For insects, chilling injuries that occur in the absence of freezing are often related to a systemic loss of ion and water balance that leads to extracellular hyperkalemia, cell depolarization, and the triggering of apoptotic signalling cascades. The ability of insect ionoregulatory organs (e.g. the Malpighian tubules) to maintain ion balance in the cold has been linked to improved chill tolerance, and many neuroendocrine factors are known to influence ion transport rates of these organs....

The utility of characterizing the effects of strain variation and individual/subgroup susceptibility on dose-response outcomes has motivated the search for new approaches beyond the popular use of the exponential dose-response model for listeriosis. While descriptive models can account for such variation, they have limited power to extrapolate beyond the details of particular outbreaks. In contrast, this study exhibits dose-response relationships from a mechanistic basis, quantifying key biological factors involved in pathogen-host dynamics. An efficient computational...

Objectives: This study examines the use of accelerated approval pathways by Health Canada over the period 1995 to 2016 inclusive and the relationship between the use of these pathways and the therapeutic gain offered by new products. Design: Cohort study. Data sources: Therapeutic Products Directorate, Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate, Notice of Compliance database, Notice of Compliance with conditions web site, Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, La revue Prescrire, World Health Organization (WHO) Anatomical Therapeutic...

A longstanding goal of systems neuroscience is to quantitatively describe how the brain integrates sensory cues over time. Here we develop a closed-loop orienting paradigm in Drosophila to study the algorithms by which cues from two modalities are integrated during ongoing behavior. We find that flies exhibit two behaviors when presented simultaneously with an attractive visual stripe and aversive wind cue. First, flies perform a turn sequence where they initially turn away from the wind...

1. Seasonal changes in the environment, such as varying temperature, have the potential to change the functional relationship between ectothermic animals, such as insects, and their microbiomes. Our objectives were to determine: a) whether seasonal changes in temperature shift the composition of the insect gut microbiome, and b) if changes in the microbiome are concomitant with changes in the physiology of the host, including the immune system and response to cold. 2. We exposed laboratory...