Personal experience and reputation interact in human decisions to help reciprocally

There is ample evidence that human cooperative behaviour towards other individuals is often conditioned on information about previous interactions. This information derives both from personal experience (direct reciprocity) and from experience of others (i.e. reputation; indirect reciprocity). Direct and indirect reciprocity have been studied separately, but humans often have access to both types of information. Here, we experimentally investigate information use in a repeated helping game. When acting as donor, subjects can condition their decisions to help recipients with both types of information at a small cost to access such information. We find that information from direct interactions weighs more heavily in decisions to help, and participants tend to react less forgivingly to negative personal experience than to negative reputation. Moreover, effects of personal experience and reputation interact in decisions to help. If a recipient''s reputation is positive, the personal experience of the donor has a weak effect on the decision to help, and vice versa. Yet if the two types of information indicate conflicting signatures of helpfulness, most decisions to help follow personal experience. To understand the roles of direct and indirect reciprocity in human cooperation, they should be studied in concert, not in isolation.     

Massively parallel acceleration methods for image handling operations

In the image handling and image processing areas, most operations can be executed in a pixel-by-pixel or cluster-by-cluster manner. These parallel and simultaneous executions have many benefits, and many researchers showed remarkable improvements. In this paper, we started from a specific and practical image handling and feature extraction sequences. We focused on the detailed design and robust implementation on the modern massively parallel architecture of CUDA. We present the enhanced features of our implementation and their design details. Our final result shows 13 times faster execution speed, in comparison with its previous CPU-based implementation. These methods can be applied to the variety of image manipulation processes.     

Computational locality in morphological maps

This paper presents a computational investigation of a range of morphological operations. These operations are first represented as morphological maps, or functions that take a stem as input and return an output with the operation applied (e.g., the ing-suffixation map takes the input ‘d???k’ and returns ‘d???k+??’). Given such representations, each operation can be classified in terms of the computational complexity needed to map a given input to its correct output. The set of operations analyzed includes various types of affixation, reduplication, and non-concatenative morphology. The results indicate that many of these operations require less than the power of regular relations (i.e., they are subregular functions), the exception being total reduplication. A comparison of the maps that fall into different complexity classes raises important questions for our overall understanding of the computational nature of phonology, morphology, and the morpho-phonological interface.     

Brachycephalization in Japan has ceased

Somatometric data are presented which show that the rapid brachycephalization in Japan has recently ceased. The causes of brachycephalization are investigated in relation to the secular change in height. Increases in head breadth have been the main cause of brachycephalization, and its pattern of secular change is very similar to that in height. Associations between head breadth, height, and year of birth were examined by partial correlation coefficients and through a comparison of students and the general population. Brachycephalization is thought to result from increases in the growth rate for head breadth caused by improvements in nutritional levels, as seen in increases in height. Increases in height over the last 100 years have been accompanied by brachycephalization in Japanese and Koreans, but by debrachycephalization in many European populations. Increases in lateral growth in Asian heads may be related to the facial flatness which is characteristic to northern Mongoloid populations.     

Secular trends in anthropometrical measurements observed in three to 11-year-old French children between 1953 and 2005

This study covers a fifty-year period between 1953 and 2005 and looks at secular trends in stature, weight and sitting height sizes among French boys and girls between the ages of 3 and 11. A special modelling in function to the age and variable for each child was established so that a comparison could be made in the kinetic growth patterns over these same two periods. Statistical analysis shows a significant increase in growth, of 0.8cm per decade in stature, characterised by a certain increase in the lower limbs and the weight (0.8kg per decade) together with a proportional increase on the body mass index. Positive secular trends of this anthropometric nature are generally thanks to improved eating and sanitary habits and this study enables us to build and elaborate new standards in growth patterns essential for monitoring auxological development in 3 to 11-year-old children in the years 2000 and onwards.     

