Smooth Muscle Myosin Heavy Chain Isoform Distribution in the Swine Stomach

To evaluate the distribution of smooth muscle myosin heavy chain isoforms (SMB, with head insert), we examined frozen sections from the various regions of swine stomachs using isoform-specific antibodies. We previously reported variable SMB myosin heavy chain (MHC) expression in stomach cells that correlates with unloaded shortening velocities. This is consistent with the generalization of tonic fundic muscle having low expression and phasic antral muscle having high expression of the SMB MHC isoform. Using immunohistochemistry (IHC), we show a progression of the SMB MHC from very low immunoreactivity in the fundus to very intense immunoreactivity in the antrum. In the body, the average level of SMB MHC immunoreactivity lies between that of the antrum and fundus. Intercellular heterogeneity was observed in all stomach regions to a similar extent. However, the intercellular range in SMB MHC immunoreactivity decreases from fundus to antrum. All stomach regions show isolated pockets or clusters of cells with similar SMB MHC immunoreactivity. There is a non-uniform intracellular immunoreactivity in SMB MHC, with many cells showing greater-intensity staining of SMB MHC in their cell peripheries. This information may prove useful in helping to elucidate possible unique physiological roles of SMB MHC

Simulated Greenland Surface Mass Balance in the GISS ModelE2 GCM: Role of the Ice Sheet Surface

The rate of growth or retreat of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets remains a highly uncertain component of future sea level change. Here we examine the simulation of Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance (GrIS SMB) in the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) ModelE2 General Circulation Model (GCM). GCMs are often limited in their ability to represent SMB compared with polarregion Regional Climate Models (RCMs). We compare ModelE2 simulated GrIS SMB for presentday (19962005) simulations with fixed ocean conditions, at a spatial resolution of 2 latitude by 2.5 longitude (~200 km), with SMB simulated by the Modle Atmosphrique Rgionale (MAR) RCM (19962005 at a 25 km resolution). ModelE2 SMB agrees well with MAR SMB on the whole, but there are distinct spatial patterns of differences and large differences in some SMB components. The impact of changes to the ModelE2 surface are tested, including a subgridscale representation of SMB with surface elevation classes. This has a minimal effect on ice sheetwide SMB, but corrects local biases. Replacing fixed surface albedo with satellitederived values and an agedependent scheme has a larger impact, increasing simulated melt by 60100%. We also find that lower surface albedo can enhance the effects of elevation classes. Reducing ModelE2 surface roughness length to values closer to MAR reduces sublimation by ~50%. Further work is required to account for meltwater refreezing in ModelE2, and to understand how differences in atmospheric processes and model resolution influence simulated SMB

Preferential Myosin Heavy Chain Isoform B Expression May Contribute to the Faster Velocity of Contraction in Veins versus Arteries

Smooth muscle myosin heavy chains occur in 2 isoforms, SMA (slow) and SMB (fast). We hypothesized that the SMB isoform is predominant in the faster-contracting rat vena cava compared to thoracic aorta. We compared the time to half maximal contraction in response to a maximal concentration of endothelin-1 (ET-1; 100 nM), potassium chloride (KCl; 100 mM) and norepinephrine (NE; 10 µM). The time to half maximal contraction was shorter in the vena cava compared to aorta (aorta: ET-1 = 235.8 ± 13.8 s, KCl = 140.0 ± 33.3 s, NE = 19.8 ± 2.7 s; vena cava: ET-1 = 121.8 ± 15.6 s, KCl = 49.5 ± 6.7 s, NE = 9.0 ± 3.3 s). Reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction supported the greater expression of SMB in the vena cava compared to aorta. SMB was expressed to a greater extent than SMA in the vessel wall of the vena cava. Western analysis determined that expression of SMB, relative to total smooth muscle myosin heavy chains, was 12.5 ± 4.9-fold higher in the vena cava compared to aorta, while SMA was 4.9 ± 1.2-fold higher in the aorta than vena cava. Thus, the SMB isoform is the predominant form expressed in rat veins, providing one possible mechanism for the faster response of veins to vasoconstrictors

Syntactic Markovian Bisimulation for Chemical Reaction Networks

In chemical reaction networks (CRNs) with stochastic semantics based on continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs), the typically large populations of species cause combinatorially large state spaces. This makes the analysis very difficult in practice and represents the major bottleneck for the applicability of minimization techniques based, for instance, on lumpability. In this paper we present syntactic Markovian bisimulation (SMB), a notion of bisimulation developed in the Larsen-Skou style of probabilistic bisimulation, defined over the structure of a CRN rather than over its underlying CTMC. SMB identifies a lumpable partition of the CTMC state space a priori, in the sense that it is an equivalence relation over species implying that two CTMC states are lumpable when they are invariant with respect to the total population of species within the same equivalence class. We develop an efficient partition-refinement algorithm which computes the largest SMB of a CRN in polynomial time in the number of species and reactions. We also provide an algorithm for obtaining a quotient network from an SMB that induces the lumped CTMC directly, thus avoiding the generation of the state space of the original CRN altogether. In practice, we show that SMB allows significant reductions in a number of models from the literature. Finally, we study SMB with respect to the deterministic semantics of CRNs based on ordinary differential equations (ODEs), where each equation gives the time-course evolution of the concentration of a species. SMB implies forward CRN bisimulation, a recently developed behavioral notion of equivalence for the ODE semantics, in an analogous sense: it yields a smaller ODE system that keeps track of the sums of the solutions for equivalent species.Comment: Extended version (with proofs), of the corresponding paper published at KimFest 2017 (http://kimfest.cs.aau.dk/

Dynamical Bonding Driving Mixed Valency in a Metal Boride

Samarium hexaboride is an anomaly, having many exotic and seemingly mutually incompatible properties. It was proposed to be a mixed-valent semiconductor, and later - a topological Kondo insulator, and yet has a Fermi surface despite being an insulator. We propose a new and unified understanding of SmB$_6$ centered on the hitherto unrecognized dynamical bonding effect: the coexistence of two Sm-B bonding modes within SmB$_6$, corresponding to different oxidation states of the Sm. The mixed valency arises in SmB$_6$ from thermal population of these distinct minima enabled by motion of B. Our model simultaneously explains the thermal valence fluctuations, appearance of magnetic Fermi surface, excess entropy at low temperatures, pressure-induced phase transitions, and related features in Raman spectra and their unexpected dependence on temperature and boron isotope