Medial prefrontal cortex neuronal activation and synaptic alterations after stress-induced reinstatement of palatable food seeking: a study using c-fos-GFP transgenic female rats

Relapse to maladaptive eating habits during dieting is often provoked by stress and there is evidence for a role of ovarian hormones in stress responses and feeding. We studied the role of these hormones in stress-induced reinstatement of food seeking and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) neuronal activation in c-fos-GFP transgenic female rats, which express GFP in strongly activated neurons. Food-restricted ovariectomized or sham-operated c-fos-GFP rats were trained to lever-press for palatable food pellets. Subsequently, lever-pressing was extinguished and reinstatement of food seeking and mPFC neuronal activation was assessed after injections of the pharmacological stressor yohimbine (0.5-2 mg/kg) or pellet priming (1-4 noncontingent pellets). Estrous cycle effects on reinstatement were also assessed in wild-type rats. Yohimbine- and pellet-priming-induced reinstatement was associated with Fos and GFP induction in mPFC; both reinstatement and neuronal activation were minimally affected by ovarian hormones in both c-fos-GFP and wild-type rats. c-fos-GFP transgenic rats were then used to assess glutamatergic synaptic alterations within activated GFP-positive and nonactivated GFP-negative mPFC neurons following yohimbine-induced reinstatement of food seeking. This reinstatement was associated with reduced AMPA receptor/NMDA receptor current ratios and increased paired-pulse facilitation in activated GFP-positive but not GFP-negative neurons. While ovarian hormones do not appear to play a role in stress-induced relapse of food seeking in our rat model, this reinstatement was associated with unique synaptic alterations in strongly activated mPFC neurons. Our paper introduces the c-fos-GFP transgenic rat as a new tool to study unique synaptic changes in activated neurons during behavio

How Digital Natives Learn and Thrive in the Digital Age: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students

The seventh bibliometric finding concerning a missing cultural value in studies about deforestation

This short piece of communication has the sole purpose of identifying some evidence, supporting our view regarding a possible missing environment-nurturing cultural value. Here, we attempt to examine the presence of cultural studies within the boundary of deforestation research

The seventh bibliometric finding on deforestation and cultural studies

This short piece of communication has the sole purpose of identifying some evidence, supporting our view regarding a possible missing environment-nurturing cultural value. Here, we attempt to examine the presence of cultural studies within the boundary of deforestation research

sFlt Multivalent Conjugates Inhibit Angiogenesis and Improve Half-Life In Vivo

We would like to thank Jonathan Winger and Xiao Zhu for guidance with the insect cell protein expression system and providing reagents. We would like to acknowledge Ann Fischer for help with expressing the sFlt protein in the Tissue Culture Facility at UC Berkeley and Dawn Spelke and Anusuya Ramasubramanian for help optimizing protein purification from insect cells. We are also grateful for the help from Leah Byrne and John Flannery at in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley for aiding us in the development of the rat intravitreal residence time model and for allowing us to use their facilities.Current anti-VEGF drugs for patients with diabetic retinopathy suffer from short residence time in the vitreous of the eye. In order to maintain biologically effective doses of drug for inhibiting retinal neovascularization, patients are required to receive regular monthly injections of drug, which often results in low patient compliance and progression of the disease. To improve the intravitreal residence time of anti-VEGF drugs, we have synthesized multivalent bioconjugates of an anti-VEGF protein, soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFlt) that is covalently grafted to chains of hyaluronic acid (HyA), conjugates that are termed mvsFlt. Using a mouse corneal angiogenesis assay, we demonstrate that covalent conjugation to HyA chains does not decrease the bioactivity of sFlt and that mvsFlt is equivalent to sFlt at inhibiting corneal angiogenesis. In a rat vitreous model, we observed that mvsFlt had significantly increased intravitreal residence time compared to the unconjugated sFlt after 2 days. The calculated intravitreal half-lives for sFlt and mvsFlt were 3.3 and 35 hours, respectively. Furthermore, we show that mvsFlt is more effective than the unconjugated form at inhibiting retinal neovascularization in an oxygen-induced retinopathy model, an effect that is most likely due to the longer half-life of mvsFlt in the vitreous. Taken together, our results indicate that conjugation of sFlt to HyA does not affect its affinity for VEGF and this conjugation significantly improves drug half-life. These in vivo results suggest that our strategy of multivalent conjugation could substantially improve upon drug half-life, and thus the efficacy of currently available drugs that are used in diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, thereby improving patient quality of life.Yeshttp://www.plosone.org/static/editorial#pee

