140 research outputs found
Возможности рекультивации каменных отвалов пустых пород после извлечения медной руды
The Elatsite porphyry copper deposit is formed spatially and genetically in magmatic intrusive and effusive rocks of the 1200-1500 m above sea level (asl). At the places where there are more remnants of sulphide minerals, are highly acidic and pollute adjacent waterways. In this paper we present some of the research on the properties of bulk materials suitable for coating the root layer for biological reclamation.Овал порфиритовой меди Элатсайт сформирован из магматических интрузивных и эффузивных пород на высоте 1200-1500 м над уровнем моря. На местах, где много остатков сульфидных минералов, высока кислотность и высоко загрязнение подземных вод. В этой работе представлены результаты исследований по изучению свойств материалов, подходящих для создания покрывающего корнеобитаемого слоя для биологической рекультивации
THERAPEUTIC EFFECT OF COMPLEX PHYSICAL FACTORS IN DISEASES OF THE EXTREMITIES DUE TO OVERSTRAIN AND MICROTRAUMATISM
The authors treated with drugs and complex physical therapy 65 patients with occupational diseases of the extremities. According to the physiotherapeutic procedures, the patients were divided into five groups: 1s t - treated with galvanic baths; 2 n d - with galvanic baths and diadynamic current; 3 r d - with galvanic baths and short-wave therapy; 4t h - with galvanic baths and paraffin, and 5t h - with galvanic baths and high-voltage, low-frequency current. Patient's improvement was evaluated according to the reduction of subjective complaints such as shivering and pain as well as to a series of objective parameters such as muscle strength, skin temperature, time for skin temperature restoration, and peripheral blood flow. The subjective complaints were better influenced than the objective indices. The combination of galvanic baths with short-wave therapy exerted the best effect in the patients with occupational diseases of the extremities
One‐week escitalopram intake alters the excitation–inhibition balance in the healthy female brain
Neural health relies on cortical excitation-inhibition balance (EIB). Previous research suggests a link between increased cortical excitation and neuroplasticity induced by selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Whether there are modulations of EIB following SSRI-administration in the healthy human brain, however, remains unclear. Thus, in a randomized double-blind study, we administered a clinically relevant dose of 20 mg escitalopram for 7 days (time when steady state is achieved) in 59 healthy women (28 escitalopram, 31 placebo) on oral contraceptives. We acquired resting-state electroencephalography data at baseline, after a single dose, and at steady state. We assessed 1/f slope of the power spectrum as a marker of EIB, compared individual trajectories of 1/f slope changes contrasting single dose and 1-week drug intake, and tested the relationship of escitalopram plasma levels and cortical excitatory and inhibitory balance shifts. Escitalopram-intake was associated with decreased 1/f slope, indicating an EIB shift in favor of excitation. Furthermore, 1/f slope at baseline and after a single dose of escitalopram was associated with 1/f slope at steady state. Higher plasma escitalopram levels at a single dose were associated with better maintenance of these EIB changes throughout the drug administration week. These findings demonstrate the potential for 1/f slope to predict individual cortical responsivity to SSRIs and widen the lens through which we map the human brain by testing an interventional psychopharmacological design in a clearly defined endocrinological state
Different Approaches to Community Evolution Prediction in Blogosphere
Predicting the future direction of community evolution is a problem with high
theoretical and practical significance. It allows to determine which
characteristics describing communities have importance from the point of view
of their future behaviour. Knowledge about the probable future career of the
community aids in the decision concerning investing in contact with members of
a given community and carrying out actions to achieve a key position in it. It
also allows to determine effective ways of forming opinions or to protect group
participants against such activities. In the paper, a new approach to group
identification and prediction of future events is presented together with the
comparison to existing method. Performed experiments prove a high quality of
prediction results. Comparison to previous studies shows that using many
measures to describe the group profile, and in consequence as a classifier
input, can improve predictions.Comment: SNAA2013 at ASONAM2013 IEEE Computer Societ
The attention-emotion interaction in healthy female participants on oral contraceptives during 1-week escitalopram intake
Previous findings in healthy humans suggest that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) modulate emotional processing via earlier changes in attention. However, many previous studies have provided inconsistent findings. One possible reason for such inconsistencies is that these studies did not control for the influence of either sex or sex hormone fluctuations. To address this inconsistency, we administered 20 mg escitalopram or placebo for seven consecutive days in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled design to sixty healthy female participants with a minimum of 3 months oral contraceptive (OC) intake. Participants performed a modified version of an emotional flanker task before drug administration, after a single dose, after 1 week of SSRI intake, and after a 1-month wash-out period. Supported by Bayesian analyses, our results do not suggest a modulatory effect of escitalopram on behavioral measures of early attentional-emotional interaction in female individuals with regular OC use. While the specific conditions of our task may be a contributing factor, it is also possible that a practice effect in a healthy sample may mask the effects of escitalopram on the attentional-emotional interplay. Consequently, 1 week of escitalopram administration may not modulate attention toward negative emotional distractors outside the focus of attention in healthy female participants taking OCs. While further research in naturally cycling females and patient samples is needed, our results represent a valuable contribution toward the preclinical investigation of antidepressant treatment
Decreased thalamo-cortico connectivity during an implicit sequence motor learning task and 7 days escitalopram intake
Evidence suggests that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) reorganize neural networks via a transient window of neuroplasticity. While previous findings support an effect of SSRIs on intrinsic functional connectivity, little is known regarding the influence of SSRI-administration on connectivity during sequence motor learning. To investigate this, we administered 20 mg escitalopram or placebo for 1-week to 60 healthy female participants undergoing concurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging and sequence motor training in a double-blind randomized controlled design. We assessed task-modulated functional connectivity with a psycho-physiological interaction (PPI) analysis in the thalamus, putamen, cerebellum, dorsal premotor, primary motor, supplementary motor, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. Comparing an implicit sequence learning condition to a control learning condition, we observed decreased connectivity between the thalamus and bilateral motor regions after 7 days of escitalopram intake. Additionally, we observed a negative correlation between plasma escitalopram levels and PPI connectivity changes, with higher escitalopram levels being associated with greater thalamo-cortico decreases. Our results suggest that escitalopram enhances network-level processing efficiency during sequence motor learning, despite no changes in behaviour. Future studies in more diverse samples, however, with quantitative imaging of neurochemical markers of excitation and inhibition, are necessary to further assess neural responses to escitalopram
Determining causality in travel mode choice
This article presents one of the pioneering studies on causal modeling in travel mode choice decision-making using causal discovery algorithms. These models are a major advancement from conventional correlation-based techniques. We propose a novel methodology that combines causal discovery with structural equation modeling (SEM). This modeling approach overcomes some of the limitations of SEM by combining the strengths of both causal discovery and SEM. Causal discovery algorithms determine causal graphs from observational data and domain knowledge, and SEMs estimate direct causal effects and test the performance of causal discovery algorithms. In this study, we test four causal discovery algorithms: Peter-Clark (PC), Fast Causal Inference (FCI), Fast Greedy Equivalence Search (FGES), and Direct Linear Non-Gaussian Acyclic Models (DirectLiNGAM). The results show that DirectLiNGAM based SEM model best captures causality in mode choice behavior. It passes several goodness-of-fit tests, including Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) and Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI), and it achieves the lowest Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) value. The analyses are conducted on data collected from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey in the New York Metropolitan area
Link prediction in online social networks using group information
Users of online social networks voluntarily participate in different user groups or communities. Researches suggest the presence of strong local community structure in these social networks, i.e., users tend to meet other people via mutual friendship. Recently, different approaches have considered communities structure information for increasing the link prediction accuracy. Nevertheless, these approaches consider that users belong to just one community. In this paper, we propose three measures for the link prediction task which take into account all different communities that users belong to. We perform experiments for both unsupervised and supervised link prediction strategies. The evaluation method considers the links imbalance problem. Results show that our proposals outperform state-of-the-art unsupervised link prediction measures and help to improve the link prediction task approached as a supervised strategy.São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) (grants 2011/22749-8 and 2013/12191-5)National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) (grant 151836/2013-2)14th International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA).\ud
Guimarães, Portugal. 30 June - 3 July 2014
One-step isolation and biochemical characterization of a highlyactive plant PSII monomeric core
We describe a one-step detergent solubilization protocol for isolating a highly active form of Photosystem II (PSII) from Pisum sativum L. Detailed characterization of the preparation showed that the complex was a monomer having no light harvesting proteins attached. This core reaction centre complex had, however, a range of low molecular mass intrinsic proteins as well as the chlorophyll binding proteins CP43 and CP47 and the reaction centre proteins D1 and D2. Of particular note was the presence of a stoichiometric level of PsbW, a low molecular weight protein not present in PSII of cyanobacteria. Despite the high oxygen evolution rate, the core complex did not retain the PsbQ extrinsic protein although there was close to a full complement of PsbO and PsbR and partial level of PsbP. However, reconstitution of PsbP and PsbPQ was possible. The presence of PsbP in absence of LHCII and other chlorophyll a/b binding proteins confirms that LHCII proteins are not a strict requirement for the assembly of this extrinsic polypeptide to the PSII core in contrast with the conclusion of Caffarri et al. (2009)
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