Most male mammals in temperate regions demonstrate seasonal sexual behaviors that coincide with seasonal variations in gonadal activities and androgen hormones. The Yangtze finless porpoise is a temperate freshwater cetacean species and an obvious seasonal breeder. To investigate the relationship between sexual behavior and gonadal activity in this animal, testicular size (volume) and structure (ultrasonogram pixel intensity) of two adult male porpoises (AF, AB) and one sub-adult male (TT) were longitudinally monitored from November 2008 to November 2009. Serum testosterone concentration was also monitored during the same period. Variations in the frequency of sexual behavior in AF and AB had similar, but seasonal trends. Their testicular size and pixel intensity also varied seasonally. Testicular size increased in March, peaked from April through June, and decreased gradually from August through September, whereas testicular pixel intensity started to increase in early February. The frequency of sexual behavior was positively correlated with testicular volume and pixel intensity (P = 0.000018 and P = 0.00012, respectively) in AF. Serum testosterone concentrations also varied. The sub-adult male porpoise, TT, was undergoing puberty, as evidenced by its marked increase in testicular volume, testicular pixel intensity, and serum testosterone concentrations from the beginning of 2009. Interestingly, TT exhibited the highest frequency of sexual behavior, most of which was same-sex pairing. However, its oversexed behavior neither quantitatively correlated with its smaller testicular volume (P = 0.61) nor with its testicular pixel intensity (P = 0.69).
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.theriogenology.2010.06.018 | DOI Listing |
J Biomed Opt
January 2025
The Johns Hopkins University, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
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Department of Biomedical Engineering, Center for Injury Biomechanics, Wake Forest University School of Medicine. 575 N. Patterson Avenue, Suite 530. Winston-Salem, NC 27101, USA. Electronic address:
Muscle atrophy occurs with extended exposure to microgravity. This study quantified the overall muscle size, lean muscle area and fat infiltration changes pre- to post-flight that occur in the thoracic and lumbar spine with long-duration spaceflight. Pre- and post-flight magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were obtained from 9 crewmembers on long-duration (≥6 months) International Space Station (ISS) missions.
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January 2025
Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Living and Working (SustAInLivWork), 51423 Kaunas, Lithuania.
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View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiosensors (Basel)
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State Key Laboratory of Radio Frequency Heterogeneous Integration (Shenzhen University), Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Devices and Systems of Ministry of Education and Guangdong Province, College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China.
Fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) has established itself as a pivotal tool for investigating biological processes within living cells. However, the extensive imaging duration necessary to accumulate sufficient photons for accurate fluorescence lifetime calculations poses a significant obstacle to achieving high-resolution monitoring of cellular dynamics. In this study, we introduce an image reconstruction method based on the edge-preserving interpolation method (EPIM), which transforms rapidly acquired low-resolution FLIM data into high-pixel images, thereby eliminating the need for extended acquisition times.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComput Biol Med
January 2025
University of Rwanda, Rwanda. Electronic address:
Deep learning methods have significantly improved medical image analysis, particularly in detecting COVID-19 chest X-rays. Nonetheless, these methodologies frequently inhibit some drawbacks, such as limited interpretability, extensive computational resources, and the need for extensive datasets. To tackle these issues, we introduced two novel algorithms: the Dynamic Co-Occurrence Grey Level Matrix (DC-GLM) and the Contextual Adaptation Multiscale Gabor Network (CAMSGNeT).
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