Central administration of oxytocin (OT) antagonists inhibits maternal and sexual behavior in non-primates, providing the strongest experimental evidence that endogenous OT facilitates these behaviors. While there have been a few reports that ICV administration of OT increases social behaviors in monkeys, no studies to date have assessed the effects of OT antagonists. Therefore, we studied in rhesus monkeys whether L368,899, a non-peptide antagonist produced by Merck that selectively blocks the human uterine OT receptor, penetrates the CNS after peripheral administration and alters female maternal and sexual behavior. In two studies in four male monkeys, L368,899 was injected iv (1 mg/kg) after which (1) CSF samples were collected at intervals over 4 h and (2) brains were collected at 60 min. Assay of samples confirmed that iv-administered L368,899 entered CSF and accumulated in the hypothalamus, septum, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus, but not other areas. An adult female monkey was tested for interest in either an infant or sexual behavior, receiving a different iv treatment prior to each test (1 or 3 mg/kg of L368,899 or saline). OT antagonist treatment reduced or eliminated interest in the infant and sexual behavior. These results, although preliminary, are the first to directly implicate endogenous OT in activation of primate maternal interest and sexual behavior. While it remains to be empirically demonstrated that peripherally administered L368,899 blocks central OT receptors, our behavioral findings suggest that this non-peptide antagonist may facilitate testing OT involvement in a variety of social and other behaviors in primates.

In August/September of 2001, the R/P FLIP and CIRPAS Twin Otter research aircraft were deployed to the eastern coast of Oahu, Hawaii, as part of the Rough Evaporation Duct (RED) experiment. Goals included the study of the air/sea exchange, turbulence, and sea‐salt aerosol particle characteristics at the subtropical marine Pacific site. Here we examine coarse mode particle size distributions. Similar to what has been shown for airborne dust, optical particle counters such as the Forward Scattering Spectrometer Probe (FSSP), Classical Scattering Aerosol Spectrometer Probe (CSASP) and the Cloud Aerosol Spectrometer (CAS) within the Cloud Aerosol and Precipitation Spectrometer (CAPS) instrument systematically overestimate particle size, and consequently volume, for sea salt particles. Ground‐based aerodynamic particle sizers (APS) and AERONET inversions yield much more reasonable results. A wing pod mounted APS gave mixed results and may not be appropriate for marine boundary layer studies. Relating our findings to previous studies does much to explain the bulk of the differences in the literature and leads us to conclude that the largest uncertainty facing flux and airborne cloud/aerosol interaction studies is likely due to the instrumentation itself. To our knowledge, there does not exist an in situ aircraft system that adequately measures the ambient volume distribution of coarse mode sea salt particles. Most empirically based sea salt flux parameterizations can trace their heritage to a clearly biased measurement technique. The current “state of the art” in this field prevents any true form of clear sky radiative “closure” for clean marine environments.

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[1] Atmospheric refractivity is typically estimated in situ from radiosonde measurements, which are expensive and may undersample the spatial and temporal variability of weather phenomena. We estimate refractivity structure near San Diego, California, using ray propagation models to fit measured GPS tropospheric delays in a least squares metric. We evaluate the potential and the limitations of ground-based GPS measurements for characterizing atmospheric refractivity, and we compare refractivity structure estimated from GPS sensing with that measured by nearby radiosondes. The results suggest that ground-based GPS provides significant constraint of inhomogeneous atmospheric refractivity, despite certain fundamental limitations of ground-based measurements. Radiosondes typically are launched just a few times daily. Consequently, estimates of temporally and spatially varying refractivity that assimilate GPS delays could substantially improve over estimates using radiosonde data alone.