Ether-à-go-go (EAG) and EAG-related gene (ERG) K(+) channels are close homologues but differ markedly in their gating properties. ERG1 channels are characterized by rapid and extensive C-type inactivation, whereas mammalian EAG1 channels were previously considered noninactivating. Here, we show that human EAG1 channels exhibit an intrinsic voltage-dependent slow inactivation that is markedly en...

During immune-complex-mediated arthritis (ICA), severe cartilage destruction is mediated by Fcgamma receptors (FcgammaRs) (mainly FcgammaRI), cytokines (e.g. IL-1), and enzymes (matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs)). IL-13, a T helper 2 (Th2) cytokine abundantly found in synovial fluid of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, has been shown to reduce joint inflammation and bone destruction during exp...

A 46-year-old woman without cardiovascular risk factors who was taking oral prednisolone for Sjögren syndrome presented with repeated episodes of transient left hemipare-sis and left-sided sensory disturbance over a 2-year period despite preventive therapy with antiplatelets and antico-agulants. Infarcts were always identified in the right middle cerebral artery territory on brain magnetic reso...

Isocupressic acid (ICA) [15-hydroxylabda-8 (17), 13E-dien-19-oic acid], a labdane diterpene acid, isolated from ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), common juniper (Juniperus communis) and Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa), induces abortion in pregnant cows when ingested primarily during the last trimester. The objective of this study was to investigate the e...

KCNQ2 (Kv7.2) and KCNQ3 (Kv7.3) are voltage-gated K(+) channel subunits that underlie the neuronal M current. In humans, mutations in these genes lead to a rare form of neonatal epilepsy (Biervert et al., 1998; Singh et al., 1998), suggesting that KCNQ2/Q3 channels may be attractive targets for novel antiepileptic drugs. In the present study, we have identified the compound N-(6-chloro-pyridin-...

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a portable brain-imaging technique with the advantage of high-temporal resolution that can be used to record electrical activity of the brain. However, it is difficult to analyze EEG signals due to the contamination of ocular artifacts, and which potentially results in misleading conclusions. Also, it is a proven fact that the contamination of ocular artifacts ca...

In this paper, an independent component analysis (ICA)-based disturbance separation scheme is proposed for statistical process monitoring. ICA is a novel statistical signal processing technique and has been widely applied in medical signal processing, audio signal processing, feature extraction and face recognition. However, there are still few applications of using ICA in process monitoring. I...

In many daily-life scenarios, acoustic sources recorded in an enclosure can only be observed with other interfering sources. Hence, convolutive Blind Source Separation (BSS) is a central problem audio signal processing. Methods based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA) are especially important this field as they require few and weak assumptions allow for blindness regarding the original sou...