Behavioral changes associated with loss of NSPC-derived VEGF in vivo after KA induced excitotoxic injury

Seizures are sudden abnormal electrical activity in the brain that lead to excitotoxic tissue damage, changes in mood and behavior, and even death. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) has been shown to protect against seizure and excitotoxic injury in rats. We have recently shown that neural stem and progenitor cells (NSPCs) produce a significant amount of the VEGF in the dentate gyrus (DG). In order to study the contribution of NSPC produced VEGF in modulating seizures and their sequelae, we used VEGFfl/flNestinCreERT2 mice in a kainic acid (KA) induced excitotoxicity model. Using VEGFfl/flNestinCreERT2 mice following tamoxifen (TAM) injection allows for the inducible knock down (KD) of VEGF in NSPCs. After either KA or vehicle treatment, mice were given hippocampus-dependent behavioral tests consisting of a novel arm test in a Y maze, an object location test (OLT), and an elevated plus maze (EPM). Analysis of the novel arm test and the OLT confirm that the KA treatment impaired memory. Surprisingly, NSPC-specific VEGF KD seems to result in decreased memory at baseline compared to control mice and may or may not be further impacted by excitotoxic injury. Analysis of the EPM suggests that VEGF KD and KA treatment had no effects on mice's anxiety-like behavior. Elucidating the functional effects of NSPC-derived factors such as VEGF in the context of injury is a critical step to understanding how stem cells modulate brain function and will aid in the successful implementation of NSPCs as therapeutic agents.Undergraduate Research Scholarship from the College of Arts and Science Honors ProgramNo embargoAcademic Major: Psycholog

Robotic Table Tennis: A Case Study into a High Speed Learning System

We present a deep-dive into a real-world robotic learning system that, in previous work, was shown to be capable of hundreds of table tennis rallies with a human and has the ability to precisely return the ball to desired targets. This system puts together a highly optimized perception subsystem, a high-speed low-latency robot controller, a simulation paradigm that can prevent damage in the real world and also train policies for zero-shot transfer, and automated real world environment resets that enable autonomous training and evaluation on physical robots. We complement a complete system description, including numerous design decisions that are typically not widely disseminated, with a collection of studies that clarify the importance of mitigating various sources of latency, accounting for training and deployment distribution shifts, robustness of the perception system, sensitivity to policy hyper-parameters, and choice of action space. A video demonstrating the components of the system and details of experimental results can be found at https://youtu.be/uFcnWjB42I0.Comment: Published and presented at Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS2023

Environmentally Friendly and Cost-Effective Synthesis of Carbonaceous Particles for Preparing Hollow SnO2 Nanospheres and their Bifunctional Li-Storage and Gas-Sensing Properties

The templated preparation of hollow nanomaterials has received broad attention. However, many templates are expansive, environmentally-harmful, along with involving a complicated preparation process. Herein, we present a cost-effective, environmentally friendly and simple approach for making carbonaceous particles which have been demonstrated as efficient templates for preparing hollow nanospheres. Natural biomass, such as wheat or corn, is used as the source only, and thus other chemicals are not needed. The carbonaceous particles possess abundant hydroxyl and carboxyl groups, enabling them to efficiently adsorb metal ions in solution. The prepared SnO2 hollow spheres were used in a lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery anode, and as the sensing layer of a gas sensor, respectively. After charge–discharge for 200 times at a rate of 1 C, the anodes exhibit a stable capacity of 500 mAh g−1, and a Coulombic efficiency as high as 99%. In addition, the gas sensor based on the SnO2 hollow spheres shows a high sensing performance towards ethanol gas. It is expected that the presented natural biomass-derived particles and their green preparation method will find more applications for broad research fields, including energy-storage and sensors

Co-coating ZnCo2O4 and carbon on a biomimetic sea anemone-shaped SnO2 mesostructure for high-performance lithium-ion batteries and semi-solid lithium slurry batteries

Biomimetic materials are receiving increasing attention as potential candidates for secondary battery systems owing to unique structures and properties. Here, we develop a biomimetic composite composing of sea anemone-shaped hollow SnO2 in-situ co-coating with ZnCo2O4 nanoparticles encapsulated by a carbon shell. The bio-mimetic SnO2@ZnCo2O4@C-based Li-ion battery anode shows a stable capacity of 700 mAh g(-1) after 350 cycles, a Coulombic efficiency exceeding 99% and a repeatable rate-performance. Low reaction barriers and rapid diffusion kinetics of Li ions are verified by using galvanostatic intermittent titration technique analysis. More -over, a full cell composing of a SnO2@ZnCo2O4@C anode and a LiCoO2 cathode exhibits 520 mAh g(-1); while working as a slurry battery anode, the sea anemone-shaped SnO2@ZnCo2O4@C also displays high capacity and Coulombic efficiency after 100 cycles. The high performances of the biomimetic composite when working at different battery systems enable it to be applicable broadly

