iran as an arid and semi-arid country always faces with the problem of soil water shortage due to insufficient precipitation and, especially in light soils, low water holding capacity and high deep percolation. therefore, researchers have tried to use new methods for increasing this capacity to keep the water in the root zone and increase the amount of plant available water and water use effici...

With age, the growth plate undergoes senescent changes that cause linear bone growth to slow and finally cease. Based on previous indirect evidence, we hypothesized that this senescent decline occurs because growth plate stem-like cells, located in the resting zone, have a finite proliferative capacity that is gradually depleted. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that the proliferation ...

We have explored the morphological basis of the synaptic depression that underlies short-term habituation of the gill-withdrawal reflex in Aplysia by examining the fine structure of the presynaptic terminals of identified sensory neurons--a critical site of plasticity for the biochemical and biophysical changes that underlie this elementary form of learning. The structure of sensory neuron syna...

The serum transferrin concentration is usually overestimated when assessed as total iron binding capacity, because iron binds not only to transferrin but also, non-specifically, to other serum proteins [l-3]. Transferrin concentration can be measured directly by immunochemical methods including: radial immunodiffusion [ 1,2,4-61, immunonephelometric assay [6,7] and immunoturbidimetric assay [8,...

RATIONALE Previous investigations have identified several potential predictors of outcomes from lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS). A concern regarding these studies has been their small sample size, which may limit generalizability. We therefore sought to examine radiographic and physiologic predictors of surgical outcomes in a large, multicenter clinical investigation, the National Emphysem...

Two neural network models, called clustering-RBFNN and clustering-BPNN models, are created for estimating the work zone capacity in a freeway work zone as a function of seventeen different factors through judicious integration of the subtractive clustering approach with the radial basis function (RBF) and the backpropagation (BP) neural network models. The clustering-RBFNN model has the attract...

Neural circuits transmit information through synapses, and the efficiency of synaptic transmission is closely related to the density of presynaptic active zones, where synaptic vesicles are released. The goal of this review is to highlight recent insights into the molecular mechanisms that control the number of active zones per presynaptic terminal (active zone density) during developmental and...

background and aims. cigarette smoke can induce oral cancer by its free radicals and oxidative damage. salivary antioxidants system is believed to have an important role in defense mechanisms against oxidative stress. this study was compared total antioxidant capacity (taoc) of saliva in smokers and nonsmokers. materials and methods. in this cross-sectional study, 30 male smokers with mean age ...