Explore the vast range of titles available.

Effective decision making in a changing environment demands that accurate predictions are learned about decision outcomes. In Drosophila , such learning is orchestrated in part by the mushroom body, where dopamine neurons signal reinforcing stimuli to modulate plasticity presynaptic to mushroom body output neurons. Building on previous mushroom body models, in which dopamine neurons signal absolute reinforcement, we propose instead that dopamine neurons signal reinforcement prediction errors by utilising feedback reinforcement predictions from output neurons. We formulate plasticity rules that minimise prediction errors, verify that output neurons learn accurate reinforcement predictions in simulations, and postulate connectivity that explains more physiological observations than an experimentally constrained model. The constrained and augmented models reproduce a broad range of conditioning and blocking experiments, and we demonstrate that the absence of blocking does not imply the absence of prediction error dependent learning. Our results provide five predictions that can be tested using established experimental methods. Dopamine neurons in the mushroom body help Drosophila learn to approach rewards and avoid punishments. Here, the authors propose a model in which dopaminergic learning signals encode reinforcement prediction errors by utilising feedback reinforcement predictions from mushroom body output neurons.

Betrayed by his oldest friend, with a tragic death on his hands, there isn't enough whiskey in England to wash away the taste of Ben's guilt. But for a one-time guardian dragon, there's no time to sit and sulk in the ruins. Because the Long Sleep has come undone. Slowly but surely, Remnants are stirring under the earth, unleashing chaos and terror on an unsuspecting modern world. Worse still, the Fay are returning, travelling across the gulfs of the nether to bring a final reckoning to Remnants and humans alike.

The conservation community is increasingly focusing on the monitoring and evaluation of management, governance, ecological, and social considerations as part of a broader move toward adaptive management and evidence-based conservation. Evidence is any information that can be used to come to a conclusion and support a judgment or, in this case, to make decisions that will improve conservation policies, actions, and outcomes. Perceptions are one type of information that is often dismissed as anecdotal by those arguing for evidence-based conservation. In this paper, I clarify the contributions of research on perceptions of conservation to improving adaptive and evidence-based conservation. Studies of the perceptions of local people can provide important insights into observations, understandings and interpretations of the social impacts, and ecological outcomes of conservation; the legitimacy of conservation governance; and the social acceptability of environmental management. Perceptions of these factors contribute to positive or negative local evaluations of conservation initiatives. It is positive perceptions, not just objective scientific evidence of effectiveness, that ultimately ensure the support of local constituents thus enabling the long-term success of conservation. Research on perceptions can inform courses of action to improve conservation and governance at scales ranging from individual initiatives to national and international policies. Better incorporation of evidence from across the social and natural sciences and integration of a plurality of methods into monitoring and evaluation will provide a more complete picture on which to base conservation decisions and environmental management. La comunidad de la conservación cada vez se enfoca más en el monitoreo y la evaluación del manejo, la gobernanza y las consideraciones ecológicas y sociales como parte de un movimiento general hacia un manejo adaptativo y una conservación basada en evidencias. La evidencia es cualquier información que puede usarse para llegar a una conclusión y para apoyar cualquier dictamen o, en este caso, para tomar decisiones que mejorarán las políticas, las acciones y los resultados de la conservación. Las percepciones son un tipo de información que generalmente es descartada como anecdótica por aquellos que defienden la conservación basada en las evidencias. En este artículo aclaro las contribuciones de la investigación a las percepciones de la conservación para mejorar la conservación adaptativa y basada en evidencias. Los estudios de las percepciones de las personas locales pueden proporcionar conocimiento importante para las observaciones, los entendimientos y las interpretaciones de los impactos sociales y los resultados ecológicos de la conservación; la legitimidad de la gobernación de la conservación; y la aceptación social del manejo ambiental. Las percepciones de estos factores contribuyen a las evaluaciones locales positivas o negativas de las iniciativas de conservación. Son las percepciones positivas, no sólo la evidencia científica y objetiva de la efectividad, las que al final aseguran el apoyo de los votantes locales y así permitir el éxito a largo plazo de la conservación. Las investigaciones sobre las percepciones pueden informar a los cursos de acción para mejorar la conservación y la gobernación a escalas que van desde las iniciativas individuales a las políticas nacionales e internacionales. Una mejor incorporación de las evidencias que van desde las ciencias sociales a las ciencias naturales y una integración de la pluralidad de métodos al monitoreo y a la evaluación proporcionarán una imagen más completa sobre en que basar las decisiones de conservación y el manejo ambiental.

