Adverse Effects of Opioid Dependency on Central and Peripheral Aspects of the Neuromuscular System

Prevalence of chronic pain and health care costs have caused an escalation of opioid dependency. The current national crisis involving opioid dependency and drug overdose are growing problems that need to be addressed. Since 2000, there has been an increased awareness of pain relief; more people are looking at alternative ways to induce pain relief and stricter guidelines in prescription of addictive opioid medications (Manchikanti et al., 2012). Despite growing efforts, opioid use and dependency has risen dramatically in the past few years; since 1999, there has been an increase in the number of opioids sold and opioid-related deaths in the USA (Manchikanti et al., 2012). Opioid misuse is the leading cause of accidental overdose and death (Compton & Volkow, 2006). In 2015, more than 40% of the world’s supply of thebaine, the main ingredient in hydrocodone and oxycodone, two forms of opioids, was consumed by the USA (Hedegaard et al., 2017). In 2008 there were 36,450 drug overdose deaths and 14,800 of those deaths were related to opioid pain relievers (CDC, 2011). By 2017 there were a total of 70,237 drug overdose deaths in the USA (Hedegaard et al., 2017). While short term use of opioids has benign effects, long-term usage has meaningful effects on rates of abuse or addiction (Compton & Volkow, 2006). It is estimated that over 4.3 million US adults are taking opioids regularly in any given week; opioids are one of the most widely prescribed class of drugs in the US based on a nationally-representative telephone survey (Parsells et al., 2008)

Cloning animals by somatic cell nuclear transfer – biological factors

Cloning by nuclear transfer using mammalian somatic cells has enormous potential application. However, somatic cloning has been inefficient in all species in which live clones have been produced. High abortion and fetal mortality rates are commonly observed. These developmental defects have been attributed to incomplete reprogramming of the somatic nuclei by the cloning process. Various strategies have been used to improve the efficiency of nuclear transfer, however, significant breakthroughs are yet to happen. In this review we will discuss studies conducted, in our laboratories and those of others, to gain a better understanding of nuclear reprogramming. Because cattle are a species widely used for nuclear transfer studies, and more laboratories have succeeded in cloning cattle than any other specie, this review will be focused on somatic cell cloning of cattle

ComPASS: a tool for distributed parallel finite volume discretizations on general unstructured polyhedral meshes

International audienceThe objective of the ComPASS project is to develop a parallel multiphase Darcy flow simulator adapted to general unstructured polyhedral meshes (in a general sense with possibly non planar faces) and to the parallelization of advanced finite volume discretizations with various choices of the degrees of freedom such as cell centres, vertices, or face centres. The main targeted applications are the simulation of CO2 geological storage, nuclear waste repository and reservoir simulations. The CEMRACS 2012 summer school devoted to high performance computing has been an ideal framework to start this collaborative project. This paper describes what has been achieved during the four weeks of the CEMRACS project which has been focusing on the implementation of basic features of the code such as the distributed unstructured polyhedral mesh, the synchronization of the degrees of freedom, and the connection to scientific libraries including the partitioner METIS, the visualization tool PARAVIEW, and the parallel linear solver library PETSc. The parallel efficiency of this first version of the ComPASS code has been validated on a toy parabolic problem using the Vertex Approximate Gradient finite volume spacial discretization with both cell and vertex degrees of freedom, combined with an Euler implicit time integration

UnifiedVisionGPT: Streamlining Vision-Oriented AI through Generalized Multimodal Framework

In the current landscape of artificial intelligence, foundation models serve as the bedrock for advancements in both language and vision domains. OpenAI GPT-4 has emerged as the pinnacle in large language models (LLMs), while the computer vision (CV) domain boasts a plethora of state-of-the-art (SOTA) models such as Meta's SAM and DINO, and YOLOS. However, the financial and computational burdens of training new models from scratch remain a significant barrier to progress. In response to this challenge, we introduce UnifiedVisionGPT, a novel framework designed to consolidate and automate the integration of SOTA vision models, thereby facilitating the development of vision-oriented AI. UnifiedVisionGPT distinguishes itself through four key features: (1) provides a versatile multimodal framework adaptable to a wide range of applications, building upon the strengths of multimodal foundation models; (2) seamlessly integrates various SOTA vision models to create a comprehensive multimodal platform, capitalizing on the best components of each model; (3) prioritizes vision-oriented AI, ensuring a more rapid progression in the CV domain compared to the current trajectory of LLMs; and (4) introduces automation in the selection of SOTA vision models, generating optimal results based on diverse multimodal inputs such as text prompts and images. This paper outlines the architecture and capabilities of UnifiedVisionGPT, demonstrating its potential to revolutionize the field of computer vision through enhanced efficiency, versatility, generalization, and performance. Our implementation, along with the unified multimodal framework and comprehensive dataset, is made publicly available at https://github.com/LHBuilder/SA-Segment-Anything.Comment: 9 pages, 29 figure

