Biologists have developed a wide range of morphological, biochemical and physiological metrics to assess the health and, in particular, the energetic status of individual animals. These metrics originated to quantify aspects of human health, but have also proven useful to address questions in life history, ecology and resource management of game and commercial animals. We review the application of condition indices (CI) for conservation studies and focus on measures that quantify fat reserves, known to be critical for energetically challenging activities such as migration, reproduction and survival during periods of scarcity. Standard methods score fat content, or rely on a ratio of body mass rationalized by some measure of size, usually a linear dimension such as wing length or total body length. Higher numerical values of these indices are interpreted to mean an animal has greater energy reserves. Such CIs can provide predictive information about habitat quality and reproductive output, which in turn can help managers with conservation assessments and policies. We review the issues about the methods and metrics of measurement and describe the linkage of CIs to measures of body shape. Debates in the literature about the best statistical methods to use in computing and comparing CIs remain unresolved. Next, we comment on the diversity of methods used to measure body composition and the diversity of physiological models that compute body composition and CIs. The underlying physiological regulatory systems that govern the allocation of energy and nutrients among compartments and processes within the body are poorly understood, especially for field situations, and await basic data from additional laboratory studies and advanced measurement systems including telemetry. For now, standard physiological CIs can provide supporting evidence and mechanistic linkages for population studies that have traditionally been the focus of conservation biology. Physiologists can provide guidance for the field application of conditions indices with validation studies and development of new instruments.

The use of augmented transition network grammars for the analysis of natural language sentences is described. Structure-building actions associated with the arcs of the grammar network allow for the reordering, restructuring, and copying of constituents necessary to produce deep-structure representations of the type normally obtained from a transformational analysis, and conditions on the arcs allow for a powerful selectivity which can rule out meaningless analyses and take advantage of semantic information to guide the parsing. The advantages of this model for natural language analysis are discussed in detail and illustrated by examples. An implementation of an experimental parsing system for transition network grammars is briefly described.

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Differing conclusions have been reached as to how or whether varying heat production has a thermoregulatory function in flying honeybees Apis mellifera. We investigated the effects of air temperature on flight metabolic rate, water loss, wingbeat frequency, body segment temperatures and behavior of honeybees flying in transparent containment outdoors. For periods of voluntary, uninterrupted, self-sustaining flight, metabolic rate was independent of air temperature between 19 and 37°C. Thorax temperatures (T th ) were very stable, with a slope of thorax temperature on air temperature of 0.18. Evaporative heat loss increased from 51·mW·g -1 at 25°C to 158·mW·g -1 at 37°C and appeared to account for head and abdomen temperature excess falling sharply over the same air temperature range. As air temperature increased from 19 to 37°C, wingbeat frequency showed a slight but significant increase, and metabolic expenditure per wingbeat showed a corresponding slight but significant decrease. Bees spent an average of 52% of the measurement period in flight, with 19 of 78 bees sustaining uninterrupted voluntary flight for periods of >1·min. The fraction of time spent flying declined as air temperature increased. As the fraction of time spent flying decreased, the slope of metabolic rate on air temperature became more steeply negative, and was significant for bees flying less than 80% of the time. In a separate experiment, there was a significant inverse relationship of metabolic rate and air temperature for bees requiring frequent or constant agitation to remain airborne, but no dependence for bees that flew with little or no agitation; bees were less likely to require agitation during outdoor than indoor measurements. A recent hypothesis explaining differences between studies in the slope of flight metabolic rate on air temperature in terms of differences in metabolic capacity and thorax temperature is supported for honeybees in voluntary flight, but not under agitation.

Rationale: Most virus-induced attacks of asthma are caused by rhinoviruses (RVs).Objectives: To determine whether people with asthma are susceptible to an increased viral load during RV infection.Methods: Seventy-four children (4-18 yr old) were enrolled; 28 with wheezing, 32 with acute rhinitis, and 14 without respiratory tract symptoms. Nasal washes were evaluated using quantitative polymerase chain reaction for RV to judge viral load along with gene sequencing to identify strains of RV. Soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1, IFN-l 1 , and eosinophil cationic protein in nasal washes, along with blood eosinophil counts and total and allergen-specific IgE in sera, were also evaluated. Similar assessments were done in 24 young adults (16 with asthma, 8 without) who participated in an experimental challenge with RV (serotype 16).Measurements and Main Results: Fifty-seven percent of wheezing children and 56% with acute rhinitis had nasal washes testing positive for RV. The geometric mean of viral loads by quantitative polymerase chain reaction in washes from wheezing children was 2.8-fold lower, but did not differ significantly from children with rhinitis (7,718 and 21,612 copies of viral RNA per microliter nasal wash, respectively; P = 0.48). The odds for wheezing were increased if children who tested positive for RV were sensitized to one or more allergens (odds ratio, 3.9; P = 0.02). Similarly, neither peak nor cumulative viral loads differed significantly in washes from adults with asthma compared with those without asthma during the experimental RV challenge.Conclusions: During acute symptoms, children infected with RV enrolled for wheezing or acute rhinitis had similar viral loads in their nasal washes, as did adults with and without asthma infected with RV-16 experimentally.

Evolutionary change in the timing of dormancy enables animals and plants to adapt to changing seasonal environments and can result in ecological speciation. Despite its clear biological importance, the mechanisms underlying the evolution of dormancy timing in animals remain poorly understood because of a lack of anatomical landmarks to discern which phase of dormancy an individual is experiencing. Taking advantage of the nearly universal characteristic of metabolic suppression during insect dormancy (diapause), we use patterns of respiratory metabolism to document physiological landmarks of dormancy and test which of the distinct phases of the dormancy developmental pathway contribute to a month-long shift in diapause timing between a pair of incipient moth species. Here, we show that divergence in life cycle between the earlier-emerging E-strain and the later-emerging Z-strain of European corn borer (ECB) is clearly explained by a delay in the timing of the developmental transition from the diapause maintenance phase to the termination phase. Along with recent findings indicating that life-cycle differences between ECB strains stem from allelic variation at a single sex-linked locus, our results demonstrate how dramatic shifts in animal seasonality can result from simple developmental and genetic changes. Although characterizing the multiple phases of the diapause developmental programme in other locally adapted populations and species will undoubtedly yield surprises about the nature of animal dormancy, results in the ECB moth suggest that focusing on genetic variation in the timing of the dormancy termination phase may help explain how (or whether) organisms rapidly respond to global climate change, expand their ranges after accidental or managed introductions, undergo seasonal adaptation, or evolve into distinct species through allochronic isolation.

The first primary blast brain injury risk assessments for mild and moderate/severe injuries in a gyrencephalic animal model were determined. The blast level needed to cause a mild/moderate brain injury may be similar to or less than that needed for pulmonary injury. The risk functions can be used in future research for blast brain injury by providing realistic injury risks to guide the design of protection or evaluate injury.

In this paper, we examine the mechanical properties of muscles in a soft-bodied arthropod under both passive and stimulated conditions. In particular, we examine the ventral interior lateral muscle of the tobacco hornworm caterpillar, Manduca sexta, and show that its response is qualitatively similar to the behaviour of particle-reinforced rubber. Both materials are capable of large nonlinear elastic deformations, show a hysteretic behaviour and display stress softening during the first few cycles of repeated loading. The Manduca muscle can therefore be considered as different elastic materials during loading and unloading and is best described using the theory of pseudo-elasticity. We summarize the basic equations for transversely isotropic pseudo-elastic materials, first for general deformations and then for the appropriate uniaxial specialization. The constitutive relation proposed is in good agreement with the experimental data for both the passive and the stimulated conditions.