Effects of ACh on the electric activity of rostral ventrolateral medullary neurons of rat in vitro

Extracellular single-unit discharges were obtained from 165 spontaneously active neurons within the region of the rostral ventrolateral medulla (RVLM) by glass microelectrode from 89 brain slices of the Sprague-Dawley rats. The units could be divided into three types: regular (61.8%), irregular (24.2%) and silent (14%). Acetylcholine (ACh, 0.1, 0.3 mumol/L) showed four kinds of effects on spontaneous discharges of RVLM neurons: excitatory, inhibitory, biphasic and non-responsive, counting respectively 41.8%, 20%, 3% and 35.2% of the neurons tested. The excitatory effect of ACh was dose-dependent. The effects, either excitatory or inhibitory, of ACh (n = 49) were mostly blocked by atropine (0.3 mumol/L, n = 42). The excitatory effect of ACh (n = 14) could be blocked mainly by selective antagonist of M1 receptor, pirenzepine (PZ, 30 nmol/L, n = 9), but not by selective antagonist of M2 receptor, methoctramine (MT) and AFDX-116. The inhibitory effect of ACh (n = 10) could be blocked mostly by M2 receptor antagonist MT (30 nmol/L, n = 7); and this inhibitory effect (n = 9) could be blocked mostly by another M2 receptor antagonist AFDX-116 (30 nmol/L, n = 6), but not by M1 receptor antagonist PZ.     

寻找非构造油气藏的新思路

目前,一种新的理论体系和研究方法已经形成,并正在发展和逐步完善。那就是层序地层学和油气成藏系统理论的诞生和发展;以及由计算机的快速发展带动起来的地震测井资料的采集、处理、显示和各种地质问题的计算机模拟技术,使得地质学和石油地质学都在朝着从定性到定量,从推测到更科学的预测方向发展。在今后的5～10年中,中国的石油地质家们不仅要注意方法和技术方面的进步,还应当重视在陆相层序地层学和陆相层序中油气成藏机制等基本理论方面的研究。     

The importance of electrochemistry-related etching in thegate-groove fabrication for InAlAs/InGaAs HFETs

For the first time, the surface metal on nonalloyed ohmic electrodes is found to significantly change the profiles of gate grooves, when resist openings are employed to monitor drain current during wet-chemical gate recess for sub-micron InAlAs/lnGaAs heterojunction field-effect transistors (HFETs). The surface metal of Ni enhances the etching rate in comparison with that in the absence of electrodes by a factor of 4 and 10, laterally and vertically, which is favorable to fabricate deep gate grooves with small side etching. The Pt surface metal, however, leads to preferential etching of InGaAs over InAlAs, which can be useful to realize large side etching. The existence of an electrochemistry-related etching component, which arises when the ohmic electrodes are present during recess etching, is considered to be responsible for these behaviors     

Leiomyomatosis peritonealis disseminata. Two case reports

AIM: To study the action of quercetin (Que) on inhibiting platelet aggregation. METHODS: Active oxygen free radicals produced by xanthine/xanthine oxidase (Xan/XO) reaction was used, platelet aggregation was determined by the turbidimetric method, and the Xan/XO oxyradicals generating reaction by luminol-dependent chemiluminescence (Che) method. RESULTS: Active oxygen free radicals enhanced the platelet aggregation induced by ADP 1.6 mumol.L-1. The rate of maximal aggregation increased from 29%-38% for ADP to 59%-70% for ADP + Xan/XO. The enhancement was abolished by the treatment of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) with Que 650 mumol.L-1 or hydrocortisone (Hyd) 900 mg.L-1. Both Que and Hyd scavenged the active oxyradicals in vitro. The Che was decreased by 75.7% (Que 4 mumol.L-1) and 79.0% (Hyd 900 mg.L-1) as compared with control. CONCLUSION: Active oxygen free radicals participated in the platelet aggregation, and scavenging oxyradicals by Que was one of mechanisms of inhibiting platelet aggregation.     

