The relationship between sensory sensitivity and autistic traits in the general population.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) tend to have sensory processing difficulties (Baranek et al. in J Child Psychol Psychiatry 47:591–601, 2006). These difficulties include over- and under-responsiveness to sensory stimuli, and problems modulating sensory input (Ben-Sasson et al. in J Autism Dev Disorders 39:1–11, 2009). As those with ASD exist at the extreme end of a continuum of autistic traits that is also evident in the general population, we investigated the link between ASD and sensory sensitivity in the general population by administering two questionnaires online to 212 adult participants. Results showed a highly significant positive correlation (r = .775, p < .001) between number of autistic traits and the frequency of sensory processing problems. These data suggest a strong link between sensory processing and autistic traits in the general population, which in turn potentially implicates sensory processing problems in social interaction difficulties

« La Tragédie du roi Christophe » du point de vue de l’histoire d’Haïti

This paper presents a multilingual study on, per single post of microblog text, (a) how much can be said, (b) how much is written in terms of characters and bytes, and (c) how much is said in terms of information content in posts by different organizations in different languages. Focusing on three different languages (English, Chinese, and Japanese), this research analyses Weibo and Twitter accounts of major embassies and news agencies. We first establish our criterion for quantifying \how much can be said" in a digital text based on the openly available Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the translated subtitles from TED talks. These parallel corpora allow us to determine the number of characters and bits needed to represent the same content in different languages and character encodings. We then derive the amount of information that is actually contained in microblog posts authored by selected accounts on Weibo and Twitter. Our results confirm that languages with larger character sets such as Chinese and Japanese contain more information per character than English, but the actual information content contained within a microblog text varies depending on both the type of organization and the language of the post. We conclude with a discussion on the design implications of microblog text limits for different languages

Resonance energy transfer: The unified theory via vector spherical harmonics

In this work, we derive the well-established expression for the quantum amplitude associated with the resonance energy transfer (RET) process between a pair of molecules that are beyond wavefunction overlap. The novelty of this work is that the field of the mediating photon is described in terms of a spherical wave rather than a plane wave. The angular components of the field are constructed in terms of vector spherical harmonics while Hankel functions are used to define the radial component. This approach alleviates the problem of having to select physically correct solution from non-physical solutions, which seems to be inherent in plane wave derivations. The spherical coordinate system allows one to easily decompose the photon’s fields into longitudinal and transverse components and offers a natural way to analyse near-, intermediate-, and far-zone RET within the context of the relative orientation of the transition dipole moments for the two molecules

Lectin-like bacteriocins from pseudomonas spp. utilise D-rhamnose containing lipopolysaccharide as a cellular receptor

Lectin-like bacteriocins consist of tandem monocot mannose-binding domains and display a genus-specific killing activity. Here we show that pyocin L1, a novel member of this family from Pseudomonas aeruginosa, targets susceptible strains of this species through recognition of the common polysaccharide antigen (CPA) of P. aeruginosa lipopolysaccharide that is predominantly a homopolymer of d-rhamnose. Structural and biophysical analyses show that recognition of CPA occurs through the C-terminal carbohydrate-binding domain of pyocin L1 and that this interaction is a prerequisite for bactericidal activity. Further to this, we show that the previously described lectin-like bacteriocin putidacin L1 shows a similar carbohydrate-binding specificity, indicating that oligosaccharides containing d-rhamnose and not d-mannose, as was previously thought, are the physiologically relevant ligands for this group of bacteriocins. The widespread inclusion of d-rhamnose in the lipopolysaccharide of members of the genus Pseudomonas explains the unusual genus-specific activity of the lectin-like bacteriocins

Ferredoxin containing bacteriocins suggest a novel mechanism of iron uptake in <i>Pectobacterium spp</i>

