Juan Pablo Garderes, Néstor Toledo, John Andrew Whitlock
et al.
Cranial muscles perform important roles triggering diverse paleobiological faculties, such as feeding, communication, alert postures, etc. Within Sauropoda, a clade with high specializations in skull architectures, and several partially complete skulls recovered, detailed reconstructions of the cranial muscles are mainly limited to two of the most famous taxa of the clade: Diplodocus and Camarasaurus. The cranial musculature for Dicraeosauridae, a minor group within the clade, has been gingerly described, based on the few suitable specimens. Herein, the craniomandibular, extrinsic eye, and cervicocranial musculatures of Bajadasaurus pronuspinax are inferred, resulting in the first detailed reconstruction for Dicraeosauridae on these muscular groups, and these are compared with previous inferences in Dicraeosauridae and with other Sauropoda and non-avian dinosaurs. The musculature of Bajadasaurus shows a shift of angle in the temporal musculature when passing through the inferior temporal window (probably indicating the presence of a cartilage for support), an important role of the orbitotemporal muscles in a hypothetical cranial kinesis (which, if true, would allow pseudo-palinal movements in a rostral directionduring the feeding process), an avian-like configuration of the eye muscles, and high lateroflexor moment arms for the skull-neck complex. Dicraeosauridae show clear osteological correlates for a high number of the craniomandibular and cervicocranial muscles, albeit some of these correlates might not be exclusively dedicated for musculature, and could be indicating the presence of alternative soft tissues.
We report the first occurrence of trace fossils in placoderm bones from the Upper Devonian of the Holy Cross Mountains. A taxonomic analysis of three ichnogenera revealed the earliest evidence of Sulculites (ie., Sulculites bellus), characterised by curved grooves known from the tortoise shells, the potential Osteocallis? isp. consists of irregular and shallow grooves, which were first described on dinosaur bones from continental deposits, while Karethraichnus? isp. being a deep and cylindrical boring, recognized for the first time in turtle shells. They show the evidence of post mortem erosional activity by organisms (e.g., worms) that penetrated the decaying carcasses to search for nutritional particles, graze microbial mats and colonize the osteic substrate. The massive dermal bones of placoderms seem to be appealing to scavengers, albeit rather as an opportunistic behaviour. Nevertheless, this uncommon finding may be caused by the relatively limited attention that has been paid to this phenomenon. The described traces also represent the oldest evidence of macrobioerosion in osteic substrate, as well as the oldest documented occurrence of these forms that have been known so far.
Non-marine ostracods are environmental proxies widely used in Quaternary environmental and climatic reconstructions. In South America (Neotropical Region), extant Limnocytheridae is the third most diverse family, with Limnocythere species typically inhabiting hyposaline to mesosaline waters. The South American Transitional Zone (SATZ), is defined across South America by arid-semiarid climate, holding the Argentinean section five endemic Limnocythere species, representing highest diversity of Limnocythere and the speciation role of this transitional area. This study analyses the diversity, paleoecological traits and distribution of Quaternary Argentinean Limnocythere, describing Limnocythere perseverans sp. nov. from Laguna Llancanelo basin, Salina del Bebedero and Laguna Runtuyoc (Argentinean SATZ), providing a dichotomous key for the 13 Quaternary species found in Argentina. The new species differs from L. cusminskyae (Neotropical Region, humid Chaco-Pampean) and L. staplini (Nearctic Region), in valve morphology (valve shape and hinge structure) and ecological requirements. Limnocythere perseverans sp. nov. prefers sodium-chloride, sulfate or chloride-sulfate waters, segregated from L. cusminskyae living in sodium, bicarbonate-rich waters, and L. staplini found in bicarbonate-depleted waters. These differences highlight its value to reconstruct changes in salinity and water chemistry. The morphological similarities among these three species open questions on biogeographical aspects of aquatic ecology. Further research is necessary to assess whether these species evolved from a shared ancestor or are an example of morphological convergence derived by the adaptation to similar ecological pressures within the Neotropical and Nearctic regions.
