The vasorelaxing activity of rotundifolone (ROT), a major constituent (63.5%) of the essential oil of Mentha x villosa, was tested in male Wistar rats (300-350 g). In isolated rat aortic rings, increasing ROT concentrations (0.3, 1, 10, 100, 300, and 500 microg/ml) inhibited the contractile effects of 1 microM phenylephrine and of 80 or 30 mM KCl (IC50 values, reported as means +/- SEM = 184 +/...

The bacterial strain M5al is a model strain for studying the molecular genetics of N2-fixation and molecular engineering of microbial production of platform chemicals 1,3-propanediol and 2,3-butanediol. Here, we present the complete genome sequence of the strain M5al, which belongs to a novel species closely related to Klebsiella michiganensis. M5al secretes plant cell wall-degrading enzymes an...

Correlating plant litter decay rates with initial tissue traits (e.g. C, N contents) is common practice, but in woody litter, predictive relationships are often weak. Variability in predicting wood decomposition is partially due to territorial competition among fungal decomposers that, in turn, have a range of nutritional strategies (rot types) and consequences on residues. Given this biotic in...

In this article, a relay on-off threshold (ROT) based on symbol error rate is derived for the cooperative communication networks with multiple antennas, where the non-orthogonal decode-and-forward (NDF) protocol with source antenna switching and linear combining decoding are used as the relaying protocol and decoding scheme, respectively. The optimal ROT for the cases using distributed orthogon...

chinaberry (melia azedarach l.) is a beautiful tree indigenous to the himalayas that grows as a native plant in iran. symptoms similar to bacterial gall have been observed on the crown, shoot and twig of chinaberry, a recent landscape tree since 2003-2004 in shiraz, fars province, south of iran. a gram negative bacterium was isolated from the galls. the isolates did not produce fluorescent pigm...

Basidiomycetes that cause brown rot of wood are essential biomass recyclers in coniferous forest ecosystems and a major cause of failure in wooden structures. Recent work indicates that distinct lineages of brown rot fungi have arisen independently from ligninolytic white rot ancestors via loss of lignocellulolytic enzymes. Brown rot thus proceeds without significant lignin removal, apparently ...

Thermal modification has been developed for an industrial method to increase the biological durability and dimensional stability of wood. In this study the effects of thermal modification on resistance against softand brown-rot fungi of sapwood and heartwood of Scots pine and Norway spruce were investigated using laboratory test methods. Natural durability against soft-rot microfungi was determ...

Cellulose degradation by four cellulose-clearing brown-rot fungi in the Coniophoraceae-Coniophora prasinoides, C. puteana, Leucogyrophana arizonica, and L. olivascens-is compared with that of a non-cellulose-clearing brown-rot fungus, Poria placenta. The cellulose- and the non-cellulose-clearing brown-rot fungi apparently employ similar mechanisms to depolymerize cellulose; most likely a nonenz...