It is common practice to study jump landing mechanics by having subjects step off a box set at a certain height instead of landing from a jump. This practice assumes that the landing mechanics are similar between stepping off a box and a countermovement jump as long as the heights can be matched. The mechanics of the two methods had never been compared when landing from identical heights. Thus,...

CONTEXT Lower extremity injury is prevalent among individuals participating in sports. Numerous variables have been reported as predisposing risk factors to injury; however, the effects of muscle fatigue on landing kinetics are unclear. OBJECTIVES To investigate the effects of a single session of repeated muscle fatigue on peak vertical ground-reaction force (GRF) during drop landings. DESI...

We estimated the total marine and brackish-water fisheries catches from the Baltic Sea Large Marine Ecosystem, from 1950-2007, taken by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden. Using the ICES electronic catch database as the ̳reported data‘ baseline, we added several IUU (Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated) catch components: ̳adjustments‘ (data source a...

The absorption of impacts resulting from contact with a landing surface during gait, running and drop landings has received considerable attention in the literature. This research has important clinical relevance as failure to appropriately plan and control impact absorption may lead to injuries to the musculo-skeletal system. This review attempts to summarize evidence gathered by studies on th...

While a growing body of literature explores the ecological implications of consistent individual variation in the behaviour of wildlife, few studies have looked at the reciprocal influences of personality within interspecific interactions, despite the potentially significant impacts on biodiversity. Here I used two species involved in cleaner-bird behaviour-black-billed magpies (Pica pica) and ...

The introduction of species to areas beyond the limits of their natural distributions has a major homogenizing influence, making previously distinct biotas more similar. The scale of introductions has frequently been commented on, but their rate and spatial pervasiveness have been less well quantified. Here, we report the findings of a detailed study of pterygote insect introductions to Gough I...

Sharks are highly vulnerable to intense and prolonged fishery extraction. This article analyzes the data on shark landings from the artisan fishing fleet on Costa Rica's Pacific coast between 1988 and 1997. The data come from an invoicing system administered by the Costa Rican Fisheries Institute (Instituto Costarricense de la Pesca y Acuacultura, INCOPESCA). Pacific coast shark fishing during ...

Between 1988 and 1998, annual tuna landings at Buenaventura (Colombian Pacific) are correlated with the sea surface temperature in the central Equatorial Pacific (r=0.78, p<0.05) and the sea level height at Buenaventura (r=0.76, p<0.05) and Balboa (Panama) (r=0.79, p<0.05). Seasonal oceanic upwelling is forced by the Panama wind jet, which may favour oceanic fisheries such as tuna. Here we firs...

Here we examine the ability of butterflies to learn colour cues in two different behavioural contexts, nectar foraging and oviposition, more or less simultaneously. We first trained female Battus philenor (Papilionidae) butterflies to associate a given colour with the presence of host plant leaf extract and assayed their colour preference; we then trained a subset of these butterflies to associ...

Dynamic knee valgus during landings is associated with an increased risk of non-contact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. In addition, the impact on the body during landings must be attenuated in the lower extremity joints. The purpose of this study was to investigate landing biomechanics during landing with dynamic knee valgus by measuring the vertical ground reaction force (vGRF) and a...