Frontal white matter tracts sustaining speech production in primary progressive aphasia

In primary progressive aphasia (PPA), speech and language difficulties are caused by neurodegeneration of specific brain networks. In the nonfluent/agrammatic variant (nfvPPA), motor speech and grammatical deficits are associated with atrophy in a left fronto-insular-striatal network previously implicated in speech production. In vivo dissection of the crossing white matter (WM) tracts within this "speech production network" is complex and has rarely been performed in health or in PPA. We hypothesized that damage to these tracts would be specific to nfvPPA and would correlate with differential aspects of the patients' fluency abilities. We prospectively studied 25 PPA and 21 healthy individuals who underwent extensive cognitive testing and 3 T MRI. Using residual bootstrap Q-ball probabilistic tractography on high angular resolution diffusion-weighted imaging (HARDI), we reconstructed pathways connecting posterior inferior frontal, inferior premotor, insula, supplementary motor area (SMA) complex, striatum, and standard ventral and dorsal language pathways. We extracted tract-specific diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics to assess changes across PPA variants and perform brain-behavioral correlations. Significant WM changes in the left intrafrontal and frontostriatal pathways were found in nfvPPA, but not in the semantic or logopenic variants. Correlations between tract-specific DTI metrics with cognitive scores confirmed the specific involvement of this anterior-dorsal network in fluency and suggested a preferential role of a posterior premotor-SMA pathway in motor speech. This study shows that left WM pathways connecting the speech production network are selectively damaged in nfvPPA and suggests that different tracts within this system are involved in subcomponents of fluency. These findings emphasize the emerging role of diffusion imaging in the differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases

The SKA and "High-Resolution" Science

"High-resolution", or "long-baseline", science with the SKA and its precursors covers a broad range of topics in astrophysics. In several research areas, the coupling between improved brightness sensitivity of the SKA and a sub-arcsecond resolution would uncover truly unique avenues and opportunities for studying extreme states of matter, vicinity of compact relativistic objects, and complex processes in astrophysical plasmas. At the same time, long baselines would secure excellent positional and astrometric measurements with the SKA and critically enhance SKA image fidelity at all scales. The latter aspect may also have a substantial impact on the survey speed of the SKA, thus affecting several key science projects of the instrument.Comment: JENAM-2010: Invited talk at JENAM session S7: The Square Kilometre Array: Paving the way for the new 21st century radio astronomy paradigm; 9 page

A runaway collision in a young star cluster as the origin of the brightest supernova

Supernova 2006gy in the galaxy NGC 1260 is the most luminous one recorded \cite{2006CBET..644....1Q, 2006CBET..647....1H, 2006CBET..648....1P, 2006CBET..695....1F}. Its progenitor might have been a very massive ($>100$ \msun) star \cite{2006astro.ph.12617S}, but that is incompatible with hydrogen in the spectrum of the supernova, because stars $>40$ \msun are believed to have shed their hydrogen envelopes several hundred thousand years before the explosion \cite{2005A&A...429..581M}. Alternatively, the progenitor might have arisen from the merger of two massive stars \cite{2007ApJ...659L..13O}. Here we show that the collision frequency of massive stars in a dense and young cluster (of the kind to be expected near the center of a galaxy) is sufficient to provide a reasonable chance that SN 2006gy resulted from such a bombardment. If this is the correct explanation, then we predict that when the supernova fades (in a year or so) a dense cluster of massive stars becomes visible at the site of the explosion

How classical is the quantum universe?

