Male-male aggression can have a large influence on access to mates, particularly in highly territorial animals such as mice. It has been suggested that males with impaired antioxidant defence and a consequential increased susceptibility to oxidative stress may have a reduced ability to invest in aggressive behaviours, which could limit their mating opportunities and reproductive success. Oxidat...

for planting fine seeds in cellular trays, an automatic pneumatic seeder was designed, constructed and evaluated. catia software was used to design and analysis the system parts of the seeder. different parts of the seeder, including vibrating seed hopper, vacuum boom, seed picking nozzles, seed tube, pneumatic system and electronic control unit for automation of the seeder, were designed and c...

Some organisms enforce "maladaptive" behaviours on others of the same or different species by imposing costs in the absence of compliance. Such enforcement is used by the enforcer to obtain benefits in the possession of the enforced individual. This mechanism is known as mafia behaviour in humans, but may be widespread in parasite-host relationships in nature, from the cellular level to societi...

The Swedish Defence Research Agency has developed a concept demonstrator for demonstrating information fusion methodology focused on intelligence processing at the division level for a future Network Based Defence (NBF) / Network Centric Warfare (NCW) C4ISR system. The demonstrator integrates force aggregation, particle filtering and sensor allocation methods to construct, dynamically update an...

Safety critical computer-based systems are now in widespread use in Defence. A number of current standards such as the UK Defence Standards 0055 and 00-56 and the recently proposed Def (Aust) Standard DR5679 require the use of formal mathematical modeling and reasoning to provide sufficient assurance of safety of system design. The analysis of system design at an early stage is a crucial step i...

Why are some defence mechanisms expressed constitutively, while others are induced only upon exposure? Experimental evolution in a bacteria-phage system provides empirical support for the prediction that high frequency of exposure to parasites selects for constitutive defence despite associated costs.

Spatial planning in border areas in Iran because of long borders and settling more than half ofthe provinces in the country's international borders with neighbouring countries play particular role in the planningsystem. This article aims to clarify the position of border areas spatial planning in the country planning system,identifying its elements, elucidating how these elements relate to othe...

DNA repair is an indispensable part of a cell's defence system against the devastating effects of DNA-damaging conditions. The regulation of this function is a really demanding situation, particularly when the stressing factors persist for a long time. In such cases, the depletion of existing DNA repair proteins has to be compensated by the induction of the analogous gene products. In addition,...

Innate immune system is the first line of defence against invading pathogens that is critical for the overall survival of the host. Human liver is characterised by a dual blood supply, with 80% of blood entering through the portal vein carrying nutrients and bacterial endotoxin from the gastrointestinal tract. The liver is thus constantly exposed to antigenic loads. Therefore, pathogenic microo...

Evolution of the nervous system progressed through cellular diversification and specialization of functions. Conceptually, the nervous system is composed from electrically excitable neuronal networks connected with chemical synapses and non-excitable glial cells that provide for homeostasis and defence. Astrocytes are integrated into neural networks through multipartite synapses; astroglial per...