The role of habitat heterogeneity for the functional response of the spider Nesticodes rufipes (Araneae : Theridiidae) to houseflies

We investigated whether or not different degrees of refuge for prey influence the characteristic of functional response exhibited by the spider Nesticodes rufipes on Musca domestica, comparing the inherent ability of N. rufipes to kill individual houseflies in such environments at two distinct time intervals. To investigate these questions, two artificial habitats were elaborated in the laboratory. For 168 h of predator-prey interaction, logistic regression analyses revealed a type 11 functional response, and a significant decrease in prey capture in the highest prey density was observed when habitat complexity was increased. Data from habitat 1 (less complex) presented a greater coefficient of determination than those from habitat 2 (more complex), indicating a higher variation of predation of the latter. For a 24 h period of predator-prey interaction, spiders killed significantly fewer prey in habitat 2 than in habitat 1. Although prey capture did not enable data to fit properly in the random predator equation in this case, predation data from habitat 2 presented a higher variation than data from habitat 1, corroborating results from 168 h of interaction. The high variability observed on data from habitat 2 (more complex habitat) is an interesting result because it reinforces the importance of refuge in promoting spatial heterogeneity, which can affect the extent of predator-prey interactions.

Differential vascular adaptive response to stress exposure in male and female rats: Role of gonadal hormones and endothelial cells

Although there are reports concerning a vascular adaptive response to stress in males, this is not yet defined in females. The aim of this study was to delineate functional gender differences in the rat vascular adaptive response to stress and to determine the ability of sex hormones to modulate the stress-induced vascular adaptive response. Responses to noradrenaline were evaluated in aortas, with and without endothelium, from intact, gonadectomized and gonadectomized-hormone-replaced males and females submitted or not to stress (2-h immobilization). Reactivity of the aorta of stressed and non-stressed intact males and females (n = 6-14 per group) was also examined in the presence of L-NAME or indomethacin. Stress decreased and gonadectomy increased maximal responses to noradrenaline in aortas with intact endothelium from both genders. Stress also reduced noradrenaline potency in males. In females, but not males, stress decreased the gonadectomy-induced noradrenaline hyper-reactivity to near that of intact non-stressed rats. Hormone replacement restored the gonadectomy-induced impaired vascular adaptive response to stress. L-NAME, but not indomethacin, abolished the stress-induced decrease in aorta reactivity of males and females. None of the procedures altered reactivity of aortas denuded of endothelium. Conclusion: Stress-induced vascular adaptive responses show gender differences. The magnitude of the adaptive response is dependent on testicular hormones and involves endothelial nitric oxide-system hyperactivity.

Monoamine oxidase inhibitory activities of indolylalkaloid toxins from the venom of the colonial spider Parawixia bistriata: Functional characterization of PwTX-I

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Low-energy direct muon transfer from H to Ne10+, S16+ and Ar18+ using the two-state close-coupling approximation to the Faddeev-Hahn-type equation

We perform a three-body calculation of direct muon-transfer rates from thermalized muonic hydrogen isotopes to bare nuclei Ne10+, S16+ and Ar18+ employing integro-differential Faddeev-Hahn-type equations in configuration space with a two-state close-coupling approximation scheme. All Coulomb potentials including the strong final-state Coulomb repulsion are treated exactly. A long-range polarization potential is included in the elastic channel to take into account the high polarizability of the muonic hydrogen. The transfer rates so-calculated are in good agreement with recent experiments. We find that the muon is captured predominantly in the n = 6, 9 and 10 states of muonic Ne10+, S16+ and Ar18+, respectively.

Lie symmetry analysis and reductions of a two-dimensional integrable generalization of the Camassa-Holm equation

In this Letter we investigate Lie symmetries of a (2 + 1)-dimensional integrable generalization of the Camassa-Holm (CH) equation. Through the similarity reductions we obtain four different (1 + 1)-dimensional systems of partial differential equations in which one of them turns out to be a (1 + 1)-dimensional CH equation. We establish their integrability by providing the Lax pair for all of them. Further, we present a brief analysis for some types of particular solutions which include the cuspon, peakon and soliton solutions for the two-dimensional generalization of the CH equation. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier B.V. B.V.

An exact equation for the free surface of a fluid in a porous medium

We study the problem of the evolution of the free surface of a fluid in a saturated porous medium, bounded from below by a. at impermeable bottom, and described by the Laplace equation with moving-boundary conditions. By making use of a convenient conformal transformation, we show that the solution to this problem is equivalent to the solution of the Laplace equation on a fixed domain, with new variable coefficients, the boundary conditions. We use a kernel of the Laplace equation which allows us to write the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator, and in this way we are able to find an exact differential-integral equation for the evolution of the free surface in one space dimension. Although not amenable to direct analytical solutions, this equation turns out to allow an easy numerical implementation. We give an explicit illustrative case at the end of the article.

PULLBACK ATTRACTORS FOR A SINGULARLY NONAUTONOMOUS PLATE EQUATION

We consider the family of singularly nonautonomous plate equation with structural dampingu(tt) + a(t, x)u(t) - Delta u(t) + (-Delta)(2)(u) + lambda u = f(u),in a bounded domain Omega subset of R(n), with Navier boundary conditions. When the nonlinearity f is dissipative we show that this problem is globally well posed in H(0)(2)(Omega) x L(2)(Omega) and has a family of pullback attractors which is upper-semicontinuous under small perturbations of the damping a.

