BACKGROUND Suburothelial myofibroblasts (sMF) are located underneath the urothelium in close proximity to afferent nerves. They express purinergic receptors and show calcium transients in response to ATP. Therefore they are supposed to be involved in afferent signaling of the bladder fullness. Since ATP concentration is likely to be very low during the initial filling phase, we hypothesized tha...

effect of static magnetic field (smf) on plants is a matter of debate. in the present study plausible useful effects of smf on wheat plant (triticum aestivum l.) via improvement of antioxidant system and iron/ferritin fortification were evaluated. the plants were cultivated in pots and in their reproductive stages were treated with or without a 30 mt smf for 4 days, each 5h. the activity of ant...

Although the promotional effects on osteoblasts of pulsed electromagnetic fields have been well-demonstrated, the effects of static magnetic fields (SMF) remain unclear; nevertheless, magnets have been clinically used as a 'force source' in various orthodontic treatments. We undertook the present investigation to study the effects of SMF on osteoblastic differentiation, proliferation, and bone ...

Carbon nanofibers (CNF) were synthesized on sintered metal fibers (SMF) filters of nickel and Ni-containing alloys (Inconel, stainless steel (SS)) by thermal chemical vapor deposition of ethane in the presence of hydrogen at 660 8C. The CNFs were formed directly over the SMF filters without deposition of metal particles. The catalytic active sites leading to the CNF formation were attained by o...

External application of static magnetic fields (SMF), used specifically for the treatment of inflammatory conditions such as soft tissue injuries, has recently become popular as a complementary and/or alternative therapy with minimal investigation into efficacy or mechanism. Localized inflammation was induced via injection of inflammatory agents lambda-carrageenan (CA) or histamine into rat hin...

A thorough assessment of the static magnetic field (SMF) inside a CO2 incubator allowed us to identify non-negligible inhomogeneities close to the floor, ceiling, walls and the door. Given that incubator's shelves are made of a non-magnetic stainless steel alloy, we did not expect any important effect of them on the SMF. Surprisingly, we did find relatively strong distortion of the SMF due to s...

The standard mammogram form (SMF) representation of an x-ray mammogram is a standardized, quantitative representation of the breast from which the volume of non-fat tissue and breast density can be easily estimated, both of which are of significant interest in determining breast cancer risk. Previous theoretical analysis of SMF had suggested that a complete and substantial set of calibration da...

An in-line Mach–Zehnder-interferometer-based two-dimensional (2-D) micrometric displacement sensor was fabricated by inserting a polarization maintaining fiber (PMF) with a length of 1 cm between two conventional singlemode fibers (SMFs). The left end of the PMF was mismatch fusion spliced with an SMF. The right end of the PMF was connected to another SMF without fusion splicing. Two independen...

To understand the loss limitations of a splice between a hollow-core fiber and a conventional fiber, we use a numerical model to calculate the expected coupling loss between the NKT Photonics' HC-1550-02 fiber and a single-mode fiber (SMF) of arbitrary step-index profile. When the SMF parameters are optimized, the splice loss is predicted to be as low as approximately 0.6 dB. This minimum is be...

The present work was undertaken in order to investigate the effects of static magnetic field (SMF) on hematopoiesis and iron metabolism in male rats. At thermoneutrality (25°C), the exposition of rats to SMF (128 mT, 1h/day for 5 consecutive days) induced an increase of hematocrit (+12%, p<0.05), hemoglobin (+6%, p<0.05) and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (+9%, p<0.05). SMF exposure ...