Contrary to the common perception that termites are indiscriminant eaters, termites choose their food carefully; however, the methods by which they choose food are not well understood. Using choice experiments and recordings of termites feeding on wooden blocks of different sizes, we show that worker drywood termites (Cryptotermes domesticus) use the resonant frequency of a block of wood to assess its size. Drywood termites showed differences in their response to vibration recordings of termites compared with artificially generated signals, suggesting that they can discriminate the source of vibration. Furthermore, fewer workers matured into neotenic reproductives when recorded termite signals were played, suggesting that vibration signals play an important role in termite communication.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0408649102 | DOI Listing |
JBMR Plus
February 2025
Radiology and Imaging Sciences, National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, United States.
Jansen metaphyseal chondrodysplasia (JMC) is an ultra-rare disorder caused by constitutive activation of parathyroid hormone type 1 receptor (PTH1R). We sought to characterize the craniofacial phenotype of patients with the disease. Six patients with genetically confirmed JMC underwent comprehensive craniofacial phenotyping revealing a distinct facial appearance that prompted a cephalometric analysis demonstrating a pattern of mandibular retrognathia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiophys Rev
December 2024
Department of Optics, Pharmacology and Anatomy, University of Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, Spain.
In recent decades, research on mechanotransduction has advanced considerably, focusing on the effects of audible acoustic waves (AAWs) and low-vibration stimulation (LVS), which has propelled the field of sonobiology forward. Taken together, the current evidence demonstrates the influence of these biosignals on key cellular processes, such as growth, differentiation and migration in mammalian cells, emphasizing the determining role of specific physical parameters during stimulation, such as frequency, sound pressure level/amplitude and exposure time. These mechanical waves interact with various cellular elements, including ion channels, primary cilia, cell-cell adhesion receptors, cell-matrix and extracellular matrix proteins, and focal adhesion complexes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFISA Trans
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China. Electronic address:
This paper addresses the critical challenge of interpretability in machine learning methods for machine fault diagnosis by introducing a novel ad hoc interpretable neural network structure called Sparse Temporal Logic Network (STLN). STLN conceptualizes network neurons as logical propositions and constructs formal connections between them using specified logical operators, which can be articulated and understood as a formal language called Weighted Signal Temporal Logic. The network includes a basic word network using wavelet kernels to extract intelligible features, a transformer encoder with sparse and structured neural attention to locate informative signal segments relevant to decision-making, and a logic network to synthesize a coherent language for fault explanation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHear Res
January 2025
Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.
The cortical tracking of the acoustic envelope is a phenomenon where the brain's electrical activity, as recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) signals, fluctuates in accordance with changes in stimulus intensity (the acoustic envelope of the stimulus). Understanding speech in a noisy background is a key challenge for people with hearing impairments. Speech stimuli are therefore more ecologically valid than clicks, tone pips, or speech tokens (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Nano
January 2025
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, P. R. China.
Neural-electronic interfaces through delivering electroceuticals to lesions and modulating pathological endogenous electrical environments offer exciting opportunities to treat drug-refractory neurological disorders. Such an interface should ideally be compatible with the neural tissue and aggressive biofluid environment. Unfortunately, no interface specifically designed for the biofluid environments is available so far; instead, simply stacking an encapsulation layer on silicon-based substrates makes them susceptible to biofluid leakage, device malfunction, and foreign-body reactions.
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