Emerging evidence highlights the far-reaching consequences of high-fat diet (HFD) and obesity on kidney morphological and functional disorders. In the present study, we aim to evaluate the effects of early HFD intake on renal function and morphology in maternal protein-restricted offspring (LP). LP and normal protein-intake offspring (NP) were fed HFD (LPH and NPH, respectively) or standard rodent (LPN and NPN) diet from the 8th to 13th week of age. Blood pressure, kidney function, immunohistochemistry and scanning electron microscopy were analyzed. Increased total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein serum levels were observed in LPH offspring. The adiposity index was reduced in the (LPN) group and, conversely, increased in the NPH and LPH groups. Blood pressure was higher beyond the 10th week of age in the LPH group compared with the other groups. Decreased urinary sodium excretion was observed in LP offspring, whereas the HFD-treated groups presented a decreased urine pH in a time-dependent fashion. The LPN, NPH and LPH groups showed increased expression of type 1 angiotensin II (AngII) receptor (AT1R), TGF-β1, collagen and fibronectin in the kidneys. Moreover, the adult fetal-programmed offspring showed pronounced effacement of the podocyte foot process associated with the rupture of cell membranes and striking urinary protein excretion, exacerbated by HFD treatment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating that young fetal-programmed offspring submitted to long-term HFD intake have increased susceptibility to renal structural and functional disorders associated with an accentuated stage of fibrosis and tubular dysfunction.

Ractopamine hydrochloride (RH) alters protein metabolism and improves growth performance in Bos taurus cattle with high carcass fat. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of RH, dietary CP and RH×CP interaction on performance, blood metabolites, carcass characteristics and meat quality of young Nellore bulls. A total of 48 bulls were randomly assigned to four treatments in a 2×2 factorial arrangement. The factors were two levels of dietary CP (100% and 120% of metabolizable protein requirement, defined as CP100 and CP120, respectively), and two levels of RH (0 and 300 mg/animal·per day). Treated animal received RH for the final 35 days before slaughter. Animals were weighed at the beginning of the feedlot period (day 63), at the beginning of ractopamine supplementation (day 0), after 18 days of supplementation (day 18) and before slaughter (day 34). Animals were slaughtered and hot carcass weights recorded. After chilling, carcass data was collected and longissimus samples were obtained for determination of meat quality. The 9–11th rib section was removed for carcass composition analysis. Supplementation with RH increased ADG independently of dietary CP. There was a RH×CP interaction on dry matter intake (DMI), where RH reduced DMI at CP120, with no effect at CP100. Ractopamine improved feed efficiency, without RH×CP interaction. Ractopamine had no effect on plasma creatinine and urea concentration. Greater dietary CP tended to increase blood urea, and there was a RH×CP interaction for plasma total protein. Ractopamine supplementation increased plasma total protein at CP120, and had no effect at CP100. Ractopamine also decreased plasma glucose concentration at CP100, but had no effect at CP120. Ractopamine increased alkaline phosphatase activity at CP120 and had no effect at CP100. There was a tendency for RH to increase longissimus muscle area, independently of dietary CP. Ractopamine did not alter fat thickness; however, fat thickness was reduced by greater CP in the diet. Supplementation with RH decreased meat shear force, but only at day 0 of aging, having no effect after 7, 14 or 21 days. Greater dietary protein increased meat shear force after 0 and 7 days of aging, with no effect after 14 or 21 days. These results demonstrate for the first time the efficacy of ractopamine supplementation to improve gain and feed efficiency of intact Bos indicus males, with relatively low carcass fat content. Ractopamine effects were not further improved by increasing dietary protein content above requirements.

Multiferroic BFO/SRO/Si trilayers have been prepared by pulsed laser deposition in the form of thin films. As a function of the BFO layer thickness, magnetic and magneto-transport properties have been investigated at room temperature and down to 5 K. At low BFO layer thickness, a residual γ-Fe2O3 phase, which interacts interfacially with the SRO and BFO layers, is responsible for moderately hard magnetic properties of the film. On increasing BFO layer thickness, more homogeneous deposits are obtained with uniform magnetic and magneto-resistive properties.

The results from a third structure determination by powder diffractometry (SDPD) round robin are discussed. From the 175 potential participants having downloaded the powder data, nine sent a total of 12 solutions (8 and 4 for samples 1 and 2, respectively, a tetrahydrated calcium tartrate and a lanthanum tungstate). Participants used seven different computer programs for structure solution (ESPOIR, EXPO, FOX, PSSP, SHELXS, SUPERFLIP, and TOPAS), applying Patterson, direct methods, direct space methods, and charge flipping approach. It is concluded that solving a structure from powder data remains a challenge, at least one order of magnitude more difficult than solving a problem with similar complexity from single-crystal data. Nevertheless, a few more steps in the direction of increasing the SDPD rate of success were accomplished since the two previous round robins: this time, not only the computer program developers were successful but also some users. No result was obtained from crystal structure prediction experts.

