Exposure to a blast wave has been proposed to cause mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), with symptoms including altered cognition, memory, and behavior. This idea, however, remains controversial, and the mechanisms of blast-induced brain injury remain unknown. To begin to resolve these questions, we constructed a simple compressed air shock tube, placed rats inside the tube, and exposed them to a highly reproducible and controlled blast wave. Consistent with the generation of a mild injury, 2 weeks after exposure to the blast, we found that motor performance was unaffected, and a panel of common injury markers showed little or no significant changes in expression in the cortex, corpus callosum, or hippocampus. Similarly, we were unable to detect elevated spectrin breakdown products in brains collected from blast-exposed rats. Using an object recognition task, however, we found that rats exposed to a blast wave spent significantly less time exploring a novel object when compared with control rats. Intriguingly, we also observed a significant shortening of the axon initial segment (AIS) in both the cortex and hippocampus of blast-exposed rats, suggesting altered neuronal excitability after exposure to a blast. A computational model showed that shortening the AIS increased both threshold and the interspike interval of repetitively firing neurons. These results support the conclusion that exposure to a single blast wave can lead to mTBI with accompanying cognitive impairment and subcellular changes in the molecular organization of neurons.

No abstract

Computations of damped diocotron oscillations ͑quasi-modes͒ are described for non-neutral plasmas and inviscid fluids. The numerical method implements a suggestion made by Briggs, Daugherty, and Levy some 25 years ago ͓Phys. Fluids 13, 421 ͑1970͔͒ to push the branch line that forms the continuum into the complex-plane by solving the mode equation in the complex r-plane. For the special case of power-law density profiles the calculation finds the same quasi-mode frequencies found recently by Corngold ͓Phys. Plasmas 2, 620 ͑1995͔͒. It is found that the feature of the continuum eigenfunctions which indicates the presence of a nearby quasi-mode is continuity of the derivative of the regular part of the eigenfunctions near the singularity. The evolution of Rayleigh modes, found in density profiles with steps, is also studied as the density steps are smoothed.

Efficient techniques for computing axisymmetric non-neutral plasma equilibria are described. These equilibria may be obtained either by requiring global thermal equilibrium, by specifying the midplane radial density profile, or by specifying the radial profile of sn dz. Both splines and finite-differences are used, and the accuracy of the two is compared by using a new characterization of the thermal equilibrium density profile which gives a simple formula for estimating the radial and axial gradient scale lengths of thermal equilibria. It is found that for global thermal equilibrium 1% accuracy is achieved with splines if the distance between neighboring splines is about two Debye lengths while finite differences require a grid spacing of about one-half Debye length to achieve the same accuracy.

Numerical investigations of a warm-fluid model with an isothermal equation of state for the perpendicular dynamics of an axisymmetric, magnetically confined pure electron plasma predict an exponentially unstable, l=1, diocotron mode for hollow density profiles. The unstable mode can be identified with a stable, nonsmooth mode that exists in cold drift models but which is destabilized by finite temperature effects. The unstable mode has many properties similar to the experimental results reported by Driscoll [Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 645 (1990)].

Part of the Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons, and the Physics Commons Original Publication Citation Rasband, Neil S."Model equations from gyrokinetic theory for a non-neutral plasma to include temperature effects and applications to a plasma of infinite length." Physics of Plasmas 3 (1996): 94-13.

A complete solution is obtained for nonaxisymmetric resonant vibrations of a free cylinder or disk involving infinite sums. For axisymmetric longitudinal vibrations an alternative to previous solutions is included. In principle, the solutions satisfy exactly the stress-free boundary conditions, in contrast to the approximate bending-mode solutions due to Pickett or approximate solutions based on a small diameter/length ratio and small shearing stresses at the ends.

For realistic, cold equilibria of finite length representing a pure electron plasma confined in a cylindrical Malmberg–Penning trap, the mode spectrum for Trivelpiece–Gould, m=0, and for diocotron, m=1, modes is calculated numerically. A novel method involving finite elements is used to successfully compute eigenfrequencies and eigenfunctions for plasma equilibria shaped like pancakes, cigars, long cylinders, and all things in between. Mostly sharp-boundary density configurations are considered but also included in this study are diffuse density profiles including ones with peaks off axis leading to instabilities. In all cases the focus has been on elucidating the role of finite length in determining mode frequencies and shapes. For m=0 accurate eigenfrequencies are tabulated and their dependence on mode number and aspect ratio is computed. For m=1 it is found that the eigenfrequencies are 2% to 3% higher than given by the Fine–Driscoll formula [Phys. Plasmas 5, 601 (1998)]. The “new modes” of Hilsabeck and O’Neil [Phys. Plasmas 8, 407 (2001)] are identified as Dubin modes. For hollow profiles finite length in cold-fluid can account for up to ∼70% of the theoretical instability growth rate.