Premotor cortex in observing erroneous action: An fMRI study

The lateral premotor cortex (PMC) is involved during action observation in monkeys and humans, reflecting a matching process between observed actions and their corresponding motor schemata. In the present study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate if paying attention to the two observable action components, objects and movements, modulates premotor activation during the observation of actions. Participants were asked to classify presented movies as showing correct actions, erroneous actions, or senseless movements. Erroneous actions were incorrect either with regard to employed objects, or to performed movements. The experiment yielded two major results: (1) The ventrolateral premotor cortex (vPMC) and the anterior part of the intraparietal sulcus (aIPS) are strongly activated during the observation of actions in humans. Premotor activation was dominantly located within Brodmann Area (BA) 6, and sometimes extended into BA 44. (2) The presentation of object errors and movements errors allowed to disentangle brain activations corresponding to the analysis of movements and objects in observed actions. Left premotor areas were more involved in the analysis of objects, whereas right premotor areas were dominant in the analysis of movements. It is suggested that the analysis of categorical information, like objects, and that of coordinate information, like movements, are pronounced in different hemispheres

Evolutionary biology of birds and their associated microbiota in the Madrean Archipelago sky islands

Sky islands are disjunct patches of montane forested habitat in a matrix of desert, grasslands, and scrub. I investigated intraspecific evolutionary biology of two bird species—the White­‐breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) and the Brown Creeper (Certhia americana)—in the Madrean Archipelago sky islands (Arizona, USA), a biodiversity and evolution hotspot. In addition, I explored patterns of codiversification of these two birds and their associated gut microbial communities. The two bird studies revealed different patterns of diversification within the sky islands. The White­‐breasted Nuthatch exhibits a pattern of isolation by environment, where genetic differences among populations are related to environmental differences of those localities. In contrast, the Brown Creeper has a strong genetic break between northern and southern populations, with no evidence of gene flow between lineages. When I investigated codiversification of birds and their microbial communities, I found no relationship between host genetic diversity and microbial community alpha diversity, while genetic differentiation between birds was significantly related with beta diversity between microbial communities. This dissertation provides a first step in comparative evolutionary biology of Madrean Archipelago avian taxa, and adds to the knowledge of the factors shaping microbial community diversity in wild animals

Comparison of Target-Capture and Restriction-Site Associated DNA Sequencing for Phylogenomics: A Test in Cardinalid Tanagers (Aves, Genus: Piranga)

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Systematic Biology following peer review. The version of record, Joseph D. Manthey, Luke C. Campillo, Kevin J. Burns, Robert G. Moyle; Comparison of Target-Capture and Restriction-Site Associated DNA Sequencing for Phylogenomics: A Test in Cardinalid Tanagers (Aves, Genus: Piranga), Systematic Biology, Volume 65, Issue 4, 1 July 2016, Pages 640–650, is available online at: ttps://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syw005.Restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) and target capture of specific genomic regions, such as ultraconserved elements (UCEs), are emerging as two of the most popular methods for phylogenomics using reduced-representation genomic data sets. These two methods were designed to target different evolutionary timescales: RAD-seq was designed for population-genomic level questions and UCEs for deeper phylogenetics. The utility of both data sets to infer phylogenies across a variety of taxonomic levels has not been adequately compared within the same taxonomic system. Additionally, the effects of uninformative gene trees on species tree analyses (for target capture data) have not been explored. Here, we utilize RAD-seq and UCE data to infer a phylogeny of the bird genus Piranga. The group has a range of divergence dates (0.5–6 myr), contains 11 recognized species, and lacks a resolved phylogeny. We compared two species tree methods for the RAD-seq data and six species tree methods for the UCE data. Additionally, in the UCE data, we analyzed a complete matrix as well as data sets with only highly informative loci. A complete matrix of 189 UCE loci with 10 or more parsimony informative (PI) sites, and an approximately 80% complete matrix of 1128 PI single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (from RAD-seq) yield the same fully resolved phylogeny of Piranga. We inferred non-monophyletic relationships of Pirangalutea individuals, with all other a priori species identified as monophyletic. Finally, we found that species tree analyses that included predominantly uninformative gene trees provided strong support for different topologies, with consistent phylogenetic results when limiting species tree analyses to highly informative loci or only using less informative loci with concatenation or methods meant for SNPs alone

Wireless recording of the calls of Rousettus aegyptiacus and their reproduction using electrostatic transducers

Bats are capable of imaging their surroundings in great detail using echolocation. To apply similar methods to human engineering systems requires the capability to measure and recreate the signals used, and to understand the processing applied to returning echoes. In this work, the emitted and reflected echolocation signals of Rousettus aegyptiacus are recorded while the bat is in flight, using a wireless sensor mounted on the bat. The sensor is designed to replicate the acoustic gain control which bats are known to use, applying a gain to returning echoes that is dependent on the incurred time delay. Employing this technique allows emitted and reflected echolocation calls, which have a wide dynamic range, to be recorded. The recorded echoes demonstrate the complexity of environment reconstruction using echolocation. The sensor is also used to make accurate recordings of the emitted calls, and these calls are recreated in the laboratory using custom-built wideband electrostatic transducers, allied with a spectral equalization technique. This technique is further demonstrated by recreating multi-harmonic bioinspired FM chirps. The ability to record and accurately synthesize echolocation calls enables the exploitation of biological signals in human engineering systems for sonar, materials characterization and imaging

