The year 2014 saw more than a thousand new mitochondrial genome sequences deposited in GenBank—an almost 15% increase from the previous year. Hundreds of peer-reviewed articles accompanied these genomes, making mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) the most sequenced and reported type of eukaryotic chromosome. These mtDNA data have advanced a wide range of scientific fields, from forensics to anthropolog...

As a growth regulator, PDGF-BB plays a crucial role in regulating neuronal survival and cell differentiation during embryonic development and in the adulthood. The multiple roles and mechanisms of PDGF-BB are still not known, especially involved in plasticity after spinal cord injury. However, before we can carry out further investigations a transgenic animal model with PDGF-BB down-regulation ...

Plesiosaurs may be divided into two general morphotypes, based on body shape. ‘Pliosauromorphs’ have a large head and a short neck—traditionally thought to be pliosaurs, while ‘plesiosauromorphs’ have a small head and long neck, and have been seen as plesiosauroids. This is in fact an oversimplification, and today, detailed analysis and investigations of plesiosaur anatomy suggest that these mo...

Aberrant wound-healing responses to injury have been implicated in the development of pulmonary fibrosis, but the mediators directing these pathologic responses have yet to be fully identified. We show that lysophosphatidic acid levels increase in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid following lung injury in the bleomycin model of pulmonary fibrosis, and that mice lacking one of its receptors, LPA1, ar...

English teachers are frequently asked to help colleagues prepare presentations for internationalconferences. Sometimes this assistance takes the form of a language course or tutorials focusingon the spoken language. Contact time is short but the participants are highly motivated. Whattype of pronunciation work will provide the greatest payoff in terms of successfully beingunders...

The two fundamental problems in a pattern recognition system are feature extraction (shape measurement) and classification. The problem of extracting a vector of shape measurements from a digital image can be further decomposed into three subproblems. The first is the image segmentation problem, i.e., the separation of objects of interest from their background. The cluster analysis methods disc...

This paper provides a brief overview of current smartgrid and microgrid technologies and issues associated with their implementation. An architecture of the microgrid for the Department of Electrical Drives and Power Electronics is proposed. Main attention is paid to the control system. The paper sets out the functions and requirements to the main controller for a microgrid control system. The ...