Celastrus and Tripterygium species, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine, have attracted much attention due to their anti-tumor promoting and neuroprotective activities, in addition to their applications in autoimmune disorders. However, systematic relationships between them and among species are unclear, and it may disturb their further medicinal utilization. In the present study, th...

The field of rehabilitation robotics develops robotic systems that assist persons who have a disability with necessary activities, or that provide therapy for persons seeking to improve physical or cognitive function. This chapter will discuss both of these domains and provide descriptions of the major achievements of the field over its short history. Specifically, after providing background in...

PURPOSE Iodinated contrast media (CM) and iron in the liver are known to hinder an accurate quantification of liver fat content (LFC) with single-energy computed tomography (SECT). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and accuracy of dual-energy CT (DECT) for ex vivo quantification of LFC, in the presence of iron and CM, compared with SECT. MATERIALS AND METHODS Sixteen p...

One of the long-standing mysteries in genomic evolution is the observation that much of the genome is composed of repetitive DNA, resulting in inter- and intraspecific variation in nuclear DNA content. Our discovery of a negative correlation between nuclear DNA content and flower size in Silene latifolia has been supported by our subsequent investigation of changes in DNA content as a correlate...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE DECT offers additional image datasets with potential benefits, but its use for H&N imaging is not justified unless image quality is preserved without increased radiation dose. The aim of this work was to compare image quality and radiation dose between a DE-derived WA image dataset and a standard SECT acquisition of the H&N. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty-two patients und...

Specimens belonging to the genus Carex sect. Ammoglochin from W Azarbaijan province (W Iran) were studied and Carex iraqensis and C. disticha are reported for the first time from Iran. These species are characterised and illustrated and a determination key for species of sect. Ammoglochin is presented. Taxonomic relationships and distributions are discussed in the Persian text which is also sum...

The importance of Cepheids is well known in many fields of astronomy. In this contribution I would like to show how it is possible to obtain indications about the internal structure of a Cepheid and how we can test models of this class of variable stars. Section 2 introduces the Fourier decomposition, a tool to describe quantitatively the light curves of pulsating stars. In the past years I hav...

We outline a neo-Meinongian framework labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM) to account for the ontology and semantics of fictional discourse. Several competing accounts of fictional objects are originated by the fact that our talking of them mirrors incoherent intuitions: mainstream theories of fiction privilege some such intuitions, but are forced to account for others via complicated ...

In the standard electroweak model, with three families, a one-to-one correspondence between certain determinants involving quark mass matrices (m and m' for charge 2/3 and 1 / 3 quarks respectively) and the presence/absence of CP violation is given. In an arbitrary basis for mass matrices, the quantity Imde t 1-ram +, m ' m '+3 appropriately normalized is introduced as a measure of CP violation...

Leaf characters have been successfully utilized to classify Camellia (Theaceae) species; however, leaf characters combined with supervised pattern recognition techniques have not been previously explored. We present results of using leaf morphological and venation characters of 93 species from five sections of genus Camellia to assess the effectiveness of several supervised pattern recognition ...