474 research outputs found
Statin therapy, myopathy and exercise--a case report
In a bid to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with coronary artery disease, statin therapy has become a cornerstone treatment for patients with dyslipideamia. Statins, or HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, are effective in blocking hepatic synthesis of cholesterol and are generally regarded as safe. Although rare, severe adverse side effects such as rhabdomyolysis have been reported, however, the more common complaint from patients is that related to myopathy. There is also mounting evidence that exercise may exacerbate these side effects, however the mechanisms are yet to be fully defined and there is controversy regarding the role that inflammation may play in the myopathy. This paper reports a patients experience during 6 months of simvastatin therapy and provides some insight into the white cell count (inflammation) following two bouts of moderate intensity exercise before and during statin therapy. It also highlights the need for rehabilitation practitioners to be aware of the adverse effects of statins in exercising patients
Social Knowledge and Signals in Primates
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/98165/1/ajp22103.pd
The law of brevity in macaque vocal communication is not an artifact of analyzing mean call durations
Words follow the law of brevity, i.e. more frequent words tend to be shorter.
From a statistical point of view, this qualitative definition of the law states
that word length and word frequency are negatively correlated. Here the recent
finding of patterning consistent with the law of brevity in Formosan macaque
vocal communication (Semple et al., 2010) is revisited. It is shown that the
negative correlation between mean duration and frequency of use in the
vocalizations of Formosan macaques is not an artifact of the use of a mean
duration for each call type instead of the customary 'word' length of studies
of the law in human language. The key point demonstrated is that the total
duration of calls of a particular type increases with the number of calls of
that type. The finding of the law of brevity in the vocalizations of these
macaques therefore defies a trivial explanation.Comment: Little improvements of the statistical argument
Trade-offs in the production of animal vocal sequences:insights from the structure of wild chimpanzee pant hoots
The study was funded by Swiss National Science Foundation (310030_143359) and European Research Council project grants awarded to KZ (PRILANG 283871).Background Vocal sequences - utterances consisting of calls produced in close succession - are common phenomena in animal communication. While many studies have explored the adaptive benefits of producing such sequences, very little is known about how the costs and constraints involved in their production affect their form. Here, we investigated this issue in the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) pant hoot, a long and structurally complex vocal sequence comprising four acoustically distinct phases – introduction, build-up, climax and let-down. Results We found that in each of these phases, and for the sequence as a whole, there was a negative relationship between the number of calls produced and their average duration. There was also a negative relationship between the total duration of some adjacent phases. Significant relationships between the fundamental frequency of calls and their number or duration were found for some phases of the sequence, but the direction of these relationships differed between particular phases. Conclusions These results indicate that there are trade-offs in terms of signal duration at two levels in pant-hoot production: between call number and duration, and between the relative durations of successive phases. These trade-offs are likely to reflect biomechanical constraints on vocal sequence production. Phase-specific trade-offs also appear to occur between fundamental frequency and call number or duration, potentially reflecting that different phases of the sequence are associated with distinct types of information, linked in different ways to call pitch. Overall, this study highlights the important role of costs and constraints in shaping the temporal and acoustic structure of animal vocal sequences.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Primates' behavioural responses to tourists: evidence for a tradeoff between potential risks and benefits
The presence of, and interactions with tourists can be both risky and beneficial for wild animals. In wildlife tourism settings, animals often experience elevated rates of aggression from conspecifics, and they may also be threatened or physically aggressed by the tourists themselves. However, tourist provisioning of wild animals provides them with highly desirable foods. In situations of conflicting motivations such as this, animals would be expected to respond using behavioural coping mechanisms. In the present study, we investigated how animals respond to tourist pressure, using wild adult Barbary macaques in the Middle Atlas Mountains, Morocco, as a case study. We found evidence that these animals use a range of different behavioural coping mechanisms–physical avoidance, social support, affiliative, aggressive and displacement behaviours–to cope with the stress associated with tourists. The pattern of use of such behaviours appears to depend on a trade-off between perceived risks and potential benefits. We propose a framework to describe how animals respond to conflicting motivational situations, such as the presence of tourists, that present simultaneously risks and benefits
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