Developmental origins of natural sound perception.

Infants are exposed to a myriad of sounds early in life, including caregivers' speech, songs, human-made and natural (non-anthropogenic) environmental sounds. While decades of research have established that infants have sophisticated perceptual abilities to process speech, less is known about how they perceive natural environmental sounds. This review synthesizes current findings about the perception of natural environmental sounds in the first years of life, emphasizing their role in auditory development and describing how these studies contribute to the emerging field of human auditory ecology.

Climate warming and temporal variation in reproductive strategies in the endangered meadow viper.

Anthropogenic climate change poses a significant threat to species on the brink of extinction. Many non-avian reptiles are endangered, but uncovering their vulnerability to climate warming is challenging, because this requires analyzing the climate sensitivity of different life stages and modeling population growth rates. Such efforts are currently hampered by a lack of long-term life-history data.

Hypershifted spin spectroscopy with dynamic nuclear polarization at 1.4 K.

Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) enhances nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) sensitivity by transferring polarization from unpaired electrons to nuclei, but nearby nuclear spins are difficult to detect or "hidden" due to strong electron-nuclear couplings that hypershift their NMR resonances. Here, we detect these hypershifted spins in a frozen glycerol-water mixture doped with TEMPOL at ~1.4 K using spin diffusion enhanced saturation transfer (SPIDEST), which indirectly reveals their spectrum.

Stepwise molecular specification of excitatory synapse diversity onto cerebellar Purkinje cells.

Brain function relies on the generation of a large variety of morphologically and functionally diverse, but specific, neuronal synapses. Here we show that, in mice, the initial formation of synapses on cerebellar Purkinje cells involves a presynaptic protein-CBLN1, a member of the C1q protein family-that is secreted by all types of excitatory inputs. The molecular program then evolves only in one of the Purkinje cell inputs, the inferior olivary neurons, with the additional expression of the presynaptic secreted proteins C1QL1, CRTAC1 and LGI2.

Simultaneous Observation of the Anomerization and Reaction Rates of Enzymatic Dehydrogenation of Glucose-6-Phosphate by Dissolution DNP.

The hyperpolarization of biological samples using dissolution dynamic nuclear polarization (dDNP) has become an attractive method for the monitoring of fast chemical and enzymatic reactions using NMR by taking advantage of a large signal increase. This approach is actively developing but still needs key methodological breakthroughs to be used as an analytical method for the monitoring of complex networks of simultaneous metabolic pathways. In this article, we use the deceptively simple example of glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) oxidation reaction by the enzyme G6P dehydrogenase (G6PDH) to discuss some important methodological aspects of dDNP kinetic experiments, such as its robustness and its ability to provide repeatable results as well as the capacity of this time-resolved methodology to test kinetic models and hypotheses and to provide reliable parameter estimates.

Harnessing Cyanine-like Properties to Develop Bright Fluorogenic Probes Based on Viscosity-Sensitive Molecular Rotors.

Dipolar fluorescent molecular rotors (FMRs) are environmentally-sensitive fluorophores that can be used in bioimaging applications to sense local viscosity and polarity. Their sensitivity to viscosity can also be used for the fluorogenic labeling of biomolecules such as DNA or proteins. In particular, we have previously used FMRs to develop a series of tunable fluorogens targeting the self-labeling protein tag Halotag for wash-free protein imaging in live cells.

Simultaneous assessment of membrane bilayer structure and drug insertion by F solid-state NMR.

Fluorine-19 is an ideal nucleus for studying biological systems using NMR due to its rarity in biological environments and its favorable magnetic properties. In this work, we used a mixture of monofluorinated palmitic acids (PAs) as tracers to investigate the molecular interaction of the fluorinated drug rosuvastatin in model lipid membranes. More specifically, PAs labeled at the fourth and eighth carbon positions of their acyl chains were coincorporated in phospholipid bilayers to probe different depths of the hydrophobic core.

Modality-Specific and Amodal Language Processing by Single Neurons.

According to psycholinguistic theories, during language processing, spoken and written words are first encoded along independent phonological and orthographic dimensions, then enter into modality-independent syntactic and semantic codes. Non-invasive brain imaging has isolated several cortical regions putatively associated with those processing stages, but lacks the resolution to identify the corresponding neural codes. Here, we describe the firing responses of over 1000 neurons, and mesoscale field potentials from over 1400 microwires and 1500 iEEG contacts in 21 awake neurosurgical patients with implanted electrodes during written and spoken sentence comprehension.

Local and Global Variability in Developing Human T-Cell Repertoires.

The adaptive immune response relies on T cells that combine phenotypic specialization with diversity of T-cell receptors (TCRs) to recognize a wide range of pathogens. TCRs are acquired and selected during T-cell maturation in the thymus. Characterizing TCR repertoires across individuals and T-cell maturation stages is important for better understanding adaptive immune responses and for developing new diagnostics and therapies.

The Effects of Plant-Microbe-Environment Interactions on Mineral Weathering Patterns in a Granular Basalt.

