Auditory neuroscience: the salience of looming sounds

Sounds that move towards us have a greater biological salience than those that move away. Recent studies in human and non-human primates demonstrate a perceptual and behavioural priority for such looming sounds that is also reflected in an asymmetric pattern of cortical activation

Aharonov-Anandan phase in Lipkin-Meskov-Glick model

In the system of several interacting spins, geometric phases have been researched intensively.However, the studies are mainly focused on the adiabatic case (Berry phase), so it is necessary for us to study the non-adiabatic counterpart (Aharonov and Anandan phase). In this paper, we analyze both the non-degenerate and degenerate geometric phase of Lipkin-Meskov-Glick type model, which has many application in Bose-Einstein condensates and entanglement theory. Furthermore, in order to calculate degenerate geometric phases, the Floquet theorem and decomposition of operator are generalized. And the general formula is achieved

Genetic diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Peru and exploration of phylogenetic associations with drug resistance.

BACKGROUND: There is limited available data on the strain diversity of M tuberculosis in Peru, though there may be interesting lessons to learn from a setting where multidrug resistant TB has emerged as a major problem despite an apparently well-functioning DOTS control programme. METHODS: Spoligotyping was undertaken on 794 strains of M tuberculosis collected between 1999 and 2005 from 553 community-based patients and 241 hospital-based HIV co-infected patients with pulmonary tuberculosis in Lima, Peru. Phylogenetic and epidemiologic analyses permitted identification of clusters and exploration of spoligotype associations with drug resistance. RESULTS: Mean patient age was 31.9 years, 63% were male and 30.4% were known to be HIV+. Rifampicin mono-resistance, isoniazid mono-resistance and multidrug resistance (MDR) were identified in 4.7%, 8.7% and 17.3% of strains respectively. Of 794 strains from 794 patients there were 149 different spoligotypes. Of these there were 27 strains (3.4%) with novel, unique orphan spoligotypes. 498 strains (62.7%) were clustered in the nine most common spoligotypes: 16.4% SIT 50 (clade H3), 12.3% SIT 53 (clade T1), 8.3% SIT 33 (LAM3), 7.4% SIT 42 (LAM9), 5.5% SIT 1 (Beijing), 3.9% SIT 47 (H1), 3.0% SIT 222 (clade unknown), 3.0% SIT1355 (LAM), and 2.8% SIT 92 (X3). Amongst HIV-negative community-based TB patients no associations were seen between drug resistance and specific spoligotypes; in contrast HIV-associated MDRTB, but not isoniazid or rifampicin mono-resistance, was associated with SIT42 and SIT53 strains. CONCLUSION: Two spoligotypes were associated with MDR particularly amongst patients with HIV. The MDR-HIV association was significantly reduced after controlling for SIT42 and SIT53 status; residual confounding may explain the remaining apparent association. These data are suggestive of a prolonged, clonal, hospital-based outbreak of MDR disease amongst HIV patients but do not support a hypothesis of strain-specific propensity for the acquisition of resistance-conferring mutations

Characterizing the impact of network latency on cloud-based applications’ performance

Businesses and individuals run increasing numbers of applications in the cloud. The performance of an application running in the cloud depends on the data center conditions and upon the resources committed to an application. Small network delays may lead to a significant performance degradation, which affects both the user’s cost and the service provider’s resource usage, power consumption and data center efficiency. In this work, we quantify the effect of network latency on several typical cloud workloads, varying in complexity and use cases. Our results show that different applications are affected by network latency to differing amounts. These insights into the effect of network latency on different applications have ramifications for workload placement and physical host sharing when trying to reach performance targets

Enabling fast hierarchical heavy hitter detection using programmable data planes

© 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Measuring and monitoring network traffic is a fundamental aspect in network management. This poster is a first step towards an SDN solution using an event triggered approach to support advanced monitoring dataplane capabilities. Leveraging P4 programmability, we built a solution to inform a remote controller about the detected hierarchical heavy hitters, thus minimizing control plane overheads

