The generality of asymmetric reproductive isolation between reciprocal crosses suggests that the evolution of isolation mechanisms often proceeds in reciprocal asymmetry. In hermaphroditic snails that copulate simultaneously and reciprocally, asymmetry in premating isolation may not be readily detectable because the failure of the symmetric performance of courtship would prevent copulation from...

A constraint satisfaction neural network (CSNN) approach is proposed for breast cancer diagnosis using mammographic and patient history findings. Initially, the diagnostic decision to biopsy was formulated as a constraint satisfaction problem. Then, an associative memory type neural network was applied to solve the problem. The proposed network has a flexible, nonhierarchical architecture that ...

PURPOSE To study the association of ARMS2 A69S genotype with the development of exudative age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in the unaffected fellow eye and to estimate the duration until the development of AMD in the second eye. DESIGN Retrospective cohort study. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed 326 patients who had exudative AMD in at least 1 eye, genotyping of ARMS2 A69S, and a m...

Electron beam lithography (EBL) has become a popular means to prepare a wide variety of nano-arrays for numerous studies and applications, including photonics and sensors. Their fabrications and characterizations are costly and time consuming, underscoring the importance of developing effective tools to rapidly study their physicochemical stabilities and properties over time. In this study, we ...

DNA hairpins produce ionic current signatures when captured by the alpha-hemolysin nano-scale pore under conditions of single molecule electrophoresis. Gating patterns produced by individual DNA hairpins when captured can be used to distinguish differences of a single base pair or even a single nucleotide [Vercoutere,W.A. et al. (2003) Nucleic Acids Res., 31, 1311-1318]. Here we investigate the...

Theoretical analysis and Computer simulations have proven to be cost-effective and powerful tools in scientific studies of materials, particularly at nano-scale where synthesis of nano-structures, interpretation of their observed character and exploration of new structures are not always straight forward. We present here fundamental principles of techniques used today for computational simulati...

BACKGROUND Cone-rod dystrophy is a retinal dystrophy with early loss of cone photoreceptors and a parallel or subsequent loss of rod photoreceptors. It may be syndromic, but most forms are non-syndromic with autosomal dominant, autosomal recessive or X-linked recessive inheritance. METHODS AND RESULTS We identified a small consanguineous family with six patients with cone-rod dystrophy from t...

The discovery of graphene and its fascinating capabilities have triggered an unprecedented interest in inorganic two-dimensional (2D) materials. Van der Waals (vdW) layered materials as graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), the more recently re-discovered black phosphorus (BP) indeed display exceptional technological potential for engineering nano-ele...

We shall discuss the use of Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) Finite Element Methods to solve Boltzmann Poisson (BP) models of electron transport in semiconductor devices at nano scales. We consider the mathematical and numerical modeling of Reflective Boundary Conditions in 2D devices and their implementation in DG-BP schemes. We study the specular, diffusive and mixed reflection BC on physical boun...