Bistability in online social networks

Online social networking is an increasingly prominent social phenomenon that has motivated much interesting research in networking. This work studies the dynamic evolvement of online social networks by a simple stochastic model that captures the inter-dependent social interactions. We show that multiple stable states exist in the evolvement of online social networks, leading to fundamental ramifications to the structures of online social networks and their applications. ©2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 2010 INFOCOM IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops, San Diego, CA., 15-19 March 2010. In Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM Conference, 2010, p. 1-

Analysis on accuracy of charge-pumping measurement with gate sawtooth pulses

Charge-pumping (CP) measurement is performed on MOSFETs with their gates tied to sawtooth pulses. Influence of both rise time (tr) and fall time (tf) on the CP current of the devices with different channel lengths is investigated at different pulse frequencies. Results show that the dominant mechanism affecting the measurement accuracy is the energy range of interface-trap distribution Dit(E) swept by the gate signal for frequencies below 500 kHz and carrier emission for frequencies above 500 kHz. For frequencies higher than 600 kHz, incomplete recombination could be an additional mechanism when tf is too short. Hence, it is suggested that low frequency is more favorable than high frequency, especially for sawtooth pulses with long tr and short tf , due to little carrier emission and negligible geometric effects even for devices as long as 50 μm. However, if high frequency (e.g. 1 MHz) is required to obtain a sufficiently large S/N ratio in the CP current, sawtooth pulses with equal tr and tf should be chosen for the least carrier emission effect and thus more reliable results on interface-state density, Moreover, for both sawtooth and trapezoidal pulses with a typical amplitude of 5 V, a lower limit of 200 ns for tr and tf is necessary to suppress all the undesirable effects in devices shorter than at least 20 μm.published_or_final_versio

A tunable common mode inductor with an auxiliary winding network

Paper 1593Track no. 5 - Devices and ComponentsIn conventional switching converter, the parasitic capacitance between switching circuit and ground introduces common mode (CM) noise problem. A CM inductor is inserted in the power feeding paths to produce a high impedance to attenuate the CM noise. However, this parasitic capacitance and the CM inductor create low-frequency resonance near the switching frequency and its harmonics. Thus, the filtering performance is diminished. Increasing the CM inductance to shift the resonant frequency to low-frequency range is one of the methods to tackle this problem. However, this approach leads to increase the power losses (both core and winding losses) of the CM inductor reducing the efficiency of the converter. In this paper, a tunable CM inductor with a small-space auxiliary winding is proposed. The auxiliary winding can be connected to a passive network to alter the frequency response of the CM inductor without affecting the original inductance. As a result, the influence of the low-frequency resonance can be mitigated. A proof-of-concept protytpe is constructed and its performance is experimentally measured. Results show that the proposed tunable CM inductor operates as theoretically anticipated. © IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Cognitive Effects Following Offline High-Frequency Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (HF-rTMS) in Healthy Populations: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

High-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (HF-rTMS) is a commonly used form of rTMS to treat neuropsychiatric disorders. Emerging evidence suggests that ‘offline’ HF-rTMS may have cognitive enhancing effects, although the magnitude and moderators of these effects remain unclear. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to clarify the cognitive effects of offline HF-rTMS in healthy individuals. A literature search for randomised controlled trials with cognitive outcomes for pre and post offline HF-rTMS was performed across five databases up until March 2022. This study was registered on the PROSPERO international prospective protocol for systematic reviews (PROSPERO 2020 CRD 42,020,191,269). The Risk of Bias 2 tool was used to assess the risk of bias in randomised trials. Separate analyses examined the cognitive effects of excitatory and inhibitory forms of offline HF-rTMS on accuracy and reaction times across six cognitive domains. Fifty-three studies (N = 1507) met inclusion criteria. Excitatory offline HF-rTMS showed significant small sized effects for improving accuracy (k = 46, g = 0.12) and reaction time (k = 44, g = -0.13) across all cognitive domains collapsed. Excitatory offline HF-rTMS demonstrated a relatively greater effect for executive functioning in accuracy (k = 24, g = 0.14). Reaction times were also improved for the executive function (k = 21, g = -0.11) and motor (k = 3, g = -0.22) domains following excitatory offline HF-rTMS. The current review was restricted to healthy individuals and future research is required to examine cognitive enhancement from offline HF-rTMS in clinical cohorts

Prolonged intermittent theta burst stimulation targeting the left prefrontal cortex and cerebellum does not affect executive functions in healthy individuals

