Classification of grasping tasks based on EEG-EMG coherence

This work presents an innovative application of the well-known concept of cortico-muscular coherence for the classification of various motor tasks, i.e., grasps of different kinds of objects. Our approach can classify objects with different weights (motor-related features) and different surface frictions (haptics-related features) with high accuracy (over 0:8). The outcomes presented here provide information about the synchronization existing between the brain and the muscles during specific activities; thus, this may represent a new effective way to perform activity recognition

Northwest Africa 5790. Top Sequence of the Nakhlite Pile

NWA 5790 is a recently discovered nakhlite. Its mineralogy, petrology and geochemistry suggest that it is the topmost sequence of the nakhlite lava pile

An inverse source problem for the heat equation and the enclosure method

An inverse source problem for the heat equation is considered. Extraction formulae for information about the time and location when and where the unknown source of the equation firstly appeared are given from a single lateral boundary measurement. New roles of the plane progressive wave solutions or their complex versions for the backward heat equation are given.Comment: 23page

Radiogenomics in clear cell renal cell carcinoma: correlations between advanced CT imaging (texture analysis) and microRNAs expression

Purpose: A relevant challenge for the improvement of clear cell renal cell carcinoma management could derive from the identification of novel molecular biomarkers that could greatly improve the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment choice of these neoplasms. In this study, we investigate whether quantitative parameters obtained from computed tomography texture analysis may correlate with the expression of selected oncogenic microRNAs. Methods: In a retrospective single-center study, multiphasic computed tomography examination (with arterial, portal, and urographic phases) was performed on 20 patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma and computed tomography texture analysis parameters such as entropy, kurtosis, skewness, mean, and standard deviation of pixel distribution were measured using multiple filter settings. These quantitative data were correlated with the expression of selected microRNAs (miR-21-5p, miR-210-3p, miR-185-5p, miR-221-3p, miR-145-5p). Both the evaluations (microRNAs and computed tomography texture analysis) were performed on matched tumor and normal corticomedullar tissues of the same patients cohort. Results: In this pilot study, we evidenced that computed tomography texture analysis has robust parameters (eg, entropy, mean, standard deviation) to distinguish normal from pathological tissues. Moreover, a higher coefficient of determination between entropy and miR-21-5p expression was evidenced in tumor versus normal tissue. Interestingly, entropy and miR-21-5p show promising correlation in clear cell renal cell carcinoma opening to a radiogenomic strategy to improve clear cell renal cell carcinoma management. Conclusion: In this pilot study, a promising correlation between microRNAs and computed tomography texture analysis has been found in clear cell renal cell carcinoma. A clear cell renal cell carcinoma can benefit from noninvasive evaluation of texture parameters in adjunction to biopsy results. In particular, a promising correlation between entropy and miR-21-5p was found

Meissner response of anisotropic superconductors

The response field of a half-space anisotropic superconductor is evaluated for an arbitrary weak external field source. Example sources of a point magnetic moment and a circular current are considered in detail. For the penetration depth $\lambda \ll L$ with $L$ being any other relevant distance (the source size, or the distance between the source and the superconductor), the major contribution to the response is the $\lambda$ independent field of the source image. It is shown that the absolute value of $\lambda$ cannot be extracted from the response field with a better accuracy than that for the source position. Similar problems are considered for thin films.Comment: 8 pages, 0 figures. 7 pages: section removed, refs. adde

Magnetic Pinning of Vortices in a Superconducting Film: The (anti)vortex-magnetic dipole interaction energy in the London approximation

The interaction between a superconducting vortex or antivortex in a superconducting film and a magnetic dipole with in- or out-of-plane magnetization is investigated within the London approximation. The dependence of the interaction energy on the dipole-vortex distance and the film thickness is studied and analytical results are obtained in limiting cases. We show how the short range interaction with the magnetic dipole makes the co-existence of vortices and antivortices possible. Different configurations with vortices and antivortices are investigated.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Influence of chitin nanocrystals on the dielectric behaviour and conductivity of chitosan-based bionanocomposites