Timothy P. Cleland, G. Asher Newsome, Erin R. Birdsall
et al.
The shells of muricoid gastropod Ecphora gardnerae from the Miocene St. Marys Formation of Maryland, USA, have been shown to contain polymeric sheets within the calcareous matrix. These membranes were found to have amino acids and complex sugar compounds. To explore these biomolecular features further, four new E. gardnerae shells were collected and analyzed for proteins and sugar compounds. Using direct analysis in real time (DART) mass spectrometry, we were able to show that the membranes contain chitin. With mass spectrometry-based paleoproteomic techniques utilizing a hydroxylamine extraction or sample preparation by easy extraction and digestion (SPEED), we found preserved peptides from all four shells including peptides that are specific to Gastropoda or Mollusca. The membranes derive from the calcitic layer of the shell and are likely analogous to chitin membranes used by other extant mollusks to control nucleation, growth, and physical properties in the calcareous layers, but future research in gastropod biology will help to address the function of these membranes.
Kaleb Mcdowell, Nick Waytowich, Javier Garcia
et al.
Metcalfe et al (1) argue that the greatest potential for human-AI partnerships lies in their application to highly complex problem spaces. Herein, we discuss three different forms of hybrid team intelligence and posit that across all three forms, the hybridization of man and machine intelligence can be effective under the right conditions. We foresee two significant research and development (R&D) challenges underlying the creation of effective hybrid intelligence. First, rapid advances in machine intelligence and/or fundamental changes in human behaviors or capabilities over time can outpace R&D. Second, the future conditions under which hybrid intelligence will operate are unknown, but unlikely to be the same as the conditions of today. Overcoming both of these challenges requires a deep understanding of multiple human-centric and machine-centric disciplines that creates a large barrier to entry into the field. Herein, we outline an open, shareable research platform that creates a form of hybrid team intelligence that functions under representative future conditions. The intent for the platform is to facilitate new forms of hybrid intelligence research allowing individuals with human-centric or machine-centric backgrounds to rapidly enter the field and initiate research. Our hope is that through open, community research on the platform, state-of-the-art advances in human and machine intelligence can quickly be communicated across what are currently different R&D communities and allow hybrid team intelligence research to stay at the forefront of scientific advancement.
The acoustofluidic method holds great promise for manipulating microorganisms. When exposed to the steady vortex structures of acoustic streaming flow, these microorganisms exhibit intriguing dynamic behaviors, such as hydrodynamic trapping and aggregation. To uncover the mechanisms behind these behaviors, we investigate the swimming dynamics of both passive and active particles within a two-dimensional acoustic streaming flow. By employing a theoretically calculated streaming flow field, we demonstrate the existence of stable bounded orbits for particles. Additionally, we introduce rotational diffusion and examine the distribution of particles under varying flow strengths. Our findings reveal that active particles can laterally migrate across streamlines and become trapped in stable bounded orbits closer to the vortex center, whereas passive particles are confined to movement along the streamlines. We emphasize the influence of the flow field on the distribution and trapping of active particles, identifying a flow configuration that maximizes their aggregation. These insights contribute to the manipulation of microswimmers and the development of innovative biological microfluidic chips.
This paper investigates the impact of a group-adaptive conversation design in two socially interactive agents (SIAs) through two real-world studies. Both SIAs - Furhat, a social robot, and MetaHuman, a virtual agent - were equipped with a conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) backend combining hybrid retrieval and generative models. The studies were carried out in an in-the-wild setting with a total of $N = 188$ participants who interacted with the SIAs - in dyads, triads or larger groups - at a German museum. Although the results did not reveal a significant effect of the group-sensitive conversation design on perceived satisfaction, the findings provide valuable insights into the challenges of adapting CAI for multi-party interactions and across different embodiments (robot vs.\ virtual agent), highlighting the need for multimodal strategies beyond linguistic pluralization. These insights contribute to the fields of Human-Agent Interaction (HAI), Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), and broader Human-Machine Interaction (HMI), providing insights for future research on effective dialogue adaptation in group settings.
