Cholinergic modulation of cognitive processing: insights drawn from computational models

Acetylcholine plays an important role in cognitive function, as shown by pharmacological manipulations that impact working memory, attention, episodic memory, and spatial memory function. Acetylcholine also shows striking modulatory influences on the cellular physiology of hippocampal and cortical neurons. Modeling of neural circuits provides a framework for understanding how the cognitive functions may arise from the influence of acetylcholine on neural and network dynamics. We review the influences of cholinergic manipulations on behavioral performance in working memory, attention, episodic memory, and spatial memory tasks, the physiological effects of acetylcholine on neural and circuit dynamics, and the computational models that provide insight into the functional relationships between the physiology and behavior. Specifically, we discuss the important role of acetylcholine in governing mechanisms of active maintenance in working memory tasks and in regulating network dynamics important for effective processing of stimuli in attention and episodic memory tasks. We also propose that theta rhythm plays a crucial role as an intermediary between the physiological influences of acetylcholine and behavior in episodic and spatial memory tasks. We conclude with a synthesis of the existing modeling work and highlight future directions that are likely to be rewarding given the existing state of the literature for both empiricists and modelers

Direct Lysis RT-qPCR of SARS-CoV-2 in Cell Culture Supernatant Allows for Fast and Accurate Quantification

Studying the entire virus replication cycle of SARS-CoV-2 is essential to identify the host factors involved and treatments to combat infection. Quantification of released virions often requires lengthy procedures, whereas quantification of viral RNA in supernatant is faster and applicable to clinical isolates. Viral RNA purification is expensive in terms of time and resources, and is often unsuitable for high-throughput screening. Direct lysis protocols were explored for patient swab samples, but the lack of virus inactivation, cost, sensitivity, and accuracy is hampering their application and usefulness for in vitro studies. Here, we show a highly sensitive, accurate, fast, and cheap direct lysis RT-qPCR method for quantification of SARS-CoV-2 in culture supernatant. This method inactivates the virus and permits detection limits of 0.043 TCID(50) virus and <1.89 copy RNA template per reaction. Comparing direct lysis with RNA extraction, a mean difference of +0.69 ± 0.56 cycles was observed. Application of the method to established qPCR methods for RSV (-ve RNA), IAV (segmented -ve RNA), and BHV (dsDNA) showed wider applicability to other enveloped viruses, whereby IAV showed poorer sensitivity. This shows that accurate quantification of SARS-CoV-2 and other enveloped viruses can be achieved using direct lysis protocols, facilitating a wide range of high- and low-throughput applications

Effectiveness and predictability of in-network storage cache for scientific workflows

Large scientific collaborations often have multiple scientists accessing the same set of files while doing different analyses, which create repeated accesses to the large amounts of shared data located far away. These data accesses have long latency due to distance and occupy the limited bandwidth available over the wide-area network. To reduce the wide-area network traffic and the data access latency, regional data storage caches have been installed as a new networking service. To study the effectiveness of such a cache system in scientific applications, we examine the Southern California Petabyte Scale Cache for a high-energy physics experiment. By examining about 3TB of operational logs, we show that this cache removed 67.6% of file requests from the wide-area network and reduced the traffic volume on wide-area network by 12.3TB (or 35.4%) an average day. The reduction in the traffic volume (35.4%) is less than the reduction in file counts (67.6%) because the larger files are less likely to be reused. Due to this difference in data access patterns, the cache system has implemented a policy to avoid evicting smaller files when processing larger files. We also build a machine learning model to study the predictability of the cache behavior. Tests show that this model is able to accurately predict the cache accesses, cache misses, and network throughput, making the model useful for future studies on resource provisioning and planning

Pitt Political Review: GSPIA Edition (Spring 2011, Volume 3)

