Honeybees are essential pollinators of many agricultural crops and wild plants. However, the number of managed bee colonies has declined in some regions of the world over the last few decades, ...probably caused by a combination of factors including parasites, pathogens and pesticides. Exposure to these diverse biotic and abiotic stressors is likely to trigger immune responses and stress pathways that affect the health of individual honeybees and hence their contribution to colony survival. We therefore investigated the effects of an orally administered bacterial pathogen (Pseudomonas entomophila) and low-dose xenobiotic pesticides on honeybee survival and intestinal immune responses. We observed stressor-dependent effects on the mean lifespan, along with the induction of genes encoding the antimicrobial peptide abaecin and the detoxification factor cytochrome P450 monooxygenase CYP9E2. The pesticides also triggered the immediate induction of a nitric oxide synthase gene followed by the delayed upregulation of catalase, which was not observed in response to the pathogen. Honeybees therefore appear to produce nitric oxide as a specific defense response when exposed to xenobiotic stimuli. The immunity-related and stress-response genes we tested may provide useful stressor-dependent markers for ecotoxicological assessment in honeybee colonies.
Experimental research has shown that pairs of stimuli which are congruent and assumed to 'go together' are recalled more effectively than an item presented in isolation. Will this multisensory memory ...benefit occur when stimuli are richer and longer, in an ecological setting? In the present study, we focused on an everyday situation of audio-visual learning and manipulated the relationship between audio guide tracks and viewed portraits in the galleries of the Tate Britain. By varying the gender and narrative style of the voice-over, we examined how the perceived congruency and assumed unity of the audio guide track with painted portraits affected subsequent recall. We show that tracks perceived as best matching the viewed portraits led to greater recall of both sensory and linguistic content. We provide the first evidence that manipulating crossmodal congruence and unity assumptions can effectively impact memory in a multisensory ecological setting, even in the absence of precise temporal alignment between sensory cues.
Mental body-representations are highly plastic and can be modified after brief exposure to unexpected sensory feedback. While the role of vision, touch and proprioception in shaping ...body-representations has been highlighted by many studies, the auditory influences on mental body-representations remain poorly understood. Changes in body-representations by the manipulation of natural sounds produced when one's body impacts on surfaces have recently been evidenced. But will these changes also occur with non-naturalistic sounds, which provide no information about the impact produced by or on the body? Drawing on the well-documented capacity of dynamic changes in pitch to elicit impressions of motion along the vertical plane and of changes in object size, we asked participants to pull on their right index fingertip with their left hand while they were presented with brief sounds of rising, falling or constant pitches, and in the absence of visual information of their hands. Results show an "auditory Pinocchio" effect, with participants feeling and estimating their finger to be longer after the rising pitch condition. These results provide the first evidence that sounds that are not indicative of veridical movement, such as non-naturalistic sounds, can induce a Pinocchio-like change in body-representation when arbitrarily paired with a bodily action.
The HERMES spectrograph installed on the 1.2-m Mercator telescope has been used to monitor the radial velocity of 13 low-metallicity carbon stars, among which seven carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) ...stars and six CH stars (including HIP 53522, a new member of the family, as revealed by a detailed abundance study). All stars but one show clear evidence for binarity. New orbits are obtained for eight systems. The sample covers an extended range in orbital periods, extending from 3.4 d (for the dwarf carbon star HE 0024-2523) to about 54 yr (for the CH star HD 26, the longest known among barium, CH, and extrinsic S stars). Three systems exhibit low-amplitude velocity variations with periods close to 1 yr superimposed on a long-term trend. In the absence of an accurate photometric monitoring of these systems, it is not clear yet whether these variations are the signature of a very low-mass companion or of regular envelope pulsations. The period – eccentricity (P − e) diagram for the 40 low-metallicity carbon stars with orbits now available shows no difference between CH and CEMP-s stars (the latter corresponding to those CEMP stars enriched in s-process elements, as are CH stars). We suggest that they must be considered as one and the same family and that their different names only stem from historical reasons. Indeed, these two families have as well very similar mass-function distributions, corresponding to companions with masses in the range 0.5–0.7 M⊙, indicative of white-dwarf companions, adopting 0.8–0.9 M⊙ for the primary component. This result confirms that CH and CEMP-s stars obey the same mass-transfer scenario as their higher-metallicity analogues, barium stars. The P − e diagrams of barium, CH, and CEMP-s stars are indeed very similar. They reveal two different groups of systems: one with short orbital periods (P< 1000 d) and mostly circular or almost circular orbits, and another with longer period and eccentric (e> 0.1) orbits. These two groups either trace different evolutionary channels during the mass-transfer episode responsible for the chemical peculiarities of the Ba/CH/CEMP-s stars, or result from the operation of tidal circularisation in a more recent past, when the current giant star was ascending the first giant branch.
The largely automatic mapping observed between space and sensory magnitudes suggests representation by a single system across domains. Using stimulus response compatibility tasks, the study confirms ...that a relative, auditory magnitude such as loudness shows a spatial compatibility effect similar to those evidenced for visual sensory domains but only with comparison tasks and for vertically oriented responses. No effect is seen when participants track changes in amplitude or when responses are oriented vertically. In a bimodal context, the study tested whether the spatial mapping of magnitude in 1 sensory modality (loudness) interacts with the spatial representation of magnitude in another sense (luminance). Observed interactions across modalities suggest overlap of magnitude representation across distinct sensory domains, whereas the absence of an effect for dynamic changes in loudness suggests that it is useful for decisions to act on 1 of several objects rather than for tracking magnitude changes in 1 object.
