Across-Line SNP Association Study for Direct and Associative Effects on Feather Damage in Laying Hens

An association study between SNP markers and feather condition score on the back, rump and belly of laying hens was performed. Feather condition score is a measure of feather damage, which has been shown to be closely related to feather pecking behaviour in hens housed in groups. A population of 662 hens was genotyped for 1536 SNPs of which 1022 could be used for the association study. The analysis was conducted across 9 different lines of White Leghorn and Rhode Island Red origin. Across lines linkage disequilibrium is conserved at shorter distances than within lines; therefore, SNPs significantly associated with feather condition score across lines are expected to be closer to the functional mutations. The SNPs that had a significant across-line effect but did not show significant SNP-by-line interaction were identified, to test that the association was consistent across lines. Both the direct effect of the individual’s genotype on its plumage condition, and the associative effect of the genotype of the cage mates on the individual’s plumage condition were analysed. The direct genetic effect can be considered as the susceptibility to be pecked at, whereas the associative genetic effect can be interpreted as the propensity to perform feather pecking. Finally, 11 significant associations between SNPs and behavioural traits were detected in the direct model, and 81 in the associative model. A role of the gene for the serotonin receptor 2C (HTR2C) on chromosome 4 was found. This supports existing evidence of a prominent involvement of the serotonergic system in the modulation of this behavioural disorder in laying hens. The genes for IL9, IL4, CCL4 and NFKB were found to be associated to plumage condition, revealing relationships between the immune system and behaviour

Seasonal variation in sonic muscles in the fawn cusk-eel <i>Lepophidium profundorum</i>

The fawn cusk-eel Lepophidium profundorum (Ophidiidae) has an unusual sound-producing system with sexually dimorphic sets of antagonistic muscles. Outside the mating season, the dorsal and ventral muscles are well developed and larger in males than in females, but the tiny intermediate muscles are smaller, suggesting a minor role, if any, in male advertisement call production. We examined summer individuals with more developed gonads and find a fourfold hypertrophy of the intermediate but not the other muscles. This result suggests androgen dependence and an important role in sound production for the intermediate muscle. Even though both sexes gain weight in the summer, the ventral and dorsal muscles in females lose weight, suggesting that sound production is less important in females and that muscle mass may be used to support egg growth

Stochastic inversion of linear first kind integral equations I. Continuous theory and the stochastic generalized inverse

The dataset associated with this paper is in ORE; see http://hdl.handle.net/10871/17644© 2015 American Psychological AssociationThis article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.This paper is made available in accordance with publisher policies. The final published version of this article is available from the publisher’s site. at http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/xhp/index.aspxBefore reusing this item please check the rights under which it has been made available. Some items are restricted to non-commercial use. Please cite the published version where applicable.The present study explores the link between attentional reorienting and response inhibition. Recent behavioral and neuroscience work indicates that both might rely on similar cognitive and neural mechanisms. We tested two popular accounts of the overlap: The ‘circuit breaker’ account, which assumes that unexpected events produce global suppression of motor output, and the ‘stimulus detection’ account, which assumes that attention is reoriented to unexpected events. In Experiment 1, we presented standard and (unexpected) novel sounds in a go/no-go task. Consistent with the stimulus detection account, we found longer RTs on go trials and higher rates of commission errors on no-go trials when these were preceded by a novel sound compared with a standard sound. In Experiment 2, novel and standard sounds acted as no-go signals. In this experiment, the novel sounds produced an improvement on no-go trials. This further highlights the importance of stimulus detection for response inhibition. Combined, the two experiments support the idea that attention is oriented to novel or unexpected events, impairing no-go performance if these events are irrelevant but enhancing no-go performance when they are relevant. Our findings also indicate that the popular circuit breaker account of the overlap between response inhibition and attentional reorienting needs some revision.European Research CouncilFPU Fellowshi

Strong back-action of a linear circuit on a single electronic quantum channel

What are the quantum laws of electricity in mesoscopic circuits? This very fundamental question has also direct implications for the quantum engineering of nanoelectronic devices. Indeed, when a quantum coherent conductor is inserted into a circuit, its transport properties are modified. In particular, its conductance is reduced because of the circuit back-action. This phenomenon, called environmental Coulomb blockade, results from the granularity of charge transfers across the coherent conductor. Although extensively studied for a tunnel junction in a linear circuit, it is only fully understood for arbitrary short coherent conductors in the limit of small circuit impedances and small conductance reduction. Here, we investigate experimentally the strong back-action regime, with a conductance reduction of up to 90%. This is achieved by embedding a single quantum channel of tunable transmission in an adjustable on-chip circuit of impedance comparable to the resistance quantum $R_K=h/e^2$ at microwave frequencies. The experiment reveals important deviations from calculations performed in the weak back-action framework, and matches with recent theoretical results. From these measurements, we propose a generalized expression for the conductance of an arbitrary quantum channel embedded in a linear circuit.Comment: 11 pages including supplementary information, to be published in Nature Physic

