This study was conducted for determining the effects of trainings, applied to athletes during short term camp period, on their aerobic and anaerobic performance. Measurements were made by the participation of 28 volunteer male ice hockey national team players. During the 15-day camp period, 10-minute running and stretching for warming and then…

This study aimed to assess physiological arousal and behavioral regulation of emotion in the context of frustration in 29 children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and 45 typically developing children (41-81 months). Heart rate was continuously measured and emotion strategies were coded, during a locked-box task. Results revealed increases in…

This laboratory exercise demonstrates the use of an immunoassay for studying kinase enzyme activity in living cells. The advantage over the classical method, in which students have to isolate the enzyme from cell material and measure its activity in vitro, is that enzyme activity is modulated and measured in living cells, providing a more…

In 1973, the Institute of Environmental Stress of the University of California-Santa Barbara, under the direction of Steven M. Horvath, began a series of field and laboratory studies of marathon runners during competition. As one of Horvath's graduate students, many of these studies became part of my doctoral dissertation. The rationale for…

Theoretical and empirical models describe respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) as a peripheral biomarker of emotion regulation and social competence. Recent findings also link RSA to individual differences in social functioning within autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, associations between RSA and symptoms of internalizing/externalizing…

The Na[superscript +]-glucose cotransporter is a key transport protein that is responsible for absorbing Na[superscript +] and glucose from the luminal contents of the small intestine and reabsorption by the proximal straight tubule of the nephron. Robert K. Crane originally described the cellular model of absorption of Na[superscript +] and…

Recent research indicates that epigenetic mechanisms and, in particular, the post-translational modification (PTM) of histones may contribute to memory encoding and storage. Among the dozens of possible histone PTMs, the methylation/demethylation of lysines in the N-terminal tail of histone H3 exhibits particularly strong links with cognitive…

Exposure to environmental chemicals may precipitate autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in genetically susceptible children. Differences in the efficiency of the glucuronidation process may substantially modulate substrate concentrations and effects. To determine whether the efficiency of this pathway is compromised in children with ASD, we measured…

This paper illustrates a biological application of the concepts of relative change and area under a curve, from mathematics. We study two biological measures "relative change in cardiac output" and "cardiac output", which are predictors of heart blockages and other related ailments. Cardiac output refers to the quantity of…

Obesity is the costliest preventable health problem in the United States. Understanding and applying the first law of thermodynamics will help students prevent and treat this all-too-common problem.

Mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation disorders include conditions in which the transport of activated acyl-Coenzyme A (CoA) into the mitochondria or utilization of these substrates is disrupted or blocked. This results in a deficit in the conversion of fat into energy. Most patients with fatty acid oxidation defects are now identified through…

Despite of the great efforts that move forward to clarify the pathophysiologic mechanisms in autism, the cause of this disorder, however, remains largely unknown. There is an increasing body of literature concerning neurochemical contributions to the pathophysiology of autism. We aimed to determine blood and brain levels of glutamate in children…

In conditioned taste aversion (CTA), a taste, the conditioned stimulus (CS), is paired with an illness-inducing stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus (US), to produce CS-US associations at very long (hours) intervals, a result that appears to violate the law of contiguity. The specific length of the maximum effective trace interval that has been…

Recent findings in neuroscience have identified principles, such as attention management and change blindness, which stage magicians exploit to create illusions. Neuroscientists have also revealed how mirror neurons and oxytocin enhance the impact of magic. In other words, magicians are just as much practitioners of sleight of mind as they are of…

Tennis is an activity requiring both endurance and anaerobic components, which could have immunosuppressive effects postexercise. Purpose: The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effect of a simulated tennis match on apoptotic and migratory markers on lymphocyte subsets. Method: Male high school (n = 5) and college (n = 3) tennis…