Background: High-density short oligonucleotide microarrays are useful tools for studying biodiversity, because they can be used to investigate both nucleotide and expression polymorphisms. However, when different strains (or species) produce different signal intensities after mRNA hybridization, it is not easy to determine whether the signal intensities were affected by nucleotide or expression polymorphisms. To overcome this difficulty, nucleotide and expression polymorphisms are currently examined separately.

Background: A variety of mouse strains exhibit diversity in spontaneous activity consistent with an important genetic contribution. To date, many studies have defined spontaneous home-cage activity as total distance or total counts of activity within a test period. However, spontaneous activity is, in fact, a composite of elements of 'temporal' and 'intensity' that is similar to 'velocity'. Here, we report on quantitative trait loci for different components of spontaneous activity, an important step towards dissection of the underlying genetic mechanisms.

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Silicon (Si) and its alloys, such as silicon oxides (SiO x ) and silicon nitrides, are indispensable thin film materials for the fabrication of large-area electronic devices. The goal of the present study is to develop a highly efficient deposition technology for good-quality hydrogenated amorphous Si (a-Si), microcrystalline Si (mc-Si), and SiO x films on flexible polymer substrates. For this purpose, we have been using atmospheric-pressure (AP) plasma excited by a 150 MHz very high-frequency (VHF) power. The changes of thickness and structure of the Si and SiO x films in the gas flow direction were studied as a function of distance from the plasma entrance, VHF power density, and gas flow rates. Based on the results, the performance of bottom-gate TFTs with the Si channel and SiO x gate insulator layers being deposited using AP-VHF plasma were examined to test the applicability of the Si and SiO x films to actual TFTs. A TFT with a field-effect mobility of $1.7 cm 2 V À1 s À1 was obtained at a temperature of 120 8C.