The effects of memantine on prepulse inhibition.

Reduced prepulse inhibition (PPI) of startle provides evidence of deficient sensorimotor gating in several disorders, including schizophrenia. The role of NMDA neurotransmission in the regulation of PPI is unclear, due to cross-species differences in the effects of NMDA antagonists on PPI. Recent reports suggest that drug effects on PPI differ in subgroups of normal humans that differ in the levels of baseline PPI or specific personality domains; here, we tested the effects of these variables on the sensitivity of PPI to the NMDA antagonist, memantine. PPI was measured in male Sprague-Dawley rats, after treatment with memantine (0, 10 or 20 mg/kg, s.c.). Baseline PPI was then measured in 37 healthy adult men. Next, subjects were tested twice, in a double-blind crossover design, comparing either (1) placebo vs 20 mg of the NMDA antagonist memantine (n=19) or (2) placebo vs 30 mg memantine (n=18). Tests included measures of acoustic startle amplitude, PPI, autonomic indices and subjective self-rating scales. Memantine had dose- and interval-dependent effects on PPI in rats. Compared with vehicle, 10 mg/kg increased short-interval (10-20 ms) PPI, and 20 mg/kg decreased long-interval (120 ms) PPI. In humans, memantine caused dose-dependent effects on psychological and somatic measures: 20 mg was associated with increased ratings of happiness, and 30 mg was associated with increased ratings of dizziness. PPI at the 120 ms prepulse interval was increased by 20 mg, but not 30 mg of memantine. Subgroups most sensitive to the PPI-enhancing effects of memantine were those with low baseline PPI, or with personality scale scores suggestive of high novelty seeking, high sensation seeking, or high disinhibition. NMDA blockade with memantine appears to have dose- and interval-dependent effects on sensorimotor gating in rats and humans, particularly among specific subgroups of normal human subjects. These findings are discussed as they relate to consistencies across other studies in humans, as well as apparent inconsistencies in the NMDA regulation of PPI across species

Selfish Dark Matter

We present a mechanism where a particle asymmetry in one sector is used to generate an asymmetry in another sector. The two sectors are not coupled through particle number violating interactions and are not required to be in thermal contact with each other. When this mechanism is applied to baryogenesis in asymmetric dark matter models, we find that the dark matter particles can be extremely light, e.g. much lighter than an eV, and that in some cases there is no need to annihilate away the symmetric component of dark matter. We discuss a concrete realization of the mechanism with signals in direct detection, at the LHC, at $B$-factories or future beam dump experiments.Comment: 18+5 pages, 2 figures; Journal version: Added references, small changes to the free-streaming length estimate

Linear Categorical Marginal Modeling of solicited symptoms in vaccine clinical trials

Analysis of the occurrence of adverse events, and in particular of solicited symptoms, following vaccination is often needed for the safety and benefit-risk evaluation of any candidate vaccine, and typically involves taking repeated measurements. In this article, it is shown that Linear Categorical Marginal Models (LCMMs) are well suited to take into account the dependencies in the data arising from the repeated measurements and provide detailed and useful information for comparing safety profiles of different products while remaining relatively easy to interpret. LCMMs are presented and applied to a Phase III clinical trial of a candidate meningococcal pediatric vaccine

Beyond Pearson’s correlation: modern nonparametric independence tests for psychological research

When examining whether two continuous variables are associated, tests based on Pearson’s, Kendall’s, and Spearman’s correlation coefficients are typically used. This paper explores modern nonparametric independence tests as an alternative, which, unlike traditional tests, have the ability to potentially detect any type of relationship. In addition to existing modern nonparametric independence tests, we developed and considered two novel variants of existing tests, most notably the Heller-Heller-Gorfine-Pearson (HHG-Pearson) test. We conducted a simulation study to compare traditional independence tests, such as Pearson’s correlation, and the modern nonparametric independence tests in situations commonly encountered in psychological research. As expected, no test had the highest power across all relationships. However, the distance correlation and the HHG-Pearson tests were found to have substantially greater power than all traditional tests for many relationships and only slightly less power in the worst case. A similar pattern was found in favor of the HHG-Pearson test compared to the distance correlation test. However, given that distance correlation performed better for linear relationships and is more widely accepted, we suggest considering its use in place or additional to traditional methods when there is no prior knowledge of the relationship type, as is often the case in psychological research

On predicting religion labels in microblogging networks

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under International Research Centres in Singapore Funding Initiativ

Measurement of the CMS Magnetic Field

The measurement of the magnetic field in the tracking volume inside the superconducting coil of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector under construction at CERN is done with a fieldmapper designed and produced at Fermilab. The fieldmapper uses 10 3-D B-sensors (Hall probes) developed at NIKHEF and calibrated at CERN to precision 0.05% for a nominal 4 T field. The precise fieldmapper measurements are done in 33840 points inside a cylinder of 1.724 m radius and 7 m long at central fields of 2, 3, 3.5, 3.8, and 4 T. Three components of the magnetic flux density at the CMS coil maximum excitation and the remanent fields on the steel-air interface after discharge of the coil are measured in check-points with 95 3-D B-sensors located near the magnetic flux return yoke elements. Voltages induced in 22 flux-loops made of 405-turn installed on selected segments of the yoke are sampled online during the entire fast discharge (190 s time-constant) of the CMS coil and integrated offline to provide a measurement of the initial magnetic flux density in steel at the maximum field to an accuracy of a few percent. The results of the measurements made at 4 T are reported and compared with a three-dimensional model of the CMS magnet system calculated with TOSCA.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, 15 reference

Музичні жанри: класифікаційні проблеми

Music genres – one of the main terms of the theoretical music studies and music practice, which reflect àesthetic and regulative constants of the music art. The music genres belong to the most important communicative-semantic basics of the artistic systems. This article is an attempt to figure out regulative basics for the development of the music genre theory