Extracellular signal-regulated kinases mediate the enhancing effects of inflammatory mediators on resurgent currents in dorsal root ganglion neurons

Previously we reported that a group of inflammatory mediators significantly enhanced resurgent currents in dorsal root ganglion neurons. To understand the underlying intracellular signaling mechanism, we investigated the effects of inhibition of extracellular signal-regulated kinases and protein kinase C on the enhancing effects of inflammatory mediators on resurgent currents in rat dorsal root ganglion neurons. We found that the extracellular signal-regulated kinases inhibitor U0126 completely prevented the enhancing effects of the inflammatory mediators on both Tetrodotoxin-sensitive and Tetrodotoxin-resistant resurgent currents in both small and medium dorsal root ganglion neurons. U0126 substantially reduced repetitive firing in small dorsal root ganglion neurons exposed to inflammatory mediators, consistent with prevention of resurgent current amplitude increases. The protein kinase C inhibitor Bisindolylmaleimide I also showed attenuating effects on resurgent currents, although to a lesser extent compared to extracellular signal-regulated kinases inhibition. These results indicate a critical role of extracellular signal-regulated kinases signaling in modulating resurgent currents and membrane excitability in dorsal root ganglion neurons treated with inflammatory mediators. It is also suggested that targeting extracellular signal-regulated kinases-resurgent currents might be a useful strategy to reduce inflammatory pain

ALD grown zinc oxide with controllable electrical properties

The paper presents results for zinc oxide films grown at low temperature regime by Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). We discuss electrical properties of such films and show that low temperature deposition results in oxygen-rich ZnO layers in which free carrier concentration is very low. For optimized ALD process it can reach the level of 10^15 cm-3, while mobility of electrons is between 20 and 50 cm2/Vs. Electrical parameters of ZnO films deposited by ALD at low temperature regime are appropriate for constructing of the ZnO-based p-n and Schottky junctions. We demonstrate that such junctions are characterized by the rectification ratio high enough to fulfill requirements of 3D memories and are deposited at temperature 100degC which makes them appropriate for deposition on organic substrates.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figures, 64 references, review pape

The form factors existing in the b->s g^* decay and the possible CP violating effects in the noncommutative standard model

We study the form factors appearing in the inclusive decay b -> s g^*, in the framework of the noncommutative standard model. Here g^* denotes the virtual gluon. We get additional structures and the corresponding form factors in the noncommutative geometry. We analyse the dependencies of the form factors to the parameter p\Theta k where p (k) are the four momenta of incoming (outgoing) b quark (virtual gluon g^*, \Theta is a parameter which measures the noncommutativity of the geometry. We see that the form factors are weaklyComment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Comparative rainfall data analysis from two vertically pointing radars, an optical disdrometer, and a rain gauge

The authors present results of a comparative analysis of rainfall data from several ground-based instruments. The instruments include two vertically pointing Doppler radars, S-band and X-band, an optical disdrometer, and a tipping-bucket rain gauge. All instruments were collocated at the Iowa City Municipal Airport in Iowa City, Iowa, for a period of several months. The authors used the rainfall data derived from the four instruments to first study the temporal variability and scaling characteristics of rainfall and subsequently assess the instrumental effects on these derived properties. The results revealed obvious correspondence between the ground and remote sensors, which indicates the significance of the instrumental effect on the derived properties

Interacting Dipoles from Matrix Formulation of Noncommutative Gauge Theories

We study the IR behavior of noncommutative gauge theory in the matrix formulation. We find that in this approach, the nature of the UV/IR mixing is easily understood, which allows us to perform a reliable calculation of the quantum effective action for the long wavelength modes of the noncommutative gauge field. At one loop, we find that our description is weakly coupled only in the supersymmetric theory. At two loops, we find non-trivial interaction terms suggestive of dipole degrees of freedom. These dipoles exhibit a channel duality reminiscent of string theory.Comment: LaTeX 11 pages, 4 figures; v.2 minor changes and some references added; v.3 many more technical details added and significantly different presentation, use REVTeX 4, to appear in PR

One Loop Renormalizability of Spontaneously Broken Gauge Theory with a Product of Gauge Groups on Noncommutative Spacetime: the U(1) x U(1) Case

A generalization of the standard electroweak model to noncommutative spacetime would involve a product gauge group which is spontaneously broken. Gauge interactions in terms of physical gauge bosons are canonical with respect to massless gauge bosons as required by the exact gauge symmetry, but not so with respect to massive ones; and furthermore they are generally asymmetric in the two sets of gauge bosons. On noncommutative spacetime this already occurs for the simplest model of U(1) x U(1). We examine whether the above feature in gauge interactions can be perturbatively maintained in this model. We show by a complete one loop analysis that all ultraviolet divergences are removable with a few renormalization constants in a way consistent with the above structure.Comment: 24 pages, figures using axodraw; version 2: a new ref item [4] added to cite efforts to all orders, typos fixed and minor rewordin

Determination of an optimal response cut-off able to predict progression-free survival in patients with well-differentiated advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours treated with sunitinib: an alternative to the current RECIST-defined response.

BACKGROUND: Sunitinib prolongs progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pNET). Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST)-defined partial responses (PR; classically defined as ⩾30% size decrease from baseline) are infrequent. METHODS: Individual data of pNET patients from the phase II [NCT00056693] and pivotal phase III [NCT00428597] trials of sunitinib were analysed in this investigator-initiated, post hoc study. The primary objective was to determine the optimal RECIST (v.1.0) response cut-off value to identify patients who were progression-free at 11 months (median PFS in phase III trial); and the most informative time-point (highest area under the curve (AUC) by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and logistic regression) for prediction of benefit (PFS) from sunitinib. RESULTS: Data for 237 patients (85 placebo; 152 sunitinib (n=66.50 mg \u274-weeks on/2-weeks off\u27 schedule; n=86 \u2737.5 mg continuous daily dosing (CDD)\u27)) and 788 scans were analysed. The median PFS for sunitinib and placebo were 9.3 months (95% CI 7.6-12.2) and 5.4 months (95% CI 3.5-6.01), respectively (hazard ratio (HR) 0.43 (95% CI 0.29-0.62); P CONCLUSIONS: A 10% reduction within marker lesions identifies pNET patients benefiting from sunitinib treatment with implications for maintenance of dose intensity and future trial design