Superfluid and magnetic states of an ultracold Bose gas with synthetic three-dimensional spin-orbit coupling in an optical lattice

We study ultracold bosonic atoms with the synthetic three-dimensional spin-orbit (SO) coupling in a cubic optical lattice. In the superfluidity phase, the lowest energy band exhibits one, two or four pairs of degenerate single-particle ground states depending on the SO-coupling strengths, which can give rise to the condensate states with spin-stripes for the weak atomic interactions. In the deep Mott-insulator regime, the effective spin Hamiltonian of the system combines three-dimensional Heisenberg exchange interactions, anisotropy interactions and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. Based on Monte Carlo simulations, we numerically demonstrate that the resulting Hamiltonian with an additional Zeeman field has a rich phase diagram with spiral, stripe, vortex crystal, and especially Skyrmion crystal spin-textures in each xy-plane layer. The obtained Skyrmion crystals can be tunable with square and hexagonal symmetries in a columnar manner along the z axis, and moreover are stable against the inter-layer spin-spin interactions in a large parameter region.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; title modified, references and discussions added; accepted by PR

Coding Properties of Mouse Retinal Ganglion Cells with Dual-Peak Patterns with Respect to Stimulus Intervals

How visual information is encoded in spikes of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) is essential in visual neuroscience. In the present study, we investigated the coding properties of mouse RGCs with dual-peak patterns with respect to visual stimulus intervals. We first analyzed the response properties, and observed that the latencies and spike counts of the two response peaks in the dual-peak pattern exhibited systematic changes with the preceding light-OFF interval. We then applied linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to assess the relative contributions of response characteristics of both peaks in information coding regarding the preceding stimulus interval. It was found that for each peak, the discrimination results were far better than chance level based on either latency or spike count, and were further improved by using the combination of the two parameters. Furthermore, the best discrimination results were obtained when latencies and spike counts of both peaks were considered in combination. In addition, the correct rate for stimulation discrimination was higher when RGC population activity was considered as compare to single neuron’s activity, and the correct rate was increased with the group size. These results suggest that rate coding, temporal coding, and population coding are all involved in encoding the different stimulus-interval patterns, and the two response peaks in the dual-peak pattern carry complementary information about stimulus interval

Interaction between Thalamus and Hippocampus in Termination of Amygdala-Kindled Seizures in Mice

The thalamus and hippocampus have been found both involved in the initiation, propagation, and termination of temporal lobe epilepsy. However, the interaction of these regions during seizures is not clear. The present study is to explore whether some regular patterns exist in their interaction during the termination of seizures. Multichannel in vivo recording techniques were used to record the neural activities from the cornu ammonis 1 (CA1) of hippocampus and mediodorsal thalamus (MDT) in mice. The mice were kindled by electrically stimulating basolateral amygdala neurons, and Racine’s rank standard was employed to classify the stage of behavioral responses (stage 1~5). The coupling index and directionality index were used to investigate the synchronization and information flow direction between CA1 and MDT. Two main results were found in this study. (1) High levels of synchronization between the thalamus and hippocampus were observed before the termination of seizures at stage 4~5 but after the termination of seizures at stage 1~2. (2) In the end of seizures at stage 4~5, the information tended to flow from MDT to CA1. Those results indicate that the synchronization and information flow direction between the thalamus and the hippocampus may participate in the termination of seizures

Scaling of global input–output networks

Examining scaling patterns of networks can help understand how structural features relate to the behavior of the networks. Input–output networks consist of industries as nodes and inter-industrial exchanges of products as links. Previous studies consider limited measures for node strengths and link weights, and also ignore the impact of dataset choice. We consider a comprehensive set of indicators in this study that are important in economic analysis, and also examine the impact of dataset choice, by studying input–output networks in individual countries and the entire world. Results show that Burr, Log-Logistic, Log-normal, and Weibull distributions can better describe scaling patterns of global input–output networks. We also find that dataset choice has limited impacts on the observed scaling patterns. Our findings can help examine the quality of economic statistics, estimate missing data in economic statistics, and identify key nodes and links in input–output networks to support economic policymaking

A Maternity Hospital in Shenyang Indoor Environment Performance Influence Factor Analysis

AbstractIn recent years, the city air pollution level of PM2.5, ozone, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides in our country occupies first place. Indoor environmental problems caused by outdoor air pollution are increasingly significant. Indoor environment of hospital which is a special public building has special requirement. The feature of maternity hospital is crowded, heavy energy consumption, weakness of maternal and neonate, generate the sick and the patients need the better indoor environment quality. Therefore, this paper takes hospital building as research object by using questionnaire method, which analyzes the indoor comprehensive environmental performance of hospital, such as the air quality, the thermal environment, the light environment, and the acoustic environment. Results show that most of the patients is satisfied with the indoor comprehensive environmental performance of hospital, and only a small part is dissatisfied with the sound environment and the outdoor vision. This paper provides a research base for establishing a complete evaluation system and method of comprehensive indoor environmental performance of maternity hospital, which will help in building environmental monitoring systems and improving the level of public participation in the construction of hospital management

Mediastinal Lymph Node Metastases in Thyroid Cancer: Characteristics, Predictive Factors, and Prognosis

Background. Mediastinal lymph node metastases (MLNM) have not been extensively studied. The aim of this study is to investigate the characteristics, predictive factors, and prognosis of MLNM in thyroid cancer. Methods. This is a retrospective study based on the thyroid cancer patients with MLNM at our institution from 2008 to 2015. Results. In total, 73 thyroid cancer patients with positive MLNM were included in this study. It contained sixty patients (82.2%) with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), twelve (16.4%) with medullary thyroid carcinoma, and one (1.4%) with anaplastic thyroid carcinoma. Forty-eight patients had the surgery as initial treatment. Fifty-three (72.6%) patients remained disease-free, and fifteen (20.5%) developed a regional recurrence. Distant metastases occurred in four (5.5%) patients and five (6.8%) patients died. Five-year overall survival rate and disease-free survival (DFS) rate of the PTC patients for initial treatment are 95.4% and 77.2%, respectively. Extrathyroidal extension and multiple lymph nodes involved were associated with DFS in PTC patients. Conclusions. Initial therapeutic control is very important for the thyroid cancer patients. Extrathyroidal extension and multiple mediastinal lymph nodes involved were the influence factors of prognosis in the thyroid cancer patients with MLNM