Automatic comparison of global children’s and adult songs supports a sensorimotor hypothesis for the origin of musical scales

Music throughout the world varies greatly, yet some musical features like scale structure display striking crosscultural similarities. Are there musical laws or biological constraints that underlie this diversity? The “vocal mistuning” hypothesis proposes that cross-cultural regularities in musical scales arise from imprecision in vocal tuning, while the integer-ratio hypothesis proposes that they arise from perceptual principles based on psychoacoustic consonance. In order to test these hypotheses, we conducted automatic comparative analysis of 100 children’s and adult songs from throughout the world. We found that children’s songs tend to have narrower melodic range, fewer scale degrees, and less precise intonation than adult songs, consistent with motor limitations due to their earlier developmental stage. On the other hand, adult and children’s songs share some common tuning intervals at small-integer ratios, particularly the perfect 5th (~3:2 ratio). These results suggest that some widespread aspects of musical scales may be caused by motor constraints, but also suggest that perceptual preferences for simple integer ratios might contribute to cross-cultural regularities in scale structure. We propose a “sensorimotor hypothesis” to unify these competing theories

Nitrogen Fixation and Translocation in Sugarcane

World sugarcane production is increasing rapidly as a biofuel. In some areas in Brazil, sugarcane has been grown continually over very long periods without N fertiliser inputs. Therefore, the occurrence of N fixation has been suspected. However, quantitative studies seeking to identify the N~2~ fixation sites in the plant and to record the translocation of fixed N around the plant have not yet established. A ^15^N~2~ gas tracer experiment was conducted using young sugarcane plants to investigate the sites of N~2~ fixation and also to explore the possibility of translocation of the fixed N among the plant's major organs. Young sugarcane plants (_Saccharum officinarum_ L.) about 40 cm high and some 14 days after sprouting from a stem cutting were exposed to ^15^N~2~ labeled air in a 500 mL plastic cylinder for 7 days. Following the 7-day ^15^N~2~ feeding, some plants were potted and grown on in normal air for a further chase period. The incorporation of ^15^N into the shoot, roots, and stem cutting was analysed at day-3, and day-7 of the labeling period and at day-14, and day-21 during the chase period. After 3 days of ^15^N~2~ feeding, the % of N derived from the ^15^N labeled air in the shoot, roots and stem cutting were 0.027%, 2.22% and 0.271%, respectively. The roots showed the highest N fixing activity followed by the stem cutting, while the incorporation of ^15^N into the shoot was very low. After 21 days about a half of the N originating in the stem cutting had been transported to the shoot and the roots. However, the ^15^N fixed either in the roots or in the stem cutting remained in the original parts and was not appreciably transported to the shoot

Preference Analysis Method Applying Relationship between Electroencephalogram Activities and Egogram in Prefrontal Cortex Activities : How to collaborate between engineering techniques and psychology

This paper introduces a method of preference analysis based on electroencephalogram (EEG) analysis of prefrontal cortex activity. The proposed method applies the relationship between EEG activity and the Egogram. The EEG senses a single point and records readings by means of a dry-type sensor and a small number of electrodes. The EEG analysis adapts the feature mining and the clustering on EEG patterns using a self-organizing map (SOM). EEG activity of the prefrontal cortex displays individual difference. To take the individual difference into account, we construct a feature vector for input modality of the SOM. The input vector for the SOM consists of the extracted EEG feature vector and a human character vector, which is the human character quantified through the ego analysis using psychological testing. In preprocessing, we extract the EEG feature vector by calculating the time average on each frequency band: θ, low-β, and high-β. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed method, we perform experiments using real EEG data. These results show that the accuracy rate of the EEG pattern classification is higher than it was before the improvement of the input vector

On the Emerging Role of the Taste Receptor Type 1 (T1R) Family of Nutrient-Sensors in the Musculoskeletal System.

The special sense of taste guides and guards food intake and is essential for body maintenance. Salty and sour tastes are sensed via ion channels or gated ion channels while G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) of the taste receptor type 1 (T1R) family sense sweet and umami tastes and GPCRs of the taste receptor type 2 (T2R) family sense bitter tastes. T1R and T2R receptors share similar downstream signaling pathways that result in the stimulation of phospholipase-C-β2. The T1R family includes three members that form heterodimeric complexes to recognize either amino acids or sweet molecules such as glucose. Although these functions were originally described in gustatory tissue, T1R family members are expressed in numerous non-gustatory tissues and are now viewed as nutrient sensors that play important roles in monitoring global glucose and amino acid status. Here, we highlight emerging evidence detailing the function of T1R family members in the musculoskeletal system and review these findings in the context of the musculoskeletal diseases sarcopenia and osteoporosis, which are major public health problems among the elderly that affect locomotion, activities of daily living, and quality of life. These studies raise the possibility that T1R family member function may be modulated for therapeutic benefit

Activation of ADF/cofilin by phosphorylation-regulated Slingshot phosphatase is required for the meiotic spindle assembly in Xenopus laevis oocytes

