Subject:
All Disciplines Arts & Humanities Biology & Life Sciences Business & Economics Chemistry & Materials Science Computer Science & Mathematics Engineering Environmental & Earth Sciences Medicine & Pharmacology Physical Sciences Public Health & Healthcare Social Sciences
Sort:
Most Viewed Latest Alphabetical (A-Z) Alphabetical (Z-A)
Filter:
All Topic Review Biography Peer Reviewed Entry Video Entry
Topic Review
Ethology
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objective study of animal behaviour, usually referring to measured responses to stimuli or to trained behavioural responses in a laboratory context, without a particular emphasis on evolutionary adaptivity. Throughout history, different naturalists have studied aspects of animal behaviour. Ethology has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, including Charles O. Whitman, Oskar Heinroth, and Wallace Craig. The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, the three recipients of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ethology combines laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to some other disciplines such as neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Ethologists typically show interest in a behavioural process rather than in a particular animal group, and often study one type of behaviour, such as aggression, in a number of unrelated species. Ethology is a rapidly growing field. Since the dawn of the 21st century researchers have re-examined and reached new conclusions in many aspects of animal communication, emotions, culture, learning and sexuality that the scientific community long thought it understood. New fields, such as neuroethology, have developed. Understanding ethology or animal behaviour can be important in animal training. Considering the natural behaviours of different species or breeds enables trainers to select the individuals best suited to perform the required task. It also enables trainers to encourage the performance of naturally occurring behaviours and the discontinuance of undesirable behaviours.
  • 5.5K
  • 09 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Salt-Tolerant Rice
Soil salinization and a degraded ecological environment are challenging agricultural productivity and food security.  Salt stress-inhibited growth and development of plants is the key limiting factor resulting in the reduction of rice yield, the contradiction of yield promotion and salt tolerance greatly affects salt-tolerant rice breeding.  Here, we  highlight current advances and challenges to breeding salt-tolerant rice, providing a basis for further studies and efforts aimed at breeding salt-tolerant rice varieties.
  • 5.4K
  • 17 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Soil Erosion Hazards
Soil erosion is a severe threat to food production systems globally. Food production in farming systems decreases with increasing soil erosion hazards. Hazard is a situation or potential condition to harm or threat to life, health or damage to property or environment, social and economic disruption. The mass movement of soil is an indicator of a soil erosion hazard. This includes gully erosion, riverbank erosion, rock-falls, debris-falls and landslides that can create damage to the environment and livelihoods.
  • 5.2K
  • 22 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Induction of Polyploidy
Polyploidy has the utmost importance in horticulture for the development of new ornamental varieties with desirable morphological traits referring to plant size and vigor, leaf thickness, larger flowers with thicker petals, intense color of leaves and flowers, long lasting flowers, compactness, dwarfness and restored fertility. Polyploidy may occur naturally due to the formation of unreduced gametes or can be artificially induced by doubling the number of chromosomes in somatic cells.
  • 5.1K
  • 21 Dec 2021
Topic Review
Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Waste in Human Health
Food supply disruption and shortage verified during the current pandemic events are a scenario that many anticipate for the near future. The impact of climate changes on food production, the continuous decrease in arable land, and the exponential growth of the human population are important drivers for this problem. 
  • 5.0K
  • 19 Jan 2023
Topic Review
Anthroponotic Disease
Reverse zoonosis, also known as zooanthroponosis, and sometimes anthroponosis (Greek zoon "animal", anthropos "man", nosos "disease"), refers to pathogens reservoired in humans that are capable of being transmitted to other non-human animals.
  • 4.9K
  • 28 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Benefits of Agricultural Biotechnology
As agricultural production approaches a bottleneck due to limited arable lands, extreme weather, and increasing food demand, novel tools are needed to produce more resilient, efficient, and high-yielding crops to ensure global food security. Modern biotechnology tools with improved specificity and efficiency could eventually become the main driver of agricultural improvement, overcoming the limitations of conventional practices in improving crops. 
  • 4.8K
  • 23 May 2022
Topic Review
Tomato Fruit and its Colors
Fruit colour represents a genetic trait with ecological and nutritional value. Plants mainly use colour to attract animals and favour seed dispersion. Thus, in many species, fruit colour coevolved with frugivories and their preferences. Environmental factors, however, represented other adaptive forces and further diversification was driven by domestication. All these factors cooperated in the evolution of tomato fruit, one of the most important in human nutrition. Tomato phylogenetic history showed two main steps in colour evolution: the change from green-chlorophyll to red-carotenoid pericarp, and the loss of the anthocyanic pigmentation. These events likely occurred with the onset of domestication. Then spontaneous mutations repeatedly occurred in carotenoid and phenylpropanoid pathways, leading to colour variants which often were propagated. Introgression breeding further enriched the panel of pigmentation patterns.
  • 4.5K
  • 30 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Estimation of Maize Yield Per Harvest Area
Maize (Zea mays L.) is one of the most important annual cereal crops in the world, providing a staple food, and being used as source of income for many populations in developing countries. Different methods can be used for estimating maize yields depending on the purpose for which the crop was produced. The estimation of yield can be calculated using kernel weight at harvest, plot area harvested, plant density, and moisture content of grain at harvest. 
  • 4.4K
  • 10 Jan 2022
Topic Review
List of Extinct Animals of the Nordics
This is a list of extinct animals of the Nordics (including Sweden, Norway , Denmark , Finland , and Iceland). The list consists of common name, Latin name, known geographical range, and approximate extinction date, with the "†" symbol indicating the species is considered extinct worldwide.
