It is well known that the etiology of obesity is both complex and multifactorial. Recent trends have Entrectinib molecular weight shown that obesity rates have risen at an alarming rate in children, and this has likely contributed to an increased prevalence of SDB in children. Like the ‘chicken and the egg’ hypothesis, the temporal relationship of obesity and SDB is unclear but it is speculated that these two conditions converge to promote a fundamental disruption to normal lipid homeostasis. In

this review, the effect of sleep disruption and SDB on lipid homeostasis in both murine and human models will be critically examined, with the intent of demonstrating that disrupted sleep in children is itself a precursor to obesity via disordered lipid homeostasis.”
“Since the second half of the 20th century, the intensification of land-use practices and the associated decline in semi-natural habitats have been the major drivers of farmland biodiversity

loss. In many marginal agricultural systems, a structural transformation of farms, from small and traditional to large and intensive, has also been observed. We unravelled the impact of farm size and slope on plant, orthopteran and butterfly diversity in 132 hay meadows in a region of the Italian Alps. We defined three farm size classes representing different levels of intensification and used Selleckchem BKM120 mixed models to test the influence of farm size along with topographic slope. The diversity of plants, orthopterans and butterflies declined with management intensity at the field scale, which mainly depended learn more on farm size and grassland topography. We found a positive effect of slope and a negative influence of farm size on species richness of the three taxonomic groups. Large farms were strongly associated with higher production of organic fertilizers and higher soil fertility than small traditional farms,

irrespective of meadow slope. At the regional scale, we found that large farms managed flatter meadows (slope = 9.0) than small traditional farms (slope = 13.5), contributing to the abandonment of steep species-rich grassland areas. Regional stakeholders should consider targeted conservation schemes to prevent the ongoing substitution of small farms with large intensive farms. A complementary solution could be to target future conservation measures to support farms with low production of organic fertilizers and to reward the maintenance of the current management of steep meadows. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“The concept of innateness is often used in explanations and classifications of biological and cognitive traits. But does this concept have a legitimate role to play in contemporary scientific discourse? Empirical studies and theoretical developments have revealed that simple and intuitively appealing ways of classifying traits (e. g. genetically specified versus owing to the environment) are inadequate.