BACKGROUND Hope has therapeutic value because it enables people to cope with uncertainty about their future health. Indeed, hope, or therapeutic optimism (TO), is seen as an essential aspect of the provision and experience of medical care. The role of TO in clinical research has been briefly discussed, but the concept, and whether it can be transferred from care to research and from patients to...

Nitrogen (N) deposition (NDEP ) drives forest carbon (C) sequestration but the size of this effect is still uncertain. In the field, an estimate of these effects can be obtained by applying mineral N fertilizers over the soil or forest canopy. A 15 N label in the fertilizer can be then used to trace the movement of the added N into ecosystem pools and deduce a C effect. However, N recycling via...

We have obtained gram quantities of clean, viable eggs of Meloidogyne incognita by a method which combined treatment with hypochlorite and differential centrifugation. Chili pepper plants (Capsicum frutescens L.) infected with M. incognita were dug at harvest from a naturally infested field. Egg sacs from roots of 50 plants were obtained by kneading the washed roots in water and recovering the ...

C linical decision making in elderly patients is becoming increasingly challenging as our society ages. 1 Edentulism was once considered normal for anyone entering the seventh decade of life, as was so eloquently declaimed by Jaques in Shakespeare's As You Like It : " sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. " 2 Today, however, preservation of the natural dentition has been so succes...

"Ethnopharmacological" use of roots of Boerhaavia diffusa (B. diffusa) in the treatment of epilepsy in Nigerian folk medicine and reports showing the presence of a calcium channel antagonistic compound "liriodendrin" in its roots, led us to undertake the present study. The study was designed to investigate the methanolic root extract of B. diffusa and its different fractions including liriodend...

Lead (Pb), a ubiquitous but highly toxic heavy metal (HM), is harmful to human health through various pathways including by ingestion of contaminated vegetables. Radish is a worldwide root vegetable crop with significant health and nutritional benefits. However, little is known about Pb translocation and distribution within radish plants after its uptake by the roots. In this study, Pb stress w...

Cadmium (Cd) in rice is a major source of Cd intake for people on a staple rice diet. The mechanisms underlying Cd accumulation in rice plant are still poorly understood. Here, we characterized the physiology and genetics of Cd transport in a high-Cd-accumulating cultivar (Jarjan) of rice (Oryza sativa). Jarjan showed 5- to 34-fold higher Cd accumulation in the shoots and grains than the cultiv...