The Use of Videotaped Segments of The Apprentice in a Food and Agricultural Sales Class: The Case of ApEc 3451

This paper described the incorporation of selected segments of the Apprentice Series into an Ag and Food Sales course. A description of the use of these segments and student evaluation of the experience are also included.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Chemotaxis of Arbacia punctulata spermatozoa to resact, a peptide from the egg jelly layer

Resact, a peptide of known sequence isolated from the jelly layer of Arbacia punctulata eggs, is a potent chemoattractant for A. punctulata spermatozoa. The chemotactic response is concentration dependent, is abolished by pretreatment of the spermatozoa with resact, and shows an absolute requirement for millimolar external calcium. A. punctulata spermatozoa do not respond to speract, a peptide isolated from the jelly layer of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus eggs. This is the first report of animal sperm chemotaxis in response to a defined egg-derived molecule

The neurological underpinnings of cluttering: Some initial findings

Background Cluttering is a fluency disorder characterised by overly rapid or jerky speech patterns that compromise intelligibility. The neural correlates of cluttering are unknown but theoretical accounts implicate the basal ganglia and medial prefrontal cortex. Dysfunction in these brain areas would be consistent with difficulties in selection and control of speech motor programs that are characteristic of speech disfluencies in cluttering. There is a surprising lack of investigation into this disorder using modern imaging techniques. Here, we used functional MRI to investigate the neural correlates of cluttering. Method We scanned 17 adults who clutter and 17 normally fluent control speakers matched for age and sex. Brain activity was recorded using sparse-sampling functional MRI while participants viewed scenes and either (i) produced overt speech describing the scene or (ii) read out loud a sentence provided that described the scene. Speech was recorded and analysed off line. Differences in brain activity for each condition compared to a silent resting baseline and between conditions were analysed for each group separately (cluster-forming threshold Z > 3.1, extent p 30 voxels, uncorrected). Results In both conditions, the patterns of activation in adults who clutter and control speakers were strikingly similar, particularly at the cortical level. Direct group comparisons revealed greater activity in adults who clutter compared to control speakers in the lateral premotor cortex bilaterally and, as predicted, on the medial surface (pre-supplementary motor area). Subcortically, adults who clutter showed greater activity than control speakers in the basal ganglia. Specifically, the caudate nucleus and putamen were overactive in adults who clutter for the comparison of picture description with sentence reading. In addition, adults who clutter had reduced activity relative to control speakers in the lateral anterior cerebellum bilaterally. Eleven of the 17 adults who clutter also stuttered. This comorbid diagnosis of stuttering was found to contribute to the abnormal overactivity seen in the group of adults who clutter in the right ventral premotor cortex and right anterior cingulate cortex. In the remaining areas of abnormal activity seen in adults who clutter compared to controls, the subgroup who clutter and stutter did not differ from the subgroup who clutter but do not stutter. Conclusions Our findings were in good agreement with theoretical predictions regarding the neural correlates of cluttering. We found evidence for abnormal function in the basal ganglia and their cortical output target, the medial prefrontal cortex. The findings are discussed in relation to models of cluttering that point to problems with motor control of speech

Beef Cattle Production and Management Practices and Implications for Educators

Beef producers need to continually incorporate new information and adopt new technology to effectively manage production costs. Oklahoma State University began a Master Cattleman program with this need in mind. Understanding technology adoption by producers requires identifying current management practices. Data from a survey developed as part of the Master Cattleman program document current practices. Management practices were examined for two groups; producers with smaller herds who are less dependent on the beef enterprise for family income, and producers with larger herds who are more dependent on beef. Results clearly show that size and dependence on the beef enterprise matters when considering a broad spectrum of beef management practices.Livestock Production/Industries,

Escape path complexity and its context dependency in Pacific blue-eyes (Pseudomugil signifer)

The escape trajectories animals take following a predatory attack appear to show high degrees of apparent 'randomness' - a property that has been described as 'protean behaviour'. Here we present a method of quantifying the escape trajectories of individual animals using a path complexity approach. When fish (Pseudomugil signifer) were attacked either on their own or in groups, we find that an individual's path rapidly increases in entropy (our measure of complexity) following the attack. For individuals on their own, this entropy remains elevated (indicating a more random path) for a sustained period (10 seconds) after the attack, whilst it falls more quickly for individuals in groups. The entropy of the path is context dependent. When attacks towards single fish come from greater distances, a fish's path shows less complexity compared to attacks that come from short range. This context dependency effect did not exist, however, when individuals were in groups. Nor did the path complexity of individuals in groups depend on a fish's local density of neighbours. We separate out the components of speed and direction changes to determine which of these components contributes to the overall increase in path complexity following an attack. We found that both speed and direction measures contribute similarly to an individual's path's complexity in absolute terms. Our work highlights the adaptive behavioural tactics that animals use to avoid predators and also provides a novel method for quantifying the escape trajectories of animals.Comment: 9 page

