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IntroductionThis study aimed to evaluate the effects of varied resistance training modalities on physical fitness components, body composition, maximal strength assessed by one-repetition maximum (1RM), isokinetic muscle functions of the shoulder and knee joints, and biomechanical properties of core muscles.MethodsForty participants were randomly assigned to four groups: control group (CG, n = 10), compound set training group (CSG, n = 10), pyramid set training group (PSG, n = 10), and superset training group (SSG, n = 10). Excluding the CG, the other three groups underwent an 8-week resistance training program, three sessions per week, at 60%–80% of 1RM intensity for 60–90 min per session. Assessments included body composition, physical fitness components, 1RM, isokinetic muscle functions, and biomechanical properties (muscle frequency, stiffness, etc.) of the rectus abdominis and external oblique muscles.ResultsThe PSG demonstrated the most significant improvement in relative peak torque during isokinetic testing of the shoulder and knee joints. Compared to the CG, all exercise groups exhibited positive effects on back strength, sprint performance, 1RM, and core muscle biomechanics. Notably, the PSG showed superior enhancement in external oblique stiffness. However, no significant differences were observed among the exercise groups for rectus abdominis biomechanical properties.DiscussionStructured resistance training effectively improved maximal strength, functional performance, and core muscle biomechanics. The pyramidal training modality conferred specific benefits for isokinetic muscle functions and external oblique stiffness, suggesting its efficacy in enhancing force production capabilities and core stability.

Background The use of ultrasonographic echo intensity (EI) to evaluate skeletal muscle quality and its effects on strength, explosive power, and physical function (PF) in older individuals remains unclear. This meta-analysis evaluated the associations among EI, muscle strength (MS), and PF in older individuals. Methods We conducted a systematic search of the PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, SPORT Discus, and CINAHL databases through October 2022 to identify primary studies examining the association between EI and MS/PF. Effect sizes were computed using a random-effects model and presented using forest plots. Pearson correlation coefficient (r) and I2 statistics were used to measure heterogeneity. Results This meta-analysis included 24 patients. EI demonstrated a negative association with maximal strength (r=-0.351; 95% confidence interval [CI], -0.411 to -0.288; p

Background: Synchronizing a TMS pulse with a person's underlying EEG rhythm can modify the brain's response. It is unclear if synchronizing rTMS trains might boost the antidepressant effect of TMS. In this first-in-human trial, we demonstrated that a single TMS pulse over the prefrontal cortex produces larger effects in the anterior cingulate depending on when it is fired relative to the individual's EEG alpha phase. Objective/hypotheses: We had three hypotheses. 1) It is feasible to synchronize repetitive TMS (rTMS) delivery to a person's preferred prefrontal alpha phase in each train of every session during a 30-visit TMS depression treatment course. 2) EEG-synchronized rTMS would produce progressive entrainment greater than unsynchronized (UNSYNC) rTMS. And 3) SYNC TMS would have better antidepressant effects than UNSYNC (remission, final Hamilton Depression Rating

This study aimed to examine the effects of supervised fitness training under the guidance of a personal trainer and those of competitive fitness training with others and reveal the effects of specific differences between them in a detailed manner. The study's participants consisted of 66 healthy male adults (age: 29.2 ± 5.4 years). The participants were divided into three groups: the individual training group (n = 21), which served as the control group; the exercising with a partner group (n = 22); and the group trained by a personal trainer (n = 23). Each participant was subsequently assessed using one repetition maximum bench press, squats, skeletal muscle mass, fat mass, and a questionnaire regarding nutritional plan and injury to compare the effects of training sessions over a period of 12 weeks. Among the three groups, only the group trained by a personal trainer showed an obvious enhancement in fat reduction compared to baseline (-1.61 kg, p = 0.033), which was suggestive of a salient trend that far surpassed those of the individual training group and the exercising with a partner group. Regarding squats, only the group trained by a personal trainer showed a significant change compared to the individual training group (p = 0.003). Regarding the participants' consistent use of a nutritional plan, only the group trained by a personal trainer exhibited a palpable tendency (p

