White-Matter Structural Connectivity in Relation to Humor Styles: An Exploratory Study

To investigate the potential relationship between white matter (WM) microstructure and humor styles, diffusion tensor images of brain WM and humor style tendencies were obtained from thirty healthy adults. Using connectivity efficiency measures from graph theoretical analysis and controlling for the influence of gender, age, educational level, and the big five personality traits, we preliminarily examined the prediction of humor styles from brain network efficiency. The results showed that the local efficiency within particular brain networks positively predicted a self-enhancing humor style and negatively predicted an aggressive humor style. The node efficiency of the left superior temporal gyrus distinguished the benevolent or hostile way that individuals coped with interpersonal embarrassment. These findings from this exploratory study support the hypothesis that WM structure influences humor styles, and provide the initial evidence and implications regarding the relationship between biological mechanisms and mental health for future research

Observation of Coulomb repulsion between Cu intercalants in CuxBi2Se3

Using scanning tunneling microscopy and ab initio simulations, we have identified several configurations for Cu dopants in CuxBi2Se3, with Cu intercalants being the most abundant. Through statistical analysis, we show strong short-range repulsive interactions between Cu intercalants. At intermediate range (\u3e5 nm), the pair distribution function shows oscillatory structure along the \u3c 10 (1) over bar \u3e directions, which appear to be influenced by different diffusion barriers along the \u3c 10 (1) over bar \u3e and \u3c 2 (1) over bar(1) over bar \u3e directions

An Intelligent Parking Scheduling Algorithm Based on Traffic and Driver Behavior Predictions

International audience; Smart parking is a common demand of citizen, especially for people living in a smart city. It is an important issue since it not only determines the required parking time of drivers but also impacts the urban population and traffic congestion. In this paper, an intelligent parking algorithm is presented based on the predictions of traffics and drivers’ behaviors. The proposed parking algorithm analyzes the historical parking records, predicts the parking traffics and the driver’s parking length and then schedules the vehicles to the parking grids such that the maximal benefits can be obtained. The proposed algorithm also dynamically allocates their reservations but guarantees the parking reservations for the VIP members. But based on the parking space resource. Performance analysis through extensive simulations demonstrates the efficiency and practicality of the proposed scheme. Document type: Conference objec

Nanowrinkled Carbon Aerogels Embedded with FeN x Sites as Effective Oxygen Electrodes for Rechargeable Zinc-Air Battery.

Rational design of single-metal atom sites in carbon substrates by a flexible strategy is highly desired for the preparation of high-performance catalysts for metal-air batteries. In this study, biomass hydrogel reactors are utilized as structural templates to prepare carbon aerogels embedded with single iron atoms by controlled pyrolysis. The tortuous and interlaced hydrogel chains lead to the formation of abundant nanowrinkles in the porous carbon aerogels, and single iron atoms are dispersed and stabilized within the defective carbon skeletons. X-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements indicate that the iron centers are mostly involved in the coordination structure of FeN4, with a minor fraction (ca. 1/5) in the form of FeN3C. First-principles calculations show that the FeN x sites in the Stone-Wales configurations induced by the nanowrinkles of the hierarchically porous carbon aerogels show a much lower free energy than the normal counterparts. The resulting iron and nitrogen-codoped carbon aerogels exhibit excellent and reversible oxygen electrocatalytic activity, and can be used as bifunctional cathode catalysts in rechargeable Zn-air batteries, with a performance even better than that based on commercial Pt/C and RuO2 catalysts. Results from this study highlight the significance of structural distortions of the metal sites in carbon matrices in the design and engineering of highly active single-atom catalysts

MUC4 gene polymorphisms associate with endometriosis development and endometriosis-related infertility

