Reading faces: differential lateral gaze bias in processing canine and human facial expressions in dogs and 4-year-old children

Sensitivity to the emotions of others provides clear biological advantages. However, in the case of heterospecific relationships, such as that existing between dogs and humans, there are additional challenges since some elements of the expression of emotions are species-specific. Given that faces provide important visual cues for communicating emotional state in both humans and dogs, and that processing of emotions is subject to brain lateralisation, we investigated lateral gaze bias in adult dogs when presented with pictures of expressive human and dog faces. Our analysis revealed clear differences in laterality of eye movements in dogs towards conspecific faces according to the emotional valence of the expressions. Differences were also found towards human faces, but to a lesser extent. For comparative purpose, a similar experiment was also run with 4-year-old children and it was observed that they showed differential processing of facial expressions compared to dogs, suggesting a species-dependent engagement of the right or left hemisphere in processing emotions

Imaging-guided chest biopsies: techniques and clinical results

Background This article aims to comprehensively describe indications, contraindications, technical aspects, diagnostic accuracy and complications of percutaneous lung biopsy. Methods Imaging-guided biopsy currently represents one of the predominant methods for obtaining tissue specimens in patients with lung nodules; in many cases treatment protocols are based on histological information; thus, biopsy is frequently performed, when technically feasible, or in case other techniques (such as bronchoscopy with lavage) are inconclusive. Results Although a coaxial system is suitable in any case, two categories of needles can be used: fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) and core-needle biopsy (CNB), with the latter demonstrated to have a slightly higher overall sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. Conclusion Percutaneous lung biopsy is a safe procedure even though a few complications are possible: pneumothorax, pulmonary haemorrhage and haemoptysis are common complications, while air embolism and seeding are rare, but potentially fatal complications

Deferred imitation and declarative memory in domestic dogs

This study demonstrates for the first time deferred imitation of novel actions in dogs (Canis familiaris) with retention intervals of 1.5 min and memory of familiar actions with intervals ranging from 0.40 to 10 min. Eight dogs were trained using the 'Do as I do' method to match their own behaviour to actions displayed by a human demonstrator. They were then trained to wait for a short interval to elapse before they were allowed to show the previously demonstrated action. The dogs were then tested for memory of the demonstrated behaviour in various conditions, also with the so-called two-action procedure and in a control condition without demonstration. Dogs were typically able to reproduce familiar actions after intervals as long as 10 min, even if distracted by different activities during the retention interval and were able to match their behaviour to the demonstration of a novel action after a delay of 1 min. In the two-action procedure, dogs were typically able to imitate the novel demonstrated behaviour after retention intervals of 1.5 min. The ability to encode and recall an action after a delay implies that facilitative processes cannot exhaustively explain the observed behavioural similarity and that dogs' imitative abilities are rather based on an enduring mental representation of the demonstration. Furthermore, the ability to imitate a novel action after a delay without previous practice suggests presence of declarative memory in dogs. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Formation of regulatory modules by local sequence duplication

Turnover of regulatory sequence and function is an important part of molecular evolution. But what are the modes of sequence evolution leading to rapid formation and loss of regulatory sites? Here, we show that a large fraction of neighboring transcription factor binding sites in the fly genome have formed from a common sequence origin by local duplications. This mode of evolution is found to produce regulatory information: duplications can seed new sites in the neighborhood of existing sites. Duplicate seeds evolve subsequently by point mutations, often towards binding a different factor than their ancestral neighbor sites. These results are based on a statistical analysis of 346 cis-regulatory modules in the Drosophila melanogaster genome, and a comparison set of intergenic regulatory sequence in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In fly regulatory modules, pairs of binding sites show significantly enhanced sequence similarity up to distances of about 50 bp. We analyze these data in terms of an evolutionary model with two distinct modes of site formation: (i) evolution from independent sequence origin and (ii) divergent evolution following duplication of a common ancestor sequence. Our results suggest that pervasive formation of binding sites by local sequence duplications distinguishes the complex regulatory architecture of higher eukaryotes from the simpler architecture of unicellular organisms

Wind Speed and Sea State Dependencies of Air-Sea Gas Transfer: Results From the High Wind Speed Gas Exchange Study (HiWinGS)

A variety of physical mechanisms are jointly responsible for facilitating air-sea gas transfer through turbulent processes at the atmosphere-ocean interface. The nature and relative importance of these mechanisms evolves with increasing wind speed. Theoretical and modeling approaches are advancing, but the limited quantity of observational data at high wind speeds hinders the assessment of these efforts. The HiWinGS project successfully measured gas transfer coefficients (k660) with coincident wave statistics under conditions with hourly mean wind speeds up to 24 m s−1 and significant wave heights to 8 m. Measurements of k660 for carbon dioxide (CO2) and dimethylsulfide (DMS) show an increasing trend with respect to 10-meter neutral wind speed (U10N), following a power-law relationship of the form: math formula and math formula. Among seven high wind speed events, CO2 transfer responded to the intensity of wave breaking, which depended on both wind speed and sea state in a complex manner, with k660 co2 increasing as the wind sea approaches full development. A similar response is not observed for DMS. These results confirm the importance of breaking waves and bubble injection mechanisms in facilitating CO2 transfer. A modified version of the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment Gas transfer algorithm (COAREG ver. 3.5), incorporating a sea state-dependent calculation of bubble-mediated transfer, successfully reproduces the mean trend in observed k660 with wind speed for both gases. Significant suppression of gas transfer by large waves was not observed during HiWinGS, in contrast to results from two prior field programs

