600 Technik, Technologie
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URSA-PQ
(2020)
We present a highly flexible and portable instrument to perform pump-probe spectroscopy with an optical and an X-ray pulse in the gas phase. The so-called URSA-PQ (German for ‘Ultraschnelle Röntgenspektroskopie zur Abfrage der Photoenergiekonversion an Quantensystemen’, Engl. ‘ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy for probing photoenergy conversion in quantum systems’) instrument is equipped with a magnetic bottle electron spectrometer (MBES) and tools to characterize the spatial and temporal overlap of optical and X-ray laser pulses. Its adherence to the CAMP instrument dimensions allows for a wide range of sample sources as well as other spectrometers to be included in the setup. We present the main design and technical features of the instrument. The MBES performance was evaluated using Kr M4,5NN Auger lines using backfilled Kr gas, with an energy resolution ΔE/E ≅ 1/40 in the integrating operative mode. The time resolution of the setup at FLASH 2 FL 24 has been characterized with the help of an experiment on 2-thiouracil that is inserted via the instruments’ capillary oven. We find a time resolution of 190 fs using the molecular 2p photoline shift and attribute this to different origins in the UV-pump—the X-ray probe setup.
The Human Takes It All
(2020)
Background: The increasing involvement of social robots in human lives raises the question as to how humans perceive social robots. Little is known about human perception of synthesized voices.
Aim: To investigate which synthesized voice parameters predict the speaker's eeriness and voice likability; to determine if individual listener characteristics (e.g., personality, attitude toward robots, age) influence synthesized voice evaluations; and to explore which paralinguistic features subjectively distinguish humans from robots/artificial agents.
Methods: 95 adults (62 females) listened to randomly presented audio-clips of three categories: synthesized (Watson, IBM), humanoid (robot Sophia, Hanson Robotics), and human voices (five clips/category). Voices were rated on intelligibility, prosody, trustworthiness, confidence, enthusiasm, pleasantness, human-likeness, likability, and naturalness. Speakers were rated on appeal, credibility, human-likeness, and eeriness. Participants' personality traits, attitudes to robots, and demographics were obtained.
Results: The human voice and human speaker characteristics received reliably higher scores on all dimensions except for eeriness. Synthesized voice ratings were positively related to participants' agreeableness and neuroticism. Females rated synthesized voices more positively on most dimensions. Surprisingly, interest in social robots and attitudes toward robots played almost no role in voice evaluation. Contrary to the expectations of an uncanny valley, when the ratings of human-likeness for both the voice and the speaker characteristics were higher, they seemed less eerie to the participants. Moreover, when the speaker's voice was more humanlike, it was more liked by the participants. This latter point was only applicable to one of the synthesized voices. Finally, pleasantness and trustworthiness of the synthesized voice predicted the likability of the speaker's voice. Qualitative content analysis identified intonation, sound, emotion, and imageability/embodiment as diagnostic features.
Discussion: Humans clearly prefer human voices, but manipulating diagnostic speech features might increase acceptance of synthesized voices and thereby support human-robot interaction. There is limited evidence that human-likeness of a voice is negatively linked to the perceived eeriness of the speaker.
Thermal stress response is an essential physiological trait that determines occurrence and temporal succession in nature, including response to climate change. We compared temperature-related demography in closely related heat-tolerant and heat-sensitive Brachionus rotifer species. We found significant differences in heat response, with the heat-sensitive species adopting a strategy of long survival and low population growth, while the heat-tolerant followed the opposite strategy. In both species, we examined the genetic basis of physiological variation by comparing gene expression across increasing temperatures. Comparative transcriptomic analyses identified shared and opposing responses to heat. Interestingly, expression of heat shock proteins (hsps) was strikingly different in the two species and mirrored differences in population growth rates, showing that hsp genes are likely a key component of a species’ adaptation to different temperatures. Temperature induction caused opposing patterns of expression in further functional categories including energy, carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, and in genes related to ribosomal proteins. In the heat-sensitive species, elevated temperatures caused up-regulation of genes related to meiosis induction and post-translational histone modifications. This work demonstrates the sweeping reorganizations of biological functions that accompany temperature adaptation in these two species and reveals potential molecular mechanisms that might be activated for adaptation to global warming.
Adverse environmental conditions are detrimental to plant growth and development. Acclimation to abiotic stress conditions involves activation of signaling pathways which often results in changes in gene expression via networks of transcription factors (TFs). Mediator is a highly conserved co-regulator complex and an essential component of the transcriptional machinery in eukaryotes. Some Mediator subunits have been implicated in stress-responsive signaling pathways; however, much remains unknown regarding the role of plant Mediator in abiotic stress responses. Here, we use RNA-seq to analyze the transcriptional response of Arabidopsis thaliana to heat, cold and salt stress conditions. We identify a set of common abiotic stress regulons and describe the sequential and combinatorial nature of TFs involved in their transcriptional regulation. Furthermore, we identify stress-specific roles for the Mediator subunits MED9, MED16, MED18 and CDK8, and putative TFs connecting them to different stress signaling pathways. Our data also indicate different modes of action for subunits or modules of Mediator at the same gene loci, including a co-repressor function for MED16 prior to stress. These results illuminate a poorly understood but important player in the transcriptional response of plants to abiotic stress and identify target genes and mechanisms as a prelude to further biochemical characterization.
