6,115 research outputs found
Extinction of cue-evoked food seeking recruits a GABAergic interneuron ensemble in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex of mice
Animals must quickly adapt food-seeking strategies to locate nutrient sources in dynamically changing environments. Learned associations between food and environmental cues that predict its availability promote food-seeking behaviors. However, when such cues cease to predict food availability, animals undergo 'extinction' learning, resulting in the inhibition of food-seeking responses. Repeatedly activated sets of neurons, or 'neuronal ensembles', in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) are recruited following appetitive conditioning and undergo physiological adaptations thought to encode cue-reward associations. However, little is known about how the recruitment and intrinsic excitability of such dmPFC ensembles are modulated by extinction learning. Here, we used in vivo 2-Photon imaging in male Fos-GFP mice that express green fluorescent protein (GFP) in recently behaviorally-activated neurons to determine the recruitment of activated pyramidal and GABAergic interneuron mPFC ensembles during extinction. During extinction, we revealed a persistent activation of a subset of interneurons which emerged from a wider population of interneurons activated during the initial extinction session. This activation pattern was not observed in pyramidal cells, and extinction learning did not modulate the excitability properties of activated neurons. Moreover, extinction learning reduced the likelihood of reactivation of pyramidal cells activated during the initial extinction session. Our findings illuminate novel neuronal activation patterns in the dmPFC underlying extinction of food-seeking, and in particular, highlight an important role for interneuron ensembles in this inhibitory form of learning
Determining the fraction of reddened quasars in COSMOS with multiple selection techniques from X-ray to radio wavelengths
The sub-population of quasars reddened by intrinsic or intervening clouds of
dust are known to be underrepresented in optical quasar surveys. By defining a
complete parent sample of the brightest and spatially unresolved quasars in the
COSMOS field, we quantify to which extent this sub-population is fundamental to
our understanding of the true population of quasars. By using the available
multiwavelength data of various surveys in the COSMOS field, we built a parent
sample of 33 quasars brighter than mag, identified by reliable X-ray to
radio wavelength selection techniques. Spectroscopic follow-up with the
NOT/ALFOSC was carried out for four candidate quasars that had not been
targeted previously to obtain a 100\% redshift completeness of the sample. The
population of high quasars (HAQs), a specific sub-population of quasars
selected from optical/near-infrared photometry, is found to contribute
of the parent sample. The full population of bright spatially
unresolved quasars represented by our parent sample consists of
reddened quasars defined by having , and
of the sample having assuming the extinction
curve of the Small Magellanic Cloud. We show that the HAQ selection works well
for selecting reddened quasars, but some are missed because their optical
spectra are too blue to pass the color cut in the HAQ selection. This is
either due to a low degree of dust reddening or anomalous spectra. We find that
the fraction of quasars with contributing light from the host galaxy is most
dominant at . At higher redshifts the population of spatially
unresolved quasars selected by our parent sample is found to be representative
of the full population at mag. This work quantifies the bias against
reddened quasars in studies that are based solely on optical surveys.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&A. The ArXiv
abstract has been shortened for it to be printabl
Using Elimination Theory to construct Rigid Matrices
The rigidity of a matrix A for target rank r is the minimum number of entries
of A that must be changed to ensure that the rank of the altered matrix is at
most r. Since its introduction by Valiant (1977), rigidity and similar
rank-robustness functions of matrices have found numerous applications in
circuit complexity, communication complexity, and learning complexity. Almost
all nxn matrices over an infinite field have a rigidity of (n-r)^2. It is a
long-standing open question to construct infinite families of explicit matrices
even with superlinear rigidity when r = Omega(n).
In this paper, we construct an infinite family of complex matrices with the
largest possible, i.e., (n-r)^2, rigidity. The entries of an n x n matrix in
this family are distinct primitive roots of unity of orders roughly exp(n^2 log
n). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first family of concrete (but not
entirely explicit) matrices having maximal rigidity and a succinct algebraic
description.