We identify Xenopus ADF/cofilin (XAC) and its activator, Slingshot phosphatase (XSSH), as key regulators of actin dynamics essential for spindle microtubule assembly during Xenopus oocyte maturation. Phosphorylation of XSSH at multiple sites within the tail domain occurs just after germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) and is accompanied by dephosphorylation of XAC, which was mostly phosphorylated in immature oocytes. This XAC dephosphorylation after GVBD is completely suppressed by latrunculin B, an actin monomer-sequestering drug. On the other hand, jasplakinolide, an F-actin-stabilizing drug, induces dephosphorylation of XAC. Effects of latrunculin B and jasplakinolide are reconstituted in cytostatic factor-arrested extracts (CSF extracts), and XAC dephosphorylation is abolished by depletion of XSSH from CSF extracts, suggesting that XSSH functions as an actin filament sensor to facilitate actin filament dynamics via XAC activation. Injection of anti-XSSH antibody, which blocks full phosphorylation of XSSH after GVBD, inhibits both meiotic spindle formation and XAC dephosphorylation. Coinjection of constitutively active XAC with the antibody suppresses this phenotype. Treatment of oocytes with jasplakinolide also impairs spindle formation. These results strongly suggest that elevation of actin dynamics by XAC activation through XSSH phosphorylation is required for meiotic spindle assembly in Xenopus laevis

Adrenocorticotropic hormone at pathophysiological concentration modulates the proliferation and differentiation of bone cells

SummaryBackground/purposeAdrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) plays a vital role in maintaining the function of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. Recent studies have demonstrated that ACTH directly affects the proliferation and differentiation of bone cells. However, the ACTH concentrations used in these studies appear to be markedly higher than the physiological concentrations. Here, we investigated whether ACTH at pathophysiological concentration affects the proliferation and differentiation of osteoblasts and osteoclasts.Materials and methodsWe evaluated the effect of ACTH at pathophysiological concentration on osteoclasts using tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase staining and on osteoblasts using alkaline phosphatase activity assay. Additionally, we conducted reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction analysis.ResultsWe found that at pathophysiological concentration, ACTH does not affect osteoblast proliferation and inhibits osteoblast differentiation. Moreover, we showed that at pathophysiological concentration, ACTH does not affect the proliferation of bone marrow macrophages, but promotes differentiation of osteoclasts and induces expression of genes involved in bone resorption.ConclusionTaken together, our findings suggest that ACTH modulates the proliferation and differentiation of bone cells in vitro at pathophysiological concentration

Computation of Green's function by local variational quantum compilation

Computation of the Green's function is crucial to study the properties of quantum many-body systems such as strongly correlated systems. Although the high-precision calculation of the Green's function is a notoriously challenging task on classical computers, the development of quantum computers may enable us to compute the Green's function with high accuracy even for classically-intractable large-scale systems. Here, we propose an efficient method to compute the real-time Green's function based on the local variational quantum compilation (LVQC) algorithm, which simulates the time evolution of a large-scale quantum system using a low-depth quantum circuit constructed through optimization on a smaller-size subsystem. Our method requires shallow quantum circuits to calculate the Green's function and can be utilized on both near-term noisy intermediate-scale and long-term fault-tolerant quantum computers depending on the computational resources we have. We perform a numerical simulation of the Green's function for the one- and two-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model up to $4\times4$ sites lattice (32 qubits) and demonstrate the validity of our protocol compared to a standard method based on the Trotter decomposition. We finally present a detailed estimation of the gate count for the large-scale Fermi-Hubbard model, which also illustrates the advantage of our method over the Trotter decomposition.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figure

Evaluation of initiating characteristics of osteoblastic calcium signaling responses to stretch by video rate time-course observation

Osteoblasts change their intracellular calcium ion concentration in response to mechanical stimuli. Although it has been reported that osteoblasts sense and respond to stretching of a substrate on which osteoblastic cells have adhered, the details of the dynamic characteristics of their calcium signaling response remain unclear. Motion artifacts such as loss of focus during stretch application make it difficult to conduct precise time-course observations of calcium signaling responses. Therefore, in this study, we observed intracellular calcium signaling responses to stretch in a single osteoblastic cell by video rate temporal resolution. Our originally developed cell-stretching microdevice enables in situ observation of a stretched cell without excessive motion artifacts such as focus drift. Residual minor effects of motion artifacts were corrected by the fluorescence ratiometric method with fluorescent calcium indicator Fluo 8H and fluorescent cytoplasm dye calcein red-orange. We succeeded to detect the intracellular calcium signaling response to stretch by video rate temporal resolution. The results revealed a time lag from stretch application to initiation of the intracellular calcium signaling response. We compared two time lags measured at two different cell areas: central and peripheral regions of the cell. The time lag in the central region of the cell was shorter than that in the peripheral region. This result suggests that the osteoblastic calcium signaling response to stretching stimuli initiates around the central region of the cell