Background: The need for scientific knowledge about aging is predicated on the demand of modern society to extend the active life of a person. To maintain intellectual longevity, it is necessary to take into account not only the pathological, but also compensatory mechanisms that arise during aging. The cerebral-cognitive reserve (CCR) influences the rate of transition from pre-phenomenological stages to the clinical stage of the disease, thereby changing the prognosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis methodological study describes the adaptation of a new method in digital wood anatomy, pixel-contrast densitometry, for angiosperm species. The new method was tested on eight species of shrubs and small trees in Southern Siberia, whose wood structure varies from ring-porous to diffuse-porous, with different spatial organizations of vessels. A two-step transformation of wood cross-section photographs by smoothing and Otsu's classification algorithm was proposed to separate images into cell wall areas and empty spaces within (lumen) and between cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate changes influence seasonal tree-ring formation. The result is a specific cell structure dependent on internal processes and external environmental factors. One way to investigate and analyze these relationships is to apply diverse simulation models of tree-ring growth.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe quantitative description of growth rings is yet incomplete, including the functional division into earlywood and latewood. Methods developed to date, such as the Mork criterion for conifers, can be biased and arbitrary depending on species and growth conditions. We proposed the use of modeling of the statistical distribution of tracheids to determine a universal criterion applicable to all conifer species.
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