Science-policy interfaces for biodiversity: dynamic learning environments for successful impact

To address the pressing problems associated with biodiversity loss, changes in awareness and behaviour are required from decision makers in all sectors. Science-policy interfaces (SPIs) have the potential to play an important role, and to achieve this effectively, there is a need to understand better the ways in which existing SPIs strive for effective communication, learning and behavioural change. Using a series of test cases across the world, we assess a range of features influencing the effectiveness of SPIs through communication and argumentation processes, engagement of actors and other aspects that contribute to potential success. Our results demonstrate the importance of dynamic and iterative processes of interaction to support effective SPI work. We stress the importance of seeing SPIs as dynamic learning environments and we provide recommendations for how they can enhance success in meeting their targeted outcomes. In particular, we recommend building long-term trust, creating learning environments, fostering participation and ownership of the process and building capacity to combat silo thinking. Processes to enable these changes may include, for example, inviting and integrating feedback, extended peer review and attention to contextualising knowledge for different audiences, and time and sustained effort dedicated to trust-building and developing common languages. However there are no ‘one size fits all’ solutions, and methods must be adapted to context and participants. Creating and maintaining effective dynamic learning environments will both require and encourage changes in institutional and individual behaviours: a challenging agenda, but one with potential for positive feedbacks to maintain momentum.     

Whole body movements in altered G environments

Davies and Rennie determined that the instantaneous peak and mean power transferred to the center-of-mass of a subject during jumping could be calculated from analyzing the ground reaction force. Since Davies and Rennie's report, vertical jumping has been used to measure the peak and mean power transferred to the center-of-mass and to assess human performance. It has also been suggested that the external load a subject experiences effects the power production. However, it is difficult to determine if the difference in power production as defined in these studies is due to the external loading, or is an effect of changing the dynamics of the movement. In this paper, we describe a study which allows us to more clearly define the power developed during jumping under different weights, and the relationship between the power developed and jump height.     

Motor skill learning, retention, and control deficits in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease, which affects the basal ganglia, is known to lead to various impairments of motor control. Since the basal ganglia have also been shown to be involved in learning processes, motor learning has frequently been investigated in this group of patients. However, results are still inconsistent, mainly due to skill levels and time scales of testing. To bridge across the time scale problem, the present study examined de novo skill learning over a long series of practice sessions that comprised early and late learning stages as well as retention. 19 non-demented, medicated, mild to moderate patients with Parkinson's disease and 19 healthy age and gender matched participants practiced a novel throwing task over five days in a virtual environment where timing of release was a critical element. Six patients and seven control participants came to an additional long-term retention testing after seven to nine months. Changes in task performance were analyzed by a method that differentiates between three components of motor learning prominent in different stages of learning: Tolerance, Noise and Covariation. In addition, kinematic analysis related the influence of skill levels as affected by the specific motor control deficits in Parkinson patients to the process of learning. As a result, patients showed similar learning in early and late stages compared to the control subjects. Differences occurred in short-term retention tests; patients' performance constantly decreased after breaks arising from poorer release timing. However, patients were able to overcome the initial timing problems within the course of each practice session and could further improve their throwing performance. Thus, results demonstrate the intact ability to learn a novel motor skill in non-demented, medicated patients with Parkinson's disease and indicate confounding effects of motor control deficits on retention performance.     

Motor control: learning new moves with old pumps

A recent study has identified a novel form of short-term memory in the spinal cord that employs a ubiquitous mechanism for cellular homeostasis to encode neuronal network activity and adjust locomotor behaviour on the basis of past performance.     

Motor learning

Bilateral damage of the medial temporal lobe system prevents the formation of new declarative memories but leaves intact knowledge that was acquired before damage. For motor learning, no structure has been identified that plays a comparable role for the consolidation of motor memories. The deficits of motor learning are focal and show a similar allocation to the various of motor learning are focal and show a similar allocation to the various sensorimotor subsystems, as do the corresponding non-mnemonic functions. The involvement of sensorimotor circuitries changes during motor learning so that association areas are preferentially activated in the early stages, and cerebello- and striato-motor-cortical loops are preferentially activated in the late stages of motor learning. Recent neuroanatomical and neurophysiological findings on the effects of brain lesions in human and non-human primates are discussed.     

Optimal mutation rates in dynamic environments

In this paper, we study the evolution of the mutation rate for simple organisms in dynamic environments. A model based on explicit population dynamics at the gene sequence level, with multiple fitness coding loci tracking a moving fitness peak in a random fitness background, is developed and an analytical expression for the optimal mutation rate is derived. The optimal mutation rate per genome is approximately independent of genome length, something that has been observed in nature. Furthermore, the optimal mutation rate is a function of the absolute, not relative, replication rate of the superior gene sequences. Simulations confirm the theoretical predictions.     

