Expertise with non-speech 'auditory Greebles' recruits speech-sensitive cortical regions

Regions of the human temporal lobe show greater activation for speech than for other sounds. These differences may reflect intrinsically specialized domain-specific adaptations for processing speech, or they may be driven by the significant expertise we have in listening to the speech signal. To test the expertise hypothesis, we used a video-game-based paradigm that tacitly trained listeners to categorize acoustically complex, artificial nonlinguistic sounds. Before and after training, we used functional MRI to measure how expertise with these sounds modulated temporal lobe activation. Participants’ ability to explicitly categorize the nonspeech sounds predicted the change in pretraining to posttraining activation in speech-sensitive regions of the left posterior superior temporal sulcus, suggesting that emergent auditory expertise may help drive this functional regionalization. Thus, seemingly domain-specific patterns of neural activation in higher cortical regions may be driven in part by experience-based restructuring of high-dimensional perceptual space

Noise emission corrections at intersections based on microscopic traffic simulation

One of the goals of the European IMAGINE project, is to formulate strategies to improve traffic modelling for application in noise mapping. It is well known that the specific deceleration and acceleration dynamics of traffic at junctions can influence local noise emission. However, macroscopic traffic models do not always model intersections, and if they do, only the influence of intersections on travel time is incorporated. In these cases, it would be useful to know what increase or decrease in noise production can be expected at or near intersections. A correction factor for road crossings has been suggested in several national noise emission standards. The question is open whether such a correction factor should be included in future harmonized methods. In this paper, a case study is presented, consisting of a large set of microscopic traffic simulations and associated noise emission calculations, which provides some insight into the specific dynamics of the noise emission near different types of intersections. A spatial approach is used, in which inbound and outbound lanes are divided into deceleration, queuing and acceleration zones. Results from regression analysis on the numerical simulations indicate that meaningful relations between noise corrections and traffic flow parameters such as traffic intensity and composition can be deduced

Multiple uses of water in irrigated areas: a case study from Sri Lanka

Water management / Water allocation / Water use efficiency / Irrigated farming / Water resources development / Water policy / Water quality / Domestic water / Water users' associations / Water rights / Gender / Households / Pricing / Water costs / Case studies / Sri Lanka / Kirindi Oya

Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio

The recent $3.4 billion purchase of Columbia Pictures by Sony Corporation focused attention on a studio that had survived one of Hollywood’s worst scandals under David Begelman, as well as ownership by Coca-Cola and David Puttnam’s misguided attempt to bring back the studio’s glory days. Columbia Pictures traces Columbia’s history from its beginnings as the CBC Film Sales Company (nicknamed “Corned Beef and Cabbage”) through the regimes of Harry Cohn and his successors, and concludes with a vivid portrait of today’s corporate Hollywood, with its investment bankers, entertainment lawyers, agents, and financiers. Bernard F. Dick’s highly readable studio chronicle is followed by thirteen original essays by leading film scholars, writing about the stars, films, genres, writers, producers, and directors responsible for Columbia’s emergence from Poverty Row status to world class. This is the first attempt to integrate film history with film criticism of a single studio. Both the historical introduction and the essays draw on previously untapped archival material—budgets that kept Columbia in the black during the 1930s and 1940s, letters that reveal the rapport between Depression audiences and director Frank Capra, and an interview with Oscar-winning screenwriter Daniel Taradash. The book also offers new perspectives on the careers of Rita Hayworth and Judy Holliday, a discussion of Columbia’s unique brands of screwball comedy and film noir, and analyses of such classics as The Awful Truth, Born Yesterday, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Anatomy of a Murder, Easy Rider, Taxi Driver, The Big Chill, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Last Emperor. Amply illustrated with film stills and photos of stars and studio heads, Columbia Pictures includes a brief chronology and a complete 1920-1991 filmography. Designed for both the film lover and the film scholar, the book is ideal for film history courses. For anyone seeking a frank, readable history of the movie business, this ‘Portrait of a Studio’ sheds light on one part of a frenzied, fractious industry. —New York Times Book Review An excellent reading experience for movie buffs and historians. —West Coast Review of Bookshttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_film_and_media_studies/1007/thumbnail.jp

