bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The role of action concepts in physical reasoning: insights from late childhood
Authors: Grandchamp des Raux Hélène , Ghilardi Tommaso , Soderberg Christina , Ossmy Ori 
Published: August 2024

A fundamental component of human cognition is the ability to intuitively reason about behaviours of objects and systems in the physical world without resorting to explicit scientific knowledge. This skill was traditionally considered a symbolic process. However, in the last decades, there has been a shift towards ideas of embodiment, suggesting that accessing physical knowledge and predicting physical outcomes is grounded in bodily interactions with the environment. Infants and children, who learn mainly through their embodied experiences, serve as a model to probe the link between reasoning and physical concepts. Here, we tested school-aged children (5- to 15-year-olds) in online reasoning games that involve different physical action concepts such as supporting, launching and clearing. We assessed changes in children’s performance and strategies over development and their relationships with the different action concepts. Children reasoned more accurately in problems that involved supporting actions compared to launching or clearing actions. Moreover, when children failed, they were more strategic in subsequent attempts when problems involved support rather than launching or clearing. Children improved with age, but improvements differed across action concepts. Our findings suggest that accessing physical knowledge and predicting physical events are affected by action concepts, and those effects change over development.
This article is part of the theme issue 'Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence'.
Spontaneous movement synchrony as an exogenous source for interbrain synchronization in cooperative learning
Authors: Li Yuanyuan , Su Chang , Pan Yafeng 
Published: August 2024

Learning through cooperation with conspecifics—‘cooperative learning’—is critical to cultural evolution and survival. Recent progress has established that interbrain synchronization (IBS) between individuals predicts success in cooperative learning. However, the likely sources of IBS during learning interactions remain poorly understood. To address this dearth of knowledge, we tested whether movement synchrony serves as an exogenous factor that drives IBS, taking an embodiment perspective. We formed dyads of individuals with varying levels of prior knowledge (high–high (HH), high–low (HL), low–low (LL) dyads) and instructed them to collaboratively analyse an ancient Chinese poem. During the task, we simultaneously recorded their brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy and filmed the entire experiment to parse interpersonal movement synchrony using the computer-vision motion energy analysis. Interestingly, the homogeneous groups (HH and/or LL) exhibited stronger movement synchrony and IBS compared with the heterogeneous group. Importantly, mediation analysis revealed that spontaneous and synchronized body movements between individuals contribute to IBS, hence facilitating learning. This study therefore fills a critical gap in our understanding of how interpersonal transmission of information between individual brains, associated with behavioural entrainment, shapes social learning.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence’.
Prefrontal Excitation/Inhibition Balance Supports Adolescent Enhancements in Circuit Signal to Noise Ratio
Authors: McKeon Shane D. , Perica Maria I. , Calabro Finnegan J. , Foran Will , Hetherington Hoby , Moon Chan-Hong , Luna Beatriz 
Published: August 2024

ABSTRACTThe development and refinement of neuronal circuitry allow for stabilized and efficient neural recruitment, supporting adult-like behavioral performance. During adolescence, the maturation of PFC is proposed to be a critical period (CP) for executive function, driven by a break in balance between glutamatergic excitation and GABAergic inhibition (E/I) neurotransmission. During CPs, cortical circuitry fine-tunes to improve information processing and reliable responses to stimuli, shifting from spontaneous to evoked activity, enhancing the SNR, and promoting neural synchronization. Harnessing 7T MR spectroscopy and EEG in a longitudinal cohort (N = 164, ages 10-32 years, 283 neuroimaging sessions), we outline associations between age-related changes in glutamate and GABA neurotransmitters and EEG measures of cortical SNR. We find developmental decreases in spontaneous activity and increases in cortical SNR during our auditory steady state task using 40 Hz stimuli. Decreases in spontaneous activity were associated with glutamate levels in DLPFC, while increases in cortical SNR were associated with more balanced Glu and GABA levels. These changes were associated with improvements in working memory performance. This study provides evidence of CP plasticity in the human PFC during adolescence, leading to stabilized circuitry that allows for the optimal recruitment and integration of multisensory input, resulting in improved executive function.
Moderate prenatal alcohol exposure alters GABAergic transmission and the actions of acute alcohol in the CeM of adolescent rats
Authors: Winchester Sarah E. , Diaz Marvin R. 
Published: August 2024