We consider a pair of like-signed, initially elliptical vortices with uniform vorticity distribution embedded in an incompressible, inviscid fluid occupying a two-dimensional, infinite domain. We characterize this finite-time, aperiodic, dynamical system in terms of its fixed points and separatrices, which divide the flow into inner core, inner recirculation, outer recirculation regions and outer flow. We numerically simulate the time evolution of the vortex pair using a contour dynamics algorithm. The rotational and co-rotational motion of the vortices perturb the separatrices, which undergo to deformations, yielding a tangle whose complexity increases as the amplitude of the perturbation increases. We analyse the dynamics of the tangle and explain the transport of fluid between different regions. We use two diagnostics to quantify stirring: stretching of the interface and the mix-norm. These two diagnostics characterize stirring in contradicting ways and present different sensitivity to the parameters considered. We find that stretching is dominated by the chaotic advection induced within the inner core and inner recirculation regions, whereas the mix-norm is dominated by the laminar transport induced within the outer recirculation regions. For pairs of vortices of small aspect ratio, stretching is piecewise linear and the mix-norm does not decrease monotonically. We show that these two effects are strongly coupled and synchronized with the rotational motion of the vortices. Since the nominal domain is unbounded, we quantify stirring on three concentric, circular domains. One domain nearly encloses the outer separatrices of the vortex pair, one is smaller and one larger than the first one. We show that the mix-norm is very sensitive to the size of the domain, while stretching is not. To quantify the sensitivity of stirring to the geometry of the initial concentration field, we consider, as an initial scalar field, two concentrations delimited by a straight-line interface of adjustable orientation. We show that the interface passing through the centroids of the vortices is the one most efficiently stretched, while the initial concentration field with an orthogonal interface is the most efficiently stirred. Finally, we investigate the effects of the angular impulse on the stirring performance of the vortex pair. Stretching is very sensitive to the angular impulse, while the mix-norm is not. We show that there is a value of the angular impulse which maximizes stretching and argue that this is due to two competing mechanisms.

We studied the stellar populations of Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy using HST/WFPC2 imaging of 7 galaxy fields. Our observations reach the oldest main-sequence turn-off, revealing distinct stars formation episodes and allowing us to address the evolution of this prototype dwarf spheroidal galaxy known to have experienced an extended history of star formation. From our HST data, spatial gradients in the stellar content of Fornax emerge with greater clarity. The outermost fields show only stars with ages between 7–12Gyr, while the intermediate region hosts a stellar population between 4–10Gyr, and stars younger of 2 Gyr are found in the innermost fields. A clearly visible gap in the subgiant branch points to bimodality in the main star formation episode. Our observations also indicate that the inner clump detected by Coleman et al. (2004) is characterized by the presence of young stars with age about 1.8 Gyr.

Recent observations of UGC 4879 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope confirm that it is a nearby isolated dwarf irregular galaxy. We measure a distance of 1.36 ± 0.03 Mpc using the Tip of the Red Giant Branch method. This distance puts UGC 4879 beyond the radius of first turnaround of the Local Group and ~700 kpc from its nearest neighbor Leo A. This isolation makes this galaxy an ideal laboratory for studying pristine star formation uncomplicated by interactions with other galaxies. We present the star formation history of UGC 4879 derived from simulated color-magnitude diagrams.

The Phoenix dwarf galaxy is the nearest and most typical representative of the class of the so-called transition dwarf galaxies (from spheroidal to irregular). We present here precise velocity measurements obtained from high-resolution spectroscopy of more than one hundred member stars, allowing us to study the stellar kinematics and estimate the internal velocity dispersion and dark matter content.

As part of our near-infrared photometric survey of nearby dwarf galaxies, we present recent results for Leo I and Leo II dwarf spheroidal galaxies. We selected O- and C-rich AGB stellar populations using two-color diagrams and compared their luminosity functions and star counts with the predictions of the most recent AGB theoretical models.

1. The data. We study detailed star formation histories (SFH) of 14 dwarf galaxies in the central parts (≤ 300 Kpc) of the two nearby galaxy groups: M 81 (D=3.6 Mpc) and Cen A (D = 3.8 Mpc). The images of 7 galaxies were selected from the sample of about 50 nearby dwarf galaxies observed with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) at the Hubble Space Telescope within our prog. 9771 & 10235, (PI I.Karachentsev). The rest of the images (ACS and WFPC2) were taken from the Hubble Archive (prog. 9884, 5898 and 6964).

