Mangrove roots in the well-protected channels and ponds among dense mangrove stands provide very similar habitats for sponges in the Twin Cays and Pelican Cays and harbor extraordinarily dense and diverse sponge communities in both locations. The species of sponges are very different, however, possibly because of an important difference in context: the Twin Cays mangrove roots are embedded in p...

The objective of this study is to develop an osteoinductive scaffold which enables the controlled release of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-2. A biodegradable gelatin sponge incorporating 50 wt% of btricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) was fabricated to investigate the osteoinduction activity. The sponge prepared had an interconnected pore structure with an average pore size of 200 mm. The in vivo re...

Demosponges are a rich natural source of unusual lipids, some of which are of interest as geochemical biomarkers. Although demosponges are animals, they often host dense communities of microbial symbionts, and it is therefore unclear which lipids can be synthesized by the animal de novo, and which require input from the microbial community. To address this uncertainty, we analyzed the lipids of...

Hosting symbionts provides many eukaryotes with access to the products of microbial metabolism that are crucial for host performance. On tropical coral reefs, many (High Microbial Abundance [HMA]) but not all (Low Microbial Abundance [LMA]) marine sponges host abundant symbiont communities. Although recent research has revealed substantial variation in these sponge-microbe associations (termed ...

INTRODUCTION Medullary sponge kidney is a congenital anomaly characterized by diffuse ectasy of the collecting tubules of one or both kidneys. It is usually diagnosed in the second or third decade of life. CASE PRESENTATION Distal renal tubular acidosis is commonly observed in patients with medullary sponge kidney. We describe here a 50-day-old Egyptian Caucasian girl with medullary sponge ki...

Emphysema is a chronic lung disease characterized by alveolar enlargement and tissue loss. Tissue engineering represents an attractive potential for regeneration of several organ systems. The complex three-dimensional architectural structure of lung parenchyma requiring connections of alveolar units to airways and the pulmonary circulation makes this strategy less optimistic. In the present stu...

Wastewater irrigation is a very important resource for heavy metal pollution in soil and then accumulation in vegetable crops. In this study, a polyethylenimine (PEI)-grafted gelatin sponge was prepared to effectively adsorb heavy metals during wastewater irrigation. Based on the strong water adsorption ability, wastewater remained in the PEI-grafted gelatin sponge for a sufficient time for the...

The biosynthetic origins of the isocyanide and isothiocyanate functional groups in the marine sponge metabolites diisocyanoadociane (1), 9-isocyanopupukeanane (10) and 9-isothiocyanatopupukeanane (11) are probed by the use of [(14)C]-labelled precursor experiments. Incubation of the sponge Amphimedon terpenensis with [(14)C]-labelled thiocyanate resulted in radioactive diisocyanoadociane (1) in...

In classical works, Hurewicz and Menger introduced two diagonalization properties for sequences of open covers. Hurewicz found a combinatorial characterization of these notions in terms of continuous images. Recently, Scheepers has shown that these notions are particular cases in a large family of diagonalization schemas. One of the members of this family is weaker than the Hurewicz property an...

Using a portion of the Continuum Hypothesis, we prove that there is a Menger-bounded (also called o-bounded) subgroup of the Baire group Z, whose square is not Menger-bounded. This settles a major open problem concerning boundedness notions for groups, and implies that Menger-bounded groups need not be Scheepers-bounded.