BACKGROUND Congestive heart failure (CHF) downregulates atrial transient outward (I(to)), slow delayed rectifier (I(Ks)), and L-type Ca(2+) (I(Ca,L)) currents and upregulates Na(+)-Ca(2+) exchange current (I(NCX)) (ionic remodeling) and causes atrial fibrosis (structural remodeling). The relative importance of ionic versus structural remodeling in CHF-related atrial fibrillation (AF) is controv...

This study examines the routes by which Mg2+ leaves cultured ovine ruminal epithelial cells (REC). Mg2+-loaded (6 mM) REC were incubated in completely Mg2+-free solutions with varying Na+ concentrations, and the Mg2+ extrusion rate was calculated from the increase of the Mg2+ concentration in the incubation medium determined with the aid of the fluorescent probe mag-fura 2 (Na+ salt). In other ...

We previously generated a rat model that spontaneously developed small vessel vasculitis (SVV). In this study, a T cell clone reactive with rat vascular endothelial cells (REC) was established and named VASC-1. Intravenous injection of VASC-1 induced SVV in normal recipients. VASC-1 was a TCRαβ/CD3-positive CD4/CD8 double-negative T cell clone with expression of NKG2D. The cytokine mRNA profile...

Reachability testing is a technique for testing concurrent programs. Reachability testing derives test sequences on-the-fly as the testing process progresses, and can be used to systematically exercise all the behaviors of a program. The main contribution of this paper is a general model for reachability testing. This model allows reachability testing to be applied to many different types of co...

We consider infinite state reactive systems specified by using linear constraints over the integers, and we address the problem of verifying safety properties of these systems by applying reachability analysis techniques. We propose a method based on program specialization, which improves the effectiveness of the backward and forward reachability analyses. For backward reachability our method c...

We consider an open problem on the stability of nonlinear nilpotent switched systems posed by Daniel Liberzon. Partial solutions to this problem were obtained as corollaries of global nice reachability results for nilpotent control systems. The global structure is crucial in establishing stability. We show that nice reachability analysis may be reduced to the reachability analysis of a specific...

Reachability analysis is a general approach to analyze Petri nets, but the state space explosion often permits its application. In the eld of performance analysis of stochastic Petri nets, modular representations of reachability graphs using Kronecker algebra have been successfully applied. This paper describes how a Kronecker representation of the reachability graph is employed for exploration...

We introduce two abstract models for multithreaded programs based on dynamic networks of pushdown systems. We address the problem of symbolic reachability analysis for these models. More precisely, we consider the problem of computing effective representations of their reachability sets using finite-state automata. We show that, while forward reachability sets are not regular in general, backwa...

This paper introduces a class of cuts, called reachability cuts, for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW). Reachability cuts are closely related to cuts derived from precedence constraints in the Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows and to k-path cuts for the VRPTW. In particular, any reachability cut dominates one or more k-path cuts. The paper presents sepa...