1. Muscle and electric organ acetylcholine receptors (AChR's) were expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes and differential effects of noncompetitive blockers on each type of receptor were analyzed using a two-electrode voltage clamp. 2. The positively charged channel blockers, phencyclidine (PCP) and tetracaine, displayed a much lower potency on muscle receptor than on the electric organ receptor. The IC50 for both blockers at the electrocyte receptor was close to 1 microM at -60 mV and even lower at more hyperpolarized voltages. In contrast, with muscle receptor IC50's were 20 to 40 microM at -60 or -80 mV. 3. Eupalmerin acetate, an uncharged noncompetitive inhibitor that displaces [3H]PCP from its high-affinity binding site, inhibited both receptors with a similar potency: IC50 of 4.9 and 6.4 microM for electrocyte and muscle receptors, respectively. However, eupalmerin acetate affected the desensitization process in each receptor type differently and triggered an unusual biphasic response in the muscle receptor. 4. These results are discussed with respect to differences in the amino acid sequences of the M2 regions of the two receptors. 5. A third type of noncompetitive inhibitor, Mg2+, was also examined and it inhibited both receptors with a similar potency (IC50, 0.5-1.0 mM). However, Mg2+ appeared to act at sites other than the PCP site.

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It has been shown recently that robot inverse kinematic transformation can be easily carried out by using a nonlinear dynamic system called “joint space command generator.” In this paper, an adaptive version of the command generator is proposed. The main feature of this command generator is that the inverse Jacobian is estimated on‐line (using least‐squares algorithms), thus the explicit form of the inverse Jacobian is not required. Since the Jacobian is dependent on the end‐effector orientation representation, the adaptive command generator is then inherently flexible in accommodating any choice of orientation representation during Cartesian trajectory planning. The only knowledge required is the forward kinematics of the robot. Thus inverse kinematic transformation of robot trajectories can be carried out with a minimum amount of kinematic information. Extensive simulation studies of the proposed scheme have been carried out which showed that the adaptive command generator is computationally feasible and highly accurate. Different orientation representations have been tested with equal success. Some typical simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the adaptive command generator.

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