By the mid 20th century, the grey wolf (Canis lupus) was exterminated from most of the conterminous United States (cUS) and Mexico. However, because wolves disperse over long distances, extant populations in Canada and Alaska might have retained a substantial proportion of the genetic diversity once found in the cUS. We analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences of 34 pre-extermination wolves and fou...

Hormone replacement therapy is the principal treatment for perimenopausal affective disorders which can cause severe side effects. The present study compared the effects of electroacupuncture (EA) and estradiol treatment on perimenopausal affective disorders at the behavioral and cellular levels. In this randomized experimental in vivo study, adult female rats were divided into intact, ovariect...

OBJECTIVE In this study, the effect of maternal deprivation (MD) and chronic unpredictable stress (CUS) in inducing depressive behaviors and associated molecular mechanism were investigated in rats. METHODS Maternal deprivation was established by separating pups from their mothers for 6 hours daily from postnatal day 1 to day 14. Chronic unpredictable stress was established by water deprivati...

Danggui-Shaoyao-San (DSS), a famous Chinese herbal formula, has been widely used in the treatment of various diseases. Previous studies have shown that DSS produces antidepressant-like effect in rodents. This study aims to investigate the mechanism(s) underlying the antidepressant-like action of DDS. The results showed that DSS treatment significantly antagonized reserpine-induced ptosis in mic...

Spectrum sharing is an essential enabling functionality to allow the coexistence between primary user (PU) and cognitive users (CUs) in the same frequency band. In this paper, we consider joint rate and power allocation in cognitive radio networks by using game theory. The optimum rates and powers are obtained by iteratively maximizing each CU’s utility function, which is designed to guarantee ...

OBJECTIVE This research was aimed to evaluate the behaviors of short- or long-term antidepressant effects of ketamine in rats exposed to chronic unpredictable stress (CUS). BACKGROUND Ketamine, a glutamate noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist, regulates excitatory amino acid functions, such as anxiety disorders and major depression, and plays an important role in synaptic plasticity and le...

This paper examines various implications of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs), namely Customs Unions (CUs) and Free Trade Areas (FTAs), in the context of a multi-country general equilibrium model based on comparative advantage considerations. We calibrate the model to represent countries with symmetric endowments, and compare the impact of those agreements with free trade and a non-cooperati...

Overlapping bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) are proliferating in East Asia. Quite a few economists worry about the spaghetti bowl phenomenon expected from the proliferating East Asian regional trade agreements (RTAs).The complicated web of hub-and-spoke type of FTAs can result in high costs for verifying rules of origin (RoO). As an alternative policy option to avoid the negative effect ...

OBJECTIVE The Sonic Flashlight (SF) is a new handheld ultrasound (US) display device being developed at our institution. It replaces the standard monitor on a conventional ultrasound (CUS) system with a miniature monitor and half-silvered mirror to reflect real-time US images into the body. With the SF, the imaged body part appears translucent, with the US image appearing to float below the sur...