Impurity influence in quantum spin Hall transport

published_or_final_versio

Classifying Cognitive Profiles Using Machine Learning with Privileged Information in Mild Cognitive Impairment

Early diagnosis of dementia is critical for assessing disease progression and potential treatment. State-or-the-art machine learning techniques have been increasingly employed to take on this diagnostic task. In this study, we employed Generalized Matrix Learning Vector Quantization (GMLVQ) classifiers to discriminate patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) from healthy controls based on their cognitive skills. Further, we adopted a "Learning with privileged information" approach to combine cognitive and fMRI data for the classification task. The resulting classifier operates solely on the cognitive data while it incorporates the fMRI data as privileged information (PI) during training. This novel classifier is of practical use as the collection of brain imaging data is not always possible with patients and older participants. MCI patients and healthy age-matched controls were trained to extract structure from temporal sequences. We ask whether machine learning classifiers can be used to discriminate patients from controls and whether differences between these groups relate to individual cognitive profiles. To this end, we tested participants in four cognitive tasks: working memory, cognitive inhibition, divided attention, and selective attention. We also collected fMRI data before and after training on a probabilistic sequence learning task and extracted fMRI responses and connectivity as features for machine learning classifiers. Our results show that the PI guided GMLVQ classifiers outperform the baseline classifier that only used the cognitive data. In addition, we found that for the baseline classifier, divided attention is the only relevant cognitive feature. When PI was incorporated, divided attention remained the most relevant feature while cognitive inhibition became also relevant for the task. Interestingly, this analysis for the fMRI GMLVQ classifier suggests that (1) when overall fMRI signal is used as inputs to the classifier, the post-training session is most relevant; and (2) when the graph feature reflecting underlying spatiotemporal fMRI pattern is used, the pre-training session is most relevant. Taken together these results suggest that brain connectivity before training and overall fMRI signal after training are both diagnostic of cognitive skills in MCI.PT and YS were supported by EPSRC grant no EP/L000296/1 “Personalized Medicine through Learning in the Model Space.” This work was supported by grants to ZK from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (H012508), the Leverhulme Trust (RF-2011-378), and the (European Community's) Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under agreement PITN-GA-2011-290011

Prostacyclins have no direct inotropic effect on isolated atrial strips from the normal and pressure-overloaded human right heart

Prostacyclins are vasodilatory agents used in the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension. The direct effects of prostacyclins on right heart function are still not clarified. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible direct inotropic properties of clinical available prostacyclin mimetics in the normal and the pressure-overloaded human right atrium. Trabeculae from the right atrium were collected during surgery from chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) patients with pressure-overloaded right hearts, undergoing pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (n = 10) and from patients with normal right hearts operated by valve replacement or coronary bypass surgery (n = 9). The trabeculae were placed in an organ bath, continuously paced at 1 Hz. They were subjected to increasing concentrations of iloprost, treprostinil, epoprostenol, or MRE-269, followed by isoprenaline to elicit a reference inotropic response. The force of contraction was measured continuously. The expression of prostanoid receptors was explored through quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Iloprost, treprostinil, epoprostenol, or MRE-269 did not alter force of contraction in any of the trabeculae. Isoprenaline showed a direct inotropic response in both trabeculae from the pressure-overloaded right atrium and from the normal right atrium. Control experiments on ventricular trabeculae from the pig failed to show an inotropic response to the prostacyclin mimetics. qPCR demonstrated varying expression of the different prostanoid receptors in the human atrium. In conclusion, prostacyclin mimetics did not increase the force of contraction of human atrial trabeculae from the normal or the pressure-overloaded right heart. These data suggest that prostacyclin mimetics have no direct inotropic effects in the human right atrium

Digital twins of plant and forest

This is the author accepted manuscriptIn forestry and plantation management, digital twins can improve viable business insights and reduce operating costs. The application of digital twins is still expanding. This Research Topic hopes to collect the application models and key technologies of digital twins in forest management and plant cultivation to lay the foundation for expanding the application scope of visual intelligence solutions

Intensive removal of PAHs in constructed wetland filled with copper biochar.

In this study, biochar-loading copper ions (Cu-BC), a novel composite for removing phenanthrene very efficiently from water, was prepared using the impregnation method. The performance of constructed wetlands (CWs) with these modified and original biochar as substrates was analyzed. CW with Cu-BC removed a large amount of phenanthrene (94.09 ± 3.02%). According to the surface characteristics analysis, Cu-BC can promote the removal of pollutants via complex absorption, hydrophobic adsorption, increasing the Lewis Pair and electrostatic attraction. Furthermore the higher nitrate removal rate in the treated system (91.11 ± 1.17%) was observed to have higher levels of bacterial metabolic diversity and denitrifier types. The phenanthrene accumulated in plants with this treatment system was enhanced by the role of copper in photosynthesis. It is able to boost the plant extraction of organic matter

Psychological drivers of hotel guests’ energy‐saving behaviours—empirical research based on the extended theory of planned behaviour

