An elegant approach to quaternary oxindole formation has been developed through a room temperature decarboxylation/radical C-H functionalization by visible-light photoredox catalysis.

Recently, bryophytes, which diverged from the ancestor of seed plants more than 400 million years ago, came into focus in photosynthesis research as they can provide valuable insights into the evolution of photosynthetic complexes during the adaptation to terrestrial life. This study isolated intact photosystem I (PSI) with its associated ...

The invasion of land was a pivotal event in vertebrate evolution that was associated with major appendicular modifications. Although fossils indicate that the evolution of fundamentally limb-like appendages likely occurred in aquatic environments, the functional consequences of using early digited limbs, rather than fins, for terrestrial propulsion have had little ...

Iodoacetic acid (IAA) has been applied to different species to acutely induce photoreceptor degeneration. The purpose of the present study was to use this toxin to thoroughly eliminate photoreceptors and induce complete blindness in the cat. IAA was delivered by single ear vein injection (20 mg·kg(-1)). Six months after the ...

Light significantly inhibits hypocotyl cell elongation, and dark-grown seedlings exhibit elongated, etiolated hypocotyls. Microtubule regulatory proteins function as positive or negative regulators that mediate hypocotyl cell elongation by altering microtubule organization. However, it remains unclear how plants coordinate these regulators to promote hypocotyl growth in darkness and inhibit growth in ...

Hydrogels actuators (HAs) that can reversibly respond to stimuli have applications in diverse fields. However, faster response rates and improved control over actuation timing and location are required to fulfill their potential. To address these criteria, we synthesized near-infrared light-driven HAs by interfacing genetically engineered elastin-like polypeptides with reduced-graphene oxide ...

The progress in NCA polymerisation combined with advanced orthogonal functionalization techniques as well as the integration with other controlled polymerisation techniques significantly widened the scope of polypeptide building blocks in a variety of material designs. Well-defined synthetic stimuli-responsive polypeptides ("smart" polypeptides) with incorporated different functionalities have been extensively explored over ...

Yin and Yang are two complementary forces that together describe the nature of real-world elements. Yin is the dark side; Yang is the light side. We describe microRNAs having both Yin and Yang characteristics because they can contribute to normal function (Yang) but also to autoimmunity, myeloproliferation, and cancer (Yin). ...

The detection and recognition of communication signals in natural soundscapes is a difficult task that animals and birds in particular excel at. We have used a neuroethological approach to quantify the recognition performance for propagated communication signals in the zebra finch, specifically regarding the information about individual identity. The propagated ...

It is known that a forward masker can make threshold for a signal poorer, but the mechanisms underlying this psychophysical effect are not well-understood. One theory, the temporal window model (TWM), proposes that masker and signal excitation are integrated within a temporal window. An additional mechanism may be cochlear gain ...

It has been suggested that the level corresponding to the knee-point of the basilar membrane (BM) input/output (I/O) function can be used to estimate the amount of inner- and outer hair-cell loss in listeners with a moderate cochlear hearing impairment [e.g., Plack et al., (2004)]. In the present study, results ...

Most measurements of ambient noise in the deep ocean have been performed using an array of hydrophones located at a fixed depth. Recently, an instrument platform known as Deep Sound has been developed, consisting of a glass sphere containing data acquisition, data storage, and system control electronics, with a pair ...

The centroid display model of sound lateralization hypothesizes an array of brain-stem cells with wide ranges of best frequencies (f) and best interaural time delays (ITD, ). The cells are distributed according to function p(f,), and images are lateralized according to the centroid of an excitation pattern on this array, ...

It has been proven, and it is well documented in literature, that the directional response in HRTFs comes largely from the effect of the pinnae. However, few studies have analyzed the contribution given by the remaining part of the external ear, particularly the ear canal. This work investigates the directionally ...

From observation of graphs of brass input impedance magnitude and transfer function vs. frequency, it is obvious that there is a strong relationship between the two. Both exhibit a series of strong resonances extending from a low frequency limit to a cutoff frequency, which is inversely proportional to the instrument's ...

Masking experiments provide important information on how the auditory system processes sounds. For example, a tone is less masked by a modulated sound than by an unmodulated sound with the same long-term spectrum, indicating the ability of the auditory system to use modulation as a cue. In general, studies on ...

Following previous work [Smits and Festen. (2011). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 130, 2987-2998] involving the interpretation of speech reception threshold (SRT) data in steady-state noise, the present study considers fluctuating noise. Whereas the SIIsteady function [i.e., the speech intelligibility index (SII) against SNR in steady-state noise] can be approximated by ...

