Search

The neuroendocrine hormone oxytocin, which is an important physiological driver of social behavior and bonding, is increasingly being measured in conjunction with behavior to better understand primate sociality. To date no data are available on oxytocin concentrations within the genus Gorilla; however, as a result of their close genetic relatedness to humans, and tolerance-based social system, Gorilla represents an important group of study. The purpose of this study was to validate the measurement of urinary and salivary oxytocin in western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) to help facilitate future study of the interaction between oxytocin and behavior within the subspecies. The primary validation procedure was an intranasal challenge. Elevated oxytocin concentrations were observed in saliva samples taken 15-120 min post challenge. Urine levels remained within baseline range approximately 30 and 90 min following the challenge; however, elevated levels were observed 24 h post challenge. No diurnal variation was found in salivary samples taken at regular intervals throughout the day; however, morning urine samples had higher concentrations than afternoon samples. In addition, samples were collected opportunistically following three social events: play, breeding, and the death of a conspecific. Following the play bouts, salivary oxytocin was almost three times greater than baseline. Salivary oxytocin was also significantly higher 15 min post breeding compared to match-control samples. Following the death of a conspecific, the group mate's urinary oxytocin concentrations decreased by half compared to a baseline period when the group was intact. This study provides a biological validation of the measurement of urinary and salivary oxytocin in western lowland gorillas. These results suggest that urinary oxytocin measurements are suitable for establishing baseline levels, as they represent the build up of the previous day's concentrations, and salivary oxytocin measurements are suitable for assessing changes following specific events.

Chaplaincy has traditionally been considered a profession highly respectful of confidentiality. Nevertheless, given increasing professional collaboration within health and welfare contexts, plus the requirements of intervention reporting and the ease of technological data sharing, it is possible that confidentiality may be sacrificed for the sake of expediency. This exploratory review considers the literature relating to the role of chaplaincy and confidentiality that suggests a number of principles which should be considered by chaplaincy associations/organizations to ensure appropriate professional practice and the holistic health and well-being of patients/clients. Recommendations are made for the development of specific policies and procedures, confidentiality training programs and further research for developing universal protocols relating to chaplains and their handling of confidential information.

The concomitant occurrence of femoral shaft and hip fractures are not rare. The ideal management of ipsilateral intertrochanteric and femoral shaft fractures is still controversial and needs to be addressed. Cephalomedullary nail fixations of both the fractures have been described with excellent results. Similar results have been published with two implant constructs treating both of these injuries separately. We report the case of a stress fracture, in the gapped area above the proximal interlocking screw of a retrograde femoral nail placed for a segmental femur fracture and a trochanteric fracture treated with a sliding hip plate screw construct, 9 months after initial injury. The gapped area of a two implant construct is of concern and biomechanical studies have shown that the proximal end of the nail and the interlocking screws may act as a stress riser in the femur. A stress fracture in the gapped area of a two implant construct has not been described earlier, although a cadaveric study had shown that the area of the proximal screw hole of the retrograde nail is a common site for a fracture, on loading. Kissing or overlapping instrumentation increases the load to failure and creates a biomechanically stable construct.

We develop a method that allows a flyer to estimate its own motion (egomotion), the wind velocity, ground slope, and flight height using only inputs from onboard optic flow and air velocity sensors. Our artificial algorithm demonstrates how it could be possible for flying insects to determine their absolute egomotion using their available sensors, namely their eyes and wind sensitive hairs and antennae. Although many behaviors can be performed by only knowing the direction of travel, behavioral experiments indicate that odor tracking insects are able to estimate the wind direction and control their absolute egomotion (i.e., groundspeed). The egomotion estimation method that we have developed, which we call the opto-aeronautic algorithm, is tested in a variety of wind and ground slope conditions using a video recorded flight of a moth tracking a pheromone plume. Over all test cases that we examined, the algorithm achieved a mean absolute error in height of 7% or less. Furthermore, our algorithm is suitable for the navigation of aerial vehicles in environments where signals from the Global Positioning System are unavailable.

