The hallmark of many intracellular pore blockers such as tetra-alkylammonium compounds and local anesthetics is their ability to allosterically modify the movement of the voltage sensors in voltage-dependent ion channels. For instance, the voltage sensor of domain III is specifically stabilized in the activated state when sodium currents are blocked by local anesthetics. The molecular mechanism...

Synaptic vesicle exocytosis is triggered by rises in calcium up to 100 microM at the site of vesicle fusion. The synaptic vesicle proteins synaptotagmin 1 and 2 (Syt I and Syt II) bind calcium at similarly high concentrations and have been proposed as the calcium sensors for fast neurotransmitter release. However, 1 microM calcium produces tonic transmitter release at photoreceptor and bipolar ...

an extended octagonal ring (eor) transducer was designed and developed to measure forces inside the compression chamber of a large square baler in different directions. the transducer was calibrated by applying forces in three directions simultaneously and independently. the sensor revealed excellent linearity along with small cross sensitivities. horizontal and vertical primary sensitivities o...

The paper presents a hybrid fuzzy classifier for effective land use land cover mapping. It discusses a Bayesian way of incorporating spatial contextual information into the Fuzzy Noise Classifier (FNC). The FNC was chosen, as it detects noise using spectral information more efficiently than its fuzzy counterparts. The spatial information at the level of second order pixel neighbourhood was mode...

soil compaction and moisture content are two of the factors that greatly influence variations in crop yield. capacitance-based sensor is a sensitive device for estimating soil water content. in this method of soil moisture content measurement, soil acts as the dielectric of the capacitor. throughout this research work, a capacitance-based moisture sensor that can measure the soil moisture conte...

Taste receptor cells are the taste sensation elements for sour, salty, sweet, bitter and umami sensations. It was demonstrated that there are cell-to-cell communications between type II (sour) and type III (sweet, bitter and umami) taste cells. Serotonin (5-HT) is released from type III cells, which is the only type of taste cells that has synaptic process with sensory afferent fibers. Then, ta...

Although the U.S. has studied space suit performance for decades, relatively little is known about how the astronaut moves and interacts within the space suit. We propose the use of insuit sensor systems to characterize this interaction and present our results using pressure sensors and inertial measurement units (IMUs) inside the David Clark Mobility Mock-Up and the Mark III space suit from NA...

wireless sensor networks are composed of hundreds or thousands of small nodes called sensor that work together and are associated with a specific task or tasks to do. each of these nodes includes sensor, processor, communication components, a small memory and a source of energy. it is expected that wireless sensor networks will be used widely in many applications in near future. scalability and...