Confronting conference complexities

Next month, Hoosen "Jerry" Coovadia will chair the XIII International AIDS Conference here, the first time this high-profile gathering has been held in a developing country. Coovadia and the other organizers have gone to great lengths to make the conference work smoothly. Photos by Malcolm Linton     

Anterior cingulate conflict monitoring and adjustments in control

Conflict monitoring by the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been posited to signal a need for greater cognitive control, producing neural and behavioral adjustments. However, the very occurrence of behavioral adjustments after conflict has been questioned, along with suggestions that there is no direct evidence of ACC conflict-related activity predicting subsequent neural or behavioral adjustments in control. Using the Stroop color-naming task and controlling for repetition effects, we demonstrate that ACC conflict-related activity predicts both greater prefrontal cortex activity and adjustments in behavior, supporting a role of ACC conflict monitoring in the engagement of cognitive control.     

Osmotic swelling of phospholipid vesicles causes them to fuse with a planar phospholipid bilayer membrane

Fusion of phospholipid vesicles with planar bilayer membranes occurs if the vesicles that contact the planar membrane swell osmotically after the replacement in their medium of an impermeant solute by a permeant one. This finding directly demonstrates that osmotic swelling is a driving force for vesicle-planar membrane fusion. The method used to induce vesicle swelling and fusion may have relevance for biological systems.