Bottom-Up versus Top-Down Induction of Sleep by Zolpidem Acting on Histaminergic and Neocortex Neurons

Zolpidem, a GABAA receptor-positive modulator, is the gold-standard drug for treating insomnia. Zolpidem prolongs IPSCs to decrease sleep latency and increase sleep time, effects that depend on α2 and/or α3 subunit-containing receptors. Compared with natural NREM sleep, zolpidem also decreases the EEG power, an effect that depends on α1 subunit-containing receptors, and which may make zolpidem-induced sleep less optimal. In this paper, we investigate whether zolpidem needs to potentiate only particular GABAergic pathways to induce sleep without reducing EEG power. Mice with a knock-in F77I mutation in the GABAA receptor γ2 subunit gene are zolpidem-insensitive. Using these mice, GABAA receptors in the frontal motor neocortex and hypothalamic (tuberomammillary nucleus) histaminergic-neurons of γ2I77 mice were made selectively sensitive to zolpidem by genetically swapping the γ2I77 subunits with γ2F77 subunits. When histamine neurons were made selectively zolpidem-sensitive, systemic administration of zolpidem shortened sleep latency and increased sleep time. But in contrast to the effect of zolpidem on wild-type mice, the power in the EEG spectra of NREM sleep was not decreased, suggesting that these EEG power-reducing effects of zolpidem do not depend on reduced histamine release. Selective potentiation of GABAA receptors in the frontal cortex by systemic zolpidem administration also reduced sleep latency, but less so than for histamine neurons. These results could help with the design of new sedatives that induce a more natural sleep

Classification of Chest Diseases using Wavelet Transforms and Transfer Learning

Chest X-ray scan is a most often used modality by radiologists to diagnose many chest related diseases in their initial stages. The proposed system aids the radiologists in making decision about the diseases found in the scans more efficiently. Our system combines the techniques of image processing for feature enhancement and deep learning for classification among diseases. We have used the ChestX-ray14 database in order to train our deep learning model on the 14 different labeled diseases found in it. The proposed research shows the significant improvement in the results by using wavelet transforms as pre-processing technique.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Presented in International Conference On Medical Imaging And Computer-Aided Diagnosis (MICAD 2020), proceeding will be published with Springer in their "Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering (LNEE)" (ISSN: 1876-1100

Electrical reliability and leakage mechanisms in highly resistive multiferroic La0.1Bi0.9FeO3 ceramics

Multiferroic La0.1 Bi0.9 FeO3 (LBFO) ceramics with high resistivity were synthesized by using a modified rapid thermal process. The LBFO ceramics show very low leakage and low dielectric loss. Well saturated ferroelectric hysteresis loops and polarization switching currents have been observed. For a maximum applied electric field of 145 kV/cm, the remanent polarization is 17.8 μC/ cm2 and the coercive filed is 75 kV/cm. The dominant conduction mechanism in the LBFO ceramics has been found to be the space-charge-limited current mechanism rather than the thermal excitation mechanism. Electrical reliability related to the fatigue and polarization retention of the LBFO ceramics has also been discussed with the leakage mechanisms. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

Resistive switching and threshold switching behaviors in La 0.1Bi 0.9Fe 1-xCo xO 3 ceramics

The effects of cobalt doping on the electrical conductivity of La 0.1Bi 0.9Fe 1-xCo xO 3 (LBFCO, x=0, 0.01, 0.03) ceramics were investigated. It is found that the leakage current increases with cobalt dopant concentration in LBFCO. On the application of bias voltage LBFCO ceramics with cobalt doping exhibits resistive switching effects at room temperature and threshold switching effects at elevated temperatures (50°C and 80°C). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of LBFCO ceramics show that cobalt dopant is bivalent as an acceptor, which induces an enhancement of oxygen vacancy concentration in LBFCO ceramics. Possible mechanisms for both resistive switching and threshold switching effects are discussed on the basis of the interplay of bound ferroelectric charges and mobile charged defects. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

ABCD Neurocognitive Prediction Challenge 2019: Predicting individual residual fluid intelligence scores from cortical grey matter morphology

We predicted residual fluid intelligence scores from T1-weighted MRI data available as part of the ABCD NP Challenge 2019, using morphological similarity of grey-matter regions across the cortex. Individual structural covariance networks (SCN) were abstracted into graph-theory metrics averaged over nodes across the brain and in data-driven communities/modules. Metrics included degree, path length, clustering coefficient, centrality, rich club coefficient, and small-worldness. These features derived from the training set were used to build various regression models for predicting residual fluid intelligence scores, with performance evaluated both using cross-validation within the training set and using the held-out validation set. Our predictions on the test set were generated with a support vector regression model trained on the training set. We found minimal improvement over predicting a zero residual fluid intelligence score across the sample population, implying that structural covariance networks calculated from T1-weighted MR imaging data provide little information about residual fluid intelligence.Comment: 8 pages plus references, 3 figures, 2 tables. Submission to the ABCD Neurocognitive Prediction Challenge at MICCAI 201

The Species of Rhimphoctona (Xylophylax) (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Campopleginae) Parasitizing Woodborers in China

Four species of Rhimphoctona (Xylophylax) collected from P. R. China are reported. Two of them are new to science: Rhimphoctona (Xylophylax) maculifemoralis Luo and Sheng, sp.nov. reared from Tetropium castaneum (Linnaeus), and Rhimphoctona (Xylophylax) immaculata Luo and Sheng, sp.nov. One is a new record for China, R. (Xylophylax) rufocoxalis (Clément 1924) reared from T. castaneum (Linnaeus). The other is R. (Xylophylax) lucida (Clément 1924) reared from Monochamus saltuarius Gebier, Tetropium gabrieli Weise and Asemus sp. A key to species known in China is provided

Mitochondrial transfer of mesenchymal stem cells effectively protects corneal epithelial cells from mitochondrial damage

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On a fabric evolution law incorporating the effects of b-value

In this paper, the effects of the intermediate stress ratio, i.e., b-value (b = (σ₂ − σ₃)/(σ₁ − σ₃)), on the contact normal-based fabric evolution of granular material, are incorporated into an extant hybrid fabric evolution law. The new evolution law is validated by Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulation results under monotonic shearing with different b-values. Predictions of the proposed generalized fabric evolution law agree well with the DEM simulation results. This evolution law can be widely used for constitutive modelling of granular materials, considering the effects of b-value in a general geomechanical three-dimensional stress space