Search

The article focuses on a study regarding the limitation of parental interaction during vocal development as it affects acoustic call structure in marmoset monkeys. Topics discussed include social interaction has a direct impact not only on the maturation of the vocal behavior but also on acoustic call structures during vocal development, systematic differences in call entropy and social interaction in proper primate vocal development.

Mechanical objects have important practical applications in the fields of quantum information and metrology as quantum memories or transducers for measuring and connecting different types of quantum systems. The field of electromechanics is in pursuit of a robust and highly coherent device that couples motion to nonlinear quantum objects such as superconducting qubits. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a high-frequency bulk acoustic wave resonator that is strongly coupled to a superconducting qubit using piezoelectric transduction with a cooperativity of 260. We measure qubit and mechanical coherence times on the order of 10 microseconds. Our device requires only simple fabrication methods and provides controllable access to a multitude of phonon modes. We demonstrate quantum control and measurement on gigahertz phonons at the single-quantum level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can we decipher speech content ("what" is being said) and speaker identity ("who" is saying it) from observations of brain activity of a listener? Here, we combine functional magnetic resonance imaging with a data-mining algorithm and retrieve what and whom a person is listening to from the neural fingerprints that speech and voice signals elicit in the listener's auditory cortex. These cortical fingerprints are spatially distributed and insensitive to acoustic variations of the input so as to permit the brain-based recognition of learned speech from unknown speakers and of learned voices from previously unheard utterances. Our findings unravel the detailed cortical layout and computational properties of the neural populations at the basis of human speech recognition and speaker identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myosin V is a molecular motor that moves cargo along actin filaments. Its two heads, each attached to a long and relatively stiff neck, move alternately forward in a ‘hand-over-hand’ fashion. To observe under a microscope how the necks move, we attached a micrometer-sized rod to one of the necks. The leading neck swings unidirectionally forward, whereas the trailing neck, once Lifted, undergoes extensive Brownian rotation in all directions before landing on a site ahead of the leading head. The neck-neck joint is essentially free, and the neck motion supports a mechanism where the active swing of the leading neck biases the random motion of the lifted head to let it eventually land on a forward site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information about several science-related news items as of April 4, 2003. It has been revealed that sand dunes sometimes emit a low-pitched sound that has been compared to a cross between an airplane engine and an organ — in at least 30 deserts, including the Gobi, Sahara, Kalahari, and Death Valley. The five researchers were in Tarfaya in southwestern Morocco in spring 2001 to study the formation of barchans, or croissant-shaped sand dunes, when an accidental avalanche suddenly unleashed the sound, which has also been compared to a Tibetan horn. The researchers found that the unique sound required an avalanche of a layer of sand grains — each 0.19 mm across — about 10 cm or 500 grains deep. No one has yet managed to capture a picture of a living giant squid. Most die from rapid pressure change when fishers accidentally pull them up from their deep-water homes. But next year in 2004, a team of Spanish scientists hopes to film this rare cephalopod, which can