Identification of the orphan gene Prod 1 in basal and other salamander families.

The urodele amphibians (salamanders) are the only adult tetrapods able to regenerate the limb. It is unclear if this is an ancestral property that is retained in salamanders but lost in other tetrapods or if it evolved in salamanders. The three-finger protein Prod 1 is implicated in the mechanism of newt limb regeneration, and no orthologs have been found in other vertebrates, thus providing evidence for the second viewpoint. It has also been suggested that this protein could play a role in salamander-specific aspects of limb development. There are ten families of extant salamanders, and Prod 1 has only been identified in two of them to date. It is important to determine if it is present in other families and, particularly, the basal group of two families which diverged approximately 200 MYA

Digit ratio (2D:4D) and social integration: an effect of prenatal sex hormones

The position people occupy in their social and professional networks is related to their social status and has strong effects on their access to social resources. While attainment of particular positions is driven by behavioral traits, many biological factors predispose individuals to certain behaviors and motivations. Prior work on exposure to fetal androgens (measured by second-to-fourth digit ratio, 2D:4D) shows that it correlates with behaviors and traits related to social status, which might make people more socially integrated. However, it also predicts certain anti-social behaviors and disorders associated with lower socialization. We explore whether 2D:4D correlates with network position later in life and find that individuals with low 2D:4D become more central in their social environment. Interestingly, low 2D:4D males are more likely to exhibit high betweenness centrality (they connect separated parts of the social structure) while low 2D:4D females are more likely to exhibit high in-degree centrality (more people name them as friends). These gender-specific differences are reinforced by transitivity (the likelihood that one’s friends are also friends with one another): neighbors of low 2D:4D men tend not to know each other; the contrary is observed for low 2D:4D women. Our results suggest that biological predispositions influence the organization of human societies and that exposure to prenatal androgens influences different status seeking behaviors in men and women

Sustainable Warehouse Features: A Systematic Literature Review

Development in the field of IT and competition in the market forces companies to increase their market share and revenue. To satisfy this goal, companies can apply and adopt plans that may lead to making the supply chain (SC) lengthy and too rigid to control/monitor. The longer the SC the more it can be disrupted by expected and unexpected events (e.g., Digital security incidents, climate). For that purpose, the SC must be built in a way to respond fast to disruptive events in an effective way and to bounce back to its original state to be considered a resilient SC, which gives a competitive advantage to the companies. To achieve SC resilience, several studies have discussed enablers. Some of these studies, focused on increasing velocity through the SC, others argued that high adaptability leads to SC resilience, and others mentioned information sharing as a key to achieving SC resilience. In addition, applying technology in the SC processes can add strength. As such, the Internet of Things can support/enhance the level of Velocity, Adaptability, and Information sharing, which leads to enhancing SC resilience. This research explores the opportunities that IoT presents to enhance resilience enablers and boost SC resilience

Differential Privacy in Privacy-Preserving Big Data and Learning: Challenge and Opportunity

Differential privacy (DP) has become the de facto standard of privacy preservation due to its strong protection and sound mathematical foundation, which is widely adopted in different applications such as big data analysis, graph data process, machine learning, deep learning, and federated learning. Although DP has become an active and influential area, it is not the best remedy for all privacy problems in different scenarios. Moreover, there are also some misunderstanding, misuse, and great challenges of DP in specific applications. In this paper, we point out a series of limits and open challenges of corresponding research areas. Besides, we offer potentially new insights and avenues on combining differential privacy with other effective dimension reduction techniques and secure multiparty computing to clearly define various privacy models

Differential Privacy in Privacy-Preserving Big Data and Learning: Challenge and Opportunity

Differential privacy (DP) has become the de facto standard of privacy preservation due to its strong protection and sound mathematical foundation, which is widely adopted in different applications such as big data analysis, graph data process, machine learning, deep learning, and federated learning. Although DP has become an active and influential area, it is not the best remedy for all privacy problems in different scenarios. Moreover, there are also some misunderstanding, misuse, and great challenges of DP in specific applications. In this paper, we point out a series of limits and open challenges of corresponding research areas. Besides, we offer potentially new insights and avenues on combining differential privacy with other effective dimension reduction techniques and secure multiparty computing to clearly define various privacy models

