Mixed Mood State Behaviors and Circadian Dysfunction following Homocysteic Acid Treatment: Potential Animal Model for Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a neuropsychiatric disease characterized by cyclical fluctuations of mood states between mania and depression. Circadian rhythm abnormalities and inconsistent sleep patterns are two common symptoms of bipolar disorder (Millar, Epsie, & Scott, 2004). Elevated levels of homocysteine, in the blood or cerebrospinal fluid, commonly occurs in patients with neuropsychiatric illnesses, including bipolar disorder (Bell et al., 1992; Boushey, Beresford, Omenn, & Motulsky, 1995). Homocysteic acid (HCA), an endogenous metabolite of homocysteine, has been implicated as a harmful neurotoxin and agonist of NMDA receptors. We have previously shown that postnatal administration of HCA (from postnatal day 3-21) in Sprague Dawley rats results in both mania-like and depressive-like behaviors, suggesting that this may serve as a novel animal model for bipolar disorder. The purpose of the present study was to characterize any circadian abnormalities that may be present in HCA-treated rats, as sleep and circadian dysfunction are common symptoms of bipolar disorder. In addition, we also characterized the developmental onset of the mania-like and depressive-like behaviors in this model. Prior to puberty, we found that HCA-treated rats exhibited no manic-like behaviors and only a trend toward depressive-like behaviors. After puberty, however, HCA-treated rats presented a mixed mood-state of both manic-like and depressive-like behaviors, along with significant dysfunction in the circadian clock. Specifically, both the free-running period and the amplitude of the rhythm were significantly reduced following HCA treatment. We are currently using microarray analyses to determine differences in circadian gene expression levels between HCA treated animals and controls. Additionally, we are examining the therapeutic role of lithium for reversing the circadian disruptions exhibited by the HCA-treated animals. Altogether, the findings of the present study provide strong evidence in support of the HCA model’s face validity for bipolar disorder, allowing us to better understand the mechanisms underlying the development of this disease

Os nacionalismos ibéricos nos estudos sobre o romanceiro tradicional

1 As bases do problema. – 2 Contornos do(s) nacionalismo(s) ibérico(s). – 2.1 O caso português. – 2.2 O caso catalão. – 2.3 O caso galego. – 3 O comparatismo como metodologia. – 4 Que pan-hispanismo? Alguns equívocos e desconhecimentos. – 4.1 Fontes documentais e estudos críticos. – 4.2 Na atividade editorial. – 5 Palavras finaisinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Get a Grip:Evaluating Grip Gestures for VR Input Using a Lightweight Pen

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) in applications such as data analysis, artistic creation, and clinical settings requires high precision input. However, the current design of handheld controllers, where wrist rotation is the primary input approach, does not exploit the human fingers' capability for dexterous movements for high precision pointing and selection. To address this issue, we investigated the characteristics and potential of using a pen as a VR input device. We conducted two studies. The first examined which pen grip allowed the largest range of motion---we found a tripod grip at the rear end of the shaft met this criterion. The second study investigated target selection via 'poking' and ray-casting, where we found the pen grip outperformed the traditional wrist-based input in both cases. Finally, we demonstrate potential applications enabled by VR pen input and grip postures

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Inverted Pendulum Exhibit for the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum

ME450 Capstone Design and Manufacturing Experience: Winter 2010This project involves designing and building a mechatronics exhibit for the Ann Arbor Hands-On museum. The exhibit consists of an inverted pendulum system that utilizes feedback controls in order to balance a free pendulum in its inverted state. The exhibit will be made up of a manual pendulum system, in which patrons will attempt to balance the pendulum on their own, and automatic pendulum system that will use a microprocessor and feedback controls to balance the pendulum. The purpose of the exhibit is for the patrons of the museum to gain an understanding of how a mechatronics system and feedback controls work.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109384/1/me450w10project2_report.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109384/2/me450w10project2_photo.jp