Publisher Correction: The impact of endothermy on the climatic niche evolution and the distribution of vertebrate diversity.

In the version of this Article originally published, in Fig. 3a the first boundary was incorrectly labelled the "K/T boundary"; it should have read the "K/Pg boundary". The two equations in the main text were incorrectly omitted from the HTML. In the description of the posterior distribution of an ancestral state, the normal distribution was incorrectly described as being "assigned as prior to the node value"; it should have read "assigned as calibration to the node value". In the associated equation (the second equation in the text), the denominator of the last term was incorrectly given as "Node prior"; it should have read "Node calibration". In the same equation, the numerator of the third term on the right-hand side of the equation contained incorrect superscript notation on the x and this is shown in the full equation in the notice below.In the Acknowledgements, the following two sentences were incorrectly omitted: "The authors thank the Vital-IT facilities of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics for the computational support" and "This work was funded by the University of Lausanne and the Swiss National Science Foundation (CRSIII3-147630) to N.S." In the Author contributions section, the first sentence was incorrectly given as "J.R. designed the study. J.R., N.S. and D. Silvestro designed the methodology and ran the analyses"; it should have read "J.R., D.S. and N.S. designed the study and the methodology". In the Supplementary Information, all three instances of the word "prior" were incorrect and should have read "calibration".These errors have now been corrected in all versions of the Article

Antibunched photons emitted by a dc-biased Josephson junction

We show experimentally that a dc biased Josephson junction in series with a high-enough-impedance microwave resonator emits antibunched photons. Our resonator is made of a simple microfabricated spiral coil that resonates at 4.4 GHz and reaches a 1.97kΩ characteristic impedance. The second order correlation function of the power leaking out of the resonator drops down to 0.3 at zero delay, which demonstrates the antibunching of the photons emitted by the circuit at a rate of 6×10^7 photons per second. Results are found in quantitative agreement with our theoretical predictions. This simple scheme could offer an efficient and bright single-photon source in the microwave domain

Pattern fluctuations in transitional plane Couette flow

In wide enough systems, plane Couette flow, the flow established between two parallel plates translating in opposite directions, displays alternatively turbulent and laminar oblique bands in a given range of Reynolds numbers R. We show that in periodic domains that contain a few bands, for given values of R and size, the orientation and the wavelength of this pattern can fluctuate in time. A procedure is defined to detect well-oriented episodes and to determine the statistics of their lifetimes. The latter turn out to be distributed according to exponentially decreasing laws. This statistics is interpreted in terms of an activated process described by a Langevin equation whose deterministic part is a standard Landau model for two interacting complex amplitudes whereas the noise arises from the turbulent background.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in Journal of statistical physic

Our private data and the market for third-party providers of functionality to websites

Your personal information is out there. You did not give it out, so how did it get there? Internet websites provide visitors with different levels of interaction, ranging from delivering basic information to providing sophisticated features and tools such as profile management, interactive visual communication, and of course, advertising. Like many traditional businesses, websites turn to third-party outsourcing to offer these features and tools. Such services include functionality (password and account control, social media integration, video hosting, chat and forum services, payment services, etc.), performance (backup service, security and firewalls, responsiveness tools, etc.) and targeting/advertising (advertising, lead generation, analytics, etc.)

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in a two-lane model for bidirectional overtaking traffic

First we consider a unidirectional flux \omega_bar of vehicles each of which is characterized by its `natural' velocity v drawn from a distribution P(v). The traffic flow is modeled as a collection of straight `world lines' in the time-space plane, with overtaking events represented by a fixed queuing time tau imposed on the overtaking vehicle. This geometrical model exhibits platoon formation and allows, among many other things, for the calculation of the effective average velocity w=\phi(v) of a vehicle of natural velocity v. Secondly, we extend the model to two opposite lanes, A and B. We argue that the queuing time \tau in one lane is determined by the traffic density in the opposite lane. On the basis of reasonable additional assumptions we establish a set of equations that couple the two lanes and can be solved numerically. It appears that above a critical value \omega_bar_c of the control parameter \omega_bar the symmetry between the lanes is spontaneously broken: there is a slow lane where long platoons form behind the slowest vehicles, and a fast lane where overtaking is easy due to the wide spacing between the platoons in the opposite direction. A variant of the model is studied in which the spatial vehicle density \rho_bar rather than the flux \omega_bar is the control parameter. Unequal fluxes \omega_bar_A and \omega_bar_B in the two lanes are also considered. The symmetry breaking phenomenon exhibited by this model, even though no doubt hard to observe in pure form in real-life traffic, nevertheless indicates a tendency of such traffic.Comment: 50 pages, 16 figures; extra references adde

Simple system using natural mineral water for high-throughput phenotyping of Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings in liquid culture

Background: Phenotyping for plant stress tolerance is an essential component of many research projects. Because screening of high numbers of plants and multiple conditions remains technically challenging and costly, there is a need for simple methods to carry out large-scale phenotyping in the laboratory.Methods: We developed a method for phenotyping the germination and seedling growth of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) Col-0 in liquid culture. Culture was performed under rotary shaking in multiwell plates, using Evian natural mineral water as a medium. Nondestructive and accurate quantification of green pixels by digital image analysis allowed monitoring of growth. Results: The composition of the water prevented excessive root elongation growth that would otherwise lead to clumping of seedlings observed when classic nutrient-rich medium or deionized water is used. There was no need to maintain the cultures under aseptic conditions, and seedlings, which are photosynthetic, remained healthy for several weeks. Several proof-of-concept experiments demonstrated the usefulness of the approach for environmental stress phenotyping. Conclusion: The system described here is easy to set up, cost-effective, and enables a single researcher to screen large numbers of lines under various conditions. The simplicity of the method clearly makes it amenable to high-throughput phenotyping using robotics

Intersection of two TASEP traffic lanes with frozen shuffle update

Motivated by interest in pedestrian traffic we study two lanes (one-dimensional lattices) of length $L$ that intersect at a single site. Each lane is modeled by a TASEP (Totally Asymmetric Exclusion Process). The particles enter and leave lane $\sigma$ (where $\sigma=1,2$) with probabilities $\alpha_\sigma$ and $\beta_\sigma$, respectively. We employ the `frozen shuffle' update introduced in earlier work [C. Appert-Rolland et al, J. Stat. Mech. (2011) P07009], in which the particle positions are updated in a fixed random order. We find analytically that each lane may be in a `free flow' or in a `jammed' state. Hence the phase diagram in the domain $0\leq\alpha_1,\alpha_2\leq 1$ consists of four regions with boundaries depending on $\beta_1$ and $\beta_2$. The regions meet in a single point on the diagonal of the domain. Our analytical predictions for the phase boundaries as well as for the currents and densities in each phase are confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: 7 figure

Texture-Modified Diet for Improving the Management of Oropharyngeal Dysphagia in Nursing Home Residents: An Expert Review.

Abstract Objectives This paper provides evidence-based and, when appropriate, expert reviewed recommendations for long-stay residents who are prescribed texture-modified diets (TMDs), with the consideration that these residents are at high risk of worsening oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD), malnutrition, dehydration, aspiration pneumonia, and OD-associated mortality, poorer quality of life and high costs. Design Nestlé Health Science funded an initial virtual meeting attended by all authors, in which the unmet needs and subsequent recommendations for OD management were discussed. The opinions, results, and recommendations detailed in this paper are those of the authors, and are independent of funding sources. Setting OD is common in nursing home (NH) residents, and is defined as the inability to initiate and perform safe swallowing. The long-stay NH resident population has specific characteristics marked by a shorter life expectancy relative to community-dwelling older adults, high prevalence of multimorbidity with a high rate of complications, dementia, frailty, disability, and often polypharmacy. As a result, OD is associated with malnutrition, dehydration, aspiration pneumonia, functional decline, and death. Complications of OD can potentially be prevented with the use of TMDs. Results This report presents expert opinion and evidence-informed recommendations for best practice on the nutritional management of OD. It aims to highlight the practice gaps between the evidence-based management of OD and real-world patterns, including inadequate dietary provision and insufficient staff training. In addition, the unmet need for OD screening and improvements in therapeutic diets are explored and discussed. Conclusion There is currently limited empirical evidence to guide practice in OD management. Given the complex and heterogeneous population of long-stay NH residents, some 'best practice' approaches and interventions require extensive efficacy testing before further changes in policy can be implemented

Accurate calibration of test mass displacement in the LIGO interferometers

We describe three fundamentally different methods we have applied to calibrate the test mass displacement actuators to search for systematic errors in the calibration of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors. The actuation frequencies tested range from 90 Hz to 1 kHz and the actuation amplitudes range from 1e-6 m to 1e-18 m. For each of the four test mass actuators measured, the weighted mean coefficient over all frequencies for each technique deviates from the average actuation coefficient for all three techniques by less than 4%. This result indicates that systematic errors in the calibration of the responses of the LIGO detectors to differential length variations are within the stated uncertainties.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, submitted on 31 October 2009 to Classical and Quantum Gravity for the proceedings of 8th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Wave