Activation of Right Ventral Prefrontal Cortex Using a Predictive Cue during Visual Spatial Orienting of Attentional Processes: An fMRI Study

Visual spatial orienting of attention can be investigated with location-cueing paradigms in which a cue provides correct information about the location of the upcoming target. Target detection is facilitated when the target appears at the expected cued location. In this study, we examined the brain activation of the spatial orienting response based on attentional “benefits.” During an fMRI experiment, two types of attentional tasks were used. Both predictive and nonpredictive cues were used and followed by an upcoming target. Behavioral data showed a faster reaction time with the predictive cue when compared with that of the nonpredictive cue. The fMRI results of these two tasks were compared, whereby isolated brain areas activated when the targets appeared at the attended position after a specific spatial expectation was induced by the cue were compared with when equivalent targets appeared after no spatial expectation was induced by the cue. The results showed that the right ventral prefrontal cortex was activated to a similar degree as the dorsal frontoparietal spatial attentional network

Identification of piecewise linear aeroelastic systems

The work presented in this paper is concerned with the identification of a piecewise linear aeroelastic system from input-output data. The main challenge with this problem is that the data are available only as a mixture of observations generated by a finite set of different interacting linear subsystems such that one does not know a prior which subsystem has generated which data, that is, the switching points of the freeplay nonlinearity. The linear part of the nonlinear aeroelastic system is represented by the orthonormal basis functions constructed by the physical poles of the linear part, and the nonlinear part is represented by a Hammerstein model. By a simple rearrangement of the data corresponding to the degree-of-freedom of freeplay and selecting a segment of the data, the identification of the physical poles could be reduced to a linear parametric problem. Afterwards, estimates of the unknown parameters of linear regression models are calculated by processing respective particles of input-output data. The iterative sequence of the switching points is constructed, and solved by a method synthesizing the non-iterative and iterative algorithms. Then the parameters of the linear and nonlinear parts of the nonlinear system including the switching points are successfully obtained. A two-dimensional airfoil with nonlinear structural freeplay in the pitch degree-of-freedom is presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed identification algorithm

Germicidal effect of intense pulsed light on Pseudomonas aeruginosa in food processing

BackgroundPseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) can cause serious infections in many parts of the body and is also an underestimated foodborne pathogen. Intense pulsed light sterilization is recognized for its high sterilization efficiency, flexible and safe operation and ease of installation on production lines, which makes up for the shortcomings of several other physical sterilization technologies.MethodsThis experiment studied the killing efficiency of different capacitances (650 μF, 470 μF, and 220 μF) of intense pulsed light on foodborne pathogenic microorganisms P. aeruginosa in the models of liquid food models, 96-well cell plates, and polycarbonate membrane models at room temperature (25°C) and refrigerated (4°C) environments to provide data to support the application of IPL sterilization devices in food processing.ResultsThe IPL was very effective in killing P. aeruginosa in the planktonic state as well as in the early and mature biofilm states, meeting target kill rates of 100%, 99.99%, and 94.33% for a given number of exposures. The biofilms formed in the polycarbonate membrane model and the 96-well plate model were more resistant to killing compared to the planktonic state. To achieve the same bactericidal effect, the number of flashes increased with decreasing capacitance.ConclusionThe bactericidal effect of IPL on P. aeruginosa was significantly influenced by the state of the bacterium. The larger the capacitance the higher the number of pulses and the better the sterilization effect on P. aeruginosa

Optimization of the Turbulence Model on Numerical Simulations of Flow Field within a Hydrocyclone

Reynolds Stress Model and Large Eddy Simulation are used to respectively perform numerical simulation for the flow field of a hydrocyclone. The three-dimensional hexahedral computational grids were generated. Turbulence intensity, vorticity, and the velocity distribution of different cross sections were gained. The velocity simulation results were compared with the LDV test results, and the results indicated that Large Eddy Simulation was more close to LDV experimental data. Large Eddy Simulation was a relatively appropriate method for simulation of flow field within a hydrocyclone

Semantic Congruency Modulates the Effect of Attentional Load on the Audiovisual Integration of Animate Images and Sounds

Attentional processes play a complex and multifaceted role in the integration of input from different sensory modalities. However, whether increased attentional load disrupts the audiovisual (AV) integration of common objects that involve semantic content remains unclear. Furthermore, knowledge regarding how semantic congruency interacts with attentional load to influence the AV integration of common objects is limited. We investigated these questions by examining AV integration under various attentional-load conditions. AV integration was assessed by adopting an animal identification task using unisensory (animal images and sounds) and AV stimuli (semantically congruent AV objects and semantically incongruent AV objects), while attentional load was manipulated by using a rapid serial visual presentation task. Our results indicate that attentional load did not attenuate the integration of semantically congruent AV objects. However, semantically incongruent animal sounds and images were not integrated (as there was no multisensory facilitation), and the interference effect produced by the semantically incongruent AV objects was reduced by increased attentional-load manipulations. These findings highlight the critical role of semantic congruency in modulating the effect of attentional load on the AV integration of common objects

