Oceanic languages typically make a grammatical contrast between expres- sions of alienable and inalienable possession. Moreover, further distinctions are made in the alienable category but not in the inalienable category. The present research tests the hypothesis that there is a good motivation for such a development in the former case. As English does not have a grammaticalized distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, it provides a good testing ground. Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, participants were asked to write (...) down the first interpretation that came to mind for possessive phrases, some of which contained inherently relational possessums, while o thers contained possessums that are not inherently relational. Phrases with non-relational possessums elicited a broader range of interpretations and a lower consistency of a given interpretation across possessor modifiers than those with relational possessums. Study 2 demonstrated that users assign a default interpretation to a possessive phrase containing a relational possessum even when another reading is plausible. Study 3, a corpus-based analysis of possessive phrase use, showed that phrases with relational possessums have a narrower range of interpretations than those with other possessums. Taken together, the findings strongly suggest that grammatical distinctions between different types of alienable possession are motivated. (shrink)

This book assembles recent research on memory and learning in plants. Organisms that share a capability to store information about experiences in the past have an actively generated background resource on which they can compare and evaluate coming experiences in order to react faster or even better. This is an essential tool for all adaptation purposes. Such memory/learning skills can be found from bacteria up to fungi, animals and plants, although until recently it had been mentioned only as capabilities of (...) higher animals. With the rise of epigenetics the context dependent marking of experiences on the genetic level is an essential perspective to understand memory and learning in organisms. -/- Plants are highly sensitive organisms that actively compete for environmental resources. They assess their surroundings, estimate how much energy they need for particular goals, and then realize the optimum variant. They take measures to control certain environmental resources. They perceive themselves and can distinguish between ‘self’ and ‘non-self’. They process and evaluate information and then modify their behavior accordingly. -/- The book will guide scientists in further investigations on these skills of plant behavior and on how plants mediate signaling processes between themselves and the environment in memory and learning processes. (shrink)

In a recent forum article, Dan Needleman and Jan Brugues argue that, despite the astonishing advances in cell biology, a fundamental understanding of even the most well-studied subcellular biological processes is lacking. This lack of understanding is evidenced by our inability to make precise predictions of subcellular and cellular behaviors. They suggest that to achieve such an under- standing, we need to apply a combination of quantitative experiments with new theoretical concepts and determine the physical principles of subcellular biological organization. (...) We discuss these issues and suggest that, besides biophysics, we need strong theoretical inputs from biocommunication theory in order to understand all the core agents of the cellular life and subcellular organization. (shrink)