The Long Haul: Migratory Flight Preparation and Performance in Songbirds

Migration requires birds to sustain high intensity endurance exercise for periods lasting from hours to days. Similar to athletes, preparation and nutrition is key to success. Birds seasonally prepare for migration, which includes increasing the capacity to oxidize fat in the flight muscles. Beyond fuelling migration, n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are hypothesized to be natural doping agents and increase endurance and fatty acid oxidative capacity. I examined how birds prepare for and sustain migratory flight and directly tested the role of n-3 PUFA. Using yellow-rumped warblers (Setophaga coronata) as a model species, I first examined the effects of migratory season and endurance flight on the flight muscle transcriptome. I compared the transcriptomes of fall migratory and wintering birds and fall migrants at rest and after a four-hour flight in a wind tunnel. During the migratory season there was a coordinated upregulation of lipid metabolic pathways. Flight altered the transcriptome more than season did, and was characterized by the upregulation cytoplasmic fatty acid transporter gene expression and downregulation of genes related to glucose metabolism. Additionally, during flight there was an upregulation of pathways related to muscle damage and inflammation, and for protein synthesis and growth. Next, I tested the role of n-3 PUFA by feeding warblers diets enriched in n-3 or n-6 PUFA and assessed endurance flight performance and muscle metabolism. Neither PUFA diet altered endurance capacity or energy costs. However, contrary to the hypothesis, n-3 PUFA decreased muscle oxidative enzyme activites. Finally, as PUFA are prone to oxidative damage I investigated if diet and flight influenced antioxidants or oxidative stress. Endurance flight resulted in oxidative stress indicated by decreased glutathione: glutathione disulphide ratio and increased protein carbonyls, but no effect of PUFA was found. Protein oxidative damage was tightly related to the energy costs of flight, suggesting that optimizing flight efficiency reduces muscle damage. Overall, I found no strong positive or negative impacts of dietary PUFA. This suggests that seasonal preparation and maintenance of flight is not influenced by PUFA. Together these studies provide insight into how birds are adapted to meet the metabolic challenges of migration

Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars

Hal Wallis might not be as well known as David O. Selznick or Samuel Goldwyn, but the films he produced—Casablanca, Jezebel, Now Voyager, The Life of Emile Zola, Becket, True Grit, and many other classics (as well as scores of Elvis movies)—have certainly endured. As producer of numerous films, Wallis made an indelible mark on the course of America’s film industry, but his contributions are often overlooked and no full-length study has yet assessed his incredible career. A former office boy and salesman, Wallis first engaged with the business of film as the manager of a Los Angeles movie theater in 1922. He attracted the notice of the Warner brothers, who hired him as a publicity assistant. Within three months he was director of the department, and appointments to studio manager and production executive quickly followed. Wallis went on to oversee dozens of productions and formed his own production company in 1944. Bernard F. Dick draws on numerous sources such as Wallis’s personal production files and exclusive interviews with many of his contemporaries to finally tell the full story of his illustrious career. Dick combines his knowledge of behind-the-scenes Hollywood with fascinating anecdotes to create a portrait of one of Hollywood’s early power players. Bernard F. Dick, professor of communications and English at Fairleigh Dickinson University, is the author of numerous books on film history, including Engulfed: the Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood. This readable and well-documented book is enhanced by interviews with Wallis\u27s widow and with numerous individuals who worked with Wallis in Hollywood. . . . Recommended —Choice Includes enough good gossip to keep movie addicts reading. —Hollywood Reporter Heston remarked, \u27Hal was very good. Surely one of the two or three best of them all.\u27 Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars offers plenty of reasons to take that assessment seriously, and it gives a great filmmaker his due. —Hollywood Reporter For someone whose name appears in the credits of hundreds of movies, Hal Wallis doesn\u27t get a lot of credit. Bernard F. Dick has tried to rectify that with the first biography of the great Hollywood producer. —Philadelphia Inquirer A masterful job of charting Wallis\u27s career and examining his roles as production executive and independent producer. This is an engaging and illuminating narrative. —Film Quarterly It is one thing to understand the complex operation of the film industry, particularly in the wake of the studios having been absorbed into conglomerates. It is quite another to tell the story of the producers involved in this industry with insight and wit, in a way that appeals to the general reader as well as to film scholars. Bernard Dick has accomplished this feat once again in his book on Hal Wallis. —Gene Phillips, Loyola Universityhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_film_and_media_studies/1021/thumbnail.jp

