Test–Retest Reliability of Mismatch Negativity (MMN) to Emotional Voices

A voice from kin species conveys indispensable social and affective signals with uniquely phylogenetic and ontogenetic standpoints. However, the neural underpinning of emotional voices, beyond low-level acoustic features, activates a processing chain that proceeds from the auditory pathway to the brain structures implicated in cognition and emotion. By using a passive auditory oddball paradigm, which employs emotional voices, this study investigates the test–retest reliability of emotional mismatch negativity (MMN), indicating that the deviants of positively (happily)- and negatively (angrily)-spoken syllables, as compared to neutral standards, can trigger MMN as a response to an automatic discrimination of emotional salience. The neurophysiological estimates of MMN to positive and negative deviants appear to be highly reproducible, irrespective of the subject’s attentional disposition: whether the subjects are set to a condition that involves watching a silent movie or do a working memory task. Specifically, negativity bias is evinced as threatening, relative to positive vocalizations, consistently inducing larger MMN amplitudes, regardless of the day and the time of a day. The present findings provide evidence to support the fact that emotional MMN offers a stable platform to detect subtle changes in current emotional shifts

A Survey on Approximate Multiplier Designs for Energy Efficiency: From Algorithms to Circuits

Given the stringent requirements of energy efficiency for Internet-of-Things edge devices, approximate multipliers, as a basic component of many processors and accelerators, have been constantly proposed and studied for decades, especially in error-resilient applications. The computation error and energy efficiency largely depend on how and where the approximation is introduced into a design. Thus, this article aims to provide a comprehensive review of the approximation techniques in multiplier designs ranging from algorithms and architectures to circuits. We have implemented representative approximate multiplier designs in each category to understand the impact of the design techniques on accuracy and efficiency. The designs can then be effectively deployed in high-level applications, such as machine learning, to gain energy efficiency at the cost of slight accuracy loss.Comment: 38 pages, 37 figure

Microbiome Structure and Mucosal Morphology of Jejunum Appendix and Colon of Rats in Health and Dysbiosis

Gut microbiota contributes to human health. Plenty of studies demonstrate that antibiotics can disrupt gut ecosystem leading to dysbiosis. Little is known about the microbial variation of appendix and its up/downstream intestine after antibiotic treatment. This study aimed to investigate the microbiome and mucosal morphology of jejunum, appendix, and colon of rats in health and dysbiosis. A rodent model of antibiotic-induced dysbiosis was employed. Microscopy was used to observe mucosal morphological changes. 16S rRNA sequencing was performed for identifying bacterial taxa and microbiome structure. The appendices of dysbiosis were found enlarged and infated with loose contents. Microscopy revealed the impairment of intestinal epithelial cells. High-throughput sequencing showed the Operational Taxonomic Units changed from 361±33, 634±18, 639±19 in the normal jejunum, appendix, colon to 748±98, 230±11, 253±16 in the disordered segments, respectively. In dysbiosis, Bacteroidetes translocated inversely from the colon and appendix (0.26%, 0.23%) to the jejunum (13.87%±0.11%); the relative abundance of all intestinal Enterococcaceae increased, while Lactobacillaceae decreased. Several bacterial clusters were found correlated to the normal appendix, whereas nonspecifc clusters correlated to the disordered appendix. In conclusion, species richness and evenness reduced in the disordered appendix and colon; similar microbiome patterns were shared between the appendix and colon regardless of dysbiosis; site-specifc bacteria were missing in the disordered appendix. Appendix is likely a transit region involving in upper and lower intestinal microfora modulation. The limitation of this study is all the data were derived from rats. We must be cautious about translating the microbiome results from rats to humans

Spatio-temporal analysis of malaria incidence at the village level in a malaria-endemic area in Hainan, China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Malaria incidence in China's Hainan province has dropped significantly, since Malaria Programme of China Global Fund Round 1 was launched. To lay a foundation for further studies to evaluate the efficacy of Malaria Programme and to help with public health planning and resource allocation in the future, the temporal and spatial variations of malaria epidemic are analysed and areas and seasons with a higher risk are identified at a fine geographic scale within a malaria endemic county in Hainan.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Malaria cases among the residents in each of 37 villages within hyper-endemic areas of Wanning county in southeast Hainan from 2005 to 2009 were geo-coded at village level based on residence once the patients were diagnosed. Based on data so obtained, purely temporal, purely spatial and space-time scan statistics and geographic information systems (GIS) were employed to identify clusters of time, space and space-time with elevated proportions of malaria cases.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Purely temporal scan statistics suggested clusters in 2005,2006 and 2007 and no cluster in 2008 and 2009. Purely spatial clustering analyses pinpointed the most likely cluster as including three villages in 2005 and 2006 respectively, sixteen villages in 2007, nine villages in 2008, and five villages in 2009, and the south area of Nanqiao town as the most likely to have a significantly high occurrence of malaria. The space-time clustering analysis found the most likely cluster as including three villages in the south of Nanqiao town with a time frame from January 2005 to May 2007.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Even in a small traditional malaria endemic area, malaria incidence has a significant spatial and temporal heterogeneity on the finer spatial and temporal scales. The scan statistics enable the description of this spatiotemporal heterogeneity, helping with clarifying the epidemiology of malaria and prioritizing the resource assignment and investigation of malaria on a finer geographical scale in endemic areas.</p

