With between 2000 and 2500 known species, cichlids (Teleostei, Cichlidae) are probably the most species rich family of vertebrate animals. With over 1500 species, more than half of the world's cichlid species live in the African Great Lakes, where several endemic species ̄ocks evolved in parallel. Speciation rates in some of these ̄ocks are unrivaled among vertebrates and they are among the most ...

Psittacosis, also known as parrot disease, parrot fever and ornithosis, can be transmitted to humans by inhaling dried excreta of infected birds like canaries, parakeets, parrots, pigeons and turkeys. Unless it is specifically thought of and investigated, the diagnosis of psittacosis can easily be missed and without identifying the exact etiology, the disease is usually treated as atypical pneu...

Respiratory neoplasia is rarely reported in avian species. A 17-yr-old Quaker parrot (Myiopsitta monachus) was admitted with a 2-wk history of anorexia, depression, and respiratory distress. Clinical examination revealed a large, firm mass in the left pectoral muscle. Radiology showed a mass silhouetting the heart and the liver. Supportive treatment was provided, but the bird died during the se...

Distributed computing continues to be an alphabet-soup of services and protocols for managing computation and storage. To live in this environment, applications require middleware that can transparently adapt standard interfaces to new distributed systems; such middleware is known as an interposition agent. In this paper, we present several lessons learned about interposition agents via a progr...

Avian chlamydiosis is caused by Chlamydiophila psittaci with the highest infection rate in parrots (Psittacidae) and pigeons (Columbiformes). A two-year-old Congo African grey parrot was examined since the bird had shown clinical signs of anorexia, depression, diarrhea, and mild dyspnea and based on biochemical and hemathological analysis the bird was diagnosed as having anemia, leukocytosis, h...

In 1839, Georg Friedrich Parrot (1767-1852) published a short note about a peculiar visual phenomenon--the diminishing of the size of external objects situated at a relatively small distance from the window of a fast-moving train. For the explanation of this illusion, Parrot proposed a concept of unconscious inferences, a very rapid syllogistic conclusion from two premises, which anticipated th...

Background: The presence of pesticide due to the huge demand for agricultural purposes is very prevalent in surface waters of Iran. These pesticides could finally accumulate in aquatic ecosystems and have been proved to have toxic effects on aquatic animals. The aim of this study was to assess the acute toxicity of Diazinon, Deltamethrin, Butachlor and Pretilachlor on Zebra Cichlid (Cryptoheros...

Cichlid fishes of Lake Tanganyika display a variety of mating and parental care behaviors, including polygamous and monogamous mouthbrooding and substrate breeding, cooperative breeding, as well as various alternative reproductive tactics such as sneaking and piracy. Moreover, reproductive behaviors sometimes vary within species both in space and in time. Here, I survey reports on mating and pa...

In September 1926 Paul Dirac began a five-month visit with Niels Bohr at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. Dirac, then barely twenty-four years old, had been in possession of his Ph.D. since only May of that year. Bohr was middle aged and already a Nobel laureate, but he was accustomed to working with junior colleagues. Nevertheless, collaboration between the two physicists p...