Multifractal analysis reveals music-like dynamic structure in songbird rhythms

Music is thought to engage its listeners by driving feelings of surprise, tension, and relief through a dynamic mixture of predictable and unpredictable patterns, a property summarized here as “expressiveness”. Birdsong shares with music the goal to attract its listeners’ attention and might use similar strategies to achieve this. We here tested a thrush nightingale’s (Luscinia luscinia) rhythm, as represented by song amplitude envelope (containing information on note timing, duration, and intensity), for evidence of expressiveness. We used multifractal analysis, which is designed to detect in a signal dynamic fluctuations between predictable and unpredictable states on multiple timescales (e.g. notes, subphrases, songs). Results show that rhythm is strongly multifractal, indicating fluctuations between predictable and unpredictable patterns. Moreover, comparing original songs with re-synthesized songs that lack all subtle deviations from the “standard” note envelopes, we find that deviations in note intensity and duration significantly contributed to multifractality. This suggests that birdsong is more dynamic due to subtle note timing patterns, often similar to musical operations like accelerando or crescendo. While different sources of these dynamics are conceivable, this study shows that multi-timescale rhythm fluctuations can be detected in birdsong, paving the path to studying mechanisms and function behind such patterns

One Year Term Review as a Participating Guest in the Detonator and Detonation Physics Group

The one year stay was possible after a long administrative process, because of the fact that this was the first participating guest of B division as a foreign national in HEAF (High Explosives Application Facility) with the Detonator/Detonation Physics Group

Shelf‐basin exchange times of Arctic surface waters estimated from \u3csup\u3e228\u3c/sup\u3eTH/\u3csup\u3e228\u3c/sup\u3eRa disequilibrium

The transpolar drift is strongly enriched in 228Ra accumulated on the wide Arctic shelves with subsequent rapid offshore transport. We present new data of Polarstern expeditions to the central Arctic and to the Kara and Laptev seas. Because 226Ra activities in Pacific waters are 30% higher than in Atlantic waters, we correct 226Ra for the Pacific admixture when normalizing 228Ra with 226Ra. The use of 228Ra decay as age marker critically depends on the constancy in space and time of the source activity, a condition that has not yet adequately been tested. While 228Ra decays during transit over the central basin, ingrowth of 228Th could provide an alternative age marker. The high 228Th/228Ra activity ratio (AR = 0.8–1.0) in the central basins is incompatible with a mixing model based on horizontal eddy diffusion. An advective model predicts that 228Th grows to an equilibrium AR, the value of which depends on the scavenging regime. The low AR over the Lomonosov Ridge (AR = 0.5) can be due to either rapid transport (minimum age without scavenging 1.1 year) or enhanced scavenging. Suspended particulate matter load (derived from beam transmission and particulate 234Th) and total 234Th depletion data show that scavenging, although extremely low in the central Arctic, is enhanced over the Lomonosov Ridge, making an age of 3 years more likely. The combined data of 228Ra decay and 228Th ingrowth confirm the existence of a recirculating gyre in the surface water of the eastern Eurasian Basin with a river water residence time of at least 3 year

Structural Evolution of a Composite Middle to Lower Crustal Section: The Sierra de Pie de Palo, Northwest Argentina

