In teleosts, superfast muscles are generally associated with the swimbladder wall, whose vibrations result in sound production. In Ophidion rochei, three pairs of muscles were named 'sonic' because their contractions affect swimbladder position: the dorsal sonic muscle (DSM), the intermediate sonic muscle (ISM), and the ventral sonic muscle (VSM). These muscles were investigated thanks to elect...

Loss of microvessels (anatomic rarefaction) occurs in chronic reduced renal mass (RRM) hypertension and is mediated via structural degeneration of vascular smooth muscle (VSM) and endothelial cells. The purpose of the present study was to determine if structural changes occur in VSM cells of the microvessels that remain in the tissue of rats with chronic RRM hypertension. Samples of cremaster m...

Chronic hypoxia (CH) results in reduced sensitivity to vasoconstrictors in conscious rats that persists upon restoration of normoxia. We hypothesized that this effect is due to endothelium-dependent hyperpolarization of vascular smooth muscle (VSM) cells after CH. VSM cell resting membrane potential was determined for superior mesenteric artery strips isolated from CH rats (PB = 380 Torr for 48...

The extent to which verbal (VM) and visuospatial memory (VSM) tests measure the same or multiple constructs is unclear. Likewise the relationship between VM and VSM across development is not known. These questions are addressed using genetically informative data, studying two age cohorts (young adults and children) of twins and siblings. VM and VSM were measured in the working memory and short-...

Our circulatory system is composed of numerous elements that are responsible for transport of blood and delivery of essential nutrients and gases to vital downstream tissues. Among these components that make up our circulation is vascular smooth muscle (VSM), the primary muscular and contractile element of blood vessels and regulator of many blood vessel functions. This is of particular importa...

Cultured neurons require specific trophic agents in order to survive. This dependence is thought to resemble the neuron-target interdependence that develops in vivo during synaptogenesis and neuronal cell death. The notion that neurons in general derive trophic support from their synaptic targets is based primarily on studies of peripheral neurons and motor neurons. To assess the general applic...

Blood pressure (BP) is regulated by multiple neuronal, hormonal, renal and vascular control mechanisms. Changes in signaling mechanisms in the endothelium, vascular smooth muscle (VSM) and extracellular matrix cause alterations in vascular tone and blood vessel remodeling and may lead to persistent increases in vascular resistance and hypertension (HTN). In VSM, activation of surface receptors ...

The heterogeneous design of multi-core processors, such as the Cell processor, introduced new challenges in porting high-level languages. Our project is developing tools that hide the underlying details of the Cell processor and eases parallel programming. We present a Virtual SIMD machine (VSM) paradigm that can be used to parallelize array expression automatically. The novelty is the use of a...

Endothelium-dependent vasodilators, nitrates, and atrial natriuretic factor relax blood vessels by increasing vascular cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP). The mechanisms by which cGMP relaxes vascular smooth muscle (VSM) are not known. Since contraction of VSM is associated with increased intracellular calcium and pH, we hypothesized that cGMP may decrease vascular tone by lowering ionized, ...

This chapter considers the usefulness of the Viable System Model (VSM) in information systems (IS) projects. The VSM is a rigorous organizational model which was developed from the study of cybernetics and has been given considerable attention by management science research. The chapter presents a case study that focuses upon the sales team of a manufacturing company. This sales team were seeki...