Adenosine A2A Receptors in Psychopharmacology: Modulators of Behavior, Mood and Cognition

The adenosine A2A receptor (A2AR) is in the center of a neuromodulatory network affecting a wide range of neuropsychiatric functions by interacting with and integrating several neurotransmitter systems, especially dopaminergic and glutamatergic neurotransmission. These interactions and integrations occur at multiple levels, including (1) direct receptor- receptor cross-talk at the cell membrane, (2) intracellular second messenger systems, (3) trans-synaptic actions via striatal collaterals or interneurons in the striatum, (4) and interactions at the network level of the basal ganglia. Consequently, A2ARs constitute a novel target to modulate various psychiatric conditions. In the present review we will first summarize the molecular interaction of adenosine receptors with other neurotransmitter systems and then discuss the potential applications of A2AR agonists and antagonists in physiological and pathophysiological conditions, such as psychostimulant action, drug addiction, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and learning and memory

Investigation on the changes of corneal curvature after non-phacoemulsification in small-incision cataract surgery with intraocular lens implantation

AIM: To investigate the changes of corneal curvature after non-phacoemulsification in small-incision cataract surgery with intraocular lens implantation and discuss the essence of iatrogenic astigmatism. <p>METHODS: In this study, the horizontal corneal curvature(HCC)and vertical corneal curvature(VCC)of 99 patients(116 eyes)were documented before and after cataract surgery,with the postoperative follow-up of 3d; 1, 2wk; 1, 3, 6mo; 1, 2, 3a. The difference value of the HCC and the VCC between preoperation and postoperation were calculated and statistically analyzed. <p>RESULTS: The VCC was deceased by 2.01D, while the HCC was increased by 1.62D on the 3d after surgery; the difference value of the HCC and VCC were both decreased acutely in the 3mo postoperationly(the difference value of the VCC was -0.52D and HCC was 0.46D); the difference value of the HCC and VCC both were decreased mildly after 3mo of postoperation, There was no significant difference between the difference value of HCC(0.29D)and VCC(-0.29D)at 6mo(<i>P</i>=0.801); VCC was still smaller than that of preoperation(-0.26D), and HCC was larger than that of preoperation(0.25D)at the 3a. Paired <i>t</i> test was performed in these curvature differences, which both decreased apparently from 3d to 6mo after surgery(<i>P</i><0.001), while they stayed still from 6mo to 3a postoperatively(VCC: <i>P</i>=0.284; HCC:<i>P</i>=1.000). <p>CONCLUSION: It remains astigmatism for a short time after small-incision cataract surgery and the treatment requires improvement so as to minimize the astigmatism as much as possible

Observation of a phononic higher-order Weyl semimetal

Weyl semimetals are extraordinary systems where exotic phenomena such as Fermi arcs, pseudo-gauge fields and quantum anomalies arise from topological band degeneracy in crystalline solids for electrons and metamaterials for photons and phonons. On the other hand, higher-order topological insulators unveil intriguing multidimensional topological physics beyond the conventional bulk-edge correspondences. However, it is unclear whether higher-order topology can emerge in Weyl semimetals. Here, we report the experimental discovery of higher-order Weyl semimetals in its phononic analog which exhibit topologically-protected boundary states in multiple dimensions. We create the physical realization of the higher-order Weyl semimetal in a chiral phononic crystal with uniaxial screw symmetry. Using near-field spectroscopies, we observe the chiral Fermi arcs on the surfaces and a new type of hinge arc states on the hinge boundaries. These topological boundary arc states link the projections of Weyl points in different dimensions and directions, and hence demonstrate higher-order multidimensional topological physics in Weyl semimetals. Our study establishes the fundamental connection between higher-order topology and Weyl physics in crystalline materials and unveils a new horizon of higher-order topological semimetals where unprecedented materials such as higher-order topological nodal-lines may emerge

Covert Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy: A New Minimally Invasive Technique

To further improve our developed transumbilical endoscopic surgery (TUES), we developed a completely covert laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC). Twelve cases of LC were recruited for this new approach. First, a 10-mm trocar was placed above the umbilicus for inserting the laparoscope. Two 5-mm trocars were then placed near the right and left ends of the superior margin of the suprapubic hair. After the 5-mm 30° laparoscope was shifted to the left suprapubic trocar, the harmonic scalper, electric hook, and grasper were inserted either through the 10-mm umbilical trocar or through the right suprapubic trocar. All gallbladders were successfully removed without intraoperative complications. The mean operating time was 28.5±5.7min (range 20-45min). All patients felt well after surgery and did not need postoperative analgesia. They resumed free oral intake 6h after the procedure. All patients were satisfied with the appearance of the incisions, which were completely hidden in the umbilicus and suprapubic hair. The approach we developed has overcome both external instrument interference around the umbilicus and the loss of triangulation in the operative field. It is relatively simpler than a typical TUES and offers better cosmetic results

‘Zhengmei’: A new early-ripening table grape

Research Not

'Brilliant Seedless': A new medium-ripening seedless table grape

Research Not

Bidirectional End-to-End Learning of Retriever-Reader Paradigm for Entity Linking

Entity Linking (EL) is a fundamental task for Information Extraction and Knowledge Graphs. The general form of EL (i.e., end-to-end EL) aims to first find mentions in the given input document and then link the mentions to corresponding entities in a specific knowledge base. Recently, the paradigm of retriever-reader promotes the progress of end-to-end EL, benefiting from the advantages of dense entity retrieval and machine reading comprehension. However, the existing study only trains the retriever and the reader separately in a pipeline manner, which ignores the benefit that the interaction between the retriever and the reader can bring to the task. To advance the retriever-reader paradigm to perform more perfectly on end-to-end EL, we propose BEER$^2$, a Bidirectional End-to-End training framework for Retriever and Reader. Through our designed bidirectional end-to-end training, BEER$^2$ guides the retriever and the reader to learn from each other, make progress together, and ultimately improve EL performance. Extensive experiments on benchmarks of multiple domains demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed BEER$^2$.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

Towards Real-World Writing Assistance: A Chinese Character Checking Benchmark with Faked and Misspelled Characters

Writing assistance is an application closely related to human life and is also a fundamental Natural Language Processing (NLP) research field. Its aim is to improve the correctness and quality of input texts, with character checking being crucial in detecting and correcting wrong characters. From the perspective of the real world where handwriting occupies the vast majority, characters that humans get wrong include faked characters (i.e., untrue characters created due to writing errors) and misspelled characters (i.e., true characters used incorrectly due to spelling errors). However, existing datasets and related studies only focus on misspelled characters mainly caused by phonological or visual confusion, thereby ignoring faked characters which are more common and difficult. To break through this dilemma, we present Visual-C$^3$, a human-annotated Visual Chinese Character Checking dataset with faked and misspelled Chinese characters. To the best of our knowledge, Visual-C$^3$ is the first real-world visual and the largest human-crafted dataset for the Chinese character checking scenario. Additionally, we also propose and evaluate novel baseline methods on Visual-C$^3$. Extensive empirical results and analyses show that Visual-C$^3$ is high-quality yet challenging. The Visual-C$^3$ dataset and the baseline methods will be publicly available to facilitate further research in the community.Comment: Work in progres