Background complexity can mitigate poor camouflage

Avoiding detection through camouflage is often key to survival. However, an animal's appearance is not the only factor affecting conspicuousness: background complexity also alters detectability. This has been experimentally demonstrated for both artificially patterned backgrounds in the lab and natural backgrounds in the wild, but only for targets that already match the background well. Do habitats of high visual complexity provide concealment to even relatively poorly-camouflaged animals? Using artificial prey which differed in their degrees of background matching to tree bark, we were able to determine their survival, under bird predation, with respect to the natural complexity of the background. The latter was quantified using low-level vision metrics of feature congestion (or 'visual clutter') adapted for bird vision. Higher background orientation clutter (edges with varying orientation) reduced the detectability of all but the poorest background-matching camouflaged treatments; higher background luminance clutter (varying achromatic lightness) reduced average mortality for all treatments. Our results suggest that poorer camouflage can be mitigated by more complex backgrounds, with implications for both camouflage evolution and habitat preferences.Data file is: Rowe_at_al_data.txt Format: tab-delimited text Created: 24/03/2021 Description of variables (columns) Block "Experimental block (different part of study site on different dates): factor with 27 levels, 1 to 27." Treatment "Experimental treatment (varied average luminance): factor with 9 levels (1 = darkest, 9 = lightest)." Replicate "Replicate number, factor with 10 levels, nested within Block and Treatment." Censored "Binary code: 1 = bird predation, 0 = disappearance for any other reason (e.g. invertebrate predation) or survival to the end of the trial." Day "Day of disappearance: numeric, taking values 0 to 5. 0 indicates the replicate was lost before deployment (n=3)." Notes Plain text description of fate of target. contrast.fc Luminance contrast metric of feature congestion. colour.fc Colour contrast metric of feature congestion. orientation.fc Edge orientation metric of feature congestion. Funding provided by: Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council, UKCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000268Award Number: BB/S00873X/

Partial Dynamical Symmetry in the Symplectic Shell Model

We present an example of a partial dynamical symmetry (PDS) in an interacting fermion system and demonstrate the close relationship of the associated Hamiltonians with a realistic quadrupole-quadrupole interaction, thus shedding new light on this important interaction. Specifically, in the framework of the symplectic shell model of nuclei, we prove the existence of a family of fermionic Hamiltonians with partial SU(3) symmetry. We outline the construction process for the PDS eigenstates with good symmetry and give analytic expressions for the energies of these states and E2 transition strengths between them. Characteristics of both pure and mixed-symmetry PDS eigenstates are discussed and the resulting spectra and transition strengths are compared to those of real nuclei. The PDS concept is shown to be relevant to the description of prolate, oblate, as well as triaxially deformed nuclei. Similarities and differences between the fermion case and the previously established partial SU(3) symmetry in the Interacting Boson Model are considered.Comment: 9 figure

Adult attachment style across individuals and role-relationships: Avoidance is relationship-specific, but anxiety shows greater generalizability

A generalisability study examined the hypotheses that avoidant attachment, reflecting the representation of others, should be more relationship-specific (vary across relationships more than across individuals), while attachment anxiety, reflecting self-representation, should be more generalisable across a person’s relationships. College students responded to 6-item questionnaire measures of these variables for 5 relationships (mother, father, best same-gender friend, romantic partner or best opposite-gender friend, other close person), on 3 (N = 120) or 2 (N = 77) occasions separated by a few weeks. Results supported the hypotheses, with the person variance component being larger than the relationship-specific component for anxiety, and the opposite happening for avoidance. Anxiety therefore seems not to be as relationship-specific as previous research suggested. Possible reasons for discrepancies between the current and previous studies are discussed

Identifying the Irritability Dimension of ODD: Application of a Modified Bifactor Model Across Five Large Community Samples of Children

The importance of irritability, as measured among the symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), has dramatically come to the fore in recent years. New diagnostic categories rely on the distinct clinical utility of irritability, and models of psychopathology suggest it plays a key role in explaining developmental pathways within and between disorders into adulthood. However, only a few studies have tested multidimensional models of ODD, and the results have been conflicting. Further, consensus has not been reached regarding which symptoms best identify irritability. The present analyses use 5 large community data sets with 5 different measures of parent-reported ODD, comprising 16,280 youth in total, to help resolve these questions. Across the samples, ages ranged from 5 to 18, and included both boys and girls. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that a modified bifactor model showed the best fit in each data set. The structure of the model included 2 correlated specific factors (irritability and oppositional behavior) in addition to a general ODD factor. In 4 models, the best fit was obtained using the items “being touchy,” “angry,” and “often losing temper” as indicators of irritability. Given the structure of the models and the generally high correlation between the specific dimensions, the results suggest that irritability may not be sufficiently distinct from oppositional behavior to support an entirely independent diagnosis. Rather, irritability may be better understood as a dimension of psychopathology that can be distinguished within ODD, and which may be related to particular forms of psychopathology apart from ODD

Are There Quantum Effects Coming from Outside Space-time? Nonlocality, free will and "no many-worlds"

Observing the violation of Bell's inequality tells us something about all possible future theories: they must all predict nonlocal correlations. Hence Nature is nonlocal. After an elementary introduction to nonlocality and a brief review of some recent experiments, I argue that Nature's nonlocality together with the existence of free will is incompatible with the many-worlds view of quantum physics.Comment: Talk presented at the meeting "Is Science Compatible with Our Desire for Freedom?" organised by the Social Trends Institute at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Octobre 201

Variable cellular ivacaftor concentrations in people with cystic fibrosis on modulator therapy

The development of CFTR modulators has transformed the care of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). Although the clinical efficacy of modulators depends on their concentrations in target tissues, the pharmacokinetic properties of these drugs in epithelia are not utilized to guide patient care. We developed assays to quantitate ivacaftor in cells and plasma from patients on modulator therapy, and our analyses revealed that cellular ivacaftor concentrations differ from plasma concentrations measured concurrently, with evidence of in vivo accumulation of ivacaftor in the cells of patients. While the nature of this study is exploratory and limited by a small number of patients, these findings suggest that techniques to measure modulator concentrations in vivo will be essential to interpreting their clinical impact, particularly given the evidence that ivacaftor concentrations influence the activity and stability of restored CFTR protein

Quantum entanglement with acousto-optic modulators: 2-photon beatings and Bell experiments with moving beamsplitters

We present an experiment testing quantum correlations with frequency shifted photons. We test Bell inequality with 2-photon interferometry where we replace the beamsplitters by acousto-optic modulators, which are equivalent to moving beamsplitters. We measure the 2-photon beatings induced by the frequency shifts, and we propose a cryptographic scheme in relation. Finally, setting the experiment in a relativistic configuration, we demonstrate that the quantum correlations are not only independent of the distance but also of the time ordering between the two single-photon measurements.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figure

Fully-Renormalized QRPA fulfills Ikeda sum rule exactly

The renormalized quasiparticle-RPA is reformulated for even-even nuclei using restrictions imposed by the commutativity of the phonon creation operator with the total particle number operator. This new version, Fully-Renormalized QRPA (FR-QRPA), is free from the spurious low-energy solutions. Analytical proof is given that the Ikeda sum rule is fullfiled within the FR-QRPA.Comment: 9 page