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  • Autumn 2004 - Issue Number 56
  • Autumn 2004 - Issue Number 56

Below are the feature articles from Physiology News Issue 56, Autumn 2004.

To read the full articles please download the issue.

  • Features

Our shape is elastic, modular and held together by carbohydrate strings

Glycan strings tie collagen fibrils into shape-defining modules with intrinsic elasticity based on a springy sugar (Iduronate) and reversible intermolecular ratchets
  • Features

Conditions under which systemic lactate may act as a metabolic substrate for the brain
  • Features

Learning to smell

The human olfactory system can ‘learn’ to smell androstenone. Why this should occur is uncertain and, because androstenone can have different smells to different people, it challenges the relationship between odour and receptors. There is perhaps more to this smelling business than meets the nose, says Tim Jacob
  • Features

Role of villus microcirculation in intestinal absorption: coupling of epithelial with endothelial transport

Capillaries in jejunal villi can absorb glucose at rates several hundred times greater per gram of tissue than in brain or contracting skeletal muscles. These high rates are made possible by delivery of glucose in high concentration from epithelium to capillaries via paracellular diffusion and solvent drag combined with increases of villus capillary blood flow and surface area
  • Features

A week in the Zambian Bush

In May 2002, Physiological Society Member Tristan Pocock left the Physiology Department at the University of Bristol, where he was a senior post-doc researching the microcirculation, to spend 2 years as a VSO (*1) volunteer teaching high school biology in the Zambian bush

  • Features

Inside the ‘black box’

Henning Wackerhage and Philip Atherton explain the molecular adaptations to marathon training
  • Features

Training and competition stress: effects on immune function and health

Mike Gleeson continues our series of articles on exercise physiology in the run up to the Olympics by considering the health implications of hard training by endurance athletes

  • Features

Maternal stress in pregnancy may affect the cardiovascular system of the child

Prenatal stress of the mother has been shown to have long term effects on the cardiovascular reactivity of the child. When pregnant rats were mildly stressed in the last week of pregnancy, their adult offspring had increased systolic blood pressure responses to mild stress. Natalya Igosheva and Vivette Glover explain

  • Features

Making old muscles young again – a therapeutic role for ββ2-agonists?

James Ryall and co-workers ask whether β2 anabolic enhancers might help prevent muscle loss in the elderly

  • Features

What limits jaw movements during vigorous head movements?

Tim Miles, Stan Flavel and Mike Nordstrom explain the mechanisms that keep the mandible in a fairly stable posture during exercises like running and jumping, in which the head moves vigorously up and down

  • Features

The contribution of steric and electrostatic factors on distribution of macromolecules in the interstitial space

There is more to the space between cells than you might think - it is a crowded (if you’re a macromolecule) and highly charged environment. Helge Wiig and colleagues discuss the possible consequences

  • Features

The leaky mitochondrion

Mitochondria use proton gradients to make ATP. Sometimes, however, proton ‘leak’ uses the gradient to produce heat instead. Here, Kent Sahlin and co-workers argue that the balance of these two consequences of fuel oxidation might be under physiological control
  • Features

Elastin and hypertension: is there a link?

Recent work has highlighted the association between a defect in elastin synthesis, large artery abnormalities and hypertension development. Studies in spontaneously hypertensive rats also point in the same direction and suggest a link between a defect in elastin organization and resistance artery remodelling

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