Pressure-volume curves were determined for black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP) trees from four full-sib families. During the first two years, trees were measured from a plantation on a dry site. In the third year, trees were sampled from the dry site and a wet site. Diurnal measurements of shoot water potential allowed in situ shoot turgor to be estimated in addition to standard water rela...

Similar to insects, birds and pterosaurs, bats have evolved powered flight. But in contrast to other flying taxa, only bats are furry. Here, we asked whether flight is impaired when bat pelage and wing membranes get wet. We studied the metabolism of short flights in Carollia sowelli, a bat that is exposed to heavy and frequent rainfall in neotropical rainforests. We expected bats to encounter h...

BACKGROUND Microwave is the most reliable sample digestion method. However, it requires expensive microwave digester automation and has relatively low productivity. In this study, three non-automated digestion methods, i.e. wet acid digestion using nitric acid (HNO3) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), wet acid digestion using HNO3, and dry washing, are compared in order to determine the best approac...

Wet aerosols of 4.5% sodium chloride (NaCl) are often used to assess the bronchial responsiveness associated with asthma. We questioned whether dry NaCl could be used as an alternative. Dry powder NaCl was inhaled from capsules containing either 5, 10, 20 or 40 mg to a cumulative dose of 635 mg. The powder was delivered via an Inhalator or Halermatic. The airway sensitivity to the dry and wet N...

This paper presents the results of mechanical strength of wet and dry zirconia/ Nafion® nano-composite membrane. The tensile tests were conducted to determine elastic modulus and stiffness of dry and wet pristine Nafion® membrane and modified Nafion® membrane. The composite membranes were prepared by recast method of different synthesized zirconium oxide with the zirconia content of 10% by weig...

The macula or macula lutea (originally from Latin macula, “spot” and lutea, “yellow”) is an oval-shaped spot, five mm in diameter, located temporal to the optical nerve and near the centre of the human retina. Although it comprises only a small part of the retina, it is responsible for the sharp central vision and colour vision. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a disease in which the n...

Animals living in patchy environments may depend on resource pulses to meet the high energetic demands of breeding. We developed two primary a priori hypotheses to examine relationships between three categories of wading bird prey biomass and covariates hypothesized to affect the concentration of aquatic fauna, a pulsed resource for breeding wading bird populations during the dry season. The fi...

This paper describes the results of self-healing behavior in early-age Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC). Uniaxially pre-loaded ECC with tensile strain of 0.3 or 0.5% were subjected to different number of wet-dry cycles. Then, resonant frequency test and reloading test were carried out to assess the recovery rate as a function of the number of wet-dry cycles. These two tests indicated di...

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM Patients' demand for tooth-colored restoratives in the posterior region is increasing. Clinicians use universal nanohybrid resin composites for both anterior and posterior regions. There are few published reports comparing fracture toughness of nonohybrids and that of hybrid composite stored wet and dry. OBJECTIVES To investigate the fracture toughness of three nanohybrid...