AbstractIndividuals with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) are at a higher risk for developing alcohol use disorder (AUD). Using a rat model of PAE on gestational day 12 (G12; ~2ndtrimesters in humans), a critical period for amygdala development, we have shown disruptions in medial central amygdala (CeM) function, an important brain region associated with the development of AUD. In addition to this, acute ethanol (EtOH) increases GABA transmission in the CeM of rodents in a sex-dependent manner, a mechanism that potentially contributes to alcohol misuse. How PAE alters acute alcohol’s effects within the CeM is unknown. Given these findings, we investigated how PAE may interact with acute alcohol to alter neuronal and synaptic mechanisms in the CeM of adolescent rats in order to understand PAE-induced alcohol-related behaviors. Under basal conditions, PAE males showed reduced rheobase, indicative of reduced excitability, and females showed a reduction in GABA transmission, indicated by lower spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (sIPSCs). We found that acute EtOH increased sIPSCs in control males at a moderate concentration (66 mM), while PAE males showed increased sIPSCs only at a high concentration (88 mM). Adolescent females, regardless of PAE status, were largely insensitive to EtOH’s effects at all tested concentrations. However, PAE females showed a significant increase in sIPSCs at the highest concentration (88 mM). Overall, these findings support the hypothesis that PAE leads to sex-specific changes in synaptic activity and neuronal function. Future research is needed to better understand the specific mechanisms by which acute EtOH’s affects neurotransmission in the adolescent brain of individuals with a history of PAE.
The longevity of cut flowers of Iranian narcissus is affected by genotype, physiochemical characteristics and stem structural factors
Authors: Haghshenas Azra , Jowkar Abolfazl 
Published: August 2024

AbstractFlower longevity is one of the critical factors in determining the quality of cut flowers. narcissus, a popular cut flower in Iran, is cultivated outdoors in the fall and winter. Despite numerous studies on extending the longevity of narcissus flowers, our understanding of internal changes in floral tissues during the postharvest period is limited. This study aimed to investigate the morphophysiological and biochemical changes in floral tissues during postharvest conditions in Iranian narcissus populations. Ten narcissus populations were collected from various regions of Iran and cultivated in a greenhouse. The harvested narcissus flowers were kept in vases containing distilled water. Flower longevity; physicochemical characteristics, such as relative solution uptake, electrical conductivity, relative water content, total protein, antioxidant enzyme activity, carotenoids, H2O2and malondialdehyde; stem mucilage sugars; structural features of the stem and vascular bundles; and the number of bacteria in the vase solution were evaluated on the first and third days after harvest. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design with nine replications, and mean comparisons were performed via SPSS software. The longevity of flowers is influenced by genetic characteristics and floral tissues. The populations of Shahla from the Khusf region and Porpar from the Khafr region presented the greatest longevity, whereas white narcissus presented the shortest longevity. Compared with petal tissue, corona tissue has greater longevity because of its thicker structure, higher water retention capacity, lower production of free radicals, and stronger antioxidant defense system. The number of vascular bundles was significantly positively correlated with relative solution uptake. No vascular blockage was observed during the postharvest period, but stem cells collapsed on the third day of vase life, which seemed to affect water uptake. The reason for the lack of vascular blockage in the narcissus stem requires further research.
Neuronal basis of audio-tactile speech perception
Authors: Cieśla Katarzyna , Wolak Tomasz , Amedi Amir 
Published: August 2024