Michael Faber, Andrey Grishko, Julian Waksberg
et al.
Robots come in various forms and have different characteristics that may shape the interaction with them. In human-human interactions, height is a characteristic that shapes human dynamics, with taller people typically perceived as more persuasive. In this work, we aspired to evaluate if the same impact replicates in a human-robot interaction and specifically with a highly non-humanoid robotic object. The robot was designed with modules that could be easily added or removed, allowing us to change its height without altering other design features. To test the impact of the robot's height, we evaluated participants' compliance with its request to volunteer to perform a tedious task. In the experiment, participants performed a cognitive task on a computer, which was framed as the main experiment. When done, they were informed that the experiment was completed. While waiting to receive their credits, the robotic object, designed as a mobile robotic service table, entered the room, carrying a tablet that invited participants to complete a 300-question questionnaire voluntarily. We compared participants' compliance in two conditions: A Short robot composed of two modules and 95cm in height and a Tall robot consisting of three modules and 132cm in height. Our findings revealed higher compliance with the Short robot's request, demonstrating an opposite pattern to human dynamics. We conclude that while height has a substantial social impact on human-robot interactions, it follows a unique pattern of influence. Our findings suggest that designers cannot simply adopt and implement elements from human social dynamics to robots without testing them first.
Turn-taking is a fundamental aspect of conversation, but current Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) systems often rely on simplistic, silence-based models, leading to unnatural pauses and interruptions. This paper investigates, for the first time, the application of general turn-taking models, specifically TurnGPT and Voice Activity Projection (VAP), to improve conversational dynamics in HRI. These models are trained on human-human dialogue data using self-supervised learning objectives, without requiring domain-specific fine-tuning. We propose methods for using these models in tandem to predict when a robot should begin preparing responses, take turns, and handle potential interruptions. We evaluated the proposed system in a within-subject study against a traditional baseline system, using the Furhat robot with 39 adults in a conversational setting, in combination with a large language model for autonomous response generation. The results show that participants significantly prefer the proposed system, and it significantly reduces response delays and interruptions.
Abstract Ontogenetic change is a major source of phenotypic variation among members of a species and is often of greater magnitude than the anatomical differences that distinguish closely related species. Ontogeny has therefore become a problematic confounding variable in vertebrate paleontology, especially in study systems distant from extant crown clades, rendering taxonomic hypothesis testing (a fundamental process in evolutionary biology) rife with difficulty. Paleontologists have adopted quantitative methods to compensate for the perception that juvenile specimens lack diagnostic apomorphies seen in their adult conspecifics. Here, I critically evaluate these methods and the assumptions that guide their interpretation using a µCT dataset comprising growth series of American and Chinese alligator. I find that several widespread assumptions are scientifically unjustifiable, and that two popular methods – geometric morphometrics and cladistic analysis of ontogeny – have unacceptably high rates of type II error and present numerous procedural difficulties. However, I also identify a suite of ontogenetically invariant characters that differentiate the living species of Alligator throughout ontogeny. These characters overwhelmingly correspond to anatomical systems that develop prior to (and play a signaling role in) the development of the cranial skeleton itself, suggesting that their ontogenetic invariance is a consequence of the widely conserved vertebrate developmental program. These observations suggest that the architecture of the cranium is fixed early in embryonic development, and that ontogenetic remodeling does not alter the topological relationships of the cranial bones or the soft tissue structures they house. I propose a general model for future taxonomic hypothesis tests in the fossil record, in which the hypothesis that two specimens different ontogenetic stages of a single species can be falsified by the discovery of character differences that cannot be attributed plausibly to ontogenetic variation.
