This work was designed to study the effects of carcass maturity on meat quality characteristics and intramuscular connective tissue of beef semitendinosus muscle from Chinese native Yellow steers. Chemical determinations, histological and mechanical measurements were performed on the raw and cooked meat at 4 days post mortem. In raw meat, intramuscular fat, collagen solubility, mechanical stren...

Copulation duration varies considerably across species, but few comparative studies have examined factors that might underlie such variation. We examined the relationship between copulation duration (prior to spermatophore transfer), the complexity of titillators (sclerotized male genital contact structures), spermatophore mass and male body mass across 54 species of bushcricket. Using phylogen...

Study design From 1993 to 2009, 840 AIS patients were treated using the SpineCor brace. 495 fitted patients had a definitive outcome, and 405 patients finished the treatment with the SpineCor brace. 225 patients had a follow-up period of at least 2 years, and 94 patients had 5 years or more of follow-up. The assessment of brace effectiveness included the following: percentage of patients who ha...

Females in some species of Old World monkeys and apes vocalize after copulation, but the function of these vocalizations is not clear. In this article, we examine the hypothesis that copulation calls are a form of postcopulatory female choice. According to this hypothesis, copulation calls are honest signals of fertility (i.e., ovulation) that are used by females to encourage mate guarding by t...

The purpose of this prospective observational study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Dynamic SpineCor brace for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis in accordance with the standardized criteria proposed by the Scoliosis Research Society Committee on Bracing and Nonoperative Management. They proposed these guidelines to make the comparison among studies more valid and reliable. From 1993 to 2...

Adult males of Eidmanacris corumbatai Garcia have reduced tegmina without stridulatory apparatus. For this reason, they developed other means ofintra-specific communication. During courtship, the males use a combination of foreleg drumming and waving of the antennae, in addition to chemical signaling through pheromones. The females become receptive to copulation when the males expose their meta...

Four studies explored people's judgments about whether particular types of behavior are compatible with determinism. Participants read a passage describing a deterministic universe, in which everything that happens is fully caused by whatever happened before it. They then assessed the degree to which different behaviors were possible in such a universe. Other participants evaluated the extent t...

Study design From 1993 to 2009, 840 patients were treated for AIS using the SpineCor brace. 495 fitted patients had a definitive outcome, and 405 patients finished the treatment with the SpineCor brace. 94 patients had at least 5 years of follow-up. The assessment of brace effectiveness included the following: percentage of patients who had a 5° or less curve progression and the percentage of p...