Search

BackgroundCholinergic basal forebrain (BF) plays an important role in sleep-wake regulation and is implicated in cortical arousal and activation. However, less is known currently regarding the abnormal BF-related neuronal circuit in human patients with insomnia disorder (ID). In this study, we aimed to explore alterations of functional connectivity (FC) in subregions of the BF and the relationships between FC alterations and sleep and mood measures in ID.Materials and methodsOne hundred and two ID patients and ninety-six healthy controls (HC) were included in this study. Each subject underwent both resting-state fMRI and high-resolution anatomical scanning. All participants completed the sleep and mood questionnaires in ID patients. Voxel-based resting-state FC in each BF subregion (Ch_123 and Ch_4) were computed. For the voxel-wise FC differences between groups, a two-sample t-test was performed on the individual maps in a voxel-by-voxel manner. To examine linear relationships with sleep and mood measures, Pearson correlations were calculated between FC alterations and sleep and mood measures, respectively.ResultsThe ID group showed significantly decreased FC between the medial superior frontal gyrus and Ch_123 compared to HC. However, increased FC between the midbrain and Ch_4 was found in ID based on the voxel-wise analysis. The correlation analysis only revealed that the altered FC between the midbrain with Ch_4 was significantly negatively correlated with the self-rating anxiety scale.ConclusionOur findings of decreased FC between Ch_123 and medial superior frontal gyrus and increased FC between midbrain and Ch4 suggest distinct roles of subregions of BF underlying the neurobiology of ID.

Chemical transport models (CTMs) have been widely used to provide instructions for the control of ozone (O3) pollution. However, we find large discrepancies between observation- and model-based urban O3 chemical regimes: volatile organic compound (VOC)-limited regimes over N. China and weak nitrogen oxides (NOx)-limited regimes over S. China in observations, in contrast to simulations with widespread distributions of strong NOx-limited regimes. The conflicting O3 evolutions are caused by underestimated urban NOx concentrations and the possible overestimation of biogenic VOC emissions. Reductions in NOx emissions, in response to regulations, have thus led to an unintended deterioration of O3 pollution over N. China provinces, for example, an increase in surface O3 by approximately 7 ppb over the Sichuan Basin (SCB) in 2014-2020. The NOx-induced urban O3 changes resulted in an increase in premature mortality by approximately 3000 cases in 2015-2020.

With the development of artificial intelligence technology, Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) has been widely used. This paper presents a CDSS system, which called the Intelligent Auxiliary Diagnostic System for Common Disease (CD-IADS). CD-IADS assists the primary doctors in the diagnosis of common diseases with the patient's symptoms, signs, tests and personal background, which improves the primary doctors' working efficiency and reduces their misdiagnosis rate. In CD-IADS, medical experts construct the Medical Knowledge Graph according to medical literature and clinical experience firstly. Then, information entropy and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms are used to optimize the special weights based on medical records. The system combines the advantages of the medical expert system and the artificial intelligence algorithm to support the diagnosis of common diseases. The paper takes the common diseases of the respiratory department as an example, and the TOP-1 and TOP-3 diagnostic accuracy rates are up to 64.6% and 86.0% respectively.

This paper investigates an analytical analysis for the flow and heat transfer in a viscous fluid over a nonlinear stretching sheet. The governing partial differential equations are transformed into coupled nonlinear differential equations by introducing a siφmilarity transformation. The asymptotic analytical solutions are obtained by using differential transform method-basic functions (DTM-BF). Four types of nanofluids, namely Cu-water, Ag-water, Al2O3 -water and TiO2 -water were studied. The influence of the nanoparticle volume fraction φ, the nonlinear stretching parameter n , Prandtl number Pr, Eckert number Ec and different nanoparticles on the velocity and temperature are discussed and shown graphically. The comparison with the numerical results is presented and it is found to be in excellent agreement.

This paper develops the Mobius inversion formula for the Gaussian integers and Eisenstein's integers, and gives two applications. The first application is to the two-dimensional arithmetic Fourier transform (AFT), which is suitable for parallel processing. The second application is to two-dimensional inverse lattice problems, and is illustrated with the recovery of interatomic potentials from the cohesive energy for monolayer graphite. The paper demonstrates the potential application in the physical science of integral domains other than the standard integers.

Volcanic eruptions are thought to be a key driver of rapid climate perturbations over geological time, such as global cooling, global warming, and changes in ocean chemistry. However, identification of stratospheric volcanic eruptions in the geological record and their causal link to the mass extinction events during the past 540 million years remains challenging. Here we report unexpected, large mass-independent sulphur isotopic compositions of pyrite with Δ33S of up to 0.91‰ in Late Ordovician sedimentary rocks from South China. The magnitude of the Δ33S is similar to that discovered in ice core sulphate originating from stratospheric volcanism. The coincidence between the large Δ33S and the first pulse of the Late Ordovician mass extinction about 445 million years ago suggests that stratospheric volcanic eruptions may have contributed to synergetic environmental deteriorations such as prolonged climatic perturbations and oceanic anoxia, related to the mass extinction., Identification of stratospheric volcanic eruptions in the geological record and their link to mass extinction events during the past 540 million years remains challenging. Here, the authors report unexpected, large mass-independent sulphur isotopic compositions of pyrite in Late Ordovician sedimentary rocks, which they suggest originates from stratospheric volcanism linked to the first pulse of the Late Ordovician mass extinction.