Refractive Error In School Children In Campinas, Brazil.

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Evaluation Of The Location Of Capsules Swallowed With Food During The Pharyngeal Phase Triggering In Asymptomatic Adults.

To assess the location of hard gelatin capsules in the pharyngeal phase triggering among asymptomatic adults. The location of the bolus during the pharyngeal phase triggering provides information about the sensorimotor model of the beginning of deglutition onset. To evaluate the location of hard gelatin capsules in the pharyngeal phase triggering among asymptomatic adults. A videofluoroscopy swallowing study was carried out in 60 subjects (14 male and 46 female participants) aged between 27 and 55 years, who were evaluated with hard gelatin capsules #00 and #3 containing barium sulfate, swallowed with liquid food and pudding, in free volume. The first laryngeal elevation movement was the criterion to locate the pharyngeal phase triggering. Statistical analysis was based on the McNemar test. Capsule #3 presented higher percentage of location in the tongue dorsum compared to capsule #00, and capsule #00 presented higher percentage of location in the tongue base and vallecula compared to capsule #3. There was a difference between different capsules swallowed with liquid (p=0.016) and pudding (p=0.037). The capsule size influenced the location of the pharyngeal phase triggering. Smaller capsules started pharyngeal phase in the most anterior region (tongue dorsum) compared to larger capsules.

Gluttonous predators: how to estimate prey size when there are too many prey

Prey size is an important factor in food consumption. In studies of feeding ecology, prey items are usually measured individually using calipers or ocular micrometers. Among amphibians and reptiles, there are species that feed on large numbers of small prey items (e.g. ants, termites). This high intake makes it difficult to estimate prey size consumed by these animals. We addressed this problem by developing and evaluating a procedure for subsampling the stomach contents of such predators in order to estimate prey size. Specifically, we developed a protocol based on a bootstrap procedure to obtain a subsample with a precision error of at the most 5%, with a confidence level of at least 95%. This guideline should reduce the sampling effort and facilitate future studies on the feeding habits of amphibians and reptiles, and also provide a means of obtaining precise estimates of prey size.

Wavelets And Adaptive Grids For The Discontinuous Galerkin Method

In this paper, space adaptivity is introduced to control the error in the numerical solution of hyperbolic systems of conservation laws. The reference numerical scheme is a new version of the discontinuous Galerkin method, which uses an implicit diffusive term in the direction of the streamlines, for stability purposes. The decision whether to refine or to unrefine the grid in a certain location is taken according to the magnitude of wavelet coefficients, which are indicators of local smoothness of the numerical solution. Numerical solutions of the nonlinear Euler equations illustrate the efficiency of the method. © Springer 2005.