The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of prolonged passive smoking (lasting 3 weeks) on plasma catecholamine levels and reactivity of isolated rabbit arteries. Plasma noradrenaline, adrenaline and dopamine levels were determined radioenzymatically. Isolated rings of the thoracic aorta and carotid artery were suspended in organ chambers and connected to a force transducer for the recording of isometric tension. Plasma noradrenaline levels were found to be significantly elevated in rabbits subjected to passive smoking for 3 weeks. Plasma adrenaline and dopamine levels were not changed. Transmural nerve stimulation of arterial rings evoked frequency-dependent contractions. Prolonged passive smoking did not affect neurogenic contractions of the arteries tested. On the other hand, endothelium-dependent relaxations of phenylephrine-precontracted arteries were significantly impaired. Furthermore, hypertrophy of the left ventricle was observed. In conclusion, passive smoking impairs endothelium-dependent relaxations but not neurogenic contractions of systemic arteries. The impaired relaxations of arteries may be, at least in part, mediated through the degradation of released nitric oxide by superoxide anions derived from cigarette smoke., J. Török, A. Gvozdjáková, J. Kucharská, I. Balažovjech, S. Kyselá, F. Šimko, J. Gvozdják., and Obsahuje bibliografii
In this paper, the problem of passivity analysis for a class of uncertain stochastic neural networks with mixed delays and impulsive control is investigated. The mixed delays include constant delay in the leakage term, discrete and distributed delays. The discrete delays are assumed to be time-varying and belong to a given interval, which means that the lower and upper bounds of interval time-varying delays are available. By using Lyapunov stability theory, stochastic analysis, linear matrix inequality techniques and introducing some free-weighting matrices, several novel sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee the passivity of the suggested system in the sense of mean square under two cases: with known or unknown parameters. It is believed that these results are significant and useful for the design and applications of impulsive stochastic neural networks. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the theoretical results.
A cascade scheme for passivity-based stabilization of a wide class of nonlinear systems is proposed in this paper. Starting from the definitions and basic concepts of passivity-based stabilization via feedback (which are applicable to minimum phase nonlinear systems expressed in their normal forms) a cascade stabilization scheme is proposed for minimum and non-minimum phase nonlinear systems where the constraint of stable zero dynamics imposed by previous stabilization approaches is abandoned. Simulation results of the proposed algorithm are presented to demonstrate its performance.
Using a large sample of museum and newly collected specimens of the cryptic butterfly species Leptidea sinapis and L. reali, identified/confirmed based on genital characters, the patterns in their geographical distributions, historical changes in range and briefly also their habitat associations in Poland, were investigated. Leptidea sinapis occurs mainly in the lowland and upland parts of the country and is rarer than L. reali, which is widespread throughout Poland, including the mountains. In the first half of the 20th century, the range of L. sinapis included the whole of Poland, whereas currently it is confined to eastern and southern regions. Historical records of the distribution of L. reali are concentrated in southern and central Poland. Currently it is recorded from localities throughout Poland. Leptidea reali is recorded most frequently in meadows and shows no clear preference for a particular level of humidity, while L. sinapis is found mainly in woodland and xerothermic habitats. The two species are syntopic within the present range of L. sinapis, which is now a declining and local species, whereas L. reali is now common and widespread. and Konrad Sachanowicz, Agnieszka Wower, Jaroslaw Buszko.