Effects of Color on the Buildup and Resolution of Proactive Interference in Working Memory

The “color superiority effect” was confirmed by the research of color on forgetting, which showed that proactive interference (PI) has less impact on colored items than gray ones. Color could directly affect the buildup of PI, leading to reduced levels of interference, or controlled processes that resolve PI. However, the effects of red and green on memory were inconsistent. Using Recent-Probes task, the current study explored how the red and green color influenced to the buildup phase (i.e., 200ms after the onset of probe) and resolution phase (i.e. 800ms after the onset of probe) of PI. Results revealed that the reaction times of green words were significantly shorter than the red words under 200ms. There were no significant differences between the red and green words under 500ms and 800ms. It indicated that green might shortened the reaction times for the PI buildup, while red prolonged it. However, on the resolution phase of PI, green words were less effective than red words. These findings offered some new information for the underlying mechanisms that modulate the interactions between color and memory

Veronicastrum axillare

Veronicastrum axillare is a traditional medical plant in China which is widely used in folk medicine due to its versatile biological activities, especially for its anti-inflammatory effects. However, the detailed mechanism underlying this action is not clear. Here, we studied the protective effects of V. axillare against acute lung injury (ALI), and we further explored the pharmacological mechanisms of this action. We found that pretreatment with V. axillare suppressed the release of proinflammatory cytokines in the serum of ALI mice. Histological analysis of lung tissue demonstrated that V. axillare inhibited LPS-induced lung injury, improved lung morphology, and reduced the activation of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) in the lungs. Furthermore, the anti-inflammatory actions of V. axillare were investigated in vitro. We observed that V. axillare suppressed the mRNA expression of interleukin-1β (IL-1β), IL-6, monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) in RAW264.7 cells challenged with LPS. Furthermore, pretreatment of V. axillare in vitro reduced the phosphorylation of p65 and IκB-α which is activated by LPS. In conclusion, our data firstly demonstrated that the anti-inflammatory effects of V. axillare against ALI were achieved through downregulation of the NF-κB signaling pathway, thereby reducing the production of inflammatory mediators

Lidar Observations of Stratospheric Gravity Waves From 2011 to 2015 at McMurdo (77.84°S, 166.69°E), Antarctica: 2. Potential Energy Densities, Lognormal Distributions, and Seasonal Variations

Five years of Fe Boltzmann lidar's Rayleigh temperature data from 2011 to 2015 at McMurdo are used to characterize gravity wave potential energy mass density (Epm), potential energy volume density (Epv), vertical wave number spectra, and static stability N² in the stratosphere 30–50 km. Epm (Epv) profiles increase (decrease) with altitude, and the scale heights of Epv indicate stronger wave dissipation in winter than in summer. Altitude mean (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) obey lognormal distributions and possess narrowly clustered small values in summer but widely spread large values in winter. (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) vary significantly from observation to observation but exhibit repeated seasonal patterns with summer minima and winter maxima. The winter maxima in 2012 and 2015 are higher than in other years, indicating interannual variations. Altitude mean (Formula presented.) varies by ~30–40% from the midwinter maxima to minima around October and exhibits a nearly bimodal distribution. Monthly mean vertical wave number power spectral density for vertical wavelengths of 5–20 km increases from summer to winter. Using Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications version 2 data, we find that large values of (Formula presented.) during wintertime occur when McMurdo is well inside the polar vortex. Monthly mean (Formula presented.) are anticorrelated with wind rotation angles but positively correlated with wind speeds at 3 and 30 km. Corresponding correlation coefficients are −0.62, +0.87, and +0.80, respectively. Results indicate that the summer-winter asymmetry of (Formula presented.) is mainly caused by critical level filtering that dissipates most gravity waves in summer. (Formula presented.) variations in winter are mainly due to variations of gravity wave generation in the troposphere and stratosphere and Doppler shifting by the mean stratospheric winds

Multiparametric Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in Acute Myocarditis: Comparison of 2009 and 2018 Lake Louise Criteria With Endomyocardial Biopsy Confirmation.

