Frequency Specific Cortical Dynamics During Motor Imagery Are Influenced by Prior Physical Activity

Motor imagery is often used inducing changes in electroencephalographic (EEG) signals for imagery-based brain-computer interfacing (BCI). A BCI is a device translating brain signals into control signals providing severely motor-impaired persons with an additional, non-muscular channel for communication and control. In the last years, there is increasing interest using BCIs also for healthy people in terms of enhancement or gaming. Most studies focusing on improving signal processing feature extraction and classification methods, but the performance of a BCI can also be improved by optimizing the user’s control strategies, e.g., using more vivid and engaging mental tasks for control. We used multichannel EEG to investigate neural correlates of a sports imagery task (playing tennis) compared to a simple motor imagery task (squeezing a ball). To enhance the vividness of both tasks participants performed a short physical exercise between two imagery sessions. EEG was recorded from 60 closely spaced electrodes placed over frontal, central, and parietal areas of 30 healthy volunteers divided in two groups. Whereas Group 1 (EG) performed a physical exercise between the two imagery sessions, Group 2 (CG) watched a landscape movie without physical activity. Spatiotemporal event-related desynchronization (ERD) and event-related synchronization (ERS) patterns during motor imagery (MI) tasks were evaluated. The results of the EG showed significant stronger ERD patterns in the alpha frequency band (8–13 Hz) during MI of tennis after training. Our results are in evidence with previous findings that MI in combination with motor execution has beneficial effects. We conclude that sports MI combined with an interactive game environment could be a future promising task in motor learning and rehabilitation improving motor functions in late therapy processes or support neuroplasticity

Complexity of Strong Implementability

We consider the question of implementability of a social choice function in a classical setting where the preferences of finitely many selfish individuals with private information have to be aggregated towards a social choice. This is one of the central questions in mechanism design. If the concept of weak implementation is considered, the Revelation Principle states that one can restrict attention to truthful implementations and direct revelation mechanisms, which implies that implementability of a social choice function is easy to check. For the concept of strong implementation, however, the Revelation Principle becomes invalid, and the complexity of deciding whether a given social choice function is strongly implementable has been open so far. In this paper, we show by using methods from polyhedral theory that strong implementability of a social choice function can be decided in polynomial space and that each of the payments needed for strong implementation can always be chosen to be of polynomial encoding length. Moreover, we show that strong implementability of a social choice function involving only a single selfish individual can be decided in polynomial time via linear programming

Assessing Tolerance to Heavy-Metal Stress in Arabidopsis thaliana Seedlings

The deposited book chapter is a post-print version and has been submitted to peer review.The deposited book chapter version contains attached the supplementary materials within the pdf.This publication hasn't any creative commons license associated.The deposited book chapter is part of the book series: "Environmental Responses in Plants: Methods and Protocols" (pp.197-208) published by Springer.Heavy-metal soil contamination is one of the major abiotic stress factors that, by negatively affecting plant growth and development, severely limit agricultural productivity worldwide. Plants have evolved various tolerance and detoxification strategies in order to cope with heavy-metal toxicity while ensuring adequate supply of essential micronutrients at the whole-plant as well as cellular levels. Genetic studies in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana have been instrumental in elucidating such mechanisms. The root assay constitutes a very powerful and simple method to assess heavy-metal stress tolerance in Arabidopsis seedlings. It allows the simultaneous determination of all the standard growth parameters affected by heavy-metal stress (primary root elongation, lateral root development, shoot biomass, and chlorophyll content) in a single experiment. Additionally, this protocol emphasizes the tips and tricks that become particularly useful when quantifying subtle alterations in tolerance to a given heavy-metal stress, when simultaneously pursuing a large number of plant lines, or when testing sensitivity to a wide range of heavy metals for a single line.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia grants: (EXPL/AGR-PRO/1013/2013, SFRH/BPD/44640/2008); GREEN-it "Bioresources for Sustainability": (UID/Multi/04551/2013).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Clinical and functional effects of a deletion in a COOH-terminal lumenal loop of the skeletal muscle ryanodine receptor

