Heritability of Stroop and flanker performance in 12-year old children

Background  

There is great interest in appropriate phenotypes that serve as indicator of genetically transmitted frontal (dys)function, such as ADHD. Here we investigate the ability to deal with response conflict, and we ask to what extent performance variation on response interference tasks is caused by genetic variation. We tested a large sample of 12-year old monozygotic and dizygotic twins on two well-known and closely related response interference tasks; the color Stroop task and the Eriksen flanker task. Using structural equation modelling we assessed the heritability of several performance indices derived from those tasks.     

The contribution of high frequencies to human brain activity underlying horizontal localization of natural spatial sounds

Background  

In the field of auditory neuroscience, much research has focused on the neural processes underlying human sound localization. A recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigated localization-related brain activity by measuring the N1m event-related response originating in the auditory cortex. It was found that the dynamic range of the right-hemispheric N1m response, defined as the mean difference in response magnitude between contralateral and ipsilateral stimulation, reflects cortical activity related to the discrimination of horizontal sound direction. Interestingly, the results also suggested that the presence of realistic spectral information within horizontally located spatial sounds resulted in a larger right-hemispheric N1m dynamic range. Spectral cues being predominant at high frequencies, the present study further investigated the issue by removing frequencies from the spatial stimuli with low-pass filtering. This resulted in a stepwise elimination of direction-specific spectral information. Interaural time and level differences were kept constant. The original, unfiltered stimuli were broadband noise signals presented from five frontal horizontal directions and binaurally recorded for eight human subjects with miniature microphones placed in each subject's ear canals. Stimuli were presented to the subjects during MEG registration and in a behavioral listening experiment.     

High energy spectroscopy in Ce and La compounds

X-ray photoemission, X-ray photoabsorption and bremmstrahlung isochromat spectroscopy in Ce and La compounds are theoretically analyzed by using the single-site Anderson model incorporated with various final state interactions. Discussions are given on the physical information derived from the analysis and also on similarities and differences in spectral features between metallic and insulating systems.     

Theory of core photoemission spectra in CeO2

By using the Anderson model with a filled valence band, we calculate the core photoemission spectra of CeO₂, and compare them with experimental results. It is shown that in the ground state of CeO₂ the 4?⁰ and 4?¹ configurations are mixed strongly due to the large hybridization between the 4? states and the valence band. In the final state of the photoemission, the 4?¹ and 4?² configurations are also mixed strongly due to the final state interaction coming from a core hole potential and the large hybridization. The fractional intensity of the 4?⁰ photoemission peak is considerably different from the weight of the 4?⁰ configuration in the ground state because of the strong final state interaction.     

Adsorption and co-adsorption of CH<Subscript>3</Subscript> and H on flat and defective nickel (111) surfaces

We use a periodic density functional theory (DFT) code to study the adsorption of CH₃ and H, as well as their co-adsorption on a Ni(111) surface with and without Ni ad-atom, at a surface coverage of 0.25 monolayer (ML). We systematically investigate the site preference for CH₃ and H. Then we combine CH₃ and H in many co-adsorbed configurations on both surfaces. Methyl and hydrogen adsorption on a flat Ni(111) surface favours the hollow site over the top site. The presence of a Ni ad-atom stabilizes the adsorption of CH₃ better than a flat surface, while hydrogen is more stable on a flat Ni(111) surface. When H and CH₃ are co-adsorbed at nearest Ni neighbours on the (111) surface, their interaction is always repulsive. However, the dissociative adsorption of CH₄ is stabilised when the fragments are infinitely separated. For the co-adsorbed fragments CH₃ and H, in the presence of an ad-atom, the repulsive interaction is lowered, so that the dissociative form of CH₄ is locally stable.     

Precise mass measurement of a double-stranded 500 base-pair (309 kDa) polymerase chain reaction product by negative ion electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry

Electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (ESI-FTICRMS) has been used to determine the mass of a double-stranded 500 base-pair (bp) polymerase chain reaction (PCR) product with an average theoretical mass of the blunt-ended (i.e. unadenylated) species of 308 859.35 Da. The PCR product was generated from the linearized bacteriophage Lambda genome which is a double-stranded template. Utilization of ethanol precipitation in tandem with a rapid microdialysis step to purify and desalt the PCR product was crucial to obtain a precise mass measurement. The PCR product (0.8 pmol/μL) was electrosprayed from a solution containing 75% acetonitrile, 25 mM piperidine, and 25 mM imidazole and was infused at a rate of 200 nL/min. The average molecular mass and the corresponding precision were determined using the charge-states ranging from 172 to 235 net negative charges. The experimental mass and corresponding precision (reported as the 95% confidence interval of the mean) was 309 406 +/- 27 Da (87 ppm). The mass accuracy was compromised due to the fact that the PCR generates multiple products when using Taq polymerase due to the non-template directed 3'-adenylation. This results in a mixture of three PCR products with nearly identical mass (i.e. blunt-ended, mono-adenylated and di-adenylated) with unknown relative abundances that were not resolved in the spectrum. Thus, the experimental mass will be a weighted average of the three species which, under our experimental conditions, reflects a nearly equal concentration of the mono- and di-adenylated species. This report demonstrates that precise mass measurements of PCR products up to 309 kDa (500 bp) can be routinely obtained by ESI-FTICR requiring low femtomole amounts. Copyright 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.