Femtosecond nonlinear ultrasonics in gold probed with ultrashort surface plasmons

Fundamental interactions induced by lattice vibrations on ultrafast time scales become increasingly important for modern nanoscience and technology. Experimental access to the physical properties of acoustic phonons in the THz frequency range and over the entire Brillouin zone is crucial for understanding electric and thermal transport in solids and their compounds. Here, we report on the generation and nonlinear propagation of giant (1 percent) acoustic strain pulses in hybrid gold/cobalt bilayer structures probed with ultrafast surface plasmon interferometry. This new technique allows for unambiguous characterization of arbitrary ultrafast acoustic transients. The giant acoustic pulses experience substantial nonlinear reshaping already after a propagation distance of 100 nm in a crystalline gold layer. Excellent agreement with the Korteveg-de Vries model points to future quantitative nonlinear femtosecond THz-ultrasonics at the nano-scale in metals at room temperature

Able-Bodied Wild Chimpanzees Imitate a Motor Procedure Used by a Disabled Individual to Overcome Handicap

Chimpanzee culture has generated intense recent interest, fueled by the technical complexity of chimpanzee tool-using traditions; yet it is seriously doubted whether chimpanzees are able to learn motor procedures by imitation under natural conditions. Here we take advantage of an unusual chimpanzee population as a ‘natural experiment’ to identify evidence for imitative learning of this kind in wild chimpanzees. The Sonso chimpanzee community has suffered from high levels of snare injury and now has several manually disabled members. Adult male Tinka, with near-total paralysis of both hands, compensates inability to scratch his back manually by employing a distinctive technique of holding a growing liana taut while making side-to-side body movements against it. We found that seven able-bodied young chimpanzees also used this ‘liana-scratch’ technique, although they had no need to. The distribution of the liana-scratch technique was statistically associated with individuals' range overlap with Tinka and the extent of time they spent in parties with him, confirming that the technique is acquired by social learning. The motivation for able-bodied chimpanzees copying his variant is unknown, but the fact that they do is evidence that the imitative learning of motor procedures from others is a natural trait of wild chimpanzees

Causes and consequences of female centrality in cetacean societies

Cetaceans are fully aquatic predatory mammals that have successfully colonized virtually all marine habitats. Their adaptation to these habitats, so radically different from those of their terrestrial ancestors, can give us comparative insights into the evolution of female roles and kinship in mammalian societies. We provide a review of the diversity of such roles across the Cetacea, which are unified by some key and apparently invariable life-history features. Mothers are uniparous, while paternal care is completely absent as far as we currently know. Maternal input is extensive, lasting months to many years. Hence, female reproductive rates are low, every cetacean calf is a significant investment, and offspring care is central to female fitness. Here strategies diverge, especially between toothed and baleen whales, in terms of mother–calf association and related social structures, which range from ephemeral grouping patterns to stable, multi-level, societies in which social groups are strongly organized around female kinship. Some species exhibit social and/or spatial philopatry in both sexes, a rare phenomenon in vertebrates. Communal care can be vital, especially among deep-diving species, and can be supported by female kinship. Female-based sociality, in its diverse forms, is therefore a prevailing feature of cetacean societies. Beyond the key role in offspring survival, it provides the substrate for significant vertical and horizontal cultural transmission, as well as the only definitive non-human examples of menopause. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals’.PostprintPeer reviewe

Dominance relationships and coalitionary aggression against conspecifics in female carrion crows

