Bumblebee colonies are founded by a single-mated queen. Due to this life history trait, bumblebees are more susceptible to parasites and diseases than polyandrous and/or polygynous social insects. A greater resistance towards parasites is shown when the genetic variability within a colony is increased. The parasite resistance may be divided into different levels regarding the step of the parasi...

Attentional demands can prevent humans and other animals from performing multiple tasks simultaneously. Some studies, however, show that tasks presented in different sensory modalities (e.g. visual and auditory) can be processed simultaneously. This suggests that, at least in these cases, attention might be modality-specific and divided differently between tasks when present in the same modalit...

The analysis of the contents of 690 children’s drawings of the den­ t is t ’s o ffice was carried out w ith the aim of determ ining the presence of »fear-inducing« and »encouraging« elements in these drawings. The results showed that only 9% of children drew encouraging elements like flowers, pictures, decorations, etc. The presence of fear-inducing elements appea­ red to depend on: 1) children...

Background Determining the content of individual allergens at isoform level has become important for comprehensive standardization and quality control of allergen products as the content of individual allergens has an impact on the potency of allergen extracts. Mass spectrometry (MS) is a dominant and indispensable proteomic tool that has been employed for allergen analysis. Therefore, the main...

Identification, characterization, and purification of allergens are essential for the structural and immunologic studies needed to understand how these molecules induce specific IgE antibody production by the human immune system. Advances in molecular biology techniques have led to the production of recombinant allergens having constant properties, allowing detection of specific IgE directed ag...

Pollen grains can play an important role in allergic diseases and many studies have revealed that allergenicity increases in industrial cities. In Bushehr province in Iran Avicennia marina (Forsk.) Vierh. has grown in two regions, Bordekhoon (Mond protected Area) and Assaluyeh (Marine National Park of Nayband). Assaluyeh (polluted area) is an industrial region with petrochemical factories that ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Environmental variability at several scales can determine plant reproductive success. The main goal of this work was to model the reproductive flexibility of a semi-arid specialist considering different scales of environmental variability. METHODS A 2-year field study was performed on the determinants of the female reproductive success of Helianthemum squamatum, an Iberian...

Suppose a speaker gestures toward four flowers and asks a listener, "How would you describe the color of this f lower?" How does the listener infer which of the four flowers is being referred to? It is proposed that he selects the one he judges to be most salient with respect to the speaker 's and his common ground-the i r mutual knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions. In a field experiment, it w...

A facile synthesis of monodispersed microparticles composed of superparamagnetic Fe(3)O(4) cores, SiO(2) shell, hierarchical γ-AlOOH periphery with Au nanoparticles is reported. These particles are found to be useful for protein immobilization and bear resemblance to daisy flowers, and are hereafter termed "nanoflowers".