Background: Eating disorders (EDs) have become a global public health concern among adolescents and young adults. However, Chinese university students exhibit a high prevalence of eating disorders. This study aims to investigate the effects of self-esteem (SE) and body shape (BS) on ED behaviors among Chinese university students. Methods: Using random sampling, 946 Chinese university students (aged 18 to 24, M = 19.94, SD = 1.04) participated in a survey comprising the Sick, Control, One, Fat, and Food Questionnaire (SCOFF-Q), the Body Shape Questionnaire (BS-Q), and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RS-S) to assess their eating disorder or non-eating disorder (NED) behavior. Results: There was a significant positive correlation between body shape and eating disorder behaviors (r = 0.19, p < 0.01), while there was a significant negative correlation between self-esteem and eating disorder behaviors (r = −0.14, p = 0.001 < 0.01). Gender was a moderating factor in the relationship between body shape and eating disorder behaviors (t = 3.14, p = 0.002 < 0.01), while parents’ marital status was a moderating factor in the relationship between self-esteem and eating disorder behavior (t = 2.72, p = 0.007 < 0.01). Body shape (z = 6.47, p = 0.001 < 0.01), self-esteem (z = −2.81, p = 0.005 < 0.05), and gender (z = 3.06, p = 0.002 < 0.01) significantly influenced eating disorder behavior among Chinese university students aged 18–24 years. Conclusions: There was a direct effect between body shape and self-esteem and eating disorder behaviors among Chinese university students aged 18–24 years. Alarmingly, female university students are becoming susceptible to external influences on self-esteem and body shape, leading to eating disorder behaviors at an increasingly younger age in China.

Summary: Aging is characterized by a global decline in physiological function. However, by constructing a complete single-cell gene expression atlas, we find that Caenorhabditis elegans aging is not random in nature but instead is characterized by coordinated changes in functionally related metabolic, proteostasis, and stress-response genes in a cell-type-specific fashion, with downregulation of energy metabolism being the only nearly universal change. Similarly, the rates at which cells age differ significantly between cell types. In some cell types, aging is characterized by an increase in cell-to-cell variance, whereas in others, variance actually decreases. Remarkably, multiple resilience-enhancing transcription factors known to extend lifespan are activated across many cell types with age; we discovered new longevity candidates, such as GEI-3, among these. Together, our findings suggest that cells do not age passively but instead react strongly, and individualistically, to events that occur during aging. This atlas can be queried through a public interface.

Abstract We present a novel unsupervised deep learning approach called BindVAE, based on Dirichlet variational autoencoders, for jointly decoding multiple TF binding signals from open chromatin regions. BindVAE can disentangle an input DNA sequence into distinct latent factors that encode cell-type specific in vivo binding signals for individual TFs, composite patterns for TFs involved in cooperative binding, and genomic context surrounding the binding sites. On the task of retrieving the motifs of expressed TFs in a given cell type, BindVAE is competitive with existing motif discovery approaches.

Abstract Human brains experience whole-brain anatomic and functional changes throughout the lifespan. Age-related whole-brain network changes have been studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine their low-frequency spatial and temporal characteristics. However, little is known about age-related changes in whole-brain fast dynamics at the scale of neuronal events. The present study investigated age-related whole-brain dynamics in resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) signals from 73 healthy participants from 6 to 65 years old via characterizing transient neuronal coactivations at a resolution of tens of milliseconds. These uncovered transient patterns suggest fluctuating brain states at different energy levels of global activations. Our results indicate that with increasing age, shorter lifetimes and more occurrences were observed in the brain states that show the global high activations and more consecutive visits to the global highest-activation brain state. There were also reduced transitional steps during consecutive visits to the global lowest-activation brain state. These age-related effects suggest reduced stability and increased fluctuations when visiting high-energy brain states and with a bias toward staying low-energy brain states. These age-related whole-brain dynamics changes are further supported by changes observed in classic alpha and beta power, suggesting its promising applications in examining the effect of normal healthy brain aging, brain development, and brain disease.