Co-coating ZnCo2O4 and carbon on a biomimetic sea anemone-shaped SnO2 mesostructure for high-performance lithium-ion batteries and semi-solid lithium slurry batteries

Biomimetic materials are receiving increasing attention as potential candidates for secondary battery systems owing to unique structures and properties. Here, we develop a biomimetic composite composing of sea anemone-shaped hollow SnO2 in-situ co-coating with ZnCo2O4 nanoparticles encapsulated by a carbon shell. The bio-mimetic SnO2@ZnCo2O4@C-based Li-ion battery anode shows a stable capacity of 700 mAh g(-1) after 350 cycles, a Coulombic efficiency exceeding 99% and a repeatable rate-performance. Low reaction barriers and rapid diffusion kinetics of Li ions are verified by using galvanostatic intermittent titration technique analysis. More -over, a full cell composing of a SnO2@ZnCo2O4@C anode and a LiCoO2 cathode exhibits 520 mAh g(-1); while working as a slurry battery anode, the sea anemone-shaped SnO2@ZnCo2O4@C also displays high capacity and Coulombic efficiency after 100 cycles. The high performances of the biomimetic composite when working at different battery systems enable it to be applicable broadly

Virulence changes in Vibrio parahaemolyticus during the freezing of Penaeus chinensis

Although Vibrio parahaemolyticus has become the most common pathogen in fresh and frozen seafood, its virulence changes have often been ignored during the processing of seafood. To investigate these potential risks, we used frozen Penaeus chinensis as examples, and the most virulent factors of V. parahaemolyticus, including amounts, VBNC status, toxins TDH and TRH, and virulence genes tdh and trh, were determined. Bacterial quantities were significantly reduced during drain and sprinkling phases, but caused by different factors. By SYTO9 and PI staining showed that washing was the main reason for the bacterial reduction at the drain phase, while the strain entering VBNC state was another reason at sprinkling phase. Their hemolysis toxicity, produced by TDH and TRH, became stronger after inoculation on shrimp, and could be detected throughout the process. Moreover, tdh and trh also exhibited trends similar to that of the hemolysis toxicity test. tdh was almost to a two-fold expression level during ice-glazing phase, while trh only express at a low level, less than half of the expression level before inoculation. These results demonstrated that the strains were not dead during freezing process, but became VBNC cells, which still produced and accumulated toxins, especially TDH, the most virulent factor

Real-Time Multi-Focus Biomedical Microscopic Image Fusion Based on m-SegNet

Activity level measurement and fusion rules are the two key factors of image fusion. In the fusion method based on neural networks, the activity level measurements are realized by dividing the image into small blocks and predicting the sharpness of each block; then, the global decision graph guiding fusion is generated according to the predicted results. However, these two tasks are serial in nature, which makes it difficult to complete them simultaneously while achieving satisfactory fusion performance. Therefore, a new multi-focus microscopic image fusion method is proposed in this paper to quickly fuse multiple histological microscopic images from different focusing planes to generate full-focus images. The improved SegNet network was used to detect the unfocused regions. Considering that two or more images are needed for fusion, a parallel fusion strategy is proposed herein to generate clear fusion images based on multiple images instead of pairwise decision graphs. Compared with the convolutional neural network, the proposed network has better representation ability and can extract and fuse the most ideal features to provide a more accurate fusion decision. Compared with the traditional Segnet network, it is lightweight, which greatly improves computing speed and achieves real-time fusion

A Magnesium/Lithium Hybrid-Ion Battery with Modified All-Phenyl-Complex-Based Electrolyte Displaying Ultralong Cycle Life and Ultrahigh Energy Density

Magnesium/lithium hybrid-ion batteries (MLHBs) combine the advantages of high safety and fast ionic kinetics, which enable them to be promising emerging energy-storage systems. Here, a high-performance MLHB using a modified all-phenyl complex with a lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide electrolyte and a NiCo2S4 cathode on a copper current collector is developed. A reversible conversion involving a copper collector with NiCo2S4 efficiently avoids the electrolyte dissociation and diffusion difficulties of Mg2+ ions, enabling low polarization and fast redox, which is verified by X-ray absorption near edge structure analysis. Such combination affords the best MLHB among all those ever reported, with a reversible capacity of 204.7 mAh g(-1) after 2600 cycles at 2.0 A g(-1), and delivers an ultrahigh full electrode-basis energy density of 708 Wh kg(-1). The developed MLHB also achieves good rate performance and temperature tolerance at -10 and 50 degrees C with a low electrolyte consumption. The hybrid-ion battery system presented here could inspire a broad set of engineering potentials for high-safety battery technologies and beyond