Category Archives: Physiology

Physiology

High-performance rugby programme launched – The Bay’s News First – SunLive

Expressions of interest for the 2021 High-Performance Rugby Pathway programme are now open.

The Bay of Plenty Rugby Union and Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology have partnered together to create the High-Performance Rugby Pathway - HPRP - delivered in three locations - Rotorua, Whakatane and Tauranga.

The HPRP is a one-year programme aimed at young athletes. The programme is designed to improve rugby athletes self-development in the areas of nutrition, exercise physiology, performance testing, sports psychology, and sport technology while formally studying for the Level Certificate in Exercise, and Certificate in Freestyle Group Exercise qualifications from Toi Ohomai.

The HPRP programme is being delivered in three locations to enable athletes to remain close to home, and support rugby in their communities, says a Bay of Plenty Rugby Union spokesperson.

The HPRP is a one-year programme aimed at recent school leavers and is designed to improve rugby athletes self-development in the areas of nutrition, exercise physiology, performance testing, sports psychology, and sport technology while formally studying for the Level Certificate in Exercise, and Certificate in Freestyle Group Exercise qualifications from Toi Ohomai.

The Bay of Plenty Rugby Union is committed to growing community rugby, so selection preference will be given to athletes who share this commitment.

On completion of this programme, graduates will be able to:

Choreograph, deliver and adapt safe and effective group exercise classes for one or more different class types and varying exercise abilities. Encourage group exercise participants to develop skills and knowledge to improve own health and wellbeing. Integrate culturally appropriate values, processes and protocols to respond to participant exercise needs. Enhance movement patterns in group exercise classes by utilising knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Use business skills and create an awareness of exercise products and services to develop and maintain a client base. Deliver safe and effective exercise programmes, including prescreening, within own scope of practice and industry code of ethics. Apply knowledge of anatomy and physiology to adapt and deliver safe and effective exercise programmes to individuals. Adapt programmes for apparently healthy people and common at risk groups using exercise science and testing. Apply motivational and communication techniques to enhance individual participant commitment to a personalised exercise programme. Apply a health and wellness framework and evidence-based nutrition principles to support a personalised exercise programme and recommend referral pathways to allied health professionals. Use marketing and business tools and techniques to support business practices as an exercise professional.

Interested people can complete the online form to register their interest in the 2021 High-Performance Rugby Pathway (HPRP) programme.

Applicants will be required to attend an interview and an information sharing session where they will be informed of programme structure and expectations as well as progression options.

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High-performance rugby programme launched - The Bay's News First - SunLive

Physiology

Field Trip Enters Partnership to Measure Psychedelic Therapies on Physiology & Mental Health – Stockhouse

Field Trip Health Ltd. (CSE: FTRP, Forum) announced on Thursday that it is partnering with WHOOP, the human performance company, provides a membership for 24/7 coaching to improve health, where Field Trip will use WHOOP Strap 3.0 to measure the biometric effects of Field Trip’s psychedelic therapies.

To read this news in full, click here.

A developer of psychedelic therapies, FTRP recently made news when it entered into a lease and stated its plan to open a Field Trip Health Centre in Amsterdam, Netherlands, expected to open in March 2021.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Field Trip Health Ltd. is a client of Stockhouse Publishing.

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Field Trip Enters Partnership to Measure Psychedelic Therapies on Physiology & Mental Health - Stockhouse

Physiology

Auburn University researchers first to discover natural, metal nanoparticles in animal body; study has implications in restoring or enhancing sense of…

"Scientists have long known animal tissue has minerals in ionic and atom-bound states, but no one knew metal nanoparticles were naturally in the animal body," said Vitaly Vodyanoy, professor of physiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine. "This is the first time a third state of metal has been observed in the body."

The study, "Endogenous zinc nanoparticles in the rat olfactory epithelium are functionally significant," was published in the Oct. 28 edition of the journal, Nature Scientific Reports.

The importance of the finding is that metal nanoparticles donate or accept many more electrons toward enzymatic reactions than available from single, metal ions. Nanoparticles are structures composed of many atoms, while ions are electrically charged atoms created by the loss or gain of one or a few electrons.

"Some scientists suggest electrons trigger the sense of smell," Vodyanoy said. "Therefore, metal nanoparticles, which can operate with many electrons, have an advantage over metal ions in smell enzymatic reactions."

The research, using laboratory rats as the animal model, found zinc nanoparticles in the nose olfactory neurons' cilia, the part of a neuron that contains olfactory receptors. Until this study, the only known zinc in the body was in an ionic or bound state.

"This is also the first study to show zinc is in the cilia," he said. "It's not a single atom, but nanoparticles with 50 to a few hundred atoms of metal. We proved zinc naturally exists in the animal body, which we believe would include humans."

When dissected, the cilia of the neurons became liquid bubbles, which Auburn researchers collected and sent to the National Institute of Standards and Technologythe study's funding agencyto perform electron diffraction to look for nanoparticles.

"We had already determined it was zinc using our physiological experiments, but we wanted NIST's confirmation with their electron microscope, and for NIST to perform electron diffraction to pinpoint if the zinc was clustered as nanoparticles," Vodyanoy said. "It was natural zinc nanoparticles."

Zinc, to this point, was thought only to exist in the body as ions or organically bound atoms derived from foods or vitamin supplements. Without zinc in the body, an animal or person will lose the sense of smell.