Background: Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) has been shown to improve the diagnosis of myocarditis, but no systematic comparison of this technique is currently available. The purpose of this study was to compare the 2009 and 2018 Lake Louise Criteria (LLC) for the diagnosis of acute myocarditis using 3.0 T MRI with endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) as a reference and to provide the cutoff values for multiparametric CMR techniques. Methods: A total of 73 patients (32 ± 14 years, 71.2% men) with clinically suspected myocarditis undergoing EMB and CMR with 3.0 T were enrolled in the study. Patients were divided into two groups according to EMB results (EMB-positive and -negative groups). The CMR protocol consisted of cine-SSFP, T2 STIR, T2 mapping, early and late gadolinium enhancement (EGE, LGE), and pre- and post-contrast T1 mapping. Their potential diagnostic ability was assessed with receiver operating characteristic curves. Results: The myocardial T1 and T2 relaxation times were significantly higher in the EMB-positive group than in the EMB-negative group. Optimal cutoff values were 1,228 ms for T1 relaxation times and 58.5 ms for T2 relaxation times with sensitivities of 86.0 and 83.7% and specificities of 93.3 and 93.3%, respectively. The 2018 LLC had a better diagnostic performance than the 2009 LLC in terms of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value. T1 mapping + T2 mapping had the largest area under the curve (0.95) compared to other single or combined parameters (2018 LLC: 0.91; 2009 LLC: 0.76; T2 ratio: 0.71; EGEr: 0.67; LGE: 0.73; ). The diagnostic accuracy for the 2018 LLC was the highest (91.8%), followed by T1 mapping (89.0%) and T2 mapping (87.7%). Conclusion: Emerging technologies such as T1/ T2 mapping have significantly improved the diagnostic performance of CMR for the diagnosis of acute myocarditis. The 2018 LLC provided the overall best diagnostic performance in acute myocarditis compared to other single standard CMR parameters or combined parameters. There was no significant gain when 2018LLC is combined with the EGE sequence

Optimized mixed Markov models for motif identification

BACKGROUND: Identifying functional elements, such as transcriptional factor binding sites, is a fundamental step in reconstructing gene regulatory networks and remains a challenging issue, largely due to limited availability of training samples. RESULTS: We introduce a novel and flexible model, the Optimized Mixture Markov model (OMiMa), and related methods to allow adjustment of model complexity for different motifs. In comparison with other leading methods, OMiMa can incorporate more than the NNSplice's pairwise dependencies; OMiMa avoids model over-fitting better than the Permuted Variable Length Markov Model (PVLMM); and OMiMa requires smaller training samples than the Maximum Entropy Model (MEM). Testing on both simulated and actual data (regulatory cis-elements and splice sites), we found OMiMa's performance superior to the other leading methods in terms of prediction accuracy, required size of training data or computational time. Our OMiMa system, to our knowledge, is the only motif finding tool that incorporates automatic selection of the best model. OMiMa is freely available at [1]. CONCLUSION: Our optimized mixture of Markov models represents an alternative to the existing methods for modeling dependent structures within a biological motif. Our model is conceptually simple and effective, and can improve prediction accuracy and/or computational speed over other leading methods

Insight-HXMT observations of Swift J0243.6+6124 during its 2017-2018 outburst

The recently discovered neutron star transient Swift J0243.6+6124 has been monitored by {\it the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope} ({\it Insight-\rm HXMT). Based on the obtained data, we investigate the broadband spectrum of the source throughout the outburst. We estimate the broadband flux of the source and search for possible cyclotron line in the broadband spectrum. No evidence of line-like features is, however, found up to $\rm 150~keV$. In the absence of any cyclotron line in its energy spectrum, we estimate the magnetic field of the source based on the observed spin evolution of the neutron star by applying two accretion torque models. In both cases, we get consistent results with $B\rm \sim 10^{13}~G$, $D\rm \sim 6~kpc$ and peak luminosity of $\rm >10^{39}~erg~s^{-1}$ which makes the source the first Galactic ultraluminous X-ray source hosting a neutron star.Comment: publishe

Overview to the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (Insight-HXMT) Satellite

As China's first X-ray astronomical satellite, the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), which was dubbed as Insight-HXMT after the launch on June 15, 2017, is a wide-band (1-250 keV) slat-collimator-based X-ray astronomy satellite with the capability of all-sky monitoring in 0.2-3 MeV. It was designed to perform pointing, scanning and gamma-ray burst (GRB) observations and, based on the Direct Demodulation Method (DDM), the image of the scanned sky region can be reconstructed. Here we give an overview of the mission and its progresses, including payload, core sciences, ground calibration/facility, ground segment, data archive, software, in-orbit performance, calibration, background model, observations and some preliminary results.Comment: 29 pages, 40 figures, 6 tables, to appear in Sci. China-Phys. Mech. Astron. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1910.0443