  • 4.3K
  • 03 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Thermoregulation Strategies in Domestic Animals
Animals adopt several strategies to regulate their body temperature by promoting heat loss or gain in hot and cold environments, respectively. This mechanism of heat loss or production is performed in thermal windows. A thermal window is a structure where many blood capillaries facilitate thermal exchange in this region. The presence of feathers, hair, or glabrous (hairless) skin and their structural characteristics greatly influence each species’ capacity to maintain thermal comfort. This factor needs to be considered when implementing new monitoring or measuring techniques such as infrared thermography since interpretations may vary due to the presence or absence of these structures. It is essential to recognize the effects of glabrous skin, hair, and feathers on thermoregulation to identify species-specific thermal windows that allow accurate evaluations of the thermal state of domestic animals.
  • 4.2K
  • 19 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Air pollution and Fuel Combustion
Air pollution is a precursor to many health issues such as difficulty breathing, asthma, lung and heart diseases, and cancer. 
  • 4.0K
  • 11 Jan 2022
Topic Review
Plant Nutrition for Human Health
Is there any relationship between plant nutrition and human health? The overall response to this question is very positive, and a strong relationship between the nutrition of plants and humans has been reported. The nutritional status of edible plants consumed by humans can have a negative or positive impact on human health.
  • 3.9K
  • 14 Jul 2022
Topic Review
Composition of Barley
Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one such feed ingredient, the use of which remains limited in poultry diets due to its low metabolisable energy, presence of anti-nutritive, soluble non-starch polysaccharides and consequent inter-cultivar variability. 
  • 3.7K
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Lipid Oxidation in Food Systems
Lipids are significant nutrients for humans and help many functional and regulatory activities in the human body, such as signal transduction, myelination, and synaptic plasticity. Lipids are also involved in the structural developments of the human body . In food, lipid content and fatty acid composition are the two critical congenital parameters to the susceptibility of food to oxidative changes. Lipid content and the fatty acid composition of fat of farm animals varies significantly depending on animal species and the diet. Lipid oxidation causes quality deterioration in food. Depending upon the reaction mechanisms and factors involved, lipid oxidation can be divided into autoxidation, photo-oxidation, and enzyme-catalyzed oxidation. Autoxidation is the most common process of lipid oxidation in foods and is divided into initiation, propagation, and termination stages. 
  • 3.6K
  • 01 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Plant-Based Antioxidants
Antioxidants are compounds that normally prevent lipid and protein oxidation. They play a major role in preventing many adverse conditions in the human body, including inflammation and cancer. Synthetic antioxidants are widely used in the food industry to prevent the production of adverse compounds that harm humans. However, plant and animal-based antioxidants are more appealing to consumers than synthetic antioxidants. Plant-based antioxidants are mainly phenolic compounds, carotenoids, and vitamins, while animal-based antioxidants are mainly whole protein or the peptides of meat, fish, egg, milk, and plant proteins. Plant-based antioxidants mainly consist of aromatic rings, while animal-based antioxidants mainly consist of amino acids. The phenolic compounds and peptides act differently in preventing oxidation and can use in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Therefore, compared with the animal-based antioxidants, plant-based compounds are more practical in the food industry. 
  • 3.6K
  • 07 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Fungi–Nematode Interactions
Fungi and nematodes are among the most abundant organisms in soil habitats. They provide essential ecosystem services and play crucial roles for maintaining the stability of food-webs and for facilitating nutrient cycling. As two of the very abundant groups of organisms, depending on the specific species, fungi and nematodes interact with each other in multiple ways either directly or indirectly. Directly, they can interact with each other mutualistically to helping each other survive and reproduce, antagonistically to cause damage and/or kill each other, and as commensals. Indirectly, they may be interact with each other through other organisms. Both biotic and abiotic factors can impact the direction and magnitude of fungal-nematode interactions.
  • 3.6K
  • 22 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Shape of Dog's Nasal Cavity and Smell
Modern dogs are the most morphologically diverse group of mammals. Numerous studies have shown that dogs and their olfactory abilities are of great importance to humans. It was found that the changes within the skull have had a significant impact on the structure of the initial sections of the respiratory system, including the turbinates of the nasal passages. Congenital defects, defined as brachycephalic syndrome, are currently a significant problem in dog breeding as they can affect animal welfare and even lead to death.
  • 3.5K
  • 19 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Extensive Sheep and Goat Production
Sheep and goat extensive production systems are conducted in many different parts of the world, and they often use essentially marginal areas unsuitable for crop production, characterized by low productivity per animal and per surface area. They positively impact local socio-economic activities, playing an essential role in the maintenance of rural communities, on ecosystems, and in the production of unique, valued foods such as lamb meat or cheeses. However, such systems are under significant pressure, mainly because there is little labor availability, and they have traditionally low productivity and often poor economic viability.
  • 3.5K
  • 08 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Biodegradability of Starch and Starch Blends
Starch is one of the most abundant biodegradable biopolymers from renewable sources; it also contains tunable thermoplastic properties suitable for diverse applications in agriculture. Functional performances of starch such as physicomechanical, barrier, and surface chemistry may be altered for extended agricultural applications. Furthermore, starch can be a multidimensional additive for plasticulture that can function as a filler, a metaphase component in blends/composites, a plasticizer, an efficient carrier for active delivery of biocides and so on.
  • 3.4K
  • 31 May 2022
  • Page
  • of
  • 70
Featured Entry Collections
>>

Featured Books

>>
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
Encyclopedia of COVID-19
Encyclopedia of Fungi
Encyclopedia of Digital Society, Industry 5.0 and Smart City
ScholarVision Creations
Feedback