Analysis of a resonant-cavity enhanced GaAs/AlGaAs MSMphotodetector

The authors have developed a 2-D device simulator for heterostructure metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodetectors. They have incorporated a model of multilayer optics into the simulator and used it to analyze the temporal response of a resonant-cavity enhanced heterostructure with a confining buffer layer and a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR). The authors show that through fine tuning the layer thicknesses, optical resonance enhancement of the light absorption can be obtained     

Inhibition of G1 cyclin-dependent kinase activity during growth arrest of human breast carcinoma cells by prostaglandin A2

Prostaglandin A2 (PGA2) potently inhibits cell proliferation and suppresses tumor growth in vivo, but little is known regarding the molecular mechanisms mediating these effects. Here we demonstrate that treatment of breast carcinoma MCF-7 cells with PGA2 leads to G1 arrest associated with a dramatic decrease in the levels of cyclin D1 and cyclin-dependent kinase 4 (cdk4) and accompanied by an increase in the expression of p21. We further show that these effects occur independent of cellular p53 status. The decline in cyclin D and cdk4 protein levels is correlated with loss in cdk4 kinase activity, cdk2 activity is also significantly inhibited in PGA2-treated cells, an effect closely associated with the upregulation of p21. Immunoprecipitation experiments verified that p21 was indeed complexed with cdk2 in PGA2-treated cells. Additional experiments with synchronized MCF-7 cultures stimulated with serum revealed that treatment with PGA2 prevents the progression of cells from G1 to S. Accordingly, the kinase activity associated with cdk4, cyclin E, and cdk2 immunocomplexes, which normally increases following serum addition, was unchanged in PGA2-treated cells. Furthermore, the retinoblastoma protein (Rb), a substrate of cdk4 and cdk2 whose phosphorylation is necessary for cell cycle progression, remains underphosphorylated in PGA2-treated serum-stimulated cells. These findings indicate that PGA2 exerts its growth-inhibitory effects through modulation of the expression and/or activity of several key G1 regulatory proteins. Our results highlight the chemotherapeutic potential of PGA2, particularly for suppressing growth of tumors lacking p53 function.     

c-KIT expression enhances the leukemogenic potential of 32D cells

The growth of human leukemic cells in culture and in vivo is dependent upon the presence of hematopoietic growth factors. Most populations of human leukemic acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) cells express c-Kit on their surface and respond to Kit ligand (KL) in culture. To determine if this interaction was of potential significance in vivo we used a mouse model system. 32D cells, a murine IL-3-dependent myeloid cell line, were rendered KL responsive by transfection of the murine c-Kit. After injection of 32D or 32D-Kit cells into syngeneic hosts, animals bearing 32D-Kit cells, but not 32D cells, became moribund and were killed. These animals had circulating leukemic blast cells, infiltration of bone marrow, spleen, brain, liver, lung, and kidney. Cells recovered from some of the animals continued to be dependent upon IL-3 or KL for growth while in other cases the cells were factor independent. This model illustrates that the constitutive expression of c-Kit enhances the leukemic potential of 32D cells. The model will be useful for studying the progression of leukemia in vivo and testing whether interruption of the interaction of Kit and KL can affect the growth of leukemic cells.     

Performance analysis of the bidirectional associative memory and animproved model from the matched-filtering viewpoint

This paper discusses the bidirectional associative memory (BAM) model from the matched-filtering viewpoint and offers it a new interpretation. Our attention is focused on the problem of stability and attractivity of equilibrium states. Several sufficient and/or necessary conditions are presented. To improve the BAM performance, an exponential function is used to enhance the correlations between the binary vectors of the retrieval key and that of the stored pattern similar to the key. The modified model is shown to be asymptotically stable. Theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the modified model performs much better than the original BAM in terms of memory capacity and error correction capability.     

钒钛渣对刚玉莫来石耐火材料的侵蚀研究

通过不同温度下钒钛渣对刚玉莫来石耐火材料的侵蚀实验，分析了炉渣、温度对材料的影响，认为致密结构、低气孔率是提高炉衬寿命的关键，板条状莫来石的存在利于减缓渣的侵蚀过程。