Divergent selection between environments can result in changes to the behavior of an organism. In many insects, volatile compounds are a primary means by which host plants are recognized and shifts in plant availability can result in changes to host preference. Both the plant substrate and microorganisms can influence this behavior, and host plant choice can have an impact on the performance of...

Calcium-dependent cysteine proteases of the calpain family are modulatory proteases that cleave their substrates in a limited manner. Among their substrates, calpains target vertebrate and invertebrate IκB proteins. Because proteolysis by calpains potentially generates novel protein functions, it is important to understand how this affects NFκB activity. We investigate the action of Calpain A (...

Efficient algorithms for solving the center problems in weighted cactus networks are presented. In particular, we have proposed the following algorithms for the weighted cactus networks of size n: an O(n log n) time algorithm to solve the 1center problem, an O(n log 3n) time algorithm to solve the weighted continuous 2-center problem. We have also provided improved solutions to the general p-ce...

BACKGROUND Cactus polysaccharides are the active components of Opuntia dillenii which have been used extensively in folk medicine. In this study, we investigate the anti-tumor effect of cactus polysaccharides on lung squamous carcinoma cells SK-MES-1. MATERIALS AND METHODS The inhibitory effect of Cactus polysaccharides on lung squamous carcinoma cells were detected by MTT assay. Cell cycle w...

BACKGROUND Cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica) fiber was shown to promote weight loss in a 3-month clinical investigation. As demonstrated by in vitro studies, cactus fiber binds to dietary fat and its use results in reduced absorption, which in turn leads to reduced energy absorption and ultimately the reduction of body weight. OBJECTIVE The objective of our study was to elucidate the dietary fat ...

In this paper, we build on recent results by Chauve et al. and Bahrani and Lumbroso, which combined the splitdecomposition, as exposed by Gioan and Paul, with analytic combinatorics, to produce new enumerative results on graphs—in particular the enumeration of several subclasses of perfect graphs (distance-hereditary, 3-leaf power, ptolemaic). Our goal was to study a simple family of graphs, of...

Cladophialophora carrionii is one of the four major etiologic agents of human chromoblastomycosis in semi-arid climates. This species was studied using sequence data of the internal transcribed spacer region of rDNA, the partial beta-tubulin gene and an intron in the translation elongation factor 1-alpha gene, in addition to morphology. With all genes a clear bipartition was observed, which cor...

A cactus graph is a connected graph in which every block is either an edge or a cycle. In this paper, we consider several problems of graph theory and developed optimal algorithms to solve such problems on cactus graphs. The running time of these algorithms is O(n), where n is the total number of vertices of the graph. The cactus graph has many applications in real life problems, especially in ...

Let p be a positive integer and G = (V;E) a graph. A subset S of V is a p-dominating set if every vertex of V S is dominated at least p times. The minimum cardinality of a p-dominating set a of G is the p-domination number p(G): It is proved for a cactus graph G that p(G) 6 (jV j+ jLp(G)j+c(G))=2; for every positive integer p > 2; where Lp(G) is the set of vertices of G of degree at most p 1 an...

Drosophila gouveai is a cactophilic species endemic to South America. In southeast Brazil it is found on summits of isolated hills, which apparently are current refugia resulting from climatic changes during the Quaternary Period. It breeds only in necrotic cactus cladodes of Pilosocereus machrisii. Temporal differences in necrotic cactus availability could have a great impact upon D. gouveai p...