Flowers allure potential pollinators by displaying attractive colour patterns, which are generally created by their petal arrangement and pigmentation. In addition to the pigmentary coloration, in certain cases reflecting surface structures may contribute to the flowers' appearance. For instance, a flower petal surface with periodic striations, acting as a grating reflector, can create an angle...

I briefly review CP violation in the B system, concentrating on B → πK decays. I discuss how to deal with electroweak-penguin contributions to these decays using flavour SU(3). With these, I show that the entire unitarity triangle can be extracted from measurements of B → πK decays. Finally, I examine the signals for new physics in these decays and the possibilities for measuring them. talk giv...

Transit oriented developments (TODs), be they greenfields developments, in-fill or redevelopments of existing sites, have been included as a key component within a number of recent metropolitan strategies within Australia, including the South East Queensland regional plan. Responding to increasingly extended journeys-to-work and other trip movements, TODs are one land use planning intervention ...

Hybridization is a well-documented, natural phenomenon that is common at low taxonomic levels in the higher plants and other groups. In spite of the obvious potential for gene flow via hybridization to cause reticulation in an evolutionary tree, analytical methods based on a strictly bifurcating model of evolution have frequently been applied to data sets containing taxa known to hybridize in n...

We do not understand perturbative QCD at small x. In particular, as I will explain, we do not understand how to apply DGLAP evolution there. However, if we combine it with Regge theory and use an important message from the HERA data for the charm structure function F c 2 (x,Q ), it is possible[1] reliably to extract the gluon structure function g(x,Q) at small x. It turns out to be larger than ...

Over the past couple of years there has been a large amount of updated data both from HERA [1, 2], on small x structure functions, and from the Tevatron, on high-ET jet production [3, 4], which has been more accurate than previous data, and expanded the phase space significantly. This had led to a number of updated sets of parton distributions [5]-[9]. In this talk we discuss the most recent up...

BACKGROUND To the authors' knowledge, limited data are available from Mediterranean populations concerning risk factors for malignant melanoma. A few Italian case-control studies have produced conflicting results regarding the association between malignant melanoma and pigmentary traits, sunburns, and melanocytic nevi. METHODS A case-control study was conducted within the framework of the Ita...

BACKGROUND We report a case of peripheral pigmentary retinopathy and visual field loss following topiramate use for uncontrolled seizures. Such side effects have not been well documented despite the increasing use of topiramate in the past 10 years. A thorough search of available English literature revealed only a small number of reports of topiramate-induced retinopathy or visual field defects...

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of glaucoma, at different stages of the disease process, on the two color-opponent system and on the luminance system. Discrimination thresholds were measured along the two equiluminant cardinal color axes (RG and YV) and along an achromatic luminance axis (LD) in 27 patients with open-angle glaucoma (OAG) and in 13 glaucoma suspects. Patient...

Systemic elastorrhexis is a widespread hereditary degeneration of mesodermal tissues affecting many structures in the body, particularly the dermis, the media of the arteries, and Bruch's membrane in the eye. Pseudoxanthoma elasticum is one form of elastorrhexis mainly affecting the skin. Degeneration of the elastic lamina of Bruch's membrane results in the formation of angioid streaks in the r...