Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
An Optical Scattering Based Cost-Effective Approach Towards Quantitative Assessment Of Turbidity And Particle Size Estimation In Drinking Water Using Image Analysis
Published: 2020-09-23
Subjects: Business, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Contaminated water consumption primarily for drinking purposes is the cause of approximately 502,000 global deaths every year mostly in economically challenging countries indicating the need for a cheap, easy to use a yet robust and scientifically proven method for determination of water quality. In this work, we have characterized the water quality utilizing the principles of optical scattering [...]
Pathways linking biodiversity to human health: A conceptual framework
Published: 2020-09-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Geography, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Psychology, Psychology, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Biodiversity is a cornerstone of human health and well-being. However, while evidence of the contributions of nature to human health is rapidly building, research into how biodiversity relates to human health remains limited in important respects. In particular, a better mechanistic understanding of the range of pathways through which biodiversity can influence human health is needed. These [...]
Mapping the past, present and future research landscape of paternal effects
Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Physiology
Although in all sexually reproducing organisms, an individual has a mother and a father, non-genetic inheritance has been predominantly studied in mothers. Paternal effects have been far less frequently studied, until recently. In the last five years, research on environmentally induced paternal effects has grown rapidly in the number of publications and diversity of topics. Motivations for [...]
On the inadequacy of species distribution models for modelling the spread of SARS-CoV-2: response to Araújo and Naimi
Published: 2020-03-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Medicine and Health Sciences
The ongoing pandemic of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is causing significant damage to public health and economic livelihoods, and is putting significant strains on healthcare services globally. This unfolding emergency has prompted the preparation and dissemination of the article “Spread of SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus likely to be constrained by climate” by Araújo [...]
The Evolutionary Ecology of Age at Natural Menopause: Implications for Public Health
Published: 2020-02-11
Subjects: Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Physiology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Evolutionary perspectives on menopause have focused on explaining why early reproductive cessation in females has emerged and why it is rare throughout the animal kingdom, but less attention has been given to exploring patterns of diversity in age at natural menopause. In this paper, we aim to generate new hypotheses for understanding human patterns of diversity in this trait, defined as age at [...]
Toward a Pluralistic Conception of Resilience
Published: 2019-06-29
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Computer Sciences, Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability, Systems Biology
The concept of resilience occupies an increasingly prominent position within contemporary efforts to confront many of modernitys most pressing challenges, including global environmental change, famine, infrastructure, poverty, and terrorism, to name but a few. Received views of resilience span a broad conceptual and theoretical terrain, with a diverse range of application domains and settings. In [...]
Heritability and maternal effects on social attention during an attention bias task in a non-human primate, Macaca mulatta
Published: 2019-05-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social attention is fundamental to a wide range of behaviours in non-human primates. However, we know very little about the heritability of social attention in non-human primates, and the heritability of attention to social threat has not been assessed. Here, we provide data to begin to fill this gap in knowledge. We tested 67 female rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta, on an attention bias [...]
Transcriptional Activation of Elephant Shark Mineralocorticoid Receptor by Corticosteroids, Progesterone and Spironolactone
Published: 2019-02-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences
We report the analysis of activation by corticosteroids and progesterone of full-length mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) from elephant shark, a cartilaginous fish belonging to the oldest group of jawed vertebrates. Based on their measured activities, aldosterone, cortisol, 11-deoxycorticosterone, corticosterone, 11-deoxcortisol, progesterone and 19-norprogesterone are potential physiological [...]
Cetacean morbillivirus, a journey from land to sea and viceversa
Published: 2019-01-15
Subjects: Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Virology
Cetacean Morbillivirus, the most relevant pathogen impacting the health and conservation of cetaceans worldwide, has shown in recent years an increased tendency to cross “interspecies barriers”, thereby giving rise to disease and mortality outbreaks in free-ranging dolphins and whales. This "Personal View" deals with the evolutionary “trajectories” of this viral pathogen, likely originating from [...]