Vitamin D, upon its discovery one century ago, was classified as a vitamin. This classification still greatly affects our perception about its biological role. 1,25(OH)2D (now known as the D hormone) is a pleiotropic steroid hormone that has multiple biologic effects. It is integral to the regulation of calcium homeostasis and bone turnover as well as having anti-proliferative, pro-differentiat...

A new circadian clock mutant has been isolated in Neurospora crassa. This new mutation, called period6 (pd -6 ) , has two features novel to known clock mutations. First, the mutation is temperature sensitive. At restrictive temperatures (above 21") the mutation shortens circadian period length from a wild-type value of 21.5 hr to 18 hr. At permissive temperatures (below 21") the mutant has a 20...

Increasing cost and scarcity of maize has stimulated the use of alternative feed sources (AFS) in the diets of cattle. In this study, we investigated the effects of partial or total replacement of maize on nutrient digestibility, growth performance, blood metabolites, and economics in Limousin crossbred feedlot cattle. Forty-five Limousin×Luxi crossbred bulls were randomly assigned to the three...

Title of dissertation: REUSE DISTANCE ANALYSIS FOR LARGE-SCALE CHIP MULTIPROCESSORS Meng-Ju Wu, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Dissertation directed by: Professor Donald Yeung Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Multicore Reuse Distance (RD) analysis is a powerful tool that can potentially provide a parallel program’s detailed memory behavior. Concurrent Reuse Distance (CRD) and Priva...

Seven members of the Mix family of paired-type homeoproteins regulate mesoderm/endoderm differentiation in amphibians. In mammals, the MIXL1 (Mix. 1 homeobox [Xenopus laevis]-like gene 1) gene is the sole representative of this family. Unlike the amphibian Mix genes that encode an open reading frame of >300 amino acids, mammalian MIXL1 encodes a smaller protein (approximately 230aa). However, m...

Surgery-induced acute postoperative pain may lead to prolonged convalescence. The present study was designed to investigate the effects of intraoperative dexmedetomidine on postoperative analgesia following abdominal colectomy surgeries. Eighty patients scheduled for abdominal colectomy surgery under general anesthesia were divided into 2 groups, which were maintained using propofol/remifentani...

In this paper the nature of root-to-shoot signals in plants growing in drying soil is considered in the context of their commercial exploitation in tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum L.) and other crops. Recent findings are presented on the effects of partial root drying (PRD) in the production of a glasshouse tomato crop. These findings show how an understanding of both root-to-shoot signalling m...

Introduction Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a class of flame retardants that were added to thousands of consumer products, such as thermoplastics, electronic equipment, and textiles (Hale et al., 2001).Research has revealed that municipal sewage could be a significant source of PBDEs contamination that is ubiquitous throughout the environment (North, 2004; Song et al., 2006). The Pe...

We developed a system to encode digital information in DNA polymers based on the partial restriction digest (PRD). Our encoding method relies on the length of the fragments obtained by the PRD rather than the actual content of the nucleotide sequence, thus eliminating the need for expensive sequencing machinery. In this letter, we report on the encoding of 12 bits of data in a DNA fragment of 1...

Plakin proteins form critical connections between cell junctions and the cytoskeleton; their disruption within epithelial and cardiac muscle cells cause skin-blistering diseases and cardiomyopathies. Envoplakin has a single plakin repeat domain (PRD) which recognizes intermediate filaments through an unresolved mechanism. Herein we report the crystal structure of envoplakin's complete PRD fold,...