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mucin 4 (<it>MUC4</it>) plays an important role in protecting and lubricating the epithelial surface of reproductive tracts, but its role in the pathogenesis of endometriosis is largely unknown.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To correlate <it>MUC4 </it>polymorphism with the risk of endometriosis and endometriosis-related infertility, we performed a case-control study of 140 patients and 150 healthy women. Six unique single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (rs882605, rs1104760, rs2688513, rs2246901, rs2258447 and rs2291652) were selected for this study. DNA fragments containing the target SNP sites were amplified by polymerase chain reaction using the TaqMan SNP Genotyping Assay System to evaluate allele frequency and distribution of genotype in <it>MUC4 </it>polymorphisms.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Both the T/G genotype of rs882605 and the frequency of haplotype T-T (rs882605 and rs1104760) were higher in patients than in controls and were statistically significant. The frequency of the C allele at rs1104760, the C allele at rs2688513, the G allele at rs2246901 and the A allele at rs2258447 were associated with advanced stage of endometriosis. Moreover, the G allele at rs882605 was verified as a key genetic factor for infertility in patients. Protein sequence analysis indicated that amino acid substitutions by genetic variations at rs882605, rs2688513 and rs2246901 occur in the putative functional loops and the type D von Willebrand factor (VWFD) domain in the MUC4 sequence.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p><it>MUC4 </it>polymorphisms are associated with endometriosis development and endometriosis-related infertility in the Taiwanese population.</p

Pelvic skeletal metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma with sarcomatous change: a case report

Sarcomatoid hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a very rare histologic variant of HCC. The characteristic of skeletal metastatic sarcomatoid hepatocellular carcinoma has never been reported. We reported a patient with sarcomatoid hepatocellular carcinoma pelvic metastasis who presented with huge pelvic metastasis that had relatively small osteolytic lesion centrally located accompanied by huge bipeduncular invasive expansile lesions into surrounding soft tissue. The lesion showed almost non-isotope uptake in 99mTc-methylene diphosphonate bone scintigraphy study. He underwent radiotherapy and tumor excision but the tumor rapidly recurred. In addition, serum α-fetoprotein level was never elevated beyond normal limit (< 20 ng/mL) through the whole course of treatment. We considered sarcomatoid hepatocellular carcinoma bone metastasis a highly aggressive lesion with unusual metastatic pattern. Surgical treatment with adequate safe margin in such a huge tumor with hypervascularity and extensive invasion in the pelvis was difficult; and radiotherapy maybe refractory regarding the sarcomatous nature. Therefore, debulking operation with local symptoms control may provide a better quality of life. And the clinical course suggests sarcomatoid hepatocellular carcinoma is derived from the transition of an ordinary hepatocellular carcinoma

Room-temperature biphoton source with a spectral brightness near the ultimate limit

The biphotons, generated from a hot atomic vapor via the process of spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM), have the following merits: stable and tunable frequencies as well as linewidth. Such merits are very useful in the applications of long-distance quantum communication. However, the hot-atom SFWM biphoton sources previously had far lower values of generation rate per linewidth, i.e., spectral brightness, as compared with the sources of biphotons generated by the spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) process. Here, we report a hot-atom SFWM source of biphotons with a linewidth of 960 kHz and a generation rate of 3.7$\times$ $10^5$ pairs/s. The high generation rate, together with the narrow linewidth, results in a spectral brightness of 3.8$\times$ $10^5$ pairs/s/MHz, which is 17 times of the previous best result with atomic vapors and also better than all known results with all kinds of media. The all-copropagating scheme together with a large optical depth (OD) of the atomic vapor is the key improvement, enabling the achieved spectral brightness to be about one quarter of the ultimate limit. Furthermore, this biphoton source had a signal-to-background ratio (SBR) of 2.7, which violated the Cauchy-Schwartz inequality for classical light by about 3.6 folds. Although an increasing spectral brightness usually leads to a decreasing SBR, our systematic study indicates that both of the present spectral brightness and SBR can be enhanced by further increasing the OD. This work demonstrates a significant advancement and provides useful knowledge in the quantum technology using photons