How and why did complex brain and behavior evolve? Clues emerge from comparative studies of animals with simpler morphology, nervous system, and behavioral economics. The brains of vertebrates, arthropods, and some annelids have highly derived executive structures and function that control downstream, central pattern generators (CPGs) for locomotion, behavioral choice, and reproduction. For the…

Cnidarians are considered ‘‘nerve net animals’’ even though their nervous systems include various forms of condensation and centralization. Yet, their broad, two-dimensional muscle sheets are innervated by diffuse nerve nets. Do the motor nerve nets represent a primitive organization of multicellular nervous systems, do they represent a consequence of radial symmetry, or do they offer a…

The Mt Amram igneous complex (AIC) represents northern tip of the Neoproterozoic Arabian Nubian Shield (ANS). For the first time the AIC deep structure was studied using the gravity, aero and ground magnetic, magnetic susceptibility and density measurements and geological data. Analysing all available data at the Amram area we concluded what only monzonite body can be reason for gravity h…

This study considers the propagation of elastic waves in a fluid-saturated double-porosity solid. Constitutive relations are derived for the double porosity medium having the transverse is otropy with verticalaxis of symmetry. The equations of motion are solved for the propagation of harmonic waves. Then, the amount of wave-induced fluid flow at any point is expressed in terms…

A comprehensive magnetic field model named CM5 has been derived from CHAMP, Ørsted and SAC-C satellite and observatory hourly-means data from 2000 August to 2013 January using the S warm Level-2 Comprehensive Inversion (CI) algorithm. Swarm is a recently launched constellation of three satellites to map the Earth’s magnetic field. The CI technique includes several interesting fe…

Geomagnetic jerks are sudden changes of trend in the geomagnetic secular variation. The Earth’s mantle behaves as a filter for the jerks, causing a delayed and a smoothed signal at theEarth’s surface. Backus’ mantle filter theory relieson approximating the impulseresponse function (IRF) of the mantle by a Gaussian. The advantage of this theory is the linear relation between je…

Patterns of airflow and pulmonary anatomy were studied in the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), the black caiman (Melanosuchus niger), the spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus), the dwarf crocodile (Osteolaemus tetraspis), the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), the Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus), and Morelet’s crocodile (Crocodylus moreletii). In addition, anatomy…

Organization and development of the forebrain in crocodilians are reviewed. In juvenile Caiman crocodilus, the following features were examined: identification and classification of dorsal thalamic nuclei and their respective connections with the telencephalon, presence of local circuit neurons in the dorsal thalamic nuclei, telencephalic projections to the dorsal thalamus, and organization of …

Experiencing the thrill of an original scientific discovery can be transformative to students unsure about becoming a scientist, yet few courses offer authentic research experiences. Increasingly, cutting-edge discoveries require an interdisciplinary approach not offered in current departmental-based courses. Here, we describe a one-semester, learning laboratory course on organismal biomechanic…

This article provides models and code for numerically simulating muscle–fluid–structure interactions (FSIs). This work was presented as part of the symposium on Leading Students and Faculty to Quantitative Biology through Active Learning at the society-wide meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in 2015. Muscle mechanics and simple mathematical models to describe the…