The importance of biota to soil formation and landscape development is widely recognized. As biotic complexity increases during early succession via colonization by soil microbes followed by vascular plants, effects of biota on mineral weathering and soil formation become more complex. Knowledge of the interactions among groups of organisms and environmental conditions will enable us to better understand landscape evolution.

Chemistry at Oxide/Water Interfaces: The Role of Interfacial Water.

Oxide-water interfaces host many chemical reactions in nature and industry. There, reaction free energies markedly differ from those of the bulk. While we can experimentally and theoretically measure these changes, we are often unable to address the fundamental question: what catalyzes these reactions? Recent studies suggest that surface and electrostatic contributions are an insufficient answer.

Wetting of a Dynamically Patterned Surface Is a Time-Dependent Matter.

In nature and many technological applications, aqueous solutions are in contact with patterned surfaces, which are dynamic over time scales spanning from ps to μs. For instance, in biology, exposed polar and apolar residues of biomolecules form a pattern, which fluctuates in time due to side chain and conformational motions. At metal/and oxide/water interfaces, the pattern is formed by surface topmost atoms, and fluctuations are due to, e.

Phenomics Demonstrates Cytokines Additive Induction of Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition.

Epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) is highly plastic with a programme where cells lose adhesion and become more motile. EMT heterogeneity is one of the factors for disease progression and chemoresistance in cancer. Omics characterisations are costly and challenging to use.

Tripolar Bolalipids as Key Components of Sustained-Release Drug Delivery Systems.

Controlling passive diffusion through an amphiphilic membrane is a key factor for the development of future smart generations of drug delivery systems. It also plays a crucial role in understanding fundamental biological systems through the design of new artificial cell models. We report herein a new concept of bolalipids designed as key components for the control of the membrane's permeability.

ArcaNN: automated enhanced sampling generation of training sets for chemically reactive machine learning interatomic potentials.

The emergence of artificial intelligence is profoundly impacting computational chemistry, particularly through machine-learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs). Unlike traditional potential energy surface representations, MLIPs overcome the conventional computational scaling limitations by offering an effective combination of accuracy and efficiency for calculating atomic energies and forces to be used in molecular simulations. These MLIPs have significantly enhanced molecular simulations across various applications, including large-scale simulations of materials, interfaces, chemical reactions, and beyond.

Dynamical regimes of diffusion models.

We study generative diffusion models in the regime where both the data dimension and the sample size are large, and the score function is trained optimally. Using statistical physics methods, we identify three distinct dynamical regimes during the generative diffusion process. The generative dynamics, starting from pure noise, first encounters a speciation transition, where the broad structure of the data emerges, akin to symmetry breaking in phase transitions.

Functionalization of Emulsion Interfaces: Surface Chemistry Made Liquid.

Disperse systems, and emulsions in particular, are currently massively used in fields as varied as food industry, cosmetics, health care and environmentally-friendly materials. To meet increasingly precise needs or targeted applications, these systems need to be endowed with new functionalities at their interfaces, in addition to their composition and structural properties. However, due to the fragility of drops and the low reactivity of their surface, conventional solid surface chemistry cannot be used for such a purpose.

The effect of anxiety on gait: a threat-of-scream study.

It is known that fear responses to clearly identified threats can inhibit motion, slowing down gait and inducing postural freezing. Nonetheless, it is less clear how anxiety, which emerges during threat anticipation, affects gait parameters. In the present work, we used a threat-of-scream paradigm to study the effects of anxiety on gait.

Spectroscopic properties under vibrational strong coupling in disordered matter from path-integral Monte Carlo simulations.

Vibrational strong coupling (VSC), the strong coupling between a Fabry-Perrot cavity and molecular vibrations at mid-infrared frequencies, has received important attention in the last years due to its capacity of modifying both vibrational spectra and chemical reactivity. VSC is a collective effect, and in this work, we introduce Path Integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) simulations that not only take into account the quantum character of the molecular vibrations and of the optical resonance of the cavity but also reproduce this collective behavior by considering multiple replicas of the molecular system. Moreover, we show that it is possible to extract from the PIMC simulations the decomposition of the hybrid optical and molecular states in terms of the bare molecular modes.

Word learning tasks as a window into the for presuppositions.

In this paper, we show that native speakers spontaneously divide the complex meaning of a new word into a presuppositional component and an assertive component. These results argue for the existence of a productive triggering algorithm for presuppositions, one that is not based on alternative lexical items nor on contextual salience. On a methodological level, the proposed learning paradigm can be used to test further theories concerned with the interaction of lexical properties and conceptual biases.

Metal-organic frameworks based on pyrazolates for the selective and efficient capture of formaldehyde.

Indoor air pollution is one of the major threads in developed countries, notably due to high concentrations of formaldehyde, a harmful molecule difficult to eliminate. Addressing this purification challenge while adhering to the principles of sustainable development requires the use of innovative, advanced sustainable materials. Here we show that by combining state-of-the-art spectroscopic techniques with density-functional theory molecular simulations, we have developed an advantageous mild chemisorption synergistic mechanism using porous metal (III or IV) pyrazole- di-carboxylate based metal-organic framework (MOF) to trap formaldehyde in a reversible manner, without incurring significant energy penalties for regeneration.