Search results

Hearing function lost by degeneration of inner ear spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) in the auditory nervous system could potentially be compensated by cellular replacement using suitable donor cells. Donor cell-derived neuronal development with functional synaptic formation with auditory neurons of the cochlear nucleus (CN) in the brainstem is a prerequisite for a successful transplantation. Here a

We study quantization noise modeling in a low-delay vector predictive transform coder for speech signals. The coder uses a Kalman filter with a backward estimated LPC model of the speech signal combined with an additive noise model of the quantization noise. Computer simulations indicate that modeling of the quantization noise can improve the quality of the decoded speech signal. This is especiall

BACKGROUND: The red blood cells (RBCs) of a patient, known to have the probable DC(W)(e)/D-- phenotype, typed as D(W)- and Rh32- but were unexpectedly agglutinated by an anti-D(W)/Rh32 serum. The reactivity suggested that the RBCs carried a novel antigen and that the molecular background of this DC(W)(e)/D-- phenotype might be different from those reported. The purpose of this study was to determi

Acanthus greuterianus from the Greek provinces of Kozanis, Florinis, Grevenon and Pellis is described as a species new to science, illustrated and compared with other members of the genus in Greece and SW Asia.

Sexual dimorphism is widespread in lizards, with the most consistently dimorphic traits being head size (males have larger heads) and trunk length (the distance between the front and hind legs is greater in females). These dimorphisms have generally been interpreted as follows: (1) large heads in males evolve through male-male rivalry (sexual selection); and (2) larger interlimb lengths in females

Optimizing pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic indices of antibiotics to obtain clinical and microbiological efficacy is essential, but dosing regimens must also be tailored to minimize the risk for emergence of resistance. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether certain concentrations of benzylpenicillin are critical for the selection of resistant subpopulations. A mixed culture of St

We synthesise traditional unstructured food webs, allometric body size scaling, trait-based modelling, and physiologically structured modelling to provide a novel and ecologically relevant tool for size-structured food webs. The framework allows food web models to include ontogenetic growth and life-history omnivory at the individual level by resolving the population structure of each species as a

The use of liquid membrane-based extractions is increasingly seen as offering an alternative to conventional sample preparation procedures in analysis of chemical species in both environmental and biological media. In this article, emphasis is placed on the attractiveness of liquid membrane-based extraction techniques to a variety of analytical applications such as speciation of metal ions in biol

Seven diterpenoids, isolated due to their ability to inhibit spore germination in the plant pathogenic fungus Magnaporthe grisea, were obtained from cultures of the basidiomycete Coprinus heptenlerus. The structures of the compounds, named heptemerones A-G, were determined with spectroscopic techniques. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We measure the amplitude of the elastomechanical displacement at a fine grid of points on a free plate having the shape of a Sinai stadium. The obtained displacement field formally corresponds to a wave function in a quantum system. While the distribution of the squared amplitudes agrees with the prediction of random matrix theory (RMT), there is a strong deviation of the spatial correlator from t

Seed bank is a plant life history strategy against the unpredictability of the biotic and the abiotic environment. We simulated competition between a seed banking and a non-banking morph of an annual plant. A constant fraction of the banker morph seeds was allocated to the seed bank, where they had a constant mortality and germination rate. All surviving seeds of the non-banker morph germinated in