RATIONALE This is a retrospective study aimed to determine the efficacy of mini-scleral contact lens in protecting the cornea and improving vision in cases of facial palsy. PATIENT CONCERNS Patients with facial palsy get exposure keratitis because the cornea is dry. They feel pain, discomfort and excessive watering. If left untreated, it leads to permanent damage to the cornea and loss of goo...

Understanding the impacts of combined resource supplies on seedlings is critical to enable prediction of establishment growth, and forest dynamics. We investigated the effects of irradiance and water treatments on absolute growth, and relative growth rate (RGR) and its components, for seedlings of fourQuercus species differing in leaf habit and with a wide variation in seedmass. Plants were gro...

We examined effects of mist quantity, topophysis (origin of cutting in the crown of 6-year-old trees), maturation state of the donor stock, and time of sticking on rooting and root system quality of cuttings representing five full-sib hybrid larch families obtained with Larix decidua Mill., L. laricina (du Roi) K. Koch, and L. kaempferi (Lamb.) Sarg. (Sieb. and Zucc.) Gord., as parents. Mist fr...

Rhizobial bacteria form symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing nodules on the roots of compatible host legume plants. One of the most well-developed model systems for studying these interactions is the plant Medicago truncatula cv. Jemalong A17 and the rhizobial bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti 1021. Repeated imaging of plant roots and scoring of symbiotic phenotypes requires methods that are non-destructi...

BACKGROUND Cacti establish mostly occurs under the canopy of nurse plants which provide a less stressful micro-environment, although mechanisms underlying this process are unknown. The impact of the combination of light and watering treatments on Opuntia streptacantha (Cactaceae) seedlings was examined. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Ecophysiological [titratable acidity, osmotic potential ('solut...

Environmental monitoring is a significant driver for wireless sensor communication. Its potential to provide dynamic real-time data about monitored variable will enable to measure properties that have not previously been observable. A low cost consumer version soil moisture monitoring system was built using a gypsum block to take moisture readings, a peripheral interface controller (PIC) with a...

Climate change induced alterations to rainfall patterns have the potential to affect the regeneration dynamics of plant species, especially in historically everwet tropical rainforest. Differential species response to infrequent rainfall may influence seed germination and seedling establishment in turn affecting species distributions. We tested the role of watering frequency intervals (from dai...