Parallel morphological evolution and habitat-dependent sexual dimorphism in cave- vs. surface populations of the (Crustacea: Isopoda: Asellidae) species complex.

Studying parallel evolution (repeated, independent evolution of similar phenotypes in similar environments) is a powerful tool to understand environment-dependent selective forces. Surface-dwelling species that repeatedly and independently colonized caves provide unique models for such studies. The primarily surface-dwelling species complex is a good candidate to carry out such research, because it colonized several caves in Europe.

Triparental care in the collared flycatcher (): Cooperation of two females with a cuckolded male in rearing a brood.

Certain predominant forms of mating and parental care systems are assumed in several model species among birds, but the opportunistic and apparently infrequent variations of "family structures" may often remain hidden due to methodological limitations with regard to genetic or behavioral observations. One of the intensively studied model species, the collared flycatcher (), is usually characterized by social monogamy with polyterritorial, facultative social polygyny, and frequent extrapair mating and extrapair paternity. During a brood-size manipulation experiment, we observed two females and a male delivering food at an enlarged brood.

Recording fine-scale movement of ground beetles by two methods: Potentials and methodological pitfalls.

Movement trajectories are usually recorded as a sequence of discrete movement events described by two parameters: step length (distance) and turning angle (bearing). One of the most widespread methods to record the geocoordinates of each step is by a GPS device. Such devices have limited suitability for recording fine movements of species with low dispersal ability including flightless carabid beetles at small spatio-temporal scales.

Melanin-based ornament darkness positively correlates with across-season nutritional condition.

Sexually dimorphic ornamental traits are widely regarded as indicators of nutritional condition. However, variation of nutritional condition outside the reproductive and the ornament production seasons has rarely been considered, although it affects the generality of information content, especially for ornaments that may be used across the year. We measured several indicators of migratory and molt condition in male and female blackcaps () during their autumn migration, and quantified their crown reflectance.

Subjective status and perceived legitimacy across countries.

The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries ( = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced.

Comparison of ligand binding and conformational stability of human calmodulin with its homolog from the malaria parasite .

Calmodulin (CaM), the key calcium sensor of eukaryotic cells regulating a great number of target proteins, belongs to the most conserved proteins. We compared function and properties of CaMs from two evolutionarily distant species, the human () representing vertebrates, and the malaria parasite (Pf). The biophysical characterization revealed higher stability of Pf CaM attributed to the more stable C-terminal domain in both Ca free and saturated states.

Color polarization vision mediates the strength of an evolutionary trap.

Evolutionary traps are scenarios in which animals are fooled by rapidly changing conditions into preferring poor-quality resources over those that better improve survival and reproductive success. The maladaptive attraction of aquatic insects to artificial sources of horizontally polarized light (e.g.

Design of localized spatiotemporal pH patterns by means of antagonistic chemical gradients.

Spatially localized moving and stationary pH patterns are generated in two-side-fed reaction-diffusion systems. The patterns are sandwiched between two quiescent zones and positioned by the antagonistic gradients of the reactants of the self-activatory process. Spatial bistability, spatiotemporal oscillations, and formation of stationary Turing patterns have been predicted by numerical simulations and observed in experiments performed by using different hydrogen ion autocatalytic chemical systems.

Book ReviewReviews.

Leonard Reinecke and Mary Beth Oliver (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Media Use and Well-Being Routledge, New York, NY, 2017, 465 pp. ISBN: 978-1-138-88658-2.

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project.

The PREDICTS project-Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.

Solvability of implicit final size equations for SIR epidemic models.

Final epidemic size relations play a central role in mathematical epidemiology. These can be written in the form of an implicit equation which is not analytically solvable in most of the cases. While final size relations were derived for several complex models, including multiple infective stages and models in which the durations of stages are arbitrarily distributed, the solvability of those implicit equations have been less studied.

The Origin of Social Evaluation, Social Eavesdropping, Reputation Formation, Image Scoring or What You Will.

Social evaluation is a mental process that leverages the preference toward prosocial partners (positivity bias) against the avoidance of antisocial individuals (negativity bias) in a cooperative context. The phenomenon is well-known in humans, and recently comparative investigations looked at the possible evolutionary origins. So far social evaluation has been investigated mainly in non-human and human primates and dogs, however, there are few data on the presence of negativity/positivity bias in client-cleaner reef fish interactions as well.

Book ReviewReviews.

Elias Aboujaoude and Vladan Starcevic (Eds.) Mental Health in the Digital Age: Grave Dangers, Great Promise, Oxford University Press: New York, NY, 2015, 277 pp. ISBN: 978-0-19-938018-3.

Book ReviewReviews.

Larry D. Rosen, Nancy A. Cheever and L.

A nationwide study of the epidemiology of relapsing polychondritis.

