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The observation of geomagnetic field variations is an important approach to studying earthquake precursors. Since 1987, the China Earthquake Administration has explored this seismomagnetic relationship. In particular, they studied local magnetic field anomalies over the Chinese mainland for earthquake prediction. Owing to the years of research on the seismomagnetic relationship, earthquake prediction experts have concluded that the compressive magnetic effect, tectonic magnetic effect, electric magnetic fluid effect, and other factors contribute to preearthquake magnetic anomalies. However, this involves a small magnitude of magnetic field changes. It is difficult to relate them to the abnormal changes of the extremely large magnetic field in regions with extreme earthquakes owing to the high cost of professional geomagnetic equipment, thereby limiting large-scale deployment. Moreover, it is difficult to obtain strong magnetic field changes before an earthquake. The Tianjin Earthquake Agency has developed low-cost geomagnetic field observation equipment through the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei geomagnetic equipment test project. The new system was used to test the availability of equipment and determine the findings based on big data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vigilance decrement is a ubiquitous problem in attention-demanding tasks. Therefore, it is significant to develop neuromodulation methods to mitigate the negative neural effect of vigilance decrement. As one of the non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, visual flicker/rhythmic visual stimulation (RVS) has been proposed to entrain neural oscillations and thereby modulate cognitive processes supported by these brain rhythms, but its effects on vigilance decrement are still unclear. Here, we investigated the effect of gamma flicker on vigilance decrement and its underlying neural mechanism. Thirty participants were recruited to perform a 12-min vigilance task. They were required to discriminate the orientation of lateralized triangle targets with/without 40-Hz RVS background. As a result, it was found that 40-Hz RVS mitigated the decrease in perceptual sensitivity ( A ′ ) with time-on-task, a typical adverse effect on behaviors caused by vigilance decrement. Electroencephalography (EEG) results showed that 40-Hz RVS could reduce the significant decline of post-stimulus theta-band inter-trial coherence (ITC) in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) with time-on-task. Regression analysis further revealed that the anterior theta-band ITC was significantly correlated to perceptual sensitivity ( A ′ ) in a positive manner. These findings indicated that gamma flicker to the visual cortex had a cross-frequency neuromodulation effect on low-frequency EEG responses over the long-range PFC region. Furthermore, this study provides new insights into the neural effects of 40-Hz RVS, which could impact time-on-task effects on vigilance behaviors and alter the utilization of attentional resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zen/Chan 禪 occupies a unique position in world intellectual history. This article argues that there is a trend in the development of Chan thought which significantly reduces the innovative nature of Huineng's 慧能 original thought and evinces an institutional effort to realign Huineng's school of Chan with the Buddhist establishment. Its main objective is to locate the original sources of Huineng's Chan and restore the revolutionary ideas of his thought. Adopting an approach that integrates historical materials with psychology, neuroscience with philosophy, and close reading of Huineng's interpretation of the Diamond Sutra and his innovative ideas and methods of cultivation in the Platform Sutra in relation to Laozi's 老子 and Zhuangzi's 莊子 Daoist ideas, it works out insights into the originality and universal appeal of Chan and the hitherto unpenetrated secret of Chan enlightenment. It concludes that the core of Huineng's Chan thought is his idea of wunian 無念 (no-thinking), and satori 悟り is not the Buddhist enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work identified nociceptive Schwann cells that can initiate pain. Consistent with the existence of inherently mechanosensitive sensory Schwann cells, we found that in mice, the mechanosensory function of almost all nociceptors, including those signaling fast pain, were dependent on sensory Schwann cells. In polymodal nociceptors, sensory Schwann cells signal mechanical, but not cold or heat pain. Terminal Schwann cells also surround mechanoreceptor nerve-endings within the Meissner's corpuscle and in hair follicle lanceolate endings that both signal vibrotactile touch. Within Meissner´s corpuscles, two molecularly and functionally distinct sensory Schwann cells positive for Sox10 and Sox2 differentially modulate rapidly adapting mechanoreceptor function. Using optogenetics we show that Meissner's corpuscle Schwann cells are necessary for the perception of low threshold vibrotactile stimuli. These results show that sensory Schwann cells within diverse glio-neural mechanosensory end-organs are sensors for mechanical pain as well as necessary for touch perception. Schwann cells associated with most sensory receptors in the skin actively participate in the transduction of mechanical stimuli. Here the authors show that silencing these sensory Schwann cells is sufficient to reduce touch perception and can inhibit mechanical pain in mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age-Related Hearing Loss (ARHL) is a common problem in aging. Numerous longitudinal cohort studies have revealed that ARHL is closely related to cognitive function, leading to a significant risk of cognitive decline and dementia. This risk gradually increases with the severity of hearing loss. We designed dual auditory Oddball and cognitive task paradigms for the ARHL subjects, then obtained the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scale evaluation results for all the subjects. Multi-dimensional EEG characteristics helped explore potential biomarkers to evaluate the cognitive level of the ARHL group, having a significantly lower P300 peak amplitude coupled with a prolonged latency. Moreover, visual memory, auditory memory, and logical calculation were investigated during the cognitive task paradigm. In the ARHL groups, the alpha-to-beta rhythm energy ratio in the visual and auditory memory retention period and the wavelet packet entropy value within the logical calculation period were significantly reduced. Correlation analysis between the above specificity indicators and the subjective scale results of the ARHL group revealed that the auditory P300 component characteristics could assess attention resources and information processing speed. The alpha and beta rhythm energy ratio and wavelet packet entropy can become potential indicators to determine working memory and logical cognitive computation-related cognitive ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is emphasized in the Self-regulated learning (SRL) framework that self-monitoring of learning state is vital for students to keep effective in studying. However, it's still challenging to get an accurate and timely understanding of their learning states