Digging with ‘hands’: observations of food capture in the flying gurnard Dactylopterus volitans (Linnaeus, 1758)

ABSTRACT

Videofilms of a foraging flying gurnard (Dactylopterus volitans) were collected at Itaipu, Niterói, RJ, Brazil. Analysis revealed details of the use of anterior parts of the pectoral fins which act as digging ‘hands’ to access infaunal prey items that are subsequently captured by oral suction feeding. Each pectoral fin has two distinct sections articulated separately on the pectoral girdle. The digging ‘anterior pectoral fin’ mainly consists of segmented and flexible fin rays but has an anterior robust unsegmented ray that provides an edge to the ‘hand’, allowing penetration of the substratum. The huge ‘posterior pectoral fins’ are supported by unsegmented rays. Most digging episodes involved one ‘hand’ and consisted of 1–7 cycles of movement with frequencies 1.15–3.74 cycles s^?1. During a cycle, the ‘hand’ is moved forwards and medially above the substratum, then is twisted medially and simultaneously depressed so that the anterior unsegmented ray impacts and enters the substratum. The hand is then drawn backwards and laterally to disturb the substratum. To prevent upward pitching of the head during digging, the ‘posterior pectoral fins’ are both moved anteriorly and laterally to shift the centre of gravity forwards while the caudal and ?second dorsal fins continue to provide propulsive force.     

Statecharts for Distributed Product Data Management System Modelling

Product data management (PDM) has been accepted as an important tool for the manufacturing industries. In recent years, more and mor e researches have been conducted in the development of PDM. Their research area s include system design, integration of object-oriented technology, data distri bution, collaborative and distributed manufacturing working environment, secur ity, and web-based integration. However, there are limitations on their rese arches. In particular, they cannot cater for PDM in dis...     

Fibulin-5/DANCE is essential for elastogenesis in vivo.

The elastic fibre system has a principal role in the structure and function of various types of organs that require elasticity, such as large arteries, lung and skin. Although elastic fibres are known to be composed of microfibril proteins (for example, fibrillins and latent transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta-binding proteins) and polymerized elastin, the mechanism of their assembly and development is not well understood. Here we report that fibulin-5 (also known as DANCE), a recently discovered integrin ligand, is an essential determinant of elastic fibre organization. fibulin-5-/- mice generated by gene targeting exhibit a severely disorganized elastic fibre system throughout the body. fibulin-5-/- mice survive to adulthood, but have a tortuous aorta with loss of compliance, severe emphysema, and loose skin (cutis laxa). These tissues contain fragmented elastin without an increase of elastase activity, indicating defective development of elastic fibres. Fibulin-5 interacts directly with elastic fibres in vitro, and serves as a ligand for cell surface integrins alphavbeta3, alphavbeta5 and alpha9beta1 through its amino-terminal domain. Thus, fibulin-5 may provide anchorage of elastic fibres to cells, thereby acting to stabilize and organize elastic fibres in the skin, lung and vasculature.     

Intelligence service binding architecture for interoperability between home network devices

Existing home devices in home network provides only independent services limited on a homogeneous protocol and/or do not fully support an intelligent service provided by cooperating among heterogeneous protocol devices. This paper proposes an intelligent and integrated service binding architecture which allow the users to figure out the status of devices and to cooperate among home network devices regardless of supported protocols or operational characteristics.     

汉人王弥与匈奴汉国的地方统治

公元307年,王弥反晋起义失败后,决心依附匈奴汉国。他和刘渊“深有分契”,尽量利用汉国的名义,其势力逐渐达到“东王青州”的程度。他成为匈奴汉国地方武装势力后,始终以半独立的状态存在。将以王弥为例,寻找汉国地方武装势力的生存过程,并分析其地方统治模式是一件颇为有意义的工作。     

The Relationship of Corporate Culture and Positive Conflict Management

With a unique corporate culture based on ancient Ch in ese wisdom being implemented at workplace for more than 10 years, we have been e ncountering various issue of managing conflicts, in particular at organization r estructure period, although we perceive that conflict does not necessarily have dysfunctional effect on our group performance. However, conflicts between and am ong various levels of the organization hierarchy are inevitably creating certain impact on our organization cohesiveness, performa...     

Methodological foundations of systems methodologies

In social systems science generally, and in management science particularly, recent developments in the variety of types of specific problem-solving methodologies (under the rubric of hard and soft systems approaches) have given an impetus to a line of inquiry, as well as debate on the nature of those methodologies. On the one hand, there has been the view that what we are witnessing is a form of Kuhnian crisis. On the other hand, a complementarist view of developments has been argued and a contingency approach proposed. But one thing has been common among the competing views: a belief that the prospects for further advances in the design and application of those methodologies, and in resolving the current controversies, lie in serious attempts to reconsider and clarify the underlying metatheoretical assumptions and concerns. This paper is an attempt to contribute to such an endeavor. A brief exposition of three methodological foundations (namely, empiricism, hermeneutics, and critique) is made, not only with the purpose of highlighting the nature as well as the limits of their epistemological and ethical claims, but also as a basis for illuminating both the nature of contemporary work on systems inquiry, design, and problem solving and the ongoing debate on what constitutes appropriate criteria for choice of specific methodologies.     

北宋明州高丽使行馆

明州(即宁波)地处中国大陆东海之滨，航道四通八达，海外交通便利，是开展海外贸易较早的城市之一，和世界各国进行通商贸易已有一、二千年的历史．到了宋代，明州和世界各国(如：高丽、东南亚、阿拉伯等)的交往达到繁盛的阶段．特别是到了北宋时期，明州与高丽的交往有了显著的增加．北宋时，由于与高丽的交往日益频繁，高丽来明州的人日益增加，北宋政府为了接待高丽使者和商人，在明州兴建了“高丽使行馆”．为了了解北宋和高丽的交往情况，中韩两国历史学界和建筑学界提供了许多重要的线索，高丽使行馆作为两国交往的重要场所有很高的研究价值．本文尝试了解、研究有关高丽使行馆的情况．