Search results for "SMOOTH"
showing 10 items of 710 documents
The relaxant effects of cromakalim (BRL 34915) on human isolated airway smooth muscle
1992
Cromakalim (BRL 34915) is a potassium channel opener with therapeutic potential as a bronchodilator in asthma. Cromakalim (0.1–30 μmol/l) inhibited the spontaneous tone of human isolated bronchi n a concentration-related manner being nearly as effective as isoprenaline or theophylline. The order of relaxant potencies (expressed as -log10 IC50 mol/l; mean ±SEM) was isoprenaline (7.29 ± 0.27; n = 8) > cromakalim (5.89 ± 0.12; n = 7) > theophylline (4.07 ±0.13; n = 10). In human bronchi where tone had been raised by addition of histamine (0.1 mmol/l), acetylcholine (0.1 mmol/l) or leukotriene D4 (LTD4, 0.1 μmol/l), the relaxant effect of cromakalim was substantially reduced. Cromakalim suppres…
An improved smoothed particle electromagnetics method in 3D time domain simulations
2011
In this paper, an enhanced variant of the meshless smoothed particle electromagnetics (SPEM) method is performed in order to solve PDEs in time domain describing 3D transient electromagnetic phenomena. The method appears to be very efficient in approximating spatial derivatives in the numerical treatment of Maxwell's curl equations. In many cases, very often, accuracy degradation, due to a lack of particle consistency, severely limits the usefulness of this approach. A numerical corrective strategy, which allows to restore the SPEM consistency, without any modification of the smoothing kernel function and its derivatives, is presented. The method allows to restore the same order of consiste…
Artichoke, Cynarin and Cyanidin Downregulate the Expression of Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase in Human Coronary Smooth Muscle Cells
2014
Artichoke (Cynara scolymus L.) is one of the world’s oldest medicinal plants with multiple health benefits. We have previously shown that artichoke leaf extracts and artichoke flavonoids upregulate the gene expression of endothelial-type nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) in human endothelial cells. Whereas NO produced by the eNOS is a vasoprotective molecule, NO derived from the inducible iNOS plays a pro-inflammatory role in the vasculature. The present study was aimed to investigate the effects of artichoke on iNOS expression in human coronary artery smooth muscle cells (HCASMC). Incubation of HCASMC with a cytokine mixture led to an induction of iNOS mRNA expression. This iNOS induction was c…
A fuzzy decision support tool for demand forecasting
2007
In this paper we present a decision support forecasting system to work with univariate time series based on the generalized exponential smoothing (Holt-Winters) approach. It is conceived as an integrated tool which has been implemented in Visual Basic. For improving the accuracy of the automatic forecasting it uses an optimization-based scheme which unifies the stages of estimation of the parameters and selects the best method using a fuzzy multicriteria approach. The elements of the set of local minima of the non-linear programming problems allow us to build the membership functions of the conflicting objectives. A set of real data is analyzed to show the performance of our forecasting too…
Space-Time FPCA Clustering of Multidimensional Curves.
2018
In this paper we focus on finding clusters of multidimensional curves with spatio-temporal structure, applying a variant of a k-means algorithm based on the principal component rotation of data. The main advantage of this approach is to combine the clustering functional analysis of the multidimensional data, with smoothing methods based on generalized additive models, that cope with both the spatial and the temporal variability, and with functional principal components that takes into account the dependency between the curves.
First‐Derivative Fourier‐Transform Infrared Determination of Oxadiazon in Commercial Herbicide Formulations
2008
Abstract A Fourier‐transform infrared (FTIR) method has been developed for the quantification of oxadiazon in herbicide formulations. The method involves the extraction of the active ingredient by sonication of the samples with CHCl3 and direct measurement of the peak area values in first‐order derivate spectra from 1770 cm−1 to 1774 cm−1 corrected with a baseline point located at 1950 cm−1 and after a 5‐point smoothing. A limit of detection (3 s) of 0.03 mg g−1 and a typical relative standard deviation (RSD) of 1.3% were found. Results obtained were comparable with those found by liquid chromatography with UV detection. The proposed method involves a 7‐times reduction in solvent consumptio…
Mechanical and electrophysiological effects of cromakalim on the human urinary bladder.
1994
The effects of cromakalim on spontaneous and induced mechanical activity of human detrusor muscle were investigated in vitro. Cromakalim produces a concentration-related decrease of spontaneous as well as carbachol- and K(+)-evoked contractions. This is the first study to utilize the patch clamp technique to elucidate the mechanism of action of cromakalim on human detrusor cells. Cromakalim hyperpolarizes the detrusor cells by increasing the net outward current which is most likely carried by potassium ions. In the human urinary bladder, this effect is mediated by a glibenclamide-sensitive potassium channel, as glibenclamide is able to diminish the relaxant effect of cromakalim and to preve…
An Enhanced Detector of Blurred and Noisy Edges
2007
Detecting edges in digital images is a tricky operation in image processing since images may contain areas with different degrees of noise, blurring and sharpness. Such operation represents an important step of the whole process of similarity shape analysis and retrieval.
(p, 2)-Equations with a Crossing Nonlinearity and Concave Terms
2018
We consider a parametric Dirichlet problem driven by the sum of a p-Laplacian ($$p>2$$) and a Laplacian (a (p, 2)-equation). The reaction consists of an asymmetric $$(p-1)$$-linear term which is resonant as $$x \rightarrow - \infty $$, plus a concave term. However, in this case the concave term enters with a negative sign. Using variational tools together with suitable truncation techniques and Morse theory (critical groups), we show that when the parameter is small the problem has at least three nontrivial smooth solutions.
An eigenvalue Dirichlet problem involving the p-Laplacian with discontinuous nonlinearities
2005
AbstractA multiplicity result for an eigenvalue Dirichlet problem involving the p-Laplacian with discontinuous nonlinearities is obtained. The proof is based on a three critical points theorem for nondifferentiable functionals.