OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to compare the catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) prevalence and its determinants between empty-nest and non-empty-nest elderly households. SETTING Shandong province of China. PARTICIPANTS A total of 2761 elderly households are included in the analysis. RESULTS CHE incidence among elderly households was 44.9%. The CHE incidence of empty-nest singles ...

To explore the nest survival rate of Reeves's pheasant(Syrmaticus reevesii) and the nest-site factors that affect it, we conducted artificial nest experiments with reference to natural nests at Dongzhai National Nature Reserve(DNNR), Henan Province and Pingjingguan, Hubei Province from April to June 2014 simulating the situation in its early and later breeding season. We also determined distanc...

‎let $mathcal a$ and $mathcal b$ be unital rings‎, ‎and $mathcal m$‎ ‎be an $(mathcal a‎, ‎mathcal b)$-bimodule‎, ‎which is faithful as a‎ ‎left $mathcal a$-module and also as a right $mathcal b$-module‎. ‎let ${mathcal u}=mbox{rm tri}(mathcal a‎, ‎mathcal m‎, ‎mathcal‎ ‎b)$ be the triangular ring and ${mathcal z}({mathcal u})$ its‎ ‎center‎. ‎assume that $f:{mathcal u}rightarrow{mathcal u}$ is...

We describe NeST, a flexible software-only storage appliance designed to meet the storage needs of the Grid. NeST has three key features that make it wellsuited for deployment in a Grid environment. First, NeST provides a generic data transfer architecture that supports multiple data transfer protocols (including GridFTP and NFS), and allows for the easy addition of new protocols. Second, NeST ...

Incubation behavior is one component of reproductive effort and thus influences the evolution of life-history strategies. We examined the relative importance of body mass, frequency of mate feeding, food, nest predation, and ambient temperature to explain interspecific variation in incubation behavior (nest attentiveness, on- and off-bout durations, and nest trips per hour) using comparative an...

We investigated the association between brood parasitism by shiny cowbirds (Molothrus bonariensis), and behaviour and nest-site characteristics of chalk-browed mockingbirds (Mimus saturninus). This host builds nests on trees, it is aggressive against intruders and it is larger than shiny cowbirds. We conducted focal observations of mockingbird nests, and registered mockingbird activity and atte...

Passerine birds have an extensive repertoire of olfactory receptor genes. However, the circumstances in which passerine birds use olfactory signals are poorly understood. The aim of this study is to investigate whether olfactory cues play a role in natal nest recognition in fledged juvenile passerines. The natal nest provides fledglings with a safe place for sleeping and parental food provision...

When opposing evolutionary selection pressures act on a behavioural trait, the result is often stabilizing selection for an intermediate optimal phenotype, with deviations from the predicted optimum attributed to tracking a moving target, development of behavioural syndromes or shifts in riskiness over an individual's lifetime. We investigated nest-site choice by female golden-winged warblers, ...

Nest size or nest-building activity has recently been hypothesized to be a postmating sexually selected signal in monogamous birds: females may assess a male’s parental quality and willingness to invest in reproduction by his participation in nest building. Females may thus adjust their reproductive effort (i.e. clutch size) not only to their own abilities but also to those of their mates. We i...

Many ant species and some social bees display size-related polyethism, often referred to as alloethism (Wilson, 1971). For example bumblebees (Bombus spp.) exhibit alloethism; there is great size variation within the worker caste, and large bees tend to be foragers, while smaller bees tend to perform within-nest tasks (reviewed in Goulson, 2003). In contrast, honeybees workers are approximately...