Nine new species of Ogyges Kaup (Coleoptera: Passalidae) from the mountainous cloud forests of Mesoamerica are described: O. handali new species and O. menchuae new species from Guatemala; O. cavei new species, O. laurae new species, O. llama new species, O. mutenroshii new species, O. ratcliffei new species, and O. toriyamai new species from Honduras; and O. sandinoi new species from Nicaragua...

The maternal part of the placenta, the decidua, consists of maternal immune cells, decidual stromal cells, and extravillous fetal trophoblasts. In a successful pregnancy, these cell compartments interact to provide an intricate balance between fetal tolerance and antimicrobial defense. These processes are still poorly characterized in the two anatomically different decidual tissues, basalis and...

Recent studies have shown that estrogen replacement can enhance the functional status of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons. Studies have also shown that estrogen has neuroprotective effects both in vitro and in vivo on a variety of cells and against a variety of insults. The present study examined the ability of estrogen replacement to protect basal forebrain cholinergic neurons from the effe...

Rat frontal cortex neurons exhibit alterations in firing in response to a 2 sec tone cue followed by rewarding medial forebrain bundle (MFB) stimulation. Nucleus basalis neurons supply up to 75% of the cortical cholinergic innervation. The nucleus basalis and ACh have been implicated as playing a role in cognitive function. Three experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that the nucleus...

Auditory cortical receptive field plasticity produced during behavioral learning may be considered to constitute "physiological memory" because it has major characteristics of behavioral memory: associativity, specificity, rapid acquisition, and long-term retention. To investigate basal forebrain mechanisms in receptive field plasticity, we paired a tone with stimulation of the nucleus basalis,...

We have developed a neurocomputational model of some attentional e!ects of nicotine. Our simulations reproduce results showing smoking abstinence to impair performance on a rapid visual information processing task involving detecting sequences of even or odd digits. Our model treats presence of nicotine as enhancement of modulatory acetylcholine signals, which focus attention on task-relevant s...

The green lacewing, Mallada basalis (Walker) (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae), is one of the most important natural enemies used in biological control programs for forestry and agricultural pests. However, it is difficult to mass rear M. basalis instars because they are voracious cannibals. This study was conducted to determine the effect of cannibalism on the development and fecundity of M. basalis. ...