BACKGROUND Although high-throughput sequencing of small subunit rRNA genes has revolutionized our understanding of microbial ecosystems, these technologies generate data at depths that benefit from automated analysis. Here we present AXIOME (Automation, eXtension, and Integration Of Microbial Ecology), a highly flexible and extensible management tool for popular microbial ecology analysis packa...

Finding an effective method to quantify species compositional changes in time and space has been an important task for ecologists and biogeographers. Recently, exploring regional floristic patterns using data derived from satellite imagery, such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) has drawn considerable research interests among ecologists. Studies have shown that NDVI could be ...

Proteins encoded by mitochondrial DNA are translated using mitochondrially encoded tRNAs and rRNAs. As with nuclear encoded tRNAs, mitochondrial tRNAs must be processed to become fully functional. The mitochondrial form of ribonuclease P (mt:RNase P) is responsible for 5'-end maturation and is comprised of three proteins; mitochondrial RNase P protein (MRPP) 1 and 2 together with proteinaceous ...

Global path planning is considered as a fundamental problem for mobile robots. This master project is split into two parts. In the first part we investigate the capabilities of Genetic Algorithms (GA) for solving the global path planning problem in large-scale grid maps. First, we propose a GA approach for efficiently finding an (or near) optimal path in the grid map. We carefully designed GA o...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) on cardiopulmonary function in healthy adults. METHOD Thirty-six healthy adults without a cardiac problem were enrolled. All patients were randomly assigned to either a control (17 subjects, mean age 29.41) or an electrical stimulation group (19 subjects, mean age 29.26). The electrical stimulation group received ...

Although bacterial communities play important roles in the suppression of pathogenic diseases and crop production, little is known about the bacterial communities associated with bacterial wilt. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing, statistical analyses of microbial communities in disease-suppressive and disease-conducive soils from three districts during the vegetation period of tobacco showed th...

Questions: How well do GIS-derived categorical variables (e.g., vegetation, soils, geology, elevation, geography, and physiography) separate plots based on community composition? How does the ability to distinguish plots by community composition vary with spatial scale, specifically number of patch types, patch size and spatial correlation? Both these questions bear on the effective use of stra...

Questions What is the influence of time and environmental factors such as climate topography on soil chemical properties composition vascular plants during primary succession lava flows an oceanic island? How compositional change characterized which successional stages can be distinguished? Location La Palma, Canary Islands. Methods We sampled in 72 plots a long-term chronosequence 10 ranging a...