Inferring reputation promotes the evolution of cooperation in spatial social dilemma games

In realistic world individuals with high reputation are more likely to influence the collective behaviors. Due to the cost and error of information dissemination, however, it is unreasonable to assign each individual with a complete cognitive power, which means that not everyone can accurately realize others' reputation situation. Here we introduce the mechanism of inferring reputation into the selection of potential strategy sources to explore the evolution of cooperation. Before the game each player is assigned with a randomly distributed parameter p denoting his ability to infer the reputation of others. The parameter p of each individual is kept constant during the game. The value of p indicates that the neighbor possessing highest reputation is chosen with the probability p and randomly choosing an opponent is left with the probability 1-p. We find that this novel mechanism can be seen as an universally applicable promoter of cooperation, which works on various interaction networks and in different types of evolutionary game. Of particular interest is the fact that, in the early stages of evolutionary process, cooperators with high reputation who are easily regarded as the potential strategy donors can quickly lead to the formation of extremely robust clusters of cooperators that are impervious to defector attacks. These clusters eventually help cooperators reach their undisputed dominance, which transcends what can be warranted by the spatial reciprocity alone. Moreover, we provide complete phase diagrams to depict the impact of uncertainty in strategy adoptions and conclude that the effective interaction topology structure may be altered under such a mechanism. When the estimation of reputation is extended, we also show that the moderate value of evaluation factor enables cooperation to thrive best. We thus present a viable method of understanding the ubiquitous cooperative behaviors in nature and hope that it will inspire further studies to resolve social dilemmas.     

A Comparison of Two Recorders for Obtaining In-flight Heart Rate Data

Measurement of mental workload has been widely used for evaluation of aircraft design, mission analysis and assessment of pilot performance during flight operations. Heart rate is the psychophysiological measure that has been most frequently used for this purpose. The risk of interference with flight safety and pilot performance, as well as the generally constrained access to flights, make it difficult for researchers to collect in-flight heart rate data. Thus, this study was carried out to investigate whether small, non-intrusive sports recorders can be used for in-flight data collection for research purposes. Data was collected from real and simulated flights with student pilots using the Polar Team System sports recorder and the Vitaport II, a clinical and research recording device. Comparison of the data shows that in-flight heart rate data from the smaller and less intrusive sports recorder have a correlation of.981 with that from the clinical recorder, thus indicating that the sports recorder is reliable and cost-effective for obtaining heart rate data for many research situations.     

Quantifying life cycle inventories of agricultural field operations by considering different operational parameters

Purpose

The ability to estimate fuel and lubricant consumption as well as depreciated weight of agricultural machinery used for field operations is very useful for energy and environmental analyses. In this study, life cycle inventory data of agricultural field operations were established by considering different parameters of such operations.

Methods

Agricultural operations considered in this study include tillage, cultivation, planting, harvesting and post-harvest operations. For these operations, the fuel and lubricant consumption as well as depreciated weight of tractors, combine harvesters and agricultural implements was estimated by considering different operational parameters such as tractor power, field condition, depth of operation, soil condition, tractor type, operational capacity of machine, width of operation and speed. Technical standards were used to estimate different types of power required for most agricultural operations (drawbar power, rotary power and motion power). The standards were then used to evaluate the variability of the fuel and lubricant consumption as well as depreciated weight of the implements by varying the aforementioned parameters.

Results and discussion

The results were compared to those that can be calculated with other approaches for life cycle inventory analysis of agricultural operations. Such comparison indicates that by using different parameters, representing the diverse local conditions of different field operations, a great variability of the results is obtained. For instance, diesel fuel consumption of tillage operations ranges from 12.6 to 76.0 L ha^?1, with an average of 34.15 L ha^?1 and standard deviation of 11.7 L ha^?1. Such representativeness of the different conditions of each field operation cannot be modelled with other tools or via the use of standard LCI datasheets.

Conclusions

The final result of this study is a novel approach for the life cycle inventory analysis of agricultural operations, in terms of fuel and lubricant consumption and of depreciated weight of the machines, which are estimated by simply selecting the operational parameters which best represent the effect of local conditions.

