Newborn infants perceive abstract numbers Izard, Véronique; Sann, Coralie; Spelke, Elizabeth S ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
06/2009, Volume:
106, Issue:
25
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Although infants and animals respond to the approximate number of elements in visual, auditory, and tactile arrays, only human children and adults have been shown to possess abstract numerical ...representations that apply to entities of all kinds (e.g., 7 samurai, seas, or sins). Do abstract numerical concepts depend on language or culture, or do they form a part of humans' innate, core knowledge? Here we show that newborn infants spontaneously associate stationary, visual-spatial arrays of 4-18 objects with auditory sequences of events on the basis of number. Their performance provides evidence for abstract numerical representations at the start of postnatal experience.
Using self-resonant coils in a strongly coupled regime, we experimentally demonstrated efficient nonradiative power transfer over distances up to 8 times the radius of the coils. We were able to ...transfer 60 watts with ∼40% efficiency over distances in excess of 2 meters. We present a quantitative model describing the power transfer, which matches the experimental results to within 5%. We discuss the practical applicability of this system and suggest directions for further study.
Snakes and their relationships with humans and other primates have attracted broad attention from multiple fields of study, but not, surprisingly, from neuroscience, despite the involvement of the ...visual system and strong behavioral and physiological evidence that humans and other primates can detect snakes faster than innocuous objects. Here, we report the existence of neurons in the primate medial and dorsolateral pulvinar that respond selectively to visual images of snakes. Compared with three other categories of stimuli (monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometrical shapes), snakes elicited the strongest, fastest responses, and the responses were not reduced by low spatial filtering. These findings integrate neuroscience with evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, herpetology, and primatology by identifying a neurobiological basis for primates' heightened visual sensitivity to snakes, and adding a crucial component to the growing evolutionary perspective that snakes have long shaped our primate lineage.
Optical Conformal Mapping Leonhardt, Ulf
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
06/2006, Volume:
312, Issue:
5781
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
An invisibility device should guide light around an object as if nothing were there, regardless of where the light comes from. Ideal invisibility devices are impossible, owing to the wave nature of ...light. This study develops a general recipe for the design of media that create perfect invisibility within the accuracy of geometrical optics. The imperfections of invisibility can be made arbitrarily small to hide objects that are much larger than the wavelength. With the use of modern metamaterials, practical demonstrations of such devices may be possible. The method developed here can also be applied to escape detection by other electromagnetic waves or sound.
The ubiquitous aquaporin channels are able to conduct water across cell membranes, combining the seemingly antagonist functions of a very high selectivity with a remarkable permeability. Whereas ...molecular details are obvious keys to perform these tasks, the overall efficiency of transport in such nanopores is also strongly limited by viscous dissipation arising at the connection between the nanoconstriction and the nearby bulk reservoirs. In this contribution, we focus on these so-called entrance effects and specifically examine whether the characteristic hourglass shape of aquaporins may arise from a geometrical optimum for such hydrodynamic dissipation. Using a combination of finite-element calculations and analytical modeling, we show that conical entrances with suitable opening angle can indeed provide a large increase of the overall channel permeability. Moreover, the optimal opening angles that maximize the permeability are found to compare well with the angles measured in a large variety of aquaporins. This suggests that the hourglass shape of aquaporins could be the result of a natural selection process toward optimal hydrodynamic transport. Finally, in a biomimetic perspective, these results provide guidelines to design artificial nanopores with optimal performances.
Localization of stationary waves occurs in a large variety of vibrating systems, whether mechanical, acoustical, optical, or quantum. It is induced by the presence of an inhomogeneous medium, a ...complex geometry, or a quenched disorder. One of its most striking and famous manifestations is Anderson localization, responsible for instance for the metal-insulator transition in disordered alloys. Yet, despite an enormous body of related literature, a clear and unified picture of localization is still to be found, as well as the exact relationship between its many manifestations. In this paper, we demonstrate that both Anderson and weak localizations originate from the same universal mechanism, acting on any type of vibration, in any dimension, and for any domain shape. This mechanism partitions the system into weakly coupled subregions. The boundaries of these subregions correspond to the valleys of a hidden landscape that emerges from the interplay between the wave operator and the system geometry. The height of the landscape along its valleys determines the strength of the coupling between the subregions. The landscape and its impact on localization can be determined rigorously by solving one special boundary problem. This theory allows one to predict the localization properties, the confining regions, and to estimate the energy of the vibrational eigenmodes through the properties of one geometrical object. In particular, Anderson localization can be understood as a special case of weak localization in a very rough landscape.
