The purpose of this study was to characterize pharmacologically the 5-HT receptor(s) mediating contraction in the mouse aorta and the pathways these receptors are coupled with to mediate contraction. We hypothesized that a 5-HT2A receptor, as in the rat, mediates contraction by activating L-type calcium channels, phospholipase C (PLC), and tyrosine kinase(s). Endothelium-denuded aortic strips w...

Two types of contractions are used for mappings defined on probabilistic metric spaces. The first type was introduced by V.M. Sehgal [15-16 ], the second type by T.L. Hicks [7]. Since then, many fixed point results were obtained. In this paper we introduce the concept of a probabilistic g−contraction, which is a generalization of a probabilistic contraction of Hicks’ type and prove some fixed p...

Absence of peristalsis and impaired relaxation of lower esophageal sphincter are the hallmarks of achalasia esophagus. Based on the pressurization patterns, achalasia has been subdivided into three subtypes. The goal of our study was to evaluate the esophageal contraction pattern and bolus clearance in type 3 achalasia esophagus. High-resolution manometry (HRM) recordings of all patients diagno...

The abnormal furrow (af) gene was identified through a maternal effect mutation that causes a defect in cell division in Xenopus embryos. In eggs obtained from mutant females (af eggs), polar body formation and cytokinesis are completely inhibited while nuclear division continues uninterrupted. Cleavage furrows are recognized as unpigmented narrow bands on the egg surface but they do not contra...

The typical installation of a heat exchange device usually involves a flow contraction at the core entrance and a flow expansion at the core exit. Repeated flow Contraction and expansion are experienced in the flow passages of some compact heat exchangers. The latter refers to the flow passages in the plate-fin type with louvered fins or stripped fins and in the tubular type with dimpled-circul...

Background: The transverse abdominis (TrA) muscle is one of the most important muscles that contribute to the stability of the lumbar spine. Strengthening of trunk muscles that have a significant role in trunk stability is very important in the field of professional sport, sport medicine and rehabilitation of patient with low back pain (LBP). Identifying the exercises that can improve the stren...

In this paper, we study the operations of contraction and revision for removing and incorporating axioms over DL-Litecore and DL-LiteR TBoxes (Calvanese et al. 2007). The operations are defined in the manner of AGM model-based contraction and revision (Grove 1988; Katsuno and Mendelzon 1992) and are based on a newly defined semantics called type semantics. We show that, as an alternative to des...

Hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension (HPH) is characterized by sustained pulmonary vasoconstriction and vascular remodeling, both of which are mediated by pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell (PASMC) contraction and proliferation, respectively. An increase in cytosolic Ca²⁺ concentration ([Ca²⁺]cyt) is a major trigger for pulmonary vasoconstriction and an important stimulus for cell proliferat...

To identify the enzymatic source of nitric oxide (NO) in the lower esophageal sphincter (LES), studies were performed in wild-type and genetically engineered endothelial nitric oxide synthase [eNOS(-)] and neuronal NOS [nNOS(-)] mice. Under nonadrenergic noncholinergic (NANC) conditions, LES ring preparations developed spontaneous tone in all animals. In the wild-type mice, electrical field sti...