Asymmetric behavior of zebrafish in spatial memory learning program - discussing the effects of brain lateralization

[[abstract]]By the proving of molecular biological technology, zebrafish has been widely used in transgenic experiments. Recently, results showed that brain lateralization exists both in the small fish’s and human’s brain. In the present study, we use modified T-maze apparatus which is symmetry and able to control opening way to examine the possible direction preference of zebrafish in the spatial memory task. In addition, we give animal irreversible surgical lesion and observe its effect on the spatial memory task. There are three experiments in this study. In experiment-1 we use na?ve animals to develop the standard training procedure. Briefly, there are two training procedure which named right-side learning and left-side learning. Animals were taught to swim direct to the right side and left side respectively. We found that only the right side learning group shows the learning curve, but similar pattern was not found in the left side learning group. Animals of the left side learning group just swam in a randomly manner and kept the speed while enter the target area. In experiment 2, we train the animals which has been bilateral telencephalic ablation on the protocol of T-maze we has made in experiment 1. We found animals in sham group show almost the same pattern and performance with the na?ve groups in experiment 1. However, animals in the lesion group, the right side learning group didn’t show the learning curve. The speed of left side group was faster than the right side group, but animal didn’t choose the left side when animals first arrived the connect area of T-maze. In experiment 3 animals were given one-side telencephalic ablation and saw the learning performance in T-maze. The results showed that the right side telencephalon played an important role in the T-maze task of right side learning, and the left side was more important in emotional progressing. Recent results showed that there were lateralize in zebrafish brain. The right eye system (RES) made decision to bite and the familiar objects. The left eye system (LES) was to use to observe the strange environment or identify new objects. And our results showed that the direction of the target reservoir will confound the learning response. Zebrafish expressed an accumulative learning response when the target reservoir settled on the right hand side. We suggest that the differential learning responses of zebrafish was resulted in the lateralization of zebrafish brain. And the right telecephalon may be play the more important on the spatial learning progress.

Trade Policies and Economic Growth

This paper aims to examine the relationship between trade policies and economic growth. In order to test whether restrictive trade policies have a positive impact on economic growth, we investigate America, Australia and China, and, analyse how their economic performance varies between a free trade environment and a relatively protective trade environment. In this paper, we focus on comparative advantage and use various data such as tariff rate, GDP growth rate, unemployment rate, etc. to test the influence of trade policies on economic growth.We find some support that less restrictive trade policy leads to better economic growth; however overall tariff rates do not seem to have a strong effect on economic growth rate

Crystal metamorphosis at stress extremes: how soft phonons turn into lattice defects

r The Author(s) 2016 At 0 K, phonon instability controls the ideal strength and the ultrafast dynamics of defect nucleation in perfect crystals under high stress. However, how a soft phonon evolves into a lattice defect is still unclear. Here, we develop a full-Brillouin zone soft-phonon-searching algorithm that shows outstanding accuracy and efficiency for pinpointing general phonon instability within the joint material-reciprocal (x–k) spaces. By combining finite-element modeling with embedded phonon algorithm and atomistic simulation, we show how a zone-boundary soft phonon is first triggered in a simple metal (aluminum) under nanoindentation, subsequently leading to a transient new crystal phase and ensuing nucleation of a deformation twin with only one-half of the transformation strain of the conventional twin. We propose a two-stage mechanism governing the transformation of unstable shortwave phonons into lattice defects, which is fundamentally different from that initially triggered by soft long-wavelength phonons. The uncovered material dynamics at stress extremes reveal deep connections between delocalized phonons and localized defects trapped by the full nonlinear potential energy landscape and add to the rich repertoire of nonlinear dynamics found in nature.National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50971090)National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51071101)National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51471107)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Division of Materials Research (DMR-410636

