The nuclear chromatin decondensation test (NCDT) detects the ability of the sperm chromatin to undergo decondensation following fertilization. The test does not have direct bearing with the fertilizing ability of the spermatozoa but only reflects the proportion of sperm that may swell following exposure to in vitro decondensing agents. The gross seminal parameters do not have any direct relatio...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of prenatal methamphetamine (MA) exposure and application of the same drug in adulthood on cognitive functions of adult male rats tested in Morris water maze (MWM). Adult male rats prenatally exposed to MA (5 mg/kg), saline or no injection were examined. Half of the animals were injected daily with MA (1 mg/kg) after finishing the testi...

Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and detrended moving average (DMA) are two scaling analysis methods designed to quantify correlations in noisy nonstationary signals. We systematically study the performance of different variants of the DMA method when applied to artificially generated long-range power-law correlated signals with an a priori known scaling exponent alpha(0) and compare them w...

Active, uncommitted knowledge structures are described as a means of representing risks with either a stochastic history or a hypothetical value, or a mixture of the two within a single risk. These same knowledge structures are shown to contribute to an increased speed of organizational response in a dynamic environment and to the ability of a simulation model to leam from its own operation.

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to test a developmental model of neurobehavioral dysregulation relating prenatal substance exposure to behavior problems at age 7. METHODS The sample included 360 cocaine-exposed and 480 unexposed children from lower to lower middle class families of which 78% were black. Structural equation modeling was used to test models whereby prenatal exposure t...

BACKGROUND Mass media exposure has been associated with an increased risk of eating pathology. It is unknown whether indirect media exposure--such as the proliferation of media exposure in an individual's social network--is also associated with eating disorders. AIMS To test hypotheses that both individual (direct) and social network (indirect) mass media exposures were associated with eating...

in this paper a laboratory study has been carried out on the effect of changing the type of soil filling cylindrical reinforcing elements from sm to gm on behavior of sandy soil. in this study the primary tests for evaluation of the impact of reinforced sand and gravel columns with diameters of 5 cm and heights of 15 cm subjected to vertical stresses of 50, 100, and 150 kpa were carried out in ...

From birth, infants prefer to look at faces that engage them in direct eye contact. In adults, direct gaze is known to modulate the processing of faces, including the recognition of individuals. In the present study, we investigate whether direction of gaze has any effect on face recognition in four-month-old infants. Four-month infants were shown faces with both direct and averted gaze, and su...