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Objective: To describe a procedure that uses a definitive BioHPP hybrid abutment (polyether ether ketone [PEEK] reinforced with ceramic nanoparticles), to obtain a hermetic mucous seal with the peri-implant soft tissues. Method and materials: Between July 2017 and December 2019, seven patients aged between 40 and 60 years, who needed prosthetic rehabilitation in the esthetic zone, were treated. Among the various therapeutic solutions offered, patients chose an immediate or conventional implant rehabilitation using the “one abutment– one time” technique with the hybrid SKY elegance implant abutment (bredent medical). Ten implants were placed, five with immediate loading including two postextraction, and five in a conventional/classic loading protocol. The protocol required that the finishing margin of the provisional restoration was positioned approximately 1 to 2 mm from the implant platform, allowing the tissues to heal around the ceramic-reinforced PEEK abutment. After 6 months for the implants with immediate loading, and 3 months for those with conventional loading, the provisional restorations were replaced with definitive zirconiaceramic prostheses. Results: The clinical evaluation on the 10 implants showed that the reinforced PEEK abutments integrated well with the peri-implant tissues, and were healthy, without plaque, and with no bleeding on probing. An average probing depth of 1.0 mm was observed for nine of the ten placed implants, and for the tenth the implant probing depth was 1.5 mm. Conclusions: The ceramic-reinforced PEEK abutments BioHPP SKY elegance associated with the one-time therapeutic protocol is a valid alternative to traditional implant loading procedures, leading to an effective peri-implant hermetic mucous seal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marine predators are an important component of marine trophic webs, and their decline has important consequences on whole ecosystem dynamics. Understanding their movements and habits is vital for conservation, yet extremely challenging. Tracking technologies, coupled with a robust, reproducible, and quantitative analytical framework, are being used to successfully identify Important Conservation Areas (ICAs) for seabirds, which are wide-ranging and declining marine predators. However, the identification of such areas is skewed towards large-bodied seabird species, and there are few marine ICAs for small-bodied birds like storm petrels. We GPS-tracked Mediterranean Storm Petrels Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis breeding in northwestern Sardinia over three consecutive breeding seasons (2019–2021), and we applied a recently proposed analytical framework for the assessment of ICAs using GPS data. We identified an area of 40638 km2 in the central Mediterranean Sea that spans three different national marine jurisdictions and partially falls within the Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean Marine Mammals. In these ICAs, a range of human activities take place (e.g., fishing activities, maritime traffic, tanker maritime routes), particularly in the neritic zones. Despite the relatively low human presence in the area, the human impact on the Mediterranean Sea is predicted to increase in future years, with important consequences for conservation. International cooperation to identify ICAs at the basin scale is needed, given the trans-national nature of storm petrel movements. Here, we describe the polygon of the identified ICAs for the Italian population of Mediterranean Storm Petrel we studied (available for download) to help inform marine spatial planning and target the conservation and protection of the species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acquiring resources for self-maintenance and reproduction is a key challenge for wild animals, and the methods that individuals employ are, in part, shaped by environmental conditions that vary in time and space. For birds, rainfall may affect behavior, impairing senses and increasing energetic costs, but its consequences on movement patterns are poorly explored. We investigated the influence of rainfall on the foraging behavior of the magnificent frigatebird, Fregata magnificens. This peculiar tropical seabird lacks feather waterproofing and is known to track environmental conditions while searching for food. Thus, its foraging behavior should be highly sensitive to the effects of rainfall. By GPS-tracking chick-rearing adults, we showed that frigatebirds did not avoid areas with rainfall during foraging trips, nor did rainfall influence trip characteristics. However, rainfall decreased time devoted to foraging and increased time spent perching. Moreover, it affected flight mode, inducing birds to fly slower and at lower altitudes. Wind speed, which was not correlated with rainfall, only affected behavior during night-time, with strong winds decreasing time spent perching. Our results indicate that rainfall does not affect the spatial distribution of foraging frigatebirds but does alter fine-scale foraging behavior by reducing flight activity. We suggest that the ongoing environmental change in this region, including an increase in rainfall events, has the potential to impair foraging and negatively affect fitness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse spatio-temporal aspects of avian migration rely on relatively rigid endogenous programs. However, flexibility in migratory behavior may allow effective coping with unpredictable variation in ecological conditions that can occur during migration. We aimed at characterizing inter- and intraindividual variation of migratory behavior in a forest-dwelling wader species, the Eurasian woodcock Scolopax rusticola , focusing on spatio-temporal consistency across repeated migration episodes. By satellite-tracking birds from their wintering sites along the Italian peninsula to their breeding areas, we disclosed a remarkable variability in migration distances, with some birds flying more than 6,000 km to Central Asian breeding grounds (up to 101°E). Prebreeding migration was faster and of shorter duration than postbreeding migration. Birds moving over longer distances migrated faster during prebreeding migration, and those breeding at northernmost latitudes left their wintering areas earlier. Moreover, birds making longer migrations departed earlier from their breeding sites. Breeding site fidelity was very high, whereas fidelity