Visual recovery after perinatal stroke evidenced by functional and diffusion MRI: case report

BACKGROUND: After perinatal brain injury, clinico-anatomic correlations of functional deficits and brain plasticity remain difficult to evaluate clinically in the young infant. Thus, new non-invasive methods capable of early functional diagnosis are needed in young infants. CASE PRESENTATION: The visual system recovery in an infant with perinatal stroke is assessed by combining diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and event-related functional MRI (ER-fMRI). All experiments were done at 1.5T. A first DTI experiment was performed at 12 months of age. At 20 months of age, a second DTI experiment was performed and combined with an ER-fMRI experiment with visual stimuli (2 Hz visual flash). At 20 months of age, ER-fMRI showed significant negative activation in the visual cortex of the injured left hemisphere that was not previously observed in the same infant. DTI maps suggest recovery of the optic radiation in the vicinity of the lesion. Optic radiations in the injured hemisphere are more prominent in DTI at 20 months of age than in DTI at 12 months of age. CONCLUSION: Our data indicate that functional cortical recovery is supported by structural modifications that concern major pathways of the visual system. These neuroimaging findings might contribute to elaborate a pertinent strategy in terms of diagnosis and rehabilitation

Adaptive Land-Use Management in Dynamic Ecological System

UK uplands are significantly important in the economy and the environment. There is also a debate on how the banning of managed burning will affect the landscape of uplands. One difficulty in answering such a question comes from the fact that land-use management continuously adapts to dynamic biological environments, which in turn have many impacts on land-use decisions. This work demonstrates how evolutionary algorithms generate land-use strategies in dynamic biological environments over time. It also illustrates the influences on sheep grazing from banning managed burning in a study site

How COVID‐19 travels in‐ and outside of value chains and then affects the stock market: Evidence from China

The organisation of value chains within and between firms and even countries is an important reason for domestic as well as international travel. Hence, value chains create interdependencies which have to do with economic but also personal interactions between firms and places. The latter means value chains are a springboard for shocks—positive or negative—to travel and other related outcomes. This paper sheds light on how input–output relations in China as one human‐interaction‐intensive activity can help explain spreading patterns of COVID‐19 in the first few months of 2020 in China. We document that COVID‐19 at that time spread more intensively where input–output relations were stronger between cities in China, and this contributed to inducing direct and mediated, indirect effects on the stock market