AbstractSince childhood, we experience speech as a combination of audio and visual signals, with visual cues particularly beneficial in difficult auditory conditions. This study investigates an alternative multisensory context of speech, and namely audio-tactile, which could prove beneficial for rehabilitation in the hearing impaired population. We show improved understanding of distorted speech in background noise, when combined with low-frequency speech-extracted vibrotactile stimulation delivered on fingertips. The quick effect might be related to the fact that both auditory and tactile signals contain the same type of information. Changes in functional connectivity due to audio-tactile speech training are primarily observed in the visual system, including early visual regions, lateral occipital cortex, middle temporal motion area, and the extrastriate body area. These effects, despite lack of visual input during the task, possibly reflect automatic involvement of areas supporting lip-reading and spatial aspects of language, such as gesture observation, in difficult acoustic conditions. For audio-tactile integration we show increased connectivity of a sensorimotor hub representing the entire body, with the parietal system of motor planning based on multisensory inputs, along with several visual areas. After training, the sensorimotor connectivity increases with high-order and language-related frontal and temporal regions. Overall, the results suggest that the new audio-tactile speech task activates regions that partially overlap with the established brain network for audio-visual speech processing. This further indicates that neuronal plasticity related to perceptual learning is first built upon an existing structural and functional blueprint for connectivity. Further effects reflect task-specific behaviour related to body and spatial perception, as well as tactile signal processing. Possibly, a longer training regime is required to strengthen direct pathways between the auditory and sensorimotor brain regions during audio-tactile speech processing.
Phased chromosome-level genome assembly provides insight into the origin of hexaploid sweetpotato
Authors: Wu Shan , Sun Honghe , Hamilton John P. , Mollinari Marcelo , Gesteira Gabriel De Siqueira , Kitavi Mercy , Yan Mengxiao , Wang Hongxia , Yang Jun , Yencho G. Craig , Buell C. Robin , Fei Zhangjun 
Published: August 2024

AbstractThe hexaploid sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas[L.] Lam.) is a globally important stable crop and plays a significant role in biofortification. The high resilience and adaptability of sweetpotato provide it with advantages in addressing food security and climate change issues. Here we report a haplotype-resolved chromosome-level genome assembly of an African cultivar, ‘Tanzania’, which enables ancestry inference along the haplotype-phased chromosomes. Our analyses reveal that the wild tetraploidI. aequatoriensis, currently found in coastal Ecuador, is the closest known relative of sweetpotato and likely a direct descendant of one of the sweetpotato progenitors. The other unknown progenitor(s) of sweetpotato have a closer genetic relationship to the wild tetraploidI. batatas4×, distributed in Central America, than toI. aequatoriensis. The different ancestral sequences are not distributed in typical subgenomes but are intertwined on the same chromosomes, possibly due to the known non-preferential recombination among haplotypes. AlthoughI. batatas4× was not involved in the hexaploidization event, introgression fromI. batatas4× to the hexaploid sweetpotato is evident. Our study improves our understanding of sweetpotato origin and provides valuable genomic resources to accelerate sweetpotato breeding.
Variations in flight strategy of small migratory birds crossing major ecological barriers
Authors: Dufour Paul , Nussbaumer Raphaël , Bocher Pierrick , Briedis Martins , Coulomb Yannig , Delacroix Rose , Dagonet Thomas , de Franceschi Christophe , de Grissac Sophie , Jeannin Bastien , Monchatre Robin , Rey Fanny , Tillo Stephan , Champagnon Jocelyn , Duriez Olivier , Jiguet Frédéric 
Published: August 2024

