Auditory perceptual simulation (APS) during silent reading refers to situations in which the reader actively simulates the voice of a character or other person depicted in a text. In three eye-tracking experiments, APS effects were investigated as people read utterances attributed to a native English speaker, a non-native English speaker, or no speaker at all. APS effects were measured via onli...

Efferocytosis by alveolar phagocytes (APs) is pivotal in maintenance of lung homeostasis. Increased efferocytosis by APs results in protection against lethal acute lung injury due to pulmonary infections whereas defective efferocytosis by APs results in chronic lung inflammation. In this report, we show that pulmonary delivery of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) significantly enhances efferocytos...

PURPOSE International consensus criteria for antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) require persistently positive antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL) and medium or high titers in association with clinical manifestations. However, the clinical relevance of persistence and titers of aPL in patients with stroke has not been identified. We aimed to investigate the risk of subsequent thrombotic events in pat...

Crystallization and morphological features of syndiotactic-b-atactic polystyrene stereodiblock copolymers (sPS-b-aPS), atactic/syndiotactic polystyrene blends (aPS/sPS), and aPS/sPS blends modified with sPS-b-aPS, with different compositions in aPS and sPS, have been investigated using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), polarized light optical microscopy (POM) and wide angle X-ray diffrac...

Astragalus membranaceus is a famous Chinese medicinal herb. Polysaccharides are the most important functional constituent in Astragalus membranaceus. In the present study, the effects of Astragalus membranaceus polysaccharides (APS) on exercise endurance capacity were evaluated in mice using swimming exercise. The antioxidant properties of APS were also investigated through the 1,1diphenyl-2-pi...

BACKGROUND Although the autoimmune polyglandular syndrome type 3 (APS-3) is the commonest APS that may be encountered in pediatric age, last year literature includes only few studies aiming to specifically ascertain the clinical spectrum of APS-3 in childhood and adolescence. Aims of these study were: a) to ascertain how many young patients with apparently isolated Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) ...

Simultaneous fluorescence imaging and electrophysiologic recordings were used to investigate the Ca influx initiated by action potentials (APs) into dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) pyramidal cell (PC) and cartwheel cell (CWC) dendrites. Local application of Cd blocked Ca transients in PC and CWC dendrites, demonstrating that the Ca influx was initiated by dendritic Ca channels. In PCs, TTX elimin...

BACKGROUND Dozens of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) formulas have been used for promotion of "blood production" for centuries, and we are interested in developing novel thrombopoietic medicines from these TCMs. Our previous studies have demonstrated the hematopoietic effects of DangGui BuXue Tong (DBT), a formula composed of Radix Angelicae Sinensis and Radix Astragali in animal and cellula...

In previous papers we proposed an algorithm for real parameter optimization called the Aggregation Pheromone System (APS). The APS replaces pheromone trails in traditional ACO with aggregation pheromones. The pheromone update rule is applied in a way similar to that of ACO. In this paper, we proposed an enhanced APS (eAPS), which uses a colony model with units. It allows a stronger exploitation...