Snow provides essential resources/services in the form of water for human use, and climate regulation in the form of enhanced cooling of the Earth. In addition, it supports a thriving winter outdoor ...recreation industry. To date, the financial evaluation of the importance of snow is incomplete and hence the need for accelerated snow research is not as clear as it could be. With snow cover changing worldwide in several worrisome ways, there is pressing need to determine global, regional, and local rates of snow cover change, and to link these to financial analyses that allow for rational decision making, as risks related to those decisions involve trillions of dollars.
Plain Language Summary
Snow is critical in sustaining human life. It provides water and plays a key role in the climate through its unrivaled power to cool the Earth. It is also changing rapidly. To date, a full financial evaluation of the importance of snow in our lives has not been made, but computations here and elsewhere indicate it is on the order of trillions of dollars. Against this value, the current costs of scientific research are trivial. We provide a strong rationale and guidelines for accelerated snow research that will allow society to make major impending decisions related to snow resources on the soundest base and best scientific knowledge.
Key Points
Snow is a critical but often‐unappreciated resource used by humans, and it is changing due to global warming in worrisome ways
Work presented here suggests the valuation across many years of western US snow resources exceeds a trillion dollars
More research is needed to help society make sound decisions on expensive major climate‐driven snow resource changes
Cellular responses to DNA damage are important determinants of both cancer development and cancer outcome following radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Identification of molecular pathways governing ...DNA damage signaling and DNA repair in response to different types of DNA lesions allows for a better understanding of the effects of radiation and chemotherapy on normal and tumor cells. Although dysregulation of the DNA damage response (DDR) is associated with predisposition to cancer development, it can also result in hypersensitivity or resistance of tumors to therapy and can be exploited for improvement of cancer treatment. We highlight the DDR pathways that are activated after treatment with radiation and different classes of chemotherapeutic drugs and describe mechanisms determining tumor sensitivity and resistance to these agents. Further, we discuss approaches to enhance tumor sensitivity to radiation and chemotherapy by modulating the DDR with a goal of enhancing the effectiveness of cancer therapies.
Learning of song in birds provides a powerful model for human speech development 1–3. However, the degree to which songbirds and humans share social mechanisms of vocal learning is unknown. Although ...it has been demonstrated as a vocal learning mechanism in human infants 3–6, learning via active social feedback is considered rare and atypical among non-human animals 7. We report here the first evidence that song learning in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), the most common model species of vocal learning and development, utilizes socially guided vocal learning. We demonstrate experimentally that the songs of juvenile zebra finches are guided toward mature vocal forms by real-time visual feedback from adult females that is contingent on their early, immature vocalizations. Using a video playback paradigm, we found that juvenile birds that received non-vocal female feedback contingently on their immature song learned significantly better and more accurate song than did yoked controls that received identical but non-contingent feedback. Both contingent and non-contingent groups sang at similar rates. Thus, we have provided the first evidence suggesting that non-imitative social learning is a crucial, potentially widespread mechanism of vocal development and have established a foundational parallel between humans and our most ubiquitous animal model of vocal learning: the crucial role of social feedback to immature vocalizations in the development of communication.
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•Imitation, not social factors, is thought to drive zebra finch song learning•We tested whether non-vocal visual feedback from females affects song learning•Song learning was facilitated by contingent feedback; yoked controls did not learn•Socially guided vocal learning is a crucial mechanism of song development
The zebra finch is the most common model of human speech development but, unlike humans, is thought to learn only via imitation. Carouso-Peck and Goldstein show that song learning is affected by non-vocal, visual feedback from females. Young males given feedback contingent on their immature songs developed higher-quality songs than yoked controls.
We examine the effect of high-frequency trading on market quality from the perspective of a limit order trader. By competing with slower limit order traders, high-frequency traders impose a welfare ...externality by selectively crowding out the most profitable limit orders. The order book imbalance immediately before each order submission, cancellation, and trade suggests that high-frequency traders strategically use limit order book information to supply liquidity on the thick side of the order book and demand liquidity from the thin side. This strategic behavior is more pronounced during volatile periods and when trading speeds increase.
This paper was accepted by Bruno Biais, finance.