during classes. In this study, we propose to use electrodermal activity (EDA) signals which are deemed to be associated with physiological arousal state to predict the college student's classroom performance. Twenty college students were recruited to attend eight lectures in the classroom, during which their EDA signals were recorded simultaneously. For each lecture, the students should complete pre- and after-class tests, and a self-reported scale (SRS) on their learning experience. EDA indices were extracted from both time and frequency domains, and they were furtherly mapped to the student's learning efficiency. As a result, the indices relevant to the dynamic changes of EDA had significant positive correlations with the learning efficiency. Furthermore, compared with only using SRS, a combination with EDA indices had significantly higher accuracy in predicting the learning efficiency. In conclusion, our findings demonstrate that the EDA dynamics are sensitive to the changes in learning efficiency, suggesting a promising approach to predicting the classroom performance of college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Rare Metals is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Aims/hypothesis: Our aim was to investigate structural changes of cutaneous Schwann cells (SCs), including nociceptive Schwann cells (nSCs) and axons, in individuals with diabetic polyneuropathy. We also aimed to investigate the relationship between these changes and peripheral neuropathic symptoms in type 1 diabetes. Methods: Skin biopsies (3 mm) taken from carefully phenotyped participants with type 1 diabetes without polyneuropathy (T1D, n=25), type 1 diabetes with painless diabetic polyneuropathy (T1DPN, n=30) and type 1 diabetes with painful diabetic polyneuropathy (P-T1DPN, n=27), and from healthy control individuals (n=25) were immunostained with relevant antibodies to visualise SCs and nerve fibres. Stereological methods were used to quantify the expression of cutaneous SCs and nerve fibres. Results: There was a difference in the number density of nSCs not abutting to nerve fibres between the groups (p=0.004) but not in the number density of nSCs abutting to nerve fibres, nor in solitary or total subepidermal SC soma number density. The overall dermal SC expression (measured by dermal SC area fraction and subepidermal SC process density) and peripheral nerve fibre expression (measured by intraepidermal nerve fibre density, dermal nerve fibre area fraction and subepidermal nerve fibre density) differed between the groups (all p<0.05): significant differences were seen in participants with T1DPN and P-T1DPN compared with those without diabetic polyneuropathy (healthy control and T1D groups) (all p<0.05). No difference was found between participants in the T1DPN and P-T1DPN group, nor between participants in the T1D and healthy control group (all p>0.05). Correlational analysis showed that cutaneous SC processes and nerve fibres were highly associated, and they were weakly negatively correlated with different neuropathy measures. Conclusions/interpretation: Cutaneous SC processes and nerves, but not SC soma, are degenerated and interdependent in individuals with diabetic polyneuropathy. However, an increase in structurally damaged nSCs was seen in individuals with diabetic polyneuropathy. Furthermore, dermal SC processes and nerve fibres correlate weakly with clinical measures of neuropathy and may play a partial role in the pathophysiology of diabetic polyneuropathy in type 1 diabetes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Numerous clinical reports have suggested that psychopathy like schizophrenia, anxiety and depression is accompanied by early attentional abnormalities in emotional processing. Recently, the efficacy of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) in changing emotional functioning has been repeatedly observed and demonstrated a causal relationship between endogenous oscillations and emotional processing. Aims: Up to now, tACS effects on emotional attention have not yet been tested. To assess such ability, we delivered active-tACS at individual alpha frequency (IAF), 10 Hz or sham-tACS for 7 consecutive days in the bilaterally dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) to totally 79 healthy participants. Results: IAF-tACS group showed significant alpha entrainment at-rest, especially in open state around stimulation area and showed an obvious advantage compared to 10 Hz-tACS. Event-related potential revealed a significant larger P200 amplitude after active-tACS and IAF group showed wider range of emotions than 10 Hz-tACS, indicating the attentional improvement in facial emotion processing. A notable positive correlation between alpha power and P200 amplitude provided an electrophysiological interpretation regarding the role of tACS in emotional attention modulation instead of somatosensory effects. Conclusion: These results support a seminal outcome for the effect of IAF-tACS on emotional attention modulation, demonstrating a feasible and individual-specific therapy for neuropsychiatric disorders related to emotion processing, especially regarding oscillatory disturbances. Highlights: Proposing a non-invasive treatment on emotional attention–long-term tACS treatment. Exploring the correlation between neural oscillations and the performance of emotion recognition tasks and demonstrating the emotional attention modulation by leveraging neural entrainment of weak alternating electric fields. Demonstrating the entrainment effect of individual tACS strategy in the individual frequency band for each subject, providing a feasible and individual therapy in neuropsychiatric disorders with abnormal rhythms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed the effect of China's fluorosis prevention and control program, which has been in effect for more than 40 years, and the impact of fluorosis on children's health. Relevant research studies were retrieved from the following online databases from the time of their inception to May 2022: PubMed, ScienceDirect, Embase, Cochrane, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang. The Review Manager 5.3 software was used in statistical analyses. This article included seventy studies: Thirty-eight studies reported the effect of improving water quality and reducing fluoride content, the incidence rate of dental fluorosis in children, and the level of urinary fluoride, and thirty-two studies reported the intelligence quotient (IQ) and health status of children. Following water improvement strategies, the fluoride levels in drinking water decreased significantly; urinary fluoride levels and dental fluorosis decreased significantly in children. With regard to the effect of fluorosis on the IQ of children, the results showed that the IQ of children in areas with a high fluoride of fluorosis was lesser than that in areas with a low fluoride, and this difference was significant. Based on the prevalence of dental fluorosis and its effect on the intelligence of children, it appears that reducing fluoride levels in drinking water and monitoring water quality are important strategies for the prevention and treatment of fluorosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neural basis for long-term behavioral improvements resulting from multi-session transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) combined with working memory training (WMT) remains unclear. In this study, we used task-related electroencephalography (EEG) measures to investigate the lasting neurophysiological effects of anodal high-definition (HD)-tDCS applied over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) during a challenging WMT. Thirty-four healthy young adults were randomized to sham or active tDCS groups and underwent ten 30-minute training sessions over ten consecutive days, preceded by a pre-test and followed by post-tests performed one day and three weeks after the last session, respectively, by performing high-load WM tasks along with EEG recording. Multi-session HD-tDCS significantly enhanced the behavioral benefits of WMT. Compared to the sham group, the active group showed facilitated increases in theta, alpha, beta, and gamma task-related oscillations at the end of training and significantly increased P300 response 3 weeks post-training. Our findings suggest that applying anodal tDCS over the left dlPFC during multi-session WMT can enhance the behavioral benefits of WMT and facilitate sustained improvements in WM-related neural efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exogenous excitation requirement and electron-hole recombination are the key elements limiting the application of catalytic therapies. Here a tumor microenvironment (TME)-specific self-triggered thermoelectric nanoheterojunction (Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3/CaO2 nanosheets, BST/CaO2 NSs) with self-built-in electric field facilitated charge separation is fabricated. Upon exposure to TME, the CaO2 coating undergoes rapid hydrolysis, releasing Ca2+, H2O2, and heat. The resulting temperature difference on the BST NSs initiates a thermoelectric effect, driving reactive oxygen species production. H2O2 not only serves as a substrate supplement for ROS generation but also dysregulates Ca2+ channels, preventing Ca2+ efflux. This further exacerbates calcium overload-mediated therapy. Additionally, Ca2+ promotes DC maturation and tumor antigen presentation, facilitating immunotherapy. It is worth noting that the CaO2 NP coating hydrolyzes very slowly in normal cells, releasing Ca2+ and O2 without causing any adverse effects. Tumor-specific self-triggered thermoelectric nanoheterojunction combined catalytic therapy, ion interference therapy, and immunotherapy exhibit excellent antitumor performance in female mice. The exogenous excitation requirement and electron-hole pair recombination are the key factors limiting the application of catalytic therapies. Here, the authors address these limitations by designing a tumor microenvironment-specific self-triggered thermoelectric nanoheterojunction with a self-built-in electric field that facilitates charge separation for cancer treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of wireless power and data telemetry to implantable medical devices (IMDs) has grown dramatically in recent decades. Achieving a high data rate and high-power transmission efficiency (PTE) over the same inductive link remains challenging. This paper presents a power and data telemetry circuit over a single 13.56 MHz inductive link. On the transmitter (TX) side, a binary-phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulation based on a Class-E amplifier that features a high modulation rate and a high quality (Q)-factor is proposed. A digital-assisted phase-locked-loop (PLL) is proposed on the receiver (RX) side as a BPSK demodulator to handle the long settling process. The maximum data rate can be extended to 1/4 of the carrier frequency. The prototype has been fabricated with a 180 nm BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) process. The measurement shows that up to 31.25 mW of power can be delivered simultaneously with 3.39-Mbps of data transmission, while a 2 × 10−7 bit-error-rate (BER) can be ensured over a transmission distance of 5 mm. The peak PTE is 70%, whereas the RX energy efficiency is 183 pJ/bit. The results demonstrate the potential of the proposed techniques in applications to various biomedical implants with intensive bandwidth and energy efficiency requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directed brain networks may provide new insights into exploring physiological mechanism and neuromarkers for depression. This study aims to investigate the abnormalities of directed brain networks in depressive patients. We constructed the directed brain network based on resting electroencephalogram for 19 depressive patients and 20 healthy controls with eyes closed and eyes open. The weighted directed brain connectivity was measured by partial directed coherence for α, β, γ frequency band. Furthermore, topological parameters (clustering coefficient, characteristic path length, and et al.) were computed based on graph theory. The correlation between network metrics and clinical symptom was also examined. Depressive patients had a significantly weaker value of partial directed coherence at alpha frequency band in eyes-closed state. Clustering coefficient and characteristic path length were significantly lower in depressive patients (both p <.01). More importantly, in depressive patients, disruption of directed connectivity was noted in left-to-left (p <.05), right-to-left (p <.01) hemispheres and frontal-to-central (p <.01), parietal-to-central (p <.05), occipital-to-central (p <.05) regions. Furthermore, connectivity in LL and RL hemispheres was negatively correlated with depression scale scores (both p <.05). Depressive patients showed a more randomized network structure, disturbed directed interaction of left-to-left, right-to-left hemispheric information and between different cerebral regions. Specifically, left-to-left, right-to-left hemispheric connectivity was negatively correlated with the severity of depression. Our analysis may serve as a potential neuromarker of depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface electromyography (EMG) is a bioelectrical signal that recognizes speech contents in a non-acoustic form. Activity detection is an important research direction in EMG research. However, in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environment, it is difficult for traditional methods to obtain accurate active signals. This paper proposes a new energy-based spectral subtraction backtracking (E-SSB) method to segment EMG active signal in the low SNR environment. Compared with traditional energy detection, the algorithm in this paper adds spectral subtraction (SS) to filter out the clutter, and raises a retrospective idea to improve the classification performance. The experiment results show the proposed activity detection method is more effective than other methods in the low SNR environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Central South University is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Precise customer requirements acquisition is the primary stage of product conceptual design, which plays a decisive role in product quality and innovation. However, existing customer requirements mining approaches pay attention to the offline or online customer comment feedback and there has been little quantitative analysis of customer requirements in the analogical reasoning environment. Latent and innovative customer requirements can be expressed