Summary: The AutoScore framework can automatically generate data-driven clinical scores in various clinical applications. Here, we present a protocol for developing clinical scoring systems for binary, survival, and ordinal outcomes using the open-source AutoScore package. We describe steps for package installation, detailed data processing and checking, and variable ranking. We then explain how to iterate through steps for variable selection, score generation, fine-tuning, and evaluation to generate understandable and explainable scoring systems using data-driven evidence and clinical knowledge.For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Xie et al. (2020),1 Xie et al. (2022)2, Saffari et al. (2022)3 and the online tutorial https://nliulab.github.io/AutoScore/. : Publisher’s note: Undertaking any experimental protocol requires adherence to local institutional guidelines for laboratory safety and ethics.

In this work, a hot water tank was developed to improve the performance of energy-saving and heat storage based on the source-sink matching principle. Through the source-sink device, the excess heat at the upper boundary of the tank could be absorbed by a heat collecting chamber and transmitted through the heat pipes to the bottom heating plate for reuse. The reasonable distribution of heat was realized while the heat insulation was improved. A comparison experiment regarding the charging and discharging processes between the improved and conventional hot water tank was tested to verify the performance enhancement. The results showed that the total exergy efficiency of the improved hot water system was increased by 7.6%, and the exergy efficiency of the water tank was 25% higher than that of a conventional tank. The heat loss of the upper layer of the tank was reduced by 55%, which indicated the improved water tank had a noticeable energy-saving effect. In addition, the total amount of available hot water in the improved tank was twice that of the conventional tank under the same operating condition. The improved hot water tank was more aligned with the users’ demand for hot water.

Catheter ablation has become an important treatment for atrial fibrillation (AF), but its recurrence rate is still high. The aim of this study was to predict AF recurrence using a three-dimensional (3D) network model based on body-surface potential mapping signals (BSPMs). BSPMs were recorded with a 128-lead vest in 14 persistent AF patients before undergoing catheter ablation (Maze-IV). The torso geometry was acquired and meshed by point cloud technology, and the BSPM was interpolated into the torso geometry by the inverse distance weighted (IDW) method to generate the isopotential map. Experiments show that the isopotential map of BSPMs can reflect the propagation of the electrical wavefronts. The 3D isopotential sequence map was established by combining the spatial–temporal information of the isopotential map; a 3D convolutional neural network (3D-CNN) model with temporal attention was established to predict AF recurrence. Our study proposes a novel attention block that focuses the characteristics of atrial activations to improve sampling accuracy. In our experiment, accuracy (ACC) in the intra-patient evaluation for predicting the recurrence of AF was 99.38%. In the inter-patient evaluation, ACC of 3D-CNN was 81.48%, and the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.88. It can be concluded that the dynamic rendering of multiple isopotential maps can not only comprehensively display the conduction of cardiac electrical activity on the body surface but also successfully predict the recurrence of AF after CA by using 3D isopotential sequence maps.