On the efficiency of field star capture by star clusters

An exciting recent finding regarding scaling relations among globular clusters is the so-called 'blue tilt': clusters of the blue sub-population follow a trend of redder colour with increasing luminosity. In this paper we evaluate to which extent field star capture over a Hubble time may explain the 'blue tilt'. We perform collisional N-body simulations to quantify the amount of field star capture occuring over a Hubble time to star clusters with 10^3 to 10^6 stars. In the simulations we follow the orbits of field stars passing through a star cluster and calculate the energy change that the field stars experience due to gravitational interaction with cluster stars during one passage through the cluster. The capture condition is that their total energy after the passage is smaller than the gravitational potential at the cluster's tidal radius. By folding this with the fly-by rates of field stars with an assumed space density as in the solar neighbourhood and a range of velocity dispersions, we derive estimates on the mass fraction of captured field stars as a function of environment. We find that integrated over a Hubble time, the ratio between captured field stars and total number of clusters stars is very low (<~ 10^(-4)), even for the smallest considered field star velocity dispersion sigma=15 km/s. This holds for star clusters in the mass range of both open clusters and globular clusters. We furthermore show that tidal friction has a negligible effect on the energy distribution of field stars after interaction with the cluster. We conclude that field star capture is not a probable mechanism for creating the colour-magnitude trend of metal-poor globular clusters.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Dynamical evolution of the mass function and radial profile of the Galactic globular cluster system

Evolution of the mass function (MF) and radial distribution (RD) of the Galactic globular cluster (GC) system is calculated using an advanced and a realistic Fokker-Planck (FP) model that considers dynamical friction, disc/bulge shocks and eccentric cluster orbits. We perform hundreds of FP calculations with different initial cluster conditions, and then search a wide-parameter space for the best-fitting initial GC MF and RD that evolves into the observed present-day Galactic GC MF and RD. By allowing both MF and RD of the initial GC system to vary, which is attempted for the first time in the present Letter, we find that our best-fitting models have a higher peak mass for a lognormal initial MF and a higher cut-off mass for a power-law initial MF than previous estimates, but our initial total masses in GCs, M_{T,i} = 1.5-1.8x10^8 Msun, are comparable to previous results. Significant findings include that our best-fitting lognormal MF shifts downward by 0.35 dex during the period of 13 Gyr, and that our power-law initial MF models well-fit the observed MF and RD only when the initial MF is truncated at >~10^5 Msun. We also find that our results are insensitive to the initial distribution of orbit eccentricity and inclination, but are rather sensitive to the initial concentration of the clusters and to how the initial tidal radius is defined. If the clusters are assumed to be formed at the apocentre while filling the tidal radius there, M_{T,i} can be as high as 6.9x10^8 Msun, which amounts to ~75 per cent of the current mass in the stellar halo.Comment: To appear in May 2008 issue of MNRAS, 386, L6

All along the line of sight: a closer look at opening angles and absorption regions in the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets

Transmission spectra contain a wealth of information about the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets. However, large thermal and chemical gradients along the line of sight can lead to biased inferences in atmospheric retrievals. In order to determine how far from the limb plane the atmosphere still impacts the transmission spectrum, we derive a new formula to estimate the opening angle of a planet. This is the angle subtended by the atmospheric region that contributes to the observation along the line of sight, as seen from the planet centre. We benchmark our formula with a 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer code and we define an opening angle suitable for the interpretation of JWST observations, assuming a 10-ppm noise floor. We find that the opening angle is only a few degrees for planets cooler than ca. 500 Kelvins, while it can be as large as 25 degrees for (ultra-)hot Jupiters and 50 degrees for hot Neptunes. Compared to previous works, our more robust approach leads to smaller estimates for the opening angle across a wide range scale heights and planetary radii. Finally, we show that ultra-hot Jupiters have an opening angle that is smaller than the angle over which the planet rotates during the transit. This allows for time-resolved transmission spectroscopy observations that probe independent parts of the planetary limb during the first and second half of the transit

Nonlinear ac conductivity of one-dimensional Mott insulators

We discuss a semiclassical calculation of low energy charge transport in one-dimensional (1d) insulators with a focus on Mott insulators, whose charge degrees of freedom are gapped due to the combination of short range interactions and a periodic lattice potential. Combining RG and instanton methods, we calculate the nonlinear ac conductivity and interpret the result in terms of multi-photon absorption. We compare the result of the semiclassical calculation for interacting systems to a perturbative, fully quantum mechanical calculation of multi-photon absorption in a 1d band insulator and find good agreement when the number of simultaneously absorbed photons is large.Comment: Dedicated to Thomas Nattermann on the occasion of his 60th birthday. To appear in JSTAT. 5 pages, 2 figure

The star cluster formation history of the LMC

The Large Magellanic Cloud is one of the nearest galaxies to us and is one of only few galaxies where the star formation history can be determined from studying resolved stellar populations. We have compiled a new catalogue of ages, luminosities and masses of LMC star clusters and used it to determine the age distribution and dissolution rate of LMC star clusters. We find that the frequency of massive clusters with masses M>5000 Msun is almost constant between 10 and 200 Myr, showing that the influence of residual gas expulsion is limited to the first 10 Myr of cluster evolution or clusters less massive than 5000 Msun. Comparing the cluster frequency in that interval with the absolute star formation rate, we find that about 15% of all stars in the LMC were formed in long-lived star clusters that survive for more than 10 Myr. We also find that the mass function of LMC clusters younger than 1 Gyr can be fitted by a power-law mass function with slope \alpha=-2.3, while older clusters follow a significantly shallower slope and interpret this is a sign of the ongoing dissolution of low-mass clusters. Our data shows that for ages older than 200 Myr, about 90% of all clusters are lost per dex of lifetime. The implied cluster dissolution rate is significantly faster than that based on analytic estimates and N-body simulations. Our cluster age data finally shows evidence for a burst in cluster formation about 1 Gyr ago, but little evidence for bursts at other ages.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, MNRAS in pres