RESUMEN
Detection canines serve critical roles to support the military, homeland security and border protection. Some explosive detection tasks are physically demanding for dogs, and prior research suggests this can lead to a reduction in olfactory detection sensitivity. To further evaluate the effect of exercise intensity on olfactory sensitivity, we developed a novel olfactory paradigm that allowed us to measure olfactory detection thresholds while dogs exercised on a treadmill at two different exercise intensities. Dogs (n = 3) showed a decrement in olfactory detection for 1-bromooctane at 10-3 (v/v) dilutions and lower under greater exercise intensity. Dogs' hit rate for the lowest concentration dropped from 0.87 ± 0.04 when walking at low intensity to below 0.45 ± 0.06 when trotting at moderate intensity. This decline had an interaction with the duration of the session in moderate intensity exercise, whereby dogs performed near 100% detection in the first 10 min of the 8 km/h session, but showed 0% detection after 20 min. Hit rates for high odor concentrations (10-2) were relatively stable at both low (1 ± 0.00) and moderate (0.91 ± 0.04) exercise intensities. The paradigm and apparatus developed here may be useful to help further understand causes of operationally relevant olfactory detection threshold decline in dogs.
RESUMEN
SMART (Simple Modular Architecture Research Tool, http://smart.embl-heidelberg.de) is a web-based resource used for the annotation of protein domains and the analysis of domain architectures, with particular emphasis on mobile eukaryotic domains. Extensive annotation for each domain family is available, providing information relating to function, subcellular localization, phyletic distribution and tertiary structure. The January 2002 release has added more than 200 hand-curated domain models. This brings the total to over 600 domain families that are widely represented among nuclear, signalling and extracellular proteins. Annotation now includes links to the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database in cases where a human disease is associated with one or more mutations in a particular domain. We have implemented new analysis methods and updated others. New advanced queries provide direct access to the SMART relational database using SQL. This database now contains information on intrinsic sequence features such as transmembrane regions, coiled-coils, signal peptides and internal repeats. SMART output can now be easily included in users' documents. A SMART mirror has been created at http://smart.ox.ac.uk.