Encoding of temporal probabilities in the human brain

Anticipating the timing of future events is a necessary precursor to preparing actions and allocating resources to sensory processing. This requires elapsed time to be represented in the brain and used to predict the temporal probability of upcoming events. While neuropsychological, imaging, magnetic stimulation studies, and single-unit recordings implicate the role of higher parietal and motor-related areas in temporal estimation, the role of earlier, purely sensory structures remains more controversial. Here we demonstrate that the temporal probability of expected visual events is encoded not by a single area but by a wide network that importantly includes neuronal populations at the very earliest cortical stages of visual processing. Moreover, we show that activity in those areas changes dynamically in a manner that closely accords with temporal expectations

Online social network size is reflected in human brain structure

The increasing ubiquity of web-based social networking services is a striking feature of modern human society. The degree to which individuals participate in these networks varies substantially for reasons that are unclear. Here, we show a biological basis for such variability by demonstrating that quantitative variation in the number of friends an individual declares on a web-based social networking service reliably predicted grey matter density in the right superior temporal sulcus, left middle temporal gyrus and entorhinal cortex. Such regions have been previously implicated in social perception and associative memory, respectively. We further show that variability in the size of such online friendship networks was significantly correlated with the size of more intimate real-world social groups. However, the brain regions we identified were specifically associated with online social network size, whereas the grey matter density of the amygdala was correlated both with online and real-world social network sizes. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that the size of an individual's online social network is closely linked to focal brain structure implicated in social cognition

Folate-conjugated nanoparticles as a potent therapeutic approach in targeted cancer therapy

The selective and efficient drug delivery to tumor cells can remarkably improve different cancer therapeutic approaches. There are several nanoparticles (NPs) which can act as a potent drug carrier for cancer therapy. However, the specific drug delivery to cancer cells is an important issue which should be considered before designing new NPs for in vivo application. It has been shown that cancer cells over-express folate receptor (FR) in order to improve their growth. As normal cells express a significantly lower levels of FR compared to tumor cells, it seems that folate molecules can be used as potent targeting moieties in different nanocarrier-based therapeutic approaches. Moreover, there is evidence which implies folate-conjugated NPs can selectively deliver anti-tumor drugs into cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo. In this review, we will discuss about the efficiency of different folate-conjugated NPs in cancer therapy. © 2015, International Society of Oncology and BioMarkers (ISOBM)

Large patent ductus arteriosus in an adult complicated by pulmonary endarteritis and embolic lung abscess

Patent ductus arteriosus in the adult is an extremely rare clinical phenomenon. We report the case of a 34-year old man who developed pulmonary endarteritis and subsequent embolic lung abscess secondary to a large patent ductus arteriosus. This brief report also provides an overview of the natural history, potential complications, optimal therapy, and diagnostic dilemmas associated with this persistent congenital cardiac defect in adults

The Application of CFD to Ventilation Calculations at Yucca Mountain

This paper presents the results of the application of CFD to ventilation calculations at Yucca Mountain using MULTIFLUX. Seven cases were selected to study the effect of the heat transport coefficient on the drift wall temperature distribution. It was concluded that variable heat transport coefficients such as those given by the differential-parameter CFD used in MULTIFLUX are considered the most appropriate approach of all cases presented. This CFD model agrees well with FLUENT results and produces the lowest temperature results, which is favorable to ventilation performance

A cyber-kill-chain based taxonomy of crypto-ransomware features

In spite of being just a few years old, ransomware is quickly becoming a serious threat to our digital infrastructures, data and services. Majority of ransomware families are requesting for a ransom payment to restore a custodian access or decrypt data which were encrypted by the ransomware earlier. Although the ransomware attack strategy seems to be simple, security specialists ranked ransomware as a sophisticated attack vector with many variations and families. Wide range of features which are available in different families and versions of ransomware further complicates their detection and analysis. Though the existing body of research provides significant discussions about ransomware details and capabilities, the all research body is fragmented. Therefore, a ransomware feature taxonomy would advance cyber defenders’ understanding of associated risks of ransomware. In this paper we provide, to the best of our knowledge, the first scientific taxonomy of ransomware features, aligned with Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain (CKC) model. CKC is a well-established model in industry that describes stages of cyber intrusion attempts. To ease the challenge of applying our taxonomy in real world, we also provide the corresponding ransomware defence taxonomy aligned with Courses of Action matrix (an intelligence-driven defence model). We believe that this research study is of high value for the cyber security research community, as it provides the researchers with a means of assessing the vulnerabilities and attack vectors towards the intended victims