The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is declining in large parts of Europe but populations in some German cities remained so far unaffected by this decline. The question arises of how urbanization affects patterns of population genetic variation and differentiation in German rabbit populations, as urban habitat fragmentation may result in altered meta-population dynamics. To address this question, we used microsatellite markers to genotype rabbit populations occurring along a rural-to-urban gradient in and around the city of Frankfurt, Germany. We found no effect of urbanization on allelic richness. However, the observed heterozygosity was significantly higher in urban than rural populations and also the inbreeding coefficients were lower, most likely reflecting the small population sizes and possibly on-going loss of genetic diversity in structurally impoverished rural areas. Global FST and G'ST-values suggest moderate but significant differentiation between populations. Multiple matrix regression with randomization ascribed this differentiation to isolation-by-environment rather than isolation-by-distance. Analyses of migration rates revealed asymmetrical gene flow, which was higher from rural into urban populations than vice versa and may again reflect intensified agricultural land-use practices in rural areas. We discuss that populations inhabiting urban areas will likely play an important role in the future distribution of European rabbits.
The pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is still not understood. There are investigations which show a changed oscillatory behaviour of brain circuits or changes in variability of, e.g., gait parameters in PD. The aim of this study was to investigate whether or not the motor output differs between PD patients and healthy controls. Thereby, patients without tremor are investigated in the medication off state performing a special bilateral isometric motor task. The force and accelerations (ACC) were recorded as well as the Mechanomyography (MMG) of the biceps brachii, the brachioradialis and of the pectoralis major muscles using piezoelectric-sensors during the bilateral motor task at 60% of the maximal isometric contraction. The frequency, a specific power ratio, the amplitude variation and the slope of amplitudes were analysed. The results indicate that the oscillatory behaviour of motor output in PD patients without tremor deviates from controls: thereby, the 95%-confidence-intervals of power ratio and of amplitude variation of all signals are disjoint between PD and controls and show significant differences in group comparisons (power ratio: p = 0.000–0.004, r = 0.441–0.579; amplitude variation: p = 0.000–0.001, r = 0.37–0.67). The mean frequency shows a significant difference for ACC (p = 0.009, r = 0.43), but not for MMG. It remains open, whether this muscular output reflects changes of brain circuits and whether the results are reproducible and specific for PD.
Of city and village mice
(2020)
A fundamental question of current ecological research concerns the drives and limits of species responses to human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC). Behavioural responses to HIREC are a key component because behaviour links individual responses to population and community changes. Ongoing fast urbanization provides an ideal setting to test the functional role of behaviour for responses to HIREC. Consistent behavioural differences between conspecifics (animal personality) may be important determinants or constraints of animals’ adaptation to urban habitats. We tested whether urban and rural populations of small mammals differ in mean trait expression, flexibility and repeatability of behaviours associated to risk-taking and exploratory tendencies. Using a standardized behavioural test in the field, we quantified spatial exploration and boldness of striped field mice (Apodemus agrarius, n = 96) from nine sub-populations, presenting different levels of urbanisation and anthropogenic disturbance. The level of urbanisation positively correlated with boldness, spatial exploration and behavioural flexibility, with urban dwellers being bolder, more explorative and more flexible in some traits than rural conspecifics. Thus, individuals seem to distribute in a non-random way in response to human disturbance based on their behavioural characteristics. Animal personality might therefore play a key role in successful coping with the challenges of HIREC.
The interplay between cognitive and oculomotor processes during reading can be explored when the spatial layout of text deviates from the typical display. In this study, we investigate various eye-movement measures during reading of text with experimentally manipulated layout (word-wise and letter-wise mirrored-reversed text as well as inverted and scrambled text). While typical findings (e.g., longer mean fixation times, shorter mean saccades lengths) in reading manipulated texts compared to normal texts were reported in earlier work, little is known about changes of oculomotor targeting observed in within-word landing positions under the above text layouts. Here we carry out precise analyses of landing positions and find substantial changes in the so-called launch-site effect in addition to the expected overall slow-down of reading performance. Specifically, during reading of our manipulated text conditions with reversed letter order (against overall reading direction), we find a reduced launch-site effect, while in all other manipulated text conditions, we observe an increased launch-site effect. Our results clearly indicate that the oculomotor system is highly adaptive when confronted with unusual reading conditions.
Instructions given prior to extinction training facilitate the extinction of conditioned skin conductance (SCRs) and fear-potentiated startle responses (FPSs) and serve as laboratory models for cognitive interventions implemented in exposure-based treatments of pathological anxiety. Here, we investigated how instructions given prior to extinction training, with or without the additional removal of the electrode used to deliver the unconditioned stimulus (US), affect the return of fear assessed 24 hours later. We replicated previous instruction effects on extinction and added that the additional removal of the US electrode slightly enhanced facilitating effects on the extinction of conditioned FPSs. In contrast, extinction instructions hardly affected the return of conditioned fear responses. These findings suggest that instruction effects observed during extinction training do not extent to tests of return of fear 24 hours later which serve as laboratory models of relapse and improvement stability of exposure-based treatments.
With the spread of smart phones capable of taking high-resolution photos and the development of high-speed mobile data infrastructure, digital visual media is becoming one of the most important forms of modern communication. With this development, however, also comes a devaluation of images as a media form with the focus becoming the frequency at which visual content is generated instead of the quality of the content. In this work, an interactive system using image-abstraction techniques and an eye tracking sensor is presented, which allows users to experience diverting and dynamic artworks that react to their eye movement. The underlying modular architecture enables a variety of different interaction techniques that share common design principles, making the interface as intuitive as possible. The resulting experience allows users to experience a game-like interaction in which they aim for a reward, the artwork, while being held under constraints, e.g., not blinking. The co nscious eye movements that are required by some interaction techniques hint an interesting, possible future extension for this work into the field of relaxation exercises and concentration training.