...........................................................................................................................................x Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................... xi 1. Introduction .....................................................................................................

BACKGROUNDS The harvesting of great saphenous veins for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients may result in significant complications, including lymphorrhagia, lymphoedema, incision infection, wound dehiscence, and skin flap necrosis. We investigated the function of a self-designed bilayered negative pressure wound therapy (b-NPWT) for reducing the above-mentioned complications using a c...

Methyl iodide (MeI) is a promising alternative to methyl bromide in soil fumigation. The pest-control efficacy and ground water contamination risks of MeI as a fumigant are highly related to its gas-phase distribution and leaching after soil application. In this study, the distribution and leaching of MeI in soil following shank injection and subsurface drip application were investigated. Methy...

Shank proteins are a new family of scaffold proteins interacting with various membrane and cytoplasmic proteins. Shank contains multiple protein-protein interaction sites, including ankyrin repeats, an SH3 domain, a PDZ domain, a long proline-rich region and an SAM domain. The PDZ domain of Shank binds to the C-terminus of guanylate kinase-associated protein (GKAP). The PDZ domain of Shank1 fro...

The PDZ domain of the shank protein interacts with numerous cell membrane receptors and cytosolic proteins via the loosely defined binding motif X-(Ser/Thr)-X-Φ-COOH (Φ represents hydrophobic residues) at the carboxyl terminus of its target protein. This enables shank to serve as a membrane-associated scaffold for the assembly of signaling complexes. As the list of proteins that bind to the sha...

Advanced prosthetic foot designs often incorporate mechanisms that adapt to terrain changes in real-time to improve mobility. Early identification of terrain (e.g., cross-slopes) is critical to appropriate adaptation. This study suggests that a simple classifier based on linear discriminant analysis can accurately predict a cross-slope encountered (0°, -15°, 15°) using measurements from the res...

Sexual reproduction in higher plants relies upon the polarised growth of pollen tubes. The growth-site at the pollen tube tip responds to signalling processes to successfully steer the tube to an ovule. Essential features of pollen tube growth are polarisation of ion fluxes, intracellular ion gradients, and oscillating dynamics. However, little is known about how these features are generated an...

We report the genetic relationship between growth and bone quality traits in a random mating broiler control population. Traits studied were growth rates from week 0 to 4 [body weight gain (BWG) 0 to 4], from week 0 to 6 (BWG 0 to 6), and residual feed intake (RFI) from week 5 to 6 (RFI 5 to 6). Bone quality traits were obtained at 6 weeks of age. These traits were shank weight (SW), shank leng...