Funding: European Research Council (ERCStG-336536 FuncSpecGen to J.W.), the Swedish Research Council Vetenskapsrådet (621-2013-4510 to J.W.), Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (to J.W.) and Tovetorp fieldstation through Stockholm University.Cooperation is a prevailing feature of many animal systems. Coalitionary aggression, where a group of individuals engages in coordinated behaviour to the detriment of conspecific targets, is a form of cooperation involving complex social interactions. To date, evidence has been dominated by studies in humans and other primates with a clear bias towards studies of male-male coalitions. We here characterize coalitionary aggression behaviour in a group of female carrion crows consisting of recruitment, coordinated chase, and attack. The individual of highest social rank liaised with the second most dominant individual to engage in coordinated chase and attack of a lower ranked crow on several occasions. Despite active intervention by the third most highly ranked individual opposing the offenders, the attack finally resulted in the death of the victim. All individuals were unrelated, of the same sex, and naive to the behaviour excluding kinship, reproduction, and social learning as possible drivers. Instead, the coalition may reflect a strategy of the dominant individual to secure long-term social benefits. Overall, the study provides evidence that members of the crow family engage in coordinated alliances directed against conspecifics as a possible means to manipulate their social environment.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

ALLEVAMENTO DI BESTIAME BOVINO IN ITALIA

The research reported in this paper was partly funded by project grants PSI2011-29016-C02-01, PSI2014-51890-C2-1-P (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spain) http://www.mineco.gob.es/ and UCM-BSCH GR3/14-940813 (Universidad Complutense de Madrid y Banco Santander Central Hispano) to F. C. A post-doctoral scholarship from Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico / FONDECYT Nº 3140580 awarded to J.ZA. funded his salary. http://www.conicyt.cl/fondecyt. European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant SOMICS agreement n° 609819. Dr. Josep Call.Cetaceans are remarkable for exhibiting group-specific behavioral traditions or cultures in several behavioral domains (e.g., calls, behavioral tactics), and the question of whether they can be acquired socially, for example through imitative processes, remains open. Here we used a “Do as other does” paradigm to experimentally study the ability of a beluga to imitate familiar intransitive (body-oriented) actions demonstrated by a conspecific. The participant was first trained to copy three familiar behaviors on command (training phase) and then was tested for her ability to generalize the learned “Do as the other does” command to a different set of three familiar behaviors (testing phase). We found that the beluga (1) was capable of learning the copy command signal “Do what-the-other-does”; (2) exhibited high matching accuracy for trained behaviors (mean = 84% of correct performance) after making the first successful copy on command; (3) copied successfully the new set of three familiar generalization behaviors that were untrained to the copy command (range of first copy = 12 to 35 trials); and (4) deployed a high level of matching accuracy (mean = 83%) after making the first copy of an untrained behavior on command. This is the first evidence of contextual imitation of intransitive (body-oriented) movements in the beluga and adds to the reported findings on production imitation of sounds in this species and production imitation of sounds and motor actions in several cetaceans, especially dolphins and killer whales. Collectively these findings highlight the notion that cetaceans have a natural propensity at skillfully and proficiently matching the sounds and body movements demonstrated by conspecifics, a fitness-enhancing propensity in the context of cooperative hunting and anti-predatory defense tactics, and of alliance formation strategies that have been documented in these species’ natural habitats. Future work should determine if the beluga can also imitate novel motor actions.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Strategies for improving patient recruitment to focus groups in primary care: a case study reflective paper using an analytical framework

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recruiting to primary care studies is complex. With the current drive to increase numbers of patients involved in primary care studies, we need to know more about successful recruitment approaches. There is limited evidence on recruitment to focus group studies, particularly when no natural grouping exists and where participants do not regularly meet. The aim of this paper is to reflect on recruitment to a focus group study comparing the methods used with existing evidence using a resource for research recruitment, PROSPeR (Planning Recruitment Options: Strategies for Primary Care).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The focus group formed part of modelling a complex intervention in primary care in the Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment (REST) study. Despite a considered approach at the design stage, there were a number of difficulties with recruitment. The recruitment strategy and subsequent revisions are detailed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The researchers' modifications to recruitment, justifications and evidence from the literature in support of them are presented. Contrary evidence is used to analyse why some aspects were unsuccessful and evidence is used to suggest improvements. Recruitment to focus group studies should be considered in two distinct phases; getting potential participants to contact the researcher, and converting those contacts into attendance. The difficulty of recruitment in primary care is underemphasised in the literature especially where people do not regularly come together, typified by this case study of patients with sleep problems.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We recommend training GPs and nurses to recruit patients during consultations. Multiple recruitment methods should be employed from the outset and the need to build topic related non-financial incentives into the group meeting should be considered. Recruitment should be monitored regularly with barriers addressed iteratively as a study progresses.</p