Three-fold increase in smell

The finding of zinc nanoparticles builds upon Vodyanoy's prior research, dating to 2005, and should open the door for future research globally into restoring or enhancing the sense of smell, as well other areas involving enzymatic reactions.

"Our current study found that natural zinc from the olfactory neurons' cilia produces the same increase as nanoparticle-engineered zinc," he said. "We previously found if you add zinc, either natural or engineered, with a puff of air to anything with an odor, we see a three-times increase in an animal's olfactory response," said Vodyanoy, who demonstrated this increase in a 2009 study.

The three-fold increase, he says, is the result of the zinc-and-odorant mixture producing additional pairs of proteins, or dimers, in the cilia.

"We had hypothesized that when zinc interacts with olfactory receptors, it produces a dimer, which is necessary for the increased sense of smell," he said. "Our research showed it to be accurate."

He says the advantages of natural zinc nanoparticles versus artificially engineered zinc nanoparticles are more stability and longer shelf life. When both are protected against oxidation with a thin layer of organic material, the natural zinc will last several years, while the artificial will last up to a year, based on his previous research.

Vodyanoy says his lab's future studies will seek to determine how animals have zinc metal nanoparticles in the nose's neuron cilia.

"We hypothesize a microorganism in the gut converts zinc ions from foods to zinc metal nanoparticles in the nose," he said. "We hope to find out."

Potential benefits

Vodyanoy says the discovery of zinc nanoparticles will add to the knowledge base of how zinc and olfactory receptors work and should advance the understanding of the sense of smell. Restoring or enhancing the sense of smell is one possible future benefit.

"Diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and now COVID-19 often cause a person to lose the sense of smell," he said. "I believe we could research ways to add a small and safe amount of zinc to food or drink, possibly as an aerosol, to allow patients to smell these foods again.

"Aromas are important in perception of our food and beverages. Food industries use a variety of chemicals, essential oils and botanicals to accentuate the smell of food. Zinc nanoparticles can be used for the enhancement of aromas in food and to make it more attractive and healthier."

He also says zinc has been shown to play a role in the memory process, and his study could provide valuable information to those studying Alzheimer's.

Agencies using detection dogs could benefit from future research as well. In preliminary studies, Vodyanoy says zinc added with a puff of air onto a surface will give the dog the three-fold increase in smelling for contraband like drugs or explosives.

The perfume industry, he adds, could look at zinc as a method to increase the stability and essence of perfume.

Research team and process

"A well-educated and skillful scientific team is critical for successful research," Vodyanoy said. "I am fortunate to have excellent scientists around me."

The team members included:

"Melissa Singletary would make a microsurgical extraction of tissues containing olfactory cilia, and then she, Samantha Hagerty and Oleg Pustovyy measured electrical signals excited in cilia by odorants and zinc nanoparticles," Vodyanoy said.

"Ludmila Globa prepared cilia samples on optical slides for high-resolution, fluorescent microscopy carried out by Oleg Pustovyy. June Lau then confirmed the presence of natural zinc metal nanoparticles in cilia by using electron microscopy and diffraction."

Vodyanoy analyzed the experimental data and wrote the manuscript for the team.

SOURCE Auburn University

http://www.auburn.edu

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Auburn University researchers first to discover natural, metal nanoparticles in animal body; study has implications in restoring or enhancing sense of...

Physiology

Novel Antioxidant Seen as an Effective Strategy for Peripheral Artery Disease – PRNewswire

OMAHA, Ne., Nov.20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchers within the School of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) have found that a novel antioxidant can provide a number of health benefits for individuals with peripheral artery disease.

The antioxidant specifically targets mitochondria, considered the powerhouse of the cell. The study was led by Assistant Professor Song-Young Park, Ph.D., and published in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology.

Park recruited eleven men and women with PAD to participate in this research; six of which received 80 milligrams of the antioxidant while the remaining five participants were given a placebo. Measurements were done before and 40 minutes after each participant took the supplement or placebo to assess the roles of vascular mitochondria in endothelial function, arterial stiffness, exercise tolerance and skeletal muscle function. After a 14 day "wash out" period, the two groups switched, with the placebo group taking the supplement and vice versa and measurements were assessed again.

When a participant took the supplement, the researchers noted an increase in dilation of the arteries, popliteal flow-mediated dilation, antioxidant superoxide dismutase, maximal walking time and distance, and time to claudication or leg pain.

"The results of this study reveal for the first time that acute oral intake of a mitochondrial-targeted antioxidant is effective for improving vascular endothelial function and superoxide dismutase in patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD)," Park said. "This improvement is clinically important and such antioxidants may potentially be utilized as therapeutic supplement for patients with PAD".

The antioxidant, commercially available as MitoQ, contains the naturally occurring ubiquinol which is a coenzyme that gives the antixoxidant the ability to cross the cell membrane and accumulate within the mitrochondria.

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a common cardiovascular disease in which atherosclerotic plaque forms in the arteries of the leg which can cause decrease blood flow and reduced perfusion in the lower extremity. The disease affects nearly 200 million people worldwide, with over 20 percent of individuals over 80 years old being affected by this disease. Common symptoms often include foot ulcers and leg pain during walking. If severe, medical treatment up to and including leg amputation may be required.

This study was funded in part by the University of Nebraska at Omaha Graduate Research and Creative Activity (GRACA) grant awarded to Jiwon Song, University of Nebraska at Omaha University Committee on Research and Creative Activity (UCRCA) awarded to Song-Young Park and the NASA Nebraska Space Grant (#NNX15AI09H) awarded to Song-Young Park. Doses of MitoQ were donated to UNO by MitoQ Limited for use in this research study.

