Bilateral neurotoxic lesions in NCM before tutoring onset do not prevent successful tutor song learning

Sensorimotor learning crucially depends on the ability to acquire a sensory memory for shaping motor commands. Such learning is conveniently studied in young songbirds when they memorize the song of an adult singer and gradually transform their own vocalizations toward the memorized target song. Here we study the involvement of the Caudal Medial Nidopallium (NCM), a higher auditory cortical area, in acquisition of a song memory. NCM has previously been shown to be involved in tutor song memorization. To study the necessity of NCM in this process, we perform large irreversible NCM lesions using ibotenic acid injections in about 40-days old juvenile zebra finches, before their first exposure to tutor song. Surprisingly, NCM-lesioned juveniles successfully copied the tutor song at least as well as untreated control animals, showing that a fully intact NCM is not required for tutor song memory formation and normal song development

Numerical simulation of Quasi-Normal Modes in time-dependent background

We study the massless scalar wave propagation in the time-dependent Schwarzschild black hole background. We find that the Kruskal coordinate is an appropriate framework to investigate the time-dependent spacetime. A time-dependent scattering potential is derived by considering dynamical black hole with parameters changing with time. It is shown that in the quasinormal ringing both the decay time-scale and oscillation are modified in the time-dependent background.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures; reference adde

Impact of climate change and genetic development on Iowa corn yield

The vulnerability of corn yield to high temperature and insufficient rainfall in the US mid-west is widely acknowledged. The impact of extreme weather and genetic development on corn yield is less well known. One of the main reasons is that the multicollinearity in the variables can lead to confounding results. Here we model the impact of climate and genetic development by employing an elastic net regression model to address the multicollinearity issue. This allows us to develop a more robust multiple regression model with higher predictive accuracy. Using granular data for Iowa from 1981-2018, we find that corn yield is vulnerable to high mean summer temperatures particularly in July, a widening diurnal temperature range in June and dry summer conditions (due to extremely low rainfall) from June-August. We find that overall climate impact reduced average annual yield by 0.7%. We also find that genetic development which led to earlier planting dates, widening duration of the reproductive interval, higher growing degree day accumulation and larger net planted area had a beneficial impact on the Iowa corn yield during 1981-2018 resulting in an average annual yield improvement of 1.8% per annum. This provides a basis for optimism that these genetic developments and management practices will continue to adapt and improve in the future to counter the impact of climate change on corn yield. We have also modelled the impact of future climate change using the latest climate projections from the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6). These climate projections show that the average temperature during the growing season (MayO-October) will increase by 2.4 -2.9 o C by mid-century while the average spring temperature (March and April) will increase by a relatively slower 1.9 -2.3 o C by mid-century. Additionally, climate projections show that both temperature and rainfall will also become more extreme in the future with the changes varying from spring to summer. Our results show that, just due to climate change alone in Iowa corn yield will decline between 1.4-1.7% per annum until mid-century (or 1.2-2.1% per annum until the late twenty first century)

Method of convex rigid frames and applications in studies of multipartite quNit pure-states

In this Letter we suggest a method of convex rigid frames in the studies of the multipartite quNit pure-states. We illustrate what are the convex rigid frames and what is the method of convex rigid frames. As the applications we use this method to solve some basic problems and give some new results (three theorems): The problem of the partial separability of the multipartite quNit pure-states and its geometric explanation; The problem of the classification of the multipartite quNit pure-states, and give a perfect explanation of the local unitary transformations; Thirdly, we discuss the invariants of classes and give a possible physical explanation.Comment: 6 pages, no figur

Possible Way to Synthesize Superheavy Element Z=117

Within the framework of the dinuclear system model, the production of superheavy element Z=117 in possible projectile-target combinations is analyzed systematically. The calculated results show that the production cross sections are strongly dependent on the reaction systems. Optimal combinations, corresponding excitation energies and evaporation channels are proposed in this letter, such as the isotopes ^{248,249}Bk in ^{48}Ca induced reactions in 3n evaporation channels and the reactions ^{45}Sc+^{246,248}Cm in 3n and 4n channels, and the system ^{51}V+^{244}Pu in 3n channel.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Long-Term Monitoring of Post-Stroke Plasticity After Transient Cerebral Ischemia in Mice Using In Vivo and Ex Vivo Diffusion Tensor MRI

We used a murine model of transient focal cerebral ischemia to study: 1) in vivo DTI long-term temporal evolution of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and diffusion fractional anisotropy (FA) at days 4, 10, 15 and 21 after stroke 2) ex vivo distribution of a plasticity-related protein (GAP-43) and its relationship with the ex vivo DTI characteristics of the striato-thalamic pathway (21 days)

Coconut oil effect on the hygroscopic properties of Simalambuo wood (Lophopetalum spp.)

