Parcellation of Human Amygdala Subfields Using Orientation Distribution Function and Spectral K-means Clustering

Amygdala plays an important role in fear and emotional learning, which are critical for human survival. Despite the functional relevance and unique circuitry of each human amygdaloid subnuclei, there has yet to be an efficient imaging method for identifying these regions in vivo. A data-driven approach without prior knowledge provides advantages of efficient and objective assessments. The present study uses high angular and high spatial resolution diffusion magnetic resonance imaging to generate orientation distribution function, which bears distinctive microstructural features. The features were extracted using spherical harmonic decomposition to assess microstructural similarity within amygdala subfields are identified via similarity matrices using spectral k-mean clustering. The approach was tested on 32 healthy volunteers and three distinct amygdala subfields were identified including medial, posterior-superior lateral, and anterior-inferior lateral

[(3aS,5aR,8aR,8bS)-2,2,7,7-Tetra­methyl­tetra­hydro-3aH-bis­[1,3]dioxolo[4,5-b:4′,5′-d]pyran-3a-yl]methyl (R)-N-(1-phenyl­eth­yl)sulfamate

In the title compound, C20H29NO8S, the two five-membered rings adopt envelope conformations (with an O atom at the flap in each case), while the six-membered pyran ring displays a twist-boat conformation. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds into a supra­molecular chain running along the a axis

Study of Peeling of Single Crystal Silicon by Intense Pulsed Ion Beam

The surface peeling process induced by intense pulsed ion beam (IPIB) irradiation was studied. Single crystal silicon specimens were treated by IPIB with accelerating voltage of 350 kV current density of 130 A/cm2. It is observed that under smaller numbers of IPIB shots, the surface may undergo obvious melting and evaporation..

Study of Peeling of Single Crystal Silicon by Intense Pulsed Ion Beam

The surface peeling process induced by intense pulsed ion beam (IPIB) irradiation was studied. Single crystal silicon specimens were treated by IPIB with accelerating voltage of 350 kV current density of 130 A/cm2. It is observed that under smaller numbers of IPIB shots, the surface may undergo obvious melting and evaporation..

Independent effects of early life adversity on social cognitive function in patients with schizophrenia

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate the impact of early life adversity on cognitive function in patients with schizophrenia, with a focus on social cognition (SC).MethodsTwo groups of patients with schizophrenia were recruited and matched on sociodemographic and clinical characteristics. One group consisted of 32 patients with a history of childhood trauma (SCZ-ct), and the other group consisted of 30 patients without a history of childhood trauma (SCZ-nct). In addition, 39 healthy controls without a history of childhood trauma (HC-nct) were also recruited. The intelligence of the three groups was assessed using the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WAIS—RC) short version. The cognitive function evaluation was conducted using the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB), and early life adversity was measured using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ) and Bullying Scale for Adults (BSA).ResultsPatients with schizophrenia endosed significantly higher scores on the CTQ (F=67.61, p<0.001) and BSA (F=9.84, p<0.001) compared to the HC-nct. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and post-hoc analyses revealed that SCZ-ct (F=11.20, p<0.001) exhibited the most pronounced cognitive impairment among the three groups, as indicated in MCCB total scores and in the domain score of SC. CTQ exhibited a negative correlation with MCCB (r=-0.405, p< 0.001); SC was negatively correlated with physical abuse (PA) of CTQ (r=-0.271, p=0.030) and emotional abuse (EA) of BSA (r=-0.265, p=0.034) in the whole patient sample. Higher SC performance was significantly predicted by CT_total (Beta =-0.582, p<0.001, 95% CI -0.96-0.46), and years of education (Beta=0.260, p =0.014, 95% CI 0.20-1.75) in schizophrenia.ConclusionsBesides familial trauma, schizophrenia patients appear to have a higher likelihood of experiencing bullying in their early life. These experiences seem to contribute significantly to their severe impairments in SC

Study on Ablation Products of Zinc by Intense Pulsed Ion Beam Irradiation

As a kind of flash heat source, intense pulse ion beam can be used for material surface modification. The ablation effect has important influence on interaction between IPIB and material. Therefore, the understanding of ablation mechanism is of great significance to IPIB application..

PonderV2: Pave the Way for 3D Foundation Model with A Universal Pre-training Paradigm

In contrast to numerous NLP and 2D computer vision foundational models, the learning of a robust and highly generalized 3D foundational model poses considerably greater challenges. This is primarily due to the inherent data variability and the diversity of downstream tasks. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive 3D pre-training framework designed to facilitate the acquisition of efficient 3D representations, thereby establishing a pathway to 3D foundational models. Motivated by the fact that informative 3D features should be able to encode rich geometry and appearance cues that can be utilized to render realistic images, we propose a novel universal paradigm to learn point cloud representations by differentiable neural rendering, serving as a bridge between 3D and 2D worlds. We train a point cloud encoder within a devised volumetric neural renderer by comparing the rendered images with the real images. Notably, our approach demonstrates the seamless integration of the learned 3D encoder into diverse downstream tasks. These tasks encompass not only high-level challenges such as 3D detection and segmentation but also low-level objectives like 3D reconstruction and image synthesis, spanning both indoor and outdoor scenarios. Besides, we also illustrate the capability of pre-training a 2D backbone using the proposed universal methodology, surpassing conventional pre-training methods by a large margin. For the first time, PonderV2 achieves state-of-the-art performance on 11 indoor and outdoor benchmarks. The consistent improvements in various settings imply the effectiveness of the proposed method. Code and models will be made available at https://github.com/OpenGVLab/PonderV2.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2301.0015

Study of the intense pulsed electron beam energy spectrum from BIPPAB-450

Intense pulsed particle beams have been widely used and studied as an effective method for material surface modification in the past several decades. Beihang Intense Pulsed PArticle Beams 450 accelerator (BIPPAB-450) can produce Intense Pulsed Ion Beams (IPIB) and Electron Beams (IPEB) in two modes with different Magnetically Insulated Diodes (MID). For IPEB, the pulse duration, accelerating voltage, total beam current are 100ns, up to 450keV and 3kA, respectively..

Deficiency of Mkrn2 causes abnormal spermiogenesis and spermiation, and impairs male fertility.

Although recent studies have shed insights on some of the potential causes of male infertility, new underlining molecular mechanisms still remain to be elucidated. Makorin-2 (Mkrn2) is an evolutionarily conserved gene whose biological functions are not fully known. We developed an Mrkn2 knockout mouse model to study the role of this gene, and found that deletion of Mkrn2 in mice led to male infertility. Mkrn2 knockout mice produced abnormal sperms characterized by low number, poor motility, and aberrant morphology. Disruption of Mkrn2 also caused failure of sperm release (spermiation failure) and misarrangement of ectoplasmic specialization (ES) in testes, thus impairing spermiogenesis and spermiation. To understand the molecular mechanism, we found that expression of Odf2, a vital protein in spermatogenesis, was significantly decreased. In addition, we found that expression levels of Odf2 were decreased in Mkrn2 knockout mice. We also found that MKRN2 was prominently expressed in the sperm of normal men, but was significantly reduced in infertile men. This result indicates that our finding is clinically relevant. The results of our study provided insights into a new mechanism of male infertility caused by the MKRN2 downregulation