     

Performance evaluation of a remote memory system with commodity hardware for large-memory data processing

The explosion of data and transactions demands a creative approach for data processing in a variety of applications. Research on remote memory systems (RMSs), so as to exploit the superior characteristics of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), has been performed for many decades, and today’s information explosion galvanizes researchers into shedding new light on the technology. Prior studies have mainly focused on architectural suggestions for such systems, highlighting different design rationale. These studies have shown that choosing the appropriate applications to run on an RMS is important in fully utilizing the advantages of remote memory. This article provides an extensive performance evaluation for various types of data processing applications so as to address the efficacy of an RMS by means of a prototype RMS with reliability functionality. The prototype RMS used is a practical kernel-level RMS that renders large memory data processing feasible. The abstract concept of remote memory was materialized by borrowing unused local memory in commodity PCs via a high speed network capable of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) operations. The prototype RMS uses remote memory without any part of its computation power coming from remote computers. Our experimental results suggest that an RMS can be practical in supporting the rigorous demands of commercial in memory database systems that have high data access locality. Our evaluation also convinces us of the possibility that a reliable RMS can satisfy both the high degree of reliability and efficiency for large memory data processing applications whose data access pattern has high locality.     

Diminished social motivation negatively impacts reputation management: autism spectrum disorders as a case in point

Human beings are endowed with a unique motivation to be included in social interactions. This natural social motivation, in turn, is thought to encourage behaviours such as flattery or self-deprecation aimed to ease interaction and to enhance the reputation of the individual who produces them. If this is the case, diminished social interest should affect reputation management. Here, we use Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs)--primarily characterised by pervasive social disinterest--as a model to investigate the effect of social motivation on reputation management. Children first rated a set of pictures and were then given the opportunity to inflate their initial ratings in front of an experimenter who declared that she had drawn the picture. Contrary to the controls, children with ASD did not enhance their ratings in the drawer's presence. Moreover, participants' flattery behaviour correlated with self-reports of social enjoyment. Our findings point to a link between diminished social interest and reputation management.     

Power loss for linkage analysis due to the dichotomization of trichotomous phenotypes

OBJECTIVES: Some traits, while naturally polychotomous, are routinely dichotomized for genetic analysis. Dichotomization, intuitively, leads to a loss of power to detect linkage, as some phenotypic variability is discarded. This paper examines this power loss in the context of a trichotomous trait. METHODS: To examine this power loss, we performed a simulation study where a trichotomous trait was simulated in a sample of 1,000 sib-pairs under various genetic models. The study was replicated 1,000 times. Linkage analysis using a variance components method, as implemented in Mx, was then performed on the trichotomous trait and compared with that on a dichotomized version of the trait. RESULTS: A comparison of the power and false positive rates of the analyses shows that power to detect linkage was increased by up to 22 percentage points simply by examining the trait as a trichotomy instead of a dichotomy. Under all models examined, the trichotomous analysis outperformed the dichotomous version. CONCLUSIONS: Comparable levels of false positive rates under both methods confirm that this power gain comes solely from the information lost upon dichotomization. Thus, dichotomizing tri- or poly-chotomous traits can lead to crippling power loss, especially in the case of many loci of small effect.     

The Other Side of Sacrifice: Introduction

While contemporary philosophers have been content to declare the logical possibilities of sacrifice exhausted, to have finally ‘sacrificed sacrifice,’ for many people around the world the notion of sacrifice – whether religious, secular, or somewhere in between – remains absolutely central to their understanding of themselves, their relations with others, and their place in the world. From religion to economics, and from politics to the environment, sacrificial tropes frequently emerge as key means of mediating and propagating various forms of power, moral discourse, and cultural identity. This paper lays out reasons for retaining sacrifice as an analytical concept within anthropology, and argues for the importance of a renewed focus on the ‘other side of sacrifice’, as a means of understanding better how sacrifice emerges beyond ritual and enters into the full gamut of social life.     

