82 research outputs found
Regularity in speech rhythm as a social coalition signal
First published: 01 August 2019Regular rhythm facilitates audiomotor entrainment and synchronization in motor behavior and vocalizations
between individuals. As rhythm entrainment between interacting agents is correlated with higher levels of cooperation
and prosocial affiliative behavior, humans can potentiallymap regular speech rhythmonto higher cooperation
and friendliness between interacting individuals.We tested this hypothesis at two rhythmic levels: pulse (recurrent
acoustic events) and meter (hierarchical structuring of pulses based on their relative salience).We asked the listeners
to make judgments of the hostile or collaborative attitude of two interacting agents who exhibit either regular
or irregular pulse (Experiment 1) or meter (Experiment 2). The results confirmed a link between the perception of
social affiliation and rhythmicity: evenly distributed pulses (vowel onsets) and consistent grouping of pulses into
recurrent hierarchical patterns are more likely to be perceived as cooperation signals. People are more sensitive to
regularity at the level of pulse than at the level of meter, and they are more confident when they associate cooperation
with isochrony in pulse. The evolutionary origin of this faculty is possibly the need to transmit and perceive
coalition information in social groups of human ancestors. We discuss the implications of these findings for the
emergence of speech in humans.The authors acknowledge financial support from
the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
(MINECO), through the âSevero Ochoaâ
Programme for Centres/Units of Excellence in
R&D (SEV-2015-0490) to the BCBL, from European
Commission as Marie SkĆodowska-Curie fellowDLV-
792331 to L.P., fromMinisterio de Ciencia
E Innovacion by grant PSI2017-82563-P to A.G.S.,
and grant RTI2018-098317-B-I00 to M.O
Cleansing the world of the germ of laziness: hygiene, sanitation, and the Javanese population in Suriname
Primordial Nucleosynthesis for the New Cosmology: Determining Uncertainties and Examining Concordance
Big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have
a long history together in the standard cosmology. The general concordance
between the predicted and observed light element abundances provides a direct
probe of the universal baryon density. Recent CMB anisotropy measurements,
particularly the observations performed by the WMAP satellite, examine this
concordance by independently measuring the cosmic baryon density. Key to this
test of concordance is a quantitative understanding of the uncertainties in the
BBN light element abundance predictions. These uncertainties are dominated by
systematic errors in nuclear cross sections. We critically analyze the cross
section data, producing representations that describe this data and its
uncertainties, taking into account the correlations among data, and explicitly
treating the systematic errors between data sets. Using these updated nuclear
inputs, we compute the new BBN abundance predictions, and quantitatively
examine their concordance with observations. Depending on what deuterium
observations are adopted, one gets the following constraints on the baryon
density: OmegaBh^2=0.0229\pm0.0013 or OmegaBh^2 = 0.0216^{+0.0020}_{-0.0021} at
68% confidence, fixing N_{\nu,eff}=3.0. Concerns over systematics in helium and
lithium observations limit the confidence constraints based on this data
provide. With new nuclear cross section data, light element abundance
observations and the ever increasing resolution of the CMB anisotropy, tighter
constraints can be placed on nuclear and particle astrophysics. ABRIDGEDComment: 54 pages, 20 figures, 5 tables v2: reflects PRD version minor changes
to text and reference
Search for Tensor, Vector, and Scalar Polarizations in the Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background
The detection of gravitational waves with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo has enabled novel tests of general relativity, including direct study of the polarization of gravitational waves. While general relativity allows for only two tensor gravitational-wave polarizations, general metric theories can additionally predict two vector and two scalar polarizations. The polarization of gravitational waves is encoded in the spectral shape of the stochastic gravitational-wave background, formed by the superposition of cosmological and individually unresolved astrophysical sources. Using data recorded by Advanced LIGO during its first observing run, we search for a stochastic background of generically polarized gravitational waves. We find no evidence for a background of any polarization, and place the first direct bounds on the contributions of vector and scalar polarizations to the stochastic background. Under log-uniform priors for the energy in each polarization, we limit the energy densities of tensor, vector, and scalar modes at 95% credibility to Ω0T<5.58Ă10-8, Ω0V<6.35Ă10-8, and Ω0S<1.08Ă10-7 at a reference frequency f0=25 Hz. © 2018 American Physical Society
Detectable clonal mosaicism and its relationship to aging and cancer
In an analysis of 31,717 cancer cases and 26,136 cancer-free controls from 13 genome-wide association studies, we observed large chromosomal abnormalities in a subset of clones in DNA obtained from blood or buccal samples. We observed mosaic abnormalities, either aneuploidy or copy-neutral loss of heterozygosity, of >2 Mb in size in autosomes of 517 individuals (0.89%), with abnormal cell proportions of between 7% and 95%. In cancer-free individuals, frequency increased with age, from 0.23% under 50 years to 1.91% between 75 and 79 years (P = 4.8 Ă 10(-8)). Mosaic abnormalities were more frequent in individuals with solid tumors (0.97% versus 0.74% in cancer-free individuals; odds ratio (OR) = 1.25; P = 0.016), with stronger association with cases who had DNA collected before diagnosis or treatment (OR = 1.45; P = 0.0005). Detectable mosaicism was also more common in individuals for whom DNA was collected at least 1 year before diagnosis with leukemia compared to cancer-free individuals (OR = 35.4; P = 3.8 Ă 10(-11)). These findings underscore the time-dependent nature of somatic events in the etiology of cancer and potentially other late-onset diseases
On the progenitor of binary neutron star merger GW170817
On 2017 August 17 the merger of two compact objects with masses consistent with two neutron stars was discovered through gravitational-wave (GW170817), gamma-ray (GRB 170817A), and optical (SSS17a/AT 2017gfo) observations. The optical source was associated with the early-type galaxy NGC 4993 at a distance of just âŒ40 Mpc, consistent with the gravitational-wave measurement, and the merger was localized to be at a projected distance of âŒ2 kpc away from the galaxy's center. We use this minimal set of facts and the mass posteriors of the two neutron stars to derive the first constraints on the progenitor of GW170817 at the time of the second supernova (SN). We generate simulated progenitor populations and follow the three-dimensional kinematic evolution from binary neutron star (BNS) birth to the merger time, accounting for pre-SN galactic motion, for considerably different input distributions of the progenitor mass, pre-SN semimajor axis, and SN-kick velocity. Though not considerably tight, we find these constraints to be comparable to those for Galactic BNS progenitors. The derived constraints are very strongly influenced by the requirement of keeping the binary bound after the second SN and having the merger occur relatively close to the center of the galaxy. These constraints are insensitive to the galaxy's star formation history, provided the stellar populations are older than 1 Gyr
Book Review: Gagandip Cheema, Western Medicine and Colonial Punjab: A Socio-cultural Perspective (1849â1901)
HIV and AIDS in relation to other pandemics
Among the viruses plaguing humans, HIV is a recent acquisition. Its outstanding success as an infection poses immense scientific challenges to human health and raises the question âWhat comes next?
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