Since 1978, Professor Bertram Scharf divided his time between the United States and France. He was a Visiting Scientist at the Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique in Marseille until the mid-1990s and collaborated with the University of Marseille (Faculté de Médecine) until his death. One of Bertram Scharf's major contributions ...

Empirical measurement is a common approach to obtaining head-related transfer functions (HRTFs). Due to differences in experimental conditions and possible errors, some deviations exist among the data from different measurements even for the same subject. This work aims to evaluate deviations of HRTFs from different measurements. Five sets of KEMAR ...

The effect of intensity on the effective bandwidth of auditory temporal processing is investigated. Thresholds for detecting sinusoidal amplitude-modulation of a 200-Hz wide band of noise centered at 1000 Hz are measured in the presence of a notched noise masker. The masker consists of two, 200-Hz wide, unmodulated bands of ...

Human listeners, and other animals too, use interaural time differences (ITD) to localize pure tones, but this ability abruptly diminishes as the frequency of a pure tone increases. The diminished sensitivity appears to serve a useful function. It prevents the confusion that would otherwise arise from the large interaural phase ...

Subjective equal-loudness contours are used to create weighting functions for human noise-mitigation criteria. Comparable direct measurements of subjective loudness with animal subjects are, however, difficult to conduct. Using methods similar to those used in previous mammalian studies, this study estimated subjective loudness through the measurement of response time (RT) in ...

Ten normally hearing listeners used a programmable sone-potentiometer knob to adjust the level of a 1000-Hz sinusoid to match the loudness of numbers presented to them in a magnitude production task. Three different power-law exponents (0.15, 0.30, and 0.60) and a log-law with equal steps in dB were used to ...

Evidence is provided suggesting a primary dependence of informational masking (IM) on the stochastic separation of target and masker given by Simpson-Fitter's da [Lutfi et al. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 132, EL109-113 (2012)]. The stimuli were synthesized impact sounds of plates played in sequence as masker-target-masker triads. Their spectra varied ...

Further evidence is provided suggesting a primary dependence of informational masking (IM) on the stochastic separation of target and masker given by Simpson-Fitter's da [Lutfi et al. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 132, EL109-113 (2012)]. The stimuli were brief bursts of Gaussian noise or words played in sequence as masker-target-masker triads. ...

This study investigates autocorrelation-based features as a potential basis for phonetic and syllabic distinctions. The work comes out of a theory of auditory signal processing based on central monaural autocorrelation and binaural crosscorrelation representations. Correlation-based features are used to predict monaural and binaural perceptual attributes that are important for the ...

Spatially separating a speech target from interfering masker(s) generally improves target intelligibility; an effect known as spatial release from masking (SRM). This study assessed the contribution of envelope cues to SRM. Target speech was presented from the front (0° azimuth) and speech maskers were either colocated or symmetrically separated from ...

Noninvasive physiological tools for assessing auditory function in humans can provide valuable information when behavioral tests are not possible. Furthermore, these tools hold promise to provide greater insight into underlying cochlear pathologies. In this study, we used noninvasive distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) and auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) to estimate ...

Amplitude modulation (AM) detection has been successfully used as a psychophysical measure of auditory temporal processing. Our understanding of the role of the auditory periphery in processing AM signals is emerging through physiological and psychophysical studies. Unfortunately, direct physiological estimates of the cochlea's mechanical response to AM signals are not ...

The Haas effect is a well-known manifestation of the precedence effect. Originally, Haas measured the echo threshold as a function of the primary auditory event and its single reflection being equally loud. What is not well known is the lateral position of the lead/lag pair as a function of inter-stimulus ...

Motion artifacts are a significant source of noise in many functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) experiments. Despite this, there is no well-established method for their removal. Instead, functional trials of fNIRS data containing a motion artifact are often rejected completely. However, in most experimental circumstances the number of trials is limited, ...

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to give a brief review of the effectiveness of otoacoustic emissions for getting frequency-specific information about a hearing-loss problem in newborns after hearing screening. Especially, the advantages of distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE) over transiently evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) are described. DATA SOURCES: Approximately ...

We demonstrate that non-ionic small molecules (SMs) can function as the doping and emissive compound in light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs), and that high brightness and decent efficiency can be attained for such devices. It is plausible that the expansion of the LEC library, to include easy-to-purify and tunable non-ionic SM ...

Light perception is indispensable for plants to respond adequately to external cues and is linked to proteolysis of key transcriptional regulators. To provide synthetic light control of protein stability, we developed a generic photosensitive degron (psd) module combining the light-reactive LOV2 domain of Arabidopsis thaliana phot1 with the murine ornithine ...

