Given its biological significance, determining the dispersal kernel (i.e., the distribution of dispersal distances) of spore-producing pathogens is essential. Here, we report two field experiments designed to measure disease gradients caused by sexually- and asexually-produced spores of the wind-dispersed banana plant fungus Mycosphaerella fijiensis. Gradients were measured during a single gene...

BACKGROUND Both unilateral pedicle screw fixation with posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) and bilateral pedicle screw fixation with PLIF are used to treat lumbar degenerative diseases (LDD). However, which one is a better treatment for LDD remains considerable controversy. Therefore, the focus of this meta-analysis was to assess the merits and shortcomings of efficacy of these 2 surgical ...

787 Dear Editor, We note with interest the recent article by Thekkinkattil et al. [1] studying the feasibility of the barbed suture (BS) (V-Loc) to close latissimus dorsi donor sites (LDD). Their seroma rates were fairly high (33% in the BS group) compared with the recently published literature [2,3], although they did not demonstrate any statistical difference with traditional interrupted quil...

We introduce linear decision diagrams (LDDs) as a special class of linear representations of formal power series. LDDs can be seen as a generalization of some previously proposed structures, such as MTBDDs and matrix diagrams, that have seen successful application in the compact representation of Markov models with large state spaces. Besides providing some possibilities for additional compress...

The article by Shapiro et al., which summarizes a survey of respondents on the words or phrases they use to identify the melanocytic nevus described by Clark et al. in 1978, shows that over 70% of The American Society of Dermatopathology (ASDP) members and nearly 85% of The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) members preferred one of the following phrases: ‘‘dysplastic nevus’’, ‘‘nevus with a...

4th International Workshop on Functional-Structural Plant Models, 7-11 june 2004 –Montpellier, France Edited by C. Godin et al., pp. 110-114 A comparison of two fractal models for describing whole tree structure Pekka Nygren, Harry Ozier-Lafontaine and Miaoer Lu Department of Forest Ecology, PO Box 27, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland Unité Agropédoclimatique, INRA Antilles-Guyane, Domaine...

BACKGROUND Different models exist to provide HIV/STI services for most-at-risk populations (MARP). Along the Tete traffic corridor in Mozambique, linking Malawi and Zimbabwe, a night clinic opening between 4 and 10 PM was established targeting female sex workers (FSW) and long-distance truck drivers (LDD). The clinic offers free individual education and counselling, condoms, STI care, HIV testi...

A seed shadow is the spatial distribution of all seeds dispersed from an individual plant (Janzen, 1970; Nathan and Muller-Landau, 2000; Schupp et al., 2002). The sum of seed shadows across all individuals in a population plus those seeds dispersed from other populations makes up seed rain. For vertebrate-dispersed species, seed shadows are the primary outcome of plant–frugivore interactions, y...

Cowden syndrome (OMIM No 158350) is a pleomorphic, autosomal dominant syndrome characterised by hamartomas in tissues derived from the endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm. It is caused by germline mutations in the PTEN gene and is allelic to the Bannayan-Riley-Ruvalcaba and Lhermitte-Duclos syndromes. The three syndromes are defined on clinical grounds but there is overlap in their definitions. Th...

PTEN gene is considered one of the most mutated tumor suppressor genes in human cancer, and it's likely to become the first one in the near future. Since 1997, its involvement in tumor suppression has smoothly increased, up to the current importance. Germline mutations of PTEN cause the PTEN hamartoma tumor syndrome (PHTS), which include the past-called Cowden, Bannayan-Riley-Ruvalcaba, Proteus...