Covalent organic synthesis commonly uses the strategy of selective bond cleavage and formation. It a similar approach can be applied stepwisely to noncovalent synthesis, more exotic or challenging ...nanostructures might become achievable. Here, we report that ferrocene-based tetratopic pyridyl ligands, which can dynamically change their geometry by means of thermal rotation of their cyclopentadienyl rings in solution, assemble with AgBF4 into discrete metal-organic nanotubes with large and uniform diameters. The nanotubes can be cut into metal-organic nanorings through selective attenuation of the inter-nanoring interaction via ferrocene oxidation. The resultant nanorings can be transferred onto inorganic substrates electrostatically or allowed to reassemble to form the original nanotube by the reductive neutralization of their oxidized ferrocene units.
Many questions in evolutionary biology require the quantification and comparison of rates of phenotypic evolution. Recently, phylogenetic comparative methods have been developed for comparing ...evolutionary rates on a phylogeny for single, univariate traits (σ²), and evolutionary rate matrices (R) for sets of traits treated simultaneously. However, high-dimensional traits like shape remain under-examined with this framework, because methods suited for such data have not been fully developed. In this article, I describe a method to quantify phylogenetic evolutionary rates for high-dimensional multivariate data $\left( {\sigma _{mult}^2} \right)$, found from the equivalency between statistical methods based on covariance matrices and those based on distance matrices (R-mode and Q-mode methods). I then use simulations to evaluate the statistical performance of hypothesis-testing procedures that compare $\sigma _{mult}^1$ for two or more groups of species on a phylogeny. Under both isotropic and non-isotropic conditions, and for differing numbers of trait dimensions, the proposed method displays appropriate Type I error and high statistical power for detecting known differences in $\sigma _{mult}^1$ among groups. In contrast, the Type I error rate of likelihood tests based on the evolutionary rate matrix (R) increases as the number of trait dimensions (p) increases, and becomes unacceptably large when only a few trait dimensions are considered. Further, likelihood tests based on R cannot be computed when the number of trait dimensions equals or exceeds the number of taxa in the phylogeny (i.e., when p> N). These results demonstrate that tests based on $\sigma _{mult}^1$ provide a useful means of comparing evolutionary rates for high-dimensional data that are otherwise not analytically accessible to methods based on the evolutionary rate matrix. This advance thus expands the phylogenetic comparative toolkit for high-dimensional phenotypic traits like shape. Finally, I illustrate the utility of the new approach by evaluating rates of head shape evolution in a lineage of Plethodon salamanders.
Smooth wrinkles and sharply crumpled regions are familiar motifs in biological or synthetic sheets, such as rapidly growing plant leaves and crushed foils. Previous studies have addressed both ...morphological types, but the generic route whereby a featureless sheet develops a complex shape remains elusive. Here we show that this route proceeds through an unusual sequence of distinct symmetry-breaking instabilities. The object of our study is an ultrathin circular sheet stretched over a liquid drop. As the curvature is gradually increased, the surface tension stretching the sheet over the drop causes compression along circles of latitude. The compression is relieved first by a transition into a wrinkle pattern, and then into a crumpled state via a continuous transition. Our data provide conclusive evidence that wrinkle patterns in highly bendable sheets are not described by classical buckling methods, but rather by a theory which assumes that wrinkles completely relax the compressive stress. With this understanding we recognize the observed sequence of transitions as distinct symmetry breakings of the shape and the stress field. The axial symmetry of the shape is broken upon wrinkling but the underlying stress field preserves this symmetry. Thus, the wrinkle-to-crumple transition marks symmetry-breaking of the stress in highly bendable sheets. By contrast, other instabilities of sheets, such as blistering and cracking, break the homogeneity of shape and stress simultaneously. The onset of crumpling occurs when the wrinkle pattern grows to half the sheet’s radius, suggesting a geometric, material-independent origin for this transition.
The article is devoted to the issue of preserving the architectural heritage of the outstanding Russian engineer V.G. Shukhov. Three objects are considered: the Moscow Radio Tower on Shabolovka, the ...“Shukhov Prolet” of the Sheet Rolling Shop and the Water Tower, located in the city of Vyksa, Nizhny Novgorod Region. The main design parameters of these structures and the results of their technical examination, the emergency response measures taken to ensure the safety of the Radio Tower in Moscow, and recommendations for the restoration of all three structures with the transfer of the Sheet Rolling Shop and the Water Tower to the central part of Vyksa are presented. It is planned to reconstruct the historical appearance of the buildings, as well as to improve the surrounding area. It is supposed to restore the geometric shape of the section by laser deposition of powder metal, and only if it is impossible to restore the element, its replacement is provided. To preserve the historical appearance, the joints of steel structures will be bolted, imitating rivets. In the course of excavation, archaeological research is planned, since within the boundaries of the construction site (the city of Vyksa) there may be areas of preserved cultural strata of the cultural heritage site “Estate-industrial complex, XVIII-XIX centuries”.
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