The shape and polarity of the C. elegans gonad is defined during early gonadogenesis by two somatic gonadal precursor cells, Z1 and Z4, and their descendants. Z1 and Z4 divide asymmetrically to establish the proximal-distal axes of the gonad and to generate regulatory leader cells that control organ shape. In this paper, we report that pop-1, the C. elegans TCF/LEF-1 transcription factor, contr...

Portulaca oleracea L. has been used as a food and medicinal plant for thousands of years in China. Polysaccharides extracted from P. oleracea L. (POP) are its main bioactive compound and have multiple pharmacological activities. However, anti-fatigue effects of POP have not yet been tested. This study was designed to investigate the anti-fatigue effects of POP in mice using the rotarod and forc...

INTRODUCTION Gastroparesis, or delayed gastric emptying, can be diagnosed with gastric emptying scintigraphy. Manometric studies of patients with gastroparesis show increased pyloric tone (pylorospasm). Among the recent endoscopic therapies for pylorospasm is peroral endoscopic pylorotomy (POP). In this study, we explored the effect of POP on gastric emptying in healthy pigs. MATERIAL AND MET...

Liposomes incorporating porphyrin-phospholipid (PoP) can be formulated to release entrapped contents in response to near-infrared (NIR) laser irradiation. Here, we examine effects of chelating copper or zinc into the PoP. Cu(II) and Zn(II) PoP liposomes, containing 10 molar % HPPH-lipid, exhibited unique photophysical properties and released entrapped cargo in response to NIR light. Cu-PoP lipo...

This paper proposes an effective multi-objective differential evolution algorithm (MDES) to solve a permutation flow shop scheduling problem (PFSSP) with modified Dejong's learning effect. The proposed algorithm combines the basic differential evolution (DE) with local search and borrows the selection operator from NSGA-II to improve the general performance.  First the problem is encoded with a...

Introduction and Objective: Nonabsorbable monofilament suture is traditionally used to secure vaginal mesh for robot-assisted sacral colpopexy (RASC) but can become exposed postoperatively requiring invasive removal. Polydioxanone delayed absorbable may avoid this. We sought determine the objective subjective impact of choice fixation. Materials Methods: A cohort study was undertaken using a pr...

OBJECTIVE To estimate quality of life, prevalence, and risk factors associated with symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse (POP) among middle-aged women. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study. A questionnaire was mailed to 3,114 women aged 50-61 years in the GAZEL cohort; 2,640 (85%) returned it. Symptomatic POP was defined by feeling a bulge from the vagina (sometimes, often, or all the time c...

OBJECTIVES Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is a major cause of morbidity in Nepal, particularly affecting women in the rural communities. Women with POP in Nepal may suffer from symptoms for decades. At present, the Government of Nepal advocates surgical intervention but access to surgical care is inadequate. This report evaluated the feasibility of a non-surgical public health programme in rural N...

This paper presents the first numerical implementation and tests of the Lagrangianaveraged Navier-Stokes-alpha (LANS-α) turbulence model in a primitive equation ocean model. The ocean model in which we work is the Los Alamos Parallel Ocean Program (POP); we refer to POP and our implementation of LANS-α as POP-α. Two versions of POP-α are presented: the full POP-α algorithm is derived from the L...

Detection of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) from redshifts z ∼> 7 would open a new window into the earliest epoch of cosmic star formation. We construct separate star formation histories at high redshifts for normal (Pop I and II) stars, and for predominantly massive (Pop III) stars. Based on these separate histories, we predict the GRB redshift distribution to be observed by the Swift mission. Regard...