Enhanced baseline activity in the left ventromedial putamen predicts individual treatment response in drug-naive, first-episode schizophrenia: Results from two independent study samples

BACKGROUND: Antipsychotic medications are the common treatment for schizophrenia. However, reliable biomarkers that can predict individual treatment response are still lacking. The present study aimed to examine whether baseline putamen activity can predict individual treatment response in schizophrenia. METHODS: Two independent samples of patients with drug-naive, first-episode schizophrenia (32 patients in sample 1 and 44 in sample 2) and matched healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at baseline. Patients were treated with olanzapine for 8 weeks; symptom severity was assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) at baseline and week 8. Fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (fALFF) and pattern classification techniques were used to analyze the data. FINDINGS: Univariate analysis shows an elevated pre-treatment fALFF in the left ventromedial putamen in both patient samples compared to healthy controls (p\u27s \u3c 0.001). The support vector regression (SVR) analysis suggests a positive relationship between baseline pre-treatment fALFF in the left ventromedial putamen and improvement in positive symptom at week 8 in each patient group using a cross-validated method (r=0.452, p=.002; r=0.511, p=.003, respectively). INTERPRETATION: Our study suggests that elevated pre-treatment mean fALFF in the left ventromedial putamen may predict individual therapeutic response to olanzapine treatment in drug-naive, first-episode patients with schizophrenia. Future studies are needed to confirm whether this finding is generalizable to patients with schizophrenia treated with other antipsychotic medications. FUND: The National Key RandD Program of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China

A fast-multi-pole accelerated method of fundamental solutions for 2-D broadband scattering of SH waves in an infinite half space

The traditional method of fundamental solution (T-MFS) is known as an effective method for solving the scattering of elastic waves, but the T-MFS is inefficient in solving large-scale or broadband frequency problems. Therefore, in order to improve the performance in efficiency and memory requirement for treating practical complex 2-D broadband scattering problems, a new algorithm of fast multi-pole accelerated method of fundamental solution (FM-MFS) is proposed. Taking the 2-D scattering of SH waves around irregular scatterers in an elastic half-space as an example, the implementation steps are presented in detail. Based on the accuracy and efficiency verification, the FM-MFS is applied to solve the broadband frequency scattering of plane SH waves around group cavities, inclusions, a V-shaped canyon and a semi-elliptical hill. It shows that, compared with T-MFS, the FM-MFS has great advantages in reducing the consumed CPU time and memory for 2-D broadband scattering. Besides, the FM-MFS has excellent adaptability both for broad-frequency and complex-shaped scattering problems

A Simple All-Fiber Solc Filter Based on 45-Tilted Fiber Gratings

A simple all-fiber Solc filter (AFSF), which consists of two 45°-tilted fiber gratings (45°-TFGs) UV-inscribed in the polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) and a series of PMF cavities, is proposed and demonstrated. The performance of the proposed filter has been theoretically simulated and experimentally verified. Both the simulated and experimental results show that the bandwidth of the filter could be tuned by the PMF sub-cavity length and the number of PMF cavities. And the free spectral range (FSR) only depends on the sub-cavity length. As a proof of that, the bandwidths of AFSF with different number of PMF sub-cavity (N=2, N=3, N=4) and the same PMF sub-cavity length of 30cm are 4 nm, 2.6nm, and 2nm, respectively. The FSRs of 3-stage AFSF with different PMF sub-cavity length (L=20 cm and L=40 cm) are 15.3 nm and 7.97 nm, respectively. Furthermore, we have also investigated the tunability of the AFSF by controlling the temperature of PMF cavity with a tuning sensitivity around 1.205 nm°/c. Compared with existing fiber-optic Solc filters, the AFSF with prominent advantages such as extremely simple and robust structure, thermal tunability in wavelength, and low cost will bring a bright future for applications in optical communication and sensing systems

