Detecting interaural time difference (ITD) is crucial for sound localization. The temporal accuracy required to detect ITD, and how ITD is initially encoded, continue to puzzle scientists. A fundamental question is whether the monaural inputs to the binaural ITD detectors differ only in their timing, when temporal and spectral tunings are largely inseparable in the auditory pathway. Here, we in...

Artificial receptors have been in use for several decades as sensor elements, in affinity separation, and as models for investigation of molecular recognition . Although there have been numerous publications on the use of molecular modeling in characterization of their affinity and selectivity, very few attempts have been made on the application of molecular modeling in computational design of ...

Among the nation’s elite colleges and universities, black graduation rates vary dramatically from institution to institution. Many sociologists have suggested that this is due not to differences in the student bodies but to institutional factors; however, this ‘‘institutional hypothesis’’ has not been recently examined empirically. We test the institutional hypothesis for a set of elite institu...

Seven stilbenes and one catechin were bioactivity-guidedly isolated from the rhizomes of Rheum palmatem. Their structures were identified as piceatannol(1), resveratrol(2), piceid(3), rhapontigenin(4), piceatannol-3'-O-β-D-glucopyranoside(5), rhaponticin(6), catechin(7) and desoxyrhapontigenin(8). Anti-monoamine oxidase (MAO) activities of compounds 1–8 were tested. Compounds 1 and 8 showed sig...

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are seven integral transmembrane proteins that are the primary targets of almost 30% of approved drugs and continue to represent a major focus of pharmaceutical research. All of GPCR targeted medicines were discovered by classical medicinal chemistry approaches. After the first GPCR crystal structures were determined, the docking screens using these structure...

Salvinorin A, the active component of the hallucinogenic sage Salvia divinorum, is an apparently selective and highly potent kappa-opioid receptor (KOR) agonist. Salvinorin A is unique among ligands for peptidergic G protein-coupled receptors in being nonnitrogenous and lipid-like in character. To examine the molecular basis for the subtype-selective binding of salvinorin A, we utilized an inte...

In this work, we use a modified thin film composite RO membrane to examine the impacts of selectivity and compaction on performance pressure retarded osmosis. membranes are promising platforms study PRO because they tolerant typical pressures well characterized for permeance selectivity. Their availability across range (from nanofiltration seawater RO) also allows us systematically investigate ...