Search

Neurons in the primate lateral habenula fire in response to punishments and are inhibited by rewards. Through its modulation of midbrain monoaminergic activity, the habenula is believed to play an important role in adaptive behavioural responses to punishment and underlie depressive symptoms and their alleviation with ketamine. However, its role in value-based decision-making in humans is poorly understood due to limitations with non-invasive imaging methods which measure metabolic, not neural, activity with poor temporal resolution. Here, we overcome these limitations to more closely bridge the gap between species by recording local field potentials directly from the habenula in 12 human patients receiving deep brain stimulation treatment for bipolar disorder (n = 4), chronic pain (n = 3), depression (n = 3) and schizophrenia (n = 2). This allowed us to record neural activity during value-based decision-making tasks involving monetary rewards and losses. High frequency gamma (60-240 Hertz) activity, a proxy for population level spiking involved in cognitive computations, increased during the receipt of loss, and decreased during receipt of reward. Furthermore, habenula high gamma also encoded risk during decision-making, being larger in amplitude for high compared to low risk. For both risk and aversion, differences between conditions peaked approximately between 400-750 ms after stimulus onset. The findings not only demonstrate homologies with the primate habenula but also extend its role to human decision-making, showing its temporal dynamics and suggesting revisions to current models. The findings suggest that habenula high gamma could be used to optimize real-time closed-looped deep brain stimulation treatment for mood disturbances and impulsivity in psychiatric disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tremendous Voc deficit and residual stress are the main bottlenecks for efficient and flexible CZTSSe thin film solar cells. For the sake of promoting the mechanical endurance of flexible devices, a convenient and effective strategy for Ga doping is proposed, which can synchronously suppress the defects and tailor the residual stress of CZTSSe. The formed CZTGSSe with a doping concentration of 0.28 mol L−1 presents an optimized heterojunction characteristic with a CBO of −0.30 eV and a released residual stress of −1.87 GPa. Benefitting from the optimum Ga doping concentration with the reduced electrostatic potential fluctuation of 81.18 meV, the ultimately structured device with a PCE of 5.37% is achieved, which can maintain 80% of its original PCE after suffering in a harsh bending environment. The proposed Ga doping strategy may pave a promising way for congener flexible and portable solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the electrocaloric effect, a novelty refrigeration device with a ribbon electrocaloric module made of electrocaloric material P(VDF-TrFE-CFE) ternary polymer was proposed. In the device, the ribbon electrocaloric module was driven by a driving wheel and moved sequentially pass through electrodes, hot end, and cold end. In this way, the EC module would undergo four stages of electrocaloric effect. Continuous cooling could be a-chieved at the cold end. A numerical simulation study of a cooling unit of the structure was carried out, and the effects of the polarization time, length, movement speed, temperature span and applied electric field strength of the electrocaloric module on the cooling performance were investigated. The results showed that the polarization time of the electrocaloric module was essential to obtain a stable cooling power density(CPD). The CPD increased with the increase of the length of the electrocaloric module and its motion speed, decreased with the increase of the temperature span at both ends. It also showed a strong positive correlation with the electric field strength. The optimal COP/COPc values existed for different electric field strengths. The cooling power density of a cooling unit reached 6.61 W/cm at a temperature span of 3 K and an electric field strength of 160 MV/m. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pollution characteristics of multi-size atmospheric particulates in Xinxiang, which was one of the most polluted cities across China, are still unclear even through air quality in Xinxiang has been improved in recent years. PM10, PM2.5, and PM1 samples were synchronously collected from 21 December 2019 to 17 January 2020 to explore pollution levels and reveal sources of PM in Xinxiang. The average mass concentrations of PM10, PM2.5, and PM1 were as high as 155.53 μg m−3, 120.07 μg m−3, and 85.64 μg m−3 during the observation period, respectively. Almost all of the chemical compositions in PM10, PM2.5 and PM1 increased continuously and obviously with the aggravation of the pollution level. Compared with the clean period, the enhancement of sulfate (23–27%) in PM was obvious higher than nitrate (19–22%) during the pollution period, which demonstrated that sulfate was the main contributor to the high concentration of PM in this study. Similar source distributions for PM10, PM2.5, and PM1 were also found, including traffic source, combustion source, secondary aerosols, industrial source, and fugitive dust, by using the positive matrix factorization (PMF) model. Furthermore, the contributions of the combustion source and secondary aerosol were found to be higher in smaller particles (PM2.5 and PM1), while the contribution of fugitive dust was higher in PM10. Moreover, dust and sand were entrained by air masses from the northwest that increased the contribution of dust in PM at the observation site. The potential source contribution function (PSCF) analysis illustrated that regional emission sources in northern and eastern Xinxiang might be important potential contributors to PM pollution in Xinxiang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photocatalytic removal of hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) based on semiconductor is important under visible light for environment and energy. Herein, a visible light-responsive heterojunction composed of molybdenum disulfide and zinc indium sulfide was synthesized through a simple one-pot hydrothermal method to ensure full contact between the two components to efficiently improve the Cr(VI) reduction. The MoS2/ZnIn2S4 composites build heterojunctions between MoS2 and ZnIn2S4 to inhibit recombination of photogenerated holes and electrons and provide the reaction sites to trap photogenerated electrons to participate in the reduction of Cr(VI). The highly efficient reduction of Cr(VI) was obtained by adjusting the proportion of molybdenum disulfide. It demonstrates that the 0.5 wt% MoS2/ZnIn2S4 composite microstructures show the highest degradation rate of 0.1989 s−1 under visible light irradiation, 1.7 times of bare ZnIn2S4. Moreover, the MoS2/ZnIn2S4 showed excellent stability during photocatalytic recyclable processes. This work encourages researchers to remove Cr(VI) by constructing effective heterojunction structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual development in insects is regulated by a complicated hierarchical cascade of sex determination. The primary signals are diverse, whereas the central nexus doublesex (dsx) gene is relatively conserved within the pathway. Aedes (Stegomyia) albopictus is an important vector with an extensive worldwide distribution. We previously reported that Ae. albopictus dsx (Aalbdsx) yields one male‐ (AalbdsxM) and three female‐specific isoforms (AalbdsxF1‐3); however, the spatiotemporal expression profiles and mechanisms regulating sex‐specific alternative splicing require further investigation. In this study, we demonstrated that the AalbdsxM messenger RNA (mRNA) represents the default pattern when analyzed in human foreskin fibroblasts and HeLa cells. We combined reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction with RNA immunoprecipitation using specific antibodies against tagged Ae. albopictus male‐determining factor AalNix and confirmed that AalNix indirectly regulates dsx pre‐mRNA and regulates its alternative splicing. During the early embryo stage (0–2 and 4–8 h), maternal dsxF and default splicing dsxM were detected in both sexes; the expression of dsxM then decreased until sufficient AalNix transcripts accumulated in male embryos at 20–24 h. These findings suggest that one or more potential dsx splicing enhancers can shift dsxM to dsxF in both sexes; however, the presence of Nix influences the function of this unknown splicing enhancer and ultimately leads to the formation of dsxM in males. Finally, our results provide important insight into the regulatory mechanism of dsx alternative splicing in the mosquito. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]