Femoral shaft fractures below or above a pre-existing implant in the elderly are not uncommon, and the ideal management of these fractures is not well defined. We report the use of a retrograde femoral nail for a femoral shaft fracture, linked to a pre-existing hip plate screw construct by locking the nail through the distal two holes of the plate. We were able to achieve a biomechanically stable construct with no gapped areas and no stress risers in osteopenic bone. This technique is one of the various methods that can be chosen to fix a fracture with a pre-existing implant proximally.

Arterial complications at the site of distal interlocking screws of interlocked intramedullary nails are uncommon. This case report illustrates a 45-year-old male who was diagnosed with a pseudoaneurysm of the lateral geniculate artery when he was worked-up for persistent pain and swelling over the distal lateral thigh. He underwent obliteration of the pseudoaneurysm with thrombin injection and had excellent relief of pain and subsequent decrease in swelling. We are not aware of any case reports of pseudoaneurysm of the lateral geniculate artery at the distal screw insertion site of interlocked intramedullary nails.

The objective of this work is to facilitate the determination of a reliable reaction network for the l-proline catalysed aldol reaction using high throughput technologies (HTT). The availability of reliable reaction network is fundamental to predictive kinetic modelling including scale up, replacing a batch process with a continuous one, optimisation, thermal safety, process simulation, etc. The extent to which HTT experiments may be used to provide the necessary quantitative understanding of both physical and chemical phenomena of the system studied is assessed through a four stage development programme. For this particular system it is shown that, in conjunction with appropriate experimental designs, meaningful data streams for mechanistic/kinetic studies can be generated. The experimental data allowed a reaction network for the l-proline catalysed aldol reaction to be proposed and verified through a kinetic modelling exercise.

Bilateral spontaneous rupture of quadriceps tendons is rare and is usually associated with predisposing comorbid conditions. We report an uncommon case of bilateral synchronous rupture of the quadriceps tendon after a ground level fall in a 51-year-old male, 8 years after renal transplant.

Interlocking nailing has become the common method of treatment of most diaphyseal fractures of long bones today (Brumback et al. in J Bone Joint Surg A 70:1453–1462, 1988; Winquist et al. in J Bone Joint Surg [Am] 66:529–539, 1984). Interlocking screws at the end of the nail that is free of the jig is usually done free hand, by perfect circle technique. Recently, computer-guided interlocking of the nail at the far end of the jig has been introduced, and this technique decreases the radiation and the time for locking at the far end. In fact, it completely avoids radiation while locking at the distal end of the nail (Tornetta et al. in Distal locking using an electromagnetic field guided computer based real time system, San Diego, CA, 2009). Trying to drill without obtaining perfect circles is one of the common causes of missing a screw hole during interlocking nailing, and this is mostly due to inexperience, making small skin incisions, thick fascia causing walking of the drill bit while drilling or being overconfident (Brumback in Tech Orthop 16:342–348, 2001). Further localization of the correct hole is often made difficult by the drill bit trying to re-enter the previously drilled hole. We describe a technique to aid in finding the appropriate screw hole after missing a hole.

Gun shot wounds of the foot and ankle may be self inflicted or due to assault. We describe in this case report,on two patients who had gun shot wounds toon the ankle with bullets embedded into the body of talus and were treated nonoperatively.

The pheromone-modulated upwind flight ofLymantria dispar males responding to different pheromone plume structures and visual stimuli designed to mimic trees was video recorded in a forest. Males flying upwind along pheromone plumes of similar structure generated tracks that were similar in appearance and quantitatively similar in almost all parameters measured, regardless of the experimentally manipulated visual stimuli associated with the pheromone source. Net velocities, ground speeds, and airspeeds of males flying in point-source plumes were slower than those of males flying in the wider, more diffuse plumes issuing from a cylindrical baffle. The mean track angle of males flying in plumes issuing from a point source was greater (oriented more across the wind) than that of males flying in plumes issuing from a transparent cylindrical baffle. Males flying in point-source plumes also turned more frequently and had narrower tracks overall than males responding to plumes from a cylindrical baffle. These data suggest thatL. dispar males orienting to pheromone sources (i.e., calling females) associated with visible vertical cylinders (i.e., trees) use predominantly olfactory cues to locate the source and that the structure of the pheromone plume markedly affects the flight orientation and the resultant track.

