The "negrito" and African "pygmy" phenotypes are predominately exhibited by hunter-gatherers living in rainforest habitats. Foraging within such habitats is associated with a unique set of locomotor behaviors, most notably habitual vertical climbing during the pursuit of honey, fruit, and game. When performed frequently, this behavior is expected to correlate with developmentally plastic skelet...

A three dimensional force measurement system was integrated in a climbing hold. The force measurement system consisted of three orthogonally mounted platform load cells. Data acquisition and power supply of the load cells was performed by a wireless data acquisition system ViFDAQ. Data was transferred by ViFDAQ to a nearby laptop by a wireless Bluetooth connection. Measurements were done during...

The goal of modular robots is to achieve versatility in the field, while satisfying any number of traditional robot tasks. We chose the task of traversing terrain by climbing, and present various methods of climbing with modular robots. In particular, we focus on the tasks of climbing across a horizontal rope, climbing up a vertical rope, and climbing up stairs using the Superbot modular robot....

Background and Objective: Datura stramonium L. is a medicinal herb from the family of Solanaceae. It has been used in herbal remedies for promoting health and treating several diseases. The current study was set up to compare the effects of Datura stramonium L. extract on the naloxone-precipitated opiate-withdrawal in mice. Materials and Methods: Male BALB/c mice (30–35 g, n = 40) were arbitra...

The Olig3 gene encodes a bHLH factor that is expressed in the ventricular zone of the dorsal alar plate of the hindbrain. We found that the Olig3(+) progenitor domain encompassed subdomains that co-expressed Math1, Ngn1, Mash1 and Ptf1a. Olig3(+) cells give rise to neuronal types in the dorsal alar plate that we denote as class A neurons. We used genetic lineage tracing to demonstrate that clas...

This paper presents a family of climbing robots that are using a track-wheel mechanism for locomotion mechanism. There are three robots: High speed vertical climbing robot, Flexible caterpillar robot, and Multi-linked climbing robot. The high speed vertical climbing robot uses suction pads to be attached on walls, and the robot has an advantage of high climbing speed of 14 m/min. The flexible c...

Whether early hominins were adept tree climbers is unclear. Although some researchers have argued that bipedality maladapts the hominin skeleton for climbing, others have argued that early hominin fossils display an amalgamation of features consistent with both locomotor strategies. Although chimpanzees have featured prominently in these arguments, there are no published data on the kinematics ...

Individual housing of laboratory mice may increase vulnerability to surgical stress, and interfere with postsurgical recovery. To analyse the effect of housing conditions on recovery, pairand single-housed female C57BL/6J mice underwent a minor laparotomy +/analgesia, anaesthesia only or no treatment. Animals were monitored using non-invasive methods during the immediate postsurgical period to ...

Climbing over chasms larger than step size is vital to fruit flies, since foraging and mating are achieved while walking. Flies avoid futile climbing attempts by processing parallax-motion vision to estimate gap width. To identify neuronal substrates of climbing control, we screened a large collection of fly lines with temporarily inactivated neuronal populations in a novel high-throughput assa...