The Sierra de Pie de Palo of northwest Argentina preserves middle to lower crustal metamorphic rocks that were penetratively deformed during Ordovician accretion of the Precordillera terrane to the Gondwana margin. New structural, petrologic, and geochronologic data from a 40 km structural transect reveals that the Sierra de Pie de Palo preserves a middle to lower crustal ductile thrust complex consisting of individual structural units and not an intact ophiolite and cover sequence. Top-to-the-west thrusting occurred intermittently on discrete ductile shear zones from ∼515 to ∼417 Ma and generally propagated toward the foreland with progressive deformation. Ordovician crustal shortening and peak metamorphic temperatures in the central portion of the Sierra de Pie de Palo were synchronous with retro-arc shortening and magmatic flare-up within the Famatina arc. Accretion of the Precordillera terrane resulted in the end of arc flare-up and the onset of synconvergent extension by ∼439 Ma. Continued synextensional to postextensional convergence was accommodated along progressively lower grade shear zones following terrane accretion and the establishment of a new plate margin west of the Precordillera terrane. The results support models of Cordilleran orogens that link voluminous arc magmatism to periods of regional shortening. The deformation, metamorphic, and magmatic history within the Sierra de Pie de Palo is consistent with models placing the region adjacent to the Famatina margin in the middle Cambrian and not as basement to the Precordillera terrane

Anisotropy of magnetothermal conductivity in Sr2RuO4

The dependence of in-plane and interplane thermal conductivities of Sr2RuO4 on temperature, as well as magnetic field strength and orientation, is reported. We found no notable anisotropy in the thermal conductivity for the magnetic field rotation parallel to the conducting plane in the whole range of experimental temperatures and fields, except in the vicinity of the upper critical field Hc2, where the anisotropy of the Hc2 itself plays a dominant role. This finding imposes strong constraints on the possible models of superconductivity in Sr2RuO4 and supports the existence of a superconducting gap with a line of nodes running orthogonal to the Fermi surface cylinder.Comment: published in Phys. Rev. Lett. 4pages, 4 eps figures, LaTe

Magnetic field - temperature phase diagram of quasi-two-dimensional organic superconductor lambda-(BETS)_2 GaCl_4 studied via thermal conductivity

The thermal conductivity kappa of the quasi-two-dimensional (Q2D) organic superconductor lambda-(BETS)_2 GaCl_4 was studied in the magnetic field H applied parallel to the Q2D plane. The phase diagram determined from this bulk measurement shows notable dependence on the sample quality. In dirty samples the upper critical field H_{c2} is consistent with the Pauli paramagnetic limiting, and a sharp change is observed in kappa(H) at H_{c2 parallel}. In contrast in clean samples H_{c2}(T) shows no saturation towards low temperatures and the feature in kappa(H) is replaced by two slope changes reminiscent of second-order transitions. The peculiarity was observed below ~ 0.33T_c and disappeared on field inclination to the plane when the orbital suppression of superconductivity became dominant. This behavior is consistent with the formation of a superconducting state with spatially modulated order parameter in clean samples.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, new figure (Fig.5) and references added, title change

Time- and Dose-Dependent Induction of HSP70 in Lemna minor Exposed to Different Environmental Stressors

The objective of this study was to examine the influence of different stressors, including cadmium (heavy metal), anthracene (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon—PAH) and chloridazon (herbicide), on population growth and biosynthesis of cytoplasmic HSP70 in Lemna minor (duckweed) in short (4 h)- and long (7 days)-term tests. A heat shock response was confirmed in Lemna exposed to high temperature: 35, 37.5, 40, or 42.5°C in short-term (4 h) treatments. The chemicals tested stimulated the biosynthesis of the cytoplasmic HSP70 protein in a concentration-dependent way (0.5–5 μM), higher in fronds exposed to lower doses of stressors. Additionally, production of HSP70 was greater after 4 h of incubation than after 7 days. The results suggest that HSP70 could be applied as a non-specific and sensitive detector of stress induced by different chemicals at concentrations below those that produce the type of response observed in classical cytotoxicity tests, such as growth inhibition

Monte-Carlo dosimetry on a realistic cell monolayer geometry exposed to alpha particles

