BACKGROUND AND AIMS Although most studies on plant defence strategies have focused on a particular defence trait, some plant species develop multiple defence traits. To clarify the effects of light on the development of multiple defence traits, the production of direct and indirect defence traits of young plants of Mallotus japonicus were examined experimentally under different light conditions...

The Marginal Value Theorem (MVT) is a cornerstone of biological theory. It connects the quality and distribution of patches in a fragmented habitat to the optimal time an individual should spend exploiting them, and thus its optimal rate of movement. However, predictions regarding how habitat alterations should impact optimal strategies have remained elusive, with heavy reliance on graphical ar...

results using these two sets, we identified h1069q mutation in four patients, c.2335t > g mutation in three, c.3061-1g > a splice site mutation in five, c.3305t > c mutation in one, and c.3809a > g mutation in two patients. conclusions the multiplex arms assay used in this study can be an efficient, reliable, and cost effective method as a primary screen for patients with wilson disease. patien...

According to the authors, time-modified confounding occurs when the causal relation between a time-fixed or time-varying confounder and the treatment or outcome changes over time. A key difference between previously described time-varying confounding and the proposed time-modified confounding is that, in the former, the values of the confounding variable change over time while, in the latter, t...

background & aim: low back pain is broadly documented as one of the most widespread pathologies in the advanced domain. although the reasons of low back pain are uncountable, it has been meaningfully related to intervertebral disc degeneration. present therapies for intervertebral disc (ivd) degeneration such as physical therapy and spinal fusion reduce symptoms' severity, but do not treat the ...

background: previous researches about the effects of epididymal obstruction on the testes are contradictory, and the mechanism harmful effect of male duct system obstruction on seminiferous tubules still remains unclear. objective: the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of epididymal obstruction in prepubertal rats on the testis. materials and methods: 15 days of age, the young ra...

where u ∼ N(0, G) and 2 ∼ N(0, R) with u and 2 independent. This model can be interpreted as Y |β, u ∼ N(Xβ+Zu,R), u ∼ N(0, G), yielding (on integrating out u) the marginal model Y |β ∼ N(Xβ,ZGZ + R). Let V = ZGZ + R. Then the maximum penalized likelihood estimates of β and u given G and R are given by θ̂ = [ β̂ û ] = (CTR−1C + B)−1CTR−1y (A.2) where C = [X Z] and B is the block diagonal matrix w...

Longitudinal studies, where data are repeatedly collected on one subject over a period, are common in medical research. When effect of a time-varying exposure on an outcome of interest is measured at different time points, standard statistical methods fail to give robust estimate in the presence of time-dependent confounders. There is alternative method avoid, that is, inverse probability weigh...