Objective: Relapsing polychondritis (RP) is a rare autoimmune inflammatory disease that attacks mainly cartilaginous structures or causes serious damage in proteoglycan-rich structures (the eyes, heart, blood vessels, inner ear). This study shows results regarding the epidemiology, progression, and associations of this highly variable disease by collecting all cases from a 124-million-person-year Central European nationwide cohort.

Methods: We used the Hungarian Health Care Database to identify all persons with possible RP infection.

Proteomic investigation of the prefrontal cortex in the rat clomipramine model of depression.

Unlabelled: Neonatal rodents chronically treated with the tricyclic antidepressant clomipramine show depression-like behavior, which persists throughout adulthood. Therefore, this animal model is suitable to investigate the pathomechanism of depression, which is still largely unknown at the molecular level beyond monoaminergic dysfunctions. Here, we describe protein level changes in the prefrontal cortex of neonatally clomipramine-treated adult rats correlating with behavioral abnormalities.

SIS Epidemic Propagation on Hypergraphs.

Mathematical modelling of epidemic propagation on networks is extended to hypergraphs in order to account for both the community structure and the nonlinear dependence of the infection pressure on the number of infected neighbours. The exact master equations of the propagation process are derived for an arbitrary hypergraph given by its incidence matrix. Based on these, moment closure approximation and mean-field models are introduced and compared to individual-based stochastic simulations.

Declarative and Non-declarative Memory Consolidation in Children with Sleep Disorder.

Healthy sleep is essential in children's cognitive, behavioral, and emotional development. However, remarkably little is known about the influence of sleep disorders on different memory processes in childhood. Such data could give us a deeper insight into the effect of sleep on the developing brain and memory functions and how the relationship between sleep and memory changes from childhood to adulthood.

Problem solving stages in the five square problem.

According to the restructuring hypothesis, insight problem solving typically progresses through consecutive stages of search, impasse, insight, and search again for someone, who solves the task. The order of these stages was determined through self-reports of problem solvers and has never been verified behaviorally. We asked whether individual analysis of problem solving attempts of participants revealed the same order of problem solving stages as defined by the theory and whether their subjective feelings corresponded to the problem solving stages they were in.

Assistance dogs provide a useful behavioral model to enrich communicative skills of assistance robots.

These studies are part of a project aiming to reveal relevant aspects of human-dog interactions, which could serve as a model to design successful human-robot interactions. Presently there are no successfully commercialized assistance robots, however, assistance dogs work efficiently as partners for persons with disabilities. In Study 1, we analyzed the cooperation of 32 assistance dog-owner dyads performing a carrying task.

Generation, spectroscopy, and structure of cyanoformyl chloride and cyanoformyl bromide, XC(O)CN.

Cyanoformyl chloride and cyanoformyl bromide, XC(O)CN (X = Cl and Br), have been investigated in the gas phase by UV photoelectron and mid-infrared spectroscopies. The ground-state geometries of the neutral molecules have been obtained from quantum-chemical calculations at the B3LYP and CCSD(T) levels using the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set. The individual spectroscopies provide a detailed investigation into the vibrational and electronic character of the molecules and are supported by quantum-chemical calculations.

Dimerisation of nitrile oxides: a quantum-chemical study.

The [3 + 2] and [3 + 3] cyclodimerisation processes of small nitrile oxides, XCNO (X = F, Cl, Br, CN, CH(3)) are investigated by ab initio coupled cluster theory at the CCSD, CCSD(T) and MR-AQCC levels for the first time. The favoured dimerisation process is a multi-step reaction to furoxans (1,2,5-oxadiazole-2-oxides) involving dinitrosoalkene-like intermediates with diradical character. The rate determining step for all but the F-species is the first, corresponding to the C-C bond formation.

Synthesis, spectroscopy and structure of the parent furoxan (HCNO)2.

The parent furoxan (1,2,5-oxadiazole 2-oxide), synthesized from glyoxime and NO(2)(g), has been investigated in the gas phase for the first time by mid-infrared and He I photoelectron spectroscopy, and in the liquid phase by Raman spectroscopy. The ground-state geometry has been obtained from quantum-chemical calculations at the B3LYP, MPn (n = 2-4), CISD, QCISD, CCSD, CCSD(T), RSPTn (n = 2,3), MRCI, and MR-AQCC levels using 6-311++G(2d,2p), cc-pVTZ, aug-cc-pVTZ, cc-pCVTZ, and cc-pVQZ basis sets. Furoxan is predicted to be planar, with a strong exocyclic and a relatively weak endocyclic N-O bond.

Socioeconomic determinants of anthropometric trends among Hungarian youth.

The increase of physical stature in the developed countries and their socio-economic correlates has been well documented for nearly two centuries. In this study, the secular changes in height, weight and the BMI of Hungarian university students and conscripts are analyzed for the years 1933-1998. During the first half of this period these body measurements changed little, while in the second half the rates of change accelerated rapidly: height increased by 1.