Search results for "EAS"
showing 10 items of 62875 documents
Functional assessment of morphological homoplasy in stem-gnathostomes
2021
Osteostraci and Galeaspida are stem-gnathostomes, occupying a key phylogenetic position for resolving the nature of the jawless ancestor from which jawed vertebrates evolved more than 400 million years ago. Both groups are characterized by the presence of rigid headshields that share a number of common morphological traits, in some cases hindering the resolution of their interrelationships and the exact nature of their affinities with jawed vertebrates. Here, we explore the morphological and functional diversity of osteostracan and galeaspid headshields using an innovative approach that combines geometric morphometrics and computational fluid dynamics, thereby constraining the underlying fa…
Tri-axial accelerometry shows differences in energy expenditure and parental effort throughout the breeding season in long-lived raptors
2021
Cutting-edge technologies are extremely useful to develop new workflows in studying ecological data, particularly to understand animal behavior and movement trajectories at the individual level. Although parental care is a well-studied phenomenon, most studies have been focused on direct observational or video recording data, as well as experimental manipulation. Therefore, what happens out of our sight still remains unknown. Using high-frequency GPS/GSM dataloggers and tri-axial accelerometers we monitored 25 Bonelli’s eagles Aquila fasciata during the breeding season to understand parental activities from a broader perspective. We used recursive data, measured as number of visits and resi…
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.
Toxicity and Binding Studies of Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1Ac, Cry1F, Cry1C, and Cry2A Proteins in the Soybean Pests Anticarsia gemmatalis and Chryso…
2017
ABSTRACT Anticarsia gemmatalis (velvetbean caterpillar) and Chrysodeixis includens (soybean looper, formerly named Pseudoplusia includens ) are two important defoliating insects of soybeans. Both lepidopteran pests are controlled mainly with synthetic insecticides. Alternative control strategies, such as biopesticides based on the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins or transgenic plants expressing Bt toxins, can be used and are increasingly being adopted. Studies on the insect susceptibilities and modes of action of the different Bt toxins are crucial to determine management strategies to control the pests and to delay outbreaks of insect resistance. In the present study, the susceptibilitie…
Evaluation of the Ability of Polyphenol Extracts of Cocoa and Red Grape to Promote the Antioxidant Response in Yeast Using a Rapid Multiwell Assay
2017
Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been used as a model organism to study the capacity of cocoa and red grape extracts to trigger an antioxidant response. A methodology adapted to microtiter plates has been developed to monitor yeast growth after culture preincubation with food ingredients and exposure to oxidative stress by hydrogen peroxide and menadione. This methodology proved effective in measuring the ability of cocoa and red grape extracts to promote an antioxidant response in yeast, and also the prospect of conducting dose-response studies. Additionally, the method has proven useful to perform studies with mutant strains lacking genes that may be related to the mechanism of action underly…
Effect of addition of Opuntia ficus-indica mucilage on the biological leavening, physical, nutritional, antioxidant and sensory aspects of bread
2019
The addition of active compounds to enhance the functional properties of foods is a quite common practice. Recently, bread became one of the target foods to incorporate functional ingredients such as those deriving from Opuntia spp. So far, only Opuntia ficus-indica cladodes in powder has been tested. The addition of fresh O. ficus-indica mucilage (in substitution to water) did not influence the biological leavening of the doughs. The resulting breads showed a biological role of the cactus mucilage, because their antioxidant activity was higher than that of control wheat bread. The sensory analysis indicated a general appreciation of the breads enriched with O. ficus-indica mucilage by the …
Preliminary Study on the In vitro and In vivo Effects of Asparagopsis taxiformis Bioactive Phycoderivates on Teleosts
2016
Several compounds from marine organisms have been studied for their potential use in aquaculture. Among the red algae, Asparagopsis taxiformis is considered one of the most promising species for the production of bioactive metabolites with numerous proposed applications. Here, the in vitro antibacterial activity, the easy handling and the absence of adverse effects on marine fish species are reported. Depending on the seasonal period of sampling, ethanol extracts of A. taxiformis exhibited significantly different inhibitory activity against fish pathogenic bacteria. The extract obtained in late spring showed strong antibacterial activity against Aeromonas salmonicida subsp. salmonicida, Vib…
Give me a sample of air and I will tell which species are found from your region : Molecular identification of fungi from airborne spore samples
2017
Fungi are a megadiverse group of organisms, they play major roles in ecosystem functioning and are important for human health, food production and nature conservation. Our knowledge on fungal diversity and fungal ecology is however still very limited, in part because surveying and identifying fungi is time demanding and requires expert knowledge. We present a method that allows anyone to generate a list of fungal species likely to occur in a region of interest, with minimal effort and without requiring taxonomical expertise. The method consists of using a cyclone sampler to acquire fungal spores directly from the air to an Eppendorf tube, and applying DNA barcoding with probabilistic specie…
Host dispersal shapes the population structure of a tick-borne bacterial pathogen
2020
Birds are hosts for several zoonotic pathogens. Because of their high mobility, especially of longdistance migrants, birds can disperse these pathogens, affecting their distribution and phylogeography. We focused on Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, which includes the causative agents of Lyme borreliosis, as an example for tick-borne pathogens, to address the role of birds as propagation hosts of zoonotic agents at a large geographical scale. We collected ticks from passerine birds in 11 European countries. B. burgdorferi s.l. prevalence in Ixodes spp. was 37% and increased with latitude. The fieldfare Turdus pilaris and the blackbird T. merula carried ticks with the highest Borrelia prevale…
Novel biocatalysts for glycerol conversion into 2,3-butanediol
2016
Abstract Bioconversion of biodiesel-derived waste glycerol into high-value products is proposed as a solution to improve economic viability of biorefineries. Several microorganisms are able to metabolize glycerol into 2,3-butanediol (2,3-BD), a promising bulk chemical with wide applications: solvent, fuel additive, and feedstock for synthetic rubber production, among them. In the present work, a wide screening of microorganisms present both into the waste water treatment system in a biodiesel industry and in culture collections was carried out in order to evaluate their potential as new 2,3-BD producer biocatalysts. Two microorganisms for 2,3-BD production from glycerol as sole carbon sourc…