Evaluating Open-QA Evaluation

This study focuses on the evaluation of the Open Question Answering (Open-QA) task, which can directly estimate the factuality of large language models (LLMs). Current automatic evaluation methods have shown limitations, indicating that human evaluation still remains the most reliable approach. We introduce a new task, Evaluating QA Evaluation (QA-Eval) and the corresponding dataset EVOUNA, designed to assess the accuracy of AI-generated answers in relation to standard answers within Open-QA. Our evaluation of these methods utilizes human-annotated results to measure their performance. Specifically, the work investigates methods that show high correlation with human evaluations, deeming them more reliable. We also discuss the pitfalls of current methods and methods to improve LLM-based evaluators. We believe this new QA-Eval task and corresponding dataset EVOUNA will facilitate the development of more effective automatic evaluation tools and prove valuable for future research in this area. All resources are available at \url{https://github.com/wangcunxiang/QA-Eval} and it is under the Apache-2.0 License

Disrupted asymmetry of inter- and intra-hemispheric functional connectivity in patients with drug-naive, first-episode schizophrenia and their unaffected siblings

BACKGROUND: Lack of normal asymmetry in the brain has been reported in patients with schizophrenia. However, it remains unclear whether disrupted asymmetry originates from inter-hemispheric functional connectivity (FC) and/or intra-hemispheric FC in this patient population. METHODS: Forty-four patients with drug-naive, first-episode schizophrenia, 42 unaffected siblings, and 44 healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan. The parameter of asymmetry (PAS) and support vector machine (SVM) were used to analyze the data. Patients were treated with olanzapine for 8 weeks. FINDINGS: Compared with healthy controls, patients showed lower PAS scores in the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG)/inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), left posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/precuneus and left angular gyrus, and higher PAS scores in the left precentral gyrus/postcentral gyrus. Unaffected siblings also showed lower PAS scores in the left MTG/ITG and left PCC/precuneus relative to healthy controls. Further, SVM analysis showed that a combination of the PAS scores in these two clusters in patients at baseline was able to predict clinical response after 8weeks of olanzapine treatment with 77.27% sensitivity, 72.73% specificity, and 75.00% accuracy. INTERPRETATION: The present study suggests disrupted asymmetry of inter- and intra-hemispheric FC in drug-naive, first-episode schizophrenia; in addition, a reduced asymmetry of inter-hemispheric FC in the left MTG/ITG and left PCC/precuneus may serve as an endophenotype for schizophrenia, and may have clinical utility to predict response to olanzapine treatment. FUND: The National Key RandD Program of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China

Theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration of the radiation mode distribution of 45° TFG

In this paper, we have theoretically analyzed and experimentally demonstrated the spatial distribution of the radiation mode of 45° tilted fiber grating (TFG). The simulation results have shown the intensity distribution of the radiation mode along the fiber axis exhibited an exponential reduction. In experiment, we have observed the radiation mode pattern of a 5-mm long 45°TFG. The captured profiles along the radial direction and axial direction were in good agreement with the simulated results of the model

Graphene oxide membranes using MOF@Chitosan core-shell nanoparticles as dual modulators for dye separation

Graphene oxide (GO) membranes hold significant promise for the water purification. However, they also face the problem of structural swelling, which limits their use in water treatment applications. In this work, a novel dual-modulated core-shell metal-organic framework@Chitosan (MOF@CS) was successfully synthesized and used as an intercalation cross-linker to optimize the interlayer spacing and stability of GO membranes. Molecular dynamics simulation confirms that MOF@CS, acting as an intercalator, accelerates the water diffusion rate within the channels of the GO layer compared to a pure GO layer. At the same time, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy analysis reveals that MOF@CS serves as a cross-linker for covalently cross-linking the GO layer. The nanofiltration performance and stability of the improved MOF@CS-GO composite membranes were significantly enhanced. Compared to the pure GO membranes, the MOF@CS-GO composite membranes exhibited enhanced Congo red rejection rates (from 76.5% to 95.6%) while maintaining a high pure water flux (34.5 L·m-2·h-1·bar-1) and good structural stability (stable dye removal performance over 120 h). This dual regulation strategy is expected to effectively solve the swelling problem of GO membranes in aqueous media and open up avenues for advancing their performance