A series of bionanocomposite films based on chitosan, reinforced with chitin nanocrystals, were developed, and assessed in terms of dielectric behaviour and conductivity by using an experimental methodology that allows avoiding the conductivity contribution and the exclusion of contact and interfacial polarization effects. The dielectric relaxations at low and high frequency and temperatures were modeled by Havriliak-Negami functions. Below the glass transition temperature (Tg), the γ and β relaxations were observed, which were related to intramolecular and non-cooperative segmental movements. At higher temperatures, an intermolecular and cooperative macromolecular movement, related to the glass transition, gave rise to α-relaxation. In addition, two over-Tg ρI and ρII relaxations were found, which were related to the displacement of dipoles in the disordered structure of bionanocomposites. The addition of chitin nanocrystals did not affect the apparent activation energy Ea of the γ-relaxation. However, it decreased the Ea of the β-relaxation and increased the free volume at temperatures in the vicinities of the α-relaxation. Finally, the electric conductivity of the bionanocomposites was lower than that of neat chitosan and chitin due to the interaction between the OH and NH2 groups that reduced the ionic mobility, along with the increase of free volume, with the subsequent separation of phases

Molecular Mobility in Oriented and Unoriented Membranes Based on Poly[2-(Aziridin-1-yl)ethanol]

Unoriented and oriented membranes based on dendronized polymers and copolymers obtained by chemical modification of poly[2-(aziridin-1-yl) ethanol] (PAZE) with the dendron 3,4,5-tris[4-(n-dodecan-1-yloxy)benzyloxy]benzoate were considered. DSC, XRD, CP-MAS NMR and DETA, contribute to characterize the tendency to crystallize, the molecular mobility of the benzyloxy substituent, the dendritic liquid crystalline group and the clearing transition. The orientation of the mesogenic chain somewhat hindered this molecular motion, especially in the full substituted PAZE. The fragility, free volume and thermal expansion coefficients of these membranes near the glass transition are related to the orientation and the addition of the dendritic groups. PAZE-based membranes combine both order and mobility on a supramolecular and macroscopic level, controlled by the dendritic group and the thermal orientation, and open the possibility of preparing membranes with proper channel mobility that promotes selective ionic transport

Real-Time Position Reconstruction with Hippocampal Place Cells

Brain–computer interfaces (BCI) are using the electroencephalogram, the electrocorticogram and trains of action potentials as inputs to analyze brain activity for communication purposes and/or the control of external devices. Thus far it is not known whether a BCI system can be developed that utilizes the states of brain structures that are situated well below the cortical surface, such as the hippocampus. In order to address this question we used the activity of hippocampal place cells (PCs) to predict the position of an rodent in real-time. First, spike activity was recorded from the hippocampus during foraging and analyzed off-line to optimize the spike sorting and position reconstruction algorithm of rats. Then the spike activity was recorded and analyzed in real-time. The rat was running in a box of 80 cm × 80 cm and its locomotor movement was captured with a video tracking system. Data were acquired to calculate the rat's trajectories and to identify place fields. Then a Bayesian classifier was trained to predict the position of the rat given its neural activity. This information was used in subsequent trials to predict the rat's position in real-time. The real-time experiments were successfully performed and yielded an error between 12.2 and 17.4% using 5–6 neurons. It must be noted here that the encoding step was done with data recorded before the real-time experiment and comparable accuracies between off-line (mean error of 15.9% for three rats) and real-time experiments (mean error of 14.7%) were achieved. The experiment shows proof of principle that position reconstruction can be done in real-time, that PCs were stable and spike sorting was robust enough to generalize from the training run to the real-time reconstruction phase of the experiment. Real-time reconstruction may be used for a variety of purposes, including creating behavioral–neuronal feedback loops or for implementing neuroprosthetic control