About the University of Nebraska at Omaha

Located in one of America's best cities to live, work and learn, the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) is Nebraska's premier metropolitan university. With more than 15,000 students enrolled in 200-plus programs of study, UNO is recognized nationally for its online education, graduate education, military friendliness and community engagement efforts. Founded in 1908, UNO has served learners of all backgrounds for more than 100 years and is dedicated to another century of excellence both in the classroom and in the community.

SOURCE University of Nebraska at Omaha

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Novel Antioxidant Seen as an Effective Strategy for Peripheral Artery Disease - PRNewswire

Physiology

The secrets of the world’s fastest marathon runners – Runner’s World (UK)

Professor Andrew Jones has played an integral part in some of the greatest marathon stories in history. The University of Exeter professor of applied physiology helped to guide Paula Radcliffe to her stunning, long-standing world record in London, in 2003; and he also worked with Eliud Kipchoge on the Breaking 2 project, the culmination of which was the first sub-two-hour marathon in history. In a long and distinguished career exploring the science behind speed and endurance, Jones has written more than 350 original research and review articles, and worked as a consultant to UK Athletics and the English Institute of Sport. This year, he has been working towards a defining marathon performance thats a little easier for us all to relate to his own attempt to break the hallowed three-hour mark for the first time, at the age of 50 and translating his unparalleled wealth of experience into his training. We caught up with him to hear about the scientific knowledge he has employed to help the worlds best get even better, what he has learned about them that sets them apart, and how we can apply it all to our own running.

AJ It started with me as a reasonably successful junior runner [Jones is being rather modest here as this included numerous Welsh Schools/AAA titles, coming third in the British Schools 3000m, running a 3:58 1500m and an 8:38 3000m in 1986, which ranked him as one of the fastest Youths in the UK; in 1987, he ran 30:13 for 10K and 66:55 for the half marathon, which were UK Age 17 best performances].. Like a lot of people, I was somewhat self-coached, and I just became fascinated by the science that underpinned running performance. That led me to study sports science at university, where my various injuries and illnesses came along and my own running fell a little by the wayside, but I continued to be fascinated by physiology, by what it is that makes some people run faster than others and what we can do to make people run faster.

I did a PhD in exercise physiology and I became fascinated with the research side, but having a link with sport was always important to me. Along with doing the more sophisticated lab-based work, which was all about trying to discover the mechanistic basis behind athletic performance, I was always keen to apply that knowledge in the real world to help athletes run faster. So I kind of lived a bit vicariously through some of the athletes I supported over those years.

You know that debate that you sometimes have in the pub after a training sessionwould you rather win an Olympic Gold medal or set the world record? I was always in the latter camp because I thought you can win an Olympic Gold by beating the people who are there on that particular day, which is obviously no mean feat, but to beat the fastest athlete of all time at a given distance I thought that was something really special. Of course at some point it might be beaten, but at least for that period of time you can say that you are the fastest athlete who ever lived over that distance, and that really appeals. As scientists, we are fascinated by how fast people can run.

I think when it comes to distances like the 100m or the mile, those distances are run so frequently that we are probably approaching the limits. The marathon is different because the athletes race the distance so infrequently, and the courses that marathons are run on arent necessarily ideal for the fastest times, and when the top athletes do get together its generally at a major championships, so the goal is to win rather that to run as quickly as possible. So when it came to the Breaking 2 project, it was about creating a real opportunity to discover what was humanly possible. Its those ultimate limits in terms of how fast can people run and what prevents them from going faster that continue to fascinate me.

First of all, they are physically phenomenal; theres no getting away from that. You simply have to have the underpinning physiology. However, there are probably other people who are similarly physiologically talented, and so you also have to have the right psychology. I dont necessarily mean just in the race itself clearly you have to have the confidence, the motivation, the ability to hurt yourself in the race but its also about having the patience, the longevity. This is especially true when it comes to the marathon because you might not hit your very best until youre in your early to mid 30s. You might have shown your early promise as a teenager, like both Paula and Eliud, so that means youve got to train for about 15 years. We all know how hard maintaining training can be and when you scale it up to the top athletes it means running as much as 10 or 12 times per week every week for 15 years consecutively.

You have to get everything right around training and recovering.

It also means that you have to get everything else right around training and recovering and you really have to sacrifice a lot. Its that monk- or nun-like existence that you have to buy into if youre going to achieve what youre ultimately capable of in the long term, whoever you are.

These are certainly lessons that you can learn from the greats, but obviously youve got to dial it back. And especially when you get a bit older. One thing I have learned as I have continued to try to run over the decades is that youve just got to be kinder to yourself. As you get a bit older, you become more susceptible to injury, you simply cant take the load and the speed in the same way that you used to. Your bones, tendons and muscles become more prone to injury so you have got to build in a lot more recovery.

Thats certainly a lesson to be taken from the Kenyan approach. Ive had the opportunity to spend some time with [Kipchoges coach] Patrick Sang in Eliuds training camp in Kenya and one thing that comes through very strongly is that while they train pretty hard most of the time and certainly very consistently, when they are not training they really do relax. They enjoy each others company and they really know how to chill out.

Another thing about the top Kenyan runners is that they dont stick rigidly to a training formula. As a scientist, I really like to plan my training and to stick to it meticulously if I possibly can, but, actually, you have to be flexible. Its that old adage that youve got to listen to your body, but is absolutely true.