Our construction is based on elimination theory of polynomial ideals. In
particular, we use results on the existence of polynomials in elimination
ideals with effective degree upper bounds (effective Nullstellensatz). Using
elementary algebraic geometry, we prove that the dimension of the affine
variety of matrices of rigidity at most k is exactly n^2-(n-r)^2+k. Finally, we
use elimination theory to examine whether the rigidity function is
semi-continuous.Comment: 25 Pages, minor typos correcte
Spectroscopy at B-factories Using Hard Photon Emission
The process of hard photon emission by initial electrons (positrons) at
B-factories is discussed. It is shown that studies of the bottomonium
spectroscopy will be feasible for the planned integrated luminosity of the
B-factory experiments.Comment: 9 pages, Latex, 1 fugure, Submitted to Int.Jour.Mod.Phys.
Formation Scenario for Wide and Close Binary Systems
Fragmentation and binary formation processes are studied using
three-dimensional resistive MHD nested grid simulations. Starting with a
Bonnor-Ebert isothermal cloud rotating in a uniform magnetic field, we
calculate the cloud evolution from the molecular cloud core (n=10^4 cm^-3) to
the stellar core (n \simeq 10^22 cm^-3). We calculated 147 models with
different initial magnetic, rotational, and thermal energies, and the
amplitudes of the non-axisymmetric perturbation. In a collapsing cloud,
fragmentation is mainly controlled by the initial ratio of the rotational to
the magnetic energy, regardless of the initial thermal energy and amplitude of
the non-axisymmetric perturbation. When the clouds have large rotational
energies in relation to magnetic energies, fragmentation occurs in the
low-density evolution phase (10^12 cm^-3 < n < 10^15 cm^-3) with separations of
3-300 AU. Fragments that appeared in this phase are expected to evolve into
wide binary systems. On the other hand, fragmentation does not occur in the
low-density evolution phase, when initial clouds have large magnetic energies
in relation to the rotational energies. In these clouds, fragmentation only
occurs in the high-density evolution phase (n > 10^17 cm^-3) after the clouds
experience significant reduction of the magnetic field owing to Ohmic
dissipation in the period of 10^12 cm^-3 < n < 10^15 cm^-3. Fragments appearing
in this phase have separations of < 0.3 AU, and are expected to evolve into
close binary systems. As a result, we found two typical fragmentation epochs,
which cause different stellar separations. Although these typical separations
are disturbed in the subsequent gas accretion phase, we might be able to
observe two peaks of binary separations in extremely young stellar groups.Comment: 45 pages,12 figures, Submitted to ApJ, For high resolution figures
see
http://www2.scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~machidam/protostar/proto/main-astroph.pd
Extreme summers impact cropland and grassland soil microbiomes
The increasing frequency of extreme weather events highlights the need to understand how soil microbiomes respond to such disturbances. Here, metagenomics was used to investigate the effects of future climate scenarios (+0.6â°C warming and altered precipitation) on soil microbiomes during the summers of 2014-2019. Unexpectedly, Central Europe experienced extreme heatwaves and droughts during 2018-2019, causing significant impacts on the structure, assembly, and function of soil microbiomes. Specifically, the relative abundance of Actinobacteria (bacteria), Eurotiales (fungi), and Vilmaviridae (viruses) was significantly increased in both cropland and grassland. The contribution of homogeneous selection to bacterial community assembly increased significantly from 40.0% in normal summers to 51.9% in extreme summers. Moreover, genes associated with microbial antioxidant (Ni-SOD), cell wall biosynthesis (glmSMU, murABCDEF), heat shock proteins (GroES/GroEL, Hsp40), and sporulation (spoIID, spoVK) were identified as potential contributors to drought-enriched taxa, and their expressions were confirmed by metatranscriptomics in 2022. The impact of extreme summers was further evident in the taxonomic profiles of 721 recovered metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). Annotation of contigs and MAGs suggested that Actinobacteria may have a competitive advantage in extreme summers due to the biosynthesis of geosmin and 2-methylisoborneol. Future climate scenarios caused a similar pattern of changes in microbial communities as extreme summers, but to a much lesser extent. Soil microbiomes in grassland showed greater resilience to climate change than those in cropland. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the response of soil microbiomes to extreme summers
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