1,721,022 research outputs found
Ultrasound emission after cycles of water stress in Picea abies
Full text linkThe relationships among rate of ultrasound acoustic emission (AE), xylem water potential and transpiration rate were investigated in 5-year-old potted saplings of Picea abies Karst. after cycles of water stress. Water-stressed plants displayed minimum xylem water potentials of –3.9 MPa, near-zero transpiration rates and up to 45 AE counts per minute. After rewatering, water-stressed plants no longer produced AEs. Well-watered control plants produced only a small number of ultrasonic AEs. After three cycles of water stress (lasting 24 days in total), it was estimated that about two-thirds of the functional tracheids were embolized. The concomitant reduction in hydraulic conductance was about 70%
Autotraction treatment for low back pain in pregnancy: a pilot study
No full textBack pain affects about 50% of pregnant women, for whom most of the conventional treatments may be contraindicated. We ran a pilot study to test safety and potential effectiveness of a modified version of autotraction (A:T), a treatment combining active pulling efforts with the upper limbs and automatical mobilization of the spine. We treated 16 women during weeks 13-26 of pregnancy (median 20), suffering from back and/or sciatica pain unremitting for 420 weeks (median 8). Treatment was given in three 25-minute outpatient periods, one every third day. During the first session heart rate and blood pressure were monitored: these never raised by more than 15 bpm and 20 mmHg, respectively. In three cases surface EMG signals recorded unilaterally from rectus abdominis and lumbar paraspinal muscles were compared during Valsalva manoeuvres and AT sessions, in order to obtain indirect information on changes of intra-abdominal pressure. Trunk muscles appeared to act to a comparable extent during both types of manoeuvre. Self report of overall improvement, peak intensity of pain (0-100 score on 100 mm visual analogue scale [VAS]) and its qualitative severity (0-45 score on the short form of McGill Pain Questionnaire [MPQ]) were taken as outcome indicators. AT manoeuvres were always painless. Thirteen out of 16 patients reported to be improved after treatment, whereas three were unchanged. In the responders, the median VAS and MPQ pain scores dropped, as a median, from 50/100 (range 25-77) to 19/100 (0-80) and from 8.5/40 (2-20) to 3.5/45 (0-14), respectively (p<0.001, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). One month after treatment 15 patients were pain free and one reported her improvement to be stable. The deliveries had been normal and the babies healthy
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Stomatal numbers in holm oak (Quercus ilex L.) leaves grown in naturally and artificially CO2 -enriched environments.
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