I dont think the Kenyan athletes I spent time with really know exactly what theyre going to do from one day to the next because it will be modified by Patrick according to how they responded to the last session and how they feel. So being a little bit looser in the way we structure our training is probably one of the lessons.

Its better to train at 90 per cent effort than to get injured or burn out.

And really it was the same with Paula she would quite often train as hard as she could for as many days in a row as she could, but then shed then wake up one morning and feel that she was barely capable of running at all. When that happened, rather than run a half-hearted session she would take a complete rest day. She wasnt afraid to do that. Its about having courage and confidence in your training and that doesnt always mean training harder and harder, and doing more and more all the time, it sometimes means backing off. You have to be able to maintain it. Its better to train at 90 per cent effort for a long period than to overdo it and get injured or burn out psychologically. And I think thats perhaps a surprising lesson: that it isnt necessarily the case that these great athletes are always training so much harder than the rest of us, they just train more sensibly.

There isnt any real consensus on this, so you do get people espousing different views and methods. When it come to the elites, they certainly all do a bit of it, but the important thing is that strength training doesnt override your running training. It needs to supplement and complement the running training you do.

It also depends a little on the type of runner you are and the type of event youre training for. You clearly need to have sufficient strength when it comes to shorter distances, but its less crucial when it comes to the marathon. The type of training that can be really beneficial to marathon runners is plyometric-type work, which can augment running economy adaptations. I dont think you need to be lifting particularly heavy weights.

The key thing you have to remember is that every training session you do whether it be running or weight training or whatever takes something out of you, so its all about the balance. If the strength training doesnt drain your energy resources and prevent you from getting the maximum from your running training sessions, then thats fine, go ahead. But if youre so tired or sore that you cant put in a good long run or interval session, that might well mean that youre doing too much.

Also consider if your strength training takes a lot of time say an hour, three times a week and thats cutting into the time that you would otherwise spend running. So doing some is probably a good thing, but you have to make sure that you dont do too much as it will never be a substitute for the running itself.

Paula used to do a couple of weight training sessions per week, which was enough, but not enough to compromise the endurance work that she was doing. As for Eliud, he and the other Kenyan athletes I spent time with dont do much strength work when they are in their specific marathon training block. They do some conditioning, so they recover after their most recent marathon, then they start to do some easy running and some conditioning and body weight exercises. They do maintain core-strength exercises, which is something that has changed in their approach over the last couple of years, but theres no weight-training facility in camp, so when they are doing their final 10-12 weeks of marathon training they really dont do a lot of weights.

What the Kenyan athletes certainly do is run across a lot of undulating terrain. From speaking to some of the physios who work with the leading east African runners, its clear when you look at their feet and their lower legs, they are extremely muscular. Theyve got muscles on their feet that you didnt know existed. Thats partly because they are barefoot a lot of the time, but its also because the terrain they run on is really rugged its up and down and its side-to-side and its quite often in heavy mud as well. So, in a sense, they are doing a fair bit of resistance training while they run.

Im definitely in the high-carb camp. I think if youre a very slow marathon runner or an ultra endurance athlete then because the intensity is so much lower, training yourself to use fat as fuel may be the way forward. However, when it comes to trying to run a marathon quickly or any shorter distance, then the most efficient fuel to use is carbohydrate that will keep your oxygen uptake low, so it will maintain your running economy.

My experience has shown that its really important that not only do you go into a marathon with lots of carbohydrate already within your muscles in the form of glycogen, but also that you make every effort to take as much carbohydrate into your system as you can while running. You should just about have enough carbohydrate to get you through a marathon if you go into it glycogen-loaded and you take in a further 60-70g per hour at the elite level, or a bit less for us non-elites. If you do so, youll have the right fuel to run at the intensity you want to sustain.

Its also important to take the carbohydrate in at an early stage. I think the mistake many people make is that because they dont feel thirsty, or because they feel full of energy in that first hour they dont pay sufficient attention to their nutrition then, but doing so will pay huge dividends later in the race.

Paula didnt want to stop. She would rather fall off the treadmill than quit. Eliud is a calmer, more reserved character, but hes also mentally extremely strong. He and the other Kenyan athletes Ive spent time with certainly do know how to push themselves, but I dont think that is expressed in their running form to such an the same extent.

When I was consultant physiologist to British Athletics, I accompanied some of our runners up to altitude training camps in Kenya on a few occasions and its really interesting when you watch groups of Kenyans and groups of Brits do their track sessions. Im certain that they are working equally as hard and yet when you watch the Brits finish their reps their form falls to pieces you can tell that they are fatigued just by looking at their stride and their upper bodies, but the running economy and the running form of the Kenyans doesnt seem to deteriorate to the same extent. Im sure that they are hurting just as much and working just as hard, but it doesnt seem to impact their running form to such an extent.

You can measure the various parameters and variables VO2 max, lactate threshold, running economy that we think are key to marathon success at the start line, but you have to remember that those variables all change as the marathon progresses. And thats something that we cant measure in the lab. So my VO2 max and my running economy will get worse as I run, and if you measured me after two hours of my three-hour marathon run, the numbers you would get then would be very different to what they were on the start line. I suspect in people like Eliud the numbers dont deteriorate anything like as much he has incredible fatigue resistance. I think thats the other dimension that makes runners like Kipchoge so special. Interestingly, when we measured his numbers in the testing and selection for Breaking 2, they were obviously right up there with the best, but they werent necessarily the best of the lot.

