STUDY DESIGN We performed an ex vivo study to observe cell morphology and viability of human nucleus pulposus (NP) chondrocytes isolated from degenerated intervertebral discs (IVD). PURPOSE To better understand the biological behavior of NP chondrocytes in monolayer cultures. OVERVIEW OF LITERATURE Biological repair of IVDs by cell-based therapy has been shown to be feasible in clinical tri...

A technique is presented for monitoring the seated postural stability and control of human subjects. Estimates are made of the locations of the subject's center of pressure (CP(S)) and projection of the center of mass (CM(NP)) from moment balance equations using measured force and acceleration data. The CP(S) and CM(NP) indices describe the stability of the subject, independent of the chair, ev...

Deer (Cervidae) cause considerable damage to forest plantations, crops, and protected habitats. The most common response to this damage is to implement strategies to lower population densities. However, lowering deer density may not always be desirable from hunting, recreational, or conservation perspectives. Therefore, knowledge is needed about additional factors beyond deer density that affec...

How to assess the potential habitat integrating landscape dynamics and population research, and how to reintroduce animals to potential habitats in environments highly human disturbed are still questions to be answered in conservation biology. According to behavioral research on Elaphurus davidians, we have developed a suitability index and a risk index to evaluate the potential habitats for th...

We developed new vegetation indices utilizing terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) to quantify the three-dimensional spatial configuration of plant communities. These indices leverage the novelty of TLS data and rely on the spatially biased arrangement of a TLS point cloud. We calculated these indices from TLS data acquired within an existing long term manipulation of forest structure in Central Or...

The combination of remote imagery data, geographic information systems software, and landscape ecology theory provides a unique basis for monitoring and assessing large-scale ecological systems. The unique feature of the work has been the need to develop and interpret quantitative measures of spatial pattern—the landscape indices. This article reviews what is known about the statistical propert...

causative constructions play an important role in the mental and linguistic system of human beings. the methodology that is used in this paper for studying causative constructions in persian is the combination of the morphology-based approach and song’s model (1996, 2001). emphasizing the causer np and the causee np, we draw the semantic map of the causer np (based on the animacy hierarchy). in...

It has been recognized that urban residential segregation is a scale-dependent phenomenon, and yet all existing structural or spatial indices measure only certain dimensions of segregation at one single scale. Inspired by new metrics developed by landscape ecologists to measure landscape heterogeneity, in this paper we explore the feasiblity of a multiscale, lacunarity-based segregation measure...

We propose a rather general description of residual New Physics (NP) effects on the top quark couplings. These effects are described in terms of 20 gauge invariant dim = 6 operators involving gauge and Higgs bosons as well as quarks of the third family. We compute their implications for the γtt̄, Ztt̄ and tbW vertices and study their observability in the process e−e+ → tt̄ with t → bW → blνl. We p...

the notion of sustainable development has rapidly gained considerable attention since the lastdecades of the twentieth century. it has become a locus for global paradigm shift on environment and development issues particularly after rio conference in 1992. the comparative analysis of agenda 21 and major un documents, mdg, and rio+20 as well as some major sources are made to provide a context fo...