Impaired contextual modulation of memories in PTSD: an fMRI and psychophysiological study of extinction retention and fear renewal

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients display pervasive fear memories, expressed indiscriminately. Proposed mechanisms include enhanced fear learning and impaired extinction or extinction recall. Documented extinction recall deficits and failure to use safety signals could result from general failure to use contextual information, a hippocampus-dependent process. This can be probed by adding a renewal phase to standard conditioning and extinction paradigms. Human subjects with PTSD and combat controls were conditioned (skin conductance response), extinguished, and tested for extinction retention and renewal in a scanner (fMRI). Fear conditioning (light paired with shock) occurred in one context, followed by extinction in another, to create danger and safety contexts. The next day, the extinguished conditioned stimulus (CS+E) was re-presented to assess extinction recall (safety context) and fear renewal (danger context). PTSD patients showed impaired extinction recall, with increased skin conductance and heightened amygdala activity to the extinguished CS+ in the safety context. However, they also showed impaired fear renewal; in the danger context, they had less skin conductance response to CS+E and lower activity in amygdala and ventral-medial prefrontal cortex compared with combat controls. Control subjects displayed appropriate contextual modulation of memory recall, with extinction (safety) memory prevailing in the safety context, and fear memory prevailing in the danger context. PTSD patients could not use safety context to sustain suppression of extinguished fear memory, but they also less effectively used danger context to enhance fear. They did not display globally enhanced fear expression, but rather showed a globally diminished capacity to use contextual information to modulate fear expression

Temporal and Spatial Patterns of Avifauna on Wetlands in the Vicinity of Bush Field Airport, Augusta, Georgia, USA

Responding to a U.S. Federal court order to improve discharged wastewater quality, Augusta, Georgia initiated development of artificial wetlands in 1997 to treat effluents. Because of the proximity to Augusta Regional Airport at Bush Field, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration expressed concern for potential increased hazard to aircraft posed by birds attracted to these wetlands. We commenced weekly low-level aerial surveys of habitats in the area beginning January, 1998. Over a one-year period, 49 surveys identified approximately 42,000 birds representing 52 species, including protected Wood Storks and Bald Eagles, using wetlands within 8 km of the airport. More birds were observed during the mid-winter and fall/spring migratory seasons (1,048 birds/survey; October - April) than during the breeding/post-breeding seasons (394 birds/survey; May - September). In winter, waterfowl dominated the avian assemblage (65% of all birds). During summer, wading birds were most abundant (56% of all birds). Habitat changes within the artificial wetlands produced fish kills and exposed mudflats, resulting in increased use by wading birds and shorebirds. No aquatic birds were implicated in 1998 bird strikes, and most birds involved could safely be placed within songbird categories. Airport incident reports further implicated songbirds. These findings suggested that efforts to decrease numbers of songbirds on the airport property must be included in the development of a wildlife hazard management plan. Seasonal differences in site use among species groups should also be considered in any such plan. Other wetlands within 8 km of the airport supported as many or more birds than the artificial wetlands. With proper management of the artificial wetlands, it should be possible to successfully displace waterfowl and wading birds to other wetlands further from the airport

Towards hardware acceleration of neuroevolution for multimedia processing applications on mobile devices

This paper addresses the problem of accelerating large artificial neural networks (ANN), whose topology and weights can evolve via the use of a genetic algorithm. The proposed digital hardware architecture is capable of processing any evolved network topology, whilst at the same time providing a good trade off between throughput, area and power consumption. The latter is vital for a longer battery life on mobile devices. The architecture uses multiple parallel arithmetic units in each processing element (PE). Memory partitioning and data caching are used to minimise the effects of PE pipeline stalling. A first order minimax polynomial approximation scheme, tuned via a genetic algorithm, is used for the activation function generator. Efficient arithmetic circuitry, which leverages modified Booth recoding, column compressors and carry save adders, is adopted throughout the design

Critical dynamics of an isothermal compressible non-ideal fluid

A pure fluid at its critical point shows a dramatic slow-down in its dynamics, due to a divergence of the order-parameter susceptibility and the coefficient of heat transport. Under isothermal conditions, however, sound waves provide the only possible relaxation mechanism for order-parameter fluctuations. Here we study the critical dynamics of an isothermal, compressible non-ideal fluid via scaling arguments and computer simulations of the corresponding fluctuating hydrodynamics equations. We show that, below a critical dimension of 4, the order-parameter dynamics of an isothermal fluid effectively reduces to "model A," characterized by overdamped sound waves and a divergent bulk viscosity. In contrast, the shear viscosity remains finite above two dimensions. Possible applications of the model are discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures; v3: minor corrections and clarifications; as published in Phys. Rev.

