The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of plasma treatment using argon and oxygen gases, combined with fiber position on flexural properties of a fiber-reinforced composite. Eleven groups were evaluated, a non-reinforced control group and 10 groups reinforced with InFibra, a woven polyethylene fiber, varying according to the plasma treatment and fiber position. The samples were prepar...

We discuss string theory on AdS 3 × S 3 × M 4 with particular emphasis on unitarity and state-operator correspondence. The AdS-CFT correspondence, in the Minkowski signature, is reexamined by taking into account the only allowed unitary representation: the principal series module of the affine current algebra SL(2,R) supplemented with zero modes. Zero modes play an important role in the descrip...

Although computer animation of articulated figures has been the focus of extensive research in computer graphics, the study of the animation of hand grasping has been rather limited. However, hand grasping has been extensively studied in the fields of kinesiology and robotics. Traditionally, researchers in the field of robotics have used analytical methods to solve the problem of hand grasping....

BACKGROUND Long duration spaceflight (i.e., 22 days or longer) has been associated with changes in sensorimotor systems, resulting in difficulties that astronauts experience with posture control, locomotion, and manual control. The microgravity environment is an important causal factor for spaceflight induced sensorimotor changes. Whether spaceflight also affects other central nervous system fu...

Microarray-based genotyping is based on the high discrimination capability of oligonucleotide probes. For detection of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) single-base discrimination is required.We investigate how various point-mutations, comprising single base mismatches (MMs), insertions and deletions, affect hybridization of DNA-DNA oligonucleotide duplexes. Employing light-directed in sit...

The stability of the mercury ion mediated dU-HgII-dU pair depends on substituents introduced at the 5-position of the pyrimidine moiety. To this end, a series of oligonucleotides were synthesized with dU modification in central position. Common and new phosphoramidites were utilized. Hybridization experiments provided 12-mer duplexes with non-canonical "dU-dU" pairs. In most cases Hg2+ stabiliz...

Bacteriophages ϕ29 and Nf from Bacillus subtilis start replication of their linear genomes at both ends using a protein-primed mechanism by means of which the DNA polymerase initiates replication by adding dAMP to the terminal protein, this insertion being directed by the second and third 3' terminal thymine of the template strand, respectively. In this work, we have obtained evidences about th...

Recent work has suggested that there are many more selectively constrained, functional noncoding than coding sites in mammalian genomes. However, little is known about how selective constraint varies amongst different classes of noncoding DNA. We estimated the magnitude of selective constraint on a large dataset of mouse-rat gene orthologs and their surrounding noncoding DNA. Our analysis indic...

The aim of this study was to develop a methodology to measure sow udder conformation to use in studying the correlation between udder traits and piglet survival, health and performance. The steps in the investigation were (i) to assess the repeatability of measures, (ii) to determine if there was an important difference between the two sides of the udder, (iii) to assess the extent of variation...