Diffusion Model is Secretly a Training-free Open Vocabulary Semantic Segmenter

Recent research has explored the utilization of pre-trained text-image discriminative models, such as CLIP, to tackle the challenges associated with open-vocabulary semantic segmentation. However, it is worth noting that the alignment process based on contrastive learning employed by these models may unintentionally result in the loss of crucial localization information and object completeness, which are essential for achieving accurate semantic segmentation. More recently, there has been an emerging interest in extending the application of diffusion models beyond text-to-image generation tasks, particularly in the domain of semantic segmentation. These approaches utilize diffusion models either for generating annotated data or for extracting features to facilitate semantic segmentation. This typically involves training segmentation models by generating a considerable amount of synthetic data or incorporating additional mask annotations. To this end, we uncover the potential of generative text-to-image conditional diffusion models as highly efficient open-vocabulary semantic segmenters, and introduce a novel training-free approach named DiffSegmenter. Specifically, by feeding an input image and candidate classes into an off-the-shelf pre-trained conditional latent diffusion model, the cross-attention maps produced by the denoising U-Net are directly used as segmentation scores, which are further refined and completed by the followed self-attention maps. Additionally, we carefully design effective textual prompts and a category filtering mechanism to further enhance the segmentation results. Extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets show that the proposed DiffSegmenter achieves impressive results for open-vocabulary semantic segmentation

Audiovisual n-Back Training Alters the Neural Processes of Working Memory and Audiovisual Integration: Evidence of Changes in ERPs

(1) Background: This study investigates whether audiovisual n-back training leads to training effects on working memory and transfer effects on perceptual processing. (2) Methods: Before and after training, the participants were tested using the audiovisual n-back task (1-, 2-, or 3-back), to detect training effects, and the audiovisual discrimination task, to detect transfer effects. (3) Results: For the training effect, the behavioral results show that training leads to greater accuracy and faster response times. Stronger training gains in accuracy and response time using 3- and 2-back tasks, compared to 1-back, were observed in the training group. Event-related potentials (ERPs) data revealed an enhancement of P300 in the frontal and central regions across all working memory levels after training. Training also led to the enhancement of N200 in the central region in the 3-back condition. For the transfer effect, greater audiovisual integration in the frontal and central regions during the post-test rather than pre-test was observed at an early stage (80-120 ms) in the training group. (4) Conclusion: Our findings provide evidence that audiovisual n-back training enhances neural processes underlying a working memory and demonstrate a positive influence of higher cognitive functions on lower cognitive functions

Elevated monocyte-to-HDL cholesterol ratio predicts post-stroke depression

ObjectivesInflammation plays an important role in the development of depression after stroke. Monocyte-to-HDL Cholesterol Ratio (MHR) recently emerged as a novel comprehensive inflammatory indicator in recent years. This study aimed to investigate whether there is a relationship between MHR levels and post-stroke depression (PSD).MethodsFrom February 2019 to September 2021, patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) were recruited within 7 days post-stroke from the two centers and blood samples were collected after admission. The 17-item Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD-17) was used to measure depressive symptoms at 3 months after stroke. Patients were given the DSM-V criteria for diagnosis of PSD.ResultsOf the 411 enrolled patients, 92 (22.38%) patients were diagnosed with PSD at 3-months follow-up. The results also showed significantly higher level of MHR in patients with depression [0.81 (IQR 0.67–0.87) vs. 0.61 (IQR 0.44–0.82), P < 0.001] at admission than patients without depression. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that MHR (OR 6.568, 95% CI: 2.123–14.565, P = 0.015) was an independent risk factor for the depression at 3 months after stroke. After adjustment for potential confounding factors, the odds ratio of PSD was 5.018 (95% CI: 1.694–14.867, P = 0.004) for the highest tertile of MHR compared with the lowest tertile. Based on the ROC curve, the optimal cut-off value of MHR as an indicator for prediction of PSD was projected to be 0.55, which yielded a sensitivity of 87% and a specificity of 68.3%, with the area under the curve at 0.660 (95% CI: 0.683–0.781; P = 0.003).ConclusionElevated level of MHR was associated with PSD at 3 months, suggesting that MHR might be a useful Inflammatory markers to predict depression after stroke

OMAE2010-21069 TEST AND ANALYSIS OF VIBRATION CHARACTERISTIC ON NEW TYPE DYNAMIC HYDROCYCLONE

ABSTRACT Dynamic hydrocyclone is currently used in separating oil and water from the crude oil, in which the fluid rolling motion is drived by the external power. Compared with the static type, the dynamic hydrocylone has higher separating property, while its structure is more complex and its separating property is influenced seriously by all the rotary components. Based on the original model, dynamic hydrocyclone of the new type is designed and manufactured, while applying the vibration signal collection and analysis system of IOtech640 type in the vibration characteristic analysis of the model body. The result shows that, when the rotating speed rises from 600r/min to 2000r/min and the flux from 1 to 3 m 3 /h, the level time-domain vibration peak of the monitoring site both the near the electromotor and the faraway is under 3.4×10 -4 , while the vertical is under 3.2×10 -4 , with steady frequency components in the vibration signal. It is illustrated that vibration intensity of the dynamic hydrocyclone of the new optimized type is lightened, which may confirm the improvement of the separation property and the operational life