AbstractThe recent development of tracking technologies has allowed to discover how small migratory birds cope with large ecological barriers such as seas and deserts, displaying remarkable behaviors like extreme diel flight altitude changes when crossing the Sahara Desert. However, the drivers and the prevalence of such behaviors among terrestrial migrants remain understudied. By deploying multi-sensor loggers on 59 individuals from 16 species in southern Europe, and using methods of geo-positioning integrating light, pressure, and activity data, we investigated where, when, and how small, nocturnal, migratory birds crossed two types of ecological barriers: two marine areas (the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean Sea) and one desert (the Sahara Desert). We found that sea crossings were often performed at very low altitude, close to sea level. Conversely, flights over the Sahara Desert typically reached median altitudes of 3000-4000 meters above sea level. These flights often lasted throughout the entire night (50% of the time) or extended up to 45 hours. Species with longer wings tended to cross the Sahara at higher altitudes. We also highlighted changes of flight altitudes between night and day in prolonged flights over the Sahara Desert in 13 species and showed that these changes do not correspond to the search for constant temperature conditions nor supporting winds. Nevertheless, during these flights, we found that birds tend to take advantage of supporting winds by flying at higher altitudes and make more significant changes of altitude when the air temperature is warmer. These changes in altitude, which coincide with sunrise, support the hypothesis that birds reach high altitudes during daytime to mitigate the effect of extra heating from solar radiation. Our study describes the flight strategies of several species crossing different types of ecological barriers and offers new insights into the dynamics of flight altitudes of small migratory birds crossing the Sahara Desert. It also confirms that the heat balance of a flying bird is complex, with several factors interacting, and calls for further research, including experimental studies, to unravel the role of each of these factors.
An in-silico comparative analysis of lncRNA expression and their role in the pathogenesis of representative fungal, bacterial and viral infections in rice
Authors: Kandpal Manu , Sharma Mahi , Rami Bhadresh R. 
Published: August 2024

AbstractLong non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) perform prominent role in the regulation of gene expression during plant development and stress response by directly interacting with DNA, RNA, proteins, and/or triggering production of small regulatory RNA molecules. The objective of our study is to understand the systems-level response of the same plant species to highly diverse pathogens across different kingdoms and evaluate the patterns of similarity vs differences, specifically in the context of lncRNA’s. Towards this objective, we performed a comparative in silico analysis of lncRNA’s of Rice that are differentially expressed in response to infection by bacteria (Xanthomonas oryzae), fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae) and virus (Rice black dwarf virus). Using a tailored lncRNA analysis pipeline, we successfully identified 1125, 719 and 240 lncRNAs inXanthomonas oryzaeinfection susceptible cultivar CT9737-6-1-3P-M,Magnaporthe oryzaesusceptible LTH accession, andRice black streaked dwarf virussusceptible Wuyujing No. 7 rice cultivars respectively. The in-silico predicted Cis- and Trans-target genes of lncRNAs were subsequently used to identify the pathways modulated by these lncRNA and how they cluster into unique categories of plant responses to pathogen infections. To further substantiate the role of predicted lncRNA’s in plant defence and immune response our analysis finds that many of the lncRNAs co-localize with the QTLs associated with Blast and Bacterial blight resistance in rice. Our in silico analysis provides a list of common and unique pathogen specific lncRNAs that can provide vital insights into the generic vs tailored mechanisms adopted by rice in different infection scenarios.
Minimizing the tensor-to-scalar ratio in single-field inflation models
Authors: Wolf William J. 
Published: August 2024

We revisit a class of simple single-field inflation models and demonstrate that they can readily produce a negligible tensor/scalar ratio r. Motivated by recent work suggesting the need to introduce higher order operators to stabilize unregulated potentials, as well as by work indicating that such terms can have significant effects on observable predictions, we explicitly construct corrected versions of the quadratic hilltop potential that are motivated by an effective field theory expansion. We employ Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods and optimization techniques to sample viable models and minimize r. We find that such potentials can readily lower r values below projected CMB-S4 sensitivity, while still remaining within observable constraints on ns. Furthermore, we find that the minimum r reached for each order of the expansion considered is well described by a power law rmin(q)∝q−B before asymptoting to a value of rmin∼10−11, where q is the order to which the expansion of V(ϕ) is carried out.

