Search results for "junctions"

Cell Systems Bioelectricity: How Different Intercellular Gap Junctions Could Regionalize a Multicellular Aggregate

2021

Simple Summary Electric potential patterns across tissues are instructive for development, regeneration, and tumorigenesis because they can influence transcription, migration, and differentiation through biochemical and biomechanical downstream processes. Determining the origins of the spatial domains of distinct potential, which in turn decide anatomical features such as limbs, eyes, brain, and heart, is critical to a mature understanding of how bioelectric signaling drives morphogenesis. We studied theoretically how connexin proteins with different voltage-gated gap junction conductances can maintain multicellular regions at distinct membrane potentials. We analyzed a minimal model that i…

Staphylococcus aureus α-Toxin’s Close Contacts Ensure the Kill

2018

The membrane pore-forming α-toxin is an important virulence factor of Staphylococcus aureus. Target cells can remove pores from their surface, but recent work shows that α-toxin may undermine this self-defense by clinging to epithelial cell junctions. The findings could lead to the development of novel remedies against S. aureus infections.

Mott-Schottky analysis of differential capacitance data of passive-film electrolyte junctions. Is it really providing correct physical insights on th…

2009

The fine structure of de-and reinnervated muscle spindles

1974

Reinnervated muscle spindles in lower lumbrical muscles of rats studied 17 days to 24 months after crushing the sciatic nerve showed a series of alterations which have not been analysed, thus far, by electron microscopy. There was a striking increase of the number of intrafusal muscle fibers seen in approximately 20% of reinnervated spindles. These spindles showed 5–11 intrafusal muscle fibers whereas normal spindles usually contained 3–4 fibers only.

Supratransmission-induced traveling breathers in long Josephson junctions

2022

The emergence of travelling sine-Gordon breathers due to the nonlinear supratransmission effect is theoretically studied in a long Josephson junction driven by suitable magnetic pulses, taking into account the presence of dissipation, a current bias, and a thermal noise source. The simulations clearly indicate that, depending on the pulse's shape and the values of the main system parameters, such a configuration can effectively yield breather excitations only. Furthermore, a nonmonotonic behavior of the breather-only generation probability is observed as a function of the noise intensity. Finally, the dynamics of the supratransmission-induced breathers is characterized by looking at quantit…

Design of compensated multiport waveguide junctions considering mechanization effects

2015

Abstract A new tool for the rigorous and efficient design of compensated multiport waveguide junctions, considering the mechanization effects due to low-cost manufacture techniques, is presented. Several new designs for a great variety of key components, present in modern microwave and millimetre-wave equipment, are proposed taking into account the introduction of rounded corners in the rectangular waveguide access ports. The new implemented tool permits to control and compensate for the potential degradation of the wide-band performance of such components prior to their fabrication, thus achieving an optimal design. All the presented results have been successfully validated by comparing th…

Bulk heterojunctions by boramers for plastic photovoltaics

2009

Enhanced Efficiency of Organic Solar Cells by Thiol-capped Au-Nanoparticles

2015

In this work, we present a study on the effect of thiol-capped AuNPs of various sizesin an organic solar cell.AuNPs have been obtained by laser ablation in liquid solution[2], have been functionalized both with 2-naphthalenethiol and alkanethiol having different length. In addition to bulk heterojunction structures with optimized interpenetrating network of donors and acceptor domains, we have chosen to study planar heterojunctions (PHJs), consisting of three component thin films realized by sequential deposition of P3HT, AuNPs and PCBM from orthogonal solvents.

Can we see syllables in monosyllabic words? A study with illusory conjunctions

2009

Mathey, Zagar, Doignon, and Seigneuric (2006) reported an inhibitory effect of syllabic neighbourhood in monosyllabic French words suggesting that syllable units mediate the access to lexical representations of monosyllabic stimuli. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the perception of syllable units in monosyllabic stimuli. The illusory conjunction paradigm was used to examine perceptual groupings of letters. Experiment 1 showed that potential syllables in monosyllabic French words (e.g., BI in BICHE) affected the pattern of illusory conjunctions. Experiment 2 indicated that the perceptual parsing in monosyllabic items was due to syllable information and orthographic redundancy. …

Identification and functional expression of HCx31.9, a novel gap junction gene

2002

By combining in silico and bench molecular biology methods we have identified a novel human gap junction gene that encodes a protein designated HCx31.9. We have determined its human chromosomal location and gene structure, and we have identified a putative mouse ortholog, mCx30.2. We have observed the presence of HCx31.9 in human cerebral cortex, liver, heart, spleen, lung, and kidney and the presence of mCx30.2 in mouse cerebral cortex, liver and lung. Moreover, preliminary data on the electrophysiological properties of HCx31.9 have been obtained by functional expression in paired Xenopus oocytes and in transfected N2A cells.