Pelvic floor disorder assessment of knowledge and symptoms: an educational intervention for Spanish-speaking women (PAKS study).

Introduction And Hypothesis: Educational interventions have been effective in improving postpartum knowledge, performance of pelvic floor exercises, and bowel-specific quality-of-life. Our primary objective was to determine if a video-based educational intervention on pelvic floor disorders (PFDs) would increase Spanish-speaking women's knowledge of PFDs, and secondarily to assess if it would decrease pelvic floor symptoms. We hypothesized that Spanish-speaking women would improve their pelvic floor knowledge and symptoms post-intervention.

Temporal and spatial regulation of translation in the mammalian oocyte via the mTOR-eIF4F pathway.

The fully grown mammalian oocyte is transcriptionally quiescent and utilizes only transcripts synthesized and stored during early development. However, we find that an abundant RNA population is retained in the oocyte nucleus and contains specific mRNAs important for meiotic progression. Here we show that during the first meiotic division, shortly after nuclear envelope breakdown, translational hotspots develop in the chromosomal area and in a region that was previously surrounded the nucleus.

Ultrafast tristable spin memory of a coherent polariton gas.

Non-linear interactions in coherent gases are not only at the origin of bright and dark solitons and superfluids; they also give rise to phenomena such as multistability, which hold great promise for the development of advanced photonic and spintronic devices. In particular, spinor multistability in strongly coupled semiconductor microcavities shows that the spin of hundreds of exciton-polaritons can be coherently controlled, opening the route to spin-optronic devices such as ultrafast spin memories, gates or even neuronal communication schemes. Here we demonstrate that switching between the stable spin states of a driven polariton gas can be controlled by ultrafast optical pulses.

Ultrafast time-domain spectroscopy based on high-speed asynchronous optical sampling.

High-speed asynchronous optical sampling (ASOPS) is a novel technique for ultrafast time-domain spectroscopy (TDS). It employs two mode-locked femtosecond oscillators operating at a fixed repetition frequency difference as sources of pump and probe pulses. We present a system where the 1 GHz pulse repetition frequencies of two Ti:sapphire oscillators are linked at an offset of Deltaf(R)=10 kHz.

A surface phase transition of supported gold nanoparticles.

A thermal phase transition has been resolved in gold nanoparticles supported on a surface. By use of asynchronous optical sampling with coupled femtosecond oscillators, the Lamb vibrational modes could be resolved as a function of annealing temperature. At a temperature of 104 degrees C the damping rate and phase changes abruptly, indicating a structural transition in the particle, which is explained as the onset of surface melting.