Synthesis of Palladium Nanoparticles by Electrode-Respiring Biofilms.

Electroactive microorganisms such as can couple organic electron donor oxidation to the respiration of electrode surfaces, colonizing them in the process. These microbes can also reduce soluble metal ions, such as soluble Pd, resulting in metallic nanoparticle (NP) synthesis. Such NPs are valuable catalysts for industrially relevant chemical production; however, their chemical and solid-state syntheses are often energy-intensive and result in hazardous byproducts.

Mathematical Proficiency in Adolescents with ASD.

This study aimed to investigate the mathematical abilities of adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to typically developing (TD) peers, focusing on procedural thinking, arithmetic comprehension, and algebraic technique. Sixty-seven adolescents (31 with ASD, 36 TD) participated in the study. A comprehensive mathematics skills test, incorporating oral and written components, was individually administered to assess abilities across three main mathematical domains.

Language in autism: domains, profiles and co-occurring conditions.

This article reviews the current knowledge state on pragmatic and structural language abilities in autism and their potential relation to extralinguistic abilities and autistic traits. The focus is on questions regarding autism language profiles with varying degrees of (selective) impairment and with respect to potential comorbidity of autism and language impairment: Is language impairment in autism the co-occurrence of two distinct conditions (comorbidity), a consequence of autism itself (no comorbidity), or one possible combination from a series of neurodevelopmental properties (dimensional approach)? As for language profiles in autism, three main groups are identified, namely, (i) verbal autistic individuals without structural language impairment, (ii) verbal autistic individuals with structural language impairment, and (iii) minimally verbal autistic individuals. However, this tripartite distinction hides enormous linguistic heterogeneity.

Dynamic Spin-Controlled Enantioselective Catalytic Chiral Reactions.

Enantioselective catalytic chiral reactions are important to all aspects of life sciences. Here we present the first utilization of the chiral induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect to form, enantioselectively, sp chiral centers in catalytic reactions, starting from achiral reagents. The enantiomeric symmetry is broken by affecting spin-controlled different reaction dynamics toward each of the enantiomers, using magnetic substrates.

Neuronal circuits overcome imbalance in excitation and inhibition by adjusting connection numbers.

The interplay between excitation and inhibition is crucial for neuronal circuitry in the brain. Inhibitory cell fractions in the neocortex and hippocampus are typically maintained at 15 to 30%, which is assumed to be important for stable dynamics. We have studied systematically the role of precisely controlled excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) cellular ratios on network activity using mice hippocampal cultures.

Long-Time-Scale Magnetization Ordering Induced by an Adsorbed Chiral Monolayer on Ferromagnets.

When an electron passes through a chiral molecule, there is a high probability for correlation between the momentum and spin of the charge, thus leading to a spin polarized current. This phenomenon is known as the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect. One of the most surprising experimental results recently demonstrated is that magnetization reversal in a ferromagnet with perpendicular anisotropy can be realized solely by chemisorbing a chiral molecular monolayer without applying any current or external magnetic field.

Coconuts and curtain cakes: The production of -questions in ASD.

Background And Aims: Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been found to exhibit difficulties in -question production. It is unclear whether these difficulties are pragmatic or syntactic in nature. The current study used a question elicitation task to assess the production of subject and object -questions of children with ASD in two different languages (Hebrew and French) wherein the syntactic structure of -questions is different, a fact that may contribute to better understanding of the underlying deficits affecting -question production.

Early evidence of royal purple dyed textile from Timna Valley (Israel).

In the context of a broad study aimed at examining dyeing technologies in the Timna textiles collection, three samples of prestigious fibers dyed with murex sea snail were identified. Our identification is based on the presence of 6-monobromoindigotin and 6,6-dibromoindigotin components (detected using HPLC analysis), which is considered unequivocal evidence for the use of murex-derived purple dyestuff. Furthermore, by comparing the analytical results with those obtained in a series of controlled dyeing experiments we were able to shed more light on the specific species used in the dyeing process and glean insights into the ancient dyeing technology.

Correlation between Ferromagnetic Layer Easy Axis and the Tilt Angle of Self Assembled Chiral Molecules.

The spin-spin interactions between chiral molecules and ferromagnetic metals were found to be strongly affected by the chiral induced spin selectivity effect. Previous works unraveled two complementary phenomena: magnetization reorientation of ferromagnetic thin film upon adsorption of chiral molecules and different interaction rate of opposite enantiomers with a magnetic substrate. These phenomena were all observed when the easy axis of the ferromagnet was out of plane.

