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Main Conditions (main + condition)

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Life Sciences50%

Selected Abstracts

Are behavioral differences among wild chimpanzee communities genetic or cultural?

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2010
An assessment using tool-use data, phylogenetic methods
Abstract Over the last 30 years it has become increasingly apparent that there are many behavioral differences among wild communities of Pan troglodytes. Some researchers argue these differences are a consequence of the behaviors being socially learned, and thus may be considered cultural. Others contend that the available evidence is too weak to discount the alternative possibility that the behaviors are genetically determined. Previous phylogenetic analyses of chimpanzee behavior have not supported the predictions of the genetic hypothesis. However, the results of these studies are potentially problematic because the behavioral sample employed did not include communities from central Africa. Here, we present the results of a study designed to address this shortcoming. We carried out cladistic analyses of presence/absence data pertaining to 19 tool-use behaviors in 10 different P. troglodytes communities plus an outgroup (P. paniscus). Genetic data indicate that chimpanzee communities in West Africa are well differentiated from those in eastern and central Africa, while the latter are not reciprocally monophyletic. Thus, we predicted that if the genetic hypothesis is correct, the tool-use data should mirror the genetic data in terms of structure. The three measures of phylogenetic structure we employed (the Retention Index, the bootstrap, and the Permutation Tail Probability Test) did not support the genetic hypothesis. They were all lower when all 10 communities were included than when the three western African communities are excluded. Hence, our study refutes the genetic hypothesis and provides further evidence that patterns of behavior in chimpanzees are the product of social learning and therefore meet the main condition for culture. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Neural correlates of noncanonical syntactic processing revealed by a picture-sentence matching task

HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 9 2008
Ryuta Kinno
Abstract It remains controversial whether the left inferior frontal gyrus subserves syntactic processing or short-term memory demands. Here we devised a novel picture-sentence matching task involving Japanese sentences with different structures to clearly contrast syntactic reanalysis processes. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), activations under three main conditions were directly compared: a canonical/subject-initial active sentence (AS), a noncanonical/subject-initial passive sentence (PS), and a noncanonical/object-initial scrambled sentence (SS). We found that activation in the dorsal region of the left inferior frontal gyrus (dF3t) was enhanced more by the noncanonical processing under the PS and SS conditions than by the canonical processing under the AS condition, and this enhancement was independent of domain-general factors, such as general memory demands and task difficulty. Moreover, the left posterior superior/middle temporal gyrus (pSTG/MTG) showed more enhanced responses to object-initial sentences under the SS condition than to subject-initial sentences under the AS and PS conditions, which were not significantly affected by task difficulty. Furthermore, activation in the left lateral premotor cortex (LPMC) increased under the AS, PS, and SS conditions, in that order. It is possible that task difficulty affects the left LPMC, but the three distinct activations patterns suggest that these frontal and temporal regions work in concert to process syntactic structures, with their respective contributions dynamically regulated by linguistic requirements. Hum Brain Mapp 2008. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Domestic Interests, Ideas and Integration: Lessons from the French Case

JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 1 2000
Craig Parsons
Both the major approaches to European integration, ,intergovernmentalism' and ,neofunctionalism', model integration as reflecting the demands of domestic interest groups. Where scholars qualify this basic model, they typically see integration diverging gradually and unintentionally from its expectations. This article tests the interest-group model against research into French policy-making across the history of integration, and argues that French policies never clearly reflected this interest-group baseline. Instead, French choices for today's European Union (as opposed to widely different historical alternatives) can only be explained with reference to French elites' ideas about Europe. Additionally, national leaders' ideas have set the main conditions for the success or failure of supranational entrepreneurship in Europe's ,grand bargains'. [source]

Mechanism of lidocaine release from carbomer,lidocaine hydrogels

JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES, Issue 1 2002
Alvaro Jimenez-Kairuz
Abstract Rheology, acid-base behavior, and kinetics of lidocaine release of carbomer,lidocaine (CL) hydrogels are reported. A series of (CL)x (x,=,mol% of L,=,25, 50, 75, 100) that covers a pH range between 5.33 and 7.96 was used. Concentrations of ion pair ([R-COO,LH+]) and free species (L) and (LH+) were determined by the selective extraction of (L) with cyclohexane (CH) together with pH measurements, i.e., CH in a ratio CH/hydrogel 2:1 extracted 48% of the whole concentration of lidocaine [LT] of a (CL)100, {[LT],=,([R-COO,LH+]),+,(L),+,(LH+)}. The remaining species in the aqueous phase were distributed as: (L) 3.82%, (LH+) 14.5%, and [R-COO, LH+] 81.7%. Rheology and pH as a function of (CL) concentration are also reported. Delivery rates of free base L were measured in a Franz-type bicompartmental device using water and NaCl 0.9% solution as receptor media. (CL) hydrogels behave as a reservoir that releases the drug at a slow rate. pH effects on rate suggest that, under the main conditions assayed, dissociation of [R-COO,LH+] is the slow step that controls releasing rates. Accordingly, release rate was increased upon addition of a second counterion (i.e., Na+), or through the diffusion of neutral salts such as NaCl, into the matrix of the gel. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. and the American Pharmaceutical Association J Pharm Sci 91:267,272, 2002 [source]