Alexandr Pavlovich Rasnitsyn, Oscar Florencio Gallego
Upper Triassic (Carnian) Los Rastros and Potrerillos formations (Argentina) are famous for their fossil insects. Some interesting Triassic fossil insects are reviewed in this work. The present paper is devoted to four described extinct Paleozoic species from two orders, Miomoptera and Glosselytrodea. Miomina mendozina Martins-Neto & Gallego, 1999 from the Potrerillos Formation is described as Miomoptera based on a unique holotype which has not been located. After reviewing the published illustrations, we conclude that it is possibly a plant remain and not an insect wing. Miomina riojana Martins-Neto & Gallego, 2006 from the Los Rastros Formation, represents a wing fragment with a few short veins and we prefer to leave it identified as questionably assigned to the Order Miomoptera. Both fossils assigned to Glosselytrodea come from the Los Rastros Formation. Argentinoglosselytrina pulchella Martins-Neto & Gallego, 2001 represents a distinct genus and species of the glosselytrodean family Glosselytridae, redescribed herein. In contrast, Chanarelytrina nana Martins-Neto & Gallego, 2006 represents the detached clavus (anal section of a forewing) of Saaloscytina carmonae Martins-Neto et al., 2006 (Hemiptera, Scytinopteroidea, Saaloscytinidae). Argentinoglosselytrina pulchella from the Upper Triassic of Argentina represents the only specimen from an extinct order that characterized the Paleozoic, which reflects the differences between this fauna and that of Central Asia, which is richer in ancient groups. Its modified morphology suggests a possible event of origin of a high-ranked and early aborted evolutionary line.
Over the last decade, Autonomous Delivery Robots (ADRs) have transformed conventional delivery methods, responding to the growing e-commerce demand. However, the readiness of ADRs to navigate safely among pedestrians in shared urban areas remains an open question. We contend that there are crucial research gaps in understanding their interactions with pedestrians in such environments. Human Pose Estimation is a vital stepping stone for various downstream applications, including pose prediction and socially aware robot path-planning. Yet, the absence of an enriched and pose-labeled dataset capturing human-robot interactions in shared urban areas hinders this objective. In this paper, we bridge this gap by repurposing, fusing, and labeling two datasets, MOT17 and NCLT, focused on pedestrian tracking and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), respectively. The resulting unique dataset represents thousands of real-world indoor and outdoor human-robot interaction scenarios. Leveraging YOLOv7, we obtained human pose visual and numeric outputs and provided ground truth poses using manual annotation. To overcome the distance bias present in the traditional MPJPE metric, this study introduces a novel human pose estimation error metric called Mean Scaled Joint Error (MSJE) by incorporating bounding box dimensions into it. Findings demonstrate that YOLOv7 effectively estimates human pose in both datasets. However, it exhibits weaker performance in specific scenarios, like indoor, crowded scenes with a focused light source, where both MPJPE and MSJE are recorded as 10.89 and 25.3, respectively. In contrast, YOLOv7 performs better in single-person estimation (NCLT seq 2) and outdoor scenarios (MOT17 seq1), achieving MSJE values of 5.29 and 3.38, respectively.
To enable effective human-AI collaboration, merely optimizing AI performance without considering human factors is insufficient. Recent research has shown that designing AI agents that take human behavior into account leads to improved performance in human-AI collaboration. However, a limitation of most existing approaches is their assumption that human behavior remains static, regardless of the AI agent's actions. In reality, humans may adjust their actions based on their beliefs about the AI's intentions, specifically, the subtasks they perceive the AI to be attempting to complete based on its behavior. In this paper, we address this limitation by enabling a collaborative AI agent to consider its human partner's beliefs about its intentions, i.e., what the human partner thinks the AI agent is trying to accomplish, and to design its action plan accordingly to facilitate more effective human-AI collaboration. Specifically, we developed a model of human beliefs that captures how humans interpret and reason about their AI partner's intentions. Using this belief model, we created an AI agent that incorporates both human behavior and human beliefs when devising its strategy for interacting with humans. Through extensive real-world human-subject experiments, we demonstrate that our belief model more accurately captures human perceptions of AI intentions. Furthermore, we show that our AI agent, designed to account for human beliefs over its intentions, significantly enhances performance in human-AI collaboration.
