In the pancreas, extracellular matrix (ECM) components play an import role in providing mechanical and physiological support, and also contribute to the function of islets. These ECM-connections are damaged during islet-isolation from the pancreas and are not fully recovered after encapsulation and transplantation. To promote the functional survival of human pancreatic islets, we tested differe...

The Arabidopsis receptor kinase FERONIA (FER) is a multifunctional regulator for plant growth and reproduction. Here we report that the female gametophyte-expressed glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored protein (GPI-AP) LORELEI and the seedling-expressed LRE-like GPI-AP1 (LLG1) bind to the extracellular juxtamembrane region of FER and show that this interaction is pivotal for FER function. LLG1...

PURPOSE Prostate cancer brachytherapy relies on an accurate spatial registration between the implant needles and the TRUS image, called "calibration". The authors propose a new device and a fast, automatic method to calibrate the brachytherapy system in the operating room, with instant error feedback. METHODS A device was CAD-designed and precision-engineered, which mechanically couples a cal...

The positive effect of acute resistance exercise on executive function, such as inhibitory control (IC), is poorly understood. Several previous studies have demonstrated this effect using whole-body resistance exercise. However, it remains unclear whether localized resistance exercise performed using only limited muscle groups could also acutely improve IC. Thus, the present study examined the ...

A high-precision variable-thrust control method based on real-time measurement of pintle displacement and closed-loop feedback is proposed to solve the technical problems deep throttling regulation liquid rocket engines (LRE). By optimizing system structure parameters, with high precision a fast response under wide range variable thrust can be realized, thus large-range, fast-response, chamber ...

An increasing number of multilingual applications require language recognition (LRE) as a frontend, but desire low additional computational cost. This article demonstrates a novel architecture for embedding phone based language recognition into a large vocabulary continuous

The Albayzin 2008 Language Recognition Evaluation was held from May to October 2008, and their results presented and discussed among the participating teams at the 5th Biennial Workshop on Speech Technology [1], organized by the Spanish Network on Speech Technologies [2] in November 2008. In this paper, we present (for the first time) a full description of the Albayzin 2008 LRE and analyze and ...

BACKGROUND Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells are the current industry standard for production of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies at commercial scales. Production optimisation in CHO cells hinges on analytical technologies such as the use of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to quantify genetic factors within the CHO genome and to detect the presence of contaminant organisms. PCR-based assay...

Analysis of 283 offspring born at the Duke University Primate Center show that young female ruffed lemurs, Varecia variegata, produce significantly more daughters, whereas old mothers produce more sons than expected. Data are compared to 3 hypotheses for sex ratio bias: the Trivers-Willard hypothesis which predicts that dominant females produce more males, the local resource competition (LRC) h...