Gestational vitamin A (retinol) deficiency poses a risk for ocular birth defects and blindness. We identified missense mutations in RBP4, encoding serum retinol binding protein, in three families with eye malformations of differing severity, including bilateral anophthalmia. The mutant phenotypes exhibit dominant inheritance, but incomplete penetrance. Maternal transmission significantly increa...

Routine husbandry procedures, such as castration and tail docking, are known to induce pain and distress in lambs (Grant, 2004; Kent et al., 2001). This raises important welfare concerns and has attracted debate on the acceptability of such practices. The most common method of castration and tail docking involves the application of a rubber ring to the scrotum or tail, usually without anesthesi...

Nonspecific recognition of pathogen-derived general elicitors triggers the first line of plant basal defense, which in turn, preconditions the host towards resistance or susceptibility. To elucidate how basal defense responses influence the onset of Mla (mildew resistance locus a)-specified resistance, we performed a meta-analysis of GeneChip mRNA expression for 155 basal defense-related genes ...

In this paper we numerically investigate nonlinear impairments in a WDM system with mixed PM (D)QPSK and OOK channels. First we analyze the dependence of XPM and XPolM on SOP and baud rate in absence of PMD. In this case we find that the nonlinear impairments are highly dependent on relative SOP between the PM (D)QPSK and neighbouring OOK channels. The dependence on relative SOP is more pronoun...

Cattle and sheep are exported from Australia by sea and form a significant market for Australian animals. For instance, in both 2006 and 2007 over half a million cattle were exported by sea from Australia, with the majority travelling the short journey to Indonesia. Other destinations included other Asian countries and the Middle East; about one tenth of the cattle travelled the “long haul” voy...

Differential group delay (DGD) experienced by the optical signal in in-service terrestrial optical fiber systems has been monitored for the first time without the requirement of looping-back, in which the live traffic carried in the fiber was used as the probing signal. The relationship between the measured DGD using this technique and the actual fiber PMD parameter is formulated and verified b...

Usage quotes were compiled using Google books [2], Oxford English Dictionary Online [3], and The Stanford dictionary of Anglicized words and phrases [1]. Dates and authors of usage quotes are cited in text. Page numbers for usage quotes, if available, are found along with the quotes themselves in the appendix at the end of the paper. A number in brackets [ ] at the end of each entry tells which...

Cohesive energy densities (C(w,MLA)/J cm(-3)) for ion-pair complexes (MLA: M(+) = Li(+) to Cs+; w: water) with six crown ethers (L), such as 18-crown-6 ether (18C6), benzo-18C6, and dibenzo-24-crown-8 one, and A(-) = picrate were calculated at 298 K by a procedure that uses either (i) an equation rearranged from that underlying log K(D,MLA)-vs.-log K(D,L) plots or (ii) intercepts of their plots...

Present study was conducted to evaluate the teratogenic effects of sublethal concentrations viz., 19.36, 9.7, and 4.8μg/g BW of deltamethrin, which was administered orally to the pregnant mice on day 6 of gestation. The fetuses were recovered on day 18 of gestation. The morphological studies revealed abnormalities including sacral hygromae, microcephally, micromelia, open eyelids, microphthalmi...

EGR1 is an early growth response zinc finger transcription factor with broad actions, including in differentiation, mitogenesis, tumor suppression, and neuronal plasticity. Here we demonstrate that Egr1-/- mice on the C57BL/6 background have normal eyelid development, but back-crossing to BALB/c background for four or five generations resulted in defective eyelid development by day E15.5, at wh...