Numerical and Experimental Characterization of Radiation Mode of 45° Tilted Fiber Grating

In this paper, we have numerically and experimentally investigated the radiation mode of 45° tilted fiber grating (45° TFG). By introducing the axial distributions into the volume current method, we have established a three-dimensional theoretical model to analyze spatial distributions of the radiation mode of 45° TFG, and measured the radiation mode spatial distributions in experiment. Both numerical and experimental results show that the radiation mode of 45° TFG exhibits an exponential reduction along the fiber axial direction, and a quasi-Gaussian profile along the radial direction of fiber. Additionally, we have also measured the detailed polarization-dependent azimuthal intensity distributions of radiation modes of both s-and p-polarized core modes. The degree of polarization of radiation mode is around 99.886%, which is independent of the length and the polarization extinction ratio of the grating. Moreover, for the first time, we have experimentally observed a very weak p-polarized component existing in the radiation mode, which has matched well with the simulation results

Enhanced Global-Brain Functional Connectivity in the Left Superior Frontal Gyrus as a Possible Endophenotype for Schizophrenia

The notion of dysconnectivity in schizophrenia has been put forward for many years and results in substantial attempts to explore altered functional connectivity (FC) within different networks with inconsistent results. Clinical, demographical, and methodological heterogeneity may contribute to the inconsistency. Forty-four patients with first-episode, drug-naive schizophrenia, 42 unaffected siblings of schizophrenia patients and 44 healthy controls took part in this study. Global-brain FC (GFC) was employed to analyze the imaging data. Compared with healthy controls, patients with schizophrenia and unaffected siblings shared enhanced GFC in the left superior frontal gyrus (SFG). In addition, patients had increased GFC mainly in the thalamo-cortical network, including the bilateral thalamus, bilateral posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/precuneus, left superior medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), right angular gyrus, and right SFG/middle frontal gyrus and decreased GFC in the left ITG/cerebellum Crus I. No other altered GFC values were observed in the siblings group relative to the control group. Further ROC analysis showed that increased GFC in the left SFG could separate the patients or the siblings from the controls with acceptable sensitivities. Our findings suggest that increased GFC in the left SFG may serve as a potential endophenotype for schizophrenia

Genetic Properties of a Nested Association Mapping Population Constructed With Semi-Winter and Spring Oilseed Rapes

Nested association mapping (NAM) populations have been widely applied to dissect the genetic basis of complex quantitative traits in a variety of crops. In this study, we developed a Brassica napus NAM (BN-NAM) population consisting of 15 recombination inbred line (RIL) families with 2,425 immortal genotypes. Fifteen high-density genetic linkage maps were constructed by genotyping by sequencing (GBS) based on all RIL families, with further integration into a joint linkage map (JLM) having 30,209 unique markers in common with multiple linkage maps. Furthermore, an ultra-density whole-genome variation map was constructed by projecting 4,444,309 high-quality variants onto the JLM. The NAM population captured a total of 88,542 recombination events (REs). The uneven distribution of recombination rate along chromosomes is positively correlated with the densities of genes and markers, but negatively correlated with the density of transposable elements and linkage disequilibrium (LD). Analyses of population structure and principal components revealed that the BN-NAM population could be divided into three groups with weak stratification. The LD decay distance across genome varied between 170 and 2,400 Kb, with LD decay more rapid in the A than in the C sub-genome. The pericentromeric regions contained large LD blocks, especially in the C sub-genome. This NAM population provides a valuable resource for dissecting the genetic basis of important traits in rapeseed, especially in semi-winter oilseed rape