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    Note on the atomic Correlation Energy

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    In the introductory section, we compare the total, kinetic, nuclear-electron, Coulomb, exchange, and correlation energies of ground-state atoms. From the analyses of the data, one can conclude that the Hartree-Fock (HF) model is notably good and might require only a small perturbation to become essentially an “accurate” model. For this reason and considering past literature, we present a semiempirical extension of the HF model. We start with a calibration of three independent models, each one with an effective Hamiltonian, which introduces a small perturbation on the kinetic, the nuclear-electron, or the Coulomb HF operators. The perturbations are expressed as very simple functions of products of orbital probability density. The three perturbations yield very equivalent results and the computed ground-state energies are reasonably near to the accurate nonrelativistic energies recently provided by E. Davidson and his collaborators for the 2–18 electron systems and the estimates by Clementi and his collaborators for the 19–54 electron systems. The first ionization potentials from He to Cs, the second ionization potentials from Li to Zn, and excitation energies for npn, 3dn, and 4s13dn configurations are used as additional verification and validation. The above three effective Hamiltonians are then combined in order to redistribute the correlation energy correction in a way which exactly satisfies the virial theorem and maintains the HF energy ratios between kinetic, nuclear-electron, and electron-electron interaction energies; the resulting effective Hamiltonian, named “virial constrained,” yields good quality data comparable to those obtained from the three independent effective operators. Concerning excitation energies, these effective Hamiltonians yield values only in modest agreement with experimental data, even if definitively superior to HF computations. To further improve the computed excitation energies, we applied an empirical scaling in the vector coupling coefficient; this correction yields very reasonable excitations for all the configurations that we have considered. We conclude that the use of effective potentials to introduce small perturbations density-dependent onto the HF model constitutes a broad class of practical and reliable semiempirical solutions to atomic many-electron problems, can provide an alternative to popular proposals from density functional theory, and should prepare the ground for “generalized HF models.

    Nitric Oxide in Myogenesis and Therapeutic Muscle Repair

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    Nitric oxide is a short-lived intracellular and intercellular messenger. The first realisation that nitric oxide is important in physiology occurred in 1987 when its identity with the endothelium-derived relaxing factor was discovered. Subsequent studies have shown that nitric oxide possesses a number of physiological functions that are essential not only to vascular homeostasis but also to neurotransmission, such as in the processes of learning and memory and endocrine gland regulation, as well as inflammation and immune responses. The discovery in 1995 that a splice variant of the neuronal nitric oxide synthase is localised at the sarcolemma via the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex and of its displacement in Duchenne muscular dystrophy has stimulated a host of studies exploring the role of nitric oxide in skeletal muscle physiology. Recently, nitric oxide has emerged as a relevant messenger also of myogenesis that it regulates at several key steps, especially when the process is stimulated for muscle repair following acute and chronic muscle injuries. Here, we will review briefly the mechanisms and functions of nitric oxide in skeletal muscle and discuss its role in myogenesis, with specific attention to the promising nitric oxide-based approaches now being explored at the pre-clinical and clinical level for the therapy of muscular dystrophy
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