Anxiety disorders are associated with prefrontal dysfunction, yet their impact on neural mechanisms underlying skilled motor learning remains poorly understood. We examined movement-readiness potentials (MRPs) using electroencephalography during a visuomotor adaptation task in 31 young adults (13 with clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders, 18 controls). MRPs were analyzed across three temporal components: early motor preparation (− 1500 to − 500 ms), late motor preparation (− 500 to − 100 ms), and movement execution (− 100 to + 100 ms). Individuals with anxiety disorders showed significantly reduced MRP amplitudes during late motor preparation (p = 0.033) and movement execution (p = 0.047) compared to controls, while early motor preparation remained intact. Despite these neural alterations, both groups demonstrated equivalent behavioral performance, with similar learning and retention of a visuomotor rotation task. Anxiety disorders selectively disrupt late-stage cognitive-motor integration processes during movement preparation and execution. The dissociation between impaired neural activity and preserved behavioral performance suggests compensatory mechanisms that maintain motor learning despite underlying neural inefficiencies. These findings reveal that anxiety affects integrated systems of cognition and action, providing new insights into their functional neurophysiological impact.
Efficient, effective, and equitable disaster response is critical yet challenging due to uncertainties, particularly those in vehicle travel times caused by infrastructure damage. To address this, current study proposes a scenario-based robust optimisation social cost vehicle routing problem (SRO-SCVRP) that minimises three objectives: (1) social cost, balancing logistics and deprivation costs, with the latter quantifying survivors' suffering from delayed access to critical supplies; (2) the variation in expected deprivation cost across travel time scenarios, reflecting solution robustness; and (3) penalties for exceeding service coverage windows (SCW), which are thresholds set by decision-makers to ensure timely deliveries, thereby enhancing model robustness. Logistics and deprivation costs operationalise efficiency and effectiveness, respectively, while the second and third objectives promote equity by reducing disparities in access and ensuring the timely fulfilment of demand. Numerical results from the SRO-SCVRP highlight a trade-off wherein gains in robustness and equity are achieved with only a modest impact on logistics cost. To assess robustness and equity, a Time and Inventory Service-Level Metric (TISM) is developed and applied to alternative water distribution strategies. Among them, the hybrid strategy yields the highest overall TISM, making it the most robust and equitable option across varied SCW thresholds and resource availability.
.-Precise demographic data are needed to model population dynamics, design management and recovery strategies, and answer questions in ecology and evolution, but for many species, accurate information on age and frequency of reproduction is lacking. Using data from a 10-year capture-mark-recapture study, I describe demographic analyses of sympatric populations of three natricine snakes, Dekay's Brownsnakes (Storeria dekayi), Red-bellied Snakes (S. occipitomaculata), and Common Gartersnakes (Thamnophis sirtalis), focusing on age and frequency of reproduction. I examined cloacal smears from males for sperm and palped females for enlarged follicles and embryos to infer minimum size at maturity and used logistic regression to relate sperm positivity and gravidity to size. I determined minimum age of maturation and first reproduction from known-age von Bertalanffy growth equations. I estimated female reproductive frequency from reproductive histories, proportion gravid, and relationship between size and gravidity. Using this information, I constructed matrix projection models to compare the effect of accelerated or delayed reproduction on the population growth parameter, ). In all three species, a small proportion of females reproduced when just one year old but for most females, and for males, age of first reproduction was 2 years. Accelerating reproduction by a year resulted in rapid population growth (lambda = 1.08-1.18), and delaying reproduction resulted in rapid population decline (lambda= 0.86-0.91) relative to baseline (lambda= 1.00). Further quantification of demographic traits and associated trade-offs could improve population projection models and provide a clearer understanding of life history variation.
Dynamical sampling refers to a class of problems in which space–time samples are taken from a signal evolving under an underlying dynamical system. The goal is to use these samples to recover relevant information about the system—such as the initial state, the evolution operator, or the sources and sinks driving the dynamics. These problems are tightly connected to frame theory, operator theory, functional analysis, and other foundational areas of mathematics; they also give rise to new theoretical questions and have applications across engineering and the sciences. This survey provides an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of dynamical sampling, summarizes recent results, and outlines directions for future work, including open problems and conjectures.
Voter participation in US local elections consistently lags behind turnout rates in national elections, particularly in suburban jurisdictions. While voting reminders, or "nudges," have been consistently linked to increased turnout in high-salience national elections, and have demonstrated promise in local elections, research on their effectiveness in these lower-salience contexts remains limited. This study uses a non-partisan, get-out-the vote field experiment during a contested local election in the United States to test the effectiveness of established voter engagement methods, specifically mailers, in increasing turnout. Given their documented success in varied election contexts, these methods were expected to yield small but measurable increases in local voter turnout. However, contrary to expectations, the findings reveal that postcard mailers, regardless of message content, had no statistically significant effect on turnout. These null results raise important questions regarding the promise of traditional voter mobilization tactics in low-salience, local elections and help clarify the conditions under which these approaches are feasible and may or may not support local political engagement.
