The epicardial release of immunoreactive atrial natriuretic peptides (ir-ANPs) in inside-out perfused rabbit atria has been reported. In order to determine the presence of ir-ANPs in pericardial ...fluid and to evaluate their biochemical characteristics, we measured the concentration of ir-ANPs in pericardial fluid obtained from the patients with congenital heart diseases during open heart surgery. Serial dilution curves made with the extrats of pericardial fluid using Sep-Pak C18 cartridges were parallel with standard curve. The concentration of ir-ANPs in pericardial fluid was significantly lower than the corresponding plasma concentration. On gel permeation and reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography, the ir-ANPs in pericardial fluid, plasma and atrial appendage showed both high and low molecular weights. The major peak of ir-ANPs in plasma was observed at the corresponding fraction to the alpha-human ANP and considerable amount of high molecular weight form of ir-ANPs was observed in pericardial fluid. However, the major peak of ir-ANPs in atrial appendage was observed at the corresponding fraction to the rat pro-ANP. The data suggest that ir-ANPs exist both high and low molecular weight forms in pericardial fluid.
This study deals with an end-of-aisle order picking system in a miniload automated storage/retrieval system (AS/RS). The system has a horse-shoe style buffer at the front end of each aisle. A ...conveyor system delivers the containers through the buffer positions. Earlier studies for the system assumed that an order picker serves only a single aisle. In general, however, an order picker can server two or more aisles for labor cost saving, and so this paper assume that an order picker serves a number of aisles in a predetermined order. The system can be modeled as a queueing system with a limited queue length and this paper analyzes the queueing model with supplementary variable technique to find the system's long-run behavior. Then, it proposes a simple optimization model to find an optimal buffer size. To illustrate the results, some examples are included into each chapter.
We give a simple variation of the basic ideas of the BB84 quantum cryptographic scheme leading to a method of key expansion. A secure random sequence (the bases sequence) determines the encoding ...bases in a proposed scheme. Against incoherent attacks by Eve, using the bases sequence repeatedly is proven to be safe by quantum mechanical laws.
We defined whether extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) to the kidney activates the nitric oxide (NO)-cyclic 3′,5′-guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) pathway.
A total of 90 male rabbits were randomly ...divided into group 1—pretreated with normal saline, group 2—pretreated intravenously (IV) with N
ω nitro-L-arginine-methyl ester (NAME) (100 mg/kg), group 3—pretreated IV with NAME and L-arginine (300 mg/kg) with ESWT to 1 kidney, group 4—pretreated IV with ODQ (1H-1,2,4oxadiazolo4,3-aquinoxalin-1-one) (20 μg/kg) and group 5—pretreated with normal saline with ESWT to the bladder. Plasma nitrite, NO metabolite and cGMP were analyzed in peripheral blood samples before, immediately after, and 30 and 60 minutes after ESWT.
ESWT to the kidney but not to the bladder caused an increase before, immediately after, and 30 and 60 minutes after ESWT in plasma nitrite in group 1 (186.1 ± 20.6, 217.5 ± 21.6, 241.9 ± 28.4 and 230.5 ± 25.3 nM) and group 5 (149.0 ± 14.7, 155.6 ± 18.4, 131.8 ± 13.6 and 140.0 ± 15.7 nM), and in cGMP in group 1 (24.2 ± 1.9, 33.8 ± 3.2, 32.9 ± 2.2 and 29.4 ± 1.9 pmol/ml) and group 5 (25.5 ± 2.1, 27.5 ± 2.5, 28.7 ± 3.1 and 25.5 ± 2.6 pmol/ml, respectively). In group 2 NAME significantly inhibited the production of nitrite (113.4 ± 18.6, 118.2 ± 19.9, 114.6 ± 18.3 and 112.5 ± 17.6 nM) and cGMP (19.4 ± 2.6, 20.6 ± 2.8, 19.3 ± 2.7 and 18.6 ± 2.6 pmol, respectively). In group 3 inhibited nitrite and cGMP production caused by NAME was recovered with L-arginine. In group 4 ODQ significantly inhibited cGMP production.
The results show that ESWT increases the level of NO and cGMP released by the kidney in an animal model.
Angiopoietin-2 (Ang2) is a complex regulator of vascular remodeling that plays a role in both blood vessel sprouting and blood vessel regression through its receptor Tie2. Recombinant Chinese hamster ...ovary (rCHO) cell lines expressing a high level (20
μg/mL) of recombinant human Ang2 protein (rhAng2) with an amino-terminal FLAG-tag was constructed by transfecting the expression vectors into dihydrofolate reductase (dhfr)-deficient CHO cells and the subsequent gene amplification in medium containing stepwise increments in methotrexate level such as 0.02, 0.08, and 0.32
μM. The rhAng2 secreted from rCHO cells was purified at a purification yield of 53.6% from the cultured medium using an anti-FLAG M2 agarose affinity gel. SDS–PAGE and Western blot analyses showed that rCHO cells secret rhAng2 as a homodimeric glycoprotein form. Furthermore, rhAng2 binds to the Tie2 receptor and phosphorylates Tie2 in a concentration-dependent manner. Therefore, our rhAng2 could be useful for clarifying biological effect of exogenous Ang2 in the future.
While it is possible in principle to determine unknown structural parameters by system identification techniques, a major challenge lies in the numerical difficulty in obtaining reasonably accurate ...results when the system size is large. Adopting the strategy of "divide-and-conquer" to address this issue, substructural identification and progressive structural identification methods are formulated. The main idea is to divide the structure into substructures such that the number of unknown parameters is within manageable size in each stage of identification. A non-classical approach of genetic algorithms is employed as the search tool for its several advantages including ease of implementation and desirable characteristics of global search. Numerical simulation study is presented, including a fairly large system of 50 degrees of freedom, to illustrate the identification accuracy and efficiency. The methods are tested for known-mass and unknown-mass systems with up to 102 unknown parameters, accounting for the effects of incomplete and noisy measurements.
In this paper, a 0.15 mu m embedded DRAM technology is described which provides a cost-effective means of delivering high bandwidth, low power consumption, noise immunity, and a small foot print ...chip. The key technologies for high performance transistors are dual thickness gate oxide, dual work-function gate with Si sub(3)N sub(4) capped Ti polycide, and selective Co silicidation of source/drain diffusion by Si sub(3)N sub(4) liner. In order to increase the memory cell efficiency, all memory cell contacts in DRAM arrays are formed by self-aligned contact (SAC) etching. Low temperature Al sub(2)O sub(3) stacked cell capacitor with hemispherical grain (HSG) makes it possible to realize the sufficient storage capacitance in DRAM arrays and the high performance transistor. The CMP planarization of interlayer dielectric enlarges the depth of focus for lithography and enables the multilevel metallization. These integration technologies can be fairly extendible to the future embedded DRAM in 0.13 mu m technology node and beyond.
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