Songbirds learn to sing in a two stage process. First, the bird forms a sensory template by listening to and memorizing its father's song. Second, the bird practices singing and learns to match its song to the memorized template. Two experimentally well-supported hypotheses locate song sequence generation in nucleus HVc, and the sensory template in the anterior forebrain pathway (AFP). However,...

BACKGROUND Computational discovery is playing an ever-greater role in supporting the processes of knowledge synthesis. A significant proportion of the more than 18 million manuscripts indexed in the PubMed database describe infectious disease syndromes and various infectious agents. This study is the first attempt to integrate online repositories of text-based publications and microbial genome ...

The number of non-native invasive pests and pathogens has increased dramatically in recent years, with disastrous consequences for the health forests worldwide. Multiple studies have shown that mixed may suffer less damage from insect than single species forest. This “associational resistance” can be notably explained by fact heterospecific neighbours make it more difficult herbivores to locate...

Recent researches in econometrics and statistics have gained considerable insights into the use of instrumental variables (IVs) for causal inference. A basic idea is that IVs serve as an experimental handle, the turning of which may change each individual’s treatment status and, through and only through this effect, also change observed outcome. The average difference in observed outcome relati...

BACKGROUND Improving our understanding of the relationship between the genotype and the drug resistance phenotype of Mycobacterium tuberculosis will aid the development of more accurate molecular diagnostics for drug-resistant tuberculosis. Studies that use direct genetic manipulation to identify the mutations that cause M. tuberculosis drug resistance are superior to associational studies in e...

Synopsis: Many theorists have long emphasized the importance of civic society and voluntary associations as vital to the lifeblood of democracy. Interest in this perennial topic has been revived by Putnam’s theory of social capital claiming that rich and dense associational networks facilitate the underlying conditions of interpersonal trust, tolerance and cooperation, providing the social foun...

Spatial cognition is a complex higher function in mammals and is involved in a variety of tasks that can be explored in the laboratory. In this review we will discuss the role of the posterior parietal/anteromedial cortex of rodents, also known as the parietal association cortex, and the hippocampal formation in spatial navigation. We will also discuss other higher associational functions of th...

Intensive Care depends on sophisticated life support technology. Effective management of devicesupported patients is complex, involving the interpretation of many variables, comparative evaluation of numerous therapeutic options, and control of various patient-management parameters. Raw data, when taken literally, can lead to the wrong interpretation of the patient state. We propose a system wh...