The aim of this study was to determine which endothelial factors were involved in the decrease of pulmonary vascular resistance at birth, and how they changed with maturation. Response of intrapulmonary artery rings precontracted with prostaglandin F2alpha were studied from piglets aged <2 h, 2-3 day, 10 day and adult pigs for pharmacological responses to acetylcholine (ACh) and cromakalim (CMK...

The research presented in this dissertation is aimed at the development of electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) based on ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs). The ORR is a key reaction in electrochemical energy devices such as fuel cells and metal-air batteries. Because of its sluggish kinetics compared to its counterpart reaction (i.e., hydrogen oxidation reaction in fuel cell...

Performance of low temperature fuel cells depends critically on the nanostructures of the material components in the electrodes and membranes. Some studies are reported here for 1) mixed metal nanoparticles supported on mesoporous carbon and 2) modification of nanopores of Nafion via in-situ polymerization of furfuryl alcohol. The anodic oxidation of small organic molecules such as alcohols in ...

ordered mesoporous carbon cmk-3 (omc) have been synthesized using mesoporous sba-15 silica as template and modified with cobalt carbonate. morphologies and surface texturing of materials werecharacterized by x-ray diffraction (xrd), scanning electron microscopy (sem) and n2 adsorption-desorptionisotherms. the cobalt modified ordered mesoporous carbon were found to have a surface area of 490.06m...

Cell-cell adhesion is essential for many immunological functions and is believed to be important in the regulation of hematopoiesis. Adhesive interactions between human endothelial cells and megakaryocytes were characterized in vitro using the CMK megakaryocytic cell line as well as marrow megakaryocytes. Although there was no adhesion between unactivated human umbilical vein endothelial cells ...

Apoptosis plays a role in pemphigus IgG-dependent acantholysis; theoretically, the blockade of the caspase pathway could prevent the blistering that is caused by pemphigus autoantibodies. Using this strategy, we attempted to block the pathogenic effect of pemphigus IgG in Balb/c mice by using the caspase inhibitor Ac-DEVD-CMK. This inhibitor was administrated before the injection of pemphigus I...