The structural-function hypothesis provides an alternative to signalling-based predictions to explain the remarkable diversity observed in avian eggshell colour. According to the hypothesis, protoporphyrin, the common pigment of visible speckles, lubricates and thus strengthens the shell and simultaneously moderates gas transfer across it. Correlational evidence for the structural-function hypo...

Structurally similar to retinoic acid (RA), the phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) controls many developmental and physiological processes via complicated signaling networks that are composed of receptors, secondary messengers, protein kinase/phosphatase cascades, transcription factors, and chromatin-remodeling factors. In addition, ABA signaling is further modulated by mRNA maturation and stabil...

Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) sensors can transmit and receive electromagnetic waves in different polarization states. As a result, PolSAR images are complex multi-dimensional data which can be extensively applied in sea ice monitoring and classification. The discrimination capability of PolSAR data makes them a unique source of information with a significant contribution to ma...

BACKGROUND Congenital sensorineural deafness is an inherited condition found in many dog breeds, including Australian Stumpy-tail Cattle Dogs (ASCD). This deafness is evident in young pups and may affect one ear (unilateral) or both ears (bilateral). The genetic locus/loci involved is unknown for all dog breeds. The aims of this study were to determine incidence, inheritance mechanism, and poss...

Speckle is an inherent characteristic of tissues when assessed by ultrasound. De-speckling is performed to improve the visualization of anatomical details but the information encoded in speckle is often discarded. In this paper we propose an ultrasonic decomposition procedure which estimates despeckled and speckle images starting with images created from Radio Frequency (RF) data. These images ...

Ultrasound is a widely used medical imaging technique used for diagnostic purposes. But the major problem with these images is that they are inherently corrupted by speckle. The presence of speckle severely hampers the interpretation and analysis of medical ultrasonic images. In this paper, a comparison of various speckle reducing spatial and wavelet based methods has been carried out while de-...

When it comes to remote sensing image classification, the use of SAR image data is often regarded as being cumbersome and error-prone. Compared with optical images, SAR images have a very high dynamics, are plagued by speckle phenomena, and their radiometric calibration is less accurate than that of optical images. Many researchers have attempted to overcome these difficulties by applying, for ...