Morphology and ultrastructure of salivary glands of male treehopper Tricentrus brunneus Funkhouser (Hemiptera: Membracoidea)

The salivary glands of male treehopper Tricentrus brunneus Funkhouser comprise a pair of acinous principal glands each with an anterior lobe and a posterior lobe; a pair of elbow-shaped accessory glands. Every accessory gland connects with the principal gland via a thin accessory salivary duct. The anterior lobe contains three types of acini (I, II and III), whereas the posterior lobe possesses only one type of acinus (IV). Two efferent salivary ducts fuse into a common salivary duct. Different acinis cells are filled with secretory granules that are distinct in size, number, shape and electron-density, indicating a maturation process before secreted. Infoldings in different acini suggest dilution of substances before being secreted. The presence of microvilli in acinus IV and the accessory gland duct possibly indicates the undergoing maturation of secretions. Electron-dense fine granules existed in the accessory gland cells, possibly related to virus transmission

La conmutación cognitiva afecta la selección de estrategia aritmética: Evidencia de patrones de mirada y medidas conductuales

Although many studies of cognitive switching have been conducted, little is known about whether and how cognitive switching affects individuals’ use of arithmetic strategies. We used estimation and numerical comparison tasks within the operand recognition paradigm and the choice/no-choice paradigm to explore the effects of cognitive switching on the process of arithmetic strategy selection. Results showed that individuals’ performance in the baseline task was superior to that in the switching task. Presentation mode and cognitive switching clearly influenced eye-gaze patterns during strategy selection, with longer fixation duration in the number presentation mode than in the clock presentation mode. Furthermore, the number of fixation was greater in the switching task than it was in the the baseline task. These results indicate that the effects of cognitive switching on arithmetic strategy selection are clearly constrained by the manner in which numbers are presented. Aunque se han realizado muchos estudios sobre el cambio cognitivo, se sabe poco acerca de si el cambio cognitivo afecta el uso de las estrategias aritméticas por parte de las personas y cómo lo hace. Utilizamos las tareas de estimación y comparación numérica dentro del paradigma de reconocimiento de operandos y el paradigma de elección / no elección para explorar los efectos del cambio cognitivo en el proceso de selección de estrategia aritmética. Los resultados mostraron que el rendimiento de los individuos en la tarea de referencia fue superior al de la tarea de cambio. El modo de presentación y la conmutación cognitiva influyeron claramente en los patrones de la mirada durante la selección de estrategia, con duraciones de fijación más largas en el modo de presentación numérica que en el modo de presentación de reloj. Además, el número de fijaciones fue mayor en la tarea de conmutación que en la tarea de línea de base. Estos resultados indican que los efectos del cambio cognitivo en la selección de la estrategia aritmética están claramente limitados por la forma en que se presentan los números

Cooperative low-rank models for removing stripe noise from OCTA images

Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is an emerging non-invasive imaging technique for imaging the microvasculature of the eye based on phase variance or amplitude decorrelation derived from repeated OCT images of the same tissue area. Stripe noise occurs during the OCTA acquisition process due to the involuntary movement of the eye. To remove the stripe noise (or ‘destriping’) effectively, we propose two novel image decomposition models to simultaneously destripe all the OCTA images of the same eye cooperatively: cooperative uniformity destriping (CUD) model and cooperative similarity destriping (CSD) model. Both the models consider stripe noise by low-rank constraint but in different ways: the CUD model assumes that stripe noise is identical across all the layers while the CSD model assumes that the stripe noise at different layers are different and have to be considered in the model. Compared to the CUD model, CSD is a more general solution for real OCTA images. An efficient solution (CSD+) is developed for model CSD to reduce the computational complexity. The models were extensively evaluated against state-of-the-art methods on both synthesized and real OCTA datasets. The experiments demonstrated not only the effectiveness of the CSD and CSD+ models in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index (SSIM) and CSD+ is twice faster than CSD, but also their beneficiary effect on the vessel segmentation of OCTA images. We expect our models will become a powerful tool for clinical applications

Penalty Algorithm Based on Conjugate Gradient Method for Solving Portfolio Management Problem

<p/> <p>A new approach was proposed to reformulate the biobjectives optimization model of portfolio management into an unconstrained minimization problem, where the objective function is a piecewise quadratic polynomial. We presented some properties of such an objective function. Then, a class of penalty algorithms based on the well-known conjugate gradient methods was developed to find the solution of portfolio management problem. By implementing the proposed algorithm to solve the real problems from the stock market in China, it was shown that this algorithm is promising.</p

Chapter 3 - Genetics in learning and memory

The power of genetics has been clearly demonstrated in studies of embryonic development. Systematic searches for mutant phenotypes during embyogenesis in Drosophila (Nusslein-Volhard and Wieschaus, 1980; Johnston and Nusslein-Volhard, 1992; Wieschaus, 1996) and zebrafish (Grunwald and Eisen, 2002) have uncovered most of the genes controlling embryonic pattern formation. The number of genes involved is limited, and they can be categorized into specific functional groups according to their phenotypic effects. Many of the corresponding genes have been characterized molecularly, thereby identifying components of gene regulation and cell signaling pathways. Genes first discov- ered in flies have subsequently been identified in vertebrates, and basic genetic mechanisms controlling early development of invertebrates have been shown to be conserved in vertebrate systems. Thus, a driving force behind analysis of development has been gene discovery in flies, which in turn has provided experimental and conceptual tools to dissect mechanisms of morphogenesis in both invertebrate and vertebrate species