Public Significance Statement
Evidence suggests that a spatial mapping of both sensory and symbolic magnitudes is processed by a single cognitive system. A key prediction of the shared magnitude hypothesis is that the spatial mapping of a given sensory magnitude should interact with the mapping of another magnitude in a different sensory modality, however, as yet, this remains untested. The present study systematically tests this hypothesis, confirming both that spatial mapping occurs for loudness, and that it is modulated by the spatial mapping elicited by visual distractors varying in intensity. This new evidence for a shared magnitude representation across vision and audition could be extended to other sensory magnitudes. In addition, the need to test contrasts between tones as well as dynamic auditory stimuli highlights a new aspect of the shared representation of magnitude as especially useful for decisions to act on 1 of 2 objects, rather than for negotiating changes in the environment.
We investigate non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) effects for magnesium and calcium in the atmospheres of late-type giant and supergiant stars. The aim of this paper is to provide a grid of ...NLTE/LTE equivalent width ratios W/W* of Mg and Ca lines for the following range of stellar parameters: T
eff∈ 3500, 5250 K, log g∈ 0.5, 2.0 dex and Fe/H ∈ − 4.0, 0.5 dex. We use realistic model atoms with the best physics available and taking into account the fine structure. The Mg and Ca lines of interest are in optical and near-IR ranges. A special interest concerns the lines in the Gaia spectrograph Radial Velocity Spectrometer (RVS) wavelength domain 8470, 8740 Å. The NLTE corrections are provided as a function of stellar parameters in an electronic table as well as in a polynomial form for the Gaia/RVS lines.
Context. The enrichment in s-process elements of barium stars is known to be due to pollution by mass transfer from a companion formerly on the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (AGB), now a ...carbon-oxygen white-dwarf (WD). Aims. We are investigating the relationship between the s-process enrichment in the barium star and the mass of its WD companion. It is expected that helium WDs, which have masses lower than about 0.5 M⊙ and never reached the AGB phase, should not pollute their giant companion with s-process elements. Therefore the companion should never turn into a barium star. Methods. Spectra with a resolution of R ~ 86 000 were obtained with the HERMES spectrograph on the 1.2 m Mercator telescope for a sample of 11 binary systems involving WD companions of various masses. We used standard 1D local thermodynamical equilibrium MARCS model atmospheres coupled with the Turbospectrum radiative-transfer code that is embedded in the BACCHUS pipeline to derive the atmospheric parameters through equivalent widths of Fe i and Fe ii lines. Least-squares minimization between the observed and synthetic line shape was used to derive the detailed chemical abundances of CNO and s-process elements. Results. The abundances of s-process elements for the entire sample of 11 binary stars were derived homogeneously. The sample encompasses all levels of overabundances: from solar s/ Fe = 0 to 1.5 dex in the two binary systems with S-star primaries (for which dedicated MARCS model atmospheres were used). The primary components of binary systems with a WD more massive than 0.5 M⊙ are enriched in s-process elements. We also found a trend of increasing s/Fe with C/Fe or (C+N)/Fe. Conclusions. Our results confirm the expectation that binary systems with WD companions less massive than 0.5 M⊙ do not host barium stars.
Vaccination coverage rates have been key to evaluating childhood immunization programs. The objectives of this study were to assess the immunization coverage of children aged 5–6 years and 13–14 ...years during the 2017–2018 school year, and to identify sociodemographic factors associated with full immunization in these children.
A descriptive cross-sectional school-based study was carried out. The population under study was a sample of schoolchildren aged 5–6 years and 13–14 years attending the second and 10th grades of primary and middle schools, respectively, located in the canton of Geneva, Switzerland. The data extracted from the vaccination cards included dates of administration of all doses of diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio (DTP), Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) and hepatitis B (HBV).
We collected 1994 records of second- and 10th-grade children. Results show that 52% of our samples were fully vaccinated for DTP, MMR, Hib, and HBV. For all the vaccines examined in this study, the rates of immunization were significantly better for the second-grade than for the 10th-grade children (P<0.0001). More Spanish children were inoculated than children of Swiss nationality: OR=1.90,95% CI (1.05–3.42). More children with parents who were workers were inoculated: OR=1.35 95% CI (1.04–1.75).
This study suggests that full coverage in our sample was suboptimal. For children in the second grade, we observed high coverage rates for specific vaccines, yet the rates of MMR vaccination were lower than the level required for a herd immunity. Data collection using vaccination cards allows for regular surveillance of the vaccination coverage of school pupils and can be easily carried out in schools.
We report on a detailed abundance study of the fairly bright slow rotators HD 30085 (A0 IV), HD 30963 (B9 III), and HD 174567 (A0 V), hitherto reported as normal stars and the sharp-lined χ Lupi A ...(B9 IV HgMn). In the spectra of HD 30085 and HD 30963, the Hg ii line at 3984 Å is conspicuous and numerous lines of silicon, manganese, chromium, titanium, iron, strontium, yttrium, and zirconium appear to be strong absorbers. A comparison of the mean spectra of HD 30085 and HD 30963 with a grid of synthetic spectra for selected unblended lines having reliable updated atomic data reveals large overabundances of phosphorus, titanium, chromium, manganese, strontium, yttrium, zirconium, barium, platinum, and mercury, and underabundances of helium, magnesium, scandium, and nickel. The surface abundances of χ Lupi A have been rederived on the same effective temperature scale and using the same atomic data for consistency and comparison for HD 30085 and HD 30963. For HD 174567, milder deficiencies and excesses are found. The abundances of sodium, magnesium, and calcium have been corrected for non-LTE (NLTE) effects. The effective temperatures, surface gravities, low projected rotational velocities, and the peculiar abundance patterns of HD 30085 and HD 30963 show that these stars are two new HgMn stars and should be reclassified as such. HD 174567 is most likely a new marginally chemically peculiar star. A list of the identifications of lines absorbing more than 2% in the spectrum of HD 30085 is also provided.
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