Multiple sequence alignment based on set covers

We introduce a new heuristic for the multiple alignment of a set of sequences. The heuristic is based on a set cover of the residue alphabet of the sequences, and also on the determination of a significant set of blocks comprising subsequences of the sequences to be aligned. These blocks are obtained with the aid of a new data structure, called a suffix-set tree, which is constructed from the input sequences with the guidance of the residue-alphabet set cover and generalizes the well-known suffix tree of the sequence set. We provide performance results on selected BAliBASE amino-acid sequences and compare them with those yielded by some prominent approaches

Improving alcohol health literacy and reducing alcohol consumption: recommendations for Germany

Background: Although the detrimental health effects of alcohol are well established, consumption levels are high in many high-income countries such as Germany. Improving alcohol health literacy presents an integrated approach to alcohol prevention and an important complement to alcohol policy. Our aim was to identify and prioritize measures to enhance alcohol health literacy and hence to reduce alcohol consumption, using Germany as an example.Methods: A series of recommendations for improving alcohol health literacy were derived from a review of the literature and subsequently rated by five experts. Recommendations were rated according to their likely impact on enhancing (a) alcohol health literacy and (b) reducing alcohol consumption. Inter-rater agreement was assessed using a two-way intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC).Results: Eleven recommendations were established for three areas of action: (1) education and information, (2) health care system, and (3) alcohol control policy. Education and information measures were rated high to increase alcohol health literacy but low to their impact on alcohol consumption, while this pattern was reversed for alcohol control policies. The ratings showed good agreement (ICC: 0.85-0.88).Conclusions: Improving alcohol health literacy and reducing alcohol consumption should be considered complementary and become part of a comprehensive alcohol strategy to curb the health, social, and economic burden of alcohol

Generalized Totalizer Encoding for Pseudo-Boolean Constraints

Pseudo-Boolean constraints, also known as 0-1 Integer Linear Constraints, are used to model many real-world problems. A common approach to solve these constraints is to encode them into a SAT formula. The runtime of the SAT solver on such formula is sensitive to the manner in which the given pseudo-Boolean constraints are encoded. In this paper, we propose generalized Totalizer encoding (GTE), which is an arc-consistency preserving extension of the Totalizer encoding to pseudo-Boolean constraints. Unlike some other encodings, the number of auxiliary variables required for GTE does not depend on the magnitudes of the coefficients. Instead, it depends on the number of distinct combinations of these coefficients. We show the superiority of GTE with respect to other encodings when large pseudo-Boolean constraints have low number of distinct coefficients. Our experimental results also show that GTE remains competitive even when the pseudo-Boolean constraints do not have this characteristic.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. To be published in 21st International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming 201

A genome-wide assessment of stages of elevational parapatry in Bornean passerine birds reveals no introgression: implications for processes and patterns of speciation

Topographically complex regions often contain the close juxtaposition of closely related species along elevational gradients. The evolutionary causes of these elevational replacements, and thus the origin and maintenance of a large portion of species diversity along elevational gradients, are usually unclear because ecological differentiation along a gradient or secondary contact following allopatric diversification can produce the same pattern. We used reduced representation genomic sequencing to assess genetic relationships and gene flow between three parapatric pairs of closely related songbird taxa (Arachnothera spiderhunters, Chloropsis leafbirds, and Enicurus forktails) along an elevational gradient in Borneo. Each taxon pair presents a different elevational range distribution across the island, yet results were uniform: little or no gene flow was detected in any pairwise comparisons. These results are congruent with an allopatric “species-pump” model for generation of species diversity and elevational parapatry of congeners on Borneo, rather than in situ generation of species by “ecological speciation” along an elevational gradient

Electronic properties of LaO1-xFxFeAs in the normal state probed by nmr/nqr

We report 139La, 57Fe and 75As nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) measurements on powders of the new LaO1−xFxFeAs superconductor for x=0 and 0.1 at temperatures up to 480 K, and compare our measured NQR spectra with local density approximation (LDA) calculations. For all three nuclei in the x=0.1 material, it is found that the local Knight shift increases monotonically with an increase in temperature, and scales with the macroscopic susceptibility, suggesting a single magnetic degree of freedom. Surprisingly, the spin lattice relaxation rates for all nuclei also scale with one another, despite the fact that the form factors for each site sample different regions of q-space. This result suggests a lack of any q-space structure in the dynamical spin susceptibility that might be expected in the presence of antiferromagnetic correlations. Rather, our results are more compatible with simple quasi-particle scattering. Furthermore, we find that the increase in the electric field gradient at the As cannot be accounted for by LDA calculations, suggesting that structural changes, in particular the position of the As in the unit cell, dominate the NQR response