Open access: A revolution in scientific publication? Or just a minor amendment of accessibility?

Scientific communication is a misnomer. The process of scientific publication is much less a forum where information is exchanged for information than a market where information is exchanged for attention. Nevertheless, the exchange of information for attention is a somewhat peculiar market, since it seems much more natural to sell the information one has produced laboriously for money. Why publish a discovery, why share it with other researchers when knowledge is power?In antiquity and in the middle ages, scientists were not preoccupied with publishing their findings. Up to the 17^th century, scholars, even in mathematics and astronomy, were pre-eminently concerned with protecting their claims to priority through secretiveness and mystification (Cf. ^{ref. 1}; on priority conflicts, see ^{ref. 2}). It was only through the emergence of new means of information sharing, such as academies and learned societies with their meetings and published proceedings, that the temptation to monopolize knowledge could be overcome. Ironically, these novel means of information sharing started as a novel branch of entertainment. The purpose of the academies and learned societies mushrooming in early modernity was the entertainment of noblemen bored of the habitual kinds of pastimes. Aristocrats were supposed to observe a code of conduct different from that of researchers and businessmen. The scholar, accordingly, did not risk his right of authorship and priority being stolen when presenting his findings to an audience of noblemen. As long as there were reliable witnesses around, this risk was minimal even when other scholars were in the audience. Testimony of a noble audience, rather, became the first step to what later came to be called intellectual property (^{ref. 3} and literature cited therein).As soon as scientists work for publication, they work for the “wage of fame,” i.e., for being paid attention.⁴ Publication puts intellectual property at the disposal of the general public under the sole condition that its processing into the user''s intellectual property is credited by citation. In terms of attention, citation is not free of cost. It means, rather, transfer of a part of the attention that the citing author earns for her or his work to the cited author. Citation, thus, tests the preparedness to pay on the part of the scientist looking for pre-processed information as a means of production. Since the account of the citations a theory or a theorem earns is a measure of its productivity (i.e., of the times it was used as a means of production), the process of citation amounts to a measuring process of the pragmatic value of scientific information.⁵Maximizing the pragmatic value of output is the best thing that the individual scientist can do for the collective advancement of knowledge. This means that scientists, as long as observing the pertinent rules of conduct, are doing exactly what they are supposed to do if they maximize citations in the way businessmen maximize profits.⁵ They are themselves entrepreneurs, who are supposed to maximize their income of expertise attention. This means that they have to have a professional interest in their products being marketed professionally. Marketing is the professional service publishers have to offer to scientists. At the same time, publishers can offer the service of pre-selection to those looking for pre-processed information as a means of production. Blind publication would have the disadvantage of a substantial waste of attention in looking for useful information. Since publishers are commercial enterprises, these services are not offered for free, but sold to the buyer or to the producer of the marketed product (or to both parties).Since its beginnings with the published proceedings of the learned societies’ meetings, the business of scientific publication has been a regular part of scientific communication by and large. As long as dissemination had to rely on analog media, it was only natural to package scientific information together with those services of pre-selection and marketing into the books and journals sold on commercial markets. Since the advent of digital media and, in particular, the Internet, a new business model has become popular that leaves the selling of information for money behind. Where what counts is just the attention a piece of information earns, offer it for free and advertise with the download figures! Where there are costs of providing to be covered, try to sell the service of attraction to the advertising industry! At any rate, don’t charge those demanding the information, since that might shoo them. With this business model, Google, for example has successfully entered the field of scientific communication. Google Scholar not only competes with traditional publishers, but was even invited to do so by the price policies some publishers of high-impact media were adopting. Since the advent of the Internet, complaints have been growing about publishers that use their market position to plunder library budgets.Google and the like, however, are no full-fledged competitors to Elsevier and the like. They just recycle material already published. In order to compete in full extent, another business idea was launched: open access. Open access means that the information is offered for free, whereas the production costs of the marketing and pre-selection services are borne by the author. It will be understood that this solution is hailed on the demand side. In a community where expecting that information is something one can download for free has become a general attitude, this solution may seem even mandatory. Open access, however, has an appeal for authors as well. Offering one’s product in free access media raises, other things being equal, the probability of being read and, accordingly, of being cited. In a sense, thus, paying for an open access publication amounts to buying into the probability of being cited. As long as the prices charged for the publication just compensate for the outlays incurred by the publisher, this possibility may be considered harmless. As soon, however, as the prices become negotiable, conflicts of objectives are imminent. The higher the impact factor of the medium, the higher