What you see and what you are told: feedback does not diminish Action-Specific Perception

2016 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.The action-specific perception account claims that ability to act causes differences in perception of task relevant stimuli. Critics argue that a response bias occurs, not a difference in perception. Feedback has empirical support for affecting response biases and distinguishing between response biases and perceptual biases. Feedback was given during an action-specific perception paradigm to determine how much of the action-specific effect could be explained by response biases. Participants played a computer-based game of tennis. The ball moved across the screen at various speeds between the two anchor speeds on which they were previously trained. Ability to act was manipulated by varying the size of the paddle used to block the ball. After each blocking attempt, participants performed a speed judgment task. Participants typically report the ball as moving faster when using a small paddle than when they use a big paddle. In Experiment 1, participants completed pre-feedback, feedback, and post-feedback phases with interleaved paddle sizes. Paddle size had a significant effect on speed judgments in all three phases and did not diminish when feedback was given. It is possible that participants did not receive enough feedback and so in experiment 2 participants received feedback during the entire experiment. Again, feedback did not eliminate the effect of paddle size on speed judgments. Experiment 3 examined how much of the difference in reported speeds could be explained by response biases. False feedback was used to create a response bias opposing the effect of paddle size on speed. A multilevel linear regression suggests that while both feedback and action ability affects reported speed, in the final model there is no significant interaction between these variables. Results support the claim that action affects perception and is evidence against a primarily response bias account of action-specific effects

RNA helicase signaling is critical for type I interferon production and protection against rift valley fever virus during mucosal challenge

Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is an emerging RNA virus with devastating economic and social consequences. Clinically, RVFV induces a gamut of symptoms ranging from febrile illness to retinitis, hepatic necrosis, hemorrhagic fever, and death. It is known that type I interferon (IFN) responses can be protective against severe pathology; however, it is unknown which innate immune receptor pathways are crucial for mounting this response. Using both in vitro assays and in vivo mucosal mouse challenge, we demonstrate here that RNA helicases are critical for IFN production by immune cells and that signaling through the helicase adaptor molecule MAVS (mitochondrial antiviral signaling) is protective against mortality and more subtle pathology during RVFV infection. In addition, we demonstrate that Toll-like-receptor-mediated signaling is not involved in IFN production, further emphasizing the importance of the RNA cellular helicases in type I IFN responses to RVFV

High performance aluminum–cerium alloys for high-temperature applications

Light-weight high-temperature alloys are important to the transportation industry where weight, cost, and operating temperature are major factors in the design of energy efficient vehicles. Aluminum alloys fill this gap economically but lack high-temperature mechanical performance. Alloying aluminum with cerium creates a highly castable alloy, compatible with traditional aluminum alloy additions, that exhibits dramatically improved high-temperature performance. These compositions display a room temperature ultimate tensile strength of 400 MPa and yield strength of 320 MPa, with 80% mechanical property retention at 240 °C. A mechanism is identified that addresses the mechanical property stability of the Al-alloys to at least 300 °C and their microstructural stability to above 500 °C which may enable applications without the need for heat treatment. Finally, neutron diffraction under load provides insight into the unusual mechanisms driving the mechanical strength

Distinct clonal identities of B-ALLs arising after lenolidomide therapy for multiple myeloma

Patients with multiple myeloma (MM) who are treated with lenalidomide rarely develop a secondary B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). The clonal and biological relationship between these sequential malignancies is not yet clear. We identified 17 patients with MM treated with lenalidomide, who subsequently developed B-ALL. Patient samples were evaluated through sequencing, cytogenetics/fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), immunohistochemical (IHC) staining, and immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) clonality assessment. Samples were assessed for shared mutations and recurrently mutated genes. Through whole exome sequencing and cytogenetics/FISH analysis of 7 paired samples (MM vs matched B-ALL), no mutational overlap between samples was observed. Unique dominant IgH clonotypes between the tumors were observed in 5 paired MM/B-ALL samples. Across all 17 B-ALL samples, 14 (83%) had a TP53 variant detected. Three MM samples with sufficient sequencing depth (\u3e500×) revealed rare cells (average of 0.6% variant allele frequency, or 1.2% of cells) with the same TP53 variant identified in the subsequent B-ALL sample. A lack of mutational overlap between MM and B-ALL samples shows that B-ALL developed as a second malignancy arising from a founding population of cells that likely represented unrelated clonal hematopoiesis caused by a TP53 mutation. The recurrent variants in TP53 in the B-ALL samples suggest a common path for malignant transformation that may be similar to that of TP53-mutant, treatment-related acute myeloid leukemia. The presence of rare cells containing TP53 variants in bone marrow at the initiation of lenalidomide treatment suggests that cellular populations containing TP53 variants expand in the presence of lenalidomide to increase the likelihood of B-ALL development

