BACKGROUND It is increasingly important to evaluate patients' recovery after ambulatory surgery. The authors developed the Functional Recovery Index (FRI) to assess postdischarge functional recovery for ambulatory surgical patients. METHODS The scale development involved four phases: item generation, item selection, reliability, and validity testing. A draft questionnaire was tested and revis...

An evolutionary response to selection requires genetic variation; however, even if it exists, then the genetic details of the variation can constrain adaptation. In the simplest case, unlinked loci and uncorrelated phenotypes respond directly to multivariate selection and permit unrestricted paths to adaptive peaks. By contrast, 'antagonistic' pleiotropic loci may constrain adaptation by affect...

This paper describes the intelligent Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) control system using Fuzzy Rule Interpolation (FRI) method. The AGV used in this paper is a virtual vehicle simulated using computer. The purpose of the control system is to control the simulated AGV by moving along the given path towards a goal. Some obstacles can be placed on or near the path to increase the difficulties of t...

FRIGIDA (FRI) is a major gene involved in the regulation of flowering time in Arabidopsis thaliana. Nucleotide variation at this gene was investigated by sequencing 25 field ecotypes collected from western Europe. Genetic diversity at FRI was characterized by a high number of haplotypes and an excess of low-frequency polymorphisms. A large excess of intraspecific nonsynonymous variation associa...

Heterosis is an important phenomenon in agriculture. However, heterosis often greatly varies among hybrids and among traits. To investigate heterosis across a large number of traits and numerous genotypes, we evaluated 12 life history traits on parents and hybrids derived from five Arabidopsis thaliana ecotypes (Col, Ler-0, Cvi, Ws, and C24) by using a complete diallel analysis containing 20 hy...

From the viewpoint of Behaviour based Control many control tasks can be divided into separate behaviour components. By defining the relevant behaviour components, the actual control action can be constructed based on the individual control actions of the component behaviours. In this case the control action is either related to an individual behaviour component or to a fusion of behaviour compo...

Much of the flowering time variation in wild strains of Arabidopsis thaliana is due to allelic variation at two epistatically acting loci, FRIGIDA (FRI) and FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC). FLC encodes a MADS (MCM1/AGAMOUS/DEFICIENS/SRF1) domain transcription factor that directly represses a series of flowering-promoting genes. FRI and FLC, however, do not explain all of the observed variation, especia...

Five freeze-tolerant yeast strains suitable for frozen dough were compared with ordinary commercial bakers' yeast. Kluyveromyces thermotolerans FRI 501 cells showed high survival ability after freezing when their resting cells were fermented for 0 to 180 min in modified liquid medium, and they grew to log and stationary phases. Among the freeze-tolerant strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, FRI ...

Fire history within the northern larch forests of Central Siberia was studied (65+°N). Fires within this area are predominantly caused by lightning strikes rather than human activity. Mean fire return intervals (FRI) were found to be 112 ± 49 years (based on fire scars) and 106 ± 36 years (based on fire scars and tree natality dates). FRI were increased with latitude increase, and observed to b...

The feasibility of using linkage disequilbrium (LD) to fine-map loci underlying natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana was investigated by looking for associations between flowering time and marker polymorphism in the genomic regions containing two candidate genes, FRI and FLC, both of which are known to contribute to natural variation in flowering. A sample of 196 accessions was used, and p...