Fertile grounds for a lively debate

Sperm chromatin: fertile grounds for proteomic discovery of clinical tools.

Sperm are remarkably complex cells with a singularly important mission: to deliver paternal DNA and its associated factors to the oocyte to start a new life. The integrity of sperm DNA is a keystone of reproductive success, which includes fertilization and embryonic development. In addition, the significance in these processes of proteins that associate with sperm DNA is increasingly being appr...

New Data , New Ideas , and Lively Debate about Mercury

A hundred scientists attended a conference about this important little planet. It was held at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, and was sponsored by the Museum, the Lunar and Planetary Institute, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mariner 10, the only space mission to Mercury, flew by it three times in 1974 and 1975. Reworking the data in light of a better understanding...

Fertile Grounds of Inquiry: Environmental Effects on Human Reproduction

Freshwater wetlands: fertile grounds for the invasive Phragmites australis in a climate change context

Climate change will likely affect flooding regimes, which have a large influence on the functioning of freshwater riparian wetlands. Low water levels predicted for several fluvial systems make wetlands especially vulnerable to the spread of invaders, such as the common reed (Phragmites australis), one of the most invasive species in North America. We developed a model to map the distribution of...

Lively voice: a new model for speaking synthetic characters

Speech is one component of most synthetic characters. It is often assumed that the most important objective for such characters is that they should be ‘life-like’, ‘natural’ and ‘believable’. This paper suggests that this is inappropriate and that a better quality is one which we call liveliness. This concept and many of the ideas behind it derive from the theatre. One of the objectives of this...