The midbody ring (MR) is asymmetrically segregated during asymmetric divisions of germline stem cells (GSCs) in Drosophila. Male GSCs, which inherit the mother centrosome, exclude the MR, whereas female GSCs, which inherit the daughter centrosome, inherit the MR. Moreover, stem cell identity correlates with the mode of MR inheritance.

Male germline stem cells (GSCs) in Drosophila melanogaster divide asymmetrically by orienting mitotic spindle with respect to the niche, a microenvironment that specifies stem cell identity. The spindle orientation is prepared during interphase through stereotypical positioning of the centrosomes. We recently demonstrated that GSCs possess a checkpoint (“the centrosome orientation checkpoint”) that monitors correct centrosome orientation prior to mitosis to ensure an oriented spindle and thus asymmetric outcome of the division. Here, we show that Par-1, a serine/threonine kinase that regulates polarity in many systems, is involved in this checkpoint. Par-1 shows a cell cycle-dependent localization to the spectrosome, a germline-specific, endoplasmic reticulum-like organelle. Furthermore, the localization of cyclin A, which is normally localized to the spectrosome, is perturbed in par-1 mutant GSCs. Interestingly, overexpression of mutant cyclin A that does not localize to the spectrosome and mutation in hts, a core component of the spectrosome, both lead to defects in the centrosome orientation checkpoint. We propose that the regulation of cyclin A localization via Par-1 function plays a critical role in the centrosome orientation checkpoint.

A novel mechanism is found by which Drosophila male germline stem cells (GSCs) slow their cell cycle under limited nutrient conditions. Upon culturing in poor media, GSCs misorient their centrosomes with respect to the stem cell niche, activating the centrosome orientation checkpoint and leading to slowdown of the cell cycle.

We have analyzed the influence of the hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thickness on the electrical performances of top gate thin-film transistors (TFTs). We have observed that, when the a-Si:H thickness increases, the threshold voltage and the subthreshold slope decrease. The modification of the TFT apparent field-effect mobility has also been investigated: we have shown that it first increases with the a-Si:H thickness, and then decreases for thicker a-Si:H films. This change of electrical performances is most likely associated with both the variation of a-Si:H microstructure during the film depositions and the effect of parasitic source and drain series resistances. We have demonstrated that for a given TFT geometry, it is therefore possible to define an optimum a-Si:H thickness ensuring maximum TFT electrical performances, and that this optimum thickness increases significantly with the TFT channel length.

Sympathetic nerves conveying central commands to regulate visceral functions often display activities in synchronous bursts. To understand how individual fibers fire synchronously, we establish "oligofiber recording techniques" to record "several" nerve fiber activities simultaneously, using in vitro splanchnic sympathetic nerve-thoracic spinal cord preparations of neonatal rats as experimental models. While distinct spike potentials were easily recorded from collagenase-dissociated sympathetic fibers, a problem arising from synchronous nerve discharges is a higher incidence of complex waveforms resulted from spike overlapping. Because commercial softwares do not provide an explicit solution for spike overlapping, a series of custom-made LabVIEW programs incorporated with MATLAB scripts was therefore written for spike sorting. Spikes were represented as data points after waveform feature extraction and automatically grouped by k-means clustering followed by principal component analysis (PCA) to verify their waveform homogeneity. For dissimilar waveforms with exceeding Hotelling's T 2 distances from the cluster centroids, a unique data-based subtraction algorithm (SA) was used to determine if they were the complex waveforms resulted from superimposing a spike pattern close to the cluster centroid with the other signals that could be observed in original recordings. In comparisons with commercial software, higher accuracy was achieved by analyses using our algorithms for the synthetic data that contained synchronous spiking and complex waveforms. Moreover, both T 2 -selected and SA-retrieved spikes were combined as unit activities. Quantitative analyses were performed to evaluate if unit activities truly originated from single fibers. We conclude that applications of our programs can help to resolve synchronous sympathetic nerve discharges (SND).

We use a new hydrogenated amorphous silicon ͑a-Si:H͒ device structure, the gated-four-probe a-Si:H thin-film transistor ͑TFT͒, to investigate the intrinsic channel characteristics of inverted-staggered a-Si:H TFTs without the influence of source/drain series resistances. The experimental results have shown that, for the conventional a-Si:H TFT structure, the field-effect mobility, threshold voltage, and field-effect channel conductance activation energy have a strong dependence on a-Si:H thickness and TFT channel length. On the other hand, for the gated-four-probe a-Si:H TFT structure, these values are a-Si:H thickness and TFT channel length independent, clearly indicating that this new a-Si:H TFT structure can be effectively used to measure the channel intrinsic properties of a-Si:H TFTs.

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