In the agroecosystem, genetically engineered plants producing insecticidal Cry proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) interact with non-target herbivores and other elements of the food web. Stacked Bt crops expose herbivores to multiple Cry proteins simultaneously. In this study, the direct interactions between SmartStax® Bt maize producing six different Cry proteins and two herbivores with ...

Several investigations around the world have been postulated that the infant cry can be utilized to asses the infant’s status and the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) has been one of the recent alternatives to classify cry signals [4,9]. A Radial Basis Function (RBF) network is implemented for infant cry classification in order to find out relevant aspects concerned with the presence of ...

The Cry family of Bacillus thuringiensis insecticidal and nematicidal proteins constitutes a valuable source of environmentally benign compounds for the control of insect pests and disease agents. An understanding of Cry toxin resistance at a molecular level will be critical to the long-term utility of this technology; it may also shed light on basic mechanisms used by other bacterial toxins th...

Long-time average spectrum (LTAS) was used to analyze the cry utterance of 26 infants under four months old; 16 of them were full-term and the other 10 infants were preterm. The results of first spectral peak (FSP), mean spectral energy (MSE), spectral tilt (ST), high frequency energy (HFE) were used to compare the cry production between term and preterm infants. In addition, cry duration and p...

Many plant pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins are allergenic. We isolated three cDNAs, Cry j 3.1, Cry j 3.2, and Cry j 3.3, that encoded homologs of Jun a 3, a PR protein allergen in Juniperus ashei, from a cDNA library derived from the pollen of Cryptomeria japonica. The predicted amino acid sequences encoded by the three cDNAs were more than 85% identical to each other and about 57% identical...

Using a forward genetics ENU mutagenesis screen for recessive mutations that affect circadian rhythmicity in the mouse, we isolated a long period (approximately 26 hr) circadian mutant named Overtime (Ovtm). Positional cloning and genetic complementation reveal that Ovtm is encoded by the F-box protein FBXL3, a component of the SKP1-CUL1-F-box-protein (SCF) E3 ubiquitin ligase complex. The Ovtm...

This study examined a largely overlooked, yet potentially important, association between empathy and distress in cry responding. The cry stimulus included a 1-min-long video clip of a 4-week-old, crying, male infant. Participants reported their dispositional empathy and distress, perceived aversiveness of the cry stimulus, response emotions, and intention to intervene with the crying infant. Em...