Search results for "09"
showing 10 items of 12776 documents
Controlled feeding experiments with diets of different abrasiveness reveal slow development of mesowear signal in goats ( Capra aegagrus hircus )
2018
ABSTRACT Dental mesowear is applied as a proxy to determine the general diet of mammalian herbivores based on tooth-cusp shape and occlusal relief. Low, blunt cusps are considered typical of grazers and high, sharp cusps typical of browsers. However, how internal or external abrasives impact mesowear, and the time frame the wear signature takes to develop, still need to be explored. Four different pelleted diets of increasing abrasiveness (lucerne, grass, grass and rice husks, and grass, rice husks and sand) were fed to four groups of a total of 28 adult goats in a controlled feeding experiment over a 6-month period. Tooth morphology was captured by medical CT scans at the beginning and end…
Imidazolium Based Ionic Liquids: A Promising Green Solvent for Water Hyacinth Biomass Deconstruction.
2018
Water hyacinth (WH) is a troublesome aquatic weed of natural and artificial water bodies of India and other tropical countries and causing severe ecological problems. The WH biomass is low in lignin content and contains high amount of cellulose and hemicellulose, making it suitable material for conversion into liquid fuels for energy production. This study highlighted that, how different imidazolium based ionic liquids (ILs) [1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide, [Cnmim]Br (n = 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10)] with tunable properties can be employed for the degradation of WH biomass. Different characterizations techniques, such as XRD, FT-IR, SEM, and DSC are used to unravel the interplay between ILs an…
Interaction Capabilities of a Robotic Receptionist
2017
A system aimed at facilitating the interaction between a human user and an humanoid robot is presented. The system is suited to answer questions about laboratories activities, people involved, projects, research themes and collaborations among employees. The task is accomplished by the HermiT reasoner invoked by a speech recognition module. The system is capable of navigating a specific ontology making inference on it. The presented system is part of a broader social robot framework whose goal is to give the user a fulfilling social interaction experience, driven by the perception of the robot internal state and involving intuitive and computational creativity capabilities.
Within trophic level shifts in collagen-carbonate stable carbon isotope spacing are propagated by diet and digestive physiology in large mammal herbi…
2018
Stable carbon isotope analyses of vertebrate hard tissues such as bones, teeth, and tusks provide information about animal diets in ecological, archeological, and paleontological contexts. There is debate about how carbon isotope compositions of collagen and apatite carbonate differ in terms of their relationship to diet, and to each other. We evaluated relationships between δ13Ccollagen and δ13Ccarbonate among free-ranging southern African mammals to test predictions about the influences of dietary and physiological differences between species. Whereas the slopes of δ13Ccollagen–δ13Ccarbonate relationships among carnivores are ≤1, herbivore δ13Ccollag…
Reproductive inequalities in the acanthocephalan Corynosoma cetaceum: looking beyond 'crowding' effects.
2018
Background: At present, much research effort has been devoted to investigate overall (average) responses of parasite populations to specific factors, e.g., density-dependence in fecundity or mortality. However, studies on parasite populations usually pay little attention to individual variation (inequality) in reproductive success. A previous study on the acanthocephalan Corynosoma cetaceum in franciscana dolphins, Pontoporia blainvillei, revealed no overall intensity-dependent, or microhabitat effects, on mass and fecundity of worms. In this study, we investigated whether the same factors could influence mass inequalities for this species of acanthocephalan.Methods: A total of 10,138 speci…
Quality Factors Influencing Consumer Demand for Small Fruit by Focus Group and Sensory Test
2017
ABSTRACTThe market of berries is a niche of high value in Italy. Small fruit’s healthy properties are well known in the international market, but little is known about the reason for a low commercialization rate of fresh small fruit in Italy. The objective of this study was to assess consumer preferences in Italy for selected berry species. Moreover, the study aims to identify the relevant attributes of berries that affect the demand for this produce according to consumers and to compare these attributes. We assessed relevant attributes affecting the demand for fresh berries for different consumers’ profiles and compared berries’ attributes rankings. The results reveal high concordance betw…
Influence of an evoked pleasant consumption context on consumers’ hedonic evaluation for minimally processed cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) fruit
2016
Awareness of the need to consider a consumption context when measuring the consumer's hedonic evaluation of a food product led researchers to investigate differences among responses given by consumers in different contexts. Previous studies measured the effects of evoking a consumption context, by using photographs or a written scenario, on hedonic evaluations of consumers for food products. This study investigated the influence of evoking a consumption context on hedonic evaluation of minimally processed cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) fruit, using pictures and memories of pleasant personal experiences. A hedonic scale method for measuring food preferences was used. Hedonic evaluation o…
Post-harvest Industrial Processes of Almond (Prunus dulcis L. Mill) in Sicily Influence the Nutraceutical Properties of By-Products at Harvest and Du…
2021
Almond cultivation in Sicily is experiencing a phase of great interest which is mainly concentrated in the development of specialized orchards, with irrigation and by adopting cultivars with high qualitative and quantitative performances. These are mostly Mediterranean genotypes with high fat content and hard or semi-hard shell, extremely different from the varieties of Californian diffusion. The development of the sector comprises the primary production of almonds but also a series of secondary products which often represent a burden for the company. From these considerations several researches have been developed with the aim of giving a value to these by-products through circular economy…
Changes in lipid and carotenoid metabolism in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii during induction of CO2-concentrating mechanism: Cellular response to low CO2…
2020
Photosynthetic organisms strictly depend on CO2 availability and the CO2:O2 ratio, as both CO2/O2 compete for catalytic site of Rubisco. Green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, can overcome CO2 shortage by inducing CO2-concentrating mechanism (CCM). Cells transferred to low-CO2 are subjected to light-driven oxidative stress due to decrease in the electron sink. Response to environmental perturbations is mediated to some extent by changes in the lipid and carotenoid metabolism. We thus hypothesize that when cells are challenged with changes in CO2 availability, changes in the lipidome and carotenoids profile occur. These changes expected to be transient, when CCM is activated, CO2 limitation w…
Dental microwear texture gradients in guinea pigs reveal that material properties of the diet affect chewing behaviour
2021
ABSTRACT Dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) is widely used for diet inferences in extant and extinct vertebrates. Often, a reference tooth position is analysed in extant specimens, while isolated teeth are lumped together in fossil datasets. It is therefore important to test whether dental microwear texture (DMT) is tooth position specific and, if so, what causes the differences in wear. Here, we present results from controlled feeding experiments with 72 guinea pigs, which received either fresh or dried natural plant diets of different phytolith content (lucerne, grass, bamboo) or pelleted diets with and without mineral abrasives (frequently encountered by herbivorous mammals in natu…