In order to kill competing strains of the same or closely related bacterial species, many bacteria produce potent narrow-spectrum protein antibiotics known as bacteriocins. Two sequenced strains of the phytopathogenic bacterium &lt;i&gt;Pectobacterium carotovorum&lt;/i&gt; carry genes encoding putative bacteriocins which have seemingly evolved through a recombination event to encode proteins containing an N-terminal domain with extensive similarity to a [2Fe-2S] plant ferredoxin and a C-terminal colicin M-like catalytic domain. In this work, we show that these genes encode active bacteriocins, pectocin M1 and M2, which target strains of &lt;i&gt;Pectobacterium carotovorum&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Pectobacterium atrosepticum&lt;/i&gt; with increased potency under iron limiting conditions. The activity of pectocin M1 and M2 can be inhibited by the addition of spinach ferredoxin, indicating that the ferredoxin domain of these proteins acts as a receptor binding domain. This effect is not observed with the mammalian ferredoxin protein adrenodoxin, indicating that &lt;i&gt;Pectobacterium spp.&lt;/i&gt; carries a specific receptor for plant ferredoxins and that these plant pathogens may acquire iron from the host through the uptake of ferredoxin. In further support of this hypothesis we show that the growth of strains of &lt;i&gt;Pectobacterium carotovorum&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;atrosepticum&lt;/i&gt; that are not sensitive to the cytotoxic effects of pectocin M1 is enhanced in the presence of pectocin M1 and M2 under iron limiting conditions. A similar growth enhancement under iron limiting conditions is observed with spinach ferrodoxin, but not with adrenodoxin. Our data indicate that pectocin M1 and M2 have evolved to parasitise an existing iron uptake pathway by using a ferredoxin-containing receptor binding domain as a Trojan horse to gain entry into susceptible cells

Research specialties as emergent phenomena: Connecting emergence theory and scientometrics

This short paper represents an initial effort to connect the emergence theory literature with the bibliometric, informetric, and scientometic literatures. It begins with a prominent definition of emergence, and then connects each of the components of this definition with the relevant insights about the development of new scientific and technical concepts or research specialties. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of the relationship between these two distinct areas of scholarly inquiry and the need for further exploration of this intersection.Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) viapublished or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Event-related alpha suppression in response to facial motion

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.While biological motion refers to both face and body movements, little is known about the visual perception of facial motion. We therefore examined alpha wave suppression as a reduction in power is thought to reflect visual activity, in addition to attentional reorienting and memory processes. Nineteen neurologically healthy adults were tested on their ability to discriminate between successive facial motion captures. These animations exhibited both rigid and non-rigid facial motion, as well as speech expressions. The structural and surface appearance of these facial animations did not differ, thus participants decisions were based solely on differences in facial movements. Upright, orientation-inverted and luminance-inverted facial stimuli were compared. At occipital and parieto-occipital regions, upright facial motion evoked a transient increase in alpha which was then followed by a significant reduction. This finding is discussed in terms of neural efficiency, gating mechanisms and neural synchronization. Moreover, there was no difference in the amount of alpha suppression evoked by each facial stimulus at occipital regions, suggesting early visual processing remains unaffected by manipulation paradigms. However, upright facial motion evoked greater suppression at parieto-occipital sites, and did so in the shortest latency. Increased activity within this region may reflect higher attentional reorienting to natural facial motion but also involvement of areas associated with the visual control of body effectors. © 2014 Girges et al

Structure and Morphology of Silver Nanoparticles on the (111) Surface of Cerium Oxide

The structure of Ag nanoparticles of different size, supported on the cerium oxide (111) surface, was investigated by X-ray absorption fine structure at the Ag K-edge. The results of the data analysis in the near and extended energy range are interpreted with the help of the results obtained by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy measurements and allow to obtain a detailed atomic scale description of the model system investigated. The Ag nanoparticles have an average size of a few tens of angstroms, which increases with increasing deposited Ag amount. The nanoparticles show a slight tendency to nucleate at the step edges between different cerium oxide layers and they have a face centered cubic structure with an Ag-Ag interatomic distance contracted by 3-4% with respect to the bulk value. The interatomic distance contraction is mainly ascribed to dimensionality induced effects, while epitaxial effects have a minor role. The presence of Ag-O bonds at the interface between the nanoparticles and the supporting oxide is also detected. The Ag-O interatomic distance decreases with decreasing nanoparticle size