Somatic embryogenesis from young spikelets of the giant bamboo Dendrocalamus asper (Schult f.) Backer ex Heyne

Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (PCTOC) - Bamboos are an important worldwide non-timber forest product with rising interest due to their environmentally friendly applications. Besides its use...     

Relative growth and morphological sexual maturity of the mangrove crab Aratus pisonii (H. Milne Edwards, 1837) (Decapoda,Brachyura, Sesarmidae) on the southern coast of the state of São Paulo,Brazil

Growth in crustaceans is characterized by ontogenetic differentiation during the development of their body structures, so studies on relative growth are widely applied in this group. In this study, the growth pattern of the body structures was verified through the analysis of relative growth, and then, morphological sexual maturity of the mangrove crab Aratus pisonii (H. Milne Edwards, 1837) was estimated. The carapace width (CW), cheliped propodus length (PL), cheliped propodus height (PH), propodus width (PW), abdomen width (AW), and first pleopod length (FPL) of the crabs were measured. The relationships that best showed changes in the allometric coefficient among demographic categories were FPL vs. CW for males and AW vs. CW for females. This study verified the increased size of the cheliped in terms of length, width, and height, which occurred mainly in adult males. This increase reflects the importance of this structure in the reproductive processes of A. pisonii. For females, the increase in abdomen growth reflects their reproductive potential, since it is a structure that provides protection for eggs.     

Taurine supplementation in high-fat diet fed male mice attenuates endocrine pancreatic dysfunction in their male offspring

Amino Acids - Obesity in fathers leads to DNA damage and epigenetic changes in sperm that may carry potential risk factors for metabolic diseases to the next generation. Taurine (TAU)...     

Smartphone‐based spectral imaging otoscope: System development and preliminary study for evaluation of its potential as a mobile diagnostic tool

We develop a novel smartphone‐based spectral imaging otoscope for telemedicine and examine its capability for the mobile diagnosis of middle ear diseases. The device was applied to perform spectral imaging and analysis of an ear‐mimicking phantom and a normal and abnormal tympanic membrane for evaluation of its potential for the mobile diagnosis. Spectral classified images were obtained via online spectral analysis in a remote server. The phantom experimental results showed that it allowed us to distinguish four different fluids located behind a semitransparent membrane. Also, in the spectral classified images of normal ears (n = 3) and an ear with chronic otitis media (n = 1), the normal and abnormal regions in each ear could be quantitatively distinguished with high contrast. These preliminary results thus suggested that it might have the potentials for providing quantitative information for the mobile diagnosis of various middle ear diseases.     

Anaerobiosis revisited: growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae under extremely low oxygen availability

Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology - The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae plays an important role in biotechnological applications, ranging from fuel ethanol to recombinant protein...     

New insights about host response to smallpox using microarray data

Background  

Smallpox is a lethal disease that was endemic in many parts of the world until eradicated by massive immunization. Due to its lethality, there are serious concerns about its use as a bioweapon. Here we analyze publicly available microarray data to further understand survival of smallpox infected macaques, using systems biology approaches. Our goal is to improve the knowledge about the progression of this disease.     

Sensitivity of macroecological patterns of South American parrots to differences in data sources

A criticism of macroecological studies has been their extensive use of secondary data sources. In this note we evaluate how different data sources affect macroecological patterns for the parrots of South America. We mapped extents of parrot occurrence based on four sources of range maps. We compared basic statistics for geographical range size distribution (mean, variance and skew) and calculated correlations between geographical range size estimates and grid cell species richness estimates. Finally, results from multiple regression analyses of species richness against six environmental variables were also compared. We found that patterns were very robust to the data source, with only relatively slight quantitative differences. Our results reinforce the notion that patterns emerging from macroecological analyses are robust to variations in data sources and cannot be merely artefacts resulting from low data quality, notably poorly defined mapping and conflicting taxonomy.