In bronchial asthma (BA), symptoms such as cough, wheezing, and sputum can be deteriorated by tachykinins secreted from non-adrenergic, noncholinergic neurons in the bronchial smooth muscles1l. It has been reported that the guinea pig with BA shows decreased NEP activity in the lung4l. However, it is still unclear whether or not the serum NEP (sNEP) levels which affect SP concentration in the s...

We examined the concentration dependence of currents through Ca(V)3.1 T-type calcium channels, varying Ca(2+) and Ba(2+) over a wide concentration range (100 nM to 110 mM) while recording whole-cell currents over a wide voltage range from channels stably expressed in HEK 293 cells. To isolate effects on permeation, instantaneous current-voltage relationships (IIV) were obtained following strong...

BACKGROUND & AIMS Many signals governing liver regeneration (LR) following 2/3 partial hepatectomy (PH) are recognized, but the primary signal(s) remains unknown. The aim of the study was to confirm that the remnant liver after PH lacks capacity to secrete the BA pool returning via the enterohepatic ciruculation (EHC), which may in turn stimulate LR. METHODS After standard PH, BA flux was doc...

This study was an attempt to examine the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations between percent fat mass (PFM) and bone parameters, especially hip geometry, among 786 males and 618 females aged 13 to 21 years from a Chinese twin cohort. PFM, bone area (BA), bone mineral content (BMC), cross-sectional area (CSA), and section modulus (SM) were obtained by dual-energy X-ray absorptiom...

There is potential for heat loss and hypothermia during anesthesia and also for hyperthermia if heat conservation and active warming measures are not accurately titrated. Accurate temperature monitoring is particularly important in procedures in which the patient is actively cooled and then rewarmed such as during cardiopulmonary bypass surgery (CPB). We simultaneously measured core, nasopharyn...

The aim of this work is to develop a practical framework, which extends the classical Hidden Markov Models (HMM) for continuous speech recognition based on the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) principle. The MaxEnt models can estimate the posterior probabilities directly as with Hybrid NN/HMM connectionist speech recognition systems. In particular, a new acoustic modelling based on discriminative MaxEn...

BACKGROUND Although most idiopathic scoliosis patients subject to conservative treatment in daily clinical practice, there have been no ideal methods to evaluate the spinal flexibility for the patients who are scheduled the brace treatment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the value of hanging total spine x-ray to estimate the indicative correction angle by brace wearing in idiopath...

Selection (28 generations, G) in a Large White-Landrace composite population for traits aimed at increasing live pigs born per litter (BA), with additional selection for increased 180-d weight (WT180) and longissimus muscle area (LMA) and decreased back fat (BF10) in the last 8 generations, was practiced. Objectives herein were to estimate genetic and phenotypic responses and genetic parameters...

The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI) bottom ash (BA) codisposed with municipal solid waste (MSW) on landfill stabilization according to the leachate quality in terms of organic matter and nitrogen contents. Six simulated landfills, that is, three conventional and three recirculated, were employed with different ratios of MSWI BA to MSW. ...