Male sperm reserves and copulation behavior in the house sparrow, passer domesticus

The aim of this study was to measure the rates of sperm utilization and production in male house sparrows, Passer domesticus: this is the first attempt to do this for any wild bird. The number of spermatozoa in the seminal glomera of males on days -1 to +3 (i.e. during their partner's fertile period) declined significantly throughout the course of the day. Males had about 12.13 x 10(6) spermatozoa in their seminal glomera at the start of the day and during 16 copulations each day used 10.31 x 10(6) spermatozoa, which is probably all that was available for ejaculation. Mean ejaculate size was estimated to be 0.64x 10(6) spermatozoa. Seminal glomera occur only in passerines and their function is unclear, but our results suggest a new hypothesis: if spermatozoa production and spermatozoa transport to the seminal glomera are limited to a short period during the night, the seminal glomera serve as a daily spermatozoa stor

Hawking Radiation as Tunneling for Extremal and Rotating Black Holes

The issue concerning semi-classical methods recently developed in deriving the conditions for Hawking radiation as tunneling, is revisited and applied also to rotating black hole solutions as well as to the extremal cases. It is noticed how the tunneling method fixes the temperature of extremal black hole to be zero, unlike the Euclidean regularity method that allows an arbitrary compactification period. A comparison with other approaches is presented.Comment: 17 pages, Latex document, typos corrected, four more references, improved discussion in section

Reduced B cell IL-10 in response to LPS in Allergic Asthma patients: an impaired Breg function?

Pathogenesis and treatment of chronic pulmonary disease

CD24 (hi) CD27 (+) B cells from patients with allergic asthma have impaired regulatory activity in response to lipopolysaccharide

Pathogenesis and treatment of chronic pulmonary disease