Artificial neural networks are made upon of highly interconnected layers of simple ‘neuron-like’ nodes. The neurons act as non-linear processing elements within the network. An attractive property of artificial neural networks is that given the appropriate network topology, they are capable of learning and characterising non-linear functional relationships. Furthermore, the structure of the resulting neural network based process model may be considered generic, in the sense that little prior process knowledge is required in its determination. The methodology therefore provides a cost efficient and reliable process modelling technique. One area where such a technique could be useful is biotechnological systems. Here, for example, the use of a process model within an estimation scheme has long been considered an effective means of overcoming inherent on-line measurement problems. However, the development of an accurate process model is extremely time consuming and often results in a model of limited applicability. Artificial neural networks could therefore prove to be a useful model building tool when striving to improve bioprocess operability. Two large scale industrial fermentation systems have been considered as test cases; a fed-batch penicillin fermentation and a continuous mycelial fermentation. Both systems serve to demonstrate the utility, flexibility and potential of the artificial neural network approach to process modelling.

In response female pheromone the male gypsy moth flies a zigzagging path upwind to locate the source of odor. He determines wind direction visually. To learn more about the mechanism underlying this behavior, we studied descending interneurons with dye-filled micro-electrodes. We studied the interneuronal responses to combinations of pheromone and visual stimuli. 1. We recorded 5 neurons whose directionally selective visual responses to wide field pattern movement were amplified by pheromone (Figs. 2–6). 2. The activity of the above neurons was more closely correlated with the position of the moving pattern than with its velocity (Fig. 4). 3. One neuron showed no clearly directional visual response and no response to pheromone. Yet in the presence of pheromone it showed directionally selective visual responses (Fig. 6). 4. We recorded 4 neurons whose directionally selective visual responses were not modulated by pheromone (Fig. 7), ruling out the possibility that the effect of the pheromone was simply to raise the activity of all visual neurons. 5. Our results suggest that female pheromone amplifies some neural pathways mediating male optomotor responses, especially the directionally selective responses to the transverse movement of the image, both below and above the animal.

1. Lymantria dispar males flying in a wind tunnel, up a plume of female sex pheromone, respond to increasing wind velocity by steering a course more precisely upwind. Even though the course angles steered are distributed unimodally about zero degrees (0°), the resulting track angles maintain a remarkably consistent bimodal distribution across all wind velocities tested (Fig. 4). 2. As the wind velocity increased, the moths maintained their average track angle and ground speed at fairly constant values (Figs. 2, 3). The males actively maintained these ‘preferred’ track angles and ground speeds by varying their air speed (Fig. 2) and course angles steered (Fig. 3). 3. The longitudinal component of image flow, the signal which hypothetically controls ground speed, remained relatively constant across all wind velocities (Fig. 5). The transverse component of image flow, which presumably controls steering increased significantly as the wind velocity increased (Fig. 5). There was no constant relationship between the transverse and longitudinal components of image flow; they appear to be used independently to control flight. 4. The males maintained the temporal aspects of their zigzagging flight tracks with remarkable consistency (Table 1). The duration between turns remained nearly the same across all wind velocities, lending support to a hypothetical CNS counterturning generator.

As the ratio of (E)-8-dodecenyl acetate (E8–12∶Ac) to (Z)-8-dodecenyl acetate (Z8–12∶Ac) increased past optimal low levels in the pheromone blend, fewer males were able to fly 2.5 m upwind to the source. The tracks of males that flew in plumes of such high-(E)off-blends were slower and narrower than those of males flying to lower-(E)blends. The tracks were narrower, first of all, because as the proportion of E8–12∶Ac increased, the males steered more into the wind. More of their thrust was directed upwind and therefore their groundspeed to either side of the windline was reduced. In addition, males also reduced their airspeeds to high-(E)blends, which contributed to the decreased groundspeeds and narrower tracks. No significant changes in the frequency of counterturning were found in response to increasing proportions of E8–12∶Ac. The inability to continue upwind flight in a plume of an off ratio was indicated by in-flight arrestment in the plume. Arrestment resulted from changes in the course angles steered by the males and the airspeeds flown.