Bradykinin B1 receptor antagonist protects against cold stress-induced erectile dysfunction in rats.

Background: Erectile dysfunction (ED) demonstrates seasonal variation with higher rates in winter, and we hypothesize that endothelial damage in erectile tissue caused by bradykinin receptor B1 (B1R) might be detrimental to this change.

Aim: To find out direct correlations between cold stress and ED, through which to further investigate the functional roles of B1R in erectile tissue and to elucidate the therapeutic roles of the B1R antagonist in a cold stress-induced ED rat model.

Methods: Cold stress rat models are established through long-term intermittent exposure to low temperature.

Monte Carlo study of duality and the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transitions of the two-dimensional q-state clock model in flow representations.

The two-dimensional q-state clock model for q≥5 undergoes two Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transitions as temperature decreases. Here we report an extensive worm-type simulation of the square-lattice clock model for q=5-9 in a pair of flow representations, from high- and low-temperature expansions, respectively. By finite-size scaling analysis of susceptibilitylike quantities, we determine the critical points with a precision improving over the existing results.

Moderate-Intensity Physical Exercise Affects the Exercise Performance and Gut Microbiota of Mice.

The gut microbiota is closely associated with the health of the host and is affected by many factors, including exercise. In this study, we compared the gut microbial changes and exercise performance over a 14-week period in mice that performed exercise (NE; n = 15) and mice that did not perform exercise (NC; n = 15). Mice were subjected to stool collection and exercise tests one week prior to adaptive training and after 2, 6, 10, and 14 weeks of exercise.

Percolation of the two-dimensional XY model in the flow representation.

We simulate the two-dimensional XY model in the flow representation by a worm-type algorithm, up to linear system size L=4096, and study the geometric properties of the flow configurations. As the coupling strength K increases, we observe that the system undergoes a percolation transition K_{perc} from a disordered phase consisting of small clusters into an ordered phase containing a giant percolating cluster. Namely, in the low-temperature phase, there exhibits a long-ranged order regarding the flow connectivity, in contrast to the quasi-long-range order associated with spin properties.

Correlated Skin Surface and Tumor Motion Modeling for Treatment Planning in Robotic Radiosurgery.

In robotic radiosurgery, motion tracking is crucial for accurate treatment planning of tumor inside the thoracic or abdominal cavity. Currently, motion characterization for respiration tracking mainly focuses on markers that are placed on the surface of human chest. Nevertheless, limited markers are not capable of expressing the comprehensive motion feature of the human chest and abdomen.

Geometric properties of the Fortuin-Kasteleyn representation of the Ising model.

We present a Monte Carlo study of the geometric properties of Fortuin-Kasteleyn (FK) clusters of the Ising model on square [two-dimensional (2D)] and simple-cubic [three-dimensional (3D)] lattices. The wrapping probability, a dimensionless quantity characterizing the topology of the FK clusters on a torus, is found to suffer from smaller finite-size corrections than the well-known Binder ratio and yields a high-precision critical coupling as K_{c}(3D)=0.221654631(8).

Critical percolation clusters in seven dimensions and on a complete graph.

We study critical bond percolation on a seven-dimensional hypercubic lattice with periodic boundary conditions (7D) and on the complete graph (CG) of finite volume (number of vertices) V. We numerically confirm that for both cases, the critical number density n(s,V) of clusters of size s obeys a scaling form n(s,V)∼s^{-τ}n[over ̃](s/V^{d_{f}^{*}}) with identical volume fractal dimension d_{f}^{*}=2/3 and exponent τ=1+1/d_{f}^{*}=5/2. We then classify occupied bonds into bridge bonds, which includes branch and junction bonds, and nonbridge bonds; a bridge bond is a branch bond if and only if its deletion produces at least one tree.

Radial smoothing for improving laser-beam irradiance uniformity.

Laser-beam irradiation uniformity is a key issue in inertial confinement fusion research. We propose a radial smoothing (RS) approach in which the speckle in a focal plane is smoothed by the radial redistribution through fast focal zooming. This focal zooming is generated by introducing the periodical spherical wavefront modulation to the laser beam, based on an optical Kerr medium and its pump laser with the temporal profile of a Gaussian pulse train.