its price expectations will be. With price expectations, the probability of discrimination between producers according to ability to pay will rise, as well as of interference between the requirement of objective selection and the commercial interest on the part of the publisher.Already we are warned of allowing the hopes raised by open access to fly too high. Open access is to be welcomed as an enrichment of business models competing in the market of scientific publication. Intensifying competition is the best-proven means to fight monopoly power. Open access, however, is suited to foster competition on the commercial market only. It is neutral with regards to competition in the market where information is exchanged for attention. It is neutral, accordingly, with regard to the monopoly power played off by the owners of high-impact media. The impact a medium calls its own is a function of its renown, which, in turn, is wealth of attention activated as an asset. The probability of a paper being cited depends, among other things, on the renown of the medium it is published in. The higher the renown of the medium, the more attractive it is for authors as well as for readers, and thus, for the libraries serving the readers’ needs. This is what the power of publishers owning high-impact media to plunder library budgets relies on. It is hopeless to fight this kind of monopoly power by fostering competition on the commercial market.Publishers are entrepreneurs in the commercial economy as well as in the economy of attention. In the attention economy, the interests of publishers largely coincide with those of authors. The attention a publication earns is shared between author and publisher. The higher the earnings, the higher the gain of reputation on both parts. The author is as interested in the reputation of the publisher as is the publisher in the reputation of the author. For the author, the reputation of the publisher is what the expected value of the publication heavily depends on. For the publisher, the reputation of the author is what the attractiveness of the organ for other reputed authors depends on. For him, the reputations of his authors are like bank deposits that he can turn into credits to newcomers who seem promising to him. By way of this credit, a reputed publisher can grant an expectation value of citations that otherwise would remain fantastic for a newcomer. All those who have really made it in science took advantage of such a credit at some point of their career. Remarkably, though, publishers granting credits in terms of guaranteed attention income are entering, and thus opening, the business field of finance in the scientific economy of attention.Regarding the promotion of the talented, importing the business model of finance is certainly among the commendable functions of publishers in the scientific economy of attention. By acting as bankers, however, they are active in wealth management as well. They are managing the wealth of scientists by translating the accumulated wage of fame (account of citations) into an asset yielding interest. Wealth yielding interest is wealth activated as a capital enhancing itself according to size. The bigger the size, the bigger, as a rule, is the rate of growth. Renown that has reached the critical mass for triggering self-enhancement gives rise, thus, to economies of scale in building up renown. Markets where suppliers realize economies of scale will be shot through by moments of monopolistic competition.In fact, since the citation process is monitored and charted statistically, a remarkably uneven distribution of citations is observed. There are few who receive many citations and many who get only a few. Robert Merton (1968) called this conspicuously uneven distribution the “Matthew effect in science.” The Matthew effect refers to the biblical parable of being entrusted with talents, the text reading that “those who have will be given and those who have not will be taken away” (Matthew 25:14–30).The skewed distribution of citations is not reducible to the uneven distribution of publications authors call their own. The explanation lies in the working of reputation as an income-generating asset. The Matthew effect denotes the role that hype plays in science. It is due not to extraordinary productivity, but to the homage that scientists, as do other people, pay to renown, prominence, fame. If you have grown prominent, you will be cited not only for the discovery you owe your prominence to, but just for being a celebrity. To be paid attention for being a celebrity means to be given because of having.The gains generated by the Matthew effect are shared between author and publisher. These gains are monopoly profits. Since the publisher is engaged in both the market where information is exchanged for attention and in the market where information is exchanged for money, he is particularly well-equipped to translate his monopoly position in the economy of attention into a monopoly position in commercial economy. This translation cannot be suppressed by toughening competition on the commercial market. The only way of pre-empting monopoly due to renown would lie in preventing the Matthew effect.If there are any means to suppress the Matthew effect, open access is certainly not among them. Nor is it clear, however, whether it makes sense at all to fight the manifestations of celebrity culture in science. In order to do so, you would have to start with abolishing the distinguished awards such as the Nobel prize and the Fields medal. You would have to ban any talk of excellence and even suppress the publication of citation indices and other ratings. Even working for the wage of fame would have to be frowned upon. Finally, social media’s way of amassing entourage would have to be suspected politically incorrect.Open access, to sum up, is far from a revolutionary innovation. It is a mode of redistributing the costs incurred by the publisher for delivering the services of marketing and pre-selection. Scientists eager to publish in renowned journals can be exploited, as libraries eager to make accessible renowned journals can. Since, as a rule, the publication outlays of the scientists will be borne by the same institution as the acquisitions of the libraries, the conversion risks to be just a switch between cost centers.     

