An ever larger proportion of Earth's biota is affected by the current accelerating environmental change. The mismatches between organisms and their environments are now increasing in both magnitude and frequency, resulting in lowered fitness and hence the decline of populations. Under this scenario, species with behavioral and/or physiological traits that provide them shelter from the environme...

The creation of psychophysical tasks for the behavioral neurosciences has generally relied upon low-level software running on a limited range of hardware. Despite the availability of software that allows the coding of behavioral tasks in high-level programming environments, many researchers are still reluctant to trust the temporal accuracy and resolution of programs running in such environment...

The goal of this research is to create general computational models of the interplay between affect, cognition and behavior. These models are being designed to support characters that act in virtual environments, make decisions, but whose behavior also suggests an underlying emotional current. We attempt to capture both the cognitive and behavioral aspects of emotion, circumscribed to the role ...

Obesity has become, nowadays, a global concern affecting both developed and developing countries. Nutrition and physical activity represent the major factors influencing energy balance and subsequently weight status. Deciding toward an appropriate intake of all nutrients is seen as necessary to maintain a wholesome lifestyle: among nutrients, sugar plays a major role and its consumption has lon...