Studies have shown that music confers plasticity to the brain. In a preliminary pilot study, we examined the effect of music listening on steroid hormones and the relationship between steroid hormone receptor polymorphisms and musical ability. Twenty-one subjects (10 males and 11 females) were recruited and divided into musically talented and control groups. The subjects selected (1) music they...

The responses of flowering phenology to temperature increases in temperate fruit trees have rarely been investigated in contrasting climatic regions. This is an appropriate framework for highlighting varying responses to diverse warming contexts, which would potentially combine chill accumulation (CA) declines and heat accumulation (HA) increases. To examine this issue, a data set was constitut...

Three acclimation groups [i.e. non-diapause (LD), diapause (SD) and diapause, cold-acclimated (SDA)] of the adult bugs Pyrrhocoris apterus differed markedly in their levels of chill tolerance. Survival time at a sub-zero, but non-freezing, temperature of -5 degrees C (Lt50) extended from 7.6 days, through 35.6 days, to >60 days in the LD, SD and SDA insects, respectively. The time necessary for...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of a dry air-chilling (AC) method on sensory texture and flavor descriptive profiles of broiler pectoralis major (fillet) and pectoralis minor (tender). The profiles of the muscles immersion-chilled and deboned at the same postmortem time and the profiles of the muscles hot-boned (or no chill) were used for the comparison. A total of 108 ev...