Multimodale Therapie radiogener Läsionen der Becken-Bein-Gefäße: Ein systematischer Review

Zusammenfassung: Hintergrund: Die Prognose von Karzinompatienten hat sich nicht zuletzt durch den Einsatz der Radiotherapie deutlich verbessert. Entsprechend überleben Patienten vermehrt auch langfristig, weshalb unerwünschte Nebenwirkungen der Tumorbehandlung wie vaskuläre Strahlenschäden klinisch immer relevanter werden. Dieser systematische Review möchte einen Überblick über die Pathogenese und die verfügbaren Therapieoptionen von radiogenen Läsionen der Becken-Bein-Gefäßachsen geben. Methode: Zwei elektronische Datenbanken (Medline, Scopus) wurden systematisch durchsucht. Im Zentrum der Recherche stand die optimale Therapie von radiogenen Gefäßläsionen der Becken-Bein-Achse. Die Suche war dabei auf deutsche und englische Artikel beschränkt. Ergebnisse: 1573 identifizierte Abstracts wurden gescreent und 33potenziell relevante ausgewählt. Von diesen wurden nach einer Volltextanalyse 16 in die Analyse eingeschlossen. Alle Studien bis auf eine wurden vor 2006 publiziert. Das Intervall zwischen der Bestrahlung und den ersten Symptomen der Durchblutungsstörung ist sehr variabel und liegt zwischen Monaten und Jahrzehnten. Leitsymptom ist in den meisten Fällen eine Claudicatio oder eine Beinischämie vom Acute-on-chronic-Typ. Das therapeutische Management war sehr heterogen. Die orthotope Revaskularisation war in 71 % der Fälle die bevorzugte Wahl, sofern ein offenes chirurgisches Verfahren gewählt worden ist. Schlussfolgerungen: Die Evidenzbasis für die Steuerung der Therapie radiogener Gefäßläsionen ist schwach. Das klinische Management richtet sich darum deduktiv nach den Behandlungsrichtlinien atherosklerotischer Gefäßläsionen und muss auch die medikamentöse Sekundärprophylaxe miteinbeziehen. Heutzutage sollten endovaskulären Verfahren bevorzugt werde

Locking Local Oscillator Phase to the Atomic Phase via Weak Measurement

We propose a new method to reduce the frequency noise of a Local Oscillator (LO) to the level of white phase noise by maintaining (not destroying by projective measurement) the coherence of the ensemble pseudo-spin of atoms over many measurement cycles. This scheme uses weak measurement to monitor the phase in Ramsey method and repeat the cycle without initialization of phase and we call, "atomic phase lock (APL)" in this paper. APL will achieve white phase noise as long as the noise accumulated during dead time and the decoherence are smaller than the measurement noise. A numerical simulation confirms that with APL, Allan deviation is averaged down at a maximum rate that is proportional to the inverse of total measurement time, tau^-1. In contrast, the current atomic clocks that use projection measurement suppress the noise only down to the level of white frequency, in which case Allan deviation scales as tau^-1/2. Faraday rotation is one of the possible ways to realize weak measurement for APL. We evaluate the strength of Faraday rotation with 171Yb+ ions trapped in a linear rf-trap and discuss the performance of APL. The main source of the decoherence is a spontaneous emission induced by the probe beam for Faraday rotation measurement. One can repeat the Faraday rotation measurement until the decoherence become comparable to the SNR of measurement. We estimate this number of cycles to be ~100 cycles for a realistic experimental parameter.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, submitted to New Journal of Physic

Confinement from new global defect structures

We investigate confinement from new global defect structures in three spatial dimensions. The global defects arise in models described by a single real scalar field, governed by special scalar potentials. They appear as electrically, magnetically or dyonically charged structures. We show that they induce confinement, when they are solutions of effective QCD-like field theories in which the vacua are regarded as color dielectric media with an anti-screening property. As expected, in three spatial dimensions the monopole-like global defects generate the Coulomb potential as part of several confining potentials.Comment: RevTex4, 7 pages, 1 figure. Version to appear in Eur. Phys. J.