BACKGROUND In Ethiopia the average fertility rate in rural areas is about 6 children per woman, while it is 2.4 children per woman in urban areas. It is with this concept in mind that the investigators of this study wanted to correlate the promotion of after-child-birth-use of family planning and desire to limit childbearing in Ethiopia. Postpartum amenorrhea signifies the interval between chil...

The Madjars are a previously unstudied population from Kazakhstan who practice a form of local exogamy in which wives are brought in from neighboring tribes, but husbands are not, so the paternal lineages remain genetically isolated within the population. Their name bears a striking resemblance to the Magyars who have inhabited Hungary for over a millennium, but whose previous history is poorly...

Fireflies have drawn considerable attention for thousands of years due to their highly efficient bioluminescence, which is important for fundamental research and photonic applications. However, there are few reports on the reflector layer (RL) of firefly lantern, which contributes to the bright luminescence. Here we presented the detailed microstructure of the RL consisting of random hollow gra...

Abstract Background Female-limited early-onset high myopia, also called Myopia-26 is a rare monogenic disorder characterized by severe short sightedness starting in early childhood and progressing to blindness potentially the middle ages. Despite X-linked locus of mutated ARR3 gene, disease paradoxically affects females only, with males being asymptomatic carriers. Previously, this has only bee...

A new species of lowland karst dwelling Cnemaspis Strauch 1887, C. grismeri sp. nov. is described from the southeastern base of the Banjaran Bintang in northern Peninsular Malaysia. It is differentiated from its congeners by a unique combination of characters including size, coloration and scalation. Cnemapis grismeri sp. nov. is most closely related to C. mcguirei, an upland species endemic to...

SarA, a Staphylococcus aureus-specific dimeric protein, modulates the expression of numerous proteins including various virulence factors. Interestingly, S. aureus synthesizes multiple SarA paralogs seemingly for optimizing the expression of its virulence factors. To understand the domain structure/flexibility and the folding/unfolding mechanism of the SarA protein family, we have studied a rec...

Using a 9-year follow-up of 69,224 mothers aged 20-50 from the National Longitudinal Mortality Survey, we investigate whether there is heightened mortality of mothers after the death of a child. Results from Cox proportional hazard models indicate that the death of a child produces a statistically significant hazard ratio of 2.3. There is suggestive evidence that the heightened mortality is con...

We have investigated Ca2+-induced exocytosis from human neutrophils using the whole cell patch-clamp capacitance technique. Microperfusion of Ca2+ buffer solutions (<30 nM to 5 mM free Ca2+) through the patch-clamp pipette revealed a biphasic activation of exocytosis by Ca2+. The first phase was characterized by high affinity (1.5-5 microM) and low apparent cooperativity (<=2) for Ca2+, and the...