We discuss two topics that are usually considered to be exclusively "quantum": the Schroedinger equation, and the uncertainty principle. We show (or rather recall) that the Schroedinger equation can be derived from Hamilton's equations using the metaplectic representation. We also show that the uncertainty principle, stated in the form of the Robertson-Schroedinger-Heisenberg inequalities can be formulated in perfectly classical terms using the topological notion of symplectic capacity

The influence of semantic and phonological factors on syntactic decisions: An event-related brain potential study

During language production and comprehension, information about a word's syntactic properties is sometimes needed. While the decision about the grammatical gender of a word requires access to syntactic knowledge, it has also been hypothesized that semantic (i.e., biological gender) or phonological information (i.e., sound regularities) may influence this decision. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while native speakers of German processed written words that were or were not semantically and/or phonologically marked for gender. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants were faster in making a gender decision when words were semantically and/or phonologically gender marked than when this was not the case, although the phonological effects were less clear. In conclusion, our data provide evidence that even though participants performed a grammatical gender decision, this task can be influenced by semantic and phonological factors

Tree migration-rates : narrowing the gap between inferred post-glacial rates and projected rates

Faster-than-expected post-glacial migration rates of trees have puzzled ecologists for a long time. In Europe, post-glacial migration is assumed to have started from the three southern European peninsulas (southern refugia), where large areas remained free of permafrost and ice at the peak of the last glaciation. However, increasing palaeobotanical evidence for the presence of isolated tree populations in more northerly microrefugia has started to change this perception. Here we use the Northern Eurasian Plant Macrofossil Database and palaeoecological literature to show that post-glacial migration rates for trees may have been substantially lower (60–260 m yr–1) than those estimated by assuming migration from southern refugia only (115–550 m yr–1), and that early-successional trees migrated faster than mid- and late-successional trees. Post-glacial migration rates are in good agreement with those recently projected for the future with a population dynamical forest succession and dispersal model, mainly for early-successional trees and under optimal conditions. Although migration estimates presented here may be conservative because of our assumption of uniform dispersal, tree migration-rates clearly need reconsideration. We suggest that small outlier populations may be a key factor in understanding past migration rates and in predicting potential future range-shifts. The importance of outlier populations in the past may have an analogy in the future, as many tree species have been planted beyond their natural ranges, with a more beneficial microclimate than their regional surroundings. Therefore, climate-change-induced range-shifts in the future might well be influenced by such microrefugia

Secular evolution versus hierarchical merging: galaxy evolution along the Hubble sequence, in the field and rich environments

In the current galaxy formation scenarios, two physical phenomena are invoked to build disk galaxies: hierarchical mergers and more quiescent external gas accretion, coming from intergalactic filaments. Although both are thought to play a role, their relative importance is not known precisely. Here we consider the constraints on these scenarios brought by the observation-deduced star formation history on the one hand, and observed dynamics of galaxies on the other hand: the high frequency of bars and spirals, the high frequency of perturbations such as lopsidedness, warps, or polar rings. All these observations are not easily reproduced in simulations without important gas accretion. N-body simulations taking into account the mass exchange between stars and gas through star formation and feedback, can reproduce the data, only if galaxies double their mass in about 10 Gyr through gas accretion. Warped and polar ring systems are good tracers of this accretion, which occurs from cold gas which has not been virialised in the system's potential. The relative importance of these phenomena are compared between the field and rich clusters. The respective role of mergers and gas accretion vary considerably with environment.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, review paper to "Penetrating Bars through Masks of Cosmic Dust: the Hubble Tuning Fork Strikes a New Note", Pilanesberg, ed. D. Block et al., Kluwe