Spiking Neural Encoding and Hardware Implementations for Neuromorphic Computing

Due to the high requirements of the computational power of modern data-intensive applications, the traditional von Neumann structure and neuromorphic computing structure started to play complementary roles in the area of computing. Thus, neuromorphic computing architectures have attracted much attention with high data capacity and power efficiency. In this chapter, the basic concept of neuromorphic computing is discussed, including spiking codes and neurons. The spiking encoder can transfer analog signals to spike signals, thus avoiding using power-consuming analog-to-digital converters. Comparisons of training accuracy and robustness of neural codes are carried out, and the circuit implementations of the spiking temporal encoders are briefly introduced. The encoding schemes are evaluated on the PyTorch platform with the most common datasets, such as Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST), Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, 10 classes (CIFAR-10), and The Street View House Numbers (SVHN). From the result, the multiplexing temporal code has shown high data capacity, robustness, and low training error. It achieves at least 6.4% more accuracy than other state-of-the-art works using other encoding schemes

Simplified three-dimensional tissue clearing and incorporation of colorimetric phenotyping.

Tissue clearing methods promise to provide exquisite three-dimensional imaging information; however, there is a need for simplified methods for lower resource settings and for non-fluorescence based phenotyping to enable light microscopic imaging modalities. Here we describe the simplified CLARITY method (SCM) for tissue clearing that preserves epitopes of interest. We imaged the resulting tissues using light sheet microscopy to generate rapid 3D reconstructions of entire tissues and organs. In addition, to enable clearing and 3D tissue imaging with light microscopy methods, we developed a colorimetric, non-fluorescent method for specifically labeling cleared tissues based on horseradish peroxidase conversion of diaminobenzidine to a colored insoluble product. The methods we describe here are portable and can be accomplished at low cost, and can allow light microscopic imaging of cleared tissues, thus enabling tissue clearing and imaging in a wide variety of settings

Formulation of a Synbiotic Beverage Based on Red Bean with Addition of Inulin Dahlia Tuber

This study aims to determine the effect of adding inulin to synbiotic beverage chemical and organoleptic properties. The study consisted of two stages, the first stage was the isolation of inulin from dahlia tubers and the second stage was the manufacture of synbiotic beverage. The design used in this study was a Randomized Block Design (RBD) with one factor, namely the concentration of dahlia tuber inulin added with a concentration level of 0 %, 1 %, 3 %, 5 %, and 7 %. One-factor research with two replications has ten experimental units with research variables: qualitative dahlia tuber inulin, synbiotic beverage water content, ash content, lipid content, protein content, fiber content, and organoleptic tests. The addition of inulin significantly affected the chemical variables of ash, lipid, protein, and fiber, and organoleptic variables of aroma, texture, colour, and taste. The best treatment results from this study were F0 treatment with the addition of 1 % inulin concentration resulting in 85 % water content, 0.14 % ash content, 3.58 % protein content, 0.32 % lipid content, and 1.76 % fiber content. The best treatment organoleptic results were 4.96 % aroma variables, 5.20 % texture, 4.96 % colour, and 4.60 % taste variables

A newly synthetic chromium complex – chromium(phenylalanine)3 improves insulin responsiveness and reduces whole body glucose tolerance

AbstractLow-molecular-weight organic chromium complexes such as chromium picolinate are often used as dietary supplements to improve insulin sensitivity and to correct dyslipidemia. However, toxicity associated with such chromium compounds has compromised their therapeutic value. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of a newly synthesized complex of chromium with phenylalanine, Cr(pa)3 on insulin-signaling and glucose tolerance. Cr(pa)3 was synthesized by chelating chromium(III) with d-phenylalanine ligand in aqueous solution. In mouse 3T3-adipocytes, Cr(pa)3 augmented insulin-stimulated glucose-uptake as assessed by a radioactive-glucose uptake assay. At the molecular level, Cr(pa)3 enhanced insulin-stimulated phosphorylation of Akt in a time- and concentration-dependent manner without altering the phosphorylation of insulin receptor. Oral treatment with Cr(pa)3 (150μg/kg/d, for six weeks) in ob/ob(+/+) obese mice significantly alleviated glucose tolerance compared with untreated obese mice. Unlike chromium picolinate, Cr(pa)3 does not cleave DNA under physiological reducing conditions. Collectively, these data suggest that Cr(pa)3 may represent a novel, less-toxic chromium supplement with potential therapeutic value to improve insulin sensitivity and glycemic control in type II diabetes