Dietary glycerol and adult access to water: effects on fecundity and longevity in the almond moth

The quality of food eaten by larval insects will affect traits such as gamete production, fat reserves, muscle bulk and body size in the adult. Moreover, larvae also depend on high moisture content in the diet for survival. The almond moth (Ephestia cautella) (W.) (Lepidoptera; Pyralidae) does not feed as an adult although it continues to drink water. We tested the idea that an almond moth could compensate for a low-water diet as a larva by increasing its water intake as an adult. We reared larvae on two different food sources with different moisture regimes; standard laboratory diet with glycerol (relatively wet) and standard diet without glycerol (relatively dry). Half the adult moths from each treatment were given water to drink before their first and only mating. Our results show that wet larval diets (i.e. containing glycerol) significantly decreased fecundity (total number of eggs laid and the proportion of hatched larvae), whilst it significantly increased male and female longevity. The interaction effect of water access for adult males and females was significant, independent of the glycerol in the larval diet. Longevity in females that were not presented with water as adults was slightly higher if mated with a male that had had access to water, suggesting a mating donation of water. However, females that received water as adults showed a decreased longevity if mated with a male who had also had access to water as an adult, indicating a negative effect of water if received by both males and females. In addition, when the larval diet included glycerol, increased number of eggs laid decreased female longevity, whilst an absence of glycerol in the larval diet resulted in low female longevity that was unlinked with fecundity. Glycerol is used in many artificial insect diets and the fact that it shows a strong effect on key life-history traits (reproductive output and longevity in this species), merits careful re-examination of its effects on these important traits in other laboratory models. We also discuss the possibility that larval diet can affect female reproductive decisions.     

Neural Correlates of Gender Differences in Reputation Building

Gender differences in cooperative choices and their neural correlates were investigated in a situation where reputation represented a crucial issue. Males and females were involved in an economic exchange (trust game) where economic and reputational payoffs had to be balanced in order to increase personal welfare. At the behavioral level, females showed a stronger reaction to negative reputation judgments that led to higher cooperation than males, measured by back transfers in the game. The neuroanatomical counterpart of this gender difference was found within the reward network (engaged in producing expectations of positive results) and reputation-related brain networks, such as the self-control network (engaged in strategically resisting the temptation to defect) and the mentalizing network (engaged in thinking about how one is viewed by others), in which the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the medial (M)PFC respectively play a crucial role. Furthermore, both DLPFC and MPFC activity correlated with the amount of back transfer, as well as with the personality dimensions assessed with the Big-Five Questionnaire (BFQ-2). Males, according to their greater DLPFC recruitment and their higher level of the BFQ-2 subscale of Dominance, were more focused on implementing a profit-maximizing strategy, pursuing this target irrespectively of others'' judgments. On the contrary, females, according to their greater MPFC activity and their lower level of Dominance, were more focused on the reputation per se and not on the strategic component of reputation building. These findings shed light on the sexual dimorphism related to cooperative behavior and its neural correlates.     

