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This study aims to develop an automatic assessment of after‐stroke dyskinesias degree by combining machine learning and near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Thirty‐five subjects were divided into five stages (healthy, patient: Brunnstrom stages 3, 4, 5, 6). NIRS was used to record the muscular hemodynamic responses from bilateral femoris (biceps brachii) muscles during passive and active upper (lower) limbs circular exercise. We used the D‐S evidence theory to conduct feature information fusion and established a Gradient Boosting DD‐MLP Net model, combining the dendrite network and multilayer perceptron, to realize automatic dyskinesias degree evaluation. Our model classified the upper limb dyskinesias with high accuracy: 98.91% under the passive mode and 98.69% under the active mode, and classified the lower limb dyskinesias with high accuracy: 99.45% and 99.63% under the passive and active modes, respectively. Our model combined with NIRS has great potential in monitoring the after‐stroke dyskinesias degree and guiding rehabilitation training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stroke usually causes multiple functional disability. To develop novel rehabilitation strategies, it is quite necessary to improve the understanding of post‐stroke brain plasticity. Here, we use functional near‐infrared spectroscopy to investigate the prefrontal cortex (PFC) network reorganization in stroke patients with dyskinesias. The PFC hemodynamic signals in the resting state from 16 stroke patients and 10 healthy subjects are collected and analyzed with the graph theory. The PFC networks for both groups show small‐world attributes. The stroke patients have larger clustering coefficient and transitivity and smaller global efficiency and small‐worldness than healthy subjects. Based on the selected network features, the established support vector machine model classifies the two groups of subjects with an accuracy rate of 88.5%. Besides, the clustering coefficient and local efficiency negatively correlate with patients' motor function. This study suggests that the PFC of stroke patients with dyskinesias undergoes specific network reorganization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in soil carbon (C) sequestration in grassland ecosystems have important impacts on the global C cycle. As such, it is important that researchers better understand the underlying mechanisms affecting soil C. Increasing evidence has shown that atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition can cause dramatic changes in grassland soil C. It remains unclear whether herbivore grazing, a primary means to manage and utilize grassland resources, can regulate the effects of N deposition on soil C, and whether these effects are dependent on plant community diversity.Here, we examined the joint effects of herbivore grazing and N‐addition on soil organic C (SOC) stocks in two types of communities with low and high plant diversity respectively.Our results showed that the effects of N‐addition and its combination with herbivore grazing on grassland SOC were inconsistent in the two types of communities. In the low‐diversity community, N‐addition greatly decreased SOC stocks, while grazing significantly increased it. Additionally, the grazing‐induced increase in soil C stocks in the presence of N‐addition was so great that it completely counteracted the significant decline in SOC induced by N‐addition. However, in the high‐diversity community, we observed no effects of N‐addition on SOC and grazing increased SOC only in the absence of N‐addition and had no significant effect in the presence of N‐addition.Synthesis and applications. Our study suggests that increased N deposition can trigger a remarkable reduction in soil C sequestration in grasslands with low plant diversity, but that herbivore grazing can offset this decline, which may help to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions caused by atmospheric N deposition. As a result, we suggest that moderate herbivore grazing should be considered as an effective grassland management measure for maintaining and improving grassland soil C sequestration as the increasing global changes such as elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide, N deposition and biodiversity losses threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender differences in psychological processes have been of great interest in a variety of fields including verbal fluency, emotion processing and working memory. Previous studies suggested that women outperform men in verbal working memory (VWM). However, the inherent mechanisms are still unclear. To obtain a deeper insight into the gender differences in brain networks in VWM, this study used near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and electro‐encephalography (EEG) simultaneously to investigate gender‐related brain networks during verbal Sternberg tasks. NIRS results confirmed that women surpass men in VWM from the perspective of both brain activation and connectivity. Results of EEG (effective connectivity and event‐related spectral power) showed that men tend to use a more visuospatial strategy to encode memory. In addition, novel analysis methods of brain networks can provide useful information about the gender specifics of brain functions. Gender‐related pseudo‐color maps constructed from all channels of average HbO2 activity during low‐ and high‐load tasks (from 0 to 6 seconds after beginning). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A commercially feasible indoor hatching system for fathead minnow Pimephales promelas requires an efficient egg collection process that maximizes egg numbers while minimizing spawning substrate. Four ratios of substrate area to the number of male fathead minnow were compared by stocking approximately 40 males and 80 females into each of sixteen 3.3-m2 outdoor pools to determine the volume of eggs that could be collected every 2–3 d. No differences in mean egg volume were found among the three lowest ratios of substrate area to the number of males (85, 170, and 255 cm2), and egg volume did not differ between the lowest (85 cm2) and highest (340 cm2) ratios, indicating that 85 cm2 of spawning substrate per male was sufficient. On average, less than one-third of the males were nesting at any one time. These results strongly suggest that lower spawning substrate area : male ratios should be tested to further refine this new hatchery method. Received November 17, 2011; accepted February 9, 2012 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]