Old songs can be as fresh as new: An ERP study on lyrics processing

Song familiarity has been systematically found to have a strong effect on music cognition, especially in aspects of emotion and memory; however, whether it would also influence the semantic processing of song lyrics is unclear. To address this, we asked subjects to listen to familiar and unfamiliar pop song excerpts, which were followed by visual target words semantically related or unrelated to the lyrics-final word, and to judge the concreteness of the targets. The ERP results revealed that larger N400 was elicited by unrelated visual targets compared with related ones, indicating that the subjects processed the meaning of the preceding lyrics even though that was not part of the required task. More importantly, the N400 relatedness effect did not vary with subjects' familiarity with the songs, suggesting that the subjects kept processing the meaning of the lyrics even though they had listened to the songs multiple times. The fact that repetition—the essential characteristic of familiar songs—did not diminish the meaning processing of lyrics suggests that lyrics and speech may differ at a higher communicative level

How does zinc oxide-eugenol compare to ferric sulphate as a pulpotomy material?

KIMThis study compared the clinical and radiographic responses after 3 months to a sterile compression technique with zinc oxide-eugenol or 15.5% ferric sulphate in 145 pulpotomised primary teeth in 30 children. In both groups of teeth the success rate was 100%. These short-term results suggest that either technique may be used

Multi-Lepton Collider Signatures of Heavy Dirac and Majorana Neutrinos

We discuss the possibility of observing multi-lepton signals at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) from the production and decay of heavy Standard Model (SM) singlet neutrinos added in extensions of SM to explain the observed light neutrino masses by seesaw mechanism. In particular, we analyze two `smoking gun' signals depending on the Dirac or Majorana nature of the heavy neutrino: (i) for Majorana case, the same-sign di-lepton signal which can be used as a probe of lepton-number violation, and (ii) for Dirac case, the tri-lepton signal which conserves lepton number but may violate lepton flavor. Within a minimal Left-Right symmetric framework in which these additional neutrino states arise naturally, we find that in both cases, the signals can be identified with virtually no background beyond a TeV, and the heavy gauge boson W_R can be discovered in this process. This analysis also provides a direct way to probe the nature of seesaw physics involving the SM singlets at TeV scale, and in particular, to distinguish type-I seesaw with purely Majorana heavy neutrinos from inverse seesaw with pseudo-Dirac counterparts.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures; typo in eq. 5 fixed; matches published versio

Isolation and characterization of cellulose degrading ability in Paenibacillus isolates from landfill leachate

Aims: Cellulases are enzymes that convert cellulose into glucose molecules, and are produced by various microorganisms in the environment. Due to their importance to the biofuel industry, there is a need to screen for more efficient varieties of cellulases. In this study, leachate samples from a landfill site were screened for cellulolytic bacteria. Methodology and results: Leachate samples obtained from a landfill collection pond were cultured in an enriched cellulose medium. Two cellulolytic isolates, designated MAEPY1 and MAEPY2, were isolated and further characterized. Phenotypic profiles and phylogenetic analyses using sequences of 16S rRNA, gyrB and whole genome suggested that these isolates are new strains of the Paenibacillus genera. The crude enzyme extracts from both isolates have cellulose degradation activity at approximately 0.1-0.2 IU/mg under working conditions of pH 6 and 55 °C. Assays using other lignocellulosic substrates showed that the crude enzyme extracts also have high xylan degradation activity. Conclusion, significance and impact of study: Paenibacillus sp. are known to produce multiple enzymes for lignocellulolytic degradation and the present results suggest that isolates described in this study, MAEPY1 and MAEPY2, are excellent candidates deserving further study as potential producers of efficient cellulases for use in industries associated with cellulosic biomass