LOWER SEMICONTINUITY of PULLBACK ATTRACTORS FOR A SINGULARLY NONAUTONOMOUS PLATE EQUATION

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Mass fractal characteristics of wet sonogels as determined by small-angle x-ray scattering and differential scanning calorimetry

Low density silica sonogels were prepared from acid sonohydrolysis of tetraethoxysilane. Wet gels were studied by small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The DSC tests were carried out under a heating rate of 2 degrees C/min from -120 degrees C up to 30 degrees C. Aerogels were obtained by CO(2) supercritical extraction and characterized by nitrogen adsorption and SAXS. The DSC thermogram displays two distinct endothermic peaks. The first, a broad peak extending from about -80 degrees C up to practically 0 degrees C, was associated to the melting of ice nanocrystals with a crystal size distribution with pore diameter ranging from 1 or 2 nm up to about 60 nm, as estimated from Thomson's equation. The second, a sharp peak with onset temperature close to 0 degrees C, was attributed to the melting of macroscopic crystals. The DSC incremental nanopore volume distribution is in reasonable agreement with the incremental pore volume distribution of the aerogel as determined from nitrogen adsorption. No macroporosity was detected by nitrogen adsorption, probably because the adsorption method applies stress on the sample during measurement, leading to a underestimation of pore volume, or because often positive curvature of the solid surface is in aerogels, making the nitrogen condensation more difficult. According to the SAXS results, the solid network of the wet gels behaves as a mass fractal structure with mass fractal dimension D=2.20 +/- 0.01 in a characteristic length scale below xi=7.9 +/- 0.1 nm. The mass fractal characteristics of the wet gels have also been probed from DSC data by means of an earlier applied modeling for generation of a mass fractal from the incremental pore volume distribution curves. The results are shown to be in interesting agreement with the results from SAXS.

Consequences of refuge for the functional response of Dermestes ater (Coleoptera : Dermestidae) to Musca domestica (Diptera : Muscidae)

It is well known that a predator has the potential to regulate a prey population only if the predator responds to increases in prey density and inflicts greater mortality rates. Predators may cause such density-dependent mortality depending on the nature of the functional and numerical responses. Yet, few studies have examined the relationship between the addition of refuges and the characteristic of functional response fits. We investigated whether addition of a refuge changed the type of functional response exhibited by Dermestes ater on Musca domestica, comparing the inherent ability of D. ater to kill houseflies in the absence and in the presence of refuge. An additional laboratory experiment was also carried out to assess handling and searching times exhibited by D. ater. Logistic regression analyses revealed a type III functional response for predator-prey interaction without refuge, and results were described by the random predator equation. The mean number of prey killed did not differ between experimental habitats, indicating that the addition of refuge did not inhibit predation. However, predators that interacted with prey without refuge spent less time searching for prey at higher densities, increasing predatory interaction. We concluded that this interaction may be weak, because data from experiments with refuge fitted poorly to models. However, the high variability and the nonsignificance of the data from the experiment with refuge show the importance of refuge for promoting spatial heterogeneity, which may prevent prey extinction.

A MODEL OF THE DEUTERON BASED ON A BREIT TYPE EQUATION

A relativistic treatment of the deuteron and its observables based on a two-body Dirac (Breit) equation, with phenomenological interactions, associated to one-boson exchanges with cutoff masses, is presented. The 16-component wave function for the deuteron (J(pi) = 1+) solution contains four independent radial functions which obey a system of four coupled differential equations of first order. This radial system is numerically integrated, from infinity to the origin, by fixing the value of the deuteron binding energy and using appropriate boundary conditions at infinity. Specific examples of mixtures containing scalar, pseudoscalar and vector like terms are discussed in some detail and several observables of the deuteron are calculated. Our treatment differs from more conventional ones in that nonrelativistic reductions of the order c-2 are not used.

Differential subcellular distribution of neurolysin (EC 3.4.24.16) and thimet oligopeptidase (EC 3.3.24.15) in the rat brain

Immunohistochemistry was used to analyze the rat brain distribution of thimet oligopeptidase and neurolysin. Both enzymes appear ubiquitously distributed within the entire rat brain. However, neuronal perikarya and processes stained for neurolysin, while intense nuclear labeling was only observed for thimet oligopeptidase. These data suggest that neurolysin and thimet oligopeptidase, endopeptidases sharing several functional and structural similarities, are present in distinctive intracellular compartments in neuronal cells. (C) 1999 Elsevier B.V. B.V. All rights reserved.

Dynamics in dumbbell domains I. Continuity of the set of equilibria

We analyze the dynamics of a reaction-diffusion equation with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions in a dumbbell domain. We provide an appropriate functional setting to treat this problem and, as a first step, we show in this paper the continuity of the set of equilibria and of its linear unstable manifolds. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Differential gene expression by Paracoccidioides brasiliensis in host interaction conditions: Representational difference analysis identifies candidate genes associated with fungal pathogenesis

Paracoccidioides brasiliensis causes infection by the host inhalation of airborne propagules of the mycelia phase of the fungus. These particles reach the lungs, and disseminate to virtually all organs. Here we describe the identification of differentially expressed genes in studies of host-fungus interaction. We analyzed two cDNA populations of P. brasiliensis, one obtained from infected animals and the other an admixture of fungus and human blood thus mimicking the hematologic events of the fungal dissemination. Our analysis identified transcripts differentially expressed. Genes related to iron acquisition, melanin synthesis and cell defense were specially upregulated in the mouse model of infection. The upregulated transcripts of yeast cells during incubation with human blood were those predominantly related to cell wall remodeling/synthesis. The expression pattern of genes was independently confirmed in host conditions, revealing their potential role in the infection process. This work can facilitate functional studies of novel regulated genes that may be important for the survival and growth strategies of P. brasiliensis in humans. (c) 2006 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Dynamics in dumbbell domains III. Continuity of attractors

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)