Air pollution is associated with increased cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality. The mechanisms of air pollution-induced health effects involve oxidative stress and inflammation. As a matter of fact, particulate matter (PM), especially fine (PM(2.5), PM < 2.5 μm) and ultrafine (PM(0.1), PM < 0.1 μm) particles, ozone, nitrogen oxides, and transition metals, are potent oxidants or...

Rationale: Acute and chronic exposures to airborne particulate matter (PM) have been linked in epidemiological studies to a wide spectrum of cardiovascular disorders that are characterized by a dysfunctional endothelium. The pathophysiological mechanisms underlying these associations are unclear. /Flk-1 ؉ cells were measured in the peripheral blood of mice exposed to concentrated particles from...

This document summarizes additional mechanistic information obtained in the first 6 years of the PM Centers’ research since their establishment in 1999. Research performed as part of the EPAfunded Particle Centers has increased the understanding of the mechanisms of PM health effects. Progress has been made in understanding the dosimetry and distribution of particles throughout the body, pulmon...

Prospective memory (PM) refers to our ability to realize delayed intentions. In event-based PM paradigms, participants must act on an intention when they detect the occurrence of a pre-established cue. Some theorists propose that in such paradigms PM responding can only occur when participants deliberately initiate processes for monitoring their environment for appropriate cues. Others propose ...

PM-PVM is a portable implementation of PVM designed to work on SMP architectures supporting multithreading. PM-PVM portability is achieved through the implementation of the PVM functionality on top of a reduced set of parallel programming primitives. Within PM-PVM, PVM tasks are mapped onto threads and the message passing functions are implemented using shared memory. Three implementation apppr...

The anti-neoplastic prodrug, cyclophosphamide, requires biotransformation to phosphoramide mustard (PM), which partitions to volatile chloroethylaziridine (CEZ). PM and CEZ are ovotoxicants, however their ovarian biotransformation remains ill-defined. This study investigated PM and CEZ metabolism mechanisms through the utilization of cultured postnatal day 4 (PND4) Fisher 344 (F344) rat ovaries...

A novel 5-DoF parallel manipulator (PM) with two composite rotational/linear active legs is proposed and its kinematics and statics are studied systematically. First, a prototype of this PM is constructed and its displacement is analyzed. Second, the formulas are derived for solving the linear/angular velocity and acceleration of UPS composite active leg. Third, the Jacobian and Hessian matrice...

Platelet activation is traditionally quantified using turbidimetric aggregometry, which reflects integrin αIIbβ3 activity, an important determinant of platelet function during pathophysiological thrombus formation. However, aggregometry does not recreate the shear conditions prevailing during thrombosis in vivo. Here we describe novel whole-frame analysis of real-time video microscopy to quanti...

BACKGROUND Cerebral activation during planning of reaching movements occurs both in the superior parietal lobule (SPL) and premotor cortex (PM), and their activation seems to take place in parallel. METHODOLOGY The activation of the SPL and PM has been investigated using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during planning of reaching movements under visual guidance. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A...