The hematophagous soft tick Ornithodoros erraticus feeds nocturnally on multiple warm-blooded vertebrate hosts. This tick is often found living buried in the soil of traditional pigpens. O. erraticus is an important infectious disease vector both for humans and animals. In the Iberian Peninsula, this tick serves as the vector of human tick-borne relapsing fever caused by the spirochete Borrelia...

Cotten, Bradley M. M.S., Purdue University, May 2015. Investigating the amino acid digestibility of alternative protein sources and determining the impact of dietary fiber on energy, nitrogen, and amino acid digestibility in growing pigs. Major Professor: Olayiwola Adeola. Three experiments were designed to quantify the nitrogen (N) and amino acid (AA) digestibility of various protein sources f...

Groups of starved, virgin adult male or female bed bugs were stimulated to search for a host by the presence of a heated artificial feeder. Some of the bed bug groups were allowed to obtain a blood meal and some were not. After the removal of the feeder, bed bugs were observed throughout the scotophase to record their searching and aggregation behavior. Groups of male and female bed bugs that w...

The present study was carried out to determine whether cephalic stimulation, associated with eating a meal, was sufficient stimulus to provoke the release of stored triacylglycerol (TAG) from a previous high-fat meal. Ten subjects were studied on three separate occasions. Following a 12 h overnight fast, subjects were given a standard mixed test meal which contained 56 g fat. Blood samples were...

"Normally, when you eat a high-fat meal, you end up with high levels of triglycerides, a type of fat, in your blood," said Sheila West, associate professor of biobehavioral health, Penn State, who led the study. "If this happens too frequently, or if triglyceride levels are raised too much, your risk of heart disease is increased. We found that adding spices to a high-fat meal reduced triglycer...

Using ELISA we provide direct evidence that the midgut defensins of the blood-sucking fly Stomoxys calcitrans are secreted into the gut lumen. We show that midgut defensin peptide levels increase up to fortyfold in response to a blood meal but not to a sugar meal. The data suggests the midgut defensin genes are post-transcriptionally regulated and that their function is protection of the stored...

Each patient with Type-1 diabetes must decide how much insulin to inject before each meal to maintain an acceptable level of blood glucose. The actual injection dose is based on a formula that takes current blood glucose level and the meal size into consideration. While following this insulin regimen, the patient records their insulin injections, blood glucose readings, meal sizes and potential...

1. The thermogenic, cardiovascular and metabolic responses to the ingestion of a 30 kJ/kg body-weight test meal were studied in six normal weight, female subjects before and after a 7 d period of underfeeding at 60 kJ/kg ideal body-weight per d. 2. With underfeeding there were decreases in body-weight, plasma insulin and 3,5,3'-triiodothyronine concentrations, resting metabolic rate and respira...

The relationship between postprandial blood glucose levels and meal viscosity was studied by adding various combinations of hydroxypropylmethylcellulose to glucose solutions and administering them to female mongrel dogs. Glucose was administered as 5% or 20% solutions in water. Hydroxypropyl-methylcellulose was dissolved in the glucose solutions to yield low (5000 cP measured at 37 degrees C an...