The melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) has important roles in regulating food intake, energy balance, and body weight in mammals. In pigs and cattle, MC4R mutations have been identified as genetic markers for growth and traits. Compared with abundant research conducted on other livestock species, little is known about mutations of the ovine MC4R gene. We investigated the affect of MC4R polymorphism...

We implement inflation within a realistic supersymmetric SO(10) model in which the doublet-triplet splitting is realized through the Dimopoulos-Wilczek mechanism, the MSSM μ problem is resolved, and higgsino mediated dimension five nucleon decay is heavily suppressed. The cosmologically unwanted topological defects are inflated away, and from δT/T , the B−L breaking scale is estimated to be of ...

In the minimal supersymmetric standard model, the three gauge couplings appear to unify at a mass scale near 2 × 1016 GeV. We investigate the possibility that intermediate scale particle thresholds modify the running couplings so as to increase the unification scale. By requiring consistency of this scenario, we derive some constraints on the particle content and locations of the intermediate t...

Abstract. The apparent unification of gauge couplings around 1016 GeV is one of the strong arguments in favor of Supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model (SM). In this contribution two new analyses of the gauge coupling running, the latter using in contrast to previous studies not data at the Z peak but at LEP2 energies, are presented. The generic SUSY scale in the more precise novel app...

OBJECTIVE We evaluate the number of surgical two-stage procedures after FSA during breast-conserving therapy (clinical false negative result of FSA) and investigate the influence of microcalcifications, small tumour diameter, neoadjuvant therapy and preoperative biopsy on the clinical false negative rate of FSA. SUBJECTS We retrospectively examined 1016 patients after intraoperative FSA durin...

We investigate the effects of aerosol optical depth (AOD), single scattering albedo (SSA), aerosol peak height (APH), measurement geometry (solar zenith angle (SZA) and viewing zenith angle (VZA)), relative azimuth angle, and surface reflectance on the accuracy of NO2 slant column density using synthetic radiance. High AOD and APH are found to decrease NO2 SCD retrieval accuracy. In moderately ...

The recent conjecture of possible equivalence between the string scale MS and the minimal supersymmetric standard model unification scale MU ≈ 2.5× 1016 GeV is considered in the context of string models. This conjecture suggests that the observable gauge group just below the string scale should be SU(3)C× SU(2)L×U(1)Y and the spectrum of the observable sector should consist solely of the MSSM s...

The possibilities and limitations of hardening silicon semiconductor devices to the high neutron and gamma radiation levels (greater than 1016 neutrons/cm 2 (i Mev eq.) and greater than 108 rads (Si) required for the NERVA nuclear engine development are discussed. A comparison is made of the high dose neutron and garmna hardening potential of bipolar, metal insulator semiconductor (MIS), and ju...

Here, we describe the improved antiarthritic properties of a nitric oxide-releasing derivative of prednisolone that includes a sparing of the effects on bone. Glucocorticoids are widely used in the treatment of chronic inflammatory pathologies, but their use is often accompanied by side effects, including osteoporosis. Recently, a new steroid able to release low levels of nitric oxide showed po...