Behavioural asymmetries, once thought to be exclusively human, appear to be widespread in vertebrates. A population-level bias should stem from natural selection and reflect a cerebral dominance, while individual preferences might be linked to individual characteristics. Manual laterality has been extensively investigated in non-human primates. However, despite a strong data base, no general pa...

Previous studies on sequential effects of human grasping behaviour were restricted to binary grasp type selection. We asked whether two established motor control strategies, the end-state comfort effect and the hysteresis effect, would hold for sequential motor tasks with continuous solutions. To this end, participants were tested in a sequential (predictable) and a randomised (non-predictable)...

During aging, sensorimotor, cognitive and physical performance decline, but can improve by training and exercise indicating that age-related changes are treatable. Dancing is increasingly used as an intervention because it combines many diverse features making it a promising neuroplasticity-inducing tool. We here investigated the effects of a 6-month dance class (1 h/week) on a group of healthy...

Polymorphisms in the Plasmodium falciparum multidrug resistance 1 (pfmdr1) gene impact sensitivity to multiple antimalarials. In Africa, polymorphisms at N86Y and D1246Y are common and have various impacts on sensitivity to different drugs. To gain insight into the fitness consequences of these polymorphisms, we cultured parasites isolated from children with malaria in Tororo, Uganda, where the...

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been traditionally used as a planning tool primarily for product development and quality improvement. In this context, many people have used QFD for making decisions on how to prioritize critical product areas from a customer perspective. However, it is the position of the author that the QFD process can be viewed as a decision support system that would enc...

Background: DNA polymerase β (pol β) is a key enzyme of base excision repair pathway. It is a 1-kb gene consisting of 14 exons. Its catalytic part lies between exon 8 and exon 14. Exon 12 has a role in deoxyribonucleotide triphosphate selection for nucleotide transferase activity. Methods: Genomic DNA was isolated from ovarian carcinoma samples. Single strand conformation polymorphism...

Complex human behavior is hierarchically organized. Whether or not syntax plays a role in this organization is currently under debate. The present ERP study uses piano performance to isolate syntactic operations in action planning and to demonstrate their priority over nonsyntactic levels of movement selection. Expert pianists were asked to execute chord progressions on a mute keyboard by copyi...

The present study aimed to determine whether growth changes in craniofacial structure could be predicted by variables expressing the postural relations of the head and the cervical column. The sample comprised 34 children, 16 girls and 18 boys. Cephalometric radiographs obtained in natural head position (mirror position) were taken on two occasions before orthodontic treatment. Mean age was 9.9...

With a large number of disordered proteins and their important functions discovered, it is highly desired to develop effective methods to computationally predict protein disordered regions. In this study, based on Random Forest (RF), Maximum Relevancy Minimum Redundancy (mRMR), and Incremental Feature Selection (IFS), we developed a new method to predict disordered regions in proteins. The mRMR...