Vascular effects and electrolyte homeostasis of the natriuretic peptide isolated from Crotalus oreganus abyssus (North American Grand Canyon rattlesnake) venom

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Immunohistochemical evaluation of prostaglandin E2 and vascular endothelial growth factor in canine cutaneous mast cell tumours

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

IFPA Meeting 2010 Workshop Report I: Immunology; Ion transport; Epigenetics; Vascular reactivity; Epitheliochorial placentation; Proteomics

Workshops are an important part of the IFPA annual meeting. At IFPA Meeting 2010 there were twelve themed workshops, six of which are summarized in this report 1. The immunology workshop focused on normal and pathological functions of the maternal immune system in pregnancy. 2. The transport workshop dealt with regulation of ion and water transport across the syncytiotrophoblast of human placenta. 3. The epigenetics workshop covered DNA methylation and its potential role in regulating gene expression in placental development and disease. 4. The vascular reactivity workshop concentrated on methodological approaches used to study placental vascular function. 5. The workshop on epitheliochorial placentation covered current advances from in vivo and in vitro studies of different domestic species. 6. The proteomics workshop focused on a variety of techniques and procedures necessary for proteomic analysis and how they may be implemented for placental research. (C) 2011 Published by IFPA and Elsevier Ltd.

Biodegradable Nanoparticles Containing Benzopsoralens: An Attractive Strategy for Modifying Vascular Function in Pathological Skin Disorders

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Group A T-loop for differential moment mechanics: An implant study

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Non-linear analysis of reinforced concrete plates by the boundary element method and continuum damage mechanics

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Relaxation-chaos phenomena in celestial mechanics. I. On wisdom's model for the 3/1 kirkwood gap

Sudden eccentricity increases of asteroidal motion in 3/1 resonance with Jupiter were discovered and explained by J. Wisdom through the occurrence of jumps in the action corresponding to the critical angle (resonant combination of the mean motions). We pursue some aspects of this mechanism, which could be termed relaxation-chaos: that is, an unconventional form of homoclinic behavior arising in perturbed integrable Hamiltonian systems for which the KAM theorem hypothesis do not hold. © 1987.

Supersymmetric quantum mechanics and the equivalent classical transformation

In the usual supersymmetric quantum mechanics, the supercharges change the eigenfunction from the bosonic to fermionic sector and conversely. The classical correspondent of this transformation is shown to be the addition of a total time derivative of a purely imaginary function to the Lagrangian function of the system.

Induced variational method from supersymmetric quantum mechanics and the screened Coulomb potential

The formalism of supersymmetric quantum mechanics supplies a trial wave function to be used in the variational method. The screened Coulomb potential is analyzed within this approach. Numerical and exact results for energy eigenvalues are compared.

Effect of NωNLA or dexamethasone on vascular hyporeactivity induced by E. coli endotoxin in sham and adrenalectomized rats

Induction of iNOS by bacterial products is considered to be part of the defense mechanism against infection. However, it has been suggested that the bacterial-induced NO-overproduction may be involved in the vascular hyporeactivity and in septic shock. It is well known that glucocorticoids prevent the induction of iNOS by Etx in rats. In the present study, dexamethasone diminished but not abolished Etx-induced vascular hyporeactivity in rats. Our results showed that the inhibition of iNOS protects sham rats against the lethal shock produced by Etx, but, in Adx rats, the NωNLA, an iNOS inhibitor, did not reduce Etx-induced mortality. Interestingly, the lack of glucocorticoid impaired the protective effect of NωNLA against Etx-induced hyporeactivity and shock in rats. A conceivable pharmacological approach to protect tissues against deleterious effect of excessive NO production includes inhibition of the iNOS, because the absence of glucocorticoid may increase the iNOS gene expression, with NO-overproduction induced by Etx, suggesting that the glucocorticoids might be of therapeutic value for the treatment of hyporeactivity and shock triggered by sepsis.

Improved systolic ventricular function with normal myocardial mechanics in compensated cardiac hypertrophy

There still controversy about the relation between changes in myocardial contractile function and global left ventricular (LV) performance during stable concentric hypertrophy. To clarify this, we analyzed LV function in vivo and myocardial mechanics in vitro in rats with pressure overload-induced cardiac hypertrophy. Male Wistar rats (70 g) underwent ascending aorta stenosis for 8 weeks (group AAS, n=9). LV performance was assessed by transthoracic echocardiography under light anesthesia. Myocardial function was studied in isolated papillary muscle preparation during isometric contraction. The data were compared with age- and sex-matched sham-operated rats (group C, n=9). LV weight-to-body weight ratio (C: 2.0 ± 0.5 mg/g; AAS: 3.3 ± 0.7 mg/g), LV relative wall thickness (C: 0.19 ± 0.02; AAS; 0.34 ± 0.10), and LV fractional shortening (C: 54 ± 5%; AAS: 70 ± 8%) were increased in the group AAS (p<0.05). Echocardiographic analysis also indicated a significant association (r=0.74; p<0.001) between percent fractional shortening and LV relative wall thickness. The performance of AAS isolated muscle revealed that active tension (C: 6.6 ± 1.7 g/mm 2; AAS: 6.5 ± 1.5 g/mm 2) and maximum rate of tension development (C: 69 ± 21 g/mm 2/s; AAS: 69 ± 18 g/mm 2) were not significantly different from group C (p>0.05). In conclusion: 1) Compensated pressure-overload myocardial hypertrophy is associated with preserved myocardial function and increased ventricular performance; 2) The improved LV function might be due to the ventricular remodeling characterized by an increased relative wall thickness. Copyright © 2002 By PJD Publications Limited.

Confined systems through variational supersymmetric quantum mechanics

The energy states of the confined harmonic oscillator and the Hulthén potentials are evaluated using the Variational Method associated to Supersymmetric Quantum Mechanics.

Merging higher derivative gravity and quantum mechanics

The most general quantum mechanical wave equation for a massive scalar particle in a metric generated by a spherically symmetric mass distribution is considered within the framework of higher derivative gravity (HDG). The exact effective Hamiltonian is constructed and the significance of the various terms is discussed using the linearized version of the above-mentioned theory. Not only does this analysis shed new light on the long standing problem of quantum gravity concerning the exact nature of the coupling between a massive scalar field and the background geometry, it also greatly improves our understanding of the role of HDG's coupling parameters in semiclassical calculations.