Norm-based coding of voice identity in human auditory cortex

Listeners exploit small interindividual variations around a generic acoustical structure to discriminate and identify individuals from their voice—a key requirement for social interactions. The human brain contains temporal voice areas (TVA) [1] involved in an acoustic-based representation of voice identity [2, 3, 4, 5 and 6], but the underlying coding mechanisms remain unknown. Indirect evidence suggests that identity representation in these areas could rely on a norm-based coding mechanism [4, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11]. Here, we show by using fMRI that voice identity is coded in the TVA as a function of acoustical distance to two internal voice prototypes (one male, one female)—approximated here by averaging a large number of same-gender voices by using morphing [12]. Voices more distant from their prototype are perceived as more distinctive and elicit greater neuronal activity in voice-sensitive cortex than closer voices—a phenomenon not merely explained by neuronal adaptation [13 and 14]. Moreover, explicit manipulations of distance-to-mean by morphing voices toward (or away from) their prototype elicit reduced (or enhanced) neuronal activity. These results indicate that voice-sensitive cortex integrates relevant acoustical features into a complex representation referenced to idealized male and female voice prototypes. More generally, they shed light on remarkable similarities in cerebral representations of facial and vocal identity

Climate change adaptation strategies and approaches for outdoor recreation

Climate change will alter opportunities and demand for outdoor recreation through altered winter weather conditions and season length, climate-driven changes in user preferences, and damage to recreational infrastructure, among other factors. To ensure that outdoor recreation remains sustainable in the face of these challenges, natural resource managers may need to adapt their recreation management. One of the major challenges of adapting recreation to climate change is translating broad concepts into specific, tangible actions. Using a combination of in-depth interviews of recreational managers and a review of peer-reviewed literature and government reports, we developed a synthesis of impacts, strategies, and approaches, and a tiered structure that organizes this information. Six broad climate adaptation strategies and 25 more specific approaches were identified and organized into a “recreation menu”. The recreation menu was tested with two national forests in the US in multi-day workshops designed to integrate these concepts into real-world projects that were at the beginning stages of the planning process. We found that the recreation menu was broad yet specific enough to be applied to recreation-focused projects with different objectives and climate change impacts. These strategies and approaches serve as stepping stones to enable natural resource and recreation managers to translate broad concepts into targeted and prescriptive actions for implementing adaptation

Adaptation strategies and approaches for forested watersheds

Intentional climate adaptation planning for ecosystems has become a necessary part of the job for natural resource managers and natural resource professionals in this era of non-stationarity. One of the major challenges in adapting ecosystems to climate change is in the translation of broad adaptation concepts to specific, tangible actions. Addressing management goals and values while considering the long-term risks associated with local climate change can make forested watershed management plans more robust to uncertainty and changing conditions. We provide a menu of tiered adaptation strategies, which we developed with a focus on forests of the Midwest and Northeastern U.S., as part of a flexible framework to support the integration of climate change considerations into forested watershed management and conservation activities. This menu encapsulates ideas from the literature into statements that signify climate adaptation intention and provide examples of associated tactics to help ground the concepts in specific actions. Finally, we describe two demonstration projects, shared through the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science’s Climate Change Response Framework, that have used this Forested Watershed Adaptation Menu and Adaptation Workbook in project-level planning

Mid-Atlantic forest ecosystem vulnerability assessment and synthesis: a report from the Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Response Framework project

Forest ecosystems will be affected directly and indirectly by a changing climate over the 21st century. This assessment evaluates the vulnerability of 11 forest ecosystems in the Mid-Atlantic region (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, eastern Maryland, and southern New York) under a range of future climates. We synthesized and summarized information on the contemporary landscape, provided information on past climate trends, and described a range of projected future climates. This information was used to parameterize and run multiple forest impact models, which provided a range of potential tree responses to climate. Finally, we brought these results before two multidisciplinary panels of scientists and land managers familiar with the forests of this region to assess ecosystem vulnerability through a formal consensus-based expert elicitation process

Ursinus College Alumni Journal, August 1968

A special responsibility • Capp quips cleverly at commencement • Alumni Day \u2768: The happy time; The business of the day; Election winners take office; Two distinguished graduates honored; A salute to individuals & organizations; Picture of a perfect day • Weighing the worth of Ursinus • What is a college? • Alumni award winner recalls Ursinus past • Alumni classes support college in 1967-1968 • Call it animal faith, if you like • All-Ursinus anniversary drive • From the President • Dr. James E. Wagner retires as vice-president • Development department increases staff • Campus clippings: New faculty members; Chapter scholars; Tax tip on the surcharge; Board elects three • Class notebook • Weddings • Births • In memoriamhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/alumnijournal/1092/thumbnail.jp

Beyond planning tools: Experiential learning in climate adaptation planning and practices

