Search results for "agricultural and biological sciences"
showing 10 items of 1704 documents
Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism
2010
The herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were the largest terrestrial animals ever, surpassing the largest herbivorous mammals by an order of magnitude in body mass. Several evolutionary lineages among Sauropoda produced giants with body masses in excess of 50 metric tonnes by conservative estimates. With body mass increase driven by the selective advantages of large body size, animal lineages will increase in body size until they reach the limit determined by the interplay of bauplan, biology, and resource availability. There is no evidence, however, that resource availability and global physicochemical parameters were different enough in the Mesozoic to ha…
Triacylglycerol Analysis in Human Milk and Other Mammalian Species: Small-Scale Sample Preparation, Characterization, and Statistical Classification …
2015
In this work, a method for the separation of triacylglycerols (TAGs) present in human milk and from other mammalian species by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography using a core–shell particle packed column with UV and evaporative light-scattering detectors is described. Under optimal conditions, a mobile phase containing acetonitrile/n-pentanol at 10 °C gave an excellent resolution among more than 50 TAG peaks. A small-scale method for fat extraction in these milks (particularly of interest for human milk samples) using minimal amounts of sample and reagents was also developed. The proposed extraction protocol and the traditional method were compared, giving similar results…
Failure Rate, Marginal Bone Loss, and Pink Esthetic with Socket-Shield Technique for Immediate Dental Implant Placement in the Esthetic Zone. A Syste…
2021
Simple Summary The socket-shield technique has been proposed for preserving the bone ridge and surrounding soft tissues with immediate implantation in the extraction socket, maintaining the buccal wall fragment of the dental root. However, the socket-shield technique has not been compared with the conventional technique for immediate dental implant placement in the esthetic zone regarding the failure rate, marginal bone loss, and pink esthetic. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a systematic review and meta-analysis that provides evidence associated with the prognosis when using the socket-shield technique compared to the conventional technique. Abstract Aim: To compare the failure rate,…
A survey on sleep assessment methods
2018
Purpose A literature review is presented that aims to summarize and compare current methods to evaluate sleep. Methods Current sleep assessment methods have been classified according to different criteria; e.g., objective (polysomnography, actigraphy…) vs. subjective (sleep questionnaires, diaries…), contact vs. contactless devices, and need for medical assistance vs. self-assessment. A comparison of validation studies is carried out for each method, identifying their sensitivity and specificity reported in the literature. Finally, the state of the market has also been reviewed with respect to customers’ opinions about current sleep apps. Results A taxonomy that classifies the sleep detect…
Human olfactory communication: current challenges and future prospects
2020
Although anthropologists frequently report the centrality of odours in the daily lives and cultural beliefs of many small-scale communities, Western scholars have historically considered the sense of smell as minimally involved in human communication. Here, we suggest that the origin and persistence of this latter view might be a consequence of the fact that most research is conducted on participants from Western societies who, collectively, were ratherold(adults),deodorizedanddesensitized(ODD) to various aspects of olfactory perception. The view is rapidly changing, however, and this themed issue provides a timely overview of the current state-of-the-art on human chemocommunication. Based …
Diverse societies are more productive: a lesson from ants
2012
The fitness consequences of animal personalities (also known as behavioural syndromes) have recently been studied in several solitary species. However, the adaptive significance of collective personalities in social insects and especially of behavioural variation among group members remains largely unexplored. Although intracolonial behavioural variation is an important component of division of labour, and as such a key feature for the success of societies, empirical links between behavioural variation and fitness are scarce. We investigated aggression, exploration and brood care behaviour in Temnothorax longispinosus ant colonies. We focused on two distinct aspects: intercolonial variabil…
Even violins can cry: specifically vocal emotional behaviours also drive the perception of emotions in non-vocal music.
2021
A wealth of theoretical and empirical arguments have suggested that music triggers emotional responses by resembling the inflections of expressive vocalizations, but have done so using low-level acoustic parameters (pitch, loudness, speed) that, in fact, may not be processed by the listener in reference to human voice. Here, we take the opportunity of the recent availability of computational models that allow the simulation of three specifically vocal emotional behaviours: smiling, vocal tremor and vocal roughness. When applied to musical material, we find that these three acoustic manipulations trigger emotional perceptions that are remarkably similar to those observed on speech and scream…
The relationship between vigilance capacity and physical exercise: a mixed-effects multistudy analysis
2019
We thank to all the participants who took part in the experiment.
Importance of considering interoceptive abilities in alexithymia assessment
2019
Background Recent studies have shown that people with high alexithymia scores have decreased interoceptive abilities, which can be associated with psychological and physical disorders. Early assessments of the alexithymia trait included the evaluation of these abilities through the dimension measuring the difficulty in identifying and distinguishing between feelings and bodily sensations (the 26-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale; TAS-26). The revised version of the TAS, the TAS-20, contains a three-factor solution that does not involve a dimension assessing interoceptive abilities. However, the three items allowing the evaluation of these abilities are still present in the TAS-20. In this con…
Seizure following the Use of the COX-2 Inhibitor Etoricoxib
2017
We describe a case of epileptic seizures occurring after the use of a COX-2 inhibitor. A 61-year-old man was admitted to our department because of a generalized tonic-clonic seizure. EEG showed generalized slowdown of the activity. Neuroimaging and blood samples studies did not evidence alterations, but a careful pharmacological history revealed that the patient had taken the COX-2 inhibitor etoricoxib to treat lumbago few days before the onset of clinical symptoms. No seizures were reported after etoricoxib discontinuation and an EEG resulted to be normal two months after this. Conclusion. Knowing the pharmacological history of a patient is important for understanding the clinical presenta…