Tropospheric ozone is a major air pollutant affecting plants worldwide. Plants in northern regions can display more ozone injury than plants at lower latitudes despite lower ozone levels. Larger ozone influx and shorter nights have been suggested as possible causes. However, the effects of the dim light present during northern summer nights have not been investigated. Young Trifolium subterrane...

The Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae) is one of the principal exotic pests affecting Brazilian production in the northeastern and southeastern regions of Brazil. In the south, it is has potential as a serious threat to temperate-climate fruit farms, since it is already found in urban and suburban communities in this region. We studied the biological c...

The impact of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) supplementation on weight change remains controversial. The objective of this study was to summarize the effects of 25[OH]D supplementation (cholecalciferol or ergocalciferol) on BMI change through a meta-analysis of published clinical trials. We completed a systematic review of English articles, using MEDLINE (Ovid, Pubmed) from January 1, 1998 throu...

We investigated the effect of acute and acclimatory temperature on the relative contribution of g9lucose and lactate to metabolism in resting sartorius muscle of the American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeiana). We examined the fate of these metabolites in vitro by supplying radiolabeled [(14)C]glucose, [(14)C]lactate and [(14)C]palmitate to isolated muscle bundles from frogs (1) acutely exposed ...

Although the relationship between stress intensity and memory function is generally believed to follow an inverted-U-shaped curve, strikingly this phenomenon has not been demonstrated under the same experimental conditions. We investigated this phenomenon for rats' performance in a hippocampus-dependent learning task, the radial arm water maze (RAWM). Variations in stress intensity were induced...

This interlaboratory study on determination of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OH-D) in serum involved 15 laboratories in eight European countries. All could distinguish between normal (50 +/- 31 nmol/L, mean +/- SD) and grossly increased concentrations, but for eight laboratories the results for serum samples with low and normal 25-OH-D content overlapped. In general, values were well reproducible, bu...

The use of cryopreserved human embryos in gene expression studies provides an additional source to the scarce embryos available for research. To validate their use we have implemented a quantitative RT-PCR to characterize the levels of the tuberous sclerosis, TSC2 gene in fresh and frozen-thawed human embryos. Frozen embryos were thawed using two different clinical protocols. In fresh embryos 9...

High-temperature stress degrades the grain quality of rice; nevertheless, the exogenous application of plant growth regulators (PGRs) might alleviate the negative effects of high temperatures. In the present study, we investigated the responses of rice grain quality to exogenously applied PGRs under high day temperatures (HDT) and high night temperatures (HNT) under controlled conditions. Four ...

Larvae of Carcinus maenas (L.) (Decapoda, Brachyura, Portunidae) were reared in the laboratory from hatching to metamorphosis. Developmental times of subsequent stages at d~fferent constant temperatures (6, 12, 12.5. 18. 25°C) were recorded. Temperature-dependent development of each larval stage can be expressed by a power function. A model is presented which combines these results with the lon...