The Atlantic forest is a terrestrial biome that extends along the Brazilian coast and has been subject of intense deforestation for decades. There are presently several efforts to try to preserve the flora and fauna of what remains from this region (e.g., Coco et al. 2014, Maciel-Silva et al. 2014, Missagia et al. 2014), but several questions on how the distinct floristic units of this biome ar...

INTRODUCTION The vertebrate inner ear mediates hearing and balance through a complex arrangement of mechanosensory hair cells, nonsensory supporting cells and sensory neurons. All of these cell types derive from the otic placode, a transient ectodermal thickening adjacent to the developing hindbrain (Barald and Kelley, 2004; Fritzsch et al., 2006). Otic placode formation is a multistep process ...

Despite the appearance of bacterial strains resistant to all clinical antibiotics, including vancomycin (the ‘last resort’), development of new antimicrobial agents has slowed during recent decades. To aid design of new antibiotics, we must develop a detailed understanding of the mechanisms of antibiotic action and antibiotic resistance. Several classes of antibiotics target the ribosome and ri...

Right from the early days of information technology (IT) diffusion and adoption research, the research has been profoundly conducted to find out the factors that are significant to adopting IT innovations. In this concern, several of the organizational (Iacovou et al., 1995 and Scupola, 2003), environmental (Iacovou et al., 1995 and Scupola, 2003) and technological factors have been studied by ...

Proteins of the p120 family have been implicated in the regulation of cadherin-based cell adhesion, but their relative importance in this process and their mechanism of action have remained less clear. Three papers in this issue suggest that p120 plays a key role in maintaining normal levels of cadherin in mammalian cells, and that it may do so by regulating cadherin trafficking (Chen et al., 2...

Plants can be attacked by arthropods both above and below ground. The ensuing systemic defense response of the plant can affect even the most distant tissues. Both primary and secondary metabolic profiles of shoots can be altered upon root herbivory and vice versa (Gange and Brown, 1989; Bezemer et al., 2003; Hol et al., 2004; Schwachtje et al., 2006), making plants powerful mediators of intera...

Proteins of the p120 family have been implicated in the regulation of cadherin-based cell adhesion, but their relative importance in this process and their mechanism of action have remained less clear. Three papers in this issue suggest that p120 plays a key role in maintaining normal levels of cadherin in mammalian cells, and that it may do so by regulating cadherin trafficking (Chen et al., 2...

OBJECTIVES To describe the morphological features of atherosclerosis in the aortas of autopsied patients (ranging from young adults to the elderly), thus providing new tools for a more sensitive morphological evaluation. METHOD We collected 141 aorta samples. We assessed the macroscopic degree of atherosclerosis, thickness of the intima and media, lipid and collagen depositions in the intima,...

General interpolating expressions, valid for nearand arbitrary overcritical sizes of clusters, are proposed for the nucleation fluxes and distributions. Results are expressed in terms of the deterministic growth rates, and are characterized by a non-Gaussian dependence on the size of nuclei. In a sense, the proposed approximations combine the positive aspects of the parabolic model by Trinkaus ...