OBJECTIVE The purpose of the present study was to devise a predictive index to predict residual liver function before hepatic resection, using technetium-99m diethylenetriamine-penta-acetic acid-galactosyl human serum albumin (99mTc-GSA) liver dynamic single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). METHODS Fifty-seven patients with liver disease underwent liver dynamic SPECT with 99mTc-GS...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of 350-rpm rotational speed on the failure incidence of ProFile nickel-titanium rotary instruments (PRI) when used by an experienced operator in conjunction with different motors. STUDY DESIGN Extracted human mandibular and maxillary first and second molars demonstrating curvatures greater than 25 degrees were used. PRI sizes 4...

Recent evidence has shown that the microRNA polymorphism may play an important role in the susceptibility to congenital heart disease (CHD). A potentially functional SNP rs4938723 (T>C) in the promoter region of pri-miR-34b/c might affect transcription factor GATA binding and therefore pri-miR-34b/c expression. We genotyped the pri-miR-34b/c polymorphism in a case-control study of 590 patients ...

In evergreen conifers, the winter down-regulation of photosynthesis and its recovery during spring are the result of a reorganization of the chloroplast and adjustments of energy-quenching mechanisms. These phenological changes may remain undetected by remote sensing, as conifers retain green foliage during periods of photosynthetic down-regulation. The aim was to assess if the timing of the sp...

Sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (F) is a novel remote sensing parameter providing an estimate of actual photosynthetic rates. A combination of this new observable and Monteith’s light use efficiency (LUE) concept was suggested for an advanced modeling of gross primary productivity (GPP). In this demonstration study, we evaluate the potential of both F and the more commonly used photochemic...

Broca’s aphasics suffer a highly restricted receptive disorder of syntax (Grodzinsky, 2000). They have severe comprehension difficulties with syntactic structures containing transformational operations (i.e., syntactic movement), and exhibit near-normal performance in most other domains of syntax. However, despite the deficit in receptive mechanisms of grammatical analysis, Broca’s aphasics use...

BACKGROUND Variant in pri-miRNA could affect miRNA expression and mature process or splicing efficiency, thus altering the hereditary susceptibility and prognosis of cancer. We aimed to assess miRNA-let-7 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) associated with the risk and prognosis of gastric cancer (GC) as predicting biomarkers, and furthermore, its possible mechanisms. METHODS A two-stage ca...

Sažetak Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je utvrditi klaoničke pokazatelje, odlike trupova, boju i pokazatelje kapaciteta vezanja vode mišićnog tkiva krčke janjadi. Cilj je također bio ispitati utjecaje tjelesne mase janjadi pri klanju i spola na istraživana svojstva. U tu svrhu zaklano je ukupno 202 janjadi krčke ovce (111 muške i 91 žensko). Neposredno nakon klanja i klaoničke obrade obavljena su m...

DiGeorge syndrome critical region gene 8 (DGCR8) is the RNA-binding partner protein of the nuclease Drosha. DGCR8 and Drosha recognize and cleave primary transcripts of microRNAs (pri-miRNAs) in the maturation of canonical microRNAs (miRNAs) in animals. We previously reported that human, frog, and starfish DGCR8 bind heme when expressed in Escherichia coli and that Fe(III) heme activates apoDGC...

This is part of a research program to establish a unified field model for interactions in nature. The aim of this article is to postulate a new principle of representation invariance (PRI), to provide a needed mathematical foundation for PRI, and to use PRI to refine the unified field equations of four interactions. Intuitively, PRI amounts to saying that all SU(N) gauge theories should be inva...