Polyplax brachyrrhyncha (Anoplura: Polyplacidae) and Rhipicephalus turanicus (Ixodidae: Rhipicephalinae) in an Ancient Louse Comb.

A fine-toothed comb found in the Judean Desert and resembling an ancient louse comb was examined. Based on radiocarbon dating, it ranged between 1660 AD and 1950 AD. From the material accumulated between the teeth, an oribatid mite, a pseudoscorpion, exuviae of beetle larvae, a sucking louse (Polyplax brachyrrhyncha Cummings, 1915), as well as a fully engorged larva and a nymph of the ixodid tick Rhipicephalus turanicus Pomerantzev, 1936 were recorded.

AFM-Based Spin-Exchange Microscopy Using Chiral Molecules.

Local magnetic imaging at nanoscale resolution is desirable for basic studies of magnetic materials and for magnetic logic and memories. However, such local imaging is hard to achieve by means of standard magnetic force microscopy. Other techniques require low temperatures, high vacuum, or strict limitations on the sample conditions.

Magnetic-related States and Order Parameter Induced in a Conventional Superconductor by Nonmagnetic Chiral Molecules.

Hybrid ferromagnetic/superconducting systems are well-known for hosting intriguing phenomena such as emergent triplet superconductivity at their interfaces and the appearance of in-gap, spin-polarized Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) states bound to magnetic impurities on a superconducting surface. In this work we demonstrate that similar phenomena can be induced on a surface of a conventional superconductor by chemisorbing nonmagnetic chiral molecules. Conductance spectra measured on NbSe flakes over which chiral α-helix polyalanine molecules were adsorbed exhibit, in some cases, in-gap states nearly symmetrically positioned around zero bias that shift with magnetic field, akin to YSR states, as corroborated by theoretical simulations.

Footedness in Steppe Buzzards (Buteo vulpinus).

Asymmetries in handedness/footedness has been demonstrated in many vertebrate and invertebrate species, including humans, but its role and origins are still debated. We studied the ratio of footedness in migratory Steppe Buzzards (Buteo vulpinus). We hypothesized that during our raptor banding program we could observe the preferred foot used by the raptor when trying to access the lure in a bal-chatri trap, and that if there was no preference in the population then it would show a 50:50 use of the right or left foot.

ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns.

Do individuals with autism have a developmental syntactic impairment, DLI (formerly known as SLI)? In this study we directly compared the performance of 18 individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) aged 9;0-18;0 years with that of 93 individuals with Syntactic-Developmental Language Impairment (SyDLI) aged 8;8-14;6 (and with 166 typically-developing children aged 5;2-18;1). We tested them using three syntactic tests assessing the comprehension and production of syntactic structures that are known to be sensitive to syntactic impairment: elicitation of subject and object relative clauses, reading and paraphrasing of object relatives, and repetition of complex syntactic structures including Wh questions, relative clauses, topicalized sentences, sentences with verb movement, sentences with A-movement, and embedded sentences. The results were consistent across the three tasks: the overall rate of correct performance on the syntactic tasks is similar for the children with ASD and those with SyDLI.

Early evidence (late 2nd millennium BCE) of plant-based dyeing of textiles from Timna, Israel.

In this article, we focus on the analysis of dyed textile fragments uncovered at an early Iron Age (11th-10th centuries BCE) copper smelting site during new excavations in the Timna Valley conducted by the Central Timna Valley (CTV) Project, as well as those found by the Arabah Expedition at the Hathor Temple (Site 200), dated to the Late Bronze/early Iron Ages (13th-11th centuries BCE). Analysis by HPLC-DAD identified two organic dyestuffs, Rubia tinctorum L. and indigotin, from a plant source (probably Isatis tinctoria L.

Conductance saturation in a series of highly transmitting molecular junctions.

Revealing the mechanisms of electronic transport through metal-molecule interfaces is of central importance for a variety of molecule-based devices. A key method for understanding these mechanisms is based on the study of conductance versus molecule length in molecular junctions. However, previous works focused on transport governed either by coherent tunnelling or hopping, both at low conductance.

Combining microfluidics, optogenetics and calcium imaging to study neuronal communication in vitro.

In this paper we report the combination of microfluidics, optogenetics and calcium imaging as a cheap and convenient platform to study synaptic communication between neuronal populations in vitro. We first show that Calcium Orange indicator is compatible in vitro with a commonly used Channelrhodopsine-2 (ChR2) variant, as standard calcium imaging conditions did not alter significantly the activity of transduced cultures of rodent primary neurons. A fast, robust and scalable process for micro-chip fabrication was developed in parallel to build micro-compartmented cultures.