Interpretation of large-scale color infrared and color aerial photography can be a laborand cost-effective means to make inventory of and monitor rangelands while maintaining accuracy. Ground measurements of total vegetation cover, tree, shrub and cacti cover at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument were taken in 1975 and 1984. Estimates of ground vegetation cover made using large scale (1:1200) ...

The semaphore cactus in the Florida Keys bus until recently been considered a disjunct location of the Jamaican Opuntia spinosissima. Loss of all but one population in the Keys coupled with recent suggestions that the species should be taxonomically separated from the Jamaican cactus and is, therefore, a Florida Keys endemic, makes this population of conservation concern. Random amplified polym...

INTRODUCTION Splinters and spines of plant matter are common foreign bodies in skin wounds of the extremities, and often present embedded in the dermis or subcutaneous tissue. Vegetative foreign bodies are highly inflammatory and, if not completely removed, can cause infection, toxic reactions, or granuloma formation. Older patients are at increased risk for infection from untreated plant forei...

1. It is widely accepted that density-dependent processes play an important role in most natural populations. However, persistent challenges in our understanding of density-dependent population dynamics include evaluating the shape of the relationship between density and demographic rates (linear, concave, convex), and identifying extrinsic factors that can mediate this relationship. 2. I studi...

Given two independent sets I and J of a graph G, imagine that a token (coin) is placed on each vertex in I. Then, the Sliding Token problem asks if one could transforms I to J using a sequence of elementary steps, where each step requires sliding a token from one vertex to one of its neighbors, such that the resulting set of vertices where tokens are placed still remains independent. In this pa...

Here we describe the development and characterization of photo-N-degron, a peptide tag that can be used in optogenetic studies protein function vivo . The photo-N-degron expressed as genetic fusion to amino termini other proteins, where it undergoes blue light-dependent conformational change exposes signal for class ubiquitin ligases, N-recognins, which mediate N-end rule mechanism proteasomal ...

AIMS Reduction of left atrial appendage (LAA) flow velocity (FV) is a risk factor for thrombus formation and increases the risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). Furthermore, LAA morphology is correlated with stroke in patients with AF. The aim of this study was to correlate LAAFV with LAA morphology in patients with AF. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 96 patients (age 59.0 ...

Interspecific facultative mutualisms typically involve guilds of interacting species, and species within a guild can vary in the quality of services they provide. For plants that secrete extrafloral nectar (EFN), visitation by multiple ant species that vary in anti herbivore abilities may result in reduced benefits, relative to an exclusive association with a high-quality mutualist. This raises...

In this thesis we study problems related to approximation of asymmetric TSP. First we give worst case examples for the famous algorithm due to Frieze, Gabiati and Maffioli for asymmetric TSP with triangle inequality. Some steps in the algorithm consist of arbitrary choices. To prove lower bounds, these choices need to be specified. We show a worst case performance with some deterministic assump...

BACKGROUND The Drosophila Toll pathway takes part in both establishment of the embryonic dorsoventral axis and induction of the innate immune response in adults. Upon activation by the cytokine Spätzle, Toll interacts with the adaptor proteins DmMyD88 and Tube and the kinase Pelle and triggers degradation of the inhibitor Cactus, thus allowing the nuclear translocation of the transcription fact...