Deep-Deterministic-Policy-Gradient-Based Task Offloading With Optimized K-Means in Edge-Computing-Enabled IoMT Cyber-Physical Systems

In recent years, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is expanding its value as a key enabling technology for smart medical cyber-physical systems. In order to overcome the constraints of constrained local resources, smart medical equipment (ME) in IoMT cyber-physical systems offload data to edge or cloud servers for processing. However, due to the limited edge resources and huge time delay caused by offloading data to the cloud, the lack of a reasonable task unloading scheme will lead to the unbearable time delay and energy consumption of the IoMT system, resulting in uneven workloads among edge servers and threatening the security of medical data. To cope with these challenges, a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG)-based task-offloading method assisted by clustering is proposed. We first improved the initialization process of K-means, and based on this, designed an optimized K-means algorithm to carry out scientific and reasonable clustering of MEs according to their quality-of-service requirements. Then, DDPG is employed to obtain an optimal task-offloading scheme to minimize average latency and total energy consumption of IoMT and to ensure load balancing among edge servers. Finally, experimental results justify the scientific nature of optimized K-means and the superiority of DDPG in reducing the system overhead of IoMT. Compared with benchmark algorithms, DDPG reduces average time delay and total energy consumption by at least 16.9% and 12.3%, respectively

Psychological capital moderate the influence of job satisfaction on performance(心理资本调节工作满意度对工作绩效的影响)

为了探索心理资本和工作满意度对工作绩效的交互影响作用，期望通过增强员工的心理资本来提高企业的员工工作满意度和工作绩效.在研究中引入了积极心理学的概念、心理资本以及工作满意度，并构建了心理资本调节工作满意度对工作绩效的影响作用的研究框架.通过对IT企业员工的大样本问卷调查，利用321名有效被试的数据检验了假设，结果发现：年龄越大IT企业员工的任务绩效和关系绩效越好；心理资本、工作满意度越高，任务绩效和关系绩效越好；心理资本会调节工作满意度对关系绩效的影响，却不能调节工作满意度对任务绩效的影响

Fabrication of Chiral 3D Microstructure Using Tightly Focused Multiramp Helico-Conical Optical Beams

Beams with optical vortices are widely used in various fields, including optical communication, optical manipulation and trapping, and, especially in recent years, in the processing of nanoscale structures. However, circular vortex beams are difficult to use for the processing of chiral micro and nanostructures. This paper introduces a multiramp helical&ndash;conical beam that can produce a three-dimensional spiral light field in a tightly focused system. Using this spiral light beam and the two-photon direct writing technique, micro&ndash;nano structures with chiral characteristics in space can be directly written under a single exposure. The fabrication efficiency is more than 20 times higher than the conventional point-by-point writing strategy. The tightly focused properties of the light field were utilized to analyze the field-dependent properties of the micro&ndash;nano structure, such as the number of multiramp mixed screw-edge dislocations. Our results enrich the means of two-photon polymerization technology and provide a simple and stable way for the micromachining of chiral microstructures, which may have a wide range of applications in optical tweezers, optical communications, and metasurfaces

The prevalence of <i>staphylococcus </i>aureus and the occurrence of mrsa cc398 in monkey feces in a zoo park in eastern China

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the important antibiotic resistant pathogens causing infections in humans and animals. The increasing observation of MRSA in wildlife species has raised the concern of its impact on animal health and the potential of zoonotic transmission. This study investigated the prevalence of S. aureus in fecal samples from non-human primates in a zoo located in Jiangsu, China, in which 6 out of 31 (19.4%) fecal samples, and 2 out of 14 (14.3%) indoor room floor swab samples were S. aureus-positive. The antibiotic susceptibility tests of the eight isolates showed that the two isolates were resistant to both penicillin and cefoxitin, the three isolates were resistant only to penicillin, while three isolates were susceptible to all detected antibiotics. The two isolates resistant to cefoxitin were further identified as MRSA by the presence of mecA. Five different spa types were identified including t034 of two MRSA isolates from Trachypithecus francoisi, t189 of two methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) isolates from Rhinopithecus roxellana, t377 of two MSSA isolates from Colobus guereza, and two novel spa types t19488 and t19499 from Papio anubis. Whole genome sequencing analysis showed that MRSA t034 isolates belonged to ST398 clustered in clonal complex 398 (CC398) and carried the type B ΦSa3 prophage. The phylogenetic analysis showed that the two MRSA t034/ST398 isolates were closely related to the human-associated MSSA in China. Moreover, two MRSA isolates contained the virulence genes relating to the cell adherence, biofilm formation, toxins, and the human-associated immune evasion cluster, which indicated the potential of bidirectional transfer of MRSA between monkeys and humans. This study is the first to report MRSA CC398 from monkey feces in China, indicating that MRSA CC398 could colonize in monkey and have the risk of transmission between humans and monkeys