There have been many claims that plant breeding would be radically altered by genetic engineering and genetic erosion. There is little doubt that both will affect breeding procedures in the long term; their short term effects are probably minor. A more relevant and immediate concern is the lack of newly-trained Ph.D.s with hands-on experience in plant breeding. Neither public nor private instit...

Although many birds are socially monogamous, most (>75%) studied species are not strictly genetically monogamous, especially under high breeding density. We used molecular tools to reevaluate the reproductive strategy of the socially monogamous white stork (Ciconia ciconia) and examined local density effects. DNA samples of nestlings (Germany, Spain) were genotyped and assigned relationships us...

Background Pinus (Pinaceae) is the largest existing genus of conifers, with over 100 widely recognized species. Pines are an important source of wood, paper and resins, among others. Genetic improvement of Pinus species is a challenging endeavor. Breeding cycles typically last for decades, significant changes take place in wood properties and growth patterns with the transition from the juvenil...

The aim of this work was to identify the natural breeding sites of sandflies in the province of Chaco, Argentina, for the first time. Preliminary studies were conducted in two different phytogeographic regions: dry Chaco (Parque Provincial Pampa del Indio), in January 2010, and humid Chaco (Resistencia, Margarita Belén and Colonia Benítez), from May-September 2010. A total of 127 samples were c...

When rats forage for randomly dispersed food in a high walled cylinder the firing of their hippocampal "place" cells exhibits little dependence on the direction faced by the rat. On radial arm mazes and similar tasks, place cells are strongly directionally selective within their fields. These tasks differ in several respects, including the visual environment, configuration of the traversable sp...

The increasing population of elders in the near future, and their expectations for a independent, safe and in-place living require new practical systems and technologies to fulfil their demands in sustainable ways. This paper presents our own reflection on the great relevance of FQAS’ main topics for recent developments on the context of Home Assistance. We show how those developments employ se...

Rate remapping is a conjunctive code that potentially enables hippocampal place cells to jointly represent spatial and nonspatial information. In this issue of Neuron, Rennó-Costa et al. introduce a theoretical model wherein the convergence of the medial and lateral entorhinal excitatory inputs, combined with local inhibition, explains hippocampal rate remapping.

Rational analyses of memory suggest that retrievability of past experience depends on its usefulness for predicting the future: memory is adapted to the temporal structure of the environment. Recent research has enriched this view by applying it to semantic memory and reinforcement learning. This paper describes how multiple forms of memory can be linked via common predictive principles, possib...

We report the spatial and temporal properties of a class of cells termed theta-modulated place-by-direction (TPD) cells recorded from the presubicular and parasubicular cortices of the rat. The firing characteristics of TPD cells in open-field enclosures were compared with those of the following two other well characterized cell classes in the hippocampal formation: place and head-direction cel...