Axon pruning during development is essential for proper wiring of the mature nervous system, but its regulation remains poorly understood. We have identified an immunoglobulin superfamily (IgSF) transmembrane protein, Plum, that is cell autonomously required for axon pruning of mushroom body (MB) γ neurons and for ectopic synapse refinement at the developing neuromuscular junction in Drosophila...

This paper is devoted to the analysis of non-standard semantic shifts in adjectives and adverbs. Under non-standard semantic shifts I understand meaning changes, which can’t be described as metaphor or metonymy. Here are some examples of the semantic shifts in question, cf.: bittere Schokolade ‘bitter chocolate’ vs. bitterer Hunger ‘very strong hunger’ hübsches Mädchen’nice girl’ vs. hübsch kal...

Osteoporosis is an age-related chronic disease characterized by a loss of bone mass and quality, and is associated with an increased risk of fragility fractures. Postmenopausal women are at the greatest risk of developing osteoporosis due to the cessation in ovarian hormone production, which causes accelerated bone loss. As the demographic shifts to a more aged population, a growing number of p...

A male patient aged 50 years presented to the emergency department with a complaint of dysphagia after ingestion of a whole plum without chewing. His history revealed a diagnosis of schizophrenia 15 years ago. This was the patient’s second presentation to hospital with this complaint. At the first-step hospital, his relatives and the physicians did not believe the patient due to his schizophren...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have indicated that acupuncture can alleviate the symptoms of Tourette syndrome (TS), but the evidence is insufficient. So far, there have been no reports on plum-blossom needle therapy for TS. Here we present a protocol for a randomized controlled trial using plum-blossom needle therapy to treat TS. METHODS/DESIGN Sixty patients will be randomly allocated into eit...

Objectives: Consumption of fruits, such as plums and prunes, is useful in treating blood circulation disorder, measles, digestive disorder, and prevention of cancer, diabetes, and obesity. The paper presents a description of antioxidant and antiradical capacity of plum (Prunus domestica L.) in both fresh and dried samples. Materials and Methods: Samples were mixed with methanol and ethanol (as ...

Genetically modified pigs that express fluorescent proteins such as green and red fluorescent proteins have become indispensable biomedical research tools in recent years. Cell or tissue transplantation studies using fluorescent markers should be conducted, wherein the xeno-antigenicity of the fluorescent proteins does not affect engraftment or graft survival. Thus, we aimed to create a transge...

APPROACH Traditional approaches to the problem of extracting data from texts have emphasized hand-crafted linguisti c knowledge. In contrast, BBN's PLUM system (Probabilistic Language Understanding Model) was developed as par t of an ARPA-funded research effort on integrating probabilistic language models with more traditional linguisti c techniques. Our research and development goals are : • m...

The ability to dynamically adapt an unstructured mesh is a powerful tool for solving computational problems with evolving physical features; however, an eecient parallel implementation is rather dii-cult. To address this problem, we have developed PLUM, an automatic portable framework for performing adaptive numerical computations in a message-passing environment. PLUM requires that all data be...

Acrylamide concentrations in prune products--baby strained prunes (range = 75-265 µg kg(-1)), baby apple/prune juice (33-61 µg kg(-1)), prune juice (186-916 µg kg(-1)) and prunes (58-332 µg kg(-1))--on the Canadian market were determined. The formation of acrylamide in a simulated plum juice was also investigated under 'drying conditions' in an open vessel at temperatures <100°C for 24 h and un...