Disrupted white matter in language and motor tracts in developmental stuttering

White matter tractsc onnecting areas involved in speech and motor control were examined using diffusion-tensor imagingingin a sample of peoplewhostutter (n=29) who were heterogeneous with respect to age, sex, handedness and stuttering severity. The goals were to replicate previous findings in developmental stuttering and to extend ourknowledge by evaluating the relationship between white matter differences in people who stutter and factors such as age, sex, handedness and stuttering severity. We replicated previous findings that showed reduced integrity in white matter underlying ventral premotorcortex, cerebral peduncles and posteriorcorpus callosum in people who stutter, relative to controls. Tractography analysis additionally revealed significantly reduced white matter integrity in the arcuate fasciculus bilaterally and the left corticospinal tract and significantly reduced connectivity within theleft corticobulbar tract in people who stutter. Region-of-interest analyses revealed reduced white matter integrity in people whostutter in the three pairs ocerebellar peduncles thatcarry the afferent and efferent fibers of the cerebellum. Within thegroup of people who stutter, the higher the stuttering severity index, the lower the white matter integrity in the leftangular gyrus but the greater the white matter connectivity in theleft corticobulbartract. Also,in people who stutter, handedness and age predicted the integrity of the corticospinal tract and peduncles, respectively. Further studies are needed to determine which of these white matter differences relate to the neural basis of stuttering and which reflect experience-dependent plasticity

Scalar--Flat Lorentzian Einstein--Weyl Spaces

We find all three-dimensional Einstein--Weyl spaces with the vanishing scalar curvatureComment: 4 page

Seeing with sound? Exploring different characteristics of a visual-to-auditory sensory substitution device

Sensory substitution devices convert live visual images into auditory signals, for example with a web camera (to record the images), a computer (to perform the conversion) and headphones (to listen to the sounds). In a series of three experiments, the performance of one such device (‘The vOICe’) was assessed under various conditions on blindfolded sighted participants. The main task that we used involved identifying and locating objects placed on a table by holding a webcam (like a flashlight) or wearing it on the head (like a miner’s light). Identifying objects on a table was easier with a hand-held device, but locating the objects was easier with a head-mounted device. Brightness converted into loudness was less effective than the reverse contrast (dark being loud), suggesting that performance under these conditions (natural indoor lighting, novice users) is related more to the properties of the auditory signal (ie the amount of noise in it) than the cross-modal association between loudness and brightness. Individual differences in musical memory (detecting pitch changes in two sequences of notes) was related to the time taken to identify or recognise objects, but individual differences in self-reported vividness of visual imagery did not reliably predict performance across the experiments. In general, the results suggest that the auditory characteristics of the device may be more important for initial learning than visual associations

Open-Path Fourier Transform Infrared Studies of Large-Scale Laboratory Biomass Fires

A series of nine large-scale, open fires was conducted in the Intermountain Fire Sciences Laboratory (IFSL) controlled-environment combustion facility. The fuels were pure pine needles or sagebrush or mixed fuels simulating forest-floor, ground fires; crown fires; broadcast burns; and slash pile burns. Mid-infrared spectra of the smoke were recorded throughout each fire by open path Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy at 0.12 cm−1 resolution over a 3 m cross-stack pathlength and analyzed to provide pseudocontinuous, simultaneous concentrations of up to 16 compounds. Simultaneous measurements were made of fuel mass loss, stack gas temperature, and total mass flow up the stack. The products detected are classified by the type of process that dominates in producing them. Carbon dioxide is the dominant emission of (and primarily produced by) flaming combustion, from which we also measure nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and most of the water vapor from combustion and fuel moisture. Carbon monoxide is the dominant emission formed primarily by smoldering combustion from which we also measure carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, and ethane. A significant fraction of the total emissions is unoxidized pyrolysis products; examples are methanol, formaldehyde, acetic and formic acid, ethene (ethylene), ethyne (acetylene), and hydrogen cyanide. Relatively few previous data exist for many of these compounds and they are likely to have an important but as yet poorly understood role in plume chemistry. Large differences in emissions occur from different fire and fuel types, and the observed temporal behavior of the emissions is found to depend strongly on the fuel bed and product type

Global Title X Series \u2710: Global Maritime Partnerships Game

During the period 3–8 October 2010, the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island hosted the Navy Title 10 Global Maritime Partnerships Game (GMPG, also Global ̳10), on a truly international scale (83 participants from 46 countries). The overarching purpose of the GMPG was to help the Navy better understand the complexity of the problems that it could face throughout the maritime environment by identifying the catalysts to instability at the national, regional and cross-regional levels and the impediments to forming effective regional and global partnerships in the maritime domain from both United States and international perspectives. This game could help the Navy better define the approaches necessary to establish maritime partnerships to address maritime security issues