Brain-wide patterns in resting human brains, as either structured functional connectivity (FC) or recurring brain states, have been widely studied in the neuroimaging literature. In particular, resting-state FCs estimated over windowed timeframe neuroimaging data from sub-minutes to minutes using correlation or blind source separation techniques have reported many brain-wide patterns of significant behavioral and disease correlates. The present pilot study utilized a novel whole-head cap-based high-density diffuse optical tomography (DOT) technology, together with data-driven analysis methods, to investigate recurring transient brain-wide patterns in spontaneous fluctuations of hemodynamic signals at the resolution of single timeframes from thirteen healthy adults in resting conditions. Our results report that a small number, i.e., six, of brain-wide coactivation patterns (CAPs) describe major spatiotemporal dynamics of spontaneous hemodynamic signals recorded by DOT. These CAPs represent recurring brain states, showing spatial topographies of hemispheric symmetry, and exhibit highly anticorrelated pairs. Moreover, a structured transition pattern among the six brain states is identified, where two CAPs with anterior-posterior spatial patterns are significantly involved in transitions among all brain states. Our results further elucidate two brain states of global positive and negative patterns, indicating transient neuronal coactivations and co-deactivations, respectively, over the entire cortex. We demonstrate that these two brain states are responsible for the generation of a subset of peaks and troughs in global signals (GS), supporting the recent reports on neuronal relevance of hemodynamic GS. Collectively, our results suggest that transient neuronal events (i.e., CAPs), global brain activity, and brain-wide structured transitions co-exist in humans and these phenomena are closely related, which extend the observations of similar neuronal events recently reported in animal hemodynamic data. Future studies on the quantitative relationship among these transient events and their relationships to windowed FCs along with larger sample size are needed to understand their changes with behaviors and diseased conditions.

Spontaneous neural activity in human as assessed with resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) exhibits brain-wide coordinated patterns in the frequency of

FeSiCr soft magnetic composites (SMCs) were fabricated by the sol-gel method, and an Al2O3/resin composite layer was employed as the insulation coating. By the decomposition of boehmite (AlOOH) gel into Al2O3 in the temperature range of 606–707 °C, a uniform Al2O3 layer could be formed on the FeSiCr powder surface. The Al2O3 insulation coating not only effectively reduced the core loss, increased the resistivity, and improved the quality factor, but it also increased the thermal conductivity of SMCs. The best overall properties with saturation magnetization Ms = 188 emu/g, effective permeability μe = 39, resistivity ρ = 8.28 × 105 Ω·cm, quality factor Q = 94 at 1 MHz, and core loss = 1173 mW/cm3 at 200 kHz and 50 mT were obtained when the SMC was prepared with powders coated by 0.5 wt.% Al2O3 and resin. The optimized SMC exhibited the lowest core loss with 27% reduction compared to the resin only-insulated sample and 71% reduction compared to the sample without insulation treatment. Importantly, the thermal conductivity of the SMCs is 5.3 W/m·K at room temperature, which is higher than that of the samples prepared by phosphating and SiO2 coating owing to the presence of a high thermal conductive Al2O3 layer. The high thermal conductivity is beneficial to enhancing the high temperature performance, lifetime, and reliability of SMCs. This work is expected to be a valuable reference for the design and fabrication of SMCs to be applied in high-temperature and high-frequency environments.

This study analyzed the transitional care work system and evaluation system in China from the perspectives of current situation, potential problems and improvement strategies, and provided a reference for the development of standardization and integration of the transitional care work system and the evaluation system. (本分析了目前国内延续性护理工作体系和评价体系的现况, 包括延续护理的发展、发展中面临的问题以及相关的改善方案, 为延续性护理工作体系和评价体系的标准化和一体化提供参考依据。)

Abstract Background Ubiquitylation modification is one of the multiple post-transcriptional process to regulate cellular physiology, including cell signaling, cycle regulation, DNA repair and transcriptional regulation. Members of TRIM family proteins could be defined as E3 ubiquitin ligases as they contain a RING-finger domain, and alterations of TRIM proteins are involved into a broad range of diverse disorders including cancer. TRIM37 is a novel discovered E3 ubiquitin ligase and acts as a oncoprotein in multiple human neoplasms, however its biological role in RCC still remains elusive. Methods RCC microarray chips and public datasets were screened to identify novel TRIMs member as TRIM37, which was dysregulated in RCC. Gain or loss of functional cancer cell models were constructed, and in vitro and in vivo assays were performed to elucidate its tumorigenic phenotypes. Interactive network analyses were utilized to define intrinsic mechanism. Results We identified TRIM37 was upregulated in RCC tumors, and its aberrant function predicted aggressive neoplastic phenotypes, poorer survival endings. TRIM37 promoted RCC cells EMT and malignant progression via TGF-β1 signaling activation, as a consequence of directly mediated by ubiquitinating-H2A modifications. Conclusions Our findings identified a previously unappreciated role of TRIM37 in RCC progression and prognostic prediction. Importantly, we declared a novel ubiquitination-dependent link between TRIM ubiquitin ligases and TGF-β1 signaling in regulating cancerous malignancies.