A key thing I take from my experience of working with Kipchoge, and on the Breaking 2 project in particular, is his self-belief. Of all the athletes that we tested and we selected, Eliud was probably the only one who genuinely believed it was possible. He had unwavering, unshakeable confidence in his own ability and coaching, training and preparation. He dares to think beyond the current limits.

Im on slightly shaky ground here as Im a physiologist not a psychologist. I do believe that you need to dare to dream and I love Eliuds slogan that no human is limited, but I also believe that we do have our limits and my job as a physiologist is to determine exactly where those limits are. Theres no point in you or I dreaming that we can run a two-hour marathon because we simply havent got the ability. You have to make sure that your dreams are realistic as a well as challenging, but I agree that if we put our minds to it, dare to dream, and then prepare accordingly then we can all achieve a little bit more than we might expect.

We saw Eliud run 1:59 and he did not even look particularly stretched. When we gave him an honorary doctorate at the University of Exeter last year we asked him how hard it was, and could he have gone any faster. He said it wasnt that hard and he could have gone a lot faster!

People may say it was all about the manufactured course and everything else and that itll never happen in London or Berlin but I wouldnt be surprised if it did, especially if he had a bit of competition and people to draft behind for a little bit longer. My mind certainly wouldnt be blown if we saw sub-two on a regular marathon course. It could be by Eliud, but theres great strength of depth in the athletes coming through now some of the athletes coming out Uganda at the moment are incredible. So I think that well see sub-two happen again in other competitions.

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The secrets of the world's fastest marathon runners - Runner's World (UK)

Physiology

Scientists reveal new evidence of electrical pathway in the heart – News-Medical.Net

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Nov 17 2020

These days having both a land line and a mobile phone seems like overkill. But Virginia Tech researchers have shown that the heart relies on at least two key communication channels to keep abnormal heart rhythms in check.

In a study published in the American Journal of Physiology Heart and Circulatory Physiology, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC scientists reveal further evidence of the "nuanced interplay" between two prominent cell-to-cell communication pathways that could influence how patients fare during a heart attack.

The research team, led by associate professor Steven Poelzing, discovered it could improve irregular heart rhythms even when the heart's blood supply was completely shut off just by altering concentrations of common electrolytes in the bloodstream.

This discovery could have important implications for the prevention and treatment of heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Millions of Americans take anti-arrhythmic medications or suffer from heart disease. By shedding light on these basic physiological principles, our research could one day help us develop more effective medications and personalized saline solutions to help prevent dangerous arrhythmias," said Poelzing, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering.

"Our goal is to one day help cardiologists identify if a patient could be at higher or lower risk of developing a dangerous arrhythmia based on their blood chemistry."

Like a phone line, gap junctions are proteins that bridge two adjacent cells. These channels let small molecules, including ions, flow straight from one cell to the next, triggering the ripple of cellular contractions that allow our hearts to beat.

For roughly a century, scientists believed that these protein channels explained how the heart's electrical impulses passed from cell to cell. But within the past 15 years, mounting evidence has shown that gap junctions aren't the only mechanism underlying electrical conduction in the heart.

When researchers genetically knocked out most of the heart's gap junctions in mice, they were surprised to find that the test subjects were just as likely to live an ordinary lifespan as their healthy counterparts.

How can hearts to beat if most of the physical ports between their cells are missing? To answer this question, a theory ephaptic coupling has re-emerged.

Ephaptic coupling occurs within microscopic spaces wedged between two cell membranes. These pockets, called the perinexus, were first described by Fralin Biomedical Research Institute scientists in 2013 and span just one to two ten-thousandths of a millimeter. For the signaling to work, two cells need to be close enough to sense the electric field generated by their neighboring cell.

You can think of ephaptic coupling between cells in the context of magnets: When you have two magnets close together they are strongly attracted to each other due to the strength of the magnetic field; similarly, the closer two cells are to one another, the stronger the effect of the electric field will be on each other. But when you pull two magnets apart, you can feel the point where attraction weakens. The same thing happens with electric fields. When the space between cells increases, ephaptic coupling weakens."

Gregory Hoeker, Study First Author and Research Assistant Professor, Poelzing's lab, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute

When blood stops flowing to the heart muscle, its tissues can swell up. This extra fluid between cells pushes the heart cells apart, expanding the width of the perinexus, and preventing ephaptic coupling.

In this new study, Poelzing's team discovered how the spacing between heart muscle cells changes during a heart attack depends on the specific recipe of electrolytes calcium, sodium, and potassium present in the bloodstream.

At the organ level, this prevents the heart beats from slowing down and becoming disorganized, which helps normalize the heart rhythm during a heart attack.

"We're learning that a patient's blood salt chemistry before and during a cardiac event is important and could impact their prognosis," Hoeker said.

"The data we have collected so far suggest that these two forms of electrical communication gap junction coupling and ephaptic coupling interact in complex ways. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they oppose one another. We believe this balance helps support safe conduction in the heart."

But there doesn't seem to be a one-size-fits-all cardioprotective cocktail of electrolytes. One patient may need more calcium and sodium, while another needs less.

Small fluctuations in either direction can have a big impact on heart conduction depending on the patient's baseline blood chemistry.

That's why Poelzing and his team are researching how different saline solutions, ranging from your common intravenous fluid drip bag to the wash that surgeons use during open heart surgeries, impact cardiac function and can contribute to arrhythmias.

The researchers say future experiments will examine how gap junctions and ephaptic coupling interact.

