836 research outputs found
Sliding on the surface: bacterial spreading without an active motor
Bacteria are able to translocate over surfaces using different types of active and passive motility mechanisms. Sliding is one of the passive types of movement since it is powered by the pushing force of dividing cells and additional factors facilitating the expansion over surfaces. In this review, we describe the sliding proficient bacteria that were previously investigated in details highlighting the sliding facilitating compounds and the regulation of sliding motility. Besides surfactants that reduce the friction between cells and substratum, other compounds including exopolysaccharides, hydrophobic proteins, or glycopeptidolipids where discovered to promote sliding. Therefore, we present the sliding bacteria in three groups depending on the additional compound required for sliding. Despite recent accomplishments in sliding research there are still many open questions about the mechanisms underlying sliding motility and its regulation in diverse bacterial species
Perirhinal Cortex Neuronal Activity is Actively Related to Working Memory in the Macaque
Lesion studies suggest that the perirhinai
cortex plays a role in object recognition memory.
To analyze its role, we recorded the activity of
single neurons in the perirhinal cortex in a
rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) performing a
delayed matching-to-sample task with up to four
intervening stimuli. Certain neurons (40 of 90
analyzed) showed a smaller response to an image
when it was shown the second time within a trial
(as a match image) than when it had been shown
(as a sample image) the first time. A new finding
was that the perirhinal cortex neurons were
actively reset between trials: when a particular
image was shown as a sample on a succeeding
trial, the response was much larger than when it
had been shown as a match image a short time
previously on the previous trial. This resetting
between trials appears to reflect the operation of
an active working memory process rather than a
passive temporal decay in a neuronal response.
The results thus provide evidence that the
perirhinal cortex plays an active role in visual
working memory, perhaps in association with
other brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex
The Floor Strategy: Wayfinding Cognition in a Multi-Level Building
This short paper is concerned with strategies and cognitive processes of wayfinding in public buildings. We conducted an empirical study in a complex multi-level building, comparing performance measures of experienced and inexperienced participants in different wayfinding tasks. Thinking aloud protocols provided insights into navigation strategies, planning phases, use of landmarks and signage. Three specific strategies for navigation in multi-level buildings were compared. The cognitively efficient floor strategy was preferred by experts over a central-point strategy or a direction strategy, and overall was associated to better wayfinding performance
Thermal effects on atomic friction
We model friction acting on the tip of an atomic force microscope as it is
dragged across a surface at non-zero temperatures. We find that stick-slip
motion occurs and that the average frictional force follows ,
where is the tip velocity. This compares well to recent experimental work
(Gnecco et al, PRL 84, 1172), permitting the quantitative extraction of all
microscopic parameters. We calculate the scaled form of the average frictional
force's dependence on both temperature and tip speed as well as the form of the
friction-force distribution function.Comment: Accepted for publication, Physical Review Letter
âYouâre free from just a girl or a boyâ:Nonbinary childrenâs understanding of their gender
BackgroundIn recent years, research on gender diversity in early childhood has increased significantly. However, much of the published literature still focuses on children whose experiences align with binary gender norms, inadvertently excluding nonbinary experiences from analysis.AimsWe seek to explore how nonbinary children, aged five to eight, perceive and understand their gender modality and experiences.MethodsNine American nonbinary children were interviewed using a semi-structured approach, which included two book readings, a drawing activity, and approximately 23 pre-determined questions. Inductive reflexive thematic analysis was utilized for developing, analyzing, and interpreting patterns across a qualitative dataset. All authors engaged in various aspects of reflexivity throughout the process, including personal, functional, and disciplinary reflexivity.AnalysisWe constructed five themes, which were evident across the accounts of participating children. The first one, Being nonbinary has different meanings for different people, illustrates the diverse interpretations of nonbinary identities. Gender is hard to describe but my pronouns help me make sense of it, highlights the challenges of explaining gender, yet pronouns help participants lucidly put their and othersâ gender into words. People can change their gender for good or just for a little while, reflect participantsâ view of gender as dynamic and fluid. âI have the agency to decide who I am with a little help of othersâ: feeling, learning, choosing and telling, explores participantsâ journey in adopting the label ânonbinaryâ. Lastly, Being nonbinary is both easy and hard: easy because I am myself, hard because of other people, depicts the multifaceted experiences of being nonbinary, from the affirmation to bullying.DiscussionIn an era marked by a contentious political climate and ongoing debates about trans/nonbinary individuals, these young children defy conventional norms and establish themselves as active architects of their identity narratives, driven by their agency and self-determination
Crowd behaviour during high-stress evacuations in an immersive virtual environment
Understanding the collective dynamics of crowd movements during stressful
emergency situations is central to reducing the risk of deadly crowd disasters.