We present a preliminary reconstruction of the star formation history of the Sagittarius dwarf irregular galaxy (SagDIG), a dIrr galaxy at the border of the Local Group. SagDIG is a lively star-forming dwarf galaxy with very low metallicity and an abundant gas reservoir, for which deep HST ACS observations have been obtained (Momany et al. 2005). We have built synthetic color-magnitude diagrams in the intrinsic ACS bands F606W and F814W and compared them with our HST/ACS observations to derive the global star formation history of the galaxy. We find a broad episode of star formation between 3 and 8 Gyr ago, with a low-intensity tail of star formation at older ages, and a SF enhancement in the last Gyr. An upper limit to the old populations is set by modeling the old HB. Our modeling of the color-magnitude diagram also provides some constraints on the chemical enrichment history of SagDIG.

Over the last five years, enormous progress in accurate distance measurements for nearby galaxies has been attained. The Hubble Space Telescope allows us to estimate distances of about 7–10% accuracy using red giant branch (RGB) up to 8 Mpc. Now we have very accurate distances for more than 200 galaxies within ~6 Mpc.

We derive quantitative star formation histories (SFH) of the two dwarf spheroidal (KK 197 and ESO 269-066) and one dwarf irregular (ESO 381-018) galaxies in the nearby Centaurus A group. The data are part of our sample of about 50 nearby dwarf galaxies observed with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) at the Hubble Space Telescope (prog. 9771 & 10235, PI I.Karachentsev). Deep color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of KK 197 is shown in Fig.1.

From a survey of PNs in NGC 300 we obtain its PNLF. We use it to derive a distance estimate, and briefly discuss the PNLF shape.

We present the results of near-infrared imaging of the dwarf spheroidal galaxies Fornax and Leo I as part of a photometric survey of stellar populations in Local Group dwarf galaxies. Wide-field observations in the J, H, and $K_s$ bands have been obtained with the SOFI camera at the ESO NTT at La Silla, Chile. The aim of this project is to study the evolution of Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxies, with special regard to star formation at intermediate epochs. The near-infrared data, together with optical catalogs from the Padova Local Group wide-field survey, provide a very large color baseline ideal to study the properties of red giant branch (RGB) and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars.

Until very recently, our knowledge of the local peculiar velocity field has been severely hampered by the lack of reliable distance measurements. HST has dramatically changed this situation, allowing astronomers to obtain accurate distances to more than 150 nearby galaxies. This number could easily reach 400 if enough observing time would be dedicated to snapshot observation of the objects in the catalog of Karachentsev et al (2004). Such a dense grid of objects correctly placed in their 3D position would provide key information on the amplitude of peculiar motions, the radial domain of bound groups, the clustering and morphological segregation properties of galaxies, and the incidence of extreme dwarfs galaxies. The key instrument to measure distances with HST is the Tip of the Red Giant Branch technique. The full exploitation of this powerful distance estimator requires a deeper understanding of the possible sources of errors and biases, such as the absolute calibration of the I-band magnitude of the tip and its dependency on age and metallicity of the underlying population, the possible contamination by AGB stars, the breakdown of the methodology in sparsely populated colour-magnitude diagrams and when the tip is close to the photometric limit.

We briefly describe our on-going investigation of the near-IR luminosity-metallicity relationship for dwarf irregular galaxies in nearby groups of galaxies. The motivations of the project and the observational databases are introduced, and a preliminary result is presented. The 12 + log(O/H) vs. H plane must be populated with more low-luminosity galaxies before a definite conclusion can be drawn.

We present an overview of our study of the short period variable stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and in the dwarf galaxies Fornax, Leo I, and NGC 6822. Light curves are presented for RR Lyrae stars, Anomalous Cepheids and, for the first time, for Dwarf Cepheids in the field and in the globular cluster #3 of the Fornax galaxy.

We present new results on a sample of RR Lyrae variables in the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and report on the first detection of RR Lyrae in the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Leo I. Emphasis is given to the discussion of the distances to these galaxies as derived from their RR Lyrae populations, and of the impact on the “short” and “long” distance scale dichotomy.

We report on a Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) patient carrier of a balanced 15q15q translocation and affected by a prolactin-secreting pituitary adenoma. Evidence provided by molecular studies indicates that the structural rearrangement is an isochromosome of maternal origin. According to the identification of isodisomy as the basis of the association of rare disorders and the recent report on chromosome 15 monosomy and nullisomy in pituitary adenoma, we suggest that in our case PWS and pituitary adenoma might be related.