Treatment of bipolar disorder: a complex treatment for a multi-faceted disorder

Background: Manic-depression or bipolar disorder (BD) is a multi-faceted illness with an inevitably complex treatment. Methods: This article summarizes the current status of our knowledge and practice of its treatment. Results: It is widely accepted that lithium is moderately useful during all phases of bipolar illness and it might possess a specific effectiveness on suicidal prevention. Both first and second generation antipsychotics are widely used and the FDA has approved olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, ziprasidone and aripiprazole for the treatment of acute mania. These could also be useful in the treatment of bipolar depression, but only limited data exists so far to support the use of quetiapine monotherapy or the olanzapine-fluoxetine combination. Some, but not all, anticonvulsants possess a broad spectrum of effectiveness, including mixed dysphoric and rapid-cycling forms. Lamotrigine may be effective in the treatment of depression but not mania. Antidepressant use is controversial. Guidelines suggest their cautious use in combination with an antimanic agent, because they are supposed to induce switching to mania or hypomania, mixed episodes and rapid cycling. Conclusion: The first-line psychosocial intervention in BD is psychoeducation, followed by cognitive-behavioral therapy. Other treatment options include Electroconvulsive therapy and transcranial magnetic stimulation. There is a gap between the evidence base, which comes mostly from monotherapy trials, and clinical practice, where complex treatment regimens are the rule

Review of methods used by chiropractors to determine the site for applying manipulation

Background: With the development of increasing evidence for the use of manipulation in the management of musculoskeletal conditions, there is growing interest in identifying the appropriate indications for care. Recently, attempts have been made to develop clinical prediction rules, however the validity of these clinical prediction rules remains unclear and their impact on care delivery has yet to be established. The current study was designed to evaluate the literature on the validity and reliability of the more common methods used by doctors of chiropractic to inform the choice of the site at which to apply spinal manipulation. Methods: Structured searches were conducted in Medline, PubMed, CINAHL and ICL, supported by hand searches of archives, to identify studies of the diagnostic reliability and validity of common methods used to identify the site of treatment application. To be included, studies were to present original data from studies of human subjects and be designed to address the region or location of care delivery. Only English language manuscripts from peer-reviewed journals were included. The quality of evidence was ranked using QUADAS for validity and QAREL for reliability, as appropriate. Data were extracted and synthesized, and were evaluated in terms of strength of evidence and the degree to which the evidence was favourable for clinical use of the method under investigation. Results: A total of 2594 titles were screened from which 201 articles met all inclusion criteria. The spectrum of manuscript quality was quite broad, as was the degree to which the evidence favoured clinical application of the diagnostic methods reviewed. The most convincing favourable evidence was for methods which confirmed or provoked pain at a specific spinal segmental level or region. There was also high quality evidence supporting the use, with limitations, of static and motion palpation, and measures of leg length inequality. Evidence of mixed quality supported the use, with limitations, of postural evaluation. The evidence was unclear on the applicability of measures of stiffness and the use of spinal x-rays. The evidence was of mixed quality, but unfavourable for the use of manual muscle testing, skin conductance, surface electromyography and skin temperature measurement. Conclusions: A considerable range of methods is in use for determining where in the spine to administer spinal manipulation. The currently published evidence falls across a spectrum ranging from strongly favourable to strongly unfavourable in regard to using these methods. In general, the stronger and more favourable evidence is for those procedures which take a direct measure of the presumptive site of care– methods involving pain provocation upon palpation or localized tissue examination. Procedures which involve some indirect assessment for identifying the manipulable lesion of the spine–such as skin conductance or thermography–tend not to be supported by the available evidence.https://doi.org/10.1186/2045-709X-21-3