Tool-Use Training in a Species of Rodent: The Emergence of an Optimal Motor Strategy and Functional Understanding

Tool use is defined as the manipulation of an inanimate object to change the position or form of a separate object. The expansion of cognitive niches and tool-use capabilities probably stimulated each other in hominid evolution. To understand the causes of cognitive expansion in humans, we need to know the behavioral and neural basis of tool use. Although a wide range of animals exhibit tool use in nature, most studies have focused on primates and birds on behavioral or psychological levels and did not directly address questions of which neural modifications contributed to the emergence of tool use. To investigate such questions, an animal model suitable for cellular and molecular manipulations is needed.) to use a rake-like tool with their forelimbs to retrieve otherwise out-of-reach rewards. Eventually, they mastered effective use of the tool, moving it in an elegant trajectory. After the degus were well trained, probe tests that examined whether they showed functional understanding of the tool were performed. Degus did not hesitate to use tools of different size, colors, and shapes, but were reluctant to use the tool with a raised nonfunctional blade. Thus, degus understood the functional and physical properties of the tool after extensive training.Our findings suggest that tool use is not a specific faculty resulting from higher intelligence, but is a specific combination of more general cognitive faculties. Studying the brains and behaviors of trained rodents can provide insights into how higher cognitive functions might be broken down into more general faculties, and also what cellular and molecular mechanisms are involved in the emergence of such cognitive functions

Projectile breakup dynamics for 6^{6}Li + 59^{59}Co: kinematical analysis of α\alpha-dd coincidences

A study of the kinematics of the $\alpha$-$d$ coincidences in the $^{6}$Li + $^{59}$Co system at a bombarding energy of $E_{lab} = 29.6$ MeV is presented. With exclusive measurements performed over different angular intervals it is possible to identify the respective contributions of the sequential projectile breakup and direct projectile breakup components. A careful analysis using a semiclassical approach of these processes provides information on both their lifetime and their distance of occurrence with respect to the target. Breakup to the low-lying (near-threshold) continuum is delayed, and happens at large internuclear distances. This suggests that the influence of the projectile breakup on the complete fusion process can be related essentially to direct breakup to the $^6$Li high-lying continuum spectrum. %Comment: Revised version including new Fig.3 and Fig.4 with new CDCC calculations. Accepted for publication at Eur. Phys. Jour. A. 11 pages, 6 figure

Valorisation of Biowastes for the Production of Green Materials Using Chemical Methods

With crude oil reserves dwindling, the hunt for a sustainable alternative feedstock for fuels and materials for our society continues to expand. The biorefinery concept has enjoyed both a surge in popularity and also vocal opposition to the idea of diverting food-grade land and crops for this purpose. The idea of using the inevitable wastes arising from biomass processing, particularly farming and food production, is, therefore, gaining more attention as the feedstock for the biorefinery. For the three main components of biomass—carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins—there are long-established processes for using some of these by-products. However, the recent advances in chemical technologies are expanding both the feedstocks available for processing and the products that be obtained. Herein, this review presents some of the more recent developments in processing these molecules for green materials, as well as case studies that bring these technologies and materials together into final products for applied usage

Chemical model of reaction cascades induced by activated enzymes or catalysts. Two-step cascades in visual transduction.

A dissipative system is approximated by a nonlinear rate equation: Z congruent to K1Z - K2Z3 (K2 greater than 0), in which the right side is derived from -delta G/delta Z of Taylor's series of the thermodynamic potential given by Gibbs' function G(Tc, Pc) (Z) at about the critical point C(Tc, Pc) of the control variables (parameters) T and P. The stability or instability of the system is treated by the changes in the control parameters. In the case that T not equal to P not equal to 0 in the steady state, Z = 0, and T and P pass the point C, K1 becomes negative. By this change, the G function is convex at Z = 0 and each product is created rapidly with concentration or number of the molecules Z = ([K1]/K2)1/2. This dynamic theory is applied to enzyme cascades. Based on cyclic GMP (cGMP) hypothesis in visual transduction, the cascade hydrolysis of cGMP of vertebrates is analyzed by dividing it into two-step reaction cascades: The initial process is that metarhodopsin II catalyzes the exchange of GDP for GTP by transducin (Gtd) and that GTP-Gtd complex is hydrolyzed to GDP-Gtd complex. In the following cascade cGMP is hydrolyzed with amplification of phosphodiesterase (PDE) activated by the removal of the small inhibitory subunit. The quantity of the hydrolysis of cGMP is estimated as approximately 5 x 10(4-5) molecules per photolyzed rhodopsin semiempirically, and this coincides well with experiments