by analogical inspiration distinctly. In response, this paper proposes a semantic analysis-driven customer requirements mining method for product conceptual design based on deep transfer learning and improved latent Dirichlet allocation (ILDA). Initially, an analogy-inspired verbal protocol analysis experiment is implemented to obtain detailed customer requirements descriptions of elevator. Then, full connection layers and a softmax layer are added to the output-end of Chinese bidirectional encoder representations from Transformers (BERT) pre-training language model. The above deep transfer model is utilized to realize the customer requirements classification among functional domain, behavioral domain and structural domain in the customer requirement descriptions of elevator by fine-tuning training. Moreover, the ILDA is adopted to mine the functional customer requirements that can represent customer intention maximally. Finally, an effective accuracy of customer requirements classification is acquired by using the BERT deep transfer model. Meanwhile, five kinds of customer requirements of elevator and corresponding keywords as well as their weight coefficients in the topic-word distribution are extracted. This work can provide a novel research perspective on customer requirements mining for product conceptual design through natural language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timely relief of anxiety in healthy people is important, but there is little research on this topic at present. Neurofeedback training allows subjects to regulate their specific brain activities autonomously and thus alter their corresponding cognitive functions. Inattention is a significant cognitive deficit in patients with anxiety. Sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) was reported to be closely related to attention. In this study, trainability, frequency specificity, and brain-behavior relationships were utilized to verify the validity of a relative SMR power protocol. An EEG neurofeedback training system was developed for alleviating anxiety levels in healthy people. The EEG data were collected from 33 subjects during SMR up-training sessions. Subjects attended six times neurofeedback training for about 2 weeks. The feedback value of the neurofeedback group was the relative SMR power at the feedback electrode (electrode C3), while the feedback values for the control group were pseudorandom numbers. The trainability index revealed that the learning trend showed an increase in SMR power activity at the C3 electrode, confirming effects across training. The frequency specificity index revealed only that SMR band activity increased significantly in the neurofeedback group. The brain-behavior relationships index revealed that increased SMR activity correlated negatively with the severity of anxiety. This study indicates that neurofeedback training using a relative SMR power protocol, based on activity at the C3 electrode, could relieve anxiety levels for healthy people and increase the SMR power. Preliminary studies support the feasibility and efficacy of the relative SMR power protocol for healthy people with anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stroke is one of the most serious diseases that threaten human life and health. It is a major cause of death and disability in the clinic. New strategies for motor rehabilitation after stroke are undergoing exploration. We aimed to develop a novel artificial neural rehabilitation system, which integrates brain-computer interface (BCI) and functional electrical stimulation (FES) technologies, for limb motor function recovery after stroke. We conducted clinical trials (including controlled trials) in 32 patients with chronic stroke. Patients were randomly divided into the BCI-FES group and the neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) group. The changes in outcome measures during intervention were compared between groups, and the trends of ERD values based on EEG were analyzed for BCI-FES group. Results showed that the increase in Fugl Meyer Assessment of the Upper Extremity (FMA-UE) and Kendall Manual Muscle Testing (Kendall MMT) scores of the BCI-FES group was significantly higher than that in the sham group, which indicated the practicality and superiority of the BCI-FES system in clinical practice. The change in the laterality coefficient (LC) values based on μ-ERD (ΔLCm-ERD) had high significant positive correlation with the change in FMA-UE(r = 0.6093, P = 0.012), which provides theoretical basis for exploring novel objective evaluation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theta and gamma rhythms in hippocampus are important to cognitive performance. The cognitive impairments following cerebral ischemia is linked with the dysfunction of theta and gamma oscillations. As the primary mechanism for learning and memory, synaptic plasticity is in connection with these neural oscillations. Although vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is thought to protect synaptic function in the ischemia rats to relieve cognitive impairment, little has been done on its effect of neural dynamics with this process. The present study investigated whether the alternation of neural oscillations in the hippocampus of ischemia rats is one of the potential neuroprotective mechanisms of VEGF. Rats were treated with the intranasal administration of VEGF at 72 h following chronic global cerebral ischemia procedure. Then local field potentials (LFPs) in hippocampal CA1 and CA3 regions were recorded and analyzed. Our results showed that VEGF can improve the power of theta and gamma rhythms in CA1 region after ischemia. Chronic global cerebral ischemia reduced the theta–gamma phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) not only within CA1 area but also in the pathway from CA3 to CA1, while VEGF alleviated the decreased coupling strength. Despite these notable differences, there were no obvious changes in the PAC within CA3 region. Surprisingly, the ischemia state did not affect the phase–phase interaction of hippocampus. In conclusion, our findings demonstrated that VEGF enhanced the theta–gamma PAC strength of CA3–CA1 pathway in ischemia rats, which may futher improve the information transmission within the hippocampus. These results illustrated the potential electrophysiologic mechanism of VEGF on cognitive improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A brain–computer interface (BCI) can connect humans and machines directly and has achieved successful applications in the past few decades. Many new BCI paradigms and algorithms have been developed in recent years. Therefore, it is necessary to review new progress in BCIs. This paper summarizes progress for EEG-based BCIs from the perspective of encoding paradigms and decoding algorithms, which are two key elements of BCI systems. Encoding paradigms are grouped by their underlying neural meachanisms, namely sensory- and motor-related, vision-related, cognition-related and hybrid paradigms. Decoding algorithms are reviewed in four categories, namely decomposition algorithms, Riemannian geometry, deep learning and transfer learning. This review will provide a comprehensive overview of both modern primary paradigms and algorithms, making it helpful for those who are developing BCI systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important