Background: Doxorubicin (DOX), a widely used antineoplastic compound, is associated with testicular damage and infertility. In this study, we intended to determine the possible preventive effects of simvastatin (SIM), a lipid lowering agent with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, on testicular morphometric-stereological changes due to DOX treatment in mice. Materials and Methods: Mal...

We present the Representative Temperature and Precipitation (T&P) GCM Subsetting Approach developed within the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) to select a practical subset of global climate models (GCMs) for regional integrated assessment of climate impacts when resource limitations do not permit the full ensemble of GCMs to be evaluated given the need to also...

BACKGROUND Microbial tolerance to different environmental stresses is of importance for efficient production of biofuels and biochemical. Such traits are often improved by evolutionary engineering approaches including mutagen-induced mutagenesis and successive passage. In contrast to these approaches which generate mutations in rapidly growing cells, recent research showed that mutations could ...

Microspheres formulated from poly (D,L-lactic-co-glycolide) (PLGA), a biodegradable polymer, have been extensively evaluated as a drug delivery system. In this study, the preparation, characterization and drug release properties of the PLGA microspheres were evaluated. Simvastatin (SIM)-loaded PLGA microspheres were prepared by oil-in-water emulsion/solvent evaporation method. The microspheres ...

Inside a case-based system, a case c is represented by a set of information entities ei E: c = {e1, e2, ..., en}. It is compared with a query q that is as well just a set of information entities. A composite similarity function for q, c ⊆ E determines a numeric value for the degree of similarity SIM(q, c). SIM is computed by means of a local similarity function sim : E × E → R. A very simple ex...

Ranking the performance of global climate models (GCMs) is a notoriously difficult exercise. Multi-model comparison studies nearly always show that each model has strengths and weaknesses relative to others, and for many purposes the multi-model ensemble mean delivers better estimates than any individual model. Nevertheless, in regions like East Africa, where there is little consensus between m...

Global Circulation Models (GCMs) contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and are widely used in global change research. This paper assesses the performance of the AR4 GCMs in simulating precipitation and temperature in China from 1960 to 1999 by comparison with observed data, using system bias (B), root-mean-square error (RMSE), Pearson...

An efficient and novel technique is developed for detecting and localizing corners of planar curves. This paper discusses the gradient feature distribution of planar curves and constructs gradient correlation matrices (GCMs) over the region of support (ROS) of these planar curves. It is shown that the eigenstructure and determinant of the GCMs encode the geometric features of these curves, such...