tificial Intelligence Corporation's I n t e l l ec t 1 was introduced in the 1970's, but expanded in this decade to support interaction with a wide variety of systems. Each year, AIC hosts a user group conference that draws hundreds of people. The middle of the decade saw the arrival of Symantec's Qg~A whose natural language interface has helped it win honors as one of the PC programs that is e...

The practice of meditation has become an interesting research issue in recent decades. Meditation is known to be beneficial for health improvement and illness reduction and many studies on meditation have been made, from both the physiological and psychological points of view. It is a fundamental requirement of meditation practice to be able to sit without body motion. In this study, a novel bo...

Seed set is usually low and differs for different crosses of flower lotus (Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn.). The reasons remain unknown, and this has a negative impact on lotus breeding. To determine the causes, we carried out two crosses of flower lotus, that is, "Jinsenianhua" × "Qinhuaihuadeng" and "Qinhuaihuadeng" × "Jinsenianhua" and pollen viability, pistil receptivity, and embryo development we...

INTRODUCTION Vulvar reconstruction using the "lotus petal" fascio-cutaneous flap offers a relatively novel means to restore symmetry and functionality after extirpative gynecologic or oncologic procedures. We sought to assess the success rates and morbidity in a large series of consecutively treated patients. METHODS We performed a retrospective review of 59 consecutive cases of lotus petal f...

Designers are often faced with difficult tradeoffs between easing the user's burden by making security decisions for them and offering features that ensure that users can make the security decisions that are right for them and their environment. Users often do not understand enough about the impact of a security decision to make an informed choice. We report on the experience in a 500person org...

Work in oyqanizations is becoming increusingiy focused on collubomtive work in #roups. Groupwclre is widely touted us the information technology that cun support this new mode of work by fostering colluborution. In a study of Lotus Note.?, u populur Rroupwure product. implemented throughout the professionul stuff of u lurge Americun insumnce company. we found the impact of groupwure to be somew...

Hierarchically structured flower leaves (petals) of many plants are superhydrophobic, but water droplets do not roll-off when the surfaces are tilted. On such surfaces water droplets are in the "Cassie impregnating wetting state", which is also known as the "petal effect". By analyzing the petal surfaces of different species, we discovered interesting new wetting characteristics of the surface ...

BACKGROUND In the evolving field of transcatheter aortic valve replacements a new generation of valves have been introduced to clinical practice. With the complexity of the TAVR procedure and the unique aspects of each TAVR device, there is a perceived risk that changing or adding a new valve in a department could lead to a worse outcome for patients, especially during the learning phase. The o...

The targeted genome editing technique, CRISPR/Cas9 system, has been widely used to modify genes of interest in a predictable and precise manner. In this study, we describe the CRISPR/Cas9-mediated efficient editing of representative SNF (symbiotic nitrogen fixation) related genes in the model legume Lotus japonicus via Agrobacterium-mediated stable or hairy root transformation. We first predict...