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Gastric Lipase
Published in Margit Hamosh, Lingual and Gastric Lipases: Their Role in Fat Digestion, 2020
Furthermore, recent studies on the ontogeny of these lipases show that gastric lipase activity is high in the newborn.66 In aquatic mammals this is especially important because of the very high concentration of fat in milk (30 to 50 wt%) and because of the importance of adequate fat digestion and absorption immediately after birth in order to deposit sufficient blubber for protective insulation.
John Lydekker (1778–1832): a benefaction leading to the Act of Incorporation, and other fund-raising initiatives
Published in Gordon C Cook, Disease in the Merchant Navy, 2019
In addition to the five vessels listed in Table 7.1, Lydekker had also owned the ‘Mary’ and the ‘Adam’ (Captain Rozier, 241 tons, which plied between London and the South Seas) until 1826. In the South Seas, the principle target was the Sperm Whale (cachalot); whaling ships usually carried about 25 officers and men, and six boats, and most were equipped for a three-year voyage. After harpooning, the blubber was removed from the whale, reduced to oil and retailed in casks; a large sperm whale yielded up to 80 barrels (three tons) of oil.3
The illness experience: eating disorders from the patient’s perspective
Published in Kathleen M Berg, Dermot J Hurley, James A McSherry, Nancy E Strange, ‘Rose’, Eating Disorders, 2018
A study conducted by Rorty et al. (1993) used semi-structured interviews to investigate patients’ beliefs regarding factors related to their recovery. The participants were 40 women who had recovered from bulimia nervosa for one year or more. Their findings indicated that the fear of getting fat and concomitant body-image disparagement/distortion were rated as the most difficult features of the eating disorder to change. Fears of weight gain are particularly debilitating to patients who were overweight as children and who suffered the rejection and humiliation inflicted on them by a weight-prejudiced society obsessed with thinness and perfection. One patient in treatment for anorexia nervosa gave an emotional account of being taunted and threatened by groups of children on her way to and from public school. She was called ‘blubber-puss’ and was frequently poked, pushed and chased. A standard joke among her harassers was that in the event of a famine, she could live off her own fat for decades. Another patient who had struggled for two years with bulimia nervosa described a similar experience in which boys would rate the bodies of girls lining up for lunch in the cafeteria on a scale of one to 10 and declare her a ‘big fat zero’. This young woman became adamant that she would never go through that again.
Advances in thermal physiology of diving marine mammals: The dual role of peripheral perfusion
Published in Temperature, 2022
Arina B. Favilla, Markus Horning, Daniel P. Costa
Ex vivo studies have enhanced our understanding of the role of blubber by investigating the physical (e.g. adipocyte morphology, thickness, thermal conductivity [81–85]) and biochemical (e.g. lipid content, fatty acid composition, and stratification [19,76,86–88]) properties of blubber (Figure 2) . These have shown that most marine mammals have stratified blubber layers. The outer layer primarily functions as insulation where lipids with lower melting points confer flexibility particularly at lower temperatures. In contrast, the composition of the inner layer makes it more readily metabolized and thus primarily serves as an energy store (Figure 3b). The relative importance of either function is also dependent on age and season [84,85,89], as well as species-specific thermal habitats and life-history strategies [32,75]. For example, blubber as an energy store may be more important for older animals during the breeding fast (especially for capital breeders) [90–92]. In contrast, blubber as an insulator may be more important for younger, smaller animals that have a greater body surface-area-to-volume ratio and/or are nutritionally dependent [7,84,93,94].
Skeletal muscle plasticity and thermogenesis: Insights from sea otters
Published in Temperature, 2022
Traver Wright, Melinda Sheffield-Moore
Marine mammals are a diverse group. Although not all derived from the same evolutionary lineage, these mammals share common aspects of their life history, having evolved to live and feed in/on the world’s oceans. Because water draws heat away from the body much faster than air, it is particularly challenging for marine mammals to stay warm. To cope with the thermoregulatory challenge of aquatic life, many marine mammals have a thick layer of blubber for insulation and a large, streamlined body that reduces surface area for heat transfer [5].