"Fright moulting" has been recorded in several orders of birds and interpreted as a way of escaping a predator when already caught. Two observations suggest that the behaviour may have another function, viz. when an aerial predator chases the prey. By shedding body feathers in the air the bird creates a cloud behind it; this might confuse the predator in the same way as the ink of octopuses confus

In a population of Blue Tits, Parus caeruleus, we performed two different food provisioning experiments; one starting before clutch initiaition and one starting when the first eggs were laid. We assessed the effect of these feeding experiments on four fitness—related factors, viz., laying date, clutch size, egg mass, and onset of incubation. Given that breeding birds are food and energy constraine

The frequency of laying gaps was studied in a nestbox breeding population of Blue Tits Parus caeruleus during the breeding season of 1990. In as many as 27% of the 55 clutches studied, laying was interrupted for at least one day. It is concluded that the interruption of egg laying depends on food availability since the frequency of laying gaps decreased in clutches laid by females experimentally p

In this work, we propose a novel measure of distance for quantifying dissimilarities between signals observed on a graph. Building on a recently introduced optimal mass transport framework, the distance measure is formed using the second-order statistics of the graph signals, allowing for comparison of graph processes without direct access to the signals themselves, while explicitly taking the dyn

There is a scarcity of work examining the relationship between culture and pain-related caregiver behaviors. Moreover, no pediatric pain studies have examined the relationship between caregiver cultural values and pain-related caregiver behaviors nor discern if this process is mediated by caregiver parenting styles and moderated by ecosocial context. Based on cross-cultural developmental theories,

In this work, we propose to utilize a recently developed covariance matrix interpolation technique in order to improve noise reduction in multi-microphone setups in the presence of a moving, localized noise source. Based on the concept of optimal mass transport, the proposed method induces matrix interpolants implying smooth spatial displacement of the noise source, allowing for physically reasona

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The human B1 bradykinin (BK) receptor (B1R) is more efficacious than the human B2 BK receptor (B2R) in both ligand-independent and agonist-dependent coupling to Gq/11-mediated phospholipase Cβ activity. In fact, B1R is constitutively active, whereas B2R exhibits little if any constitutive activity. To evaluate the role of the C-terminal domain in receptor Gq/11 coupling, we constructed chimeric an

In this report, we show that desensitization regulates ligand- independent, spontaneous activity of the human B2 bradykinin (BK) receptor, and the level of spontaneous receptor activity determines the action of the BK antagonists and partial receptor agonists NPC17731 and HOE140 as agonists or inverse agonists. Spontaneous receptor activity was monitored by measuring basal cellular phosphoinositid

Elevated formation of bradykinin (BK) and Lys-BK or kallidin (KD) and their carboxypeptidase metabolites desArg9BK and desArg10KD is evident at sites of inflammation. Moreover, B2 receptors (B2R) which mediate the action of BK and KD, participates in the acute stage of the inflammatory and pain response, whereas B1 receptors (B1R), through which desArg9BK and desArg10KD act, partake in the chronic

In order to identify agonist- and antagonist-binding epitopes in the human B1 and B2 bradykinin (BK) receptors, we exploited the ability of these receptors to discriminate between peptide ligands that differ only by the absence (B1) grid presence (B2) of a C-terminal Arg. This was done by constructing chimeric proteins in which specific domains were exchanged between these receptors as recently de