Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a fatal disease contributed by both genetic and epigenetic factors. The epigenetic alteration of protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor type 22 (PTPN22) and its clinical significance in ESCC were still not yet clarified. A quantitative methylation study of PTPN22 and its expression were conducted in 121 and 31 paired tumor and adjacent normal tiss...

Predators affect herbivores directly and indirectly, by consumptive and nonconsumptive effects, and the combined influence of multiple predators is shaped by interactions among predators. I documented the individual and combined effects of birds (chickadees, nuthatches, warblers) and ants (Formica podzolica) on arthropods residing in pine (Pinus ponderosa) canopies in a factorial field experime...

1 We explored geographical variation in the interaction between the elaiosome-bearing seeds of Helleborus foetidus and ant dispersers. We looked for correlation across nine Iberian localities, between diaspore traits and structural and functional characteristics of ant communities. 2 Mean diaspore traits did not show a distance-dependent pattern. Seed size-related traits (length, width, diaspor...

Extrafloral nectaries can occur in both vegetative and reproductive plant structures. In many Rubiaceae species in the Brazilian Cerrado, after corolla abscission, the floral nectary continues to secret nectar throughout fruit development originating post-floral pericarpial nectaries which commonly attract many ant species. The occurrence of such nectar secreting structures might be strategic f...

Ecological patterns and processes are characteristically scale dependent, and research findings often cannot be translated easily from one scale to another. Conservation biology is challenged by a lack of congruence between the spatial scales of ecological research (typically involving small plots) and land management (typically involving whole landscapes). Here, I discuss spatial scaling issue...

The syrphid subfamily Microdontinae is characterized by myrmecophily of their immature stages, i.e., they develop in ant nests. Data on natural history of microdontines are scarce, especially in the Neotropics. Based on fieldwork in southern Brazil, this study provided new data on development and ecology of the hoverfly Pseudomicrodon biluminiferus (Hull) (Diptera: Syrphidae) as well as the fir...

Ant colony optimization is a metaheuristic approach belonging to the model based search algorithm. It is a paradigm for designing metaheuristic algorithm for combinatorial problem. In this paper we discuss the Ant colony system. Ant colony system is one of the best algorithm of ant colony optimization. First we discuss the optimization,and one of the optimization problem is combinatiorial probl...

The optimal reactive power dispatch (ORPD) problem is formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem involving nonlinear objective function with multiple local minima. In this paper, as a new approach, different ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms are applied to the reactive power dispatch problem. Ant system (AS), the firstly introduced ant colony optimization algorithm, and its direc...

The entire ant faunas of remote Polynesian islands consist of introduced species. An important question concerning the assembly of Pacific island ant faunas is whether these species are a random assortment of the available species pool, or whether they exhibit highly ordered occurrence patterns (i.e., nested subsets of species). I evaluated nestedness for the ant faunas of two island groups in ...

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