Contour Integration over Time: Psychophysical and fMRI Evidence.

The brain integrates discrete but collinear stimuli to perceive global contours. Previous contour integration (CI) studies mainly focus on integration over space, and CI is attributed to either V1 long-range connections or contour processing in high-visual areas that top-down modulate V1 responses. Here, we show that CI also occurs over time in a design that minimizes the roles of V1 long-range interactions. We use tilted contours embedded in random orientation noise and moving horizontally behind a fixed vertical slit. Individual contour elements traveling up/down within the slit would be encoded over time by parallel, rather than aligned, V1 neurons. However, we find robust contour detection even when the slit permits only one viewable contour element. Similar to CI over space, CI over time also obeys the rule of collinearity. fMRI evidence shows that while CI over space engages visual areas as early as V1, CI over time mainly engages higher dorsal and ventral visual areas involved in shape processing, as well as posterior parietal regions involved in visual memory that can represent the orientation of temporally integrated contours. These results suggest at least partially dissociable mechanisms for implementing the Gestalt rule of continuity in CI over space and time.European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) (Grant ID: 255577), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Grant IDs: D52199X , E027436), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant IDs: 31230030, 31571160, 91432102

Contour Integration over Time: Psychophysical and fMRI Evidence.

The brain integrates discrete but collinear stimuli to perceive global contours. Previous contour integration (CI) studies mainly focus on integration over space, and CI is attributed to either V1 long-range connections or contour processing in high-visual areas that top-down modulate V1 responses. Here, we show that CI also occurs over time in a design that minimizes the roles of V1 long-range interactions. We use tilted contours embedded in random orientation noise and moving horizontally behind a fixed vertical slit. Individual contour elements traveling up/down within the slit would be encoded over time by parallel, rather than aligned, V1 neurons. However, we find robust contour detection even when the slit permits only one viewable contour element. Similar to CI over space, CI over time also obeys the rule of collinearity. fMRI evidence shows that while CI over space engages visual areas as early as V1, CI over time mainly engages higher dorsal and ventral visual areas involved in shape processing, as well as posterior parietal regions involved in visual memory that can represent the orientation of temporally integrated contours. These results suggest at least partially dissociable mechanisms for implementing the Gestalt rule of continuity in CI over space and time

Mass-Production of Mesoporous MnCo2O4 Spinels with Manganese(IV)- and Cobalt(II)-Rich Surfaces for Superior Bifunctional Oxygen Electrocatalysis

A mesoporous MnCo2O4 electrode material is made for bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysis. The MnCo2O4 exhibits both Co3O4-like activity for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and Mn2O3-like performance for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The potential difference between the ORR and OER of MnCo2O4 is as low as 0.83 V. By XANES and XPS investigation, the notable activity results from the preferred MnIVand CoII-rich surface. The electrode material can be obtained on large-scale with the precise chemical control of the components at relatively low temperature. The surface state engineering may open a new avenue to optimize the electrocatalysis performance of electrode materials. The prominent bifunctional activity shows that MnCo2O4 could be used in metal-air batteries and/or other energy devices.Peer reviewe

Identification of a latent pathogen on mulberry tree with a disease of mosaic dwarf

A disease on mulberries with the typical symptoms of mosaic and dwarf leaves was found in middle areas of China in 1980s. Presently, this disease became serious and spread out. Based on previous finding, we detected a viroid-like small molecular RNA in diseased mulberries tissues. In this paper, we further identified the pathogen of mulberry mosaic dwarf disease (MMDD) according to the Koch's postulates and reported the diagnostic method of the pathogen by using PCR with two sets of specific primers. The result might be helpful to control the disease extension

ConPET: Continual Parameter-Efficient Tuning for Large Language Models

Continual learning necessitates the continual adaptation of models to newly emerging tasks while minimizing the catastrophic forgetting of old ones. This is extremely challenging for large language models (LLMs) with vanilla full-parameter tuning due to high computation costs, memory consumption, and forgetting issue. Inspired by the success of parameter-efficient tuning (PET), we propose Continual Parameter-Efficient Tuning (ConPET), a generalizable paradigm for continual task adaptation of LLMs with task-number-independent training complexity. ConPET includes two versions with different application scenarios. First, Static ConPET can adapt former continual learning methods originally designed for relatively smaller models to LLMs through PET and a dynamic replay strategy, which largely reduces the tuning costs and alleviates the over-fitting and forgetting issue. Furthermore, to maintain scalability, Dynamic ConPET adopts separate PET modules for different tasks and a PET module selector for dynamic optimal selection. In our extensive experiments, the adaptation of Static ConPET helps multiple former methods reduce the scale of tunable parameters by over 3,000 times and surpass the PET-only baseline by at least 5 points on five smaller benchmarks, while Dynamic ConPET gains its advantage on the largest dataset. The codes and datasets are available at https://github.com/Raincleared-Song/ConPET.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

A link between tropical intraseasonal variability and Arctic stratospheric ozone

Previous studies using satellite measurements showed evidence that subtropical upper troposphere/lower stratosphere ozone (O_3) can be modulated by tropical intraseasonal variability, the most dominant form of which is the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) with a period of 30–60 days. Here we further study the MJO modulation in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere O_3 over the northern extratropics and the Arctic. Significant MJO-related O_3 signals (13–20 Dobson units) are found over the northern extratropics (north of 30°N). The O_3 anomalies change their magnitude and patterns depending on the phase of the MJO. Over the Arctic, the MJO-related O_3 anomalies are dominated by a wave number 2 structure and are anticorrelated with the geopotential height (GPH) anomalies at 250 hPa. The latter is similar to the findings in the previous studies over subtropics and indicates that the Arctic upper troposphere/lower stratosphere O_3 anomalies are associated with dynamical motions near the tropopause. The teleconnection from the tropics to the Arctic is likely through propagation of planetary waves generated by the equatorial heating that affects the tropopause height and O_3 at high latitudes

Absence of Appl2 sensitizes endotoxin shock through activation of PI3K/Akt pathway

BACKGROUND: The adapter proteins Appl1 (adaptor protein containing pleckstrin homology domain, phosphotyrosine domain, and leucine zipper motif 1) and Appl2 are highly homologous and involved in several signaling pathways. While previous studies have shown that Appl1 plays a pivotal role in adiponectin signaling and insulin secretion, the physiological functions of Appl2 are largely unknown. RESULTS: In the present study, the role of Appl2 in sepsis shock was investigated by using Appl2 knockout (KO) mice. When challenged with lipopolysaccharides (LPS), Appl2 KO mice exhibited more severe symptoms of endotoxin shock, accompanied by increased production of proinflammatory cytokines. In comparison with the wild-type control, deletion of Appl2 led to higher levels of TNF-α and IL-1β in primary macrophages. In addition, phosphorylation of Akt and its downstream effector NF-κB was significantly enhanced. By co-immunoprecipitation, we found that Appl2 and Appl1 interacted with each other and formed a complex with PI3K regulatory subunit p85α, which is an upstream regulator of Akt. Consistent with these results, deletion of Appl1 in macrophages exhibited characteristics of reduced Akt activation and decreased the production of TNFα and IL-1β when challenged by LPS. CONCLUSIONS: Results of the present study demonstrated that Appl2 is a critical negative regulator of innate immune response via inhibition of PI3K/Akt/NF-κB signaling pathway by forming a complex with Appl1 and PI3K.published_or_final_versio

Exploring the Performance Benefits of End-to-End Path Switching

This paper explores the feasibility of improving the performance of end-to-end data transfers between different sites through path switching. Our study is focused on both the logic that controls path switching decisions and the configurations required to achieve sufficient path diversity. Specifically, we investigate two common approaches offering path diversity – multi-homing and overlay networks – and investigate their characteristics in the context of a representative wide-area testbed. We explore the end-to-end delay and loss characteristics of different paths and find that substantial improvements can potentially be achived by path switching, especially in lowering end-to-end losses. Based on this assessment, we develop a simple path-switching mechanism capable of realizing those performance improvements. Our experimental study demonstrates that substantial performance improvements are indeed achievable using this approach

Failure Mechanism of Bolts and Countermeasures in Swelling Soft Rock Support

The effect of conventional bolt support is not ideal due to the large deformation character of soft rock. As an innovative bolt, constant resistance large deformation (CRLD) bolt has been successfully applied to swelling soft rock engineering, but the reinforcement mechanism is not yet clear. To investigate the interaction mechanism between bolt and surrounding rock, Nanshan Coal Mine of China was selected as the engineering background. The plastic zone of surrounding rock mass and the axial force of three bolts were obtained by theoretical analysis and FLAC3D numerical simulation. Failure processes of conventional pretension bolts in soft rock were reproduced, and the interaction between CRLD bolt and soft rock was investigated in comparison. The results indicate that: (1) The fracture zone of surrounding rock exceeds the anchorage range of the low pretension bolt, the bolt slides with surrounding rock and finally fails. (2) The fracture zone of surrounding rock does not exceed the anchorage range of the high pretension bolt. However, with the accumulation of deformation energy, stress concentration makes the bolt break. (3) CRLD bolt can effectively absorb the deformation energy released by soft rock and maintain constant support resistance. The conclusions obtained in this study provide significant references in the selection of bolts in soft rock engineering