We have identified a patient affected by a relatively severe form of central core disease (CCD), carrying a heterozygous deletion (amino acids 4863-4869) in the pore-forming region of the sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium release channel. The functional effect of this deletion was investigated (i) in lymphoblastoid cells from the affected patient and her mother, who was also found to harbour the mutation and (ii) in HEK293 cells expressing recombinant mutant channels. Lymphoblastoid cells carrying the RYR1 deletion exhibit an ‘unprompted' calcium release from intracellular stores, resulting in significantly smaller thapsigargin-sensitive intracellular Ca2+ stores, compared with lymphoblastoid cells from control individuals. Blocking the RYR1 with dantrolene restored the intracellular calcium stores to levels similar to those found in control cells. Single channel and [3H]ryanodine binding measurements of heterologously expressed mutant channels revealed a reduced ion conductance and loss of ryanodine binding and regulation by Ca2+. Heterologous expression of recombinant RYR1 peptides and analysis of their membrane topology demonstrate that the deleted amino acids are localized in the lumenal loop connecting membrane-spanning segments M8 and M10. We provide evidence that a deletion in the lumenal loop of RYR1alters channel function and causes CC

A multi-scenario Lagrangian trajectory analysis to identify source regions of the Asian tropopause aerosol layer on the Indian subcontinent in August 2016

The Asian tropopause aerosol layer (ATAL) is present during the Asian summer monsoon season affecting the radiative balance of the atmosphere. However, the source regions and transport pathways of ATAL particles are still uncertain. Here, we investigate transport pathways from different regions at the model boundary layer (MBL) to the ATAL by combining two Lagrangian transport models (CLaMS, Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere; MPTRAC, Massive-Parallel Trajectory Calculations) with balloon-borne measurements of the ATAL performed by the Compact Optical Backscatter Aerosol Detector (COBALD) above Nainital (India) in August 2016. Trajectories are initialised at the measured location of the ATAL and calculated 90 d backwards in time to investigate the relation between the measured, daily averaged, aerosol backscatter ratio and source regions at the MBL. Different simulation scenarios are performed to find differences and robust patterns when the reanalysis data (ERA5 or ERA-Interim), the trajectory model, the vertical coordinate (kinematic and diabatic approach) or the convective parameterisation are varied. The robust finding among all scenarios is that the largest continental air mass contributions originate from the Tibetan Plateau and the Indian subcontinent (mostly the Indo-Gangetic Plain), and the largest maritime air mass contributions in Asia come from the western Pacific (e.g. related to tropical cyclones). Additionally, all simulation scenarios indicate that the transport of maritime air from the tropical western Pacific to the region of the ATAL lowers the backscatter ratio (BSR) of the ATAL, while most scenarios indicate that the transport of polluted air from the Indo-Gangetic Plain increases the BSR. While the results corroborate key findings from previous ERA-Interim-based studies, they also highlight the variability in the contributions of different MBL regions to the ATAL depending on different simulation scenarios.</p

Expression and localization of nuclear proteins in autosomal-dominant Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy with LMNA R377H mutation

BACKGROUND: The autosomal dominant form of Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (AD-EDMD) is caused by mutations in the gene encoding for the lamins A and C (LMNA). Lamins are intermediate filament proteins which form the nuclear lamina underlying the inner nuclear membrane. We have studied the expression and the localization of nuclear envelope proteins in three different cell types and muscle tissue of an AD-EDMD patient carrying a point mutation R377H in the lamin A/C gene. RESULTS: Lymphoblastoid cells, skin fibroblasts, primary myoblasts and muscle thin sections were studied by immunocytochemistry and electron microscopy. Cellular levels of A-type lamins were reduced compared to control cells. In contrast, the amount of emerin and lamin B appeared unaltered. Cell synchronization experiments showed that the reduction of the cellular level of A-type lamin was due to instability of lamin A. By electron microscopy, we identified a proportion of nuclei with morphological alterations in lymphoblastoid cells, fibroblasts and mature muscle fibres. Immunofluorescence microscopy showed that a major population of the lamin B receptor (LBR), an inner nuclear membrane protein, was recovered in the cytoplasm in association with the ER. In addition, the intranuclear organization of the active form of RNA polymerase II was markedly different in cells of this AD-EDMD patient. This aberrant intranuclear distribution was specifically observed in muscle cells where the pathology of EDMD predominates. CONCLUSIONS: From our results we conclude: Firstly, that structural alterations of the nuclei which are found only in a minor fraction of lymphoblastoid cells and mature muscle fibres are not sufficient to explain the clinical pathology of EDMD; Secondly, that wild type lamin A is required not only for the retention of LBR in the inner nuclear membrane but also for a correct localization of the transcriptionally active RNA pol II in muscle cells. We speculate that a rearrangement of the internal chromatin could lead to muscle-specific disease symptoms by interference with proper mRNA transcription