Farid Saleh, Thomas Clements, Vincent Perrier
et al.
Abstract Concretions are an interesting mode of preservation that can occasionally yield fossils with soft tissues. To properly interpret these fossils, an understanding of their fossilization is required. Probabilistic models are useful tools to identify variations between different Konservat-Lagerstätten that are separated spatially and temporally. However, the application of probabilistic modeling has been limited to Early Paleozoic Konservat-Lagerstätten preserved in shales. In this paper, the patterns of preservation of three concretionary Konservat-Lagerstätten—the Carboniferous Mazon Creek (USA) and Montceau-les-Mines (France), and the Silurian Herefordshire Lagerstätte (UK)—are analyzed using a statistical approach. It is demonstrated that the degree of biotic involvement, i.e., the degree to which a carcass dictates its own preservation, is connected to internal organ conditional probabilities—the probabilities of finding an internal organ associated with another structure such as biomineralized, sclerotized, cuticularized, or cellular body walls. In concretions that are externally forced with little biological mediation (e.g., Herefordshire), all internal organ conditional probabilities are uniform. As biological mediation in concretion formation becomes more pronounced, heterogeneities in conditional probabilities are introduced (e.g., Montceau-les-Mines and Mazon Creek). The three concretionary sites were also compared with previously investigated Konservat-Lagerstätten preserving fossils in shales to demonstrate how the developed probability framework aids in understanding the broad-scale functioning of preservation in Konservat-Lagerstätten.
Human trust research uncovered important catalysts for trust building between interaction partners such as appearance or cognitive factors. The introduction of robots into social interactions calls for a reevaluation of these findings and also brings new challenges and opportunities. In this paper, we suggest approaching trust research in a circular way by drawing from human trust findings, validating them and conceptualizing them for robots, and finally using the precise manipulability of robots to explore previously less-explored areas of trust formation to generate new hypotheses for trust building between agents.
Chiara Crociati, Elena Valenti, Francesco R. Ferraro
et al.
In the context of a project aimed at characterizing the properties of the so-called Bulge Fossil Fragments (the fossil remnants of the bulge formation epoch), here we present the first determination of the metallicity distribution of Liller 1. For a sample of 64 individual member stars we used ESO- MUSE spectra to measure the equivalent width of the CaII triplet and then derive the iron abundance. To test the validity of the adopted calibration in the metal-rich regime, the procedure was first applied to three reference bulge globular clusters (NGC 6569, NGC 6440, and NGC 6528). In all the three cases, we found single-component iron distributions, with abundance values fully in agreement with those reported in the literature. The application of the same methodology to Liller 1 yielded, instead, a clear bimodal iron distribution, with a sub-solar component at $\text{[Fe/H]}= -0.48\,$dex ($σ= 0.22$) and a super-solar component at $\text{[Fe/H]}= +0.26\,$dex ($σ= 0.17$). The latter is found to be significantly more centrally concentrated than the metal-poor population, as expected in a self-enrichment scenario and in agreement with what found in another bulge system, Terzan 5. The obtained metallicity distribution is astonishingly similar to that predicted by the reconstructed star formation history of Liller 1, which is characterized by three main bursts and a low, but constant, activity of star formation over the entire lifetime. These findings provide further support to the possibility that, similar to Terzan 5, also Liller 1 is a Bulge Fossil Fragment.