functional thin-film material in the field of electronic information, high-purity titanium (Ti) is widely used in different industries, such as integrated circuits, flat-panel displays and solar energy, indicating the importance of further research on Ti targets. Herein, a titanium target is placed in a UDP-650 closed-field nonequilibrium magnetron sputtering ion coating machine for deep etching to form racetrack grooves, and different positions of etching grooves are analyzed to understand the target etched behavior. The sputtering-induced etching of the Ti target, from shallow to deep regions, changes from the preferential sputtering of scratches and other defects in the edge area to the surface sputtering pits, with discontinuous distribution and uneven size, to grain boundary sputtering and, finally, to closely packed grain surface sputtering. The etching behavior of different regions exhibits different characteristics, mainly showing selective sputtering. The surface roughness of the sputtered area initially increases with the increase of sputtering depth and plasma density, followed by a slight decrease. Moreover, different degrees of incomplete recrystallization occur in different sputtering areas due to the uneven distribution of plasma on the target surface. The grain size increased from the transition area between sputtering and non-sputtering (112 μm) to the deepest sputtering area (139 μm). Moreover, the relationship between the cross-sectional grain size and sputter surface roughness renders a correlation coefficient of 0.802, indicating a strong influence of grain size on surface roughness. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to refine grains and increase the sputtering yield of the target as well as reduce the surface roughness of the target after etching to obtain a high-quality thin film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The brain function of prediction is fundamental for human beings to shape perceptions efficiently and successively. Through decades of effort, a valuable brain activation map has been obtained for prediction. However, much less is known about how the brain manages the prediction process over time using traditional neuropsychological paradigms. Here, we implemented an innovative paradigm for timing prediction to precisely study the temporal dynamics of neural oscillations. In the experiment recruiting 45 participants, expectation suppression was found for the overall electroencephalographic activity, consistent with previous hemodynamic studies. Notably, we found that N1 was positively associated with predictability while N2 showed a reversed relation to predictability. Furthermore, the matching prediction had a similar profile with no timing prediction, both showing an almost saturated N1 and an absence of N2. The results indicate that the N1 process showed a 'sharpening' effect for predictable inputs, while the N2 process showed a 'dampening' effect. Therefore, these two paradoxical neural effects of prediction, which have provoked wide confusion in accounting for expectation suppression, actually co-exist in the procedure of timing prediction but work in separate time windows. These findings strongly support a recently-proposed opposing process theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is a common serious mental disorder with unclear pathogenesis. Currently, specific diagnostic biomarkers are yet to be characterized. The close homolog of L1 (CHL1) is a L1 family cell adhesion molecule involved in the regulation of neuronal survival and growth. Although genome-wide expression profiling of human lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) reported neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) L1 as a tentative biomarker for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant response, the involvement of CHL1 in depression is unclear. In this study, using a well-established chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) depression mouse model, we examined the mRNA and protein expression of CHL1 in normal control, CUMS, vehicle (VEH), fluoxetine (FLU), and clozapine (CLO) groups. We found that in the CUMS group, both mRNA and protein expression of CHL1 were downregulated in both the hippocampus and the cortex. Treatment of CUMS mice with FLU and CLO reversed CHL1 mRNA and protein expression. In the human study, we showed that CHL1 expression was significantly downregulated in monocytes of unipolar and bipolar depressive patients compared with healthy donors (HD) at both mRNA and protein levels. Consistently, ELISA showed that CHL1 levels in the serum of patients with depression were reduced and negatively correlated with their HRSD-21 scores. Further flow cytometry studies showed that the reduced number of CHL1 positive CD19+ and CD20+ B cells of patients with depression was subsequently reversed with antidepressant treatment. Our findings suggested that downregulation of CHL1 from both immune cells and the brain may be linked to the immunopathogenesis of depression. In conclusion, CHL1 may be an important predictive marker for both diagnosis and treatment outcome of depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commit messages are important complementary information used in understanding code changes. To address message scarcity, some work is proposed for automatically generating commit messages. However, most of these approaches focus on generating summary of the changed software entities at the superficial level, without considering the intent behind the code changes (e.g., the existing approaches cannot generate such message: "fixing null pointer exception"). Considering developers often describe the intent behind the code change when writing the messages, we propose ChangeDoc, an approach to reuse existing messages in version control systems for automatical commit message generation. Our approach includes syntax, semantic, pre-syntax, and pre-semantic similarities. For a given commit without messages, it is able to discover its most similar past commit from a large commit repository, and recommend its message as the message of the given commit. Our repository contains half a million commits that were collected from SourceForge. We evaluate our approach on the commits from 10 projects. The results show that 21.5% of the recommended messages by ChangeDoc can be directly used without modification, and 62.8% require minor modifications. In order to evaluate the quality of the commit messages recommended by ChangeDoc, we performed two empirical studies involving a total of 40 participants (10 professional developers and 30 students). The results indicate that the recommended messages are very good approximations of the ones written by developers and often include important intent information that is not included in the messages generated by other tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literary pneuma (wenqi 文氣) is a foundational idea in Chinese literary thought and the theory of literary pneuma one of the major aesthetic theories in Chinese literature and art. Since its first appearance, however, this aesthetic has remained an elusive concept despite its central importance. This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine major statements of wenqi in Chinese thought in relation to similar ideas