Genetic susceptibility testing for common complex disease is a practice that is currently in clinical use. There are two types of gene mutations, and therefore, two varieties of genotype testing: deterministic and susceptibility. As the term suggests, deterministic genes determine whether or not a person will develop a given trait in Mendelian fashion, such as Huntington’s disease. Genotype scr...

Voltage-gated sodium channels are critical determinants of nerve and muscle excitability. Although numerous toxins and small molecules target sodium channels, identifying the mechanisms of action is challenging. Here we used gating-pore currents selectively generated in each of the voltage-sensors from the four a-subunit domains (DI–DIV) to monitor the activity of individual voltage-sensors and...

Abstract Marine protected areas (MPAs) are an important tool for conservation but can be victims of their own success—higher fish biomass within MPAs create incentives to poach. This insight underpins the finding that fishing persists in most worldwide, and it raises questions about MPA monitoring enforcement. We propose a novel institution enhance design—a ‘Conservation Finance Area (CFA)’—tha...

Despite the prevalence of protected areas, evidence of their impacts on people is weak and remains hotly contested in conservation policy. A key question in this debate is whether socioeconomic impacts vary according to social subgroup. Given that social inequity can create conflict and impede poverty reduction, understanding how protected areas differentially affect people is critical to desig...

Microstrip patch antennas (MPAs) are rapidly gaining more attention due to the proliferation of communication devices and systems with frequencies becoming more suitable for the size and performance of this type of antenna. Due to recent advancements in semiconductor technology, high dielectric constant materials are used to achieve additional size reduction which has made MPAs very useful and ...

Coral reefs, the most diverse of marine ecosystems, currently experience unprecedented levels of degradation. Diseases are now recognized as a major cause of mortality in reef-forming corals and are complicit in phase shifts of reef ecosystems to algal-dominated states worldwide. Even so, factors contributing to disease occurrence, spread, and impact remain poorly understood. Ecosystem resilien...

ComiR is a web tool for combinatorial microRNA (miRNA) target prediction. Given an messenger RNA (mRNA) in human, mouse, fly or worm genomes, ComiR computes the potential of being targeted by a set of miRNAs, each of which can have zero, one or more targets on its 30untranslated region. In determining the regulatory potential of an mRNA from a set of miRNAs, ComiR uses user-provided miRNA expre...

s of oral and poster presentations given at the 6th International Workshop on Grapevine Trunk Diseases, Florence, Italy, 1–3 September 2008 The 6th International Workshop on Grapevine Trunk Diseases, was held in Florence, Italy, on September 1–3, 2008, and was attended by 120 participants. Thirty-four oral presentations and 59 posters were presented at the meeting, dealing with esca and other t...

Time-dependent inhibition (TDI) of the cytochrome P450 (P450) family of enzymes is usually studied in human liver microsomes (HLM) by investigating whether the inhibitory potency is increased with increased incubation times. The presented work was initiated after a discrepancy was observed for the TDI of an important P450 enzyme, CYP3A4, during early studies of the investigational drug compound...

Successfully enforced marine protected areas (MPAs) have been widely demonstrated to allow, within their boundaries, the recovery of exploited species and beyond their boundaries, the spillover of juvenile and adult fish. Little evidence is available about the so-called 'recruitment subsidy', the augmented production of propagules (i.e. eggs and larvae) due to the increased abundance of large-s...