Tertiary hypothyroidism in a dog

<p/> <p>A nine-year-old male entire Labrador was diagnosed with pituitary dependent hyperadrenocorticism. Following seven months of successful mitotane therapy, the dog presented with marked weight gain, seborrhoea and alopecia. Routine clinicopathological analyses revealed marked hypercholesterolaemia. Serum total and free thyroxine (T4) concentrations were below their respective reference ranges. Serum thyroid stimulating hormone (cTSH) concentration was within reference range. TSH and thyrotropin releasing hormone (TRH) response tests revealed adequate stimulation of total T4 in both, and cTSH in the latter test. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a mass arising from the pituitary fossa, with suprasellar extension. A diagnosis of tertiary hypothyroidism was made. Following four weeks of levothyroxine therapy, circulating cholesterol concentration had declined, weight loss had ensued and dermatological abnormalities had improved. Euthanasia was performed four months later due to the development of neurological signs. A highly infiltrative pituitary adenoma, with effacement of the overlying hypothalamus was identified on post mortem examination. Tertiary hypothyroidism has not been previously reported in dogs.</p

Reciprocity as a foundation of financial economics

This paper argues that the subsistence of the fundamental theorem of contemporary financial mathematics is the ethical concept ‘reciprocity’. The argument is based on identifying an equivalence between the contemporary, and ostensibly ‘value neutral’, Fundamental Theory of Asset Pricing with theories of mathematical probability that emerged in the seventeenth century in the context of the ethical assessment of commercial contracts in a framework of Aristotelian ethics. This observation, the main claim of the paper, is justified on the basis of results from the Ultimatum Game and is analysed within a framework of Pragmatic philosophy. The analysis leads to the explanatory hypothesis that markets are centres of communicative action with reciprocity as a rule of discourse. The purpose of the paper is to reorientate financial economics to emphasise the objectives of cooperation and social cohesion and to this end, we offer specific policy advice

Decrease in alarm call response among tufted capuchins in competitive feeding contexts: possible evidence for counterdeception

Animal signals function to elicit behaviors in receivers that ultimately benefit the signaler, while receivers should respond in a way that maximizes their own fitness. However, the best response may be difficult for receivers to determine when unreliable signaling is common. “Deceptive” alarm calling is common among tufted capuchins (Cebus apella nigritus) in competitive feeding contexts, and responding to these calls is costly. Receivers should thus vary their responses based on whether a call is likely to be reliable. If capuchins are indeed able to assess reliability, I predicted that receivers will be less likely to respond to alarms that are given during competitive feeding contexts than in noncompetitive contexts, and, within feeding contexts, that individuals inside or adjacent to a food patch will be less likely to respond to alarms than those further from the resource. I tested these predictions in a group of wild capuchins by observing the reactions of focal animals to alarm calls in both noncompetitive contexts and experimental feeding contexts. Antipredator escape reactions, but not vigilance reactions, occurred significantly less often in competitive feeding contexts than in noncompetitive contexts and individuals adjacent to food patches were more likely to respond to alarm calls than were those inside or further from food patches. Although not all predictions were fully supported, the findings demonstrate that receivers vary their behavior in a way that minimizes the costs associated with “deceptive” alarms, but further research is needed to determine whether or not this can be attributed to counterdeception

In Bonobos Yawn Contagion Is Higher among Kin and Friends

In humans, the distribution of yawn contagion is shaped by social closeness with strongly bonded pairs showing higher levels of contagion than weakly bonded pairs. This ethological finding led the authors to hypothesize that the phenomenon of yawn contagion may be the result of certain empathic abilities, although in their most basal form. Here, for the first time, we show the capacity of bonobos (Pan paniscus) to respond to yawns of conspecifics. Bonobos spontaneously yawned more frequently during resting/relaxing compared to social tension periods. The results show that yawn contagion was context independent suggesting that the probability of yawning after observing others\u27 yawns is not affected by the propensity to engage in spontaneous yawns. As it occurs in humans, in bonobos the yawing response mostly occurred within the first minute after the perception of the stimulus. Finally, via a Linear Mixed Model we tested the effect of different variables (e.g., sex, rank, relationship quality) on yawn contagion, which increased when subjects were strongly bonded and when the triggering subject was a female. The importance of social bonding in shaping yawn contagion in bonobos, as it occurs in humans, is consistent with the hypothesis that empathy may play a role in the modulation of this phenomenon in both species. The higher frequency of yawn contagion in presence of a female as a triggering subject supports the hypothesis that adult females not only represent the relational and decisional nucleus of the bonobo society, but also that they play a key role in affecting the emotional states of others