Funding:
This work was supported by the Centre for International Finance and Regulation Grant T013.
Supplemental Material:
The online appendix and data are available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4539
.
Preservatives in multidose formulations of topical ophthalmic medications are crucial for maintaining sterility but can be toxic to the ocular surface. Benzalkonium chloride (BAK)-used in ...approximately 70% of ophthalmic formulations-is well known to cause cytotoxic damage to conjunctival and corneal epithelial cells, resulting in signs and symptoms of ocular surface disease (OSD) including ocular surface staining, increased tear break-up time, and higher OSD symptom scores. These adverse effects are more problematic with chronic exposure, as in lifetime therapy for glaucoma, but can also manifest after exposure as brief as seven days. Multiple strategies are available to minimize or eliminate BAK exposure, among them alternative preservatives, preservative-free formulations including sustained release drug delivery platforms, and non-pharmacological therapies for common eye diseases and conditions. In this paper, we review the cytotoxic and clinical effects of BAK on the ocular surface and discuss existing and emerging options for ocular disease management that can minimize or eliminate BAK exposure.
Infants' prelinguistic vocalizations are rarely considered relevant for communicative development. As a result, there are few studies of mechanisms underlying developmental changes in prelinguistic ...vocal production. Here we report the first evidence that caregivers' speech to babbling infants provides crucial, real-time guidance to the development of prelinguistic vocalizations. Mothers of 9.5-month-old infants were instructed to provide models of vocal production timed to be either contingent or noncontingent on their infants' babbling. Infants given contingent feedback rapidly restructured their babbling, incorporating phonological patterns from caregivers' speech, but infants given noncontingent feedback did not. The new vocalizations of the infants in the contingent condition shared phonological form but not phonetic content with their mothers' speech. Thus, prelinguistic infants learned new vocal forms by discovering phonological patterns in their mothers' contingent speech and then generalizing from these patterns.
Socially guided vocal learning, the ability to use contingent reactions from social partners to guide immature vocalizations to more mature forms, is thought to be a rare ability known to be used ...only by humans, marmosets and two unrelated songbird species (brown-headed cowbirds and zebra finches). However, this learning strategy has never been investigated in the vast majority of species that are known to modify their vocalizations over development. We propose a novel, preliminary evolutionary modelling approach that uses ecological, reproductive and developmental traits to predict which species may incorporate social influences as part of their vocal learning system. We demonstrate our model using data from 28 passerines. We found three highly predictive traits: temporal overlap between sensory (memorization) and sensorimotor (practice) phases of song learning, song used for mate attraction, and social gregariousness outside the breeding season. Species with these traits were distributed throughout the clade, suggesting that a trait-based approach may yield new insights into the evolution of learning strategies that cannot be gleaned from phylogenetic relatedness alone. Our model suggests several previously uninvestigated and unexpected species as likely socially guided vocal learners and offers new insight into the evolution and development of vocal learning.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and humans’.
The many functions of vocal learning Carouso-Peck, Samantha; Goldstein, Michael H.; Fitch, W. Tecumseh
Philosophical transactions - Royal Society. Biological sciences,
10/2021, Volume:
376, Issue:
1836
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The capacity to learn novel vocalizations has evolved convergently in a wide range of species. Courtship songs of male birds or whales are often treated as prototypical examples, implying a sexually ...selected context for the evolution of this ability. However, functions of learned vocalizations in different species are far more diverse than courtship, spanning a range of socio-positive contexts from individual identification, social cohesion, or advertising pair bonds, as well as agonistic contexts such as territorial defence, deceptive alarm calling or luring prey. Here, we survey the diverse usages and proposed functions of learned novel signals, to build a framework for considering the evolution of vocal learning capacities that extends beyond sexual selection. For each function that can be identified for learned signals, we provide examples of species using unlearned signals to accomplish the same goals. We use such comparisons to generate hypotheses concerning when vocal learning is adaptive, given a particular suite of socio-ecological traits. Finally, we identify areas of uncertainty where improved understanding would allow us to better test these hypotheses. Considering the broad range of potential functions of vocal learning will yield a richer appreciation of its evolution than a narrow focus on a few prototypical species.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and humans’.
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