BACKGROUND Polo-like kinase 1 (Plk1), as a characteristic regulator in meiosis, organizes multiple biological events of cell division. Although Plk1 has been implicated in various functions in somatic cell mitotic processes, considerably less is known regarding its function during the transition from metaphase I (MI) to metaphase II (MII) stage in oocyte meiotic progression. METHODS In this s...

Conventional and along-track interferometric (ATI) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) senses the motion of the ocean surface by measuring the Doppler shift of reflected signals. Measurements are affected by a Wind-wave-induced Artifact Surface Velocity (WASV) which was modeled theoretically in past studies and has been estimated empirically only once before with Envisat ASAR by Mouche et al. (2012)...

Given that over 97 percent of American teens play videogames, it is not surprising that many "games for health" target youth. Although tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, few digital games focus on preventing this behavior. The aims of this study were twofold: (1) to determine if youth will play a game with tobacco-related information and themes and (2) t...

FengYun-3B (FY-3B) soil moisture product, retrieved from passive microwave brightness temperature data based on the Qp model, has rarely been applied at the catchment and region scale. One of the reasons for this is its coarse spatial resolution (25-km). The study in this paper presented a new method to obtain a high spatial resolution soil moisture product by downscaling FY-3B soil moisture pr...

Background: This study sought to evaluate current trends in surgical management of colon injuries in a level I urban trauma centre, in the light of our increasing confidence in primary repair. Methods: Our retrospective study evaluates the results of 116 patients with colon injuries operated at Bucharest Clinical Emergency Hospital, in the light of some of the most commonly cited factors which ...

Apolipoprotein (apo) mimetic peptides replicate some aspects of HDL function. We have previously reported the effects of compound ATI-5261 on its ability to replicate many functions of native apo A-I in the process of HDL biogenesis. ATI-5261 induced muscle toxicity in wild type C57Bl/6 mice, increased CPK, ALT and AST and increase in triglyceride (Tg) levels. Aromatic phenylalanine residues on...

General-Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) is an emerging field of research which allows software developers to utilize the significant amount of computing resources GPUs provide for a wider range of applications. While traditional high performance computing environments such as clusters, grids and supercomputers require significant architectural modifications to incorporate...

Canada’s RADARSAT-2 commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite will have an experimental mode that will permit ground moving target indication (GMTI) measurements to be made. In this mode of operation, the radar antenna is partitioned into two subapertures that sequentially observe the scene of interest from the same point in space. Two of the GMTI processing approaches currently being...

Studies of epithelial ion and fluid transport across the distal pulmonary epithelia have provided important new concepts regarding the resolution of pulmonary edema, specifically the removal of edema from the distal airspaces of the lung. Overall, there is convincing evidence that vectorial ion transport across the alveolar and distal airway epithelia is the primary determinant of alveolar flui...