Awareness of danger inside the egg: Evidence of innate and learned predator recognition in cuttlefish embryos.

Predation can be a very strong selective pressure on prey. Many studies have shown the existence of innate anti-predator responses, mostly in the early developmental stages of juvenile vertebrates. Learning to recognize predators is another possible defensive resource, but such a method involves a high death risk.

Understanding solid-state properties of triglycerides used in pharmaceutical and food microencapsulation.

Hydrophobic materials, in particular hydrogenated vegetable oils, HVO, are extensively used as coating materials in food and pharmaceutical systems. Correct application of these coatings requires an evaluation of their behaviour as a function of various parameters such as melting temperature, solubility, concentration and/or pH. The purpose of this study was to assess the physico-chemical properties of an HVO in terms of composition, crystallisation, phase transition and polymorphism using a variety of analytical techniques, such as electrospray mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray diffraction (XRD).

Feasibility, safety and outcomes of playing Kinect Adventures!™ for people with Parkinson's disease: a pilot study.

Objectives: To assess the feasibility, safety and outcomes of playing Microsoft Kinect Adventures™ for people with Parkinson's disease in order to guide the design of a randomised clinical trial.

Design: Single-group, blinded trial.

Setting: Rehabilitation Center of São Camilo University, Brazil.

Relationship of good and poor Wisconsin Card Sorting Test performance to illness duration in schizophrenia: a cross-sectional analysis.

The authors investigated whether schizophrenic patients with good and poor performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) showed cognitive modifications related to duration of illness. Of the 154 patients evaluated with the WCST, 56 subjects had normal or mildly impaired performance and 98 showed impairment on the basis of the number of categories achieved (0-3 categories = poor performance). These subsamples were then cross-sectionally divided into three subsamples depending on length of illness (< 5 years, 6-10 years, > 10 years).

Insight and neuropsychological function in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with psychotic features.

Objectives: This study investigates the pattern of association between patient unawareness of illness and neuropsychological tests of frontal lobe function in subjects with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BD) with psychotic features.

Method: We administered the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST) and a shortened version of the Scale to Assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder (SUMD) to a sample of 64 patients with psychosis (42 with schizophrenia and 22 with BD).

Results: None of the correlations between WCST scores and insight scores were statistically significant, either in the total group or in each group analyzed separately.