Employing the Internet of Things to Attain Resilience Across Supply Chain

This paper investigates and analyses the features of sustainable warehousing by conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) to create a significant insight of the expanding and growing trends of sustainable warehousing, to fit perfectly within the net-zero supply chain strategies and adapting to the new value adding practices of Industry 5.0. Using a set of 65 publications, including journal papers, conference papers, and reviews, for the last 10 years, between 2013 and 2023, the SLR highlights and considers several green logistics areas that are essential to help redesign the features of sustainable warehouses. The paper also emphasizes the need for further research to develop new models for warehouses that can be implemented in the Industry 5.0 supply chain to achieve net-zero goals. In other words, the paper is trying to understand the current state of sustainable warehousing and identify areas where improvements can be made to make warehouses more sustainable and environmentally friendly, and to help the industry move towards a net-zero supply chain. Additionally, the paper is suggesting that there is a need for more research to be done to create new models for warehouses that can be applied in the Industry 5.0 supply chain, in order to reach net-zero goals

Analysing Critical Factors of Strategic Alignment Between Operational Excellence and Industry 4.0 Technologies in Smart Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector is highly competitive and operationally complex. Therefore, the strategic alignment between operational excellence methodologies and Industry 4.0 technologies is one of the issues that need to be addressed. The main aim of the study is to determine the critical factors of strategic alignment between operational excellence methodologies and Industry 4.0 technologies for manufacturing industries and make comparative analyses between automotive, food, and textile industries in terms of strategic alignment between operational excellence methodologies and Industry 4.0 technologies. Firstly, determining the critical factors based on literature review and expert opinions, these criteria are weighted, and Analytical Hierarchy Process is run to calculate the weights of these criteria. Afterwards, the best sector is determined by the Gray Relational Analysis method according to the criteria for the three manufacturing industries selected for the study. As a result of AHP, ‘Infrastructure for Right Methodology, Techniques and Tools, is in the first place, ‘Organizational Strategy, is in the second place, while the third highest critical factor is ‘Capital Investment’. Moreover, based on Gray Relational Analysis results, the automotive industry is determined as the best alternative in terms of strategic alignment between OPEX methodologies and I4.0 technologies. This study is unique in that it is primarily possible to obtain the order of importance within the criteria and to make comparisons between three important manufacturing industries that are important for the economies of the world

Gradient of the Casimir force between Au surfaces of a sphere and a plate measured using atomic force microscope in a frequency shift technique

We present measurement results for the gradient of the Casimir force between an Au-coated sphere and an Au-coated plate obtained by means of an atomic force microscope operated in a frequency shift technique. This experiment was performed at a pressure of 3x10^{-8} Torr with hollow glass sphere of 41.3 mcm radius. Special attention is paid to electrostatic calibrations including the problem of electrostatic patches. All calibration parameters are shown to be separation-independent after the corrections for mechanical drift are included. The gradient of the Casimir force was measured in two ways with applied compensating voltage to the plate and with different applied voltages and subsequent subtraction of electric forces. The obtained mean gradients are shown to be in mutual agreement and in agreement with previous experiments performed using a micromachined oscillator. The obtained data are compared with theoretical predictions of the Lifshitz theory including corrections beyond the proximity force approximation. An independent comparison with no fitting parameters demonstrated that the Drude model approach is excluded by the data at a 67% confidence level over the separation region from 235 to 420 nm. The theoretical approach using the generalized plasma-like model is shown to be consistent with the data over the entire measurement range. Corrections due to the nonlinearity of oscillator are calculated and the application region of the linear regime is determined. A conclusion is made that the results of several performed experiments call for a thorough analysis of the basics of the theory of dispersion forces.Comment: 35 pages, 14 figures, 1 table; to appear in Phys. Rev.

Nudging Cooperation in a Crowd Experiment

We examine the hypothesis that driven by a competition heuristic, people don't even reflect or consider whether a cooperation strategy may be better. As a paradigmatic example of this behavior we propose the zero-sum game fallacy, according to which people believe that resources are fixed even when they are not. We demonstrate that people only cooperate if the competitive heuristic is explicitly overridden in an experiment in which participants play two rounds of a game in which competition is suboptimal. The observed spontaneous behavior for most players was to compete. Then participants were explicitly reminded that the competing strategy may not be optimal. This minor intervention boosted cooperation, implying that competition does not result from lack of trust or willingness to cooperate but instead from the inability to inhibit the competition bias. This activity was performed in a controlled laboratory setting and also as a crowd experiment. Understanding the psychological underpinnings of these behaviors may help us improve cooperation and thus may have vast practical consequences to our society.Fil: Niella, Tamara. Universidad Torcuato di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Stier, Nicolas. Universidad Torcuato di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Sigman, Mariano. Universidad Torcuato di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin