Impact of intrinsic biophysical diversity on the activity of spiking neurons

We study the effect of intrinsic heterogeneity on the activity of a population of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons. By rescaling the dynamical equation, we derive mathematical relations between multiple neuronal parameters and a fluctuating input noise. To this end, common input to heterogeneous neurons is conceived as an identical noise with neuron-specific mean and variance. As a consequence, the neuronal output rates can differ considerably, and their relative spike timing becomes desynchronized. This theory can quantitatively explain some recent experimental findings.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

A study on the sexuality of transsexuals in Hong Kong

"In the following parts, we will first of all introduce the general situation transsexuals face in Hong Kong, followed by a report and discussion on the interview results of three Male-to Female (MtF) transsexuals regarding their sex and gender identity, sexual desire and how they experience their bodies in sex before and after their sex reassignment surgery. Through scrutinizing the subjects’ sexuality out of a clinical discourse and affirming the subjects’ sexual experiences, we hope to probe insight into the complexities and ambiguities of our sexuality formation and culture."AsiaPacifiQueer Network, Australian National Universit

Topological inference of the Conley index

The Conley index of an isolated invariant set is a fundamental object in the study of dynamical systems. Here we consider smooth functions on closed submanifolds of Euclidean space and describe a framework for inferring the Conley index of any compact, connected isolated critical set of such a function with high confidence from a sufficiently large finite point sample. The main construction of this paper is a specific index pair which is local to the critical set in question. We establish that these index pairs have positive reach and hence admit a sampling theory for robust homology inference. This allows us to estimate the Conley index, and as a direct consequence, we are also able to estimate the Morse index of any critical point of a Morse function using finitely many local evaluations

Getting Outdoors After the Workday: The Affective and Cognitive Effects of Evening Nature Contact

A growing body of research indicates that contact with nature at work has beneficial effects on employee well-being. However, employees often spend most of their workdays indoors, largely separate from natural elements. For these employees, the bulk of their contact with nature occurs outside of work, after the workday. The extent to which this contact with nature during nonwork time helps employees recover from the workday and affects them at work the next day, if at all, is not clear, leaving an incomplete picture of the potential for employees to access the work-related benefits of nature in their personal time. In this paper, we draw from stress recovery theory and attention restoration theory to examine the effects of evening nature contact on work effort the following day via two paths: increased positive affect and reduced depletion. Our results, based on three studies employing different methodologies (i.e., an experience sampling study, an experiment, and a recall study), indicate that evening nature contact positively relates to beginning of workday positive affect and subsequent work effort. However, this effect emerged only for employees with high levels of nature connectedness—an individual difference reflecting individuals’ innate connection to the natural world. Concerning the depletion-based link between evening nature contact and employee effort at work the next day, our results offered only limited support for this path. These findings extend our understanding of the effects of contact with nature on employees, particularly across work and home boundaries

Paclitaxel induces immunogenic cell death in ovarian cancer via TLR4/IKK2/SNARE-dependent exocytosis

Emerging evidence shows that the efficacy of chemotherapeutic drugs are reliant on their capability to induce immunogenic cell death (ICD), thus transforming dying tumor cells into antitumor vaccines. We wanted to uncover potential therapeutic strategies that target ovarian cancer by having a better understanding of the standard-of-care chemotherapy treatment. Here, we showed in ovarian cancer that paclitaxel induced ICD-associated DAMPs (i.e. damage-associated molecular patterns, such as CALR exposure, ATP secretion and HMGB1 release) in vitro and elicited significant antitumor responses in tumor vaccination assays in vivo. Paclitaxel-induced TLR4 signaling was essential to the release of DAMPs, which lead to the activation of NF-κB-mediated CCL2 transcription and IKK2-mediated SNARE-dependent vesicle exocytosis, thus exposing CALR on the cell surface. Paclitaxel induced ER stress, which triggered PERK activation and eIF2α phosphorylation independent of TLR4. Paclitaxel chemotherapy induced T cell infiltration in ovarian tumors of the responsive patients; CALR expression in primary ovarian tumors also correlated with patients' survival and patient response to chemotherapy. These findings suggest that the effectiveness of paclitaxel relied upon the activation of antitumor immunity through ICD via TLR4 and highlighted the importance of CALR expression in cancer cells as an indicator of response to paclitaxel chemotherapy in ovarian cancer