In the past decade, several dedicated tools have been developed to help natural resources professionals integrate climate science into their planning and implementation; however, it is unclear how often these tools lead to on-the-ground climate adaptation. Here, we describe a training approach that we developed to help managers effectively plan to execute intentional, climate-informed actions. This training approach was developed through the Climate Change Response Framework (CCRF) and uses active and focused work time and peer-to-peer interaction to overcome observed barriers to using adaptation planning tools. We evaluate the effectiveness of this approach by examining participant evaluations and outlining the progress of natural resources projects that have participated in our trainings. We outline a case study that describes how this training approach can lead to place and context-based climate-informed action. Finally, we describe best practices based on our experience for engaging natural resources professionals and helping them increase their comfort with climate-informed planning

Assessing autophagy in archived tissue or how to capture autophagic flux from a tissue snapshot

Autophagy is a highly conserved degradation mechanism that is essential for maintaining cellular homeostasis. In human disease, autophagy pathways are frequently deregulated and there is immense interest in targeting autophagy for therapeutic approaches. Accordingly, there is a need to determine autophagic activity in human tissues, an endeavor that is hampered by the fact that autophagy is characterized by the flux of substrates whereas histology informs only about amounts and localization of substrates and regulators at a single timepoint. Despite this challenging task, considerable progress in establishing markers of autophagy has been made in recent years. The importance of establishing clear-cut autophagy markers that can be used for tissue analysis cannot be underestimated. In this review, we attempt to summarize known techniques to quantify autophagy in human tissue and their drawbacks. Furthermore, we provide some recommendations that should be taken into consideration to improve the reliability and the interpretation of autophagy biomarkers in human tissue samples.This work was supported by grants from the Bernese Cancer League, “Stiftung für klinisch-experimentelle Tumorforschung”, and the Werner and Hedy Berger-Janser Foundation for Cancer Research (to M.H.); by Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII) and FEDER funds from the EU (PI14/01085 and PI17/00093) and supported by Miguel Servet contract by ISCIII and FSE funds (CPII16/00023) (to M.M.); from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (RTI2018-096748-B-100 to N.A.); from the University Professor Training Fellowship, Ministry of Science, Innovation and University, Government of Spain (FPU17/00026) (to P.C.O); from the ISCIII (PI16/00090 and PI19/01266) and the Andalusian Government (Consejería de Igualdad, Salud y Políticas Sociales, PI-0198-2016) for their financial support, and from the Biomedical Research Network Center for Liver and Digestive Diseases (CIBERehd) founded by the ISCIII and co-financed by European Development Regional Fund (EDRF) “A way to achieve Europe” for their financial support (to J.M.), from Breakthrough Cancer Research, Ireland funding (to S.L.M); from the PI18/00442 grant integrated into the State Plan for R & D + I2013-2016 and funded by the ISCIII and the ERDF, a way to make Europe (to G.V.); from the Luxembourg National Research Fund (C18/BM/12670304/COMBATIC to B.J.); from the Northern Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), through the Competitiveness Factors Operational Programme (COMPETE) (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000013) and from the projects POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028159 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030782 by FEDER, through the COMPETE (to P.L.); from National funds, through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) (to P.L.); from ARRS—the Slovenian research agency, programme P1-0140: Proteolysis and its regulation (led by B. Turk) (to E.Ž.); from the Swiss Cancer Research (KFS-3360-02-2014) (to A.P, and M.P.T.) (KFS-3409-02-2014), and the Swiss National Science Foundation (31003A_173219) (to M.P.T.)

ARResT/Interrogate: an interactive immunoprofiler for IG/TR NGS data.

Abstract Motivation The study of immunoglobulins and T cell receptors using next-generation sequencing has finally allowed exploring immune repertoires and responses in their immense variability and complexity. Unsurprisingly, their analysis and interpretation is a highly convoluted task. Results We thus implemented ARResT/Interrogate, a web-based, interactive application. It can organize and filter large amounts of immunogenetic data by numerous criteria, calculate several relevant statistics, and present results in the form of multiple interconnected visualizations. Availability and Implementation ARResT/Interrogate is implemented primarily in R, and is freely available at http://bat.infspire.org/arrest/interrogate/ Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Deliverable 1.1 review document on the management of marine areas with particular regard on concepts, objectives, frameworks and tools to implement, monitor, and evaluate spatially managed areas

The main objectives if this document were to review the existing information on spatial management of marine areas, identifying the relevant policy objectives, to identify parameters linked to the success or failure of the various Spatially Managed marine Areas (SMAs) regimes, to report on methods and tools used in monitoring and evaluation of the state of SMAs, and to identify gaps and weaknesses in the existing frameworks in relation to the implementation, monitoring, evaluation and management of SMAs. The document is naturally divided in two sections: Section 1 reviews the concepts, objectives, drivers, policy and management framework, and extraneous factors related to the design, implementation and evaluation of SMAs; Section 2 reviews the tools and methods to monitor and evaluate seabed habitats and marine populations.peer-reviewe