The sap sucking insects (Hemiptera), which include aphids, whiteflies, plant bugs and stink bugs, have emerged as major agricultural pests. The Hemiptera cause direct damage by feeding on crops, and in some cases indirect damage by transmission of plant viruses. Current management relies almost exclusively on application of classical chemical insecticides. While the development of transgenic cr...

Influence of three different stocking densities, vitamin C supplementation of Daphnia spp. and feeding practice (i.e. mechanical, hand) on the success of dry feed habituation of pond reared pikeperch juveniles was investigated through one month trial. Pond reared pikeperch juveniles were harvested 42 days post-fertilisation (mean individual weight 1.1 ± 0.3g) and stocked into the experimental r...

Efforts to estimate the strength of species interactions in species-rich, reticulate food webs have been hampered by the multitude of direct and indirect interactions such systems exhibit and have been limited by an assumption that pairwise interactions display linear functional forms. Here we present a new method for directly measuring, on a per capita basis, the nonlinear strength of trophic ...

The rapidly growing world population and rising consumption of biofuels intensify demands for both food and biofuels. This exaggerates food and fuel shortages. The use of food crops such as corn grain to produce ethanol raises major nutritional and ethical concerns. Nearly 60% of humans in the world are currently malnourished, so the need for grains and other basic foods is critical. Growing cr...

Health care professionals assume that tube feeding is an unpleasant, distressing experience for patients, which is only partially substantiated by experience. Thirty patients were interviewed via a tube feeding and hospital experience checklist (a 47-item interview schedule). Common experiences were operationally defined as those felt by at least 50%; subjectively distressful experiences were t...

Ghrelin, a circulating orexigenic stomach-derived hormone, has recently been implicated in extra-homeostatic feeding, increasing food reward and food-motivated behavior. The precise target site(s) for ghrelin's effects on food reward have yet to be elucidated. The neurocircuitry underpinning food-motivated behavior involves, in particular, the dopamine cells of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) ...

background and purpose: inappropriate complementary feeding practices are one of the causes of malnutrition worldwide. this study was aimed to determine the complementary feeding practices according to world health organization recommendation in sari, iran. materials and methods: this cross-sectional study on complementary feeding practices assayed the different aspect of infant feeding based o...

Blister beetles (Meloidae) are cosmopolitan in distribution except from New Zealand, Antarctica and most Polynesian islands. They act as minor pests for some crops and as major pests for others under certain conditions in several parts of the world. The present work reviews the most important agronomic impacts of various beetle species in different African, Asian, European and American countrie...

Accurate knowledge of the functional response of predators to prey density is essential for understanding food web dynamics, to parameterize mechanistic models of animal responses to environmental change, and for designing appropriate conservation measures. Greater flamingos (Phoenicopterus roseus), a flagship species of Mediterranean wetlands, primarily feed on Artemias (Artemia spp.) in comme...

Feeding promotes protein accretion in skeletal muscle through a stimulation of the mRNA translation initiation phase of protein synthesis either secondarily to nutrient-induced rises in insulin or owing to direct effects of nutrients themselves. The present set of experiments establishes the effects of meal feeding on potential signal transduction pathways that may be important in accelerating ...