external stress. The charateristic time-scale for surface mass diffusion scales to the fourth power to the wavelength of the perturbation.

Case Study: Influence Of Morphological Changes On Flooding In Jingjiang River

The middle reach of the Yangtze River, customarily called the Jingjiang River, together with its diversion channels and Dongting Lake, form a large complicated drainage system. In the last five decades, significant geomorphological changes have occurred in the drainage system, including the shrinkage of diversion channels, contraction of Dongting Lake, changes in the rating curve at the Luoshan station, and cutoffs of the lower Jingjiang River. These changes are believed to be the cause of the occurrence of abnormal floods in the Jingjiang River. Qualitative analyses suggest that the first three factors aggravate the flood situation in the lower Jingjiang River, while the last factor seems beneficial for flood prevention. To quantitatively evaluate these conclusions, a finite-volume numerical model was constructed. A series of numerical simulations were carried out to test the individual and combined effects of the aforementioned four factors, and these simulations showed that high flood stages in the Jingjiang River clearly are related to the geomorphological changes.

Fuzzy reasoning morphological operators and their optical implementation

Fuzzy-reasoning theory is widely used in industrial control. Mathematical morphology is a powerful tool to perform image processing. We apply fuzzy-reasoning theory to morphology and suggest a scheme of fuzzy-reasoning morphology, including fuzzy-reasoning dilation and erosion functions. These functions retain more fine details than the corresponding conventional morphological operators with the same structuring element. An optical implementation has been developed with area-coding and thresholding methods. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.

Solid-state optical parallel morphological processor

Based on birefringence, a building-block stacking technique is suggested in this paper. A solid-state optical morphological processor module is thus developed, which is an integration of a beam array generator submodule, an optical connector submodule, and a Pockels readout optical modulator. It is shown that the technique is compact in construction, simple for fabrication, and insensitive to the environment.

Morphological ordered gray-scale erosion for optical image processing

An ordered gray-scale erosion is suggested according to the definition of hit-miss transform. Instead of using three operations, two images, and two structuring elements, the developed operation requires only one operation and one structuring element, but with three gray-scale levels. Therefore, a union of the ordered gray-scale erosions with different structuring elements can constitute a simple image algebra to program any combined image processing function. An optical parallel ordered gray-scale erosion processor is developed based on the incoherent correlation in a single channel. Experimental results are also given for an edge detection and a pattern recognition. (C) 1998 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [S0091-3286(98)00306-7].

Morphological characteristics of amorphous Ge2Sb2Te5 films after a single femtosecond laser pulse irradiation

The morphology of materials resulting from laser irradiation of the single-layer and the multilayer amorphous Ge2Sb2Te5 films using 120 fs pulses at 800 nm was observed using scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. For the single-layer film, the center of the irradiated spot is depression and the border is protrusion, however, for the multilayer film, the center morphology changes from a depression to a protrusion as the increase of the energy. The crystallization threshold fluence of the single-layer and the multilayer film is 22 and 23 mJ/cm(2), respectively. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Structural, morphological and optical properties of ZnO thin films grown on gamma-LiAlO2 substrate by pulsed laser deposition

ZnO thin films were deposited on the substrates of (100) gamma-LiAlO2 at 400, 550 and 700 degrees C using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) with the fixed oxygen pressure of 20 Pa, respectively. When the substrate temperature is 400 degrees C, the grain size of the film is less than 1 mu m observed by Leitz microscope and measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD). As the substrate temperature increases to 550 degrees C, highly-preferred c-orientation and high-quality ZnO film can be attained. While the substrate temperature rises to 700 degrees C, more defects appears on the surface of film and the ZnO films become polycrystalline again possibly because more Li of the substrate diffused into the ZnO film at high substrate temperature. The photoluminescence (PL) spectra of ZnO films at room temperature show the blue emission peaks centered at 430 nm. We suggest that the blue emission corresponds to the electron transition from the level of interstitial Zn to the valence band. Meanwhile, the films grown on gamma-LiAlO2 (LAO) exhibit green emission centered at 540 nm, which seemed to be ascribed to excess zinc and/or oxygen vacancy in the ZnO films caused by diffusion of Li. from the substrates into the films during the deposition.

Spray combustion synthesis of nanocrystalline Y2O3 and its thermodynamical and morphological study

Nano Y2O3 particles with a spherical shape and narrow size distribution have been prepared by a novel spray combustion method. The experimental procedure is briefly described and the thermodynamical process of the post-heat treatment is investigated in this paper. The precursor fully crystallized when treated at as low as 400 degrees C. Prepared particles showed spherical shape and well dispersibility under different treating conditions. Narrow size distribution of particles was achieved even when the precursor was treated at 1373 K. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Y2O3 stabilized ZrO2 thin films deposited by electron beam evaporation: Structural, morphological characterization and laser induced damage threshold

Four kinds of Y2O3 stabilized ZrO2 (YSZ) thin films with different Y2O3 content have been prepared on BK7 substrates by electron-beam evaporation method. Structural properties and surface morphology of thin films were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectra and scanning probe microscope. Laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) was determined. It was found that crystalline phase and microstructure of YSZ thin films was dependent on Y2O3 molar content. YSZ thin films changed from monoclinic phase to high temperature phase (tetragonal and cubic) with the increase of Y2O3 content. The LIDT of stabilized thin film is more than that of unstabilized thin films. The reason is that ZrO2 material undergoes phase transition during the course of e-beam evaporation resulting in more numbers of defects compared to that of YSZ thin films. These defects act as absorptive center and the original breakdown points. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.