Non-target displacement measurement of structures using vision based approaches

Although vision based methods for displacement measurement have been used in civil engineering for more than a decade, most of those techniques required some sort target attachment. Using target attachment techniques for real-life structures such as bridges is not practical in most of the cases. In this study, a non-target vision based method for displacement measurement is developed by proposing a new type of virtual markers instead of physical targets. The key-points of measured locations are extracted by means of a robust computer vision technique named Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT), and characteristics of the key-points show a potential ability to take the place of classical targets. To calculate the converting ratio between image coordinate and world coordinate, a camera calibration method is implemented while the conventional targets are no longer existence. The proposed method has been verified at the UCF 4-span bridge model and delivering good results at both static and dynamic displacement behavior of the model. Furthermore, the method can be seen as less complicated and more cost-effective than conventional approaches. © 2014 Taylor & Francis Group

Retroperitoneal abscess from dropped appendicolith complicating laparoscopic appendectomy.

peer reviewedAbscesses can occur after appendectomy. With the increasing use of laparoscopy, this risk has increased in the same way as the incidence of abscesses related to dropped gallstones increased after laparoscopic cholecystectomy. However, this occurrence has been rarely reported. We describe here the case of a young patient who developed retroperitoneal abscess one year after laparoscopic appendectomy

A Vision For Vision-Based Technologies For Bridge Health Monitoring

Condition assessment of bridges evolved over the years with the advances in non-destructive evaluation technologies, field tests and structural health monitoring. As a result, technological advances changed the resources that bridge engineers can tap into; however, the requirement for practical, low-cost and effective approaches has remained the same. The writer and his research team have explored vision-based technologies to fulfill such requirements. In this paper, first the vision-based technologies will be presented along with capabilities and limitations. A review of basic concepts, available camera, lens and other peripherals are reviewed along with some of the algorithms for analyzing computer vision data. A framework of image-based structural identification is proposed to obtain structural parameters by using a full con-contact method on vision related techniques. By using a camera system, traffic over the bridge will be identified and classified into classes and sub-classes for vehicle weight estimation. Finally, some solutions and example applications from a laboratory bridge, a footbridge and a railroad bridge are presented

Une obstruction acquise à la vidange gastrique en pédiatrie : mise au point et traitement

La sténose non hypertrophique du pylore (SNHP) est une situation relativement rare chez l’enfant et peu de données lui sont donc consacrées dans la littérature. Ainsi, son incidence est estimée à 1 cas pour 100 000 alors que celle de la sténose hypertrophique est estimée de 1,25 à 4 cas pour 1 000. Par ailleurs, la maladie ulcéreuse est peu fréquente chez l’enfant (son incidence avoisine également les 1 pour 100 000), mais sa morbidité et sa mortalité restent importantes. Lorsqu’elle est de localisation antro-pylorique, la maladie ulcéreuse reste une des principales causes de SNHP. La sténose pylorique reste, malgré l’arrivée des médications anti acides, une indication fréquente de chirurgie. Les autres complications possibles des ulcères gastriques sont la perforation et l’hémorragie. Ce cas soulève également la problématique de l’administration d’anti-inflammatoires dans un contexte pyrétique. Cette pratique reste courante, sinon dans le chef des professionnels de santé, tout au moins chez les parents confronté à une pyrexie chez leur enfant. Faut-il la proscrire ? Un article a récemment décrit un cas de sténose du pylore chez un enfant de 2 ans ayant ingéré une dose unique et pharmacologique d’ibuprofène