Inhibitors of calpains, calcium-activated neutral proteases, protect against cell death produced by anoxia and a variety of toxicants both in vitro and in vivo. The problems with known calpain inhibitors are a lack of specificity, low membrane permeability, and/or low potency. The goal of this study was to determine the effects of seven novel dipeptide and tripeptide calpain inhibitors on calpa...

The random process theory (RPT) has been widely applied to predict the joint probability distribution functions (PDFs) of asperity heights and curvatures of rough surfaces. A check of the predictions of RPT against the actual statistics of numerically generated random fractal surfaces and of real rough surfaces has been only partially undertaken. The present experimental and numerical study pro...

The renin-angiotensin and endothelin systems regulate blood pressure, in part, by affecting renal tubular sodium transport. In rodents, ETB receptors decrease proximal tubular reabsorption, whereas AT1 receptors produce the opposite effect. We hypothesize that ETB and AT1 receptors interact at the receptor level, and that the interaction is altered in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). In ...

The objective of this study was to determine whether cortical evoked potentials (CEPs) can define neurophysiological patterns in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). In this prospective study of consecutive patients attending secondary and tertiary centers, patients with Rome II-defined IBS underwent rectal sensory and pain threshold (RST and RPT, respectively) testing with electrical stimulation on...

This study provides a direct comparison of boundary and prominence perception strategies between Japanese EFL learners and native speakers of English using the Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) method. Although RPT experiments are available for both native English speakers [1], [2], [3] and Japanese EFL learners [4], a direct comparison of the available data is problematic as the stimuli sets u...

Related party transactions (RPTs) are transactions made among affiliated companies in a conglomerate group. Heavy RPT ratio means high level of dependence of a firm on the captive market within a conglomerate group. This may depress the firm’s incentive to invest in R&D and the high level of R&D expenditure of a firm with heavy RPT ratio may not be efficiently led to high level of firm performa...

Bactericidal activities of HMR 3647 (HMR), moxifloxacin (MXFX), and rifapentine (RPT) against Mycobacterium leprae, measured by the proportional bactericidal technique in the mouse footpad system, were compared with those of the established antileprosy drugs clarithromycin (CLARI), ofloxacin (OFLO), and rifampin (RMP). Administered in five daily doses of 100 mg/kg of body weight, HMR appeared s...

The behavior of TRISO fuel used in high temperature gas reactors in order to achieve high fuel performance is difficult to model using traditional lattice codes due to the double-heterogeneity effect created by the multi-coated fuel kernels in a graphite matrix. A simple volume-weighted homogenization does not accurately reduce the problem to one degree of heterogeneity as it does not properly ...