Social Communication Across Reproductive Boundaries: Hormones And The Auditory Periphery Of Songbirds And Frogs

Most animals experience reproductive transitions in their lives; for instance, reaching reproductive maturity or cycling in and out of breeding condition. Some reproductive transitions are abrupt, while others are more gradual. In most cases, changes in communication between the sexes follow the time course of these reproductive transitions and are typically thought to be coordinated by steroid hormones. We know a great deal about hormonal control of communication behaviors in birds and frogs, as well as the central neural control of these behaviors. There has also been significant interest in the effects of steroid hormones on central nervous system structures that control both the production and reception of communication signals associated with reproductive behaviors. However, peripheral sensory structures have typically received less attention, although there has been growing interest in recent years. It is becoming clear that peripheral sensory systems play an important role in reproductive communication, are plastic across reproductive conditions, and, in some cases, this plasticity may be mediated by steroid hormones. In this paper, we discuss recent evidence for the role of peripheral auditory structures in reproductive communication in birds and frogs, the plasticity of the peripheral auditory system, and the role of steroid hormones in mediating the effects of the peripheral auditory system on reproductive communication. We focus on both seasonal and acute reproductive transitions, introduce new data on the role of hormones in modulating seasonal patterns, and make recommendations for future work

Atomic Force Microscopy of DNA, Nucleoproteins and Cellular Complexes: The Use of Functionalized Substrates

Progress towards rapid and simple characterization of biomolecular samples by scanning probe microscopy is impeded mainly by limitations of the current approach to sample preparation. We are working on approaches based on chemical functionalization of mica. Treatment of mica with aminopropyltriethoxy silane (APTES) makes the surface positively charged (AP-mica) and able to hold DNA in place for imaging, even in water. We have shown that AP-mica is an appropriate substrate for numerous nucleoprotein complexes as well. The AFM images of the complex of DNA with RecA protein are stable and indicate a structural periodicity for this filament. AP-mica holds strongly such large DNA complexes as kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) and is an appropriate substrate for their imaging with AFM. We have further develop this approach for making hydrophobic substrates. Silylation of mica surface with hexamethyldisilazane (Me-mica) allowed us to get AFM images of chlorosomes, an antenna complex isolated from green photosynthetic bacteria. Me-mica may be converted into a positively charged substrate after treatment with water solutions of tetraethylammonium bromide or cetyltrimethylammonium bromide. These activated surfaces show high activity towards binding the DNA molecules

The scaling limit of the incipient infinite cluster in high-dimensional percolation. II. Integrated super-Brownian excursion

For independent nearest-neighbour bond percolation on Z^d with d >> 6, we prove that the incipient infinite cluster's two-point function and three-point function converge to those of integrated super-Brownian excursion (ISE) in the scaling limit. The proof is based on an extension of the new expansion for percolation derived in a previous paper, and involves treating the magnetic field as a complex variable. A special case of our result for the two-point function implies that the probability that the cluster of the origin consists of n sites, at the critical point, is given by a multiple of n^{-3/2}, plus an error term of order n^{-3/2-\epsilon} with \epsilon >0. This is a strong statement that the critical exponent delta is given by delta =2.Comment: 56 pages, 3 Postscript figures, in AMS-LaTeX, with graphicx, epic, and xr package

Evidence for Warped Disks of Young Stars in the Galactic Center

The central parsec around the super-massive black hole in the Galactic Center hosts more than 100 young and massive stars. Outside the central cusp (R~1") the majority of these O and Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars reside in a main clockwise system, plus a second, less prominent disk or streamer system at large angles with respect to the main system. Here we present the results from new observations of the Galactic Center with the AO-assisted near-infrared imager NACO and the integral field spectrograph SINFONI on the ESO/VLT. These include the detection of 27 new reliably measured WR/O stars in the central 12" and improved measurements of 63 previously detected stars, with proper motion uncertainties reduced by a factor of four compared to our earlier work. We develop a detailed statistical analysis of their orbital properties and orientations. Half of the WR/O stars are compatible with being members of a clockwise rotating system. The rotation axis of this system shows a strong transition as a function of the projected distance from SgrA*. The main clockwise system either is either a strongly warped single disk with a thickness of about 10 degrees, or consists of a series of streamers with significant radial variation in their orbital planes. 11 out of 61 clockwise moving stars have an angular separation of more than 30 degrees from the clockwise system. The mean eccentricity of the clockwise system is 0.36+/-0.06. The distribution of the counter-clockwise WR/O star is not isotropic at the 98% confidence level. It is compatible with a coherent structure such as stellar filaments, streams, small clusters or possibly a disk in a dissolving state. The observed disk warp and the steep surface density distribution favor in situ star formation in gaseous accretion disks as the origin of the young stars.Comment: ApJ in pres

