Dorsomedial striatum, but not dorsolateral striatum, is necessary for rat category learning

Categorization is an adaptive cognitive function that allows us to generalize knowledge to novel situations. Converging evidence from neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and neurophysiological studies suggest that categorization is mediated by the basal ganglia; however, there is debate regarding the necessity of each subregion of the basal ganglia and their respective functions. The current experiment examined the roles of the dorsomedial striatum (DMS; homologous to the head of the caudate nucleus) and dorsolateral striatum (DLS; homologous to the body and tail of the caudate nucleus) in category learning by combining selective lesions with computational modeling. Using a touchscreen apparatus, rats were trained to categorize distributions of visual stimuli that varied along two continuous dimensions (i.e., spatial frequency and orientation). The tasks either required attention to one stimulus dimension (spatial frequency or orientation; 1D tasks) or both stimulus dimensions (spatial frequency and orientation; 2D tasks). Rats with NMDA lesions of the DMS were impaired on both the 1D tasks and 2D tasks, whereas rats with DLS lesions showed no impairments. The lesions did not affect performance on a discrimination task that had the same trial structure as the categorization tasks, suggesting that the category impairments effected processes relevant to categorization. Model simulations were conducted using a neural network to assess the effect of the DMS lesions on category learning. Together, the results suggest that the DMS is critical to map category representations to appropriate behavioral responses, whereas the DLS is not necessary for categorization

Comparison of Construction Costs for Vegetated Treatment Systems in the Midwest

Vegetated treatment systems (VTSs) provide an alternative to containment basin systems for beef feedlot runoff control. Beef producers in the Midwestern United States have shown an increasing interest in using VTSs as a perceived lower cost option to containment basin systems. This paper reports the actual construction costs associated with 21 VTSs (eight on permitted Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and 13 on non permitted Animal Feeding Operations (AFOs)) located within Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. The VTS construction costs are reported on a per head basis in 2009 adjusted dollars for each system. Cost comparisons are presented between CAFO and AFO facilities, by location and by system type. Additionally, estimated construction cost comparisons between open feedlots with VTS systems, open feedlots with containment basins, monoslope barns and hoop structure beef production systems are provided. Results from the cost comparison indicate that monoslope barns with concrete floors are the highest cost at $621 per head on average followed by hoop structures at$395 per head. Vegetated Treatment Systems designed for CAFO facilities ($77 per head avg.) are less expensive to construct than a traditional containment basin ($129 per head avg.) The same results indicated that an AFO VTS ($62 per head avg.) was less expensive to build than a containment basin on a similar facility ($195 per head). The data indicated that the least expensive VTS for an AFO is a sloped or sloped and level VTA ($42 per head avg.) followed by a pump sloped VTA ($68 per head avg.) and a sprinkler VTS ($87 per head avg.)

Kansas v. Boettger: On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of the State of Kansas

This amicus brief in support of Kansas’ petition for certiorari in Kansas v. Boettger discusses the important issue of whether the First Amendment require proof of specific intent to criminally punish violent threats. The brief argues that the First Amendment does not contain any such requirement and that creating any such requirement would interfere with effective prosecution of domestic violence. The Kansas Supreme Court’s decision over which review is being sought required the state to prove that an abuser had a specific intent to cause fear. If allowed to stand, the decision will make prosecuting and preventing domestic violence even more challenging, without any corresponding benefit. In domestic violence cases, there is rarely direct evidence of specific intent, and domestic-violence victims often struggle to confront their abusers in court. Indeed, the impact of abusers’ psychological, emotional, and physical abuse is often so severe that victims frequently struggle even to seek help. The Kansas Supreme Court’s decision to impose a specific intent requirement in a case involving violent threats is inconsistent with decisions from other courts, the law in over a dozen states, the Model Penal Code, and the history and tradition of the First Amendment. This amicus brief concludes that the Supreme Court should grant certiorari to review the decision below and reverse it

Exploring a Model for the Semantics of Medieval Legal Charters

This paper describes several aspects of a formal digital semantic model that expresses some issues presented by medieval charters. Surprisingly, perhaps, this model does not deal directly with a charter’s text and is not mark-up based. Instead, it draws on the authors’ experience with the construction of three highly structured factoid-oriented prosopographical databases that drew heavily on charter sources, and that also did not explicitly contain a digital representation of the charter texts. The paper explains the way in which the structured data model thus derived differs from text-oriented approaches such as TEI/CEI work that has been done so far on charters. It presents a view on why this factoid-based model seems to capture more readily some of the complexity in the apparent meanings of the charters, and suggests that this is because it is also more likely to relate to a richer conception of the broader medieval world in which these charters were created than text-oriented work does. Finally, drawing on recent work on the ChartEx project, it explores how a combined approach, that takes the best of both text-markup and structured data modelling techniques, could evolve in the future

