Search results for " Smooth"

Multifibrillar bundles of a self-assembling hyaluronic acid derivative obtained through a microfluidic technique for aortic smooth muscle cell orient…

2018

A hyaluronic acid derivative that is able to physically crosslink in a saline aqueous environment was employed for the production of fibers with a mean diameter of 50 μm using a microfluidic technique. The microfibers were collected in a tailored rotating collector and assembled to form multifibrillar bundles. The orientation of the microfibers on the collected bundles was evaluated by microCT analysis. The bundles were biofunctionalized by physical addition of fibronectin or chemical tethering of a cyRGDC peptide to achieve control of Aortic Smooth Muscle Cell (AoSMC) attachment, elongation and alignment. The mechanical performances of these bundles were evaluated by elongation tests, rela…

Uncoupling of Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase in Cardiovascular Disease and its Pharmacological Reversal

2010

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the role of oxidative stress in vascular dysfunction and atherogenesis, and strategies for its prevention. Endothelial dysfunction and oxidative stress have been identified as a common denominator of many cardiovascular risk factors. They support pro-inflammatory, prothrombotic, proliferative, and vasoconstrictor mechanisms that are involved in the initiation, progression, and complications of atherosclerosis. The pathophysiologic causes of oxidative stress involve changes in a number of different enzyme systems. Increased production of ROS by uncoupled eNOS is likely to contribute significantly to vascular oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunctio…

Pauls rectifiable and purely Pauls unrectifiable smooth hypersurfaces

2020

This paper is related to the problem of finding a good notion of rectifiability in sub-Riemannian geometry. In particular, we study which kind of results can be expected for smooth hypersurfaces in Carnot groups. Our main contribution will be a consequence of the following result: there exists a -hypersurface without characteristic points that has uncountably many pairwise non-isomorphic tangent groups on every positive-measure subset. The example is found in a Carnot group of topological dimension 8, it has Hausdorff dimension 12 and so we use on it the Hausdorff measure . As a consequence, we show that any Lipschitz map defined on a subset of a Carnot group of Hausdorff dimension 12, with…

Computational Techniques for the Analysis of Small Signals in High-Statistics Neutrino Oscillation Experiments

2020

The current and upcoming generation of Very Large Volume Neutrino Telescopes – collecting unprecedented quantities of neutrino events – can be used to explore subtle effects in oscillation physics, such as (but not restricted to) the neutrino mass ordering. The sensitivity of an experiment to these effects can be estimated from Monte Carlo simulations. With the high number of events that will be collected, there is a trade-off between the computational expense of running such simulations and the inherent statistical uncertainty in the determined values. In such a scenario, it becomes impractical to produce and use adequately-sized sets of simulated events with traditional methods, such as M…

Commentaries on Viewpoint: Airway smooth muscle and airway hyperresponsiveness in human asthma: have we chased the wrong horse?

2014

Tenascin gene expression in rat liver and in rat liver cells. In vivo and in vitro studies.

1991

Tenascin is a major glycoprotein constituent of the extracellular matrix with a strong affinity to fibronectin; its distribution is believed to be temporarily and spatially limited. Tenascin gene expression is increased during wound healing processes. As repair mechanisms in chronic liver diseases resemble wound healing we studied tenascin gene expression in rat liver and in isolated rat liver cells. In normal rat liver a tenascin specific antiserum stains sinusoidal cells with fiber-like prolongations, which at the same time are desmin-positive (ITO-cells). In the CCl4-acutely-damaged liver a strong tenascin staining is detected in cells located among the mononuclear cells of the inflammat…

Relaxation induced by N-terminal fragments of chromogranin A in mouse gastric preparations.

2007

Abstract A definitive role for chromogranin A (CGA)-derived fragments in the control of the gastrointestinal smooth muscle contractility has not been yet established. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate, in vitro , the effects of the recombinant vasostatin 1–78 (VS-1), CGA 7–57 and CGA 47–66 on the mouse gastric mechanical activity, recording the changes of intraluminal pressure. VS-1, CGA 7–57 and CGA 47–66 produced concentration-dependent relaxations. Mouse anti-vasostatin-1 monoclonal antibody 5A8, recognising the region 53–57, abolished the relaxation induced by VS-1, indicating the specificity of the effect. The relaxation was significantly reduced by tetrodotoxin (TTX), b…

Finite element approximation for a div-rot system with mixed boundary conditions in non-smooth plane domains

1984

The authors examine a finite element method for the numerical approximation of the solution to a div-rot system with mixed boundary conditions in bounded plane domains with piecewise smooth boundary. The solvability of the system both in an infinite and finite dimensional formulation is proved. Piecewise linear element fields with pointwise boundary conditions are used and their approximation properties are studied. Numerical examples indicating the accuracy of the method are given. peerReviewed

NG-monomethyl-L-arginine and NG-nitro-L-arginine inhibit endothelium-dependent relaxations in human isolated omental arteries.

1991

Abstract The L-arginine analogues NG-monomethyl-l-arginine (l-NMMA, 10−4  m) and NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (l-NAME, 10−4  m), which specifically inhibit the synthesis of nitric oxide from l-arginine, significantly reduced acetylcholine-induced endothelium-dependent relaxations in rings of human omental arteries. The inhibitory potency of l-NMMA and l-NAME was similar. Addition of l-NMMA or l-NAME to the organ bath did not induce any significant changes in the resting tension of the tissues. The effects of l-NMMA were reversed by l-arginine (3 × 10−4  m). The l-NMMA enantiomer, d-NMMA (10−4  m), did not influence either the basal tone of the preparation or the relaxing effects of acet…

Fast Computation by Subdivision of Multidimensional Splines and Their Applications

2016

We present theory and algorithms for fast explicit computations of uni- and multi-dimensional periodic splines of arbitrary order at triadic rational points and of splines of even order at diadic rational points. The algorithms use the forward and the inverse Fast Fourier transform (FFT). The implementation is as fast as FFT computation. The algorithms are based on binary and ternary subdivision of splines. Interpolating and smoothing splines are used for a sample rate convertor such as resolution upsampling of discrete-time signals and digital images and restoration of decimated images that were contaminated by noise. The performance of the rate conversion based spline is compared with the…