The brain comprises only 2% of total body weight; however, under normal conditions, it receives 15–20% of the cardiac output and accounts for 20% of total body oxygen consumption. Because energy reserves within the brain are negligible, adequate blood flow is essential for the provision of a continuous supply of energy-producing substrates and for the removal of the byproducts of cellular metab...

Introduction: Recent lunar missions provide the planetary science community with vast amounts of new data enabling important insights into the geology and evolution of the Moon on a global scale. Remotely sensed observations of the polar regions reveal the location of persistently illuminated regions and evidence for volatiles captured in cold traps [1-5]. In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) of...

Body condition is assumed to influence an animal’s health and fitness. Various non-destructive methods based on body mass and a measure of body length have been used as condition indices (CIs), but the dominant method amongst ecologists is currently the calculation of residuals from an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression of body mass against length. Recent studies of energy reserves in smal...

Hibernating animals can adjust torpor expression according to available energy reserves. Besides the quantity, the quality of energy reserves could play an important role for overwintering strategies. Common hamsters are food-storing hibernators and show high individual variation in hibernation performance, which might be related to the quality of food hoards in the hibernacula. In this study, ...

The survival of small birds in winter is critically dependent on the birds’ ability to accumulate and maintain safe levels of energy reserves. In some species, food caching facilitates energy regulation by providing an energy source complementary to body fat. We present a dynamic optimization model of short-term, diurnal energy management for both food-caching and non-caching birds in which onl...