The present study evaluated engineered media for plant biofilter optimisation in an unvegetated column experiment to assess the performance of loamy sand, perlite, vermiculite, zeolite and attapulgite media under stormwater conditions enriched with varying nutrients and metals reflecting urban pollutant loads. Sixty columns, 30 unvegetated and 30 Juncus effusus vegetated, were used to test: pollutant removal, infiltration rate, particulate discharge, effluent clarity and plant functional response, over six sampling rounds. All engineered media outperformed conventional loamy sand across criteria, with engineered attapulgite consistently among the best performers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe hippocampus plays a key role in learning and memory. The normal development and mature function of hippocampal networks supporting these cognitive functions depends on afferent cholinergic neurotransmission mediated by nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Whereas it is well-established that nicotinic receptors are present on GABAergic interneurons and on glutamatergic presynaptic terminals within the hippocampus, the ability of these receptors to mediate postsynaptic signaling in pyramidal neurons is not well understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Rats, humans, and monkeys demonstrate robust crossmodal object recognition (CMOR), identifying objects across sensory modalities. We have shown that rats' performance of a spontaneous tactile-to-visual CMOR task requires functional integration of perirhinal (PRh) and posterior parietal (PPC) cortices, which seemingly provide visual and tactile object feature processing, respectively. However, research with primates has suggested that PRh is sufficient for multisensory object representation.
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