"Our next research step is to take a multilayered approach, using peptide treatments to target gap junctions and different electrolyte fluids to modulate ephaptic coupling, so we can see how these systems work together during an event such as cardiac arrest," Hoeker said.

Source:

Journal reference:

Hoeker, G. S., et al. (2020) Attenuating loss of cardiac conduction during no-flow ischemia through changes in perfusate sodium and calcium. American Journal of Physiology. doi.org/10.1152/ajpheart.00112.2020.

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Scientists reveal new evidence of electrical pathway in the heart - News-Medical.Net

Physiology

Academics fear Sydney University job cuts will threaten medical research – Sydney Morning Herald

Students and some academic staff protested against the cuts on Wednesday, chanting that "a pandemic's not the time" for slashing jobs in the medical sciences.

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However, a University of Sydney spokeswoman said the changes had been planned for over a year and had been made in consultation with staff.

"They will allow us to focus on new teaching areas in medical science critical for the future health workforce, including digital health, bio-informatics and infectious disease," she said.

"In discipline areas weve looked at the number of staff needed to teach the various courses and where there are mismatches, we are adjusting as needed. We also discovered that some teaching was being duplicated across various schools."

The university will make redundant nine of 29 full-time equivalent positions in physiology, according to a memo sent to staff last week. Pathology numbers will be reduced by more than half: from 11.7 to 4.7 full-time equivalent positions. Staff who receive funding from grants will not be affected.

Professor Rebecca Mason, a former head of physiology who has worked in the discipline for almost 33 years, said the proposed figures had underestimated staff hours and misrepresented their available teaching time.

"Most people are fairly stretched," she said. "If you take away [almost] half of the staff, the rest are going to be even more stretched... We've already had evidence of staff burnout. [People] are acutely anxious."

She said cutting numbers would increase workloads, rush teaching and remove time for research and curriculum development. It was also "appalling" for students who would lose specialised supervisors while in the middle of projects.

"We won't have enough staff to give students a good experience and that's a tragedy," she said.

"You need a period of time where you can supervise students, think and plan your research. People are going to spend all of their non-teaching time preparing for teaching, because it's going to be spread over so few people."

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Professor Mason said colleagues had been researching treatments for degenerative diseases like Parkinsons, embryo development, maintaining vitamin D levels in winter, muscular dystrophy and COVID-19 transmission.

"That's going to be put at great risk if you get rid of half a discipline," she said.

The university does not expect its research to be negatively impacted, its spokeswoman said. "Our research themes are aligned to health issues that face Australian communities, as well as the priorities for various bodies that fund our research," she said.

"A much larger number of academic staff are funded on research grants that are out of scope for this change... We have over 200 academic staff in the School of Medical Sciences; less than 10 percent of total academic staff within the school are proposed for redundancy."

Emeritus Professor John Hearn, a former deputy vice-chancellor of Sydney University and an international university executive from the physiology discipline, said the university had led a "disgraceful destruction of a famous school".

The final change plan is expected next week.

At the end of each day, well send you the most important breaking news headlines, evening entertainment ideas and a long read to enjoy. Sign uphere.

Natassia is the education reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Academics fear Sydney University job cuts will threaten medical research - Sydney Morning Herald

Physiology

Why Trying Things May Be The Answer To Find Your Talent – Forbes

Two of my favorite books about human performance are written by David Epstein, one of the very best science writers in the world, due to his unusual ability to pair elegant prose with accurate summaries of scientific research. The first book, The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, focused largely on talent and focus in sports, whereas the second book, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, focused largely on the importance of domain sampling and later specialization in a wide range of performance domains. Thus, when reading the two books side by side you get an integrated perspective on these issues. In an earlier interview for Psychology Today we primarily discussed sports, but this time around we talked about how his thinking has evolved since the writing of his first book.

In The Sports Gene you highlighted the importance of talent and focus, but in Range you highlighted the importance of sampling and later specialization. Can you discuss how you think about performance from these two seemingly opposite perspectives?

The Sports Gene

This might sound surprising, but some of what led me to writeRangecame out of questions I got about talent afterThe Sports Gene. Second to people who wanted to argue about my critique of the 10,000-hours rule, probably the most common question I got was from parents or coaches asking how to identify the sport or training plan that best fit their child or someone they were training. I think a lot of that came from the "Big Bang of Body Types" chapter that described research on how the physiology of elite athletes rapidly became more specific to particular athletic niches. Basically, as sports spread aroundthe world and becamemore competitive, more people were essentially screenedout of a given sport (at the elite level) by physiological factors. (The same goes for training, by the way. As sports have become more competitive, more people are screened out by either physiology or training. A century ago you might show up at the Olympics and be the only person with elite talent or the only person who knew anything about training, and you might win. Not so today, obviously.) So to get back to the link between the books, parents were asking me what lab measures their kids should get to determine whether their kid can be a pro athlete, or what sport they should try in. Well, there are a lot of factors other than the physiological parameters I mentioned that matter, and even when physiology is ante for the game, it often doesn't tell you much more than that. If you blinded sports scientists to the identity of sprinters at the Olympics and let them have whatever physiological data they wanted, it wouldn't help them predict who's going to win. It's just too multifactorial and complex.

