Myofibroblasts are specialized fibroblasts that contribute to wound healing by producing extracellular matrix and by contracting the granulation tissue. They appear in a phase of wound healing when the dermis strongly interacts with activated epidermal keratinocytes. Direct co-culture with keratinocytes upregulates TGFbeta activity and also induces fibroblast to differentiate into alpha-smooth ...

Nonlinear contraction theory allows surprisingly simple analysis of synchronisation phenomena in distributed networks of coupled nonlinear elements. The key idea is the construction of a virtual contracting system whose particular solutions include the individual subsystems’ states. We also study the role, in both nature and system design, of co-existing “power” leaders, to which the networks s...

Hagfishes are regarded as the most primitive living craniates. Excitation-contraction (E-C) coupling mechanisms were studied in skeletal and caudal heart muscle fibres of the hagfish Eptatretus burgeri. In white (fast) skeletal muscle fibres from the musculus tubulatus, force generation in response to electrical stimulation was maintained in nominally Ca(2+) free artificial seawater (ASW) (0Ca(...

metabolic alkalosis is characterized by high hco3- as it is seen in chronic respiratory acidosis, but ph differentiates the two disorders. there is no characteristic symptom or sign. orthostatic hypotension may be encountered. weakness and hyporeflexia occur if serum k+ is markerdly low. tetany and neuromuscular irritability occur rarely. we report the results of retrospective data analysis of ...

Nitric oxide (NO) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) are known to play various functional and pathophysiological roles as an intracellular messenger in the heart. In this study, we investigated whether the increased production of NO and/or ROS was involved in the cholinergic regulation of rhythmic contraction in spontaneously beating cultured cardiac myocytes from neonatal rats. Exposure of cult...

In reductive proof search, proofs are naturally generalized by solutions, comprising all (possibly infinite) structures generated by locally correct, bottom-up application of inference rules. We propose a rather natural extension of the Curry-Howard paradigm of representation, from proofs to solutions: to represent solutions by (possibly infinite) terms of the coinductive variant of the typed l...