Impacts of Mid-Level Biofuel Content In Gasoline on SIDI Engine-Out and Tailpipe Particulate Matter Emissions

In this work, the influences of ethanol and iso-butanol blended with gasoline on engine-out and post three-way catalyst (TWC) particle size distribution and number concentration were studied using a General Motors (GM) 2.0L turbocharged spark ignition direct injection (SIDI) engine. The engine was operated using the production engine control unit (ECU) with a dynamometer controlling the engine speed and the accelerator pedal position controlling the engine load. A TSI Fast Mobility Particle Sizer (FMPS) spectrometer was used to measure the particle size distribution in the range from 5.6 to 560 nm with a sampling rate of 1 Hz. U.S. federal certification gasoline (E0), two ethanol-blended fuels (E10 and E20), and 11.7% iso-butanol blended fuel (BU12) were tested. Measurements were conducted at 10 selected steady-state engine operation conditions. Bi-modal particle size distributions were observed for all operating conditions with peak values at particle sizes of 10 nm and 70 nm. Idle and low-speed / low-load conditions emitted higher total particle numbers than other operating conditions. At idle, the engine-out particulate matter (PM) emissions were dominated by nucleation mode particles, and the production TWC reduced these nucleation mode particles by more than 50%, while leaving the accumulation mode particle distribution unchanged. At an engine load higher than 6 bar net mean effective pressure (NMEP), accumulation mode particles dominated the engine-out particle emissions, and the TWC had little effect. Compared to the baseline gasoline (E0), E10 does not significantly change PM emissions, while E20 and BU12 both reduce PM emissions under the conditions studied. Iso-butanol was observed to impact PM emissions more than ethanol, with up to 50% reductions at some conditions. In this paper, issues related to PM measurement using the FMPS are also discussed. While some uncertainties are due to engine variation, the FMPS must be carefully maintained in order to achieve repeatable measurement results

Inequity in access to transplantation in the UK

Background and objectives Despite the presence of a universal health care system, it is unclear if there is intercenter variation in access to kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom. This study aims to assess whether equity exists in access to kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom after adjustment for patient-specific factors and center practice patterns. Design, setting, participants, & measurements In this prospective, observational cohort study including all 71 United Kingdom kidney centers, incident RRT patients recruited between November 2011 and March 2013 as part of the Access to Transplantation and Transplant Outcome Measures study were analyzed to assess preemptive listing (n=2676) and listing within 2 years of starting dialysis (n=1970) by center. Results Seven hundred and six participants (26%) were listed preemptively, whereas 585 (30%) were listed within 2 years of commencing dialysis. The interquartile range across centers was 6%–33% for preemptive listing and 25%–40% for listing after starting dialysis. Patient factors, including increasing age, most comorbidities, body mass index >35 kg/m2, and lower socioeconomic status, were associated with a lower likelihood of being listed and accounted for 89% and 97% of measured intercenter variation for preemptive listing and listing within 2 years of starting dialysis, respectively. Asian (odds ratio, 0.49; 95% confidence interval, 0.33 to 0.72) and Black (odds ratio, 0.43; 95% confidence interval, 0.26 to 0.71) participants were both associated with reduced access to preemptive listing; however Asian participants were associated with a higher likelihood of being listed after starting dialysis (odds ratio, 1.42; 95% confidence interval, 1.12 to 1.79). As for center factors, being registered at a transplanting center (odds ratio, 3.1; 95% confidence interval, 2.36 to 4.07) and a universal approach to discussing transplantation (odds ratio, 1.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.08 to 1.78) were associated with higher preemptive listing, whereas using a written protocol was associated negatively with listing within 2 years of starting dialysis (odds ratio, 0.7; 95% confidence interval, 0.58 to 0.9). Conclusions Patient case mix accounts for most of the intercenter variation seen in access to transplantation in the United Kingdom, with practice patterns also contributing some variation. Socioeconomic inequity exists despite having a universal health care system

Supplemental Feeding for Ecotourism Reverses Diel Activity and Alters Movement Patterns and Spatial Distribution of the Southern Stingray, Dasyatis americana

