Flying vertebrates (birds and bats) are under selective pressure to reduce the size of the gut and the mass of the digesta it carries. Compared with similar-sized nonflying mammals, birds and bats have smaller intestines and shorter retention times. We review evidence that birds and bats have lower spare digestive capacity and partially compensate for smaller intestines with increased paracellu...

BACKGROUND In 2003, Steps to a Healthier Austin was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to implement chronic disease prevention and health promotion activities. We report Steps to a Healthier Austin's partnership with Health & Lifestyles Corporate Wellness, Inc (Health & Lifestyles), to provide a worksite wellness program for Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (C...

How do the lifestyles (free-living unparasitized, free-living parasitized, and parasitic) of animal species affect major ecological power-law relationships? We investigated this question in metazoan communities in lakes of Otago, New Zealand. In 13,752 samples comprising 1,037,058 organisms, we found that species of different lifestyles differed in taxonomic distribution and body mass and were ...

Obesity is a major clinical problem for individuals and health care systems worldwide, alarmingly fuelled by body mass excess in the juvenile age. In spite of its multi-factorial origin, unhealthy lifestyles relative to alimentary behaviours and physical activity habits play a major causative role. Thus, an important preventive action of this condition can be conducted by fostering motivation o...

Neurospora crassa has a long history as an excellent model for genetic, cellular, and biochemical research. Although this fungus is known as a saprotroph, it normally appears on burned vegetations or trees after forest fires. However, due to a lack of experimental evidence, the nature of its association with living plants remains enigmatic. Here we report that Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) is a...

257 Received September 30, 2013; revised and accepted November 1, 2013. Published online November 26, 2013; doi: 10.1620/tjem.231.257. Correspondence: Katsuyuki Murata, M.D., Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Akita University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-1-1 Hondo, Akita, Akita 010-8543, Japan. e-mail: [email protected] The Association between Dietary Lifestyles and Hepato...

BACKGROUND Lifestyles are associated with physical and mental health status, as well as health-related quality of life (QOL) in adults. There is little information about relation between lifestyles and QOL in children. This study aims to examine the correlation among Japanese children. METHODS Subjects were from the Toyama Birth Cohort Study, a prospective, longitudinal survey of children bor...

It has recently been proposed that life-history evolution is subject to a fundamental size-dependent constraint. This constraint limits the rate at which biomass can be produced so that production per unit of body mass is inevitably slower in larger organisms than in smaller ones. Here we derive predictions for how changes in body size and production rates evolve in different lifestyles subject...