Universal Oligonucleotide Microarray for Sub-Typing of Influenza A Virus

A universal microchip was developed for genotyping Influenza A viruses. It contains two sets of oligonucleotide probes allowing viruses to be classified by the subtypes of hemagglutinin (H1–H13, H15, H16) and neuraminidase (N1–N9). Additional sets of probes are used to detect H1N1 swine influenza viruses. Selection of probes was done in two steps. Initially, amino acid sequences specific to each subtype were identified, and then the most specific and representative oligonucleotide probes were selected. Overall, between 19 and 24 probes were used to identify each subtype of hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Genotyping included preparation of fluorescently labeled PCR amplicons of influenza virus cDNA and their hybridization to microarrays of specific oligonucleotide probes. Out of 40 samples tested, 36 unambiguously identified HA and NA subtypes of Influenza A virus

Cortical plasticity associated with stuttering therapy.

Abstract Neuroimaging studies have indicated that persistent developmental stuttering (PDS) may be associated both with an abnormality in white matter of left-hemispheric speech areas and a right-hemispheric hyperactivity. The latter may compensate for the deficient structural connectivity in the left hemisphere. To investigate the effects of stuttering therapy on brain activity nine male adults with PDS underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and within 12 weeks after fluency shaping therapy. Brain response differences during overt sentence reading before and after therapy were assessed by utilizing random effects analyses. After therapy, a more widespread activation was observed in frontal speech and language regions and temporal areas of both hemispheres, particularly and more pronounced on the left side. Interestingly, distinct posttreatment left-sided activation increases were located directly adjacent to a recently detected area of white matter anomaly [M. Sommer, M.A. Koch, W. Paulus, C. Weiller, C. Büchel (2002 Neumann et al. / Journal of Fluency Disorders 30 (2005) [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] execution, and temporal areas. Hence, a therapeutic mechanism can be assumed to remodel brain circuitry close to the source of the dysfunction instead of reinforcing compensation via homologous contralateral brain networks. Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to: (1) describe brain activation changes detected shortly after fluency-shaping therapy; (2) identify left-hemispheric regions where a (re)functionalization after fluency-shaping therapy seems to occur adjacent to a recently described abnormal white matter region in PDS subjects; and (3) discuss how an effective cerebral compensation mechanism for stuttering could work

Exploring Hyperons and Hypernuclei with Lattice QCD

In this work we outline a program for lattice QCD that would provide a first step toward understanding the strong and weak interactions of strange baryons. The study of hypernuclear physics has provided a significant amount of information regarding the structure and weak decays of light nuclei containing one or two Lambda's, and Sigma's. From a theoretical standpoint, little is known about the hyperon-nucleon interaction, which is required input for systematic calculations of hypernuclear structure. Furthermore, the long-standing discrepancies in the P-wave amplitudes for nonleptonic hyperon decays remain to be understood, and their resolution is central to a better understanding of the weak decays of hypernuclei. We present a framework that utilizes Luscher's finite-volume techniques in lattice QCD to extract the scattering length and effective range for Lambda-N scattering in both QCD and partially-quenched QCD. The effective theory describing the nonleptonic decays of hyperons using isospin symmetry alone, appropriate for lattice calculations, is constructed.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figure

Multiwavelength Observations of LS I +61 303 with VERITAS, Swift and RXTE

We present results from a long-term monitoring campaign on the TeV binary LSI +61 303 with VERITAS at energies above 500 GeV, and in the 2-10 keV hard X-ray bands with RXTE and Swift, sampling nine 26.5 day orbital cycles between September 2006 and February 2008. The binary was observed by VERITAS to be variable, with all integrated observations resulting in a detection at the 8.8 sigma (2006/2007) and 7.3 sigma (2007/2008) significance level for emission above 500 GeV. The source was detected during active periods with flux values ranging from 5 to 20% of the Crab Nebula, varying over the course of a single orbital cycle. Additionally, the observations conducted in the 2007-2008 observing season show marginal evidence (at the 3.6 sigma significance level) for TeV emission outside of the apastron passage of the compact object around the Be star. Contemporaneous hard X-ray observations with RXTE and Swift show large variability with flux values typically varying between 0.5 and 3.0*10^-11 ergs cm^-2 s^-1 over a single orbital cycle. The contemporaneous X-ray and TeV data are examined and it is shown that the TeV sampling is not dense enough to detect a correlation between the two bands.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, 2 table, Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa