Emotional Evaluation of Pain in Migraine Patients

In the present study, we investigated how pain perception by migraine (MG) patients may differ from that of normal subjects. We simultaneously measured respiration and used an electroencephalogram to find inspiration-related (I-α) potentials during pain stimuli, which are usually observed in normal subjects during emotional arousal. There were no differences in pain threshold levels, maximum pain levels, scales of the level of pain, state, and trait anxiety, or respiratory rate during rest and stimulation between normal and MG subjects. When anticipating a pain stimulus, respiratory rate increased in both MG and normal subjects. However, I-α potentials were only found in normal subjects. We suggest that the absence of I-α potentials in MG patients may be due to the fact that pain-induced pervasive cortical excitability may not be sufficient to concentrate the brain rhythms to phase-lock. Hypersensitivity towards light, sound, and various sensations is often reported in MG. Thus, there may be a tendency in MG subjects to avoid concentrating on one external stimulus to protect against increased hypersensitivity. It may be that MG patients intuitively know that decentralizing their attention can avoid triggering an MG attack

Parallel Activation of the Amygdala and Visual Cortex Estimated by Dipole Tracing Analysis during Visual Stimulation of Fear and Sadness

In this study we used the electroencephalograph (EEG) dipole tracing method to analyze the visual and emotional evoked potentials (VEEPs) triggered by emotional stimuli induced by pictures of fear, sadness and happiness selected from the International Affective Picture System. We hypothesized that if we used the emotional pictures as triggers for averaging the EEG, we could determine VEEPs, and dipoles could be estimated in the visual cortex as well as in the areas related to the picture-induced emotions. We found the VEEP components elicited by fearful and sad stimuli were quite similar and there were no differences in the root mean square values of the positive waves, P1 and P2, in these two stimuli. However, the VEEP elicited by the happy stimulus had a significantly different amplitude compared to the fearful and sad stimuli. Different amplitude components of VEEPs between negative and positive emotions might be caused by differences in the processing of activations. The negative emotions of fear and sadness activated the amygdala in parallel with the visual cortex immediately after the stimuli; and at a later time period the anterior cingulate cortex was activated for conscious awareness of the negative emotions. A simple happy stimulus does not need parallel activation of the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex, along with activation of the visual cortex. We suggest that parallel processing in the visual cortex and amygdala might serve to rapidly evaluate stimuli, in readiness for the conscious awareness of negative emotions

Amygdala Response During Anticipatory Anxiety in Patients with Tension-type Headache

Tension-type headache (TTH) is the most prevalent primary headache disorder, affecting 0.5%〜4.8% of the population worldwide. Psychological factors play an important role in the pathogenesis of TTH. For instance, depression and anxiety are thought to enhance central sensitization, and thus increase the frequency of headaches. In this study, we used the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and measures of anxiety to analyze personality traits associated with TTH. Specifically, we were interested in the relationship between these variables, respiratory responses, and brain activity. Our results showed that individuals with TTH had significantly higher state anxiety scores compared with healthy controls. In addition, individuals with TTH showed a greater increase in RR during a stressful task involving anticipation of an electrical stimulation. During anticipatory anxiety, there was bilateral amygdala (AMG) activation in TTH patients, while only the right AMG was activated in healthy controls. Interestingly, patients in the TTH group with high levels of state anxiety and high scores on schizophrenia scales had the following MMPI personality traits: peculiar perception, poor familial relationship, difficulties concentrating, and lack of deep interest. We suggest that the psychological factors associated with the above-mentioned brain activation might induce peripheral muscle pressure, which then triggers headaches

CA-ARBAC: privacy preserving using context-aware role-based access control on Android permission system