A review of elliptical and disc galaxy structure, and modern scaling laws

A century ago, in 1911 and 1913, Plummer and then Reynolds introduced their models to describe the radial distribution of stars in `nebulae'. This article reviews the progress since then, providing both an historical perspective and a contemporary review of the stellar structure of bulges, discs and elliptical galaxies. The quantification of galaxy nuclei, such as central mass deficits and excess nuclear light, plus the structure of dark matter halos and cD galaxy envelopes, are discussed. Issues pertaining to spiral galaxies including dust, bulge-to-disc ratios, bulgeless galaxies, bars and the identification of pseudobulges are also reviewed. An array of modern scaling relations involving sizes, luminosities, surface brightnesses and stellar concentrations are presented, many of which are shown to be curved. These 'redshift zero' relations not only quantify the behavior and nature of galaxies in the Universe today, but are the modern benchmark for evolutionary studies of galaxies, whether based on observations, N-body-simulations or semi-analytical modelling. For example, it is shown that some of the recently discovered compact elliptical galaxies at 1.5 < z < 2.5 may be the bulges of modern disc galaxies.Comment: Condensed version (due to Contract) of an invited review article to appear in "Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems"(www.springer.com/astronomy/book/978-90-481-8818-5). 500+ references incl. many somewhat forgotten, pioneer papers. Original submission to Springer: 07-June-201

Cold gas accretion in galaxies

Evidence for the accretion of cold gas in galaxies has been rapidly accumulating in the past years. HI observations of galaxies and their environment have brought to light new facts and phenomena which are evidence of ongoing or recent accretion: 1) A large number of galaxies are accompanied by gas-rich dwarfs or are surrounded by HI cloud complexes, tails and filaments. It may be regarded as direct evidence of cold gas accretion in the local universe. It is probably the same kind of phenomenon of material infall as the stellar streams observed in the halos of our galaxy and M31. 2) Considerable amounts of extra-planar HI have been found in nearby spiral galaxies. While a large fraction of this gas is produced by galactic fountains, it is likely that a part of it is of extragalactic origin. 3) Spirals are known to have extended and warped outer layers of HI. It is not clear how these have formed, and how and for how long the warps can be sustained. Gas infall has been proposed as the origin. 4) The majority of galactic disks are lopsided in their morphology as well as in their kinematics. Also here recent accretion has been advocated as a possible cause. In our view, accretion takes place both through the arrival and merging of gas-rich satellites and through gas infall from the intergalactic medium (IGM). The infall may have observable effects on the disk such as bursts of star formation and lopsidedness. We infer a mean ``visible'' accretion rate of cold gas in galaxies of at least 0.2 Msol/yr. In order to reach the accretion rates needed to sustain the observed star formation (~1 Msol/yr), additional infall of large amounts of gas from the IGM seems to be required.Comment: To appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics Reviews. 34 pages. Full-resolution version available at http://www.astron.nl/~oosterlo/accretionRevie

The stellar and sub-stellar IMF of simple and composite populations

The current knowledge on the stellar IMF is documented. It appears to become top-heavy when the star-formation rate density surpasses about 0.1Msun/(yr pc^3) on a pc scale and it may become increasingly bottom-heavy with increasing metallicity and in increasingly massive early-type galaxies. It declines quite steeply below about 0.07Msun with brown dwarfs (BDs) and very low mass stars having their own IMF. The most massive star of mass mmax formed in an embedded cluster with stellar mass Mecl correlates strongly with Mecl being a result of gravitation-driven but resource-limited growth and fragmentation induced starvation. There is no convincing evidence whatsoever that massive stars do form in isolation. Various methods of discretising a stellar population are introduced: optimal sampling leads to a mass distribution that perfectly represents the exact form of the desired IMF and the mmax-to-Mecl relation, while random sampling results in statistical variations of the shape of the IMF. The observed mmax-to-Mecl correlation and the small spread of IMF power-law indices together suggest that optimally sampling the IMF may be the more realistic description of star formation than random sampling from a universal IMF with a constant upper mass limit. Composite populations on galaxy scales, which are formed from many pc scale star formation events, need to be described by the integrated galactic IMF. This IGIMF varies systematically from top-light to top-heavy in dependence of galaxy type and star formation rate, with dramatic implications for theories of galaxy formation and evolution.Comment: 167 pages, 37 figures, 3 tables, published in Stellar Systems and Galactic Structure, Vol.5, Springer. This revised version is consistent with the published version and includes additional references and minor additions to the text as well as a recomputed Table 1. ISBN 978-90-481-8817-