Recent studies have emphasized the changes in large-scale brain networks related to healthy aging, with the ultimate purpose to aid in differentiating normal neurocognitive aging from neurodegenerative disorders that also arise with age. Emerging evidence from functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) indicates that connectivity patterns within specific brain networks, especially the Default Mode Network (DMN), distinguish those with Alzheimer's disease from healthy individuals. In addition, disruptive alterations in the large-scale brain systems that support high-level cognition are shown to accompany cognitive decline at the behavioral level, which is commonly observed in the aging populations, even in the absence of disease. Although fMRI is useful for assessing functional changes in brain networks, its high costs and limited accessibility discourage studies that need large populations. In this study, we investigated the aging-effect on large-scale networks of the human brain using high-density electroencephalography and electrophysiological source imaging, which is a less costly and more accessible alternative to fMRI. In particular, our study examined a group of healthy subjects in the age range from middle- to older-aged adults, which is an under-studied range in the literature. Employing a high-resolution computation model, our results revealed age associations in the connectivity pattern of DMN in a consistent manner with previous fMRI findings. Particularly, in combination with a standard battery of cognitive tests, our data showed that in the posterior cingulate / precuneus area of DMN higher brain connectivity was associated with lower performance on an episodic memory task. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of using electrophysiological imaging to characterize large-scale brain networks and suggest that changes in network connectivity are associated with normal aging.

The transitional care is mainly used in the care of chronic diseases management, but in recent years, transitional care has also been extended to postoperative surgery, PICC tube placement, puerperium care and other aspects. There is no specific requirement for nursing staff, and most of them have not received professional training. Transitional care in China is rapidly popularizing and developing, but there are also problems that cannot be ignored in the development process. When the hospital vigorously promotes transitional care, it should focus on solving the existing problems in order to better implement transitional care, and then provide better medical care services for the current situation of China's aging population. (延续性护理主要运用于慢性疾病护理, 近年来在外科术后、PICC置管后、产褥期等方面应用广泛。国内延续性护理对护理人员尚未有明确要求, 大多未经过专业培训, 多为临床各科室护士担任。虽然国内延续性护理正在快速普及和发展, 但发展过程中也存在不可忽视的问题。医院在大力推行延续性护理时, 要着重解决目前存在的问题, 以便更好地实施延续性护理, 进而为国内人口老龄化的现状提供更好的医疗护理服务。)

Core-shell structured amorphous FeSiBCr@phosphate/silica powders were prepared by phosphating and sodium silicate treatment. The soft magnetic composites (SMCs) were fabricated based on these powders. The effects of phosphoric acid (H3PO4) concentration and annealing temperature on their properties were investigated. During the phosphating process, the powder coated with a low concentration of H3PO4-ethanol solution leads to uneven phosphate coating, while the peeling of phosphate coating occurs for the high H3PO4 concentration. Using 0.5 wt.% phosphoric solution, a uniform and dense insulation layer can be formed on the surface of the powder, resulting in increased resistivity and the reduced eddy current loss of the amorphous soft magnetic composites (ASMCs). This insulation layer can increase the roughness of the powder surface, which is beneficial to the subsequent coating of sodium silicate. By optimizing sodium silicate treatment, a complete and uniform SiO2 layer can be formed on the phosphated powders well, leading to double layer core-shell structure and excellent soft magnetic properties. The magnetic properties of amorphous SMCs can be further improved by post annealing due to the effectively released residual stress. The enhanced permeability and greatly reduced core loss can be achieved by annealing at 773 K, but the deterioration of magnetic properties occurs as the annealing temperature over 798 K, mainly due to the increase of α-Fe(Si) and Fe3B phases, which hinder the domain wall displacement and magnetic moment rotation. The excellent soft magnetic properties with permeability μe = 35 and core loss Ps = 368 kW/m3 at 50 mT/200 kHz have been obtained when the SMCs prepared with the powders coated by 0.5 wt.% H3PO4 and 2 wt.% sodium silicate were annealed at 773 K.

