One of the world's greatest plant collections has won a top heritage award at a time when it is highlighting with a tree-top walkway the need to study the forest canopy which is one of the most crucial but least understood habitats.

Assisted reproductive technologies in all mammals are critically dependent on the quality of the oocytes used to produce embryos. For reasons not fully clear, oocytes matured in vitro tend to be much less competent to become fertilized, advance to the blastocyst stage, and give rise to live young than their in vivo-produced counterparts, particularly if they are derived from immature females. H...

Of all the phenomena in the atmosphere, there is none that exceeds the thunderstorm in beauty as it builds up from a small detached cumulus into a towering and awe-inspiring cumulonimbus. However, aviators treat thunderstorms with reverence for they are associated with hail, wind shear and turbulence, squalls and at times heavy precipitation. Thunderstorms during the hot and dry pre-monsoon sea...

Substantially less development to the blastocyst stage occurs in vitro than in vivo and this may be due to deficiencies in oocyte competence. Although a large proportion of bovine oocytes undergo spontaneous nuclear maturation, less is known about requirements for proper cytoplasmic maturation. Commonly, supraphysiological concentrations of FSH and LH are added to maturation media to improve cu...

Techniques for in vitro production (IVP) of viable embryos have been thoroughly developed in several domestic species in view to improve breeding efficiency. When applied to wild life, these techniques may also help the maintenance of biodiversity through amplification of sparse animals offspring and facilitation of genetic material exchange. During the successive steps of IVP, i.e. oocyte in v...

The maturation rate of canine oocytes during in vitro maturation (IVM) needs to be improved. The present study was designed to evaluate the effects of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) on the IVM of canine oocytes. Ovaries were obtained by ovariohysterectomy and were sliced to release cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs). In Experiment 1, the effects of different concentrations of IGF-1 on the nu...