NK cells are a component of innate immunity which activity significantly correlates with health status. The aim of our study was to estimate a status of NK (natural killer) cells in the very old (mean age 92+/-2 ys) and old subjects (mean age 78+/-5 ys) as compared to a control group of young individuals (mean age 25+/-4 ys). NK cells were characterized by measurement of their cytotoxic activit...

BACKGROUND Few studies have assessed whether emotional content affects processes supporting working memory in Alzheimer disease (AD) patients. METHODS We assessed 22 AD patients and 40 elderly controls (EC) with a delayed matching and non-matching to sample task (DMST/DNMST), and a spatial-delayed recognition span task (SRST; unique/varied) using emotional stimuli. RESULTS AD patients showe...

Despite being probably one of the most studied topics in Evolutionary Biology, the mechanisms of maintenance of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) diversity in vertebrates remain also one of the most debated topics [1]. Ellison et al. [2] studied MHC class I diversity of a selfing Kryptolebias marmoratus population by clustering alleles in supertypes grouped by their physico-chemical simila...

The European mudminnow (Umbra krameri) is a Middle Danubian endemic fish species, which is characterised by isolated populations living mainly in artificial habitats in the centre of its range, in the Carpathian Basin. For their long term preservation, reliable information is needed about the structure of stocks and the level of isolation. The recent distribution pattern, and the population gen...

Working memory (WM) skills of individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) tend to be very poor compared to typically developing children of similar mental age. In particular, research has found that in individuals with DS visuo-spatial WM is better preserved than verbal WM. This study investigated whether it is possible to train short-term memory (STM) and WM abilities in individuals with DS. The cas...

A growing body of work on emotion-cognition interactions has revealed both facilitative and disruptive effects of emotion on working memory in younger adults. These differing effects may vary by the goal relevancy of emotion within a task. Additionally, it is possible that these emotional effects would be larger for older adults, considering findings of preserved emotional processing with age. ...

Reforestation with autochthonous species should take into account the preservation of the variability and the geographical structure of genetic diversity in forest species. In order to provide empirical data, genetic composition of an artificial population of holm oak (Quercus ilex L.) and its natural seed-origin population in Andalusia were analysed with six microsatellite loci. The genetic di...

When hybridizing species come into contact, understanding the processes that regulate their interactions can help predict the future outcome of the system. This is especially relevant in conservation situations where human activities can influence hybridization dynamics. We investigated a developing hybrid zone between red wolves and coyotes in North Carolina, USA to elucidate patterns of hybri...

Beyond the ongoing privacy preserving social network studies which mainly focus on node de-identification and link protection, this paper is written with the intention of preserving the privacy of link's affinities, or weights, in a finite and directed social network. To protect the weight privacy of edges, we define a privacy measurement, k-anonymity, over individual weighted edges. It is cons...

BACKGROUND Working memory (WM) deficits are a core feature of schizophrenia. Recent electrophysiological evidence indicates that the brain systems for visual encoding are especially impaired. However, patients still achieve performance levels clearly above chance, which indicates the existence of residual mechanisms supporting WM encoding. The present study presents evidence that alpha phase lo...