Sludge Digestion By Anaerobic Fluidized Beds. I: Lab Performance Data

This study was undertaken to evaluate the laboratory performance of the anaerobic fluidized bed digesting secondary biological sludge at 35° C with four hydraulic-retention times (HRTs): 1, 2.5, 5, and 10 days. In addition, the effects of both operating temperature (15° C, 25° C and 35° C) and the initial sludge solubilization on the digester performance were also examined. It was found that at 35° C, an adequate degree of sludge digestion was obtainable with an HRT of only 1-2 days if the influent biological sludge was presolubilized by treatment with 17.5 meq/L of sodium hydroxide. If no presolubilization was used, the necessary HRT was increased to 10 days. When the temperature was decreased to 25° C and the sludge was presolubilized, the required HRT was 2.5-3 days. However, as the temperature was further decreased to 15° C, the system was unable to achieve adequate digestion in as long as 10 days, even with presolubilization. It was also observed that the fluidized-bed system was able to accept abrupt increases of loading without a corresponding buildup of excessive organic acids. © ASCE

A mobile-device-supported peer-assisted learning system for collaborative early EFL reading

Collaborative learning methods which emphasize peer interaction have been widely applied to increase the intensity and effectiveness of EFL reading programs. However, simply grouping students heterogeneously and assigning them group goals does not guarantee that effective collaborative learning will ensue. The present research includes two studies. In Study One, the weaknesses of collaborative learning in a traditional EFL setting were observed. Then, in Study Two, a mobile-device-supported peer-assisted learning (MPAL) system was developed for the purpose of addressing the identified weaknesses. Two classes of twenty-six third grade students participated in the present research to examine the unique contribution of MPAL to collaborative EFL reading activities. The collaborative behavior of elementary EFL learners was videotaped and analyzed. Detailed analysis of the videotaped behavior indicated that MPAL helped improve collaboration in elementary school level EFL learners and promotes their reading motivation

Case Report of Subanesthetic Intravenous Ketamine Infusion for the Treatment of Neuropathic Pain and Depression with Suicidal Features in a Pediatric Patient

Chronic neuropathic pain and depression are often comorbid. Ketamine has been used to treat refractory pain. There is emerging evidence for use in depression. We present a case of a pediatric patient who was successfully treated with subanesthetic intravenous ketamine infusion for chronic neuropathic pain and suicidality

Efficient Neural Architecture Search via Proximal Iterations

Neural architecture search (NAS) recently attracts much research attention because of its ability to identify better architectures than handcrafted ones. However, many NAS methods, which optimize the search process in a discrete search space, need many GPU days for convergence. Recently, DARTS, which constructs a differentiable search space and then optimizes it by gradient descent, can obtain high-performance architecture and reduces the search time to several days. However, DARTS is still slow as it updates an ensemble of all operations and keeps only one after convergence. Besides, DARTS can converge to inferior architectures due to the strong correlation among operations. In this paper, we propose a new differentiable Neural Architecture Search method based on Proximal gradient descent (denoted as NASP). Different from DARTS, NASP reformulates the search process as an optimization problem with a constraint that only one operation is allowed to be updated during forward and backward propagation. Since the constraint is hard to deal with, we propose a new algorithm inspired by proximal iterations to solve it. Experiments on various tasks demonstrate that NASP can obtain high-performance architectures with 10 times of speedup on the computational time than DARTS.Comment: Accepted by AAAI-202

A Study on the Satisfaction of Supply Chain Management System from the View of Justice and Value

Due to the common, most enterprises have utilized information technology (IT) to enhance their competition and performance. Meanwhile, governments in Taiwan have encouraged enterprises to adapt e-commerce by putting policies and facilitating technology. Nevertheless, only few literatures discuss or evaluate the satisfaction of E-SCM after establishing information systems by enterprises. This research attempts to integrate three well-founded theories – Information System Success model (ISS), Organization Justice Theory and Consumer Value to develop our model. Using Structural Square Modeling (SEM) analysis performed on results of a questionnaire given to the providers of SCM who have established the E-SCM in their enterprises. The results showed that the distributive justice, procedural justice and interactive justice in the organization justice theory have a significant effect on the performance outcome in the E-SCM. It also showed that the system and service quality in the IS success model and the cost and service value in shopping value have a significant effect on the satisfaction of the E-SCM. The contribution of this study can be further research in academic and practical