Blockchain-based federated learning methodologies in smart environments

Blockchain technology is an undeniable ledger technology that stores transactions in high-security chains of blocks. Blockchain can solve security and privacy issues in a variety of domains. With the rapid development of smart environments and complicated contracts between users and intelligent devices, federated learning (FL) is a new paradigm to improve accuracy and precision factors of data mining by supporting information privacy and security. Much sensitive information such as patient health records, safety industrial information, and banking personal information in various domains of the Internet of Things (IoT) including smart city, smart healthcare, and smart industry should be collected and gathered to train and test with high potential privacy and secured manner. Using blockchain technology to the adaption of intelligent learning can influence maintaining and sustaining information security and privacy. Finally, blockchain-based FL mechanisms are very hot topics and cut of scientific edge in data science and artificial intelligence. This research proposes a systematic study on the discussion of privacy and security in the field of blockchain-based FL methodologies on the scientific databases to provide an objective road map of the status of this issue. According to the analytical results of this research, blockchain-based FL has been grown significantly during these 5 years and blockchain technology has been used more to solve problems related to patient healthcare records, image retrieval, cancer datasets, industrial equipment, and economical information in the field of IoT applications and smart environments.

     

Motor learning by observing

Learning complex motor behaviors like riding a bicycle or swinging a golf club is based on acquiring neural representations of the mechanical requirements of movement (e.g., coordinating muscle forces to control the club). Here we provide evidence that mechanisms matching observation and action facilitate motor learning. Subjects who observed a video depicting another person learning to reach in a novel mechanical environment (imposed by a robot arm) performed better when later tested in the same environment than subjects who observed similar movements but no learning; moreover, subjects who observed learning of a different environment performed worse. We show that this effect is not based on conscious strategies but instead depends on the implicit engagement of neural systems for movement planning and control.     

Pseudomonas aeruginosa attachment and biofilm development in dynamic environments

Biofilm formation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa is hypothesized to follow a developmental pattern initiated by attachment to a surface followed by microcolony formation and mature biofilm development. Swimming and twitching motility are important for attachment and biofilm development in P. aeruginosa. However, it is clear that many P. aeruginosa strains lacking swimming motility exist as biofilms in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients. Consequently, we have developed a dynamic attachment assay to identify motility-independent attachment-defective mutants. Using transposon mutagenesis, we identified 14 novel dynamic attachment-deficient (dad) mutants including four mutants specific to dynamic assay conditions (dad specific). Two of the dad-specific mutants contain insertions in genes involved in sensing and responding to external stimuli, implying a significant impact of external factors on the biofilm developmental pathway. Observations of initial attachment and long-term biofilm formation characterized our dad mutants into two distinct classes: biofilm delayed and biofilm impaired. Biofilm-delayed mutants form wild-type biofilms but are delayed at least 24 h compared with the wild type, whereas biofilm-impaired mutants never form wild-type biofilms in our assays. We propose a dynamic model for attachment and biofilm formation in P. aeruginosa including these two classes.     

Response of insect activity rhythms to altered gravitational environments

Researchers describe the development of the Beetle Activity Monitor (BAM), constructed to support an experiment with the desert beetle, Trigonoscelis gigas, proposed for the NASA-Mir program. The BAM tracks beetle movement via a wheel which turns as the animal moves in the cage. In addition to design features that conform to shuttle specifications and animal housing standards, it holds a maximum number of animals, allows for continuous recording of activity, and provides a controlled lighting environment. An experiment with 32 beetles collected data in 5-minute increments for animals exposed to constant darkness and 12-hour light-dark periods. Results of this experiment indicate that the light-dark cycle entrained the beetle circadian rhythm.     

Motor learning and prediction in a variable environment

Traditional studies of motor learning and prediction have focused on how subjects perform a single task. Recent advances have been made in our understanding of motor learning and prediction by investigating the way we learn variable tasks, which change either predictably or unpredictably over time. Similarly, studies have examined how variability in our own movements affects motor learning.     

Signalling and the evolution of cooperative foraging in dynamic environments

Understanding cooperation in animal social groups remains a significant challenge for evolutionary theory. Observed behaviours that benefit others but incur some cost appear incompatible with classical notions of natural selection; however, these behaviours may be explained by concepts such as inclusive fitness, reciprocity, intra-specific mutualism or manipulation. In this work, we examine a seemingly altruistic behaviour, the active recruitment of conspecifics to a food resource through signalling. Here collective, cooperative behaviour may provide highly nonlinear benefits to individuals, since group functionality has the potential to be far greater than the sum of the component parts, for example by enabling the effective tracking of a dynamic resource. We show that due to this effect, signalling to others is an evolutionarily stable strategy under certain environmental conditions, even when there is a cost associated to this behaviour. While exploitation is possible, in the limiting case of a sparse, ephemeral but locally abundant nutrient source, a given environmental profile will support a fixed number of signalling individuals. Through a quantitative analysis, this effective carrying capacity for cooperation is related to the characteristic length and time scales of the resource field.     

Sexual selection predicts the persistence of populations within altered environments

The effect of sexual selection on species persistence remains unclear. The cost of bearing ornaments or armaments might increase extinction risk, but sexual selection can also enhance the spread of beneficial alleles and increase the removal of deleterious alleles, potentially reducing extinction risk. Here we investigate the effect of sexual selection on species persistence in a community of 34 species of dung beetles across a gradient of environmental disturbance ranging from old growth forest to oil palm plantation. Horns are sexually selected traits used in contests between males, and we find that both horn presence and relative size are strongly positively associated with species persistence and abundance in altered habitats. Testes mass, an indicator of post‐copulatory selection, is, however, negatively linked with the abundance of species within the most disturbed habitats. This study represents the first evidence from a field system of a population‐level benefit from pre‐copulatory sexual selection.     

Motor cortex rules for learning and memory

Primary motor cortex has a complex, interconnected anatomical and functional architecture with dynamic properties. Recent evidence suggests that, concomitantly with regulating muscle activity and movements, the motor cortex makes key contributions to learning and remembering motor skills.     

Bioglass (R) stimulation of embryonic long-bones in altered loading environments

The 45S5 composition glass (Bioglass (R), USBiomaterials, USA) contains 45 wt% SiO2, 24.5 wt% CaO, 24.5 wt% Na2O and 6 wt% P2O5. It is a low SiO2 (45 wt%) and a high Na2O content glass that results in rapid ion exchange when exposed to physiological solutions. The change in local solution chemistry results in rapid nucleation (1-3 hours exposure) and subsequent crystallisation of hydroxyl-carbonate-apatite (HCA) identical to naturally occurring bone mineral within a hydrated SiO2-rich layer developed on the glass surface. During HCA layer formation, proteins and other growth factors are absorbed into the layer. The synthetic bone mineral layer bonds to collagen, produced by the host tissue, which leads to a strong interfacial bond that is stronger than the host tissue (hard or soft) (Hench and West. 1996). In this study we show that the chemical effects responsible for enhanced bone cell proliferation and differentiation found in-vitro and in-vivo with Bioglass (R) may be sufficient to prevent the demineralisation of bone tissue that occurs as a result of ageing or exposure to a low loading environment i.e. implant/tissue stress-shielding, space-flight.     

Visual flight control in naturalistic and artificial environments

Although the visual flight control strategies of flying insects have evolved to cope with the complexity of the natural world, studies investigating this behaviour have typically been performed indoors using simplified two-dimensional artificial visual stimuli. How well do the results from these studies reflect the natural behaviour of flying insects considering the radical differences in contrast, spatial composition, colour and dimensionality between these visual environments? Here, we aim to answer this question by investigating the effect of three- and two-dimensional naturalistic and artificial scenes on bumblebee flight control in an outdoor setting and compare the results with those of similar experiments performed in an indoor setting. In particular, we focus on investigating the effect of axial (front-to-back) visual motion cues on ground speed and centring behaviour. Our results suggest that, in general, ground speed control and centring behaviour in bumblebees is not affected by whether the visual scene is two- or three dimensional, naturalistic or artificial, or whether the experiment is conducted indoors or outdoors. The only effect that we observe between naturalistic and artificial scenes on flight control is that when the visual scene is three-dimensional and the visual information on the floor is minimised, bumblebees fly further from the midline of the tunnel. The findings presented here have implications not only for understanding the mechanisms of visual flight control in bumblebees, but also for the results of past and future investigations into visually guided flight control in other insects.     

Autonomic degeneration and altered blood pressure control in humans

The study of patients with partial or total defects of their sympathetic nerves can help clarify the role of the sympathetic nervous system in blood pressure control. Denervation supersensitivity of both beta and alpha receptors develops in humans and is proportional to the degree of sympathetic withdrawal. Although alterations in beta-receptor sensitivity are familiar responses to beta agonists or antagonists, patients with decreased norepinephrine (NE) levels appear to develop alpha-receptor supersensitivity of greater hemodynamic importance. When beta supersensitivity is marked, there may be a pressor response to beta blockade even when circulating levels of NE and epinephrine are very low. Indomethacin blocks prostaglandin synthesis and causes an increase in blood pressure in patients with partial autonomic neuropathies. The drug increases blood pressure by enhancing alpha- and diminishing beta-receptor sensitivity to NE, so it is effective only in patients who have some residual NE release.