All living creatures, with no exception of humans, are subjected to an environment with both thermal and mechanical ‘loadings’. When the temperature is out of normal physiological range (e.g. in extreme heat or cold), biological activities fail to proceed in a normal way, resulting in injury or even death. On the other hand, in medicine, various therapeutic methods involving both thermal and me...

Thermal expansion involves a response of a material to an external stimulus that typically involves an increase in a crystallographic axis (positive thermal expansion (PTE)), although shrinking with applied heat (negative thermal expansion (NTE)) is known in rarer cases. Here, we demonstrate a means to achieve dynamic molecular motion and thermal expansions in organic solids via co-crystallizat...

Thermal conductivity of two-dimensional (2D) materials is of interest for energy storage, nanoelectronics and optoelectronics. Here, we report that the thermal conductivity of molybdenum disulfide can be modified by electrochemical intercalation. We observe distinct behaviour for thin films with vertically aligned basal planes and natural bulk crystals with basal planes aligned parallel to the ...

Natural thermal insulation materials developed from renewable crop by-products and natural binders are analysed in terms of their thermal degradation and fire behaviour. A pyrolysis combustion flow calorimetre (PCFC) is used to characterise some kinds of crop by-products, including rice husk, corn pith and barley straw. This technique is complemented with a TG analysis. Six thermal insulation m...

Castilla, A. M., Van Damme, R. & Bauwens, D.: Field body temperatures, mechanisms of thermoregulation and evolution of thermal characteristics in lacertid lizards. Nat. Croat., Vol. 8, No. 3., 253–274, 1999, Zagreb. We discuss three aspects of the thermal biology of lacertid lizards. First, we provide an overview of the available data on field body temperatures (Tb), the thermal sensitivity of ...

1. Understanding an animal’s ecology requires knowledge of how individual variation in behaviour and physiology interact with each other and with the environment that an animal experiences. 2. Environmental variation affects behaviour, but whether individual variation in physiological performance also affects behaviour is poorly known. 3. We studied a high-altitude population of Deer Mice ( Per...

The formation, chemical, and thermal processing of complex organic molecules (COMs) is currently a topic of much interest in interstellar chemistry. The isomers glycolaldehyde, methyl formate, and acetic acid are particularly important because of their role as pre-biotic species. It is becoming increasingly clear that many COMs are formed within interstellar ices which are dominated by water. H...

Plasticity or evolution in behavioural responses are key attributes of successful animal invasions. In northern Australia, the invasive cane toad (Rhinella marina) recently invaded semi-arid regions. Here, cane toads endure repeated daily bouts of severe desiccation and thermal stress during the long dry season (April-October). We investigated whether cane toads have shifted their ancestral noc...

The thermal decomposition behavior of the Fe(II), Co(II), Ni(II) and Zn(II) complexes of polydithiooxamide has been investigated by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) at a heating rate of 20°C min-1 under nitrogen. The Coats-Redfern integral method is used to evaluate the kinetic parameters for the successive steps in the decomposition sequence observed in the TGA curves. The processes of thermal...

für Naturforschung in cooperation with the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Dieses Werk wurde im Jahr 2013 vom Verlag Zeitschrift für Naturforschung in Zusammenarbeit mit der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. digitalisiert und unter folgender Lizenz veröffentlicht: Creative Commons Namen...