The hospitality industry is an important energy consumer and carbon emitter. Behaviour-driven energy conservation is a strategy with great promise to strengthen the energy efficiency of hotel buildings. The aim of this study is to explore the driving psychological factors of hotel guests’ energy-saving intentions and behaviours. This paper constructs two extensions of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) with personal norms, past behaviours, and self-determined motivation to explain the guests’ energy-saving behaviour in hotel buildings. This research compares the explanatory power of the original TPB and two extensions with structural equation modelling. The analysis is based on 530 valid, self-reported data from 827 surveyed hotel guests in Shanghai. The analysis suggests that the extended model gains greater explanatory power in predicting the behaviour patterns by employing the above three additional factors. In addition, self-determined motivation presents a more significant impact than other more developed TPB predictors, such as intention and perceived behaviour control. Aside from that, past behaviour replaces attitude as the most critical predictor of hotel energy-saving intention in the extended models. In addition to the existing interventions in office and residential buildings, the research highlights the role of self-determination in hotel energy conservation and further emphasises the long-term benefit of encouraging pro-environmental behaviours in hotel guests. The findings expand the existing research on pro-environmental behaviours and will contribute to energy-saving behaviour intervention in hotel buildings and policy formulations for sustainable hotel operation and maintenance.</jats:p

Whole-genome sequencing to understand the genetic architecture of common gene expression and biomarker phenotypes.

Initial results from sequencing studies suggest that there are relatively few low-frequency (&lt;5%) variants associated with large effects on common phenotypes. We performed low-pass whole-genome sequencing in 680 individuals from the InCHIANTI study to test two primary hypotheses: (i) that sequencing would detect single low-frequency-large effect variants that explained similar amounts of phenotypic variance as single common variants, and (ii) that some common variant associations could be explained by low-frequency variants. We tested two sets of disease-related common phenotypes for which we had statistical power to detect large numbers of common variant-common phenotype associations-11 132 cis-gene expression traits in 450 individuals and 93 circulating biomarkers in all 680 individuals. From a total of 11 657 229 high-quality variants of which 6 129 221 and 5 528 008 were common and low frequency (&lt;5%), respectively, low frequency-large effect associations comprised 7% of detectable cis-gene expression traits [89 of 1314 cis-eQTLs at P &lt; 1 × 10(-06) (false discovery rate ∼5%)] and one of eight biomarker associations at P &lt; 8 × 10(-10). Very few (30 of 1232; 2%) common variant associations were fully explained by low-frequency variants. Our data show that whole-genome sequencing can identify low-frequency variants undetected by genotyping based approaches when sample sizes are sufficiently large to detect substantial numbers of common variant associations, and that common variant associations are rarely explained by single low-frequency variants of large effect

Controlling Cherenkov angles with resonance transition radiation

Cherenkov radiation provides a valuable way to identify high energy particles in a wide momentum range, through the relation between the particle velocity and the Cherenkov angle. However, since the Cherenkov angle depends only on material's permittivity, the material unavoidably sets a fundamental limit to the momentum coverage and sensitivity of Cherenkov detectors. For example, Ring Imaging Cherenkov detectors must employ materials transparent to the frequency of interest as well as possessing permittivities close to unity to identify particles in the multi GeV range, and thus are often limited to large gas chambers. It would be extremely important albeit challenging to lift this fundamental limit and control Cherenkov angles as preferred. Here we propose a new mechanism that uses constructive interference of resonance transition radiation from photonic crystals to generate both forward and backward Cherenkov radiation. This mechanism can control Cherenkov angles in a flexible way with high sensitivity to any desired range of velocities. Photonic crystals thus overcome the severe material limit for Cherenkov detectors, enabling the use of transparent materials with arbitrary values of permittivity, and provide a promising option suited for identification of particles at high energy with enhanced sensitivity.Comment: There are 16 pages and 4 figures for the manuscript. Supplementary information with 18 pages and 5 figures, appended at the end of the file with the manuscript. Source files in Word format converted to PDF. Submitted to Nature Physic

Diverse system stresses: common mechanisms of chromosome fragmentation

Chromosome fragmentation (C-Frag) is a newly identified MCD (mitotic cell death), distinct from apoptosis and MC (mitotic catastrophe). As different molecular mechanisms can induce C-Frag, we hypothesize that the general mechanism of its induction is a system response to cellular stress. A clear link between C-Frag and diverse system stresses generated from an array of molecular mechanisms is shown. Centrosome amplification, which is also linked to diverse mechanisms of stress, is shown to occur in association with C-Frag. This led to a new model showing that diverse stresses induce common, MCD. Specifically, different cellular stresses target the integral chromosomal machinery, leading to system instability and triggering of MCD by C-Frag. This model of stress-induced cell death is also applicable to other types of cell death. The current study solves the previously confusing relationship between the diverse molecular mechanisms of chromosome pulverization, suggesting that incomplete C-Frag could serve as the initial event responsible for forms of genome chaos including chromothripsis. In addition, multiple cell death types are shown to coexist with C-Frag and it is more dominant than apoptosis at lower drug concentrations. Together, this study suggests that cell death is a diverse group of highly heterogeneous events that are linked to stress-induced system instability and evolutionary potential