1,720,991 research outputs found

    Large character degrees of solvable groups with abelian Sylow 2-subgroups.

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    We prove that if G is a solvable group with abelian Sylow 2-subgroups, the index of the Fitting subgroup of G is at most the square of the largest irreducible character degree of G

    The structure of finite groups of conjugate rank 2.

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    In this paper we give a structure theorem for the finite groups with three conjugacy class sizes. In particular, they are solvable groups with derived length at most 3 or nilpotent groups

    Duration, numerosity and length processing in healthy ageing and Parkinson's disease

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    : People constantly process temporal, numerical, and length information in everyday activities and interactions with the environment. However, it is unclear whether quantity perception changes during ageing. Previous studies have provided heterogeneous results, sometimes showing an age-related effect on a particular quantity, and other times reporting no differences between young and elderly samples. However, three dimensions were never compared within the same study. Here, we conducted two experiments with the aim of investigating the processing of duration, numerosity and length in both healthy and pathological ageing. The experimental paradigm consisted of three bisection tasks in which participants were asked to judge whether the presented stimulus (i.e. a time interval, a group of dots, or a line) was more similar to the short/few or long/many standards. The first study recruited healthy young and elderly participants, while the second recruited healthy elderly participants and patients with Parkinson's disease, a clinical condition commonly associated with temporal impairments. The results of both experiments showed that discrimination precision differed between domains in all groups, with higher precision in the numerosity task and lower sensitivity in judging duration. Furthermore, while discrimination abilities were affected in healthy elderly and, even more so, in Parkinson's disease group, no domain-specific impairments emerged. According to our research, reduced discrimination precision might be explained by an alteration of a single system for all quantities or by an age-related general cognitive decline

    Finite groups whose noncentral commuting elements have centralizers of equal size.

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    A finite group is called a CH-group if for every x,y∈G∖Z(G), xy=yx implies that \|\cent Gx\| = \|\cent Gy\|. Applying results of Schmidt [‘Zentralisatorverbände endlicher Gruppen’, Rend. Sem. Mat. Univ. Padova 44 (1970), 97–131] and Rebmann [‘F-Gruppen’, Arch. Math. 22 (1971), 225–230] concerning CA-groups and F-groups, the structure of CH-groups is determined, up to that of CH-groups of prime-power order. Upper bounds are found for the derived length of nilpotent and solvable CH-groups

    Measuring temporal bias in sequential numerosity comparison

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    While several methods have been proposed to assess the influence of continuous visual cues in parallel numerosity estimation, the impact of temporal magnitudes on sequential numerosity judgments has been largely ignored. To overcome this issue, we extend a recently proposed framework that makes it possible to separate the contribution of numerical and non-numerical information in numerosity comparison by introducing a novel stimulus space designed for sequential tasks. Our method systematically varies the temporal magnitudes embedded into event sequences through the orthogonal manipulation of numerosity and two latent factors, which we designate as “duration” and “temporal spacing”. This allows us to measure the contribution of finer-grained temporal features on numerosity judgments in several sensory modalities. We validate the proposed method on two different experiments in both visual and auditory modalities: results show that adult participants discriminated sequences primarily by relying on numerosity, with similar acuity in the visual and auditory modality. However, participants were similarly influenced by non-numerical cues, such as the total duration of the stimuli, suggesting that temporal cues can significantly bias numerical processing. Our findings highlight the need to carefully consider the continuous properties of numerical stimuli in a sequential mode of presentation as well, with particular relevance in multimodal and cross-modal investigations. We provide the complete code for creating sequential stimuli and analyzing participants’ responses

    A novel rhamno-mannan exopolysaccharide isolated from biofilms of Burkholderia multivorans C1576

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    Burkholderia multivorans C1576 is a Gram negative opportunistic pathogen causing serious lung infection in cystic fibrosis patients. Considering that bacteria naturally form biofilms, and exopolysaccharides are recognized as important factors for biofilm architecture set-up, B. multivorans was grown both in biofilm and in non-biofilm mode on two different media in order to compare the exopolysaccharides biosynthesized in these different experimental conditions. The exopolysaccharides produced were purified and their structure was determined resorting mainly to NMR spectroscopy, ESI mass spectrometry and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. The experimental data showed that both in biofilm and non-biofilm mode B. multivorans C1576 produced a novel exopolysaccharide having the following structure: [Formula: see text]. About 50% of the 2-linked rhamnose residues are substituted on C-3 with a methyl ether group. The high percentage of deoxysugar Rha units, coupled with OMe substitutions, suggest a possible role for polymer domains with marked hydrophobic characteristics able to create exopolysaccharide junction zones favouring the stability of the biofilm matrix

    Electrophysiological Signatures of Numerosity Encoding in a Delayed Match-to-Sample Task

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    The number of elements in a small set of items is appraised in a fast and exact manner, a phenomenon called subitizing. In contrast, humans provide imprecise responses when comparing larger numerosities, with decreasing precision as the number of elements increases. Estimation is thought to rely on a dedicated system for the approximate representation of numerosity. While previous behavioral and neuroimaging studies associate subitizing to a domain-general system related to object tracking and identification, the nature of small numerosity processing is still debated. We investigated the neural processing of numerosity across subitizing and estimation ranges by examining electrophysiological activity during the memory retention period in a delayed numerical match-to-sample task. We also assessed potential differences in the neural signature of numerical magnitude in a fully non-symbolic or cross-format comparison. In line with behavioral performance, we observed modulation of parietal-occipital neural activity as a function of numerosity that differed in two ranges, with distinctive neural signatures of small numerosities showing clear similarities with those observed in visuospatial working memory tasks. We also found differences in neural activity related to numerical information in anticipation of single vs. cross-format comparison, suggesting a top-down modulation of numerical processing. Finally, behavioral results revealed enhanced performance in the mixed-format conditions and a significant correlation between task performance and symbolic mathematical skills. Overall, we provide evidence for distinct mechanisms related to small and large numerosity and differences in numerical encoding based on task demands

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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