The energy and specific energy absorbed in the main cell compartments (nucleus and cytoplasm) in typical radiobiology experiments are usually estimated by calculations as they are not accessible for a direct measurement. In most of the work, the cell geometry is modelled using the combination of simple mathematical volumes. We propose a method based on high resolution confocal imaging and ion beam analysis (IBA) in order to import realistic cell nuclei geometries in Monte-Carlo simulations and thus take into account the variety of different geometries encountered in a typical cell population. Seventy-six cell nuclei have been imaged using confocal microscopy and their chemical composition has been measured using IBA. A cellular phantom was created from these data using the ImageJ image analysis software and imported in the Geant4 Monte-Carlo simulation toolkit. Total energy and specific energy distributions in the 76 cell nuclei have been calculated for two types of irradiation protocols: a 3 MeV alpha particle microbeam used for targeted irradiation and a 239Pu alpha source used for large angle random irradiation. Qualitative images of the energy deposited along the particle tracks have been produced and show good agreement with images of DNA double strand break signalling proteins obtained experimentally. The methodology presented in this paper provides microdosimetric quantities calculated from realistic cellular volumes. It is based on open-source oriented software that is publicly available

Management of Chlamydia Cases in Australia (MoCCA): protocol for a non-randomised implementation and feasibility trial

INTRODUCTION: The sexually transmitted infection chlamydia can cause significant complications, particularly among people with female reproductive organs. Optimal management includes timely and appropriate treatment, notifying and treating sexual partners, timely retesting for reinfection and detecting complications including pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). In Australia, mainstream primary care (general practice) is where most chlamydia infections are diagnosed, making it a key setting for optimising chlamydia management. High reinfection and low retesting rates suggest partner notification and retesting are not uniformly provided. The Management of Chlamydia Cases in Australia (MoCCA) study seeks to address gaps in chlamydia management in Australian general practice through implementing interventions shown to improve chlamydia management in specialist services. MoCCA will focus on improving retesting, partner management (including patient-delivered partner therapy) and PID diagnosis. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: MoCCA is a non-randomised implementation and feasibility trial aiming to determine how best to implement interventions to support general practice in delivering best practice chlamydia management. Our method is guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research and the Normalisation Process Theory. MoCCA interventions include a website, flow charts, fact sheets, mailed specimen kits and autofills to streamline chlamydia consultation documentation. We aim to recruit 20 general practices across three Australian states (Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland) through which we will implement the interventions over 12–18 months. Mixed methods involving qualitative and quantitative data collection and analyses (observation, interviews, surveys) from staff and patients will be undertaken to explore our intervention implementation, acceptability and uptake. Deidentified general practice and laboratory data will be used to measure pre-post chlamydia testing, retesting, reinfection and PID rates, and to estimate MoCCA intervention costs. Our findings will guide scale-up plans for Australian general practice. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethics approval was obtained from The University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee (Ethics ID: 22665). Findings will be disseminated via conference presentations, peer-reviewed publications and study reports

Modeling Hemispheric Detonation Experiments in 2-Dimensions

Experiments have been performed with LX-17 (92.5% TATB and 7.5% Kel-F 800 binder) to study scaling of detonation waves using a dimensional scaling in a hemispherical divergent geometry. We model these experiments using an arbitrary Lagrange-Eulerian (ALE3D) hydrodynamics code, with reactive flow models based on the thermo-chemical code, Cheetah. The thermo-chemical code Cheetah provides a pressure-dependent kinetic rate law, along with an equation of state based on exponential-6 fluid potentials for individual detonation product species, calibrated to high pressures ({approx} few Mbars) and high temperatures (20000K). The parameters for these potentials are fit to a wide variety of experimental data, including shock, compression and sound speed data. For the un-reacted high explosive equation of state we use a modified Murnaghan form. We model the detonator (including the flyer plate) and initiation system in detail. The detonator is composed of LX-16, for which we use a program burn model. Steinberg-Guinan models5 are used for the metal components of the detonator. The booster and high explosive are LX-10 and LX-17, respectively. For both the LX-10 and LX-17, we use a pressure dependent rate law, coupled with a chemical equilibrium equation of state based on Cheetah. For LX-17, the kinetic model includes carbon clustering on the nanometer size scale