Cerebral palsy is the most common cause of serious physical disability in childhood. Inadequate physical fitness is one of the major problems in children with cerebral palsy. Various aquatic activities and exercises can improve fitness levels in children with cerebral palsy. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the studies published from 1990 to 2011, which investigate the effects of aquati...

Viruses are a paradigm of the economy of genome resources, reflected in their multiplication strategy and for their own structure. Although there is enormous structural diversity, the viral genome is always enclosed within a proteinaceous coat, and most virus species are haploid; the only exception to this rule are the highly pleomorphic enveloped viruses. We performed an in-depth characterizat...

Aquatic insects contribute significantly to freshwater ecosystems, forming food for many organisms, particularly in the food webs associated with wetland environments. Many fishes, amphibians, shorebirds, waterfowl, and other animals forage heavily on both the aquatic and terrestrial stages of aquatic insects, which are essential to their survival. It is estimated that about 3 % of the total in...

Wide occurrence of aquatic metal pollution has caused much attention. Biomonitoring offers an appealing tool for the assessment of metal pollution in aquatic ecosystem. The bioindicators including algae, macrophyte, zooplankton, insect, bivalve mollusks, gastropod, fish, amphibian and others are enumerated and compared for their advantages and disadvantages in practical biomonitoring of aquatic...

Despite the predominance of aquatic environments on the planet Earth, microbial abundance and diversity within soil environments exceed that of the aquatic realm. Most of what we know of viral ecology within natural systems has come through investigations of aquatic environments. However, the 'aquatic-bias' in viral ecology is beginning to change as the cultivation-independent approaches, which...

background: mycotoxins are a group of structurally diverse substances produced by a wide range of moulds. these fungal secondary metabolites, whose presence in feed is unavoidable, can impose hazards to human and animal health. continuous concern about potential effects of mycotoxins in the human diet has led to an increasing interest in researches about fungi and mycotoxin production. the aim ...

Aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals, while resting at the water surface or ashore, breathe with a low frequency (f) by comparison to terrestrial mammals of the same body size, the difference increasing the larger the species. Among various interpretations, it was suggested that the low-f breathing is a consequence of the end-inspiratory breath-holding pattern adopted by aquatic mammals to favour b...

BACKGROUND Aquatic insects are very abundant and divers groups of insects that are associated with an aquatic or semiaquatic environment in one or more of their life stages. These insects have been, in some cases, well studied because they are vectors of several diseases. This is the first comprehensive faunistic study of aquatic insects from Babol County. The results may provide basic data for...

Background: Parasitic dinoflagellates of the genus Hematodinium are significant pathogens affecting the global decapod crustacean fishery. Despite this, considerable knowledge gaps exist regarding the life history of the pathogen in vivo, and the role of free living life stages in transmission to naïve hosts. Results: In this study, we describe a novel disease in European brown shrimp (Crangon ...

Background: Limited information is available regarding the habitat preference of the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) in South Australian estuarine environments. The need to overcome this paucity of information is crucial for management and conservation initiatives. This preliminary study investigates the space-time patterns of habitat preference by the Indo-Pacific bottlenose...