to wintering areas increased with age. Migration routes were significantly consistent, both among repeated migration episodes and between pre- and postbreeding migration. Prebreeding migration departure date was not significantly repeatable, whereas arrival date to the breeding areas was highly repeatable. Hence, interindividual variation in migratory behavior of woodcocks was mostly explained by the location of the breeding areas, and spatial consistency was relatively large through the entire annual cycle. Flexibility in prebreeding migration departure date may suggest that environmental effects have a larger influence on temporal than on spatial aspects of migratory behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent improvements in our understanding of physiology have altered the way in which bone is perceived: no longer is it considered as simply the repository of divalent ions, but rather as a sophisticated endocrine organ with potential extraskeletal effects. Indeed, a number of pathologic conditions involving bone in different ways can now be reconsidered from a bone-centred perspective. For example, in metabolic bone diseases like osteoporosis (OP) and renal osteodystrophy (ROD), the association with a worse cardiovascular outcome can be tentatively explained by the possible derangements of three recently discovered bone hormones (osteocalcin, fibroblast growth factor 23 and sclerostin) and a bone-specific enzyme (alkaline phosphatase). Further, in recent years the close link between bone and inflammation has been better appreciated and a wide range of chronic inflammatory states (from rheumatoid arthritis to ageing) are being explored to discover the biochemical changes that ultimately lead to bone loss and OP. Also, it has been acknowledged that the concept of the bone–vascular axis may explain, for example, the relationship between bone metabolism and vessel wall diseases like atherosclerosis and arteriosclerosis, with potential involvement of a number of cytokines and metabolic pathways. A very important discovery in bone physiology is the bone marrow (BM) niche, the functional unit where stem cells interact, exchanging signals that impact on their fate as bone-forming cells or immune-competent haematopoietic elements. This new element of bone physiology has been recognized to be dysfunctional in diabetes (so-called diabetic mobilopathy), with possible clinical implications. In our opinion, ROD, the metabolic bone disease of renal patients, will in the future probably be identified as a cause of BM niche dysfunction. An integrated view of bone, which includes the BM niche, now seems necessary in order to understand the complex clinical entity of chronic kidney disease–mineral and bone disorders and its cardiovascular burden. Bone is thus becoming a recurrently considered paradigm for different inter-organ communications that needs to be considered in patients with complex diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The meaning, mechanism, and function of imitation in early infancy have been actively discussed since Meltzoff and Moore's (1977) report of facial and manual imitation by human neonates. Oostenbroek et al. (2016) claim to challenge the existence of early imitation and to counter all interpretations so far offered. Such claims, if true, would have implications for theories of social‐cognitive development. Here we identify 11 flaws in Oostenbroek et al.'s experimental design that biased the results toward null effects. We requested and obtained the authors’ raw data. Contrary to the authors’ conclusions, new analyses reveal significant tongue‐protrusion imitation at all four ages tested (1, 3, 6, and 9 weeks old). We explain how the authors missed this pattern and offer five recommendations for designing future experiments. Infant imitation raises fundamental issues about action representation, social learning, and brain–behavior relations. The debate about the origins and development of imitation reflects its importance to theories of developmental science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies were carried out to explore the relationship between circadian typology and the Alternative Five-Factor Model of personality. In the first study, 379 participants (232 females) were administered the reduced version of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire and the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire. Evening types reported higher impulsive sensation-seeking scores than morning and intermediate types, whereas morning types scored higher than evening types on activity factor. In the second study, the association between morningness and activity personality factor was verified through the objective-actigraphic monitoring of the rest-activity cycle. Actigraphy allowed us to operationalise both circadian typology, through the computing of midpoint of sleep (early values, expressed in hours and minutes, correspond to an advanced phase of the sleep/wake cycle), and activity factor by the means of motor activity recording. Fifty-one individuals (30 females) wore an actigraph on the nondominant wrist continuously for 1 week. A negative correlation was observed between midpoint of sleep and mean diurnal motor activity, demonstrating that an early phase of the sleep/wake cycle (i.e. morningness preference) was related to higher diurnal motor activity. Assessed both subjectively and objectively, the results of both studies highlight a significant relationship between morningness and activity personality factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euler's celebrated buckling formula gives the critical load N for the buckling of a slender cylindrical column with radius B and length L as where E is Young's modulus. Its derivation relies on the assumptions that linear elasticity applies to this problem, and that the slenderness ( B/ L) is an infinitesimal quantity. Here we ask the following question: What is the first non-linear correction in the right hand-side of this equation when terms up to ( B/ L) are kept? To answer this question, we specialize the exact solution of incremental non-linear elasticity for the homogeneous compression of a thick compressible cylinder with lubricated ends to the theory of third-order elasticity. In particular, we highlight the way second- and third-order constants-including Poisson's ratio-all appear in the coefficient of ( B/ L). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]