Abstract: A genotype-independent method for efficiently carrying out pollen-mediated transformation of maize, tomato or melon is described. The method uses pollen pretreated with silicon carbide and DNA to produce transformed plants with high efficiency and reproducibility.

Abstract: A device for calculating numerical solutions for partial differential equations in successive intervals using adaptive meshes, comprises: a neural network part for producing predictions of gradients at a following interval based on gradients available from previous intervals, and a mesh adaptation part, associated with said neural network part, configured for adapting a mesh over a domain of a respective partial differential equation using said predictions, such that said mesh adaptively refines itself about emerging regions of complexity as said partial differential equation progresses over said successive intervals. The neural network part succeeds in its predictions since its use herein is equivalent to using time series function fitting techniques.

Abstract: Pattern matching apparatus for comparing signal samples with a pattern to find signal samples substantially matching said pattern, the apparatus comprising: a projector for projecting said signal samples over a tree of projection vectors of successively increasing frequency at nodes of said tree to successively provide projection values, a distance measurer, associated with an output of said projector for determining a distance between a projection value and a corresponding projection value of said pattern, said distance being an expression of a minimum bound of a true distance between said sample and said pattern, and a thresholder, associated with an output of said distance measurer for applying a threshold to said minimum bound to successively reject samples at respective nodes.