Publications related to Human evolution

SORI: A softness-rendering interface to unravel the nature of softness perception

Jamie Paik, Mustafa Mete, Hwayeong Jeong

Tactile perception of softness serves a critical role in the survival, well-being, and social interaction among various species, including humans. This perception informs activities from food selection in animals to medical palpation for disease detection ...

National Academy of Sciences2024

Bacterial diversity dominates variable macrophage responses of tuberculosis patients in Tanzania

Jacques Fellay, Zhi Ming Xu

The Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) comprises nine human-adapted lineages that differ in their geographical distribution. Local adaptation of specific MTBC genotypes to the respective human host population has been invoked in this context. We aim ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Secondary structure of the human mitochondrial genome affects formation of deletions

Jacques Fellay, Konstantin Popadin

BackgroundAging in postmitotic tissues is associated with clonal expansion of somatic mitochondrial deletions, the origin of which is not well understood. Such deletions are often flanked by direct nucleotide repeats, but this alone does not fully explain ...

BMC2023

In Quest of Meaning: Revisiting the discourse around “non-pedigreed” architecture

Vasileios Chanis

The title of the current contribution is “In quest of meaning: revisiting the discourse around ‘non-pedigreed’ architecture”. As a brief introduction, I would like to project the following two images. One is Villa Arpel, while the other is the district of ...

2023

Towards Novel Evaluation Methods for Social Dialog Systems

Ekaterina Svikhnushina

Language has shaped human evolution and led to the desire to endow machines with language abilities. Recent advancements in natural language processing enable us to achieve this breakthrough in human-machine interaction. However, introducing conversational ...

EPFL2023

Molecular reconstruction and simulation of the Neuron-Glia-Vasculature system

Polina Shichkova

The outstanding information processing capacity of the brain relies on numerous molecular mechanisms. It is an extremely energy-expensive function, which involves specialization and collaboration of different cell types. A common framework to study the com ...

EPFL2023

Mitochondrial Pseudogenes Suggest Repeated Inter-Species Hybridization among Direct Human Ancestors

Konstantin Popadin

The hypothesis that the evolution of humans involves hybridization between diverged species has been actively debated in recent years. We present the following novel evidence in support of this hypothesis: the analysis of nuclear pseudogenes of mtDNA ("NUM ...

MDPI2022

Exploiting Marginal Stability in Slow-Fast Quasilinear Dynamical Systems

Alessia Ferraro

The accurate investigation of many geophysical phenomena via direct numerical simulations is computationally not possible nowadays due to the huge range of spatial and temporal scales to be resolved. Therefore advances in this field rely on the development ...

EPFL2022

New Insights Into the Pivotal Role of CREB-Regulated Transcription Coactivator 1 in Depression and Comorbid Obesity

Antoine Timothée Cherix, Jean-René Cardinaux

Depression and obesity are major public health concerns, and there is mounting evidence that they share etiopathophysiological mechanisms. The neurobiological pathways involved in both mood and energy balance regulation are complex, multifactorial and stil ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2022

Stabilization of cultural innovations depends on population density: Testing an epidemiological model of cultural evolution against a global dataset of rock art sites and climate-based estimates of ancient population densities

John Richard Walker, Taylor Howard Newton, Francesco Casalegno

Demographic models of human cultural evolution have high explanatory potential but weak empirical support. Here we use a global dataset of rock art sites and climate and genetics-based estimates of ancient population densities to test a new model based on ...

2021

Adaptive Task-Space Force Control for Humanoid-to-Human Assistance

Anastasia Bolotnikova

We envision a humanoid robot to serve as a source of additional motion-support forces in assistance for frail persons. In this context, we present a control strategy for a humanoid to adaptively regulate its assistive force contribution. First, we identify ...

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC2021

Mesomelic dysplasias associated with the HOXD locus are caused by regulatory reallocations

Denis Duboule, Christopher Chase Bolt, Lucille Delisle

Mesomelic dysplasia, a severe shortening and bending of the limb, has been linked to rearrangements in the HoxD cluster in humans and mice. Here the authors engineer a 1 Mb inversion including the HoxD gene cluster and use this model to provide a mechanist ...

Nature Portfolio2021

Achieving visible light-driven hydrogen evolution at positive bias with a hybrid copper-iron oxide|TiO2-cobaloxime photocathode

Kevin Sivula, Florent Alexandre Boudoire

H-2 is an environmentally-friendly fuel that would allow for a circular economy but its sustainable production, e.g. from solar energy and water, remains a challenge. A hybrid CuFexOy|TiO2-CoHEC (CoHEC = chloro([4,4 '-bipyridine]-2,6-dicarboxylic acid)bis( ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2020

The evolution of the type VI secretion system as a disintegration weapon

Julius Hans Bernd Winter

The type VI secretion system (T6SS) is a nanomachine used by many bacteria to drive a toxin-laden needle into other bacterial cells. Although the potential to influence bacterial competition is clear, the fitness impacts of wielding a T6SS are not well und ...

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE2020

Stability of flexible thin-film metallization stimulation electrodes: analysis of explants after first-in-human study and improvement ofin vivoperformance

Silvestro Micera, Stanisa Raspopovic, Francesco Maria Petrini

Objective.Micro-fabricated neural interfaces based on polyimide (PI) are achieving increasing importance in translational research. The ability to produce well-defined micro-structures with properties that include chemical inertness, mechanical flexibility ...

2020

Benzothiadiazole Aryl-amine Based Materials as Efficient Hole Carriers in Perovskite Solar Cells

Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin, Cristina Roldán Carmona, Manuel Alejandro Méndez Agudelo, Cristina Rodriguez Seco

Four hole transport materials (HTMs) based on a benzothiadiazole (BT) central core have been synthesized and successfully employed in triple-cation mixed-halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs), reaching 18.05% solar to energy conversion efficiency. The synth ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2020

Temperature dependence of the(pi,0)anomaly in the excitation spectrum of the 2D quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet

Henrik Moodysson Rønnow, Martin Mourigal, Goran Nilsen

It is well established that in the low-temperature limit, the two-dimensional quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a square lattice (2DQHAFSL) exhibits an anomaly in its spectrum at short-wavelengths on the zone-boundary. In the vicinity of the (pi, 0) po ...

IOP PUBLISHING LTD2020

The potential of textile reinforced concrete for design of innovative structures

Aurelio Muttoni, Patricia Guaita, Raffael Baur, Miguel Fernández Ruiz, Patrick Lorenzo Valeri

Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC) is a recent evolution of ordinary reinforced concrete. This relatively new construction material replaces steel reinforcement with high-strength, non-corrosive textile fabrics in order to reduce cover requirements to minim ...

2019

A minimalist model of extinction and range dynamics of virtual mountain species driven by warming temperatures

Andrea Rinaldo, Enrico Bertuzzo, Damiano Pasetto, Jonathan Giezendanner

A longstanding question in ecology concerns the prediction of the fate of mountain species under climate change, where climatic and geomorphic factors but also endogenous species characteristics are jointly expected to control species distributions. A sign ...

2019

On Force Synergies in Human Grasping Behavior

Aude Billard, Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis

The human hand is a versatile and complex system with dexterous manipulation capabilities. For the transfer of human grasping capabilities to humanoid robotic and prosthetic hands, an understanding of the dynamic characteristics of grasp motions is fundame ...

IEEE2019