Registro de albinismo imperfecto en el pecho colorado grande (Sturnella loyca)

Se comunica un registro de albinismo imperfecto del pecho colorado grande (Sturnella loyca). Se describen patrones de color y comportamiento, además aspectos del ambiente y la localidad donde se halló.A record of albinism in a female specimen of Long-tailed Meadowlark (Sturnella loyca) is reported. The description includes color patterns, behaviour, habitat and location.Fil: Tizón, Francisco Rodrigo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiarida. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiarida; ArgentinaFil: Carrizo, Martin A..Fil: Seewald, Pablo A.

Stability and decay of Bloch oscillations in presence of time-dependent nonlinearity

We consider Bloch oscillations of Bose-Einstein condensates in presence of a time-modulated s-wave scattering length. Generically, interaction leads to dephasing and decay of the wave packet. Based on a cyclic-time argument, we find---additionally to the linear Bloch oscillation and a rigid soliton solution---an infinite family of modulations that lead to a periodic time evolution of the wave packet. In order to quantitatively describe the dynamics of Bloch oscillations in presence of time-modulated interactions, we employ two complementary methods: collective-coordinates and the linear stability analysis of an extended wave packet. We provide instructive examples and address the question of robustness against external perturbations.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures. Slightly amended final versio

Ising analogues of quantum spin chains with multispin interactions

A new family of free fermionic quantum spin chains with multispin interactions was recently introduced. Here we show that it is possible to build standard quantum Ising chains -- but with inhomogeneous couplings -- which have the same spectra as the novel spin chains with multispin interactions. The Ising models are obtained by associating an antisymmetric tridiagonal matrix to the polynomials that characterize the quasienergies of the system via a modified Euclidean algorithm. For the simplest non-trivial case, corresponding to the Fendley model, the phase diagram of the inhomogeneous Ising model is investigated numerically. It is characterized by gapped phases separated by critical lines with order-disorder transitions depending on the parity of the total number of energy density operators in the Hamiltonian.Comment: 16 pages, 17 figure

G protein-coupled receptor 37 (GPR37) emerges as an important modulator of adenosinergic transmission in the striatum

G protein-coupled receptor 37 (GPR37), also known as parkin associated endothelin-like (Pael) receptor, is an orphan G protein-coupled receptor, which suffers a defective parking ubiquitination in autosomal recessive Parkinson's disease promoting its endoplasmic reticulum aggregation and stress, neurotoxicity and neuronal death (Takahashi and Imai, 2003). Interestingly, we have demonstrated previously that GPR37 heteromerizes with adenosine A2A receptor (A2AR) in the striatum (Morató et al., 2017; Sokolina et al., 2017). In addition, we also reported some functional consequences of this direct interaction, whereby GPR37 deletion enhanced striatal A2AR cell surface expression with a concomitant increase in A2AR agonist-mediated cAMP accumulation (Morató et al., 2017); accordingly, an enhancement of A2AR agonist-induced catalepsy and antagonist-induced locomotor activity was observed upon GPR37 deletion (Morató et al., 2017). Overall, it has been hypothesized that GPR37 might hold a chaperone-like activity controlling A2AR cell surface targeting and function. However, the precise physiological function of GPR37 still is unidentified. The current findings now provide additional evidence for the role of GPR37 as a repressor of A2AR function

A genetic algorithm for optimal assembly of pairwise forced-choice questionnaires

The use of multidimensional forced-choice questionnaires has been proposed as a means of improving validity in the assessment of non-cognitive attributes in high-stakes scenarios. However, the reduced precision of trait estimates in this questionnaire format is an important drawback. Accordingly, this article presents an optimization procedure for assembling pairwise forced-choice questionnaires while maximizing posterior marginal reliabilities. This procedure is performed through the adaptation of a known genetic algorithm (GA) for combinatorial problems. In a simulation study, the efficiency of the proposed procedure was compared with a quasi-brute-force (BF) search. For this purpose, five-dimensional item pools were simulated to emulate the real problem of generating a forced-choice personality questionnaire under the five-factor model. Three factors were manipulated: (1) the length of the questionnaire, (2) the relative item pool size with respect to the questionnaire’s length, and (3) the true correlations between traits. The recovery of the person parameters for each assembled questionnaire was evaluated through the squared correlation between estimated and true parameters, the root mean square error between the estimated and true parameters, the average difference between the estimated and true inter-trait correlations, and the average standard error for each trait level. The proposed GA offered more accurate trait estimates than the BF search within a reasonable computation time in every simulation condition. Such improvements were especially important when measuring correlated traits and when the relative item pool sizes were higher. A user-friendly online implementation of the algorithm was made available to the user