Long story short, I realized that having a sampling period in which an athlete can try a variety of activities is a better way for them to help find the place where they fitphysiologically and psychologicallythan any lab test one can give. I must say, I did not expect that the sports science would also show skill development benefits to sport diversitylike in studies that matched athletes for ability at a certain age, and then followed them as they focused or diversifiedso that was a surprise to me. I thought the power of the sampling period would just be about talent matching. And I think that's important, but I came to believe there's more to it. (That's not even to mention durability. I spent some time with the physiologist for Cirque du Soleil, and he told me that they created a program to diversify the movement patterns in their training of performers, and it cut their injury rates by a third.) But as far as the bridge fromThe Sports GenetoRange, it was around that question of how you find match quality in a situation that isn't reducible to simple measurements. As I quoted Howard Finster, the legendary artist who discovered he could paint at age 59: "A person dont know what he can do unless he tries. Trying things is the answer to find your talent."

The Sports Gene focused, understandably, on sports, but Range provided a look at performance in all kinds of domains. In doing research for and writing these books, what did you learn about the similarities or differences in what goes into extraordinary performance across domains?

Range

The main differenceand I realized this less explicitly when my own career as a college athlete endedis that in many ways sports make the hardest parts of life easier. When I tell people I was an 800-meter runner in college, they tend to say "Oh that's the hardest event!" (I disagree, but that's another story). Let's say it is. The hard parts are still in many ways easier than almost all of the work world. The next steps and goals tend to be extremely clear. Progress is often very easy to measure. The rules never change. Tried and true systems that have been in place for years or decades are there to support you, etc. etc. Much of the time, you can turn your brain off and just make sure to be tough and resilient and consistent in training. And if you have a strong team culture, even that becomes not so difficult. In fact, sometimes it even helps to not think so much and outsource the thinking parts of what you're doing to, say, coaches. (Not always, but sometimes.) Some sports are the epitome of what psychologist Robin Hogarth called "kind learning environments"; clear goals, unchanging rules, quick and accurate feedback. There are absolutely principles and lessons from sports that can transfer to anything we do, but we also have to be careful about extrapolating too much. Most of the work that most of us do isn't necessarily in kind learning environments. We may have to figure out our own next steps and goals; rules may be unclear or change; feedback may be absent, delayed, or inaccurate, and work next year won't look like work last year.

Silver medalist figure skater Sasha Cohen captured this beautifully in a New York Times op-ed:Olympic athletes need to understand that the rules for life are different from the rules for sports. Yes, striving to accomplish a single overarching goal every day means you have grit, determination and resilience. But the ability to pull yourself together mentally and physically in competition is different from the new challenges that await you. So after you retire, travel, write a poem, try to start your own business, stay out a little too late, devote time to something that doesnt have a clear end goal. In a nutshell, I think resilience and matching your work to your talents and interests are extremely important in both sports and other areas. But whereas refusing to change course no matter what comes is often a virtue in sports, opportunistic course changes are often where the competitive advantages in the rest of the work world reside. I'd say I'm something of a student of science history, and I think you probably are too, and I think many of the most important breakthroughs have come from actionsshifting focus to some unexpected but interesting oddity; starting and abandoning many different projects; pursuing curiosities with unclear goals or utilitythat would have cost those innovators points on the grit scale.

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Why Trying Things May Be The Answer To Find Your Talent - Forbes

Physiology

Study finds 3 key qualities needed to break the 2-hour marathon – Runner’s World (UK)

Eliud Kipchoges 1.59 marathon showed us it was possible, but now a new study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology has revealed the specific combination of physiological abilities required to have a chance of running a sub-two-hour marathon.

The research, conducted by Professor Andrew Jones at the University of Exeter was based on data from extensive testing of the athletes including Kipchoge who were involved in Nikes Breaking2 project. The project culminated in Kipchoge missing the 2-hr barrier by a mere 26 seconds on the Monza F1 race track before he went on to his sublime 1:59:40.2 at the Ineos 1:59 challenge in Vienna last year.

The requirements of a two-hour marathon have been extensively debated, but the actual physiological demands have never been reported before, says Jones, who also worked extensively with Paula Radcliffe throughout her career and in the build up to her London Marathon World record.

We see in the physiology of these runners a perfect balance of characteristics for the marathon.'

According to Jones, the findings reveal that the worlds best marathon runners have a perfect balance of three factors:

Its the combination of these qualities, rather than one particular stellar reading, that is key according to Jones. Some of the results particularly the VO2 max were not actually as high as we expected, says Jones. Instead, what we see in the physiology of these runners is a perfect balance of characteristics for marathon performance.

Drilling down into the data, the individual numbers measured in Kipchoge and the other athletes were, of course, hugely impressive. The elite runners were shown to be capable of taking in oxygen twice as fast at the required marathon pace as an average person of the same age.

To maintain a two-hour marathon pace of 21.1 km/h, the study found that a 59kg runner would need to take in about four litres of oxygen per minute (or 67ml per kg of weight per minute). To run for two hours at this speed, athletes must maintain what we call 'steady-state' VO2, says Jones. This means they meet their entire energy needs aerobically, rather than relying on anaerobic respiration which depletes carbohydrate stores in the muscles faster and leads to more rapid fatigue.

The second key characteristic is running economy, which refers to how efficiently the body uses the oxygen it takes in both internally and through an effective running action.

The third trait, known as lactate turn point, is the percentage of VO2 max a runner can sustain before anaerobic respiration begins. If and when this happens, carbohydrates in the muscles are used at a high rate, rapidly depleting glycogen stores, Jones explains.

At this point which many marathon runners may know as 'the wall' the body has to switch to burning fat, which is less efficient and ultimately means the runner slows down.

