INTRODUCTION Exotic pets are increasingly popular in Hong Kong and include fish, amphibians, reptiles, and arthropods. Some of these exotic animals are venomous and may cause injuries to and envenomation of their owners. The clinical experience of emergency physicians in the management of injuries and envenomation by these exotic animals is limited. We reviewed the clinical features and outcome...

Surveys of natural habitats often indicate that native and exotic species richness are positively correlated at large scales and negatively correlated at small scales. The small-scale relationship is often presented as evidence that native richness can repel invasion or conversely that exotic invasions can reduce native diversity. The larger scale pattern has been interpreted as evidence of the...

Functional differences between native and exotic species potentially constitute one factor responsible for plant invasion. Differences in trait values between native and exotic invasive species, however, should not be considered fixed and may depend on the context of the comparison. Furthermore, the magnitude of difference between native and exotic species necessary to trigger invasion is unkno...

Enemy release of exotic plants from soil pathogens has been tested by examining plant-soil feedback effects in repetitive growth cycles. However, positive soil feedback may also be due to enhanced benefit from the local arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). Few studies actually have tested pathogen effects, and none of them did so in arid savannas. In the Kalahari savanna in Botswana, we compared...

The Higgs sector of the U(1)-extended supersymmetric model is studied with great detail. We calculate the masses of the Higgs bosons at the one-loop level. We also calculate at the one-loop level the gluon-involving processes for the productions and decays of the scalar Higgs bosons of the model at the energy of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where the radiative corrections due to the lo...

Different Borrelia species and serotypes were tested for their sensitivity to serum complement from various animals and human. Complement-mediated Borrelia killing in cattle, European bison and deer was higher irrespective of the Borrelia species whereas in other animals and human it was intermediate and Borrelia species-dependent. Activation of the alternative complement pathway by particular ...