New Instruments for the Management of Cochlear Implantation in an Individual with a Fracture of the Temporal Bone and Cochlear Ossification.

Cochlear implant surgery can be highly complex in cases where ossification of the internal ear has taken place. In this case report, we report the use of new technological instruments to optimise the surgical process of implantation. These were the combined use of a surgical approach extended by a subtotal petrosectomy, a pre-operative radiological study with the OTOPLAN software for choosing the most suitable electrode array, and a residual functionality test of the auditory nerve using the ANTS test electrode array prior to inserting the cochlear implant electrode array.

Tetrapod sperm length evolution in relation to body mass is shaped by multiple trade-offs.

Sperm length is highly variable across species and many questions about its variation remain open. Although variation in body mass may affect sperm length evolution through its influence on multiple factors, the extent to which sperm length variation is linked to body mass remains elusive. Here, we use the Pareto multi-task evolution framework to investigate the relationship between sperm length and body mass across tetrapods.

Being heterogeneous is disadvantageous: Brownian non-Gaussian searches.

Diffusing diffusivity models, polymers in the grand canonical ensemble and polydisperse, and continuous-time random walks all exhibit stages of non-Gaussian diffusion. Is non-Gaussian targeting more efficient than Gaussian? We address this question, central to, e.g.

Being Heterogeneous Is Advantageous: Extreme Brownian Non-Gaussian Searches.

Redundancy in biology may be explained by the need to optimize extreme searching processes, where one or few among many particles are requested to reach the target like in human fertilization. We show that non-Gaussian rare fluctuations in Brownian diffusion dominates such searches, introducing drastic corrections to the known Gaussian behavior. Our demonstration entails different physical systems and pinpoints the relevance of diversity within redundancy to boost fast targeting.