Of course, understanding the theory from the lab data is one thing, but putting into practice precisely in a marathon is an additional challenge. And this is another area where the elite runners were found to excel. The runners we studied 15 of the 16 from East Africa seem to know intuitively how to run just below their 'critical speed', close to the 'lactate turn point' but never exceeding it, says Jones.

'The runners seem to know intuitively how to run just be to run just below their critical speed.'

This is especially challenging because even for elite runners the turn point drops slightly over the course of a marathon, and its not possible to measure this in the lab. Having said that, we suspect that the very best runners in this group, especially Eliud Kipchoge, show remarkable fatigue resistance.

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Study finds 3 key qualities needed to break the 2-hour marathon - Runner's World (UK)

Physiology

Teaching assistants reflect on instruction in a pandemic – Arizona Daily Wildcat

From words muffled by masks, to dancers on hiatus, to socially distant hands-on help, graduate teaching assistants experience a variety of challenges teaching amidst a pandemic this semester at the University of Arizona.

The UA opted for an on-ramp approach to deliver in-person instruction for fall 2020. Stage one classes for fall included labs, and fine and performing arts studios, with more classes expected to be added to the stage one category next spring.

Stage one classes were taught predominantly by graduate teaching assistants; in the physics department, all labs over 30 sections are taught by teaching assistants. All sections of Physiology 201 lab are taught by graduate teaching assistants. Meanwhile, school of dance in-person classes are mostly, but not all, taught by faculty.

One mandatory safety measure implemented for in-person teaching was mask-wearing, which is an effective way of minimizing the spread of the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, masks present a challenge for effective communication in classrooms that are not equipped with microphones.

When I am teaching, I raise my voice more than what I would normally do, so students can hear me, said Edgar Salazar-Canizales, teaching assistant for the UA Physics Department. Students arent as aware of this and sometimes they ask questions in a really low voice and its really hard to hear.

Another novel factor with in-person settings is the need to socially distance. TAs said it requires real creativity to guide the students verbally and from a distance while teaching a hands-on lab. Students often struggle with the material and TAs are limited in the ways they can assist them.

Its definitely a little bit difficult doing the in-person as far as not being able to help students with hands-on things like microscopes," said Kyle Filicetti, a teaching assistant for Physiology 201. "If they are having trouble focusing the microscopes, we are not allowed to approach them.

Particularly for Physiology 201, what normally would be a three-hour long lab, has been reformatted to 45 minutes with fewer numbers of students in each section.

For Physiology 201, each teaching assistant has two sections of 30 students, each subdivided in sections of 10 students. In these labs they work with microscopes, look at bone anatomy and do dissections, all in under one hour.

I suddenly now have to do mental gymnastics to figure out what is the most important thing that I have to highlight in this essentially 35-minute class because we also have to make sure we have time left over for cleaning, said Keila Soto Espinoza, another physiology TA.

An added duty for teaching assistants this semester is keeping track of students who are in quarantine or isolating and supporting students who are missing labs. Salazar-Canizales said that it seems like every student will have to miss a lab at some point either because they were exposed or have the virus. By mid-semester, six of his 22 students needed to quarantine.

Filicetti, in physiology, pointed out there is extra administrative work involved when a student tests positive. They need to inform the department, communicate back and forth with the student while supporting them with deadline extensions and emailing the people in charge of moving those deadlines in D2L.

Aside from sick students, TAs have reported a lot more administrative work this fall with office hours, assignments and other forms of communications needing to be delivered in an online setting.

I think a lot of us are having issues with grading online, Filicetti said. We do a decent amount of grading and every time I go in and grade something I have to wait for it to download.

In addition, teachers have reported that there is a higher volume of emails needed without frequent in-class communication.

Its more than I ever thought," Filicetti said. "Just the administrative side of teaching is quite difficult online.

In the UA Physics Department, it is unclear what would happen if instructors were to get sick. The department told teaching assistants that if they miss a lab, another TA will cover for them. But then they would have to cover that other teaching assistant another time. If someone misses several lab sessions due to sickness, TAs said, the department will deal with it when it arises.

Teachers working in other departments report different challenges and implemented safety measures. In the UA School of Dance, faculty, graduate students and students attending in-person classes must get tested for the virus once a week, a protocol not mandatory for some other in-person classes.

If you miss your test of the week, your test time, then you are not allowed in the studio until you get your next test result, said Ilana Jonas, teaching assistant for the School of Dance. All students agreed before classes started that they would cooperate and test once a week.

A challenge specific to dance majors is the interruption in training. Dancers require strict workout routines and stamina to succeed in their dance programs. Hiatus can present physical risks for them.

One of my concerns was just bringing them back into taking class in a safe way, just because they had taken time off, Jonas said. They have done really well with that, but that was one consideration they hadnt done pointe work in six months and Im sure none of them had ever taken a break that long.

Whether in dance, physics or physiology, all the teaching assistants appreciated the COVID-19 testing available through the university. And despite the many challenges, all said they generally felt safe with the university safety measures implemented.

I dont think there is anything else I would really add to the safety protocol, Jonas said, reflecting what other teachers reported. Everyone has just thought of every possible scenario.

Jonas said she was a little nervous to be back in the classroom at first, But being in the studio and seeing the cooperation of the students with all of the protocols that have been put into place I was pleasantly surprised of how safe it felt to be in the studio."

Cynthia Bujanda is a graduate student in the applied bioscience program at the University of Arizona. Follow Cynthia Bujanda on Twitter

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Teaching assistants reflect on instruction in a pandemic - Arizona Daily Wildcat