Perceptions and uses of Chinese medicine among the chinese in Hong Kong

The present paper was based on both qualitative observations and quantitative survey data. Major findings are as follows: (1) The sacred or magical-religious tradition of Chinese medicine is accepted by a relatively small portion (roughly one-fifth) of the ordinary Chinese people in urban Hong Kong, and is relatively more popular among women or less educated people. (2) Both the classical-professional and the local-empirical traditions of secular medicine are resorted to by many Chinese people (over one half) either for treating diseases or for strengthening their constitution. The acceptance of secular Chinese medicine does not vary significantly among different sex, age, education, or income groups. It should be noted that secular Chinese medicine is often used in addition to or in combination with modern Western medicine. (3) It appears that most people are more confident in the Chinese medical tradition than in Chinese-style practitioners in Hong Kong, and that people's confidence in secular Chinese medicine has been increasing in recent years. (4) There are reasons for the confidence in secular Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine is generally perceived to be better than or as good as Western, scientific medicine in some ways, such as for tonic care, for fewer side effects, for curing the cause (not symptoms) of diseases, and for treating certain diseases. Therefore, to ordinary Chinese people, Chinese and Western medicine may perform either equivalent or complementary functions. (5) As regards the process of seeking medical care, most people seem to follow the pattern of moving from self-medication, using Chinese and/or Western home remedies, to Western-style doctors, to Chinese-style practitioners, and finally to a Western medical hospital. Policy and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The enduring toxicity of road-killed cane toads (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Rhinella marina</Emphasis>)

The primary ecological impact of invasive cane toads (Rhinella marina) in Australia is mediated by their powerful toxins, which are fatal to many native species. Toads use roads as invasion corridors and feeding sites, resulting in frequent road-kills. The flattened, desiccated toad carcasses remain highly toxic despite being heated daily to >40°C for many months during the tropical dry-season. In controlled laboratory experiments, native tadpoles (Cyclorana australis, Litoria rothii), fishes (Mogurnda mogurnda) and leeches (Family Erpobdellidae) died rapidly when we added fragments of sun-dried toad to their water, even if the native animals had no physical access to the carcass. Given the opportunity, native tadpoles and fishes strongly avoided the vicinity of dried toad fragments. Hence, long-dead toads may contaminate roadside ponds formed by early wet-season rains and induce avoidance and/or mortality of native anuran larvae, fishes and invertebrates. Our studies show that the toxicity of this invasive species does not end with the toad’s death, and that methods for disposing of toad carcasses (e.g., after culling operations) need to recognize the persistent danger posed by those carcasses.     

Advancing proteomics with ion/ion chemistry

Mass spectrometers, instruments that use electric and/or magnetic fields to measure a gas-phase ion's mass-to-charge ratio (m/z), are used in a wide variety of applications--with the field having a reputation for providing good sensitivity and high-informing power. Protein analysis (proteomics) is a relatively recent affair for the field and was enabled in the late 1980s with the advent of biomolecule ionization methods such as electrospray ionization (ESI) and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI). Today, the area of protein analysis garners considerable attention from many in the mass spectrometry (MS) field; given the myriad of possible protein forms and their broad dynamic range (abundance) in the cell, the analytical challenge is paramount. Here we discuss a developing technology--ion/ion chemical reactions--that promises to transform how we think about and conduct protein sequence analysis via MS.     

The increase of stature in France

This study is divided in two parts. The first shows that the secular trend of increasing height is far from decreasing and, on the contrary, is accelerating. The second part attacks the problem of the causes of this phenomena. It shows that the increase of stature is linked to all indicators of the conditions of life, without any one factor being predominant. On the other hand, students of the more privileged back-grounds keep on showing this secular trend, though their life standards seems to be at the optimum. Therefore, the cause and the end of this phenomena cannot be demonstrated.