With the increasing demand of human beings for space exploration, space robots show great development potential. When grasping space objects with different sizes and shapes, cable-driven continuum arms have better performance than traditional robots. In this paper, a novel space robot with triple cable-driven continuum arms is proposed, which can achieve compliant grasping through multi-arm cooperation. The kinematic model of the robot is proposed and verified through simulations and experiments. Results show that the maximum repeat positioning error is no larger than 1 mm and the maximum tracking error is no larger than 2 mm, compared to the 300 mm long arm. In addition, the demonstration experiment of grasping a ball indicates the good performance of the robot in compliant grasping.

In order to study the migration and transformation of SO3 from circulating fluidized bed boiler (CFB) in the air preheater and flue gas treatment facilities, 10 circulating fluidized bed boilers with installed capacities between 150 MW and 330 MW were measured by controlled condensation method. Ten circulating fluidized bed boilers with installed capacities ranging from 150 MW to 330 MW were measured using the controlled condensation method. It is showed that the SO3 removal rate of the air preheater was affected by the air preheater flue gas exit temperature, which ranged from 6.7 % to 36.5 %, and the SO3 removal rate of the rotary air preheater was higher than that of the tubular air preheater. The SO3 removal rate of cloth bag filter and electric bag filter is above 40 %; the SO3 removal rate of electrostatic precipitator is between 6.1 % and 10.8 %. The SO3 removal rate of wet desulfurization method ranges from 41.7 % to 73.4 %, with the highest SO3 removal rate of double tower double cycle. The SO3 removal rate of off-furnace CFB semi-dry desulfurization reached 89.7 %~97.9 %, and the dry process inside the furnace + off-furnace CFB semi-dry process could reduce the SO3 at the desulfurization outlet to below 0.3 mg/m3 under the tested conditions. The conclusions of the test analysis in this paper can provide reference for SO3 control in circulating fluidized bed boilers and related policy formulation.

Due to the outstanding characteristics of the large structural flexibility and strong dexterity of soft robots, they have attracted great attention. However, the dynamic modeling and precise control of soft robots face huge challenges. Traditional model-based and model-free control methods find it difficult to obtain a balance between complexity and accuracy. In this paper, a dynamic model of a three-chamber continuous pneumatic manipulator is established based on the modal method. Moreover, a hybrid controller integrating model predictive control (MPC) and iterative learning control (ILC) is proposed, which can simultaneously perform model parameter learning and trajectory tracking control. Experimental results show that the proposed control method can optimize the parameters of the dynamic model in real time with less iterations than the traditional model-free method and have good control performance in trajectory tracking experiments. In the future, the proposed dynamic model and the hybrid controller should be verified on a multi-section manipulator.

Abstract With the development of intelligent flexible manufacturing, traditional industrial manipulators with a single configuration are difficult to meet a variety of tasks. Reconfigurable robots have developed rapidly which could change their configurations and end effectors for different tasks. The reconfigurable connecting mechanism (RCM) is a core component of reconfigurable robots. In this paper, two types of intelligent modularized RCMs with light weight, high payload, and large pose (position and attitude) error tolerance are developed. One is driven by shape memory alloy (SMA) and recovery spring. It is locked by steel balls and key. The other is driven by electromagnetic coil and locked by permanent magnet and key. The locking principle, mechanical system and control system of the two RCMs are detailed introduced. Both of them meet the requirements of high precision and high payload in the industrial field. Finally, the developed RCMs are respectively integrated to a practical robot and experimented. The experiment results verified the performance of the two RCMs.

