Locusts jump by using a catapult mechanism in which energy produced by slow contractions of the extensor tibiae muscles of the hind legs is stored in distortions of the exoskeleton, most notably (1) the two semi-lunar processes at each knee joint and (2) the tendons of the extensor muscles themselves. The energy is then suddenly released from these stores to power the rapid, propulsive movement...

Synchronised reproduction offers clear benefits to planktonic foraminifera – an important group of marine calcifiers – as it increases the chances of successful gamete fusion. Such synchrony requires tuning to an internal or external clock. Evidence exists for lunar reproductive cycles in some species, but its recognition in shell flux time series has proven difficult, raising questions about r...

BACKGROUND It is a common belief in medical community that lunar phases have an impact on human health. A growing body of evidence indicates that lunar phases can predict the risk to develop acute neurological and vascular disorders. The goal of present report was to present our institution data and to perform systematic review of studies examining the association of intracranial aneurysm ruptu...

There are dramatic and physiologically relevant changes in both skylight color and intensity during evening twilight as the pathlength of direct sunlight through the atmosphere increases, ozone increasingly absorbs long wavelengths and skylight becomes increasingly blue shifted. The moon is above the horizon at sunset during the waxing phase of the lunar cycle, on the horizon at sunset on the n...

The associations were quantified between daily and interannual variation in the timing of a closed population of lake sturgeon Acipenser fulvescens migration and arrival at spawning sites with stream environmental and lunar covariates. Spawning data were gathered from 1262 fish in Black Lake, Michigan 2001 to 2008 and by video monitoring 2000 to 2002. Sex-specific variation in responses to exte...

OBJECTIVE To search for a time parallelism between lunar and solar rotation cycles and calendar dates of attacks of pseudogout--chondrocalcinosis articularis (pyrophosphate arthropathy). METHODS Seventy-four documented attacks with known calendar dates of onset recorded in 16 patients of one family cluster between 1955 and 1995 were examined in this study. Their daily frequencies during the g...

We examined the relationship between the pelagic environment and the lunar timing of reproduction and recruitment of a coral reef fish by comparing patterns exhibited by fish under normal oceanographic conditions with patterns exhibited by fish that experienced significantly different pelagic conditions (i.e. encounter with meso-scale, low-salinity North Brazil Current [NBC] rings passing by th...