\"Ben Garston has broken the Lore. Now it's time to face the music. Life isn't treating Red Ben well. He's lost everything he held dear, including the love of his life. Still, at least he escaped the clutches of a malevolent spirit bent on total destruction. So there is that. Now Ben just wants to drink, and forget, and drink some more. But he can't. Not yet. Because someone is stirring up trouble. Someone who wants to unleash a powerful ancient magic that could bring the realm of mythology crashing into the modern world. If Ben fails to stop them, the world will burn -- and that's the last thing he needs on his conscience.\"-- Provided by publisher.

Understanding the rise, spread, and fall of large-scale states in the ancient world has occupied thinkers for millennia. However, no comprehensive mechanistic model of state dynamics based on their insights has emerged, leaving it difficult to evaluate empirically or quantitatively the different explanations offered. Here I present a spatially- and temporally-resolved agent-based model incorporating several hypotheses about the behavior of large-scale (>200 thousand km 2 ) agrarian states and steppe nomadic confederations in Afro-Eurasia between the late Bronze and the end of the Medieval era (1500 BCE to 1500 CE). The model tracks the spread of agrarian states as they expand, conquer the territory of other states or are themselves conquered, and, occasionally, collapse. To accurately retrodict the historical record, several key contingent regional technological advances in state military and agricultural efficiencies are identified. Modifying the location, scale, and timing of these contingent developments allows quantitative investigation of historically-plausible alternative trajectories of state growth, spread, and fragmentation, while demonstrating the operation and limits of the model. Under nominal assumptions, the rapid yet staggered increase of agrarian state sizes across Eurasia after 600 BCE occurs in response to intense military pressure from ‘mirror‘ steppe nomadic confederations. Nevertheless, in spite of various technological advances throughout the period, the modeled creation and spread of new agrarian states is a fundamental consequence of state collapse and internal civil wars triggered by rising ‘demographic-structural’ pressures that occur when state territorial growth is checked yet (warrior elite) population growth continues. Together the model’s underlying mechanisms substantially account for the number of states, their duration, location, spread rate, overall occupied area, and total population size for three thousand years.

Projections of future mortality and life expectancy are needed to plan for health and social services and pensions. Our aim was to forecast national age-specific mortality and life expectancy using an approach that takes into account the uncertainty related to the choice of forecasting model. We developed an ensemble of 21 forecasting models, all of which probabilistically contributed towards the final projections. We applied this approach to project age-specific mortality to 2030 in 35 industrialised countries with high-quality vital statistics data. We used age-specific death rates to calculate life expectancy at birth and at age 65 years, and probability of dying before age 70 years, with life table methods. Life expectancy is projected to increase in all 35 countries with a probability of at least 65% for women and 85% for men. There is a 90% probability that life expectancy at birth among South Korean women in 2030 will be higher than 86·7 years, the same as the highest worldwide life expectancy in 2012, and a 57% probability that it will be higher than 90 years. Projected female life expectancy in South Korea is followed by those in France, Spain, and Japan. There is a greater than 95% probability that life expectancy at birth among men in South Korea, Australia, and Switzerland will surpass 80 years in 2030, and a greater than 27% probability that it will surpass 85 years. Of the countries studied, the USA, Japan, Sweden, Greece, Macedonia, and Serbia have some of the lowest projected life expectancy gains for both men and women. The female life expectancy advantage over men is likely to shrink by 2030 in every country except Mexico, where female life expectancy is predicted to increase more than male life expectancy, and in Chile, France, and Greece where the two sexes will see similar gains. More than half of the projected gains in life expectancy at birth in women will be due to enhanced longevity above age 65 years. There is more than a 50% probability that by 2030, national female life expectancy will break the 90 year barrier, a level that was deemed unattainable by some at the turn of the 21st century. Our projections show continued increases in longevity, and the need for careful planning for health and social services and pensions. UK Medical Research Council and US Environmental Protection Agency.

\"Intercollegiate Athletics, Inc. examines the corrupting influence and damaging financial effects of big-time intercollegiate athletics, especially football and to a lesser extent basketball, on American higher education. Students, scholars, sports fans, and those interested in learning how big-time football and basketball have cast such an enormous-and often baleful-shadow upon American colleges and universities will profit from this provocative and engagingly written book\"-- Provided by publisher.

The classical portrayal of poor health in tropical countries is one of infections and parasites, contrasting with wealthy Western countries, where unhealthy diet and behaviours cause non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease and cancer. Using international mortality data, we show that most NCDs cause more deaths at every age in low- and middle-income tropical countries than in high-income Western countries. Causes of NCDs in low- and middle-income countries include poor nutrition and living environment, infections, insufficient taxation and regulation of tobacco and alcohol, and under-resourced and inaccessible healthcare. We identify a comprehensive set of actions across health, social, economic and environmental sectors that could confront NCDs in low- and middle-income tropical countries and reduce global health inequalities.