in modern philosophy, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism. It attempts to understand its rationale, locate its conceptual groundings, and reconceptualize it into an aesthetic theory for our time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the charges trapping and retention processes of the blend electret films of polystyrene and different cyano-substituted spirofluorenes organic small molecular material (PS/SFXs) by using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) technologies. The series of blend films present a promising charge storage property and a potential application in the charge trapping memory devices. We focused on the influences of the prepared parameters and the storage conditions for the samples on their charge storage properties. We found that water molecules in the films will influence the injection and retention processes of the trapped charges in the blend PS/SFXs films. The enhanced localization ability of the trapped charges is observed in the film prepared with high annealing temperature. The thicknesses of the films have an obvious effect on the charge injection process while having no discernible effect on the retention process. These results are very important for the studies of PS/SFXs in memory devices. The results show that the polarization and net charge transfer coexist for charge trapping in PS/SFXs films, while the symmetry of molecular structure of SFXs plays an important role in trapped charges stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prognosis and treatment evaluation of spinal cord injury (SCI) are still in the long-term research stage. Prognostic factors for SCI treatment need effective biomarker to assess therapeutic effect. Quantitative diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) may become a potential indicators for assessing SCI repair. However, its correlation with the results of locomotor function recovery and tissue repair has not been carefully studied. The aim of this study was to use quantitative DTI to predict neurological repair of SCI with transplanting collagen/chitosan scaffold binding basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF). To achieve our research goals, T10 complete transection SCI model was established. Then collagen/chitosan mixture adsorbed with bFGF (CCS/bFGF) were implanted into rats with SCI. At 8 weeks after modeling, implanting CCS/bFGF demonstrated more significant improvements in locomotor function according to Basso-Beattie-Bresnahan (BBB) score, inclined-grid climbing test, and electrophysiological examinations. DTI was carried out to evaluate the repair of axons by diffusion tensor tractgraphy (DTT), fractional anisotropy (FA) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), a numerical measure of relative white matter from the rostral to the caudal. Parallel to locomotor function recovery, the CCS/bFGF group could significantly promote the regeneration of nerve fibers tracts according to DTT, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Bielschowsky's silver staining and immunofluorescence staining. Positive correlations between imaging and locomotor function or histology were found at all locations from the rostral to the caudal (P < 0.0001). These results demonstrated that DTI might be used as an effective predictor for evaluating neurological repair after SCI in experimental trails and clinical cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph embedding is a popular graph based dimensionality reduction framework, and it consists of two successive steps, i.e., graph construction and embedding. The traditional graph construction methods such as k -nearest-neighbor (k-NN) and ε -ball suffer from the difficulty in parameter selection and are also sensitive to noises. On the other hand, the property of embedding projection is not fully explored by many methods. In this paper, we explicitly investigate these two steps and propose three adaptive graph orthogonal discriminant embedding techniques (termed as AGODE-gs, AGODE-dl and AGODE-tr) for dimensionality reduction, and their differences lie in the way of orthogonalization. In our proposed methods, both the intra-class adjacency graph and the inter-class repulsion graph are constructed by a ℓ 2 -norm regularized least square, and an orthogonal constraint between the projection vectors is then imposed. The time and space complexity of the proposed methods are also analyzed in detail. We further show that the proposed methods are computationally more efficient than those ℓ 1 -norm based graph construction methods. Extensive experiments on four face databases (ORL, Yale, CUM-PIE and Extended YaleB) verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed methods with encouraging results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is easy to show that in computer vision, there is the closely coupled relation between feature matching and fundamental matrix estimation. The widely used robust methods such as RANSAC and its improved versions separately deal with feature matching and fundamental matrix estimation. Although these methods are simple to implement, their performance may be relatively low in the presence of gross outliers. By exploiting such coupled relation, the soft decision optimization method is proposed in this paper to estimate the fundamental matrix and find the inlier correspondence set together. Combing feature matching and fundamental matrix estimation, a soft decision objective function is developed to automatically remove the interference of the outliers in the candidate correspondence set. Moreover, an efficient expectation–maximization algorithm is established to find the solution to the fundamental matrix and the inlier correspondence set. Experiments on both synthesized data and real images show that the proposed method can cope with large noise and high ratio of outliers and is superior to some state-of-the-art robust methods in precision, recall, and residual error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies showed that the modified maximum tangential stress (MMTS) criterion considering two stress terms (containing r−1/2 and r1/2) of the well-known Williams series expansion can better assess the mode I fracture toughness (KIc) of rocks than the traditional maximum tangential stress (MTS) criterion. However, this study indicates that in some cases, only using the two stress terms cannot fully describe the tangential stress at the critical distance for rock specimens, and the higher order, non-singular stress terms can also play important roles in the tangential stress. The MMTS fracture criterion might still induce non-negligible errors for assessing mode I rock fracture. Thus, we propose a further improved MTS (FIMTS) criterion. The FIMTS criterion emphasizes that the number of non-singular stress terms used in a MTS-based criterion should be carefully chosen according to the following principle: the tangential stress at the critical distance can be accurately described using the selected stress terms. Mode I fracture tests on two kinds of rocks are conducted using a newly proposed V-notched short rod bend (VNSRB) specimen. The specimen- or loading-configuration-dependence of KIc indicated by the experimental data is theoretically assessed using the traditional MTS, the MMTS and the FIMTS criteria, and the last