Thalamic Activation Modulates the Responses of Neurons in Rat Primary Auditory Cortex: An In Vivo Intracellular Recording Study

Auditory cortical plasticity can be induced through various approaches. The medial geniculate body (MGB) of the auditory thalamus gates the ascending auditory inputs to the cortex. The thalamocortical system has been proposed to play a critical role in the responses of the auditory cortex (AC). In the present study, we investigated the cellular mechanism of the cortical activity, adopting an in vivo intracellular recording technique, recording from the primary auditory cortex (AI) while presenting an acoustic stimulus to the rat and electrically stimulating its MGB. We found that low-frequency stimuli enhanced the amplitudes of sound-evoked excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) in AI neurons, whereas high-frequency stimuli depressed these auditory responses. The degree of this modulation depended on the intensities of the train stimuli as well as the intervals between the electrical stimulations and their paired sound stimulations. These findings may have implications regarding the basic mechanisms of MGB activation of auditory cortical plasticity and cortical signal processing

Molecular mechanism of the TP53-MDM2-AR-AKT signalling network regulation by USP12

The TP53-MDM2-AR-AKT signalling network plays a critical role in the development and progression of prostate cancer. However, the molecular mechanisms regulating this signalling network are not completely defined. By conducting transcriptome analysis, denaturing immunoprecipitations and immunopathology, we demonstrate that the TP53-MDM2-AR-AKT cross-talk is regulated by the deubiquitinating enzyme USP12 in prostate cancer. Our findings explain why USP12 is one of the 12 most commonly overexpressed cancer-associated genes located near an amplified super-enhancer. We find that USP12 deubiquitinates MDM2 and AR, which in turn controls the levels of the TP53 tumour suppressor and AR oncogene in prostate cancer. Consequently, USP12 levels are predictive not only of cancer development but also of patient’s therapy resistance, relapse and survival. Therefore, our findings suggest that USP12 could serve as a promising therapeutic target in currently incurable castrate-resistant prostate cancer

Electric vehicles fleet for frequency regulation using a multi-agent system

International audienceThe production of PhotoVoltaic (PV) energy depends on the solar irradiance level. The PV power plant fluctuations may have a significant impact on the frequency regulation in sufficiently small power systems, such as islands. The objective of this paper is to present a method using cooperative multi-agent systems to reduce the frequency fluctuations due to the unpredicted fluctuations of the PV production using electric vehicles as electricity storage units in an isolated power system

Intelligent Transportation Systems Enabled ICT Framework for Electric Vehicle Charging in Smart City

In the future, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are expected to be widely adopted as personal, commercial, and public fleets in modern cities. The popularity of EVs will have a significant impact on the sustainable and economic development of urban city. However, compared to traditional fossil fuel vehicles, EVs have limited range and inevitably necessitate regular recharging. Thus, the provisioning of assured service quality is necessary for realizing E-mobility solution using EVs. The design of an efficient charging management system for EVs has become an emerging research problem in future connected vehicles applications, given their mobility uncertainties. Major technical challenges involve decision-making intelligence for the selection of Charging Stations (CSs), as well as the corresponding communication infrastructure for information dissemination between the power grid and mobile EVs. This chapter introduces a number of information enabling technologies that been applied for EV charging, viewed from a transportation planning angle

Electric Vehicles Aggregation in Market Environment: A Stochastic Grid-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Grid Management

Part 10: Energy MarketsInternational audienceThis paper addresses a development of a support management system for a power system aggregator managing a fleet of electric vehicles and bidding in a day-ahead electricity market. The support management system is modeled by stochastic mixed integer linear programming approach. The charge and discharge of the batteries of the fleet of vehicles are brought about to a convenient contribution for the maximization of the expected profit of the aggregator. The optimization takes into consideration the profiles of usage of the vehicle owners and the battery degradation of the vehicles. The vehicles are assumed as bidirectional energy flow units: allowing grid-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-grid operation modes. A strong interaction of information exchange is assumed between the aggregator and vehicle owners. A set of scenarios is created by a scenario generation method based on the Kernel Density Estimation technique and are subjected to a reduction by a K-means clustering technique. A case study with data of Electricity Market of Iberian Peninsula is presented to drive conclusion about the support management system developed