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for alleviating negative symptoms and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia commonly targets the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (LDLPFC). However, the therapeutic effectiveness of rTMS at this site remains inconclusive and increasingly, studies are focusing on cerebellar rTMS. Recently, prolonged intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) has emerged as a rapid-acting form of rTMS with promising clinical benefits. This study explored the cognitive and neurophysiological effects of prolonged iTBS administered to the LDLPFC and cerebellum in a healthy cohort. 50 healthy participants took part in a cross-over study and received prolonged (1800 pulses) iTBS targeting the LDLPFC, cerebellar vermis, and sham iTBS. Mixed effects repeated measures models examined cognitive and event-related potentials (ERPs) from 2-back (P300, N200) and Stroop (N200, N450) tasks after stimulation. Exploratory non-parametric cluster-based permutation tests compared ERPs between conditions. There were no significant differences between conditions for behavioural and ERP outcomes on the 2-back and Stroop tasks. Exploratory cluster-based permutation tests of ERPs did not identify any significant differences between conditions. We did not find evidence that a single session of prolonged iTBS administered to either the LDLPFC or cerebellum could cause any cognitive or ERP changes compared to sham in a healthy sample

Three-Dimensional Spectral-Domain Optical Coherence Tomography Data Analysis for Glaucoma Detection

Purpose: To develop a new three-dimensional (3D) spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) data analysis method using a machine learning technique based on variable-size super pixel segmentation that efficiently utilizes full 3D dataset to improve the discrimination between early glaucomatous and healthy eyes. Methods: 192 eyes of 96 subjects (44 healthy, 59 glaucoma suspect and 89 glaucomatous eyes) were scanned with SD-OCT. Each SD-OCT cube dataset was first converted into 2D feature map based on retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) segmentation and then divided into various number of super pixels. Unlike the conventional super pixel having a fixed number of points, this newly developed variable-size super pixel is defined as a cluster of homogeneous adjacent pixels with variable size, shape and number. Features of super pixel map were extracted and used as inputs to machine classifier (LogitBoost adaptive boosting) to automatically identify diseased eyes. For discriminating performance assessment, area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristics of the machine classifier outputs were compared with the conventional circumpapillary RNFL (cpRNFL) thickness measurements. Results: The super pixel analysis showed statistically significantly higher AUC than the cpRNFL (0.855 vs. 0.707, respectively, p = 0.031, Jackknife test) when glaucoma suspects were discriminated from healthy, while no significant difference was found when confirmed glaucoma eyes were discriminated from healthy eyes. Conclusions: A novel 3D OCT analysis technique performed at least as well as the cpRNFL in glaucoma discrimination and even better at glaucoma suspect discrimination. This new method has the potential to improve early detection of glaucomatous damage. © 2013 Xu et al

Influence of indium-tin-oxide thin-film quality on reverse leakage current of indium-tin-oxide/n-GaN Schottky contacts

Author name used in this publication: X. M. Tao2006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Individualised Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Targeting of the Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex for Enhancing Cognition: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been demonstrated to produce cognitive enhancing effects across different neuropsychiatric disorders; however, so far, these effects have been limited. This trial investigated the efficacy of using a novel individualised approach to target the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (L-DLPFC) for enhancing cognitive flexibility based on performance on a cognitive task. First, forty healthy participants had their single target site at the L-DLPFC determined based on each individual’s performance on a random letter generation task. Participants then received, in a cross-over single-blinded experimental design, a single session of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) to their individualised DLPFC target site, an active control site and sham iTBS. Following each treatment condition, participants completed the Task Switching task and Colour–Word Stroop test. There was no significant main effect of treatment condition on the primary outcome measure of switch reaction times from the Task Switching task [F = 1.16 (2, 21.6), p = 0.33] or for any of the secondary cognitive outcome measures. The current results do not support the use of our novel individualised targeting methodology for enhancing cognitive flexibility in healthy participants. Research into alternative methodological targeting approaches is required to further improve rTMS’s cognitive enhancing effects

Clinical relevance and therapeutic potential of angiopoietin-like protein 4 in hepatocellular carcinoma

published_or_final_versio

An inhibitory pull-push circuit in frontal cortex.

Push-pull is a canonical computation of excitatory cortical circuits. By contrast, we identify a pull-push inhibitory circuit in frontal cortex that originates in vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP)-expressing interneurons. During arousal, VIP cells rapidly and directly inhibit pyramidal neurons; VIP cells also indirectly excite these pyramidal neurons via parallel disinhibition. Thus, arousal exerts a feedback pull-push influence on excitatory neurons-an inversion of the canonical push-pull of feedforward input