criterion is shown to be the best. Therefore, considering non-singular stress terms of the Williams expansion can better assess mode I fracture of rocks. Our study calls for more attention to the effects of non-singular stress terms on mode I fracture of rocks, especially for small-size specimens and for rocks with relatively large critical distances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of wearable technology, portable wireless systems have been used gradually for collecting electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. However, the introduction of portable collection devices always means a descent in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of EEG. Subject-independent brain-computer interface (BCI) avoids conventional calibration procedure for new users. However, whether subject-independent model can be used in cross-platform BCI has not been discussed so far. This paper transplanted the subject-independent model from a high-SNR platform to a lower one for recognition in P300-Speller. After comparing their EEG features elicited from diverse collection platforms, a model adjustment strategy was proposed to increase recognition accuracy. By model adjustment, the average accuracy was 85.00% in online spell experiments. The results indicate it is feasible for subject-independent model transplantation, especially after model adjustment strategy. It provides technology supported for further development of cross-platform BCI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electroencephalographic (EEG)-based emotion recognition has received increasing attention in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) recently, there however remain a number of challenges in building a generalized emotion recognition model, one of which includes the difficulty of an EEG-based emotion classifier trained on a specific stimulus to handle other stimuli. Little attention has been paid to this issue. The current paper is to study this issue and determine the feasibility of coping with this challenge using feature selection. 12 healthy volunteers were emotionally elicited when watching the video clip. Power spectral density (PSD) and brain asymmetry (BAY) were extracted as EEG features. Support vector machine (SVM) classifier was then examined under within-stimulus conditions (samples extracted from one video were sent to both training set and testing set) and cross-stimulus conditions (samples extracted from one video were merely sent to one set, training set or testing set alternatively). The within-stimulus 5-class classification performed fairly well (accuracy: 93.31 % for PSD and 85.39 % for BAY). Cross-stimulus classification, however, deteriorated to low levels (46.22 % and 46.2 % accordingly). Trained and tested with the most robust feature subset selected by SVM-recursive feature elimination (RFE), the mean 5-class performance of cross-stimulus classifier was significantly improved to 68.89 and 64.44 % for PSD and BAY respectively. These results suggest that cross-stimulus emotion recognition is reasonable and feasible with proper methods and brings EEG-based emotion recognition models closer to being able to discriminate emotion states in practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a silicalite-1 modified HY zeolite (HY/silicalite-1) was prepared and applied as an efficient catalyst to promote the hydrolysis of microcrystalline cellulose to glucose in ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([Emim]Cl). Scanning Electron Microscope reflects a core-shell morphology of HY/silicalite-1. When using HY/silicalite-1 as catalyst instead of non-modified HY, the glucose selectivity could be significantly improved, and the hydrolysis temperature could also be reduced to 110 °C. Under optimal conditions, 93.5% of total reducing sugar and 50.8% of glucose yield were obtained within 8 h of the reaction. The mechanism with respect to the hydrolysis of cellulose over HY/silicalite-1 was fully discussed. The improved sugar selectivity may due to reduced Lewis acidity of modified HY. Moreover, the reduced contact probability of sugar with the Lewis acid cites of catalyst caused by the outer silicalite-1 layer may also contribute to the good sugar selectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fundamental matrix estimation for wide baseline images is significantly difficult due to the fact that the proportion of inliers in putative correspondences is generally very low. Traditional robust fundamental matrix estimation methods, such as RANSAC, will encounter the problems of computational inefficiency and low accuracy when outlier ratio is high. In this paper, a novel robust estimation method called inlier set sample optimization is proposed to solve these problems. First, a one-class support vector machine-based preselection algorithm is performed to efficiently select a candidate inlier set from putative SIFT correspondences according to distribution consistency of features in location, scale and orientation. Then, the quasi-optimal inlier set is refined iteratively by maximizing a soft decision objective function. Finally, fundamental matrix is estimated with the optimal inlier set. Experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to several state-of-the-art robust methods in speed, accuracy and stability and is applicable to wide baseline images with large differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic cerebral hypoperfusion (CCH) is associated with various neurodegenerative diseases characterized by cognitive impairment. Dozens of studies including ours have indicated that exogenous administration of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) could exert effective cognitive protection during ischemia. Nevertheless, the underlying mechanism has not been well clarified. To address this issue, we explored the synaptic mechanisms in vivo since hippocampal synaptic function is essential to the learning and memory process. Besides, the role of autophagy in cognitive dysfunction under conditions of CCH is still controversial. And abnormal autophagy could threaten normal neurotransmission at synapse where a large amount of protein synthesis and degradation take place. Hence, we further examined whether the altered synaptic function was associated with autophagy. The results showed that CCH impaired spatial cognition as evidenced in Morris water maze. We further found that VEGF mitigated impaired hippocampal synaptic function including basal synaptic transmission, paired-pulse facilitation, short-term, long-term plasticity, depotentiation, and the level of synaptic proteins as assessed by electrophysiological examination and western blot assay. Furthermore, our results demonstrated that CCH could induce excessive autophagy which could be inhibited by VEGF. Thus, we speculated that VEGF could ameliorate impaired synaptic function induced by CCH because of its ability to inhibit excessive autophagy, and eventually improve spatial learning and memory function. Importantly, our findings shed light on potential therapeutic strategies to be exploited in the usage of VEGF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the effect and safety of the complementary use of the extract of Artemisia annua L. (EAA) on treating active rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods: A randomized