River Restoration to Achieve a Stage 0 Condition: Summary of a Workshop Held November 5-6, 2020

Restoration to achieve Stage 0 is a valley-scale, process-based (hydrologic, geologic and biological) approach that aims to reestablish stream depositional environments to maximize longitudinal, lateral, and vertical connectivity at base flows and facilitate development of dynamic, self-formed and self-sustaining wetland-stream complexes. The term Stage 0 originally described complex multi-channel conditions and wider floodplains that evidence suggests were common when Euro-Americans arrived. Stage 0 is one stage in a 9-stage stream channel evolution model. Stage 0 is now also more broadly used to describe stream restoration projects aimed at changing the current condition and future evolution of incised, single-channel streams to achieve those multi-channel and wider floodplain conditions. The Stage 0 approach has generated excitement among restoration practitioners and researchers. It is seen as an action on a scale commensurate with past impacts; potentially capable of putting streams and their floodplains on a trajectory to recovery that is sustainable with minimal future intervention. Projects that reset the valley surface elevation may include the transfer of large amounts of sediment into incised channels from adjacent terraces using heavy machinery, and placement of logs and boulders to create structure across the resulting floodplain. Recreating expanded, complex and resilient stream and floodplain habitats over the longer term may involve considerable short-term disturbance of existing stream environments. Because some of these streams currently support sensitive populations of focal or endangered species (most notably salmonids) projects designed to achieve a Stage 0 condition have raised some questions and concerns among land managers and regulators charged with recovering those species. The approach is relatively new, so there are also questions regarding terminology, implementation and monitoring approaches, and appropriate sites and scale for these projects. In this science and policy context, a Stage 0 Stream Restoration Workshop was held on November 5-6, 2020 with the goal to bring together practitioners, researchers, regulators and other stakeholders to discuss current topics and data gaps related to implementing and monitoring restoration projects intended to achieve a Stage 0 condition. The online workshop included expert presentations, questions and discussions during plenary sessions, and smaller breakout groups. This document summarizes the workshop proceedings

Langmuir-Blodgett films of polyethylene

The possibility to obtain surface layers on water and prepare solid multilayer Langmuir–Blodgett films of medium-density polyethylene is shown. The polymer film on water is stable, demonstrates a reversible surface pressure-area isotherm up to 15 mN/m, and can be deposited onto a substrate using the Langmuir–Blodgett technique in a wide range of surface pressures. The thickness of a single deposited layer is 5.1 nm on average. The dielectric and optical constants of multilayer films are near their bulk values. The films exhibit high dielectric strength of at least 200 MV/m

Herbicide-resistant weeds : from research and knowledge to future needs

Synthetic herbicides have been used globally to control weeds in major field crops. This has imposed a strong selection for any trait that enables plant populations to survive and reproduce in the presence of the herbicide. Herbicide resistance in weeds must be minimized because it is a major limiting factor to food security in global agriculture. This represents a huge challenge that will require great research efforts to develop control strategies as alternatives to the dominant and almost exclusive practice of weed control by herbicides. Weed scientists, plant ecologists and evolutionary biologists should join forces and work towards an improved and more integrated understanding of resistance across all scales. This approach will likely facilitate the design of innovative solutions to the global herbicide resistance challenge

Identifying Critical Roles for the Lamin B Receptor and Additional Nuclear Envelope Proteins in Regulating the Proliferation and Differentiation of Myeloid Progenitors

Neutrophils are blood phagocytes that contain lobulated nuclei, development of which depend on the expression of an inner nuclear membrane (INM) protein called the lamin B receptor (LBR). Loss of LBR expression causes not only hypolobulation of neutrophil nuclei (Pelger-Huët anomaly) but also severe developmental defects in humans (HEM/Greenberg dysplasia) and mice (ichthyosis). LBR is considered a dual function protein: the N-terminal domain contains chromatin and lamin B binding sites, whereas the C-terminal domain anchors LBR to the INM and exhibits C14 sterol reductase activity. Despite our knowledge of these two structural features of LBR, which domain supports normal development is unclear. We recently addressed this issue with regards to myelopoiesis by expressing wild-type and mutant forms of mouse Lbr in myeloid cells derived from an ichthyosis mouse. We demonstrated that expression of the Lbr sterol reductase domain alone can support nuclear morphologic maturation and is critical to both cholesterol biosynthesis and lipid-stressed proliferative responses of myeloid progenitors. In contrast, myeloid progenitors that lack the homologous C14 sterol reductase Tm7sf2 displayed normal nuclear maturation, cholesterol biosynthesis and lipid-stressed proliferation. We have now generated ichthyosis myeloid cells that express forms of Lbr with missense mutations in the sterol reductase domain known to cause HEM/Greenberg dysplasia. Our preliminary results indicate that these sterol reductase missense mutations disrupt cholesterol biosynthesis and lipid-stressed proliferation, but do not appear to affect nuclear maturation. We are also analyzing the expression patterns of Lbr and two additional nuclear envelope (NE) proteins, Lamin A/C and Sun2, during neutrophil vs. macrophage differentiation using both cell line models and ex vivo differentiated mouse bone marrow, and examining how overexpression of either Lamin A/C or Sun2 affects myeloid differentiation. Our studies may reveal new insight into how different NE proteins regulate the complex functions of two professional phagocytes