Simalambuo (Lophopetalum spp) trees are endemic to Southeast Asia and widely grow in the natural forests in Nias island. Local people whose experience of utilizing the simalambuo wood have claimed that the wood easily absorbs water. Throughout our searches, not many efforts to modify the physical properties of the simalambuo woods have been carried out yet. Therefore, in this study, we modified simalambuo wood by thermal treatment in coconut oil-ambient conditions. The heat treatment became an option to support the efforts in reducing the use of non-environmental-friendly materials and methods. The simalambuo wood was treated under coconut oil at 130-210oC for 6 hours. Coconut oil uptake was up to 174%, while the leaching test (AWPA E-06 standard) showed the uneasily permeate out from the wood and high retention differently in terms of treatment and cooling temperature. Heat treatment with coconut oil affected water absorption ability and improved dimensional stability of simalambuo wood. Water absorption reduced from 162% to 16%, and dimensional stability increased from 8.4% to 4.2% at 192 hours after being soaked in water. The higher the difference between treatment and cooling temperature, the better-affected water absorption ability was and the higher dimensional ability could be achieved

Assessing Hospital Readmission Risk Factors in Heart Failure Patients Enrolled in a Telemonitoring Program

The purpose of this study was to validate a previously developed heart failure readmission predictive algorithm based on psychosocial factors, develop a new model based on patient-reported symptoms from a telemonitoring program, and assess the impact of weight fluctuations and other factors on hospital readmission. Clinical, demographic, and telemonitoring data was collected from 100 patients enrolled in the Partners Connected Cardiac Care Program between July 2008 and November 2011. 38% of study participants were readmitted to the hospital within 30 days. Ten different heart-failure-related symptoms were reported 17,389 times, with the top three contributing approximately 50% of the volume. The psychosocial readmission model yielded an AUC of 0.67, along with sensitivity 0.87, specificity 0.32, positive predictive value 0.44, and negative predictive value 0.8 at a cutoff value of 0.30. In summary, hospital readmission models based on psychosocial characteristics, standardized changes in weight, or patient-reported symptoms can be developed and validated in heart failure patients participating in an institutional telemonitoring program. However, more robust models will need to be developed that use a comprehensive set of factors in order to have a significant impact on population health

What Should a Psychiatrist Know About Genetics? Review and Recommendations From the Residency Education Committee of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics.

The International Society of Psychiatric Genetics (ISPG) created a Residency Education Committee with the purpose of identifying key genetic knowledge that should be taught in psychiatric training programs. Thirteen committee members were appointed by the ISPG Board of Directors, based on varied training, expertise, gender, and national origin. The Committee has met quarterly for the past 2 years, with periodic reports to the Board and to the members of the Society. The information summarized includes the existing literature in the field of psychiatric genetics and the output of ongoing large genomics consortia. An outline of clinically relevant areas of genetic knowledge was developed, circulated, and approved. This document was expanded and annotated with appropriate references, and the manuscript was developed. Specific information regarding the contribution of common and rare genetic variants to major psychiatric disorders and treatment response is now available. Current challenges include the following: (1) Genetic testing is recommended in the evaluation of autism and intellectual disability, but its use is limited in current clinical practice. (2) Commercial pharmacogenomic testing is widely available, but its utility has not yet been clearly established. (3) Other methods, such as whole exome and whole genome sequencing, will soon be clinically applicable. The need for informed genetic counseling in psychiatry is greater than ever before, knowledge in the field is rapidly growing, and genetic education should become an integral part of psychiatric training

Benchmarking nearest neighbor retrieval of zebra finch vocalizations across development

Vocalizations are highly specialized motor gestures that regulate social interactions. The reliable detection of vocalizations from raw streams of microphone data remains an open problem even in research on widely studied animals such as the zebra finch. A promising method for finding vocal samples from potentially few labelled examples (templates) is nearest neighbor retrieval, but this method has never been extensively tested on vocal segmentation tasks. We retrieve zebra finch vocalizations as neighbors of each other in the sound spectrogram space. Based on merely 50 templates, we find excellent retrieval performance in adults (F1 score of 0.93±0.07) but not in juveniles (F1 score of 0.64±0.18), presumably due to the larger vocal variability of the latter. The performance in juveniles improves when retrieval is based on fixed-size template slices (F1 score of 0.72±0.10) instead of entire templates. Among the several distance metrics we tested such as the cosine and the Euclidean distance, we find that the Spearman distance largely outperforms all others. We release our expert-curated dataset of more than 50’000 zebra finch vocal segments, which will enable training of data-hungry machine-learning approaches