Heterogeneous blood-brain barrier dysfunction in cerebral small vessel diseases

INTRODUCTION: We explored how blood-brain barrier (BBB) leakage rate of gadolinium chelates (K trans) and BBB water exchange rate (k w) varied in cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) subtypes. METHODS: Thirty sporadic cSVD, 40 cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL), and 13 high-temperature requirement factor A serine peptidase 1 (HTRA) -related cSVD subjects were investigated parallel to 40 healthy individuals. Subjects underwent clinical, cognitive, and MRI assessment.RESULTS: In CADASIL, no difference in K trans, but lower k w was observed in multiple brain regions. In sporadic cSVD, no difference in k w, but higher K trans was found in the whole brain and normal-appearing white matter. In HTRA1-related cSVD, both higher K trans in the whole brain and lower k w in multiple brain regions were observed. In each patient group, the altered BBB measures were correlated with lesion burden or clinical severity. DISCUSSION: In cSVD subtypes, distinct alterations of k w and K trans were observed. The combination of K trans and k w can depict the heterogeneous BBB dysfunction. HIGHLIGHTS: We measured BBB leakage to gadolinium-based contrast agent (K trans) and water exchange rate (k w) across BBB in three subtypes of cSVD. CADASIL is characterized by lower k w, HTRA1-related cSVD exhibits both higher K trans and lower k w, while sporadic cSVD is distinguished by higher K trans. There are distinct alterations in k w and K trans among subtypes of cSVD, indicating the heterogeneous nature of BBB dysfunction. </p

Action Real-Time Strategy Gaming Experience Related to Increased Attentional Resources: An Attentional Blink Study

Action real-time strategy gaming (ARSG) is a cognitively demanding task which requires attention, sensorimotor skills, team cooperation, and strategy-making abilities. A recent study found that ARSG experts had superior visual selective attention (VSA) for detecting the location of a moving object that could appear in one of 24 different peripheral locations (Qiu et al., 2018), suggesting that ARSG experience is related to improvements in the spatial component of VSA. However, the influence of ARSG experience on the temporal component of VSA—the detection of an item among a sequence of items presented consecutively and quickly at a single location—still remains understudied. Using behavioral and electrophysiological measures, this study examined whether ARSG experts had superior temporal VSA performance compared to non-experts in an attentional blink (AB) task, which is typically used to examine temporal VSA. The results showed that the experts outperformed the non-experts in their detection rates of targets. Furthermore, compared to the non-experts, the experts had faster information processing as indicated by earlier P3 peak latencies in an AB period, more attentional resources distributed to targets as indicated by stronger P3 amplitudes, and a more flexible deployment of attentional resources. These findings suggest that experts were less prone to the AB effect. Thus, long-term ARSG experience is related to improvements in temporal VSA. The current findings support the benefit of video gaming experience on the development of VSA

Land-use change interacts with island biogeography to alter bird community assembly

Anthropogenic activities have reshaped biodiversity on islands worldwide. However, it remains unclear how island attributes and land-use change interactively shape multiple facets of island biodiversity through community assembly processes. To answer this, we conducted bird surveys in various land-use types (mainly forest and farmland) using transects on 34 oceanic land-bridge islands in the largest archipelago of China. We found that bird species richness increases with island area and decreases with isolation, regardless of the intensity of land-use change. However, forest-dominated habitats exhibited lower richness than farmland-dominated habitats. Island bird assemblages generally comprised species that share more similar traits or evolutionary histories (i.e., functional and/or phylogenetic clustering) than expected if assemblages were randomly assembled. Contrary to our expectations, we observed that bird assemblages in forest-dominated habitats were more clustered on large and close islands, whereas assemblages in farmland-dominated habitats were more clustered on small islands. These contrasting results indicate that land-use change interacts with island biogeography to alter the community assembly of birds on inhabited islands. Our findings emphasize the importance of incorporating human-modified habitats when examining the community assembly of island biota, and further suggest that agricultural landscapes on large islands may play essential roles in protecting countryside island biodiversity

Land-use change interacts with island biogeography to alter bird community assembly

Anthropogenic activities have reshaped biodiversity on islands worldwide. However, it remains unclear how island attributes and land-use change interactively shape multiple facets of island biodiversity through community assembly processes. To answer this, we conducted bird surveys in various land-use types (mainly forest and farmland) using transects on 34 oceanic land-bridge islands in the largest archipelago of China. We found that bird species richness increases with island area and decreases with isolation, regardless of the intensity of land-use change. However, forest-dominated habitats exhibited lower richness than farmland-dominated habitats. Island bird assemblages generally comprised species that share more similar traits or evolutionary histories (i.e., functional and/or phylogenetic clustering) than expected if assemblages were randomly assembled. Contrary to our expectations, we observed that bird assemblages in forest-dominated habitats were more clustered on large and close islands, whereas assemblages in farmland-dominated habitats were more clustered on small islands. These contrasting results indicate that land-use change interacts with island biogeography to alter the community assembly of birds on inhabited islands. Our findings emphasize the importance of incorporating human-modified habitats when examining the community assembly of island biota, and further suggest that agricultural landscapes on large islands may play essential roles in protecting countryside island biodiversity

An improved gray wolf optimization to solve the multi-objective tugboat scheduling problem.