Effect of the nitrification inhibitor 3,4-dimethylpyrazole phosphate (DMPP) on N-turnover, the N2_{2}O reductase-gene nosZ and N2_{2}O:N2_{2} partitioning from agricultural soils

Nitrification inhibitors (NIs) have been shown to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N$_{2}$O) from agricultural soils. However, their N$_{2}$O reduction efficacy varies widely across different agro-ecosystems, and underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. To investigate effects of the NI 3,4-dimethylpyrazole-phosphate (DMPP) on N-turnover from a pasture and a horticultural soil, we combined the quantification of N$_{2}$ and N$_{2}$O emissions with $^{15}$N tracing analysis and the quantification of the N$_{2}$O-reductase gene (nosZ) in a soil microcosm study. Nitrogen fertilization suppressed nosZ abundance in both soils, showing that high nitrate availability and the preferential reduction of nitrate over N$_{2}$O is responsible for large pulses of N$_{2}$O after the fertilization of agricultural soils. DMPP attenuated this effect only in the horticultural soil, reducing nitrification while increasing nosZ abundance. DMPP reduced N$_{2}$O emissions from the horticultural soil by >50% but did not affect overall N$_{2}$ + N$_{2}$O losses, demonstrating the shift in the N$_{2}$O:N$_{2}$ ratio towards N$_{2}$ as a key mechanism of N$_{2}$O mitigation by NIs. Under non-limiting NO$_{3}$$^{-}$ availability, the efficacy of NIs to mitigate N$_{2}$O emissions therefore depends on their ability to reduce the suppression of the N$_{2}$O reductase by high NO$_{3}$$^{-}$ concentrations in the soil, enabling complete denitrification to N$_{2}$

Dual-probe decoherence microscopy: Probing pockets of coherence in a decohering environment

We study the use of a pair of qubits as a decoherence probe of a non-trivial environment. This dual-probe configuration is modelled by three two-level-systems which are coupled in a chain in which the middle system represents an environmental two-level-system (TLS). This TLS resides within the environment of the qubits and therefore its coupling to perturbing fluctuations (i.e. its decoherence) is assumed much stronger than the decoherence acting on the probe qubits. We study the evolution of such a tripartite system including the appearance of a decoherence-free state (dark state) and non-Markovian behaviour. We find that all parameters of this TLS can be obtained from measurements of one of the probe qubits. Furthermore we show the advantages of two qubits in probing environments and the new dynamics imposed by a TLS which couples to two qubits at once.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figure

Sensing sociability: Individual differences in young adults' conversation, calling, texting, and app use behaviors in daily life.

Sociability as a disposition describes a tendency to affiliate with others (vs. be alone). Yet, we know relatively little about how much social behavior people engage in during a typical day. One challenge to documenting social behavior tendencies is the broad number of channels over which socializing can occur, both in-person and through digital media. To examine individual differences in everyday social behavior patterns, here we used smartphone-based mobile sensing methods (MSMs) in four studies (total N = 926) to collect real-world data about young adults' social behaviors across four communication channels: conversations, phone calls, text messages, and use of messaging and social media applications. To examine individual differences, we first focused on establishing between-person variability in daily social behavior, examining stability of and relationships among daily sensed social behavior tendencies. To explore factors that may explain the observed individual differences in sensed social behavior, we then expanded our focus to include other time estimates (e.g., times of the day, days of the week) and personality traits. In doing so, we present the first large-scale descriptive portrait of behavioral sociability patterns, characterizing the degree to which young adults engaged in social behaviors and mapping these behaviors onto self-reported personality dispositions. Our discussion focuses on how the observed sociability patterns compare to previous research on young adults' social behavior. We conclude by pointing to areas for future research aimed at understanding sociability using mobile sensing and other naturalistic observation methods for the assessment of social behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)