In southern England, Linaria vulgaris (common yellow toadflax) suffers from high rates of nectar robbery by bumblebees. In a wild population of L. vulgaris we found that 96 % of open flowers were robbed. Five species of bumblebee were observed foraging on these flowers, although short-tongued species (Bombus lapidarius, B. lucorum and B. terrestris) robbed nectar whilst longer-tongued ones beha...

ANTHER INDEHISCENCE FACTOR (AIF), a NAC-like gene, was identified in Arabidopsis. In AIF:GUS flowers, β-glucuronidase (GUS) activity was detected in the anther, the upper parts of the filaments, and in the pollen of stage 7-9 young flower buds; GUS activity was reduced in mature flowers. Yellow fluorescent protein (YFP)+AIF-C fusion proteins, which lacked a transmembrane domain, accumulated in ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS 'Pollination syndromes' are suites of phenotypic traits hypothesized to reflect convergent adaptations of flowers for pollination by specific types of animals. They were first developed in the 1870s and honed during the mid 20th Century. In spite of this long history and their central role in organizing research on plant-pollinator interactions, the pollination syndromes hav...

Dehydration is a major factor resulting in huge loss from cut flowers during transportation. In the present study, dehydration inhibited petal cell expansion and resulted in irregular flowers in cut roses, mimicking ethylene-treated flowers. Among the five floral organs, dehydration substantially elevated ethylene production in the sepals, whilst rehydration caused rapid and elevated ethylene l...

Retain, a commercially available ethylene inhibitor developed by Valent BioSciences, has been widely tested on stone fruit for improving post harvest shelf life. This season, a simple test of its effect on Serr PFA was conducted in Kings County. A nine-year old block of Serr walnuts south of a Chandler orchard was selected. Ten fruiting shoots in each of twenty trees 120 to 150 feet south of th...

cerebral palsy is a term commonly used for conditions characterized by motor dysfunction due to non-progressive brain damage in early life. the aim of this study was to compare the effects of self-control and experimental-control feedback frequencies on the acquisition, retention and transfer of a throwing task in children with spastic cerebral palsy. from 1750 students with cerebral palsy in t...

most of the studies on the key word method of second/foreign language vocabulary learning have been based on the evidence from laboratory experiments and have primarily involved the use of english key words to learn the vocabularies of other languages. furthermore, comparatively quite limited number of such studies is done in authentic classroom contexts. the present study inquired into the eff...

The essential oil, obtained by steam distillation of flowers, leaves and stems from Wisteria brachybotrys Sieb.et Zucc, collected in Japan was analyzed by gas chromatography (GC) and GC-MS. The important aroma-active compounds were also detected in the oil using GC-MS/Olfactometry (GC-MS/O) and aroma extraction dilution analysis (AEDA). As a result, sixty-eight compounds from flowers of W. brac...

This study aimed to prepare silk fibroin (SF) films loaded with honeysuckle flowers extract (HFE) for inducing apoptosis of HeLa cells. We mixed solution of SF and HFE by air-drying for preparing the honeysuckle flowers extract loaded silk fibroin (SFH) films. The physical properties including morphologies, contact angle, roughness, and Z range were characterized. MTS assay and fluorescence mic...