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Abstract: Stimulation of ionotropic glutamate receptors are implicated in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Recently this has been demonstrated in the expression of cell cycle proteins in vulnerable neurons in Alzheimer's disease. Thus, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the expression of cell cycle proteins in cerebellar granule cells after stimulation of AMPA/KA receptors and likewise to study the neuroprotective effects of CDK inhibitors. Our results demonstrated that after a treatment with CDK inhibitors, a significant decrease in apoptotic nuclei induced by kainic acid was found in the presence of flavopiridol and 3‐ATA. We concluded that CDK activation is involved, at least, in part, in the pro‐apoptotic effects of kainic acid.

The quality factor of a metric, defined by Bel as a measure of its approximation to a solution of Einstein's equations, is tested with several well-known approximate solutions. Whereas for some metrics such as the linearized plane wave solutions the quality factor leads to some intriguing results, for others such as the Newtonian and post-Newtonian approximations for the one and two body systems, and also the linearized perturbations of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metrics, it seems to lead to very reasonable results.