The hexagonal shape of the honeycomb cells depends on the construction behavior of bees

The hexagonal shape of the honey bee cells has attracted the attention of humans for centuries. It is now accepted that bees build cylindrical cells that later transform into hexagonal prisms through a process that it is still debated. The early explanations involving the geometers' skills of bees have been abandoned in favor of new hypotheses involving the action of physical forces, but recent data suggest that mechanical shaping by bees plays a role. However, the observed geometry can arise only if isodiametric cells are previously arranged in a way that each one is surrounded by six other similar cells; here I suggest that this is a consequence of the building program adopted by bees and propose a possible behavioral rule ultimately accounting for the hexagonal shape of bee cells

Dynamic activity patterns and cortico-subcortical interactions in the human brain

openQuesto progetto di tesi si propone di indagare la natura della connettività funzionale dinamica (dFC), con un particolare focus sulle sue basi neurali e sulla sua possibile rilevanza comportamentale. Nello specifico, partendo da uno studio pubblicato nel 2022 da Favaretto e colleghi, valuteremo il ruolo delle comunicazioni cortico-sottocorticali nella modellazione della dFC, nonché l'importanza dei suoi parametri nel predire specifici aspetti demografici e comportamentali.This thesis project aims at broadly investigating the nature of dynamic funtctional connectivity (dFC), with a specific focus on its neural underpinnings and potential behavioral relevance. In particular, leading from a study published in 2022 by Favaretto and collegues, we will assess the role of cortico-subcortical communications in shaping dFC as well as the influence of dFC metrics on demographic traits and individual behavior

Lexical stress and phonetic processing in word learning in 20- to 24-month-old English-learning children

PubMed ID: 2147719

Honey bee antiviral immune barriers as affected by multiple stress factors: A novel paradigm to interpret colony health decline and collapse

Any attempt to outline a logical framework in which to interpret the honey bee health decline and its contribution to elevated colony losses should recognize the importance of the multifactorial nature of the responsible syndrome and provide a functional model as a basis for defining and testing working hypotheses. We propose that covert infections by deformed wing virus (DWV) represent a sword of Damocles permanently threatening the survival of honey bee colonies and suggest that any factor affecting the honey bee\u2019s antiviral defenses can turn this pathogen into a killer. Here we discuss the available experimental evidence in the framework of a model based on honey bee immune competence as affected by multiple stress factors that is proposed as a conceptual tool for analyzing bee mortality and its underlying mechanisms

Infants’ statistical word segmentation in an artificial language is linked to both parental speech input and reported production abilities

International audienc

Bias for consonantal information over vocalic information in 30-month-olds: cross-linguistic evidence from French and English.

Using a name-based categorization task, Nazzi found in 2005 that French-learning 20-month-olds can make use of one-feature consonantal contrasts between new labels but fail to do so with one-feature vocalic contrasts. This asymmetry was interpreted as developmental evidence for the proposal that consonants play a more important role than vowels at the lexical level. In the current study using the same task, we first show that by 30 months French-learning infants can make use of one-feature vocalic contrasts (e.g., /pize/-/pyze/). Second, we show that in a situation where infants must neglect either a consonantal one-feature change or a vocalic one-feature change (e.g., match a /pide/ with either a /tide/ or a /pyde/), both French- and English-learning 30-month-olds choose to neglect the vocalic change rather than the consonantal change. We argue that these results suggest that by 30 months of age, infants still give less weight to vocalic information than to consonantal information in a lexically related task even though they are able to process fine vocalic information

Spécificité phonétique : de la perception précoce à l’acquisition des premiers mots

Dans ce chapitre, nous présentons des recherches portant sur la spécificité phonétique des premiers mots, utilisant soit des tâches de reconnaissance de mots connus, soit des tâches impliquant des processus d’acquisition de mots nouveaux. Cette discussion traitera du lien entre développement phonologique et acquisition lexicale. De nouvelles données seront présentées (Nazzi, 2005), montrant que des enfants de 20 mois peuvent acquérir simultanément deux mots nouveaux s’ils sont phonétiquement différents, ou s’ils se distinguent minimalement par une consonne (en position initiale de mot ou pas), mais pas s’ils ne diffèrent que par l’une de leur voyelle. Nous discuterons des implications de ces nouvelles données sur notre compréhension de la spécificité des premiers mots, et soulèverons la possibilité d’une contribution différente des voyelles et des consonnes à l’acquisition lexicale précoce.In this chapter, we review research, bearing on the issue of the phonetic specificity of early words, using either known word recognition tasks or tasks investigating the processes involved in the acquisition of new words. This review will address the issue of the link between phonological development and lexical acquisition. New findings will be presented (Nazzi, 2005), showing that 20-month-old infants can simultaneously learn two words if they are phonetically different or if they differ minimally by one of their consonants (whether or not in word-initial position), but not if they differ by one of their vowels. We will discuss the implications of these new findings for our understanding of the phonetic specificity of early words, and will discuss the possibility of a different contribution of vowels and consonants to early lexical acquisition