With the continuous prosperity of maritime transportation on a global scale and the resulting escalation in port trade volume, tugboats assume a pivotal role as essential auxiliary tools influencing the ingress and egress of vessels into and out of ports. As a result, the optimization of port tug scheduling becomes of paramount importance, as it contributes to the heightened efficiency of ship movements, cost savings in port operations, and the promotion of sustainable development within the realm of maritime transportation. However, a majority of current tugboat scheduling models tend to focus solely on the maximum operational time. Alternatively, the formulated objective functions often deviate from real-world scenarios. Furthermore, prevailing scheduling methods exhibit shortcomings, including inadequate solution accuracy and incompatibility with integer programming. Consequently, this paper introduces a novel multi-objective tugboat scheduling model to align more effectively with practical considerations. We propose a novel optimization algorithm, the Improved Grey Wolf Optimization (IGWO), for solving the tugboat scheduling model. The algorithm enhances convergence performance by optimizing convergence parameters and individual updates, making it particularly suited for solving integer programming problems. The experimental session designs several scale instances according to the reality of the port, carries out simulation experiments comparing several groups of intelligent algorithms, verifies the effectiveness of IGWO, and verifies it in the comprehensive port area of Huanghua Port to get the optimal scheduling scheme of this port area, and finally gives management suggestions to reduce the cost of tugboat operation through sensitivity analysis

List of bird species in the breeding season of 2020 in the Zhoushan Archipelago, China

List of bird species in the breeding season of 2020 in the Zhoushan Archipelago, China Duorun Wang1, #, Yuhao Zhao1, #, Shupei Tang1, Xiangxu Liu1, Wande Li1, Peng Han1, Di Zeng1, Yangheshan Yang1, Guangpeng Wei1, Yi Kang1, Xingfeng Si1* 1 Institute of Eco-Chongming (IEC), Zhejiang Tiantong Forest Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China; # These authors contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors; * Corresponding author: Xingfeng Si: [email protected] We surveyed bird assemblages on study islands in Zhoushan Archipelago in the breeding season of 2020 (from April to June). We setup transects on each island to cover various habitat types for birds except highly urbanized regions (i.e., cities and towns). For the largest island (Island 1: Zhoushan Island), we set eight transects. For the rest of study islands, we set one, two, or four transects that the number of transects was based on the area and land-use types of study islands. We used Global Positioning System (GPS) to record the position and the length of each transect. The transect length is 2 km on most study islands. However, the transect length is restricted to 1 km for several small islands, as the steep terrain (e.g., cliffs near the edges) does not allow us to set a 2-km transect. For bird surveys, at least two well-trained surveyors walked at a constant speed (ca. 1.5 km/h) along transects and recorded the identities and abundances of all birds heard and seen. Bird surveys were conducted two hours after sunrise and one hours before sunset, and the overall surveying time was restricted to two hours in each survey. We only conducted bird surveys on days with good weather conditions, excluding heavy raining or strong windy days. All transects were surveyed twice which is the maximum survey effort we can afford due to the large region of the Zhoushan Archipelago, the limited transportations in this region and the relatively short period of the breeding season. Surveyors walked the transects in a random order by inversing the starting point to avoid survey biases.</p

Supporting Information from Land-use change interacts with island biogeography to alter bird community assembly

Anthropogenic activities have reshaped biodiversity on islands worldwide. However, it remains unclear how island attributes and land-use change interactively shape multiple facets of island biodiversity through community assembly processes. To answer this, we conducted bird surveys in various land-use types (mainly forest and farmland) using transects on 34 oceanic land-bridge islands in the largest archipelago of China. We found that bird species richness increases with island area and decreases with isolation, regardless of the intensity of land-use change. However, forest-dominated habitats exhibited lower richness than farmland-dominated habitats. Island bird assemblages generally comprised species that share more similar traits or evolutionary histories (i.e. functional and/or phylogenetic clustering) than expected if assemblages were randomly assembled. Contrary to our expectations, we observed that bird assemblages in forest-dominated habitats were more clustered on large and close islands, whereas assemblages in farmland-dominated habitats were more clustered on small islands. These contrasting results indicate that land-use change interacts with island biogeography to alter the community assembly of birds on inhabited islands. Our findings emphasize the importance of incorporating human-modified habitats when examining the community assembly of island biota, and further suggest that agricultural landscapes on large islands may play essential roles in protecting countryside island biodiversity

Patient-Derived Organoids from Colorectal Cancer with Paired Liver Metastasis Reveal Tumor Heterogeneity and Predict Response to Chemotherapy

There is no effective method to predict chemotherapy response and postoperative prognosis of colorectal cancer liver metastasis (CRLM) patients. Patient-derived organoid (PDO) has become an important preclinical model. Herein, a living biobank with 50 CRLM organoids derived from primary tumors and paired liver metastatic lesions is successfully constructed. CRLM PDOs from the multiomics levels (histopathology, genome, transcriptome and single-cell sequencing) are comprehensively analyzed and confirmed that this organoid platform for CRLM could capture intra- and interpatient heterogeneity. The chemosensitivity data in vitro reveal the potential value of clinical application for PDOs to predict chemotherapy response (FOLFOX or FOLFIRI) and clinical prognosis of CRLM patients. Taken together, CRLM PDOs can be utilized to deliver a potential application for personalized medicine