Dental remains of a medium sized beaver from the early Late Miocene Hammerschmiede locality (MN 7/8) in the
Northern Alpine Foreland Basin (Southern Germany, Bavaria) are described and assigned to Steneofiber depereti. The
numerous material (160 teeth) was collected in the two fossiliferous layers HAM 5 and HAM 4 and comprises beaver
individuals of a large range of age classes, from juvenile to old. The dental remains metrically and morphologically
overlap the stratigraphic older Steneofiber spp. and the younger Chalicomys spp. This supports the hypothesis of the
European anagenetic evolutionary lineage Steneofiber depereti–Chalicomys jaegeri. The morphological characters to
differentiate Steneofiber depereti and Chalicomys jaegeri are discussed and redefined. The performed age-frequency
distribution (Mortality profile) indicates a natural ecological mortality and confirms that at least the fluvial channel of the
HAM 4 deposits was the actual optimal beaver habitat and continuously populated by larger family groups of beavers.
Furthermore, there are indications that the Hammerschmiede beaver had a similar parental investment as today’s beavers,
where young adults migrate to poorer habitats in the second year, in search of their own territory. The shallower channel
of HAM 5 possibly represents such a “second choice” habitat.
We describe Jurassic fossilized woods from the Gümüşhane and Erzurum regions of Turkey that represent the eastern
Sakarya Zone (eSZ) terrestrial biota. We collected 27 fossil wood fragments in total. All 27 fossil wood specimens represent coniferous trees. We assigned ten specimens to Agathoxylon sp. type 1, fourteen to Agathoxylon sp. type 2, two to
Protelicoxylon asiaticum and one to Xenoxylon hopeiense. Middle Jurassic woods are represented by Agathoxylon only
what does not allow for any palaeobiogeographic inferences. The Late Jurassic wood flora evidences a continuity of
Gondwanan eSZ terrestrial areas with the Laurasian ones. The occurrence of Xenoxylon within this Late Jurassic wood
flora suggests an abundant water supply under a relatively cool/humid climate. Overall, both floras show important
similarities to contemporary fossil wood flora from Iran and, to a lesser extent, to those from Georgia
Mercedes Fernández, Ana N. Zimicz, Mariano Bond
et al.
In the last few years, the Quebrada de Los Colorados Formation has become an important middle Eocene fossiliferous unit in Northwestern Argentina. In this unit, the South American native ungulates were until now only represented by the order Notoungulata, including one family of Typotheria and three of Toxodontia. In this contribution, we present a new faunistic assemblage of South American native ungulates, collected from outcrops of the Quebrada de Los Colorados Formation at Los Cardones National Park, Calchaquí Valleys, Salta Province (Argentina). This new assemblage is constituted by the following taxa: litoptern Didolodontidae cf. Ernestokokenia sp., Astrapotheria indet., and notoungulate Notostylopidae Homalostylops sp., a ?Homalostylops sp., typothere “Oldfieldthomasiidae” Colbertia falui sp. nov., Colbertia lumbrerense, and Colbertia sp. and toxodont “Notohippidae” Pampahippus secundus. Colbertia falui sp. nov. differs from the other species of Colbertia by the following features: lower cheek teeth with both more labially angular and oblique trigonid; lower premolars more labio-lingually compressed; with proportionally larger trigonid, and shorter talonid; ectoflexid transversally deeper; lower molars with a more developed paralophid, and more expanded metalophid and entoconid; the latter is located in a more mesial position, being closer to the metaconid; deep and lingually narrower talonid basin; disto-lingual sulcus transversally shallower; more developed cingulids; and m3 with less lingually projected hypoconulid. This new fauna markedly increases the taxonomic richness known for this formation since it includes the first mention of notostylopids, “oldfieldthomasiids”, litoptern didolodontids, and astrapotheres. With the current evidence, we postulate an ungulate migration from Patagonia to Northwestern Argentina during the Eocene. We also hypothesize that the observed taxonomic differences among the Quebrada de Los Colorados, Geste, and Lumbrera formations are more probably associated to orogenic factors that have regulated the faunal dynamic in Northwestern Argentina during the Paleogene than to a differential sampling effort or taphonomic biases.