In October 2011, a snowstorm in the northeastern USA caused many branch failures of many tree species commonly planted in urbanized settings. Immediately following the storm, we assessed 1,764 trees for possible snow-induced damage and factors affecting it on the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA, USA. Nearly all failures were of branches, most of which were not defective...

The discrete binary hierarchy (DBH) is a concept underlyingmany important issues in analysis of complex systems: knowledge structures, testand-search organization, evolutionary trees, taxonomy, data handling, etc. It appears that any DBH corresponds to an orthonormal basis of the Euclidean space related to the hierarchy leaves. The properties of these bases form a mathematical framework which c...

Dopamine-fS-hydroxylase (DBH), the enzyme responsible for the conversion of dopamine to norepinephrine, was measured in the plasma of two lines of mice selectively bred for differential sensitivity to hypnotic doses of ethanol. Plasma levels of DBH were measured by radioenzymatic assay in long sleep (LS) and short sleep (SS) male and female mice which had no prior exposure to ethanol. LS mice h...

This experiment provides a direct test of our previous suggestion that estradiol regulates dopamine-B-hydroxylase (DBH) activity in hypothalamic loci. Anterior, medial and posterior hypothalamic slices from triplets of rats were taken during estrus and diestus and assayed for DBH activity using the technique of Molinoff et al. [15]. DBH activity was measured in hypothalamic slices on three diff...

Mycoplasmas are highly fastidious bacteria, difficult to culture and slow growing. Many species of mycoplasmas are important pathogens that cause respiratory infection in laboratory animals and that are known to affect experimental results obtained with contaminated animals. The aim of the present study was to develop a sensitive and specific assay for the detection of mycoplasma species. To th...

Hindbrain catecholaminergic neurons are key participants in systemic glucoregulation. However, the specific subpopulations critical for glucoregulatory function have not been fully identified. Here we used in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry to investigate effects of glucoprivation on expression of the gene for the catecholamine biosynthetic enzyme, dopamine-beta-hydroxylase (DBH), t...

Dopamine -hydroxylase (DBH) which catalyzes conversion of dopamine into noradrenaline, may be a good blood marker of unipolar depression. Therefore, we studied the effect of classic antidepressant drug imipramine (10 mg/kg ip) on activity of this enzyme in plasma of rats subjected to chronic mild stress (CMS), the model of anhedonia. CMS induced reductions in DBH activity by the second day and ...

Dopamine beta-hydroxylase (DBH) which catalyzes conversion of dopamine into noradrenaline, may be a good blood marker of unipolar depression. Therefore, we studied the effect of classic antidepressant drug imipramine (10 mg/kg ip) on activity of this enzyme in plasma of rats subjected to chronic mild stress (CMS), the model of anhedonia. CMS induced reductions in DBH activity by the second day ...

The effect of propranolol on plasma dopamine-beta-hydroxylase activity and triiodothyronine was investigated in twelve subjects with Graves' disease. Plasma DBH activity, serum triiodothyronine and thyroxine were determined beforehand and electrocardiograms were recorded on the same days as the blood samples were taken. Propranolol administration was associated with clinical amelioration in blo...

Adrenergic hormones are essential for early heart development. To gain insight into understanding how these hormones influence heart development, we evaluated genomic expression changes in embryonic hearts from adrenergic-deficient and wild-type control mice. To perform this study, we used a mouse model with targeted disruption of the Dopamine β-hydroxylase (Dbh) gene, whose product is responsi...