Bioenergetic Evaluation of Muscle Fatigue in Murine Tongue.

Muscle fatigue is the diminution of force required for a particular action over time. Fatigue may be particularly pronounced in aging muscles, including those used for swallowing actions. Because risk for swallowing impairment (dysphagia) increases with aging, the contribution of muscle fatigue to age-related dysphagia is an emerging area of interest.

Tongue Force Training Induces Plasticity of the Lingual Motor Cortex in Young Adult and Aged Rats.

Tongue exercise programs are used clinically for dysphagia in aged individuals and have been shown to improve lingual strength. However, the neural mechanisms of age-related decline in swallowing function and its association with lingual strength are not well understood. Using an established rat model of aging and tongue exercise, we hypothesized that the motor cortex of aged rats would have a smaller lingual motor map area than young adult rats and would increase in size as a function of tongue exercise.

Electron-Beam-Induced Deposition as a Technique for Analysis of Precursor Molecule Diffusion Barriers and Prefactors.

Electron-beam-induced deposition (EBID) is a direct-write chemical vapor deposition technique in which an electron beam is used for precursor dissociation. Here we show that Arrhenius analysis of the deposition rates of nanostructures grown by EBID can be used to deduce the diffusion energies and corresponding preexponential factors of EBID precursor molecules. We explain the limitations of this approach, define growth conditions needed to minimize errors, and explain why the errors increase systematically as EBID parameters diverge from ideal growth conditions.