Na(+) reduction induces contraction of opossum lower esophageal sphincter (LES) circular smooth muscle strips in vitro; however, the mechanism(s) by which this occurs is unknown. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the electrophysiological effects of low Na(+) on opossum LES circular smooth muscle. In the presence of atropine, quanethidine, nifedipine, and substance P, conventio...

Chronic stress precipitates or exacerbates the symptoms of functional bowel disorders, including motility dysfunction. The cellular mechanisms of these effects are not understood. We tested the hypothesis that heterotypic chronic stress (HeCS) elevates the release of norepinephrine from the adrenal medulla, which enhances transcription of the gene-regulating expression of Ca(v)1.2 (L-type) chan...

Ro, Seungil, William J. Hatton, Sang Don Koh, and Burton Horowitz. Molecular properties of small-conductance Ca21-activated K channels expressed in murine colonic smooth muscle. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 281: G964–G973, 2001.—Small-conductance Ca21-activated K (SK) channels are important participants in inhibitory neurotransmission in gastrointestinal smooth muscles. Three isoform...

Antimicrobial proteins are a rich source of new lead compounds for the development of new drugs that will tackle global resistance towards existing antibiotics. Caenopore-5 (Cp-5) is an antimicrobial protein (AMP) expressed in the intestine of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and is a member of the lipid binding saposin-like-protein family, composed of 5 a-helices and 3 disulfide bonds. Subs...

Shi, Xuan-Zheng, and Sushil K. Sarna. Impairment of Ca21 mobilization in circular muscle cells of the inflamed colon. Am. J. Physiol. Gastrointest. Liver Physiol. 278: G234– G242, 2000.—This study investigated whether inflammation modulates the mobilization of Ca21 in canine colonic circular muscle cells. The contractile response of single cells from the inflamed colon was significantly suppres...

Recent findings show that the enteric neurotransmitter VIP enhances gene transcription of the alpha1C subunit of Cav1.2 (L-type) Ca2+ channels in the primary cultures of human colonic circular smooth muscle cells and circular smooth muscle strips. In this study, we investigated whether systemic infusion of VIP in intact animals enhances the gene transcription and protein expression of these cha...

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization observations will require superb control of systematic errors in order to achieve their full scientific potential, particularly in the case of attempts to detect the B modes that may provide a window on inflation. Interferometry may be a promising way to achieve these goals. This paper presents a formalism for characterizing the effects of a variet...

This paper presents a capacity based analysis of directional Multiple-Input MultipleOutput (MIMO) channel measurements that were conducted with (16 x 16) element Uniform Circular Arrays (UCA) of patch antennas. The effect of antenna array configuration on performance has been investigated. A comparison between directly measured MIMO channels and MIMO channels generated from the multipath parame...

We propose to combine directional antennas in a conformal array configuration with a matching two-stage receiver architecture to improve performance of code-division multiple-access (CDMA) communication systems in time-varying channels. We propose a reduced-dimension space–time (ST) RAKE architecture that matches the ST correlation structure of the data received by a circular array. In time-var...

In this paper, the circular ring model is proposed to model the signal statistics of a wideband multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel. Based on the proposed model, a new space-timefrequency cross-correlation function is derived for the MIMO channel, in a compact mathematical form. The cross-correlation function includes various parameters of interest such as the distance between the bas...