Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a low molecular weight (approximately 319 Da) neurotoxin found in a number of animal species, including pufferfish. Protection from toxin tainted food stuffs requires rapid, sensitive, and specific diagnostic tests. An emerging technique for the detection of both proteins and nucleic acids is Fluidic Force Discrimination (FFD) assays. This simple and rapid method typically...

Fox-Fordyce disease (FFD) is a rare inflammatory disorder that affects the apocrine sweat glands. Clinically, lesions are equidistant, smooth, uniform, firm, folliculocentric papules, which can range in color from flesh-colored to red-brown to slightly yellow. Whereas the axillae are most commonly involved, FFD also can involve the anogenital and periareolar areas, lips, umbilicus, sternum, per...

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between frequency of family dinners (FFD) and selected problem behaviors for adolescents after adjusting for family connectedness, parental awareness, other family activities, and other potentially confounding factors. METHODS Data are drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997. The primary variable of interest is self-reported FFD in a typ...

Nanoscale bowtie aperture antennas can be used to focus light well below the diffraction limit with extremely high transmission efficiencies. This paper studies the spectral dependence of the transmission through nanoscale bowtie apertures defined in a silver film. A realistic bowtie aperture is numerically modeled using the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method. Results show that the tra...

STUDY DESIGN We performed a multicentric, randomized, comparative clinical trial. Eligible patients were randomly assigned to receive 150 mg of Tolperisone thrice daily or 8 mg of Thiocolchicoside twice daily for 7 days. PURPOSE To assess the efficacy and tolerability of Tolperisone in comparison with Thiocolchicoside in the treatment of acute low back pain with spasm of spinal muscles. OVE...

Forecasting ecological responses to climate change represents a challenge to the ecological community because models are often site-specific and climate data are lacking at appropriate spatial and temporal resolutions. We use a case study approach to demonstrate uncertainties in ecological predictions related to the driving climatic input data. We use observational records, derived observationa...

Climate change is expected to have a significant effect on the first flowering date (FFD) in plants flowering in early spring. Prunus yedoensis Matsum is a good model plant for analyzing this effect. In this study, we used a degree day model to analyze the effect of air temperatures on the FFDs of P. yedoensis at Wuhan University from a long-time series from 1951 to 2012. First, the starting da...