Published by the American Physical Society
2024
Classical Liouville action and uniformization of orbifold Riemann surfaces
Authors: Taghavi Behrad , Naseh Ali , Allameh Kuroush 
Published: August 2024

We study the classical Liouville field theory on Riemann surfaces of genus g>1 in the presence of vertex operators associated with branch points of orders mi>1. In order to do so, we will consider the generalized Schottky space Sg,n(m) obtained as a holomorphic fibration over the Schottky space Sg of the (compactified) underlying Riemann surface. The fibers of Sg,n(m)→Sg correspond to configuration spaces of n orbifold points of orders m=(m1,…,mn). Drawing on the previous work of Park [] as well as Takhtajan and Zograf [; L. A. Takhtajan and P. Zograf], we define Hermitian metrics hi for tautological line bundles ℒi over Sg,n(m). These metrics are expressed in terms of the first coefficient of the expansion of covering map J near each singular point on the Schottky domain. Additionally, we define the regularized classical Liouville action Sm using Schottky global coordinates on Riemann orbisurfaces with genus g>1. We demonstrate that exp[Sm/π] serves as a Hermitian metric in the holomorphic Q-line bundle ℒ=⊗i=1nℒi⊗(1−1/mi2) over Sg,n(m). Furthermore, we explicitly compute the first and second variations of the smooth real-valued function 𝒮m=Sm−π∑i=1n(mi−1mi)loghi on the Schottky deformation space Sg,n(m). We establish two key results: (i) 𝒮m generates a combination of accessory and auxiliary parameters, and (ii) −𝒮m acts as a Kähler potential for a specific combination of Weil-Petersson and Takhtajan-Zograf metrics that appear in the local index theorem for orbifold Riemann surfaces [Takhtajan and Zograf, ]. The obtained results can then be interpreted in terms of the complex geometry of the Hodge line bundle equipped with Quillen’s metric over the moduli space Mg,n(m) of Riemann orbisurfaces and the tree-level approximation of conformal Ward identities associated with quantum Liouville theory.

Published by the American Physical Society
2024
“Without trust, we can’t really do any work”: workplace trust and communication among expatriates and host nationals
Authors: Wyant Mizuki H. , Cionea Ioana A. 
Published: August 2024

PurposeScholars acknowledge that trust relationships between expatriates and host nationals are important; however, previous research has demonstrated that one’s culture affects how individuals define trust, which can influence how trust is developed between expatriates and host nationals. In addition, trust can affect communication between expatriates and host nationals in many ways. Therefore, this study examined how US host nationals and Japanese expatriates conceptualized trust in the workplace as well as how trust affected their daily communication.Design/methodology/approachA total of 32 participants (16 US Americans and 16 Japanese) working in a multinational manufacturing company participated in semi-structured, individual interviews. A modified version of constant comparative analysis was employed to analyze the data.FindingsBoth groups of participants identified competence and skills, teamwork and collaboration, and open/honest communication as defining features of trust in the workplace, although there were some explanations regarding trust that were influenced by participants’ culture. Further, trust between US host nationals and Japanese expatriates affected their communication strategies, such as information flow and mentoring communication.Originality/valueThis study contributes to literature on the relationships between expatriates and host nationals by providing a culturally nuanced understanding of trust in the workplace. Additionally, findings from this study offer practical recommendations for multinational corporations for how to socialize and train their employees to enhance their work experience with one another.
Internet use, household financial market participation and portfolio choice: evidence from China
Authors: Peng Gang , Peng Xiaoxiao , Zhu Li 
Published: August 2024

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the impact of Internet use on household financial market participation and portfolio choice.Design/methodology/approachBased on the Chinese General Social Survey 2017 (CGSS2017), this study empirically explores whether Internet use affects household financial market participation in China with an Endogenous Switching Probit model.FindingsThe results show that households using the Internet are more likely to invest in financial markets. Further research shows that households with high Internet use are significantly more likely to participate in financial markets than households with low Internet use. From the perspective of household portfolio choice, Internet use has a certain role in increasing the probability of portfolio diversification. However, among households that have invested in financial markets, those with a high-frequency use of the Internet do not show an impact on portfolio diversification.Originality/valueThis study complements existing research about the impact of Internet use or not on household financial market decisions and portfolio choice, expands the knowledge on the household financial market choice from the respective of the degree of Internet use.