Mechanical responses of the isolated cervix of the day-22 pregnant rat to field stimulation.

Field stimulation of isolated, spirally-cut cervix from day-22 pregnant rats produced contractions which could be inhibited by tetrodotoxin or hyoscine and potentiated by propranolol. The rat cervix would appear to receive both cholinergic and noradrenergic innervations whose transmitters activate muscarinic cholinoceptors and beta-adrenoceptors respectively.     

Carbon loss from an unprecedented Arctic tundra wildfire

Arctic tundra soils store large amounts of carbon (C) in organic soil layers hundreds to thousands of years old that insulate, and in some cases maintain, permafrost soils. Fire has been largely absent from most of this biome since the early Holocene epoch, but its frequency and extent are increasing, probably in response to climate warming. The effect of fires on the C balance of tundra landscapes, however, remains largely unknown. The Anaktuvuk River fire in 2007 burned 1,039 square kilometres of Alaska's Arctic slope, making it the largest fire on record for the tundra biome and doubling the cumulative area burned since 1950 (ref. 5). Here we report that tundra ecosystems lost 2,016?±?435?g?C?m(-2) in the fire, an amount two orders of magnitude larger than annual net C exchange in undisturbed tundra. Sixty per cent of this C loss was from soil organic matter, and radiocarbon dating of residual soil layers revealed that the maximum age of soil C lost was 50 years. Scaled to the entire burned area, the fire released approximately 2.1?teragrams of C to the atmosphere, an amount similar in magnitude to the annual net C sink for the entire Arctic tundra biome averaged over the last quarter of the twentieth century. The magnitude of ecosystem C lost by fire, relative to both ecosystem and biome-scale fluxes, demonstrates that a climate-driven increase in tundra fire disturbance may represent a positive feedback, potentially offsetting Arctic greening and influencing the net C balance of the tundra biome.     

Phase transitions in the assembly of multivalent signalling proteins

Cells are organized on length scales ranging from ?ngstr?m to micrometres. However, the mechanisms by which ?ngstr?m-scale molecular properties are translated to micrometre-scale macroscopic properties are not well understood. Here we show that interactions between diverse synthetic, multivalent macromolecules (including multi-domain proteins and RNA) produce sharp liquid-liquid-demixing phase separations, generating micrometre-sized liquid droplets in aqueous solution. This macroscopic transition corresponds to a molecular transition between small complexes and large, dynamic supramolecular polymers. The concentrations needed for phase transition are directly related to the valency of the interacting species. In the case of the actin-regulatory protein called neural Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome protein (N-WASP) interacting with its established biological partners NCK and phosphorylated nephrin, the phase transition corresponds to a sharp increase in activity towards an actin nucleation factor, the Arp2/3 complex. The transition is governed by the degree of phosphorylation of nephrin, explaining how this property of the system can be controlled to regulatory effect by kinases. The widespread occurrence of multivalent systems suggests that phase transitions may be used to spatially organize and biochemically regulate information throughout biology.     

企业研发团队知识共享影响因素的实证研究

基于知识共享理论和研发团队知识共享特征和影响因素,提出企业研发团队知识共享影响因素概念模型及理论假设,并运用调查问卷和结构方程模型对研发团队知识共享影响因素进行实证研究.结果表明,知识提供者、接受者、共享手段和共享双方关系4因素对研发团队知识共享水平有显著影响,而知识共享文化对知识共享水平影响作用不显著.提出了提高企业研发团队知识共享水平的对策与建议.     

基于Simulink的动态电路分析

介绍了Simulink应用于动态电路仿真分析的方法,以一个实例详述了图形输入式建模、参数设置、仿真配置、Matlab绘图分析等步骤．指出了联合运用To File、To Workspace和Scope模块,实现不同参数情况下仿真分析的优越性．     

数学分析在高等代数中的某些应用

高等代数中的某些问题,若用代数学的方法解决起来可能相当繁琐,但若结合数学分析的方法,则问题往往会迎刃而解．该文使用数学分析中的函数连续性和无穷区间的广义积分知识解决某些矩阵问题和二次型问题．