The open-close states of the ion channels in a living system are regulated by multiple stimuli such as ligand, pH, potential and light. Functionalizing natural channels by using synthetic chemistry would provide biological nanopores with novel properties and applications. Here we use para-sulfonato-calix[4]arene-based host-guest supramolecular system to develop artificial gating ...

We present a novel experimental technique that can differentiate unequivocally between chaotic light and coherent light with amplitude fluctuations, and thus permits us to characterize unambiguously the output of a laser. This technique consists of measuring the second-order intensity cross correlation at the outputs of an unbalanced Michelson interferometer. It ...

Several studies have shown that social judgement may be defined by two dimensions, competence and warmth. From a functional perspective, embodied theories have proposed that warmth may be associated with physical distance, whereas competence may be connected to a vertical motion (UPWARD/DOWNWARD). Two main studies were conducted to examine if ...

Functional MRI (fMRI) resting-state experiments are aimed at identifying brain networks that support basal brain function. Although most investigators consider a 'resting-state' fMRI experiment with no specific external stimulation, subjects are unavoidably under heavy acoustic noise produced by the equipment. In the present study, we evaluated the influence of auditory ...

The evolution of the human upper limb involved a change in function from its use for both locomotion and prehension (as in apes) to a predominantly prehensile and manipulative role. Well-preserved forelimb remains of 1.98-million-year-old Australopithecus sediba from Malapa, South Africa, contribute to our understanding of this evolutionary transition. Whereas ...

Previous electromyographic (EMG) studies of gluteus medius (GMed) have not accurately quantified the function of the three proposed structurally and functionally unique segments (anterior, middle and posterior). Therefore this study used anatomically verified locations for intramuscular electrode recordings in three segments of GMed to determine whether the segments are functionally ...

All photosynthetic organisms need to regulate light harvesting for photoprotection. Three types of flexible non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) mechanisms have been characterized in oxygenic photosynthetic cyanobacteria, algae, and plants: OCP-, LHCSR-, and PSBS-dependent NPQ. OCP-dependent NPQ likely evolved first, to quench excess excitation in the phycobilisome (PB) antenna of cyanobacteria. During ...

PURPOSE: To evaluate relationships between the macular visual field (VF) mean sensitivity and the ganglion cell and inner plexiform layer (GCA) thicknesses. METHODS: Seventy-one glaucoma patients and 29 normal subjects were included in this cross-sectional study. At each visit, GCA thicknesses were measured by Cirrus HD-OCT (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Dublin, ...

Many neurophysiological variables such as heart rate, motor activity, and neural activity are known to exhibit intrinsic fractal fluctuations - similar temporal fluctuation patterns at different time scales. These fractal patterns contain information about health, as many pathological conditions are accompanied by their alteration or absence. In physical systems, such ...

The authors build on previous experience in the optimization of white-light sources based on combinations of narrow-band spectra. They extend those concepts by using delta-function spectra to study the prospects of future optimal laser-based sources. The optimization process is based on a trade-off between the color rendering properties and the ...

The present study examines whether race-specific features affect biological motion perception. Activation of the neural action observation and imitation network was measured using functional MRI. During scanning, individuals were asked to imitate and observe basic hand movements of own-race and other-race actors. Results indicate that three key areas often associated ...

The goal of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) is to investigate the brain's functional connections by using the temporal similarity between blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signals in different regions of the brain "at rest" as an indicator of synchronous neural activity. Since this measure relies on the temporal ...

BACKGROUND: Abnormal biomechanical loading has been identified as an associated risk factor of osteoarthritis in the wrist and hand. Empirical data to date are insufficient to describe the role of altered biomechanics in thumb carpometacarpal (CMC) arthritis. QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: This is a pilot study to evaluate motion analysis of the upper ...

In a previous study (Stenfelt and Håkansson, 2002) a loudness balance test between bone conducted (BC) sound and air conducted (AC) sound was performed at frequencies between 0.25 and 4 kHz and at levels corresponding to 30-80 dB HL. The main outcome of that study was that for maintaining equal loudness, the ...

Silicon photomultipliers are novel solid state photodetectors that recently became commercially available. The goal of this paper was to investigate their suitability for low light level detection in miniaturized functional near-infrared spectroscopy instruments. Two measurement modules with a footprint of 26×26 mm(2) were built, and the signal-to-noise ratio was assessed ...

The prevention of cone loss during retinal degeneration is a major goal of most therapeutic strategies in retinal degenerative diseases. An intriguing issue in the current research in this field is to understand why a genetic mutation that affects rods eventually leads to cone death. The main objective of the ...