Milnacipran affects mouse impulsive, aggressive, and depressive-like behaviors in a distinct dose-dependent manner

Serotonin/noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) are widely used for the treatment for major depressive disorder, but these drugs induce several side effects including increased aggression and impulsivity, which are risk factors for substance abuse, criminal involvement, and suicide. To address this issue, milnacipran (0, 3, 10, or 30 mg/kg), an SNRI and antidepressant, was intraperitoneally administered to mice prior to the 3-choice serial reaction time task, residente-intruder test, and forced swimming test to measure impulsive, aggressive, and depressive-like behaviors, respectively. A milnacipran dose of 10 mg/kg suppressed all behaviors, which was accompanied by increased dopamine and serotonin levels in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) but not in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Although the most effective dose for depressive-like behavior was 30 mg/kg, the highest dose increased aggressive behavior and unaffected impulsive behavior. Increased dopamine levels in the NAc could be responsible for the effects. In addition, the mice basal impulsivity was negatively correlated with the latency to the first agonistic behavior. Thus, the optimal dose range of milnacipran is narrower than previously thought. Finding drugs that increase serotonin and dopamine levels in the mPFC without affecting dopamine levels in the NAc is a potential strategy for developing novel antidepressants

Detecting human heads with their orientations

We propose a two-step method for detecting human heads with their orientations. In the first step, the method employs an ellipse as the contour model of human-head appearances to deal with wide variety of appearances. Our method then evaluates the ellipse to detect possible human heads. In the second step, on the other hand, our method focuses on features inside the ellipse, such as eyes, the mouth or cheeks, to model facial components. The method evaluates not only such components themselves but also their geometric configuration to eliminate false positives in the first step and, at the same time, to estimate face orientations. Our intensive experiments show that our method can correctly and stably detect human heads with their orientations

Development and verification of wall-flap-gate as tsunami inundation defence for nuclear plants

A wall-flap-gate is automatic watertight door, and it works by buoyancy without powered machineries and human operations. In the Tohoku Earthquake tsunamis, serious damages were caused by inundation from ventilators of outer walls in power plants. The wall-flap-gate is estimated to be effective in keeping sustainability of nuclear plants against extreme tsunamis. The present study examines the hydrodynamic characteristics of the wall-flap-gate by hydraulic model experiments and verifies its capability of flood prevention for nuclear plants through various prototype tests. The experimental results proved that the wall-flap-gate had sufficient strength, watertightness, and durability against tsunamis and that its motion was not disturbed by debris. The viability of the wall-flap-gate as an inundation defence structure for nuclear plants was confirmed through this study. As a result, practical wall-flap-gates are installing on Hamaoka nuclear power station in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan

Ground-state properties of neutron-rich Mg isotopes

We analyze recently-measured total reaction cross sections for 24-38Mg isotopes incident on 12C targets at 240 MeV/nucleon by using the folding model and antisymmetrized molecular dynamics(AMD). The folding model well reproduces the measured reaction cross sections, when the projectile densities are evaluated by the deformed Woods-Saxon (def-WS) model with AMD deformation. Matter radii of 24-38Mg are then deduced from the measured reaction cross sections by fine-tuning the parameters of the def-WS model. The deduced matter radii are largely enhanced by nuclear deformation. Fully-microscopic AMD calculations with no free parameter well reproduce the deduced matter radii for 24-36Mg, but still considerably underestimate them for 37,38Mg. The large matter radii suggest that 37,38Mg are candidates for deformed halo nucleus. AMD also reproduces other existing measured ground-state properties (spin-parity, total binding energy, and one-neutron separation energy) of Mg isotopes. Neutron-number (N) dependence of deformation parameter is predicted by AMD. Large deformation is seen from 31Mg with N = 19 to a drip-line nucleus 40Mg with N = 28, indicating that both the N = 20 and 28 magicities disappear. N dependence of neutron skin thickness is also predicted by AMD.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.