The basking occurrence has management implications as it suggests that the best time to conduct
aerial censuses of the St. Lucia crocodiles is during winter after 10:00 when most of the individuals are basking and hence most easily seen. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Fluctuating temperatures (FTs) influence hatchling phenotypes differently from constant temperatures (CTs) in some reptiles, but not in others. This inconsistency raises a question of whether thermal fluctuations during incubation always play an important role in shaping the phenotype of hatchlings. To answer this question, we incubated eggs of Naja atra under one CT (28 degrees C, CT), two temperature-shift [cold first (CF) and hot first (HF) in which eggs were first incubated at 24 or 32 degrees C and then at the other, each for 20 days, and buy LCZ696 finally at 28 degrees C until hatching], and one FT thermal regimes. Female hatchlings were larger in snout-vent length but smaller in tail length, head size than male hatchlings from the same-sized egg; female hatchlings had more ventral scales than did male Dinaciclib solubility dmso hatchlings. The FT and HF treatments resulted in shorter incubation lengths. Tail length was greatest in the CT treatment and smallest in the
FT treatment, with the CF and HF treatments in between; head width was greater in the CT treatment than in the other three treatments. Other examined hatchling traits did not differ among treatments. The observed morphological modifications cannot be attributed to the effect of thermal fluctuations but to the effect of temperatures close to the upper and lower viable Florfenicol limits
for the species. Our results therefore support the hypothesis that hatchling phenotype is not altered by thermal fluctuation in species with no phenotypic response to incubation temperature within some thresholds. (C)2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Background: The use of either efavirenz or lopinavir-ritonavir plus two nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) is recommended for initial therapy for patients with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection, but which of the two regimens has greater efficacy is not known. The alternative regimen of lopinavir-ritonavir plus efavirenz may prevent toxic effects associated with NRTIs.
Methods: In an open-label study, we compared three regimens for initial therapy: efavirenz plus two NRTIs (efavirenz group), lopinavir-ritonavir plus two NRTIs (lopinavir-ritonavir group), and lopinavir-ritonavir plus efavirenz (NRTI-sparing group). We randomly assigned 757 patients with a median CD4 count of 191 cells per cubic millimeter and a median HIV-1 RNA level of 4.8 log(10) copies per milliliter to the three groups.
Results: At a median follow-up of 112 weeks, the time to virologic failure was longer in the efavirenz group than in the lopinavir-ritonavir group (P=0.