Existing mobile platforms are based on manual way of granting and revoking permissions to applications. Once the user grants a given permission to an application, the application can use it without limit, unless the user manually revokes the permission. This has become the reason for many privacy problems because of the fact that a permission that is harmless at some occasion may be very dangerous at another condition. One of the promising solutions for this problem is context-aware access control at permission level that allows dynamic granting and denying of permissions based on some predefined context. However, dealing with policy configuration at permission level becomes very complex for the user as the number of policies to configure will become very large. For instance, if there are A applications, P permissions, and C contexts, the user may have to deal with A × P × C number of policy configurations. Therefore, we propose a context-aware role-based access control model that can provide dynamic permission granting and revoking while keeping the number of policies as small as possible. Although our model can be used for all mobile platforms, we use Android platform to demonstrate our system. In our model, Android applications are assigned roles where roles contain a set of permissions and contexts are associated with permissions. Permissions are activated and deactivated for the containing role based on the associated contexts. Our approach is unique in that our system associates contexts with permissions as opposed to existing similar works that associate contexts with roles. As a proof of concept, we have developed a prototype application called context-aware Android role-based access control. We have also performed various tests using our application, and the result shows that our model is working as desired

Operational Review of the First Wireline In Situ Stress Test in Scientific Ocean Drilling

Scientific ocean drilling’s first in situ stress measurement was made at Site C0009A during Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 319 as part of Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE) Stage 2. The Modular Formation Dynamics Tester (MDT, Schlumberger)wireline logging tool was deployed in riser Hole C0009A to measure in situ formation pore pressure, formation permeability (often reported as mobility=permeability/viscosity), and the least principal stress (S3) at several isolated depths (Saffer et al., 2009; Expedition 319 Scientists, 2010). The importance of in situ stress measurements is not only for scientific interests in active tectonic drilling, but also for geomechanical and well bore stability analyses. Certain in situ tools were not previously available for scientific ocean drilling due to the borehole diameter and open hole limits of riserless drilling. The riser-capable drillship, D/V Chikyu,now in service for IODP expeditions, allows all of the techniques available to estimate the magnitudes and orientations of 3-D stresses to be used. These techniques include downhole density logging for vertical stress, breakout and caliper log analyses for maximum horizontal stress, core-based anelastic strain recovery (ASR, used in the NanTroSEIZE expeditions in 2007–2008), and leak-off test (Lin et al., 2008) and minifrac/hydraulic fracturing (NanTroSEIZE Expedition319 in 2009). In this report, the whole operational planning process related to in situ measurements is reviewed, and lessons learned from Expedition 319 are summarized for efficient planning and testing in the future

Cytotoxicity of replication-competent adenoviruses powered by an exogenous regulatory region is not linearly correlated with the viral infectivity/gene expression or with the E1A-activating ability but is associated with the p53 genotypes

BackgroundReplication-competent adenoviruses (Ad) produced cytotoxic effects on infected tumors and have been examined for the clinical applicability. A biomarkers to predict the cytotoxicity is valuable in a clinical setting.MethodsWe constructed type 5 Ad (Ad5) of which the expression of E1A gene was activated by a 5′ regulatory sequences of survivin, midkine or cyclooxygenase-2, which were highly expressed in human tumors. We also produced the same replication-competent Ad of which the fiber-knob region was replaced by that of Ad35 (AdF35). The cytotoxicity was examined by a colorimetric assay with human tumor cell lines, 4 kinds of pancreatic, 9 esophageal carcinoma and 5 mesothelioma. Ad infectivity and Ad-mediated gene expression were examined with replication-incompetent Ad5 and AdF35 which expressed the green fluorescence protein gene. Expression of cellular receptors for Ad5 and AdF35 was also examined with flow cytometry. A transcriptional activity of the regulatory sequences was investigated with a luciferase assay in the tumor cells. We then investigated a possible correlation between Ad-mediated cytotoxicity and the infectivity/gene expression, the transcriptional activity or the p53 genotype.ResultsWe found that the cytotoxicity was greater with AdF35 than with Ad5 vectors, but was not correlated with the Ad infectivity/gene expression irrespective of the fiber-knob region or the E1A-activating transcriptional activity. In contrast, replication-competent Ad produced greater cytotoxicity in p53 mutated than in wild-type esophageal carcinoma cells, suggesting a possible association between the cytotoxicity and the p53 genotype.ConclusionsSensitivity to Ad-mediated cytotoxic activity was linked with the p53 genotype but was not lineally correlated with the infectivity/gene expression or the E1A expression

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements