Endothelin-1 (ET-1) is a 21-amino-acid peptide and it is one of the most potent endogenous vasoconstricting agent yet discovered (Yanagisawa et al., 1988). ET-1 binds to its receptors (typically ETA receptor) on vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and subsequently induces an increase in the intracellular free Ca2+ concentration ([Ca]i), which is essential for contraction of the cells. It is ge...

There is an urgent need for better regimens to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB). Treatment for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB, defined as resistance to both isoniazid and rifampicin) has a success rate of only 64% (Falzon et al., 2013), is prolonged for up to 24 months, and is poorly tolerated. Treatment success for extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB, defined as...

This chapter focuses on correctly recognizing faces in the presence of large illumination variation. Our aim is to do this by synthesizing an illumination normalized image using Quotient Image-based techniques (Shashua et al., 2001, Wang et al., 2004, Chen et al., 2005, Nishiyama et al., 2006, Zhang et al., 2007, and An et al., 2008). These techniques extract an illumination invariant represent...

The leafhopper genus Macrosteles Fieber in China comprises 25 species including ten new species: Macrosteles brochus Zhang & Lu, M. brunneus Zhang & Lu, M. choui Zhang & Lu, M. ehensis Zhang & Lu, M. gracilis Zhang & Lu, M. falcatus Zhang & Lu, M. haperatus Zhang & Lu, M. nabiae Kwon, M. parastriifrons Zhang & Lu and M. spinosus Kwon. Five species are newly recorded from China, including M. abl...

Correction for 'Stable small bubble clusters in two-dimensional foams' by Kai Zhang et al., Soft Matter, 2017, DOI: .

Of the many cellular and molecular hallmarks that are broadly associated with physiological decline during aging (L opez-Ot ın et al., 2013), loss of muscular strength in vertebrates is particularly problematic because in humans it is a better predictor of morbidity and mortality than loss of muscle mass (Newman et al., 2006). Human cohort studies indicate that with both aging and disease, musc...

The formal verification of properties of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) is highly desirable for gaining confidence in the correctness of the model and the corresponding system. A significant step towards HMM verification was the development by Zhang et al. of a family of logics for verifying HMMs, called POCTL*, and its model checking algorithm. As far as we know, the verification tool we present ...

The article by Zhang et al. retreads a lot of information already covered in Zhang et al. (AMT, 2016), with some additional analysis. Overall, I find there are potentially some interesting components of this paper that go beyond the authors previous work, but at the same time there are a number of aspects that are presented as novel insights that are either not sufficiently justified or explain...

Google Street View (GSV) was used for urban land use classification, together with airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data and high resolution orthoimagery, by a parcel-based method. In this data article, we present the input raw GSV images, intermediate products of GSV images, and final urban land use classification data that are related to our research article "Parcel-based urban la...

Many provinces in China including Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiansu, Hubei, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Changzhou, Cangzhou, and Jianxing (Deng and Ju, 1994; Ding et al., 2005; Hu et al., 2004; Xue et al., 2005; Yang et al., 2005) are subsiding owing to rapid development and urbanization. The cause identified with these subsidence phenomena has been mainly due to excessive withdrawal of groundwater (Chai et al.,...