controlled clinical trial was performed. All the 159 participates with active RA were randomly assigned to the control group (80 cases) and EAA group (79 cases) using concealed random allocation method. In the control group, patients were medicated with leflflunomide and methotrexate for 48 weeks; and patients in the EAA group were administrated with leflflunomide, methotrexate plus EAA (30 g/d). At the time points of 0, 12, 24 and 48 weeks, the clinical outcome measures, including objective pain score, tenderness score, number of painful joints, number of swollen joints, health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) score for quality of life, levels of serum rheumatoid factor (RF), anti-cyclic citrullinated protein antibodies (CCP-Ab), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C reactive protein (CRP), visual analogue score for pain (VAS), and the overall effificacy were detected and recorded. Results: The objective pain score, number of painful joints and ESR at 12 weeks, tenderness score and HAQ at 24 weeks, and the tenderness score, number of painfull joints, number of swollen joints, HAQ, CRP, RF and CCP-Ab at 48 weeks were signifificantly improved in the EAA group compared with the control group ( P<0.01 or P<0.05). At 24 and 48 weeks, the overall effificacy of the EAA group was signifificantly higher than the control group ( P<0.01). There were signifificantly higher withdrawal rate of corticosteroids within 12 weeks post-treatment and lower incidence rate of adverse effects in the EAA group compared with the control group ( P<0.01 or P<0.05). Conclusion: EAA plus methotrexate and leflflunomide were more effective and safer than the routine use of methotrexate and leflflunomide in the treatment of active RA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a kind of fluorinated copolyfluorene, named poly[(4-(octyloxy)-9,9-diphenylfluorene-2,7-diyl)- alt-(2,3,5,6-tetrafluoro-1,4-phenylene)] (PODPF-TFP), is synthesized by facile palladium-based direct aromatization. Compared to the non-fluorinated counterpart, poly[(4-(octyloxy)-9,9-diphenylfluorene-2,7-diyl)- alt-( p-phenylene)] (PODPF-P), deeper HOMO/LUMO energy level combined with steric hindrance effect endow PODPF-TFP with excellent spectra and morphology stability. Finally, organic field-effect transistor (OFET) memory devices are fabricated with PODPF-P/PODPFTFP as the dielectric layers, and they both exhibit flash type storage characteristic. Owing to the electronegativity of fluorine atom, the device based on PODPF-TFP exhibits larger memory window and more stable I / I ratio during a retention time of 10 s as well as a better aging stability. The present study suggests that fluorinated p- n copolyfluorene electrets could enhance the capabilities of charge trapping and storage, which are promising for OFET memory devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuronal calcium-binding protein 1 and -2 (NECAB1/2) localize to multiple excitatory neuron populations in the mouse spinal cord. Here, we analyzed rat and human spinal cord, combining in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry, complementing newly collated data on mouse spinal cord for direct comparisons. Necab1/2 mRNA transcripts showed complementary distribution in rodent's spinal cord. Multiple-labeling fluorescence histochemistry with neuronal phenotypic markers localized NECAB1 to a dense fiber plexus in the dorsal horn, to neurons mainly in superficial layers and to commissural interneurons in both rodent species. NECAB1-positive (+) motor neurons were only found in mice. NECAB1 distribution in the human spinal cord was similar with the addition of NECAB1-like immunoreactivity surrounding myelinated axons. NECAB2 was mainly present in excitatory synaptic boutons in the dorsal horn of all three species, and often in calbindin-D28k neuronal somata. Rodent ependymal cells expressed calbindin-D28k. In humans, they instead were NECAB2 and/or calretinin. Our results reveal that the association of NECAB2 to excitatory neuronal circuits in the spinal cord is evolutionarily conserved across the mammalian species investigated so far. In contrast, NECAB1 expression is more heterogeneous. Thus, our study suggests that the phenotypic segregation of NECAB1 and -2 to respective excitatory and inhibitory spinal systems can underpin functional modalities in determining the fidelity of synaptic neurotransmission and neuronal responsiveness, and might bear translational relevance to humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cracked chevron notched semi-circular bending (CCNSCB) method for measuring the mode I fracture toughness of rocks combines the merits (e.g., avoidance of tedious pre-cracking of notch tips, ease of sample preparation and loading accommodation) of both methods suggested by the International Society for Rock Mechanics, which are the cracked chevron notched Brazilian disc (CCNBD) method and the notched semi-circular bend (NSCB) method. However, the limited availability of the critical dimensionless stress intensity factor (SIF) values severely hinders the widespread usage of the CCNSCB method. In this study, the critical SIFs are determined for a wide range of CCNSCB specimen geometries via three-dimensional finite element analysis. A relatively large support span in the three point bending configuration was considered because the fracture of the CCNSCB specimen in that situation is finely restricted in the notch ligament, which has been commonly assumed for mode I fracture toughness measurements using chevron notched rock specimens. Both CCNSCB and NSCB tests were conducted to measure the fracture toughness of two different rock types; for each rock type, the two methods produce similar toughness values. Given the reported experimental results, the CCNSCB method can be reliable for characterizing the mode I fracture toughness of rocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the clinical effect of fast-track surgery combined with Chinese medicine treatment in devascularization operation for cirrhotic esophageal varices. Methods: Seventy-two patients with cirrhotic esophageal varices were selected from January 2009 to June 2013, and randomly assigned to a conventional group and a fast-track group (fast-track surgery combined with Chinese medicine treatment) using a randomized digital table, 36 cases in each group. Operation and anesthesia recovery time, postoperative hospitalization and quality of life were recorded and compared between groups during the perioperative period. Results: Compared with the conventional group, the fast-track group had longer operation time (253.6±46.4 min vs. 220.6±51.0 min) and anesthesia recovery time (50.5±15.9 min vs. 23.5±9.6 min; P<0.01); less bleeding (311.3±46.8 mL vs. 356.2±57.5 mL; P<0.01) and less transfusion (1932.3±106.9 mL vs. 2045.6±115.4 mL; P<0.01); as well as faster recovery of gastrointestinal function, shorter postoperative hospitalization and higher quality of life. There were no serious postoperative complications and no further bleeding occurred. Conclusion: Fast-track surgery combined with Chinese medicine treatment is a safe and feasible approach to accelerate the recovery of patients with cirrhotic portal hypertension in perioperative period of devascularization operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]