Parenting Stress Undermines Mother-Child Brain-to-Brain Synchrony: A Hyperscanning Study

Synchrony refers to the coordinated interplay of behavioural and physiological signals that reflect the bi-directional attunement of one partner to the other's psychophysiological, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral state. In mother-child relationships, a synchronous pattern of interaction indicates parental sensitivity. Parenting stress has been shown to undermine mother-child behavioural synchrony. However, it has yet to be discerned whether parenting stress affects brain-to-brain synchrony during everyday joint activities. Here, we show that greater parenting stress is associated with less brain-to-brain synchrony in the medial left cluster of the prefrontal cortex when mother and child engage in a typical dyadic task of watching animation videos together. This brain region overlaps with the inferior frontal gyrus, the frontal eye field, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which are implicated in inference of mental states and social cognition. Our result demonstrates the adverse effect of parenting stress on mother-child attunement that is evident at a brain-to-brain level. Mother-child brain-to-brain asynchrony may underlie the robust association between parenting stress and poor dyadic co-regulation. We anticipate our study to form the foundation for future investigations into mechanisms by which parenting stress impairs the mother-child relationship

Florivory Shapes both Leaf and Floral Interactions

Florivory, or the consumption of flowers, is a ubiquitous interaction that can reduce plant reproduction directly by damaging reproductive tissues and indirectly by deterring pollinators. However, we know surprisingly little about how florivory alters plant traits or the larger community of species interactions. Although leaf damage is known to affect floral traits and interactions in many systems, the consequences of floral damage for leaf traits and interactions are unknown. We manipulated floral damage in Impatiens capensisand measured effects on floral attractive traits and secondary chemicals, leaf secondary chemicals, floral interactions, leaf herbivory, and plant reproduction. We also examined relationships between early season floral traits and floral interactions, to explore which traits structure floral interactions. Moderate but not high florivory significantly increased relative selfed reproduction, leading to a shift in mating system away from outcrossing. Florivory increased leaf secondary compounds and decreased leaf herbivory, although mechanisms other than leaf chemistry may be responsible for some of the reduced leaf damage. Florivory altered four of seven measured interactions, including increased subsequent florivory and reduced flower spiders, although only leaf damage effects were significant after correcting for multiple tests. Pretreatment concentrations of floral anthocyanins and condensed tannins were associated with reduced levels of many floral antagonisms, including florivory, nectar larceny, and flower spider abundance, suggesting these traits play a role in floral resistance. Overall, our results indicate a broad range of community and potential evolutionary consequences of florivory through structuring subsequent floral interactions, altering leaf secondary chemicals, and shaping leaf herbivory

Opacities of Singly and Doubly Ionised Neodymium and Uranium for Kilonova Emission Modeling

Even though the electromagnetic counterpart AT2017gfo to the binary neutron star merger GW170817 is powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei, only few tentative identifications of light r-process elements have been made so far. One of the major limitations for the identification of heavy nuclei is incomplete or missing atomic data. While substantial progress has been made on lanthanide atomic data over the last few years, for actinides there has been less emphasis, with the first complete set of opacity data only recently published. We perform atomic structure calculations of neodymium $(Z=60)$ as well as the corresponding actinide uranium $(Z=92)$. Using two different codes (FAC and HFR) for the calculation of the atomic data, we investigate the accuracy of the calculated data (energy levels and electric dipole transitions) and their effect on kilonova opacities. For the FAC calculations, we optimise the local central potential and the number of included configurations and use a dedicated calibration technique to improve the agreement between theoretical and available experimental atomic energy levels (AELs). For ions with vast amounts of experimental data available, the presented opacities agree quite well with previous estimations. On the other hand, the optimisation and calibration method cannot be used for ions with only few available AELs. For these cases, where no experimental nor benchmarked calculations are available, a large spread in the opacities estimated from the atomic data obtained with the various atomic structure codes is observed.We find that the opacity of uranium is almost double the neodymium opacity.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures. Accepted by MNRA

Measurements of bubble size spectra within leads in the Arctic summer pack ice

Peer reviewe

Responsive Operations for Key Services (ROKS): A Modular, Low SWaP Quantum Communications Payload

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a theoretically proven future-proof secure encryption method that inherits its security from fundamental physical principles. With a proof-of-concept QKD payload having flown on the Micius satellite since 2016, efforts have intensified globally. Craft Prospect, working with a number of UK organisations, has been focused on miniaturising the technologies that enable QKD so that they may be used in smaller platforms including nanosatellites. The significant reduction of size, and therefore the cost of launching quantum communication technologies either on a dedicated platform or hosted as part of a larger optical communications will improve potential access to quantum encryption on a relatively quick timescale. The Responsive Operations for Key Services (ROKS) mission seeks to be among the first to send a QKD payload on a CubeSat into low Earth orbit, demonstrating the capabilities of newly developed modular quantum technologies. The ROKS payload comprises a quantum source module that supplies photons randomly in any of four linear polarisation states fed from a quantum random number generator; an acquisition, pointing, and tracking system to fine-tune alignment of the quantum source beam with an optical ground station; an imager that will detect cloud cover autonomously; and an onboard computer that controls and monitors the other modules, which manages the payload and assures the overall performance and security of the system. Each of these modules have been developed with low Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) for CubeSats, but with interoperability in mind for other satellite form factors. We present each of the listed components, together with the initial test results from our test bench and the performance of our protoflight models prior to initial integration with the 6U CubeSat platform systems. The completed ROKS payload will be ready for flight at the end of 2022, with various modular components already being baselined for flight and integrated into third party communication missions

A global database of sea surface dimethylsulfide (DMS) measurements and a procedure to predict sea surface DMS as a function of latitude, longitude, and month

47 pages, 13 figures, 7 tablesA database of 15,617 point measurements of dimethylsulfide (DMS) in surface waters along with lesser amounts of data for aqueous and particulate dimethylsulfoniopropionate concentration, chlorophyll concentration, sea surface salinity and temperature, and wind speed has been assembled. The database was processed to create a series of climatological annual and monthly 1°x1°latitude-longitude squares of data. The results were compared to published fields of geophysical and biological parameters. No significant correlation was found between DMS and these parameters, and no simple algorithm could be found to create monthly fields of sea surface DMS concentration based on these parameters. Instead, an annual map of sea surface DMS was produced using an algorithm similar to that employed by Conkright et al. [1994]. In this approach, a first-guess field of DMS sea surface concentration measurements is created and then a correction to this field is generated based on actual measurements. Monthly sea surface grids of DMS were obtained using a similar scheme, but the sparsity of DMS measurements made the method difficult to implement. A scheme was used which projected actual data into months of the year where no data were otherwise presen

The future role of Scottish local government economic development

Since 1979 local authorities have been subjected to two main pressures from central government: increasing control over the range and type of services that can be provided; and greater emphasis on the private sector's role. So far, beyond being affected by the general financial constraints that local government has been placed under, the economic development services that many local authorities provide have escaped largely unscathed. This situation seems now likely to change radically as a result of three measures. These are:- a) the Local Government and Housing Bill; b) Scottish Enterprise; and c) changes to the structure of local government. When considered in isolation these measures contain much that is attractive and which could produce a more effective economic development service; for example, a specific power to carry out economic development and the creation of an integrated training and enterprise development service. However the argument that is put forward in this paper is that these measures have to be seen as complementary. They are part of an overall strategy intended to result in a major reduction in local government's local economic development activities