Yet, their systematic experimental study remains a challenging open problem due
to ethical and methodological constraints. In this paper, we demonstrate the
viability of shared 3D virtual environments as an experimental platform for
conducting crowd experiments with real people. In particular, we show that
crowds of real human subjects moving and interacting in an immersive 3D virtual
environment exhibit typical patterns of real crowds as observed in real-life
crowded situations. These include the manifestation of social conventions and
the emergence of self-organized patterns during egress scenarios. High-stress
evacuation experiments conducted in this virtual environment reveal movements
characterized by mass herding and dangerous overcrowding as they occur in crowd
disasters. We describe the behavioral mechanisms at play under such extreme
conditions and identify critical zones where overcrowding may occur.
Furthermore, we show that herding spontaneously emerges from a density effect
without the need to assume an increase of the individual tendency to imitate
peers. Our experiments reveal the promise of immersive virtual environments as
an ethical, cost-efficient, yet accurate platform for exploring crowd behaviour
in high-risk situations with real human subjects.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure
Phase Transitions of an Oscillator Neural Network with a Standard Hebb Learning Rule
Studies have been made on the phase transition phenomena of an oscillator
network model based on a standard Hebb learning rule like the Hopfield model.
The relative phase informations---the in-phase and anti-phase, can be embedded
in the network. By self-consistent signal-to-noise analysis (SCSNA), it was
found that the storage capacity is given by , which is better
than that of Cook's model. However, the retrieval quality is worse. In
addition, an investigation was made into an acceleration effect caused by
asymmetry of the phase dynamics. Finally, it was numerically shown that the
storage capacity can be improved by modifying the shape of the coupling
function.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure
A duo of Potassium-responsive Histidine Kinases govern the multicellular destiny of Bacillus subtilis
Multicellular biofilm formation and surface motility are bacterial behaviors considered mutually exclusive. However, the basic decision to move over or stay attached to a surface is poorly understood. Here, we discover that in Bacillus subtilis, the key root biofilm-controlling transcription factor Spo0A~Pi (phosphorylated Spo0A) governs the flagellum-independent mechanism of social sliding motility. A Spo0A-deficient strain was totally unable to slide and colonize plant roots, evidencing the important role that sliding might play in natural settings. Microarray experiments plus subsequent genetic characterization showed that the machineries of sliding and biofilm formation share the same main components (i.e., surfactin, the hydrophobin BslA, exopolysaccharide, and de novo-formed fatty acids). Sliding proficiency was transduced by the Spo0A-phosphorelay histidine kinases KinB and KinC. We discovered that potassium, a previously known inhibitor of KinC-dependent biofilm formation, is the specific sliding-activating signal through a thus-far-unnoticed cytosolic domain of KinB, which resembles the selectivity filter sequence of potassium channels. The differential expression of the Spo0A~Pi reporter abrB gene and the different levels of the constitutively active form of Spo0A, Sad67, in Îspo0A cells grown in optimized media that simultaneously stimulate motile and sessile behaviors uncover the spatiotemporal response of KinB and KinC to potassium and the gradual increase in Spo0A~Pi that orchestrates the sequential activation of sliding, followed by sessile biofilm formation and finally sporulation in the same population. Overall, these results provide insights into how multicellular behaviors formerly believed to be antagonistic are coordinately activated in benefit of the bacterium and its interaction with the host.Fil: Grau, Roberto Ricardo. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Cs.bioquimicas y Farmaceuticas. Departamento de Microbiologia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas; ArgentinaFil: de Oña, Paula. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Cs.bioquimicas y Farmaceuticas. Departamento de Microbiologia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas; ArgentinaFil: Kunert, Maritta. Instituto Max Planck Institut Fur Chemische Okologie; AlemaniaFil: Leñini, Cecilia Andrea. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Cs.bioquimicas y Farmaceuticas. Departamento de Microbiologia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gallegos Monterrosa, Ramses. Universitat Jena; AlemaniaFil: Mhatre, Eisha. Universitat Jena; AlemaniaFil: Vileta, DarĂo. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Cs.bioquimicas y Farmaceuticas. Departamento de Microbiologia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas; ArgentinaFil: Donato, Veronica. Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Facultad de Cs.bioquimicas y Farmaceuticas. Departamento de Microbiologia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas; ArgentinaFil: Hölscher, Theresa. Universitat Jena; AlemaniaFil: Boland, Wilhem. Instituto Max Planck Institut Fur Chemische Okologie; AlemaniaFil: Kuipers, Oscar P.. University of Groningen; PaĂses BajosFil: KovĂĄcs, Ăkos T.. Universitat Jena; Alemani
- âŠ