Daily report cards as a school-based intervention for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.This paper describes daily report cards and the evidence relating to their use in schools for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This intervention typically involves teachers evaluating a student's behaviour at school against pre-determined targets and parents subsequently providing reinforcement at home for positive reports. Research suggests that the daily report card has been effective in treating a range of ADHD symptoms and improving school outcomes, including academic achievement in some cases. The daily report card also encourages collaboration between teachers and parents, and evidence suggests that the intervention benefits from the inclusion of reinforcement at home. Daily report cards are easy to implement and research finds that teachers consider them an acceptable intervention for ADHD. This paper also considers challenges in using daily report cards, including barriers to their use over the long-term and the risk of stigma for children with a report card. Ideas to address these issues are suggested

Solar Disinfection of MODS Mycobacterial Cultures in Resource-Poor Settings

INTRODUCTION: Safe disposal of TB culture material in which the infectious burden of clinical samples has been greatly amplified is an important challenge in resource-limited settings. The bactericidal capacity of solar cookers has been demonstrated previously for conventional bacteria and contaminated clinical waste. We investigated the use of a simple solar cooker for the sterilization of mycobacterial broth cultures from the microscopic observation drug susceptibility assay (MODS). METHODS: Simulated TB culture materials were prepared by inoculating 24-well MODS plates with 500 microL of a known concentration of Mycobacterium bovis BCG. In a series of experiments, samples were simultaneously placed inside a box-type solar cooker and control box and removed at timepoints between 15 minutes and 6 hours. Quantitative cultures were performed using retrieved samples to determine sterilization effect. RESULTS: All cultures from the control box were positive at or within 1-4 logs of inoculation concentration. Simulated culture plates at concentrations from 10(3) colony-forming-units (CFU)/ml to 10(7) CFU/ml were completely sterilized after only one hour of cooker exposure, at temperatures between 50-102 degrees C. At 10(9) CFU/ml (far in excess of diagnostic cultures), it was only possible to recover mycobacterial growth in plates removed after 15 minutes. By 30 minutes all plates were effectively sterilized. DISCUSSION: Solar disinfection provides a very effective, safe and low-cost alternative to conventional equipment used for disposal of mycobacterial culture material. Effect of climatic conditions and optimal operating procedure remain to be defined

What are the Best Hierarchical Descriptors for Complex Networks?

This work reviews several hierarchical measurements of the topology of complex networks and then applies feature selection concepts and methods in order to quantify the relative importance of each measurement with respect to the discrimination between four representative theoretical network models, namely Erd\"{o}s-R\'enyi, Barab\'asi-Albert, Watts-Strogatz as well as a geographical type of network. The obtained results confirmed that the four models can be well-separated by using a combination of measurements. In addition, the relative contribution of each considered feature for the overall discrimination of the models was quantified in terms of the respective weights in the canonical projection into two dimensions, with the traditional clustering coefficient, hierarchical clustering coefficient and neighborhood clustering coefficient resulting particularly effective. Interestingly, the average shortest path length and hierarchical node degrees contributed little for the separation of the four network models.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Phagocytosis in the brain: homeostasis and disease

Microglia are resident macrophages of the central nervous system and significantly contribute to overall brain function by participating in phagocytosis during development, homeostasis, and diseased states. Phagocytosis is a highly complex process that is specialized for the uptake and removal of opsonized and non-opsonized targets, such as pathogens, apoptotic cells, and cellular debris. While the role of phagocytosis in mediating classical innate and adaptive immune responses has been known for decades, it is now appreciated that phagocytosis is also critical throughout early neural development, homeostasis, and initiating repair mechanisms. As such, modulating phagocytic processes has provided unexplored avenues with the intent of developing novel therapeutics that promote repair and regeneration in the CNS. Here, we review the functional consequences that phagocytosis plays in both the healthy and diseased CNS, and summarize how phagocytosis contributes to overall pathophysiological mechanisms involved in brain injury and repair