Navigating from live to virtual social interactions: looking at but not manipulating smartphones provokes a spontaneous mimicry response in the observers

Journal of Ethology - By gathering data on people during their ordinary daily activities, we tested if looking at, but not manipulating, smartphones led to a mimicry response in the observer....     

Promoting proteomics knowledge in Europe: report on the activities of the EuPA Education Committee 2006-2007

The early transition of knowledge from highly specialised and sophisticated proteomics research to a diverse community in need of know-how is a challenge that requires backing from advanced research centres and groups, and a coordinating body for the dissemination of this knowledge. The European Proteomics Association (EuPA) Education Committee signified this as a priority area when the EuPA was formed, and began its program to coordinate proteomics training and knowledge dissemination in 2006. This report serves as an update of our past activities and an announcement of upcoming events. Over the last year the EuPA Education Committee has coordinated or supported different educational activities including basic and advanced courses, a summer school, workshops and tutorials. A new programme of basic courses dubbed "Teaching the Teachers" has been initiated. These courses reach a larger, Europe wide, audience in a short timeframe, thus improving the opportunities for trainees of elementary proteomics techniques. Another important event has been the merger of the EuPA and HUPO (Human Proteome Organisation) Education Committees into a single one in order to combine ideas and ef for ts that will favour global education in proteomics.     

Proteomics application exercise of the Swiss Proteomics Society: report of the SPS'02 session

After the success of the mass spectrometry (MS) round table that was held at the first Swiss Proteomics Society congress (SPS'01) in Geneva, the SPS has organized a proteomics application exercise and allocated a full session at the SPS'02 congress. The main objective was to encourage the exchange of expertise in protein identification, with a focus on the use of mass spectrometry, and to create a bridge between the users' questions and the instrument providers' solutions. Two samples were sent to fifteen interested labs, including academic groups and MS hardware providers. Participants were asked to identify and partially characterize the samples. They consisted of a complex mixture of peptide/proteins (sample A) and an almost pure recombinant peptide carrying post-translational modifications (sample B). Sample A was an extract of snake venom from the species Bothrops jararaca. Sample B was a recombinant and modified peptide derived from the shrimp Penaeus vannamei penaeidin 3a. The eight labs that returned results reported the use of a wide range of MS instrumentation and techniques. They mentioned a variety of time and manpower allocations. The origin of sample A was generally identified together with a number of database protein entries. The difficulty of the sample identification lay in the incomplete knowledge of the Bothrops species genome sequence and is discussed. Sample B was generally and correctly identified as penaeidin. However, only one group reported the full primary structure. Interestingly, the approaches were again varied and are discussed in the text.     

MSight: an image analysis software for liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry

Images obtained from high-throughput mass spectrometry (MS) contain information that remains hidden when looking at a single spectrum at a time. Image processing of liquid chromatography-MS datasets can be extremely useful for quality control, experimental monitoring and knowledge extraction. The importance of imaging in differential analysis of proteomic experiments has already been established through two-dimensional gels and can now be foreseen with MS images. We present MSight, a new software designed to construct and manipulate MS images, as well as to facilitate their analysis and comparison.     

SPS' Digest: the Swiss Proteomics Society selection of proteomics articles

Despite the consolidation of the specialized proteomics literature around a few established journals, such as Proteomics, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, and the Journal of Proteome Research, a lot of information is still spread in many different publications from different fields, such as analytical sciences, MS, bioinformatics, etc. The purpose of SPS' Digest is to gather a selection of proteomics articles, to categorize them, and to make the list available on a periodic basis through a web page and email alerts.     

Sexual signalling in Propithecus verreauxi: male "chest badge" and female mate choice

Communication, an essential prerequisite for sociality, involves the transmission of signals. A signal can be defined as any action or trait produced by one animal, the sender, that produces a change in the behaviour of another animal, the receiver. Secondary sexual signals are often used for mate choice because they may inform on a potential partner's quality. Verreaux's sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) is characterized by the presence of two different morphs of males (bimorphism), which can show either a stained or clean chest. The chest becomes stained by secretions of the sternal gland during throat marking (rubbing throat and chest on a vertical substrate while smearing the scent deposition). The role of the chest staining in guiding female mate choice was previously hypothesized but never demonstrated probably due to the difficulty of observing sifaka copulations in the wild. Here we report that stained-chested males had a higher throat marking activity than clean-chested males during the mating season, but not during the birth season. We found that females copulated more frequently with stained-chested males than the clean-chested males. Finally, in agreement with the biological market theory, we found that clean-chested males, with a lower scent-releasing potential, offered more grooming to females. This "grooming for sex" tactic was not completely unsuccessful; in fact, half of the clean-chested males copulated with females, even though at low frequency. In conclusion, the chest stain, possibly correlated with different cues targeted by females, could be one of the parameters which help females in selecting mates.     

Berenty 2006: Census of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Propithecus verreauxi</Emphasis> and Possible Evidence of Population Stress

We provide a survey of a folivorous lemur, Propithecus verreauxi (sifaka), in the Berenty Reserve, southern Madagascar. Higher densities of folivores in small patches occur in either high-quality food areas or in less disturbed refugia. The skewness of sex ratio, which in lemurs is often male-biased, can be critically exacerbated in population stress. We predicted that sifaka would show higher densities in areas where protein-rich food is abundant (prediction 1a) and in refugium areas (prediction 1b). Owing to increased competition by brown and ring-tailed lemurs and decreased food production by tamarind trees, we expected an extremely male-biased sex ratio (prediction 2). In November–December 2006, we counted and sexed 206 adult/subadult sifaka (49 groups) during daily walks in different forest zones (Ankoba secondary forest, to the north, Malaza gallery/scrub areas, and spiny forest, to the south). Sifaka may have decreased in the gallery forest to concentrate in Ankoba (in a sort of out-of-Malaza). The area contains protein-rich food (prediction 1a confirmed). Sifaka are proportionally more concentrated in the spiny area than in the degraded scrub forest (prediction 1b confirmed). The sex ratio is extremely male biased, possibly due to either high sifaka density, in Ankoba, or food availability reduction, in Malaza (prediction 2 confirmed). The sifaka population seems to be under stress: researchers need to resume demographic studies, interrupted in Berenty in the mid-1980s, to preserve in situ a species that is difficult to protect ex situ.     

Sniffing Behavior in Lemur catta: Seasonality, Sex, and Rank

We analyzed the role of direct olfactory investigation in relation to seasonality, sex, and female rank via of a longitudinal study on 16 adult ring-tailed lemurs living in two groups at the Pistoia Zoo (Tuscany, Italy). The observations took place from May 1997 to March 1999 and lasted >1,500 h. Males were olfactorily more active than females except for skin licking, which also appeared to be associated with affiliative behaviors. Both sexes had peak frequency of direct olfactory monitoring during the reproductive season; contrarily, skin licking showed apparently random fluctuations. There is a significant positive correlation between rank and sniffing genitals performed by females on other females and a significant negative correlation between rank and sniffing genitals received: high-ranking females are mostly actors, while low-ranking females are mostly receivers. The continuous follow-up of the reproductive conditions of potential competitors suggests that sniffing genitals might play a role in female reproductive strategies.