Decays of the Three Top Contributors to the Reactor ν - e High-Energy Spectrum, Rb 92, y 96gs, and Cs 142, Studied with Total Absorption Spectroscopy

We report total absorption spectroscopy measurements of Rb92, Y96gs, and Cs142 β decays, which are the most important contributors to the high energy ν-e spectral shape in nuclear reactors. These three β decays contribute 43% of the ν-e flux near 5.5 MeV emitted by nuclear reactors. This ν-e energy is particularly interesting due to spectral features recently observed in several experiments including the Daya Bay, Double Chooz, and RENO Collaborations. Measurements were conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by means of proton-induced fission of U238 with on-line mass separation of fission fragments and the Modular Total Absorption Spectrometer. We observe a β-decay pattern that is similar to recent measurements of Rb92, with a ground-state to ground-state β feeding of 91(3)%. We verify the Y96gs ground-state to ground-state β feeding of 95.5(20)%. Our measurements substantially modify the β-decay feedings of Cs142, reducing the β feeding to Ba142 states below 2 MeV by 32% when compared with the latest evaluations. Our results increase the discrepancy between the observed and the expected reactor ν-e flux between 5 and 7 MeV, the maximum excess increases from ∼10% to ∼12%

Enzyme promiscuity shapes adaptation to novel growth substrates

<p>Evidence suggests that novel enzyme functions evolved from low-level promiscuous activities in ancestral enzymes. Yet, the evolutionary dynamics and physiological mechanisms of how such side activities contribute to systems-level adaptations are not well characterized. Furthermore, it remains untested whether knowledge of an organism's promiscuous reaction set, or underground metabolism, can aid in forecasting the genetic basis of metabolic adaptations. Here, we employ a computational model of underground metabolism and laboratory evolution experiments to examine the role of enzyme promiscuity in the acquisition and optimization of growth on predicted non-native substrates in Escherichia coli K-12 MG1655. After as few as approximately 20 generations, evolved populations repeatedly acquired the capacity to grow on five predicted non-native substrates-D-lyxose, D-2-deoxyribose, D-arabinose, m-tartrate, and monomethyl succinate. Altered promiscuous activities were shown to be directly involved in establishing high-efficiency pathways. Structural mutations shifted enzyme substrate turnover rates toward the new substrate while retaining a preference for the primary substrate. Finally, genes underlying the phenotypic innovations were accurately predicted by genome-scale model simulations of metabolism with enzyme promiscuity.</p

A unified data representation theory for network visualization, ordering and coarse-graining

Representation of large data sets became a key question of many scientific disciplines in the last decade. Several approaches for network visualization, data ordering and coarse-graining accomplished this goal. However, there was no underlying theoretical framework linking these problems. Here we show an elegant, information theoretic data representation approach as a unified solution of network visualization, data ordering and coarse-graining. The optimal representation is the hardest to distinguish from the original data matrix, measured by the relative entropy. The representation of network nodes as probability distributions provides an efficient visualization method and, in one dimension, an ordering of network nodes and edges. Coarse-grained representations of the input network enable both efficient data compression and hierarchical visualization to achieve high quality representations of larger data sets. Our unified data representation theory will help the analysis of extensive data sets, by revealing the large-scale structure of complex networks in a comprehensible form.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure