Maternal effects on the development of vocal communication in wild chimpanzees

Early-life experiences, such as maternal care received, influence adult social integration and survival. We examine what changes to social behavior through ontogeny lead to these lifelong effects, particularly whether early-life maternal environment impacts the development of social communication. Chimpanzees experience prolonged social communication development. Focusing on a central communicative trait, the "pant-hoot" contact call used to solicit social engagement, we collected cross-sectional data on wild chimpanzees (52 immatures and 36 mothers). We assessed early-life socioecological impacts on pant-hoot rates across development, specifically: mothers' gregariousness, age, pant-hoot rates and dominance rank, maternal loss, and food availability, controlling for current maternal effects. We found that early-life maternal gregariousness correlated positively with offspring pant-hoot rates, while maternal loss led to reduced pant-hoot rates across development. Males had steeper developmental trajectories in pant-hoot rates than females. We demonstrate the impact of maternal effects on developmental trajectories of a rarely investigated social trait, vocal production

Association of physical exercise and calcium intake with bone mass measured by quantitative ultrasound

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Interventions other than medications in the management of osteoporosis are often overlooked. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association of physical activity and calcium intake with bone parameters.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We measured the heel T-score and stiffness index (SI) in 1890 pre- and postmenopausal women by quantitative ultrasound (QUS) and assessed physical activity and dietary calcium intake by questionnaire. Participants were divided according to their weekly physical activity (sedentary, moderately active, systematically active) and daily calcium consumption (greater than or less than 800 mg/day).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>SI values were significantly different among premenopausal groups (p = 0.016) and between sedentary and systematically active postmenopausal women (p = 0.039). QUS T-scores in systematically active premenopausal women with daily calcium intake > 800 mg/day were significantly higher than those in all other activity groups (p < 0.05) independent of calcium consumption.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Systematic physical activity and adequate dietary calcium intake are indicated for women as a means to maximize bone status benefits.</p

Secure synthesis and activation of protocol translation agents

Protocol heterogeneity is pervasive and is a major obstacle to effective integration of services in large systems. However, standardization is not a complete answer. Standardized protocols must be general to prevent a proliferation of standards, and can therefore become complex and inefficient. Specialized protocols can be simple and efficient, since they can ignore situations that are precluded by application characteristics. One solution is to maintain agents for translating between protocols. However, n protocol types would require agents, since an agent must exist for a source - destination pair. A better solution is to create agents as needed. This paper examines the issues in the creation and management of protocol translation agents. We focus on the design of Nestor, an environment for synthesizing and managing RPC protocol translation agents. We provide rationale for the translation mechanism and the synthesis environment, with specific emphasis on the security issues arising in Nestor. Nestor has been implemented and manages heterogeneous RPC agents generated using the Cicero protocol construction language and the URPC toolkit.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/49229/2/ds7402.pd

Disruption of glycine transporter 1 restricted to forebrain neurons is associated with a procognitive and antipsychotic phenotypic profile

The NMDA receptor is thought to play a central role in some forms of neuronal plasticity, including the induction of long-term potentiation. NMDA receptor hypofunction can result in mnemonic impairment and has been implicated in the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. The activity of NMDA receptors is controlled by its endogenous coagonist glycine, and a local elevation of glycine levels is expected to enhance NMDA receptor function. Here, we achieved this by the generation of a novel mouse line (CamKIIalphaCre;Glyt1tm1.2fl/fl) with a neuron and forebrain selective disruption of glycine transporter 1 (GlyT1). The mutation led to a significant reduction of GlyT1 and a corresponding reduction of glycine reuptake in forebrain samples, without affecting NMDA receptor expression. NMDA (but not AMPA) receptor-evoked EPSCs recorded in hippocampal slices of mutant mice were 2.5 times of those recorded in littermate controls, suggesting that neuronal GlyT1 normally assumes a specific role in the regulation of NMDA receptor responses. Concomitantly, the mutants were less responsive to phencyclidine than controls. The mutation enhanced aversive Pavlovian conditioning without affecting spontaneous anxiety-like behavior in the elevated plus maze and augmented a form of attentional learning called latent inhibition in three different experimental paradigms: conditioned freezing, conditioned active avoidance, conditioned taste aversion. The CamKIIalphaCre;Glyt1tm1.2fl/fl mouse model thus suggests that augmentation of forebrain neuronal glycine transmission is promnesic and may also offer an effective therapeutic intervention against the cognitive and attentional impairments characteristic of schizophrenia

Imaging of trabecular bone structure in osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is a metabolic bone disorder that is characterized by reduced bone mass and a deterioration of bone structure which results in an increased fracture risk. Since the disease is preventable, diagnostic techniques are of major importance. Standard techniques determine bone mineral density, whereas some of the newer techniques focus on trabecular structure. This article reviews structure analysis techniques in the diagnosis of osteoporosis. Imaging techniques applied to the assessment of trabecular bone structure include conventional radiography, magnification radiography, high-resolution CT (HRCT) and high-resolution MR imaging (HRMRI). The best results were obtained using high-resolution tomographic techniques. The highest spatial resolutions in vivo were achieved using HRMRI. The most common texture analysis techniques that have been used are morphological parameters (analogous to bone histomorphometry). Fractal dimension, co-occurrence matrices, mathematical filter techniques and autocorrelation functions are more complex techniques. Most of the studies evaluating structure analysis show that texture parameters and bone mineral density both predict bone strength and osteoporotic fractures, and that combining both techniques yields the best results in the diagnosis of osteoporosis