Southern stingrays, Dasyatis americana, have been provided supplemental food in ecotourism operations at Stingray City Sandbar (SCS), Grand Cayman since 1986, with this site becoming one of the world’s most famous and heavily visited marine wildlife interaction venues. Given expansion of marine wildlife interactive tourism worldwide, there are questions about the effects of such activities on the focal species and their ecosystems. We used a combination of acoustic telemetry and tag-recapture efforts to test the hypothesis that human-sourced supplemental feeding has altered stingray activity patterns and habitat use at SCS relative to wild animals at control sites. Secondarily, we also qualitatively estimated the population size of stingrays supporting this major ecotourism venue. Tag-recapture data indicated that a population of at least 164 stingrays, over 80% female, utilized the small area at SCS for prolonged periods of time. Examination of comparative movements of mature female stingrays at SCS and control sites revealed strong differences between the two groups: The fed animals demonstrated a notable inversion of diel activity, being constantly active during the day with little movement at night compared to the nocturnally active wild stingrays; The fed stingrays utilized significantly (

vrfinder: Finding outbound addresses in traceroute

Current methods to analyze the Internet's router-level topology with paths collected using traceroute assume that the source address for each router in the path is either an inbound or off-path address on each router. In this work, we show that outbound addresses are common in our Internet-wide traceroute dataset collected by CAIDA's Ark vantage points in January 2020, accounting for 1.7% - 5.8% of the addresses seen at some point before the end of a traceroute. This phenomenon can lead to mistakes in Internet topology analysis, such as inferring router ownership and identifying interdomain links. We hypothesize that the primary contributor to outbound addresses is Layer 3 Virtual Private Networks (L3VPNs), and propose vrfinder, a technique for identifying L3VPN outbound addresses in traceroute collections. We validate vrfinder against ground truth from two large research and education networks, demonstrating high precision (100.0%) and recall (82.1% - 95.3%). We also show the benefit of accounting for L3VPNs in traceroute analysis through extensions to bdrmapIT, increasing the accuracy of its router ownership inferences for L3VPN outbound addresses from 61.5% - 79.4% to 88.9% - 95.5%

A Young Solar Twin in the Rosette Cluster NGC 2244 Line of Sight

Based on prior precision photometry and cluster age analysis, the bright star GSC 00154−01819 is a possible young pre-main sequence member of the Rosette cluster, NGC 2244. As part of a comprehensive study of the large-scale structure of the Rosette and its excitation by the cluster stars, we noted this star as a potential backlight for a probe of the interstellar medium and extinction along the sight line towards a distinctive nebular feature projected on to the cluster centre. New high-resolution spectra of the star were taken with the University College London Echelle Spectrograph of the AAT. They reveal that rather than being a reddened spectral type B or A star within the Mon OB2 association, it is a nearby, largely unreddened, solar twin of spectral type G2V less than 180 Myr old. It is about 219 pc from the Sun with a barycentric radial velocity of +14.35 ± 1.99 km s−1. The spectrum of the Rosette behind it and along this line of sight shows a barycentric radial velocity of +26.0 ± 2.4 km s−1 in H α, and a full width at half-maximum velocity dispersion of 61.94 ± 1.38 km s−1

Optimizing dry-matter partitioning for increased spike growth, grain number and harvest index in spring wheat

Improving biomass is an important goal for future genetic gains in yield potential in wheat, but it will also be crucial to identify physiological traits to maximize harvest index (HI, proportion of aboveground biomass in grain). Increased grain partitioning will require increased dry-matter (DM) partitioning to the spikes at anthesis as well as enhanced fruiting efficiency (FE, grains per g spike dry matter at anthesis or chaff dry matter at harvest), whilst optimizing the partitioning amongst the non-grain components to maintain post-anthesis photosynthetic capacity and soluble carbohydrate translocation. The objectives of this study were to: i) quantify genetic variation in DM partitioning among plant organs at anthesis (GS65) + 7days and associations with spike growth and FE and ii) identify optimized partitioning traits associated with enhanced HI and grain yield, in CIMMYT elite spring wheat backgrounds. Two field experiments were conducted in 2011-12 and 2012-13 testing 26 CIMMYT spring wheat cultivars in NW Mexico in irrigated conditions in which DM partitioning was assessed in plant organs at anthesis + 7 days, and within-spike (glume, palea, lemma, rachis and awn) partitioning was assessed at harvest. Grain yield, yield components, HI and FE were assessed at harvest. Our results identified new traits for HI (decreased DM partitioning to stem internodes 2 (top down, peduncle-1) and 3, and decreased rachis DM partitioning and rachis specific weight (rachis DM per rachis unit length) and increased lemma DM partitioning), potentially allowing breeders to maximize the exploitation of enhanced carbon assimilation for grain biomass. Further work will focus on understanding the role of soluble carbohydrate re-translocation in these relationships and establishing high-throughput and cost-effective phenotyping methods for these traits for deployment in breeding