Mechanisms of vascular smooth muscle contraction and the basis for pharmacologic treatment of smooth muscle disorders

The smooth muscle cell directly drives the contraction of the vascular wall and hence regulates the size of the blood vessel lumen. We review here the current understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which agonists, therapeutics, and diseases regulate contractility of the vascular smooth muscle cell and we place this within the context of whole body function. We also discuss the implications for personalized medicine and highlight specific potential target molecules that may provide opportunities for the future development of new therapeutics to regulate vascular function.Accepted manuscrip

Effects of low winter temperatures on some orchard mites

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Effects of low winter temperatures on some orchard mites

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Analyses of shocked quartz at the global K-P boundary indicate an origin from a single, high-angle, oblique impact at Chicxulub

Accepted versio

Energy Density Functionals From the Strong-Coupling Limit Applied to the Anions of the He Isoelectronic Series

Anions and radicals are important for many applications including environmental chemistry, semiconductors, and charge transfer, but are poorly described by the available approximate energy density functionals. Here we test an approximate exchange-correlation functional based on the exact strong-coupling limit of the Hohenberg-Kohn functional on the prototypical case of the He isoelectronic series with varying nuclear charge $Z<2$, which includes weakly bound negative ions and a quantum phase transition at a critical value of $Z$, representing a big challenge for density functional theory. We use accurate wavefunction calculations to validate our results, comparing energies and Kohn-Sham potentials, thus also providing useful reference data close to and at the quantum phase transition. We show that our functional is able to bind H$^-$ and to capture in general the physics of loosely bound anions, with a tendency to strongly overbind that can be proven mathematically. We also include corrections based on the uniform electron gas which improve the results.Comment: Accepted for the JCP Special Topic Issue "Advances in DFT Methodology

The biology of Monochamus notatus morgani (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)

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Participation in the school dinner hall environment: A qualitative observational study of a UK mainstream primary school

Introduction: Children with disabilities should have equal access to participate within school. Participation is affected by contextual factors; the physical environment and people. One important aspect is the school meal. Little is known about school dinner environments and there is no formal guidance. Material and Methods: This was an observational study of one UK mainstream primary school dinner hall. Two one hour lunchtimes were observed with children, aged 5-11 years, (703) and mealtime staff (30). Observations were guided using published frameworks, with descriptions of the physical environment and social interactions noted. Children and mealtime staff were not directly approached. Sound pressure level measurements were taken. Further information was gathered via the school website and the Special Educational Needs Coordinator. Results: This purpose-built school dinner hall had a seating capacity of 231 with a range of different sized furniture. Sound pressure levels reached a maximum of 91dB, above UK standards. It scored negatively on acoustic audit with factors including; open plan space, open doors, hard flooring, talking. The social environment focused on ensuring children ate a meal and on managing behaviour (‘dinner hall rules’). School staff were observed to focus on these aspects e.g. managing queues, wiping tables and reminding children of the rules. School staff did not eat with the children. Conclusion: In this school the children’s ability to participate fully at mealtimes is likely to be limited, particularly for children with disabilities. This study highlights the need for more exploration of this school environment with guidance developed

Pyrolysis-GC×GC-TOFMS to characterize carbonaceous chondrites

Using pyrolysis-GCxGC-TOFMS to analyze organic carbon in carbonaceous chondrites gives a massive increase in both sensitivity and structural information from samples when compared to traditional Py-GC-MS

Multispin correlations and pseudo-thermalization of the transient density matrix in solid-state NMR: free induction decay and magic echo

Quantum unitary evolution typically leads to thermalization of generic interacting many-body systems. There are very few known general methods for reversing this process, and we focus on the magic echo, a radio-frequency pulse sequence known to approximately "rewind" the time evolution of dipolar coupled homonuclear spin systems in a large magnetic field. By combining analytic, numerical, and experimental results we systematically investigate factors leading to the degradation of magic echoes, as observed in reduced revival of mean transverse magnetization. Going beyond the conventional analysis based on mean magnetization we use a phase encoding technique to measure the growth of spin correlations in the density matrix at different points in time following magic echoes of varied durations and compare the results to those obtained during a free induction decay (FID). While considerable differences are documented at short times, the long-time behavior of the density matrix appears to be remarkably universal among the types of initial states considered - simple low order multispin correlations are observed to decay exponentially at the same rate, seeding the onset of increasingly complex high order correlations. This manifestly athermal process is constrained by conservation of the second moment of the spectrum of the density matrix and proceeds indefinitely, assuming unitary dynamics.Comment: 12 Pages, 9 figure

Jastrow correlation factor for atoms, molecules, and solids

A form of Jastrow factor is introduced for use in quantum Monte Carlo simulations of finite and periodic systems. Test data are presented for atoms, molecules, and solids, including both all-electron and pseudopotential atoms. We demonstrate that our Jastrow factor is able to retrieve a large fraction of the correlation energy