This volume of the Pitt Political Review: GSPIA Edition includes "Legal and Societal Injustice: Gender Inequality and Land Rights in Tanzania" and "The Transformation of Philanthropy in Sub-Saharan Africa: from Traditional Practices to the Establishment of Grantmaking Foundations." The aim of "Legal and Societal Injustice: Gender Inequality and Land Rights in Tanzania" is to increase awareness of the problems surrounding land rights and gender inequality in Tanzania's Karagwe District. "The Transformation of Philanthropy in Sub-Saharan Africa: from Traditional Practices to the Establishment of Grantmaking Foundations" discusses the effectiveness of African foundations in development over the long-term

Practitioner Review: effectiveness and mechanisms of change in participatory arts-based programmes for promoting youth mental health and well-being – a systematic review

Background: Participatory arts-based (PAB) programmes refer to a diverse range of community programmes involving active engagement in the creation process that appear helpful to several aspects of children's and young people's (CYP) mental health and well-being. This mixed-methods systematic review synthesises evidence relating to the effectiveness and mechanisms of change in PAB programmes for youth. Method: Studies were identified following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses approach. Eleven electronic databases were searched for studies of PAB programmes conducted with CYP (aged 4–25 years), which reported mental health and well-being effectiveness outcomes and/or mechanisms of change. A mixed-methods appraisal tool assessed study quality. A narrative synthesis was conducted of effectiveness and challenges in capturing this. Findings relating to reported mechanisms of change were integrated via a metasummary. Results: Twenty-two studies were included. Evidence of effectiveness from quantitative studies was limited by methodological issues. The metasummary identified mechanisms of change resonant with those proposed in talking therapies. Additionally, PAB programmes appear beneficial to CYP by fostering a therapeutic space characterised by subverting restrictive social rules, communitas that is not perceived as coercive, and inviting play and embodied understanding. Conclusions: There is good evidence that there are therapeutic processes in PAB programmes. There is a need for more transdisciplinary work to increase understanding of context–mechanism–outcome pathways, including the role played by different art stimuli and practices. Going forward, transdisciplinary teams are needed to quantify short- and long-term mental health and well-being outcomes and to investigate optimal programme durations in relation to population and need. Such teams would also be best placed to work on resolving inter-disciplinary methodological tensions

Predicting Resource Utilization Trends with Southern California Petabyte Scale Cache

Large community of high-energy physicists share their data all around world making it necessary to ship a large number of files over wide- area networks. Regional disk caches such as the Southern California Petabyte Scale Cache have been deployed to reduce the data access latency. We observe that about 94% of the requested data volume were served from this cache, without remote transfers, between Sep. 2022 and July 2023. In this paper, we show the predictability of the resource utilization by exploring the trends of recent cache usage. The time series based prediction is made with a machine learning approach and the prediction errors are small relative to the variation in the input data. This work would help understanding the characteristics of the resource utilization and plan for additional deployments of caches in the future

Floristic quality assessment for Orchis Fen Preserve, Emmet County, Michigan

Field Biology of PlantsThe Michigan Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) is a tool used to evaluate the natural significance and floristic quality of a given locality. We evaluated the plant community at Orchis Fen, a 35-acre preserve in Emmet County, Michigan owned by the Little Traverse Conservancy and Nature Conservancy. The purpose of our study was to use the Floristic Quality Index (FQI), Wetness Index, and the mean coefficient of conservatism (C) to provide the Little Traverse Conservancy and Nature Conservancy with information to aid in their preservation and management strategies. We set up a diagonal transect and identified plants across the site, passing through three interconnected habitats: cedar swamp, fen, and hardwood forest (Figure 1). We found that the mean C was 5.14 for native species and 4.42 when invasive species were taken into account. The FQI for native species was 53.14 and 49.60 including invasive species. The native wetness coefficient (W) was -1.96 for the entire transect and changed to -1.75 with adventives. These values indicate that Orchis Fen is a high quality natural area with an above-average representation of plant species associated with pre-settlement conditions. Our study reinforces the importance of continuing to focus on preservation efforts in this area.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61466/3/Falk_et_al_2008.pd