The process wherein dividing cells exhaust proliferative capacity and enter into replicative senescence has become a prominent model for cellular aging in vitro. Despite decades of study, this cellular state is not fully understood in culture and even much less so during aging. Here, we revisit Leonard Hayflick’s original observation of replicative senescence in WI-38 human lung fibroblasts equipped with a battery of modern techniques including RNA-seq, single-cell RNA-seq, proteomics, metabolomics, and ATAC-seq. We find evidence that the transition to a senescent state manifests early, increases gradually, and corresponds to a concomitant global increase in DNA accessibility in nucleolar and lamin associated domains. Furthermore, we demonstrate that senescent WI-38 cells acquire a striking resemblance to myofibroblasts in a process similar to the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) that is regulated by t YAP1/TEAD1 and TGF-β2. Lastly, we show that verteporfin inhibition of YAP1/TEAD1 activity in aged WI-38 cells robustly attenuates this gene expression program.

Capturing and stabilizing tumbling targets using dual-arm space robots are very crucial to on-orbit servicing task. However, it is still very challenging due to the complex dynamics coupling and closed-chain constraints between the manipulators, the base, and the target. In this paper, a kinodynamic trajectory optimization method is proposed to generate the motion of a dual-arm space robot for stabilizing the captured tumbling target, which is formulated and solved as a nonlinear programming problem using direct collocation. Instead of optimizing the trajectory of each joint with the dynamics model of space robot, this method optimizes the trajectory of the tumbling target while considering the kinematics and dynamics constraints between the two arms and the target simultaneously. The objective function of the optimization is defined as weighted detumbling time, base disturbance, and manipulability, in order to avoid singularity and save the energy of space robot for further manipulation. Several physical simulations are carried out to validate the proposed method.

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of compound Chai Jin Jie Yu Tablets (CJJYT) in ameliorating cognitive impairment associated with depression and its potential mechanism of action. Methods: In vitro experiments, the hippocampus was isolated from the whole brain of the fetal rat and cultured into hippocampal neuron cells. 50 μM corticosterone (CORT) was added to each group 18 h before the experiment for modeling depression, with the exception of the control group. After modeling, the blank serum group was added with 10% blank serum, the CJJYT group and the venlafaxine group were added with the corresponding 10% drug-containing serum, and the control group and the model group were added with equal volumes of culture medium. The intracellular Ca2+ mean fluorescence intensity, miniature excitatory postsynaptic current (mEPSC) current amplitude, and frequency of different hippocampal neurons were evaluated as indicators of synaptic function in the hippocampal neurons. In addition, the expression of synaptic plasticity related proteins, synaptophysin-α (SYN-α), N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor 2A (NR2A), N-methyl-D- aspartate receptor 2B (NR2B), post synaptic density 95 protein (PSD-95), calcium/calmodulin dependent protein kinaseⅡ (CaMKⅡ) and synaptic associated protein (SynGAP) were detected in the hippocampal neurons by immunofluorescence staining and high content analysis (HCA) system. Then, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to detect the mRNA expression levels of SYN-α, NR2A, NR2B, PSD- 95, CaMKⅡ and SynGAP. For in vivo experiments, except for those in the blank control group, all rats were treated within a single cage for chronic unpredictable stress-induced depression modeling and subjected to corresponding drug interventions. Behavioral tests were used to detect depressive behavior and determine learning, memory and other cognitive abilities, whereas enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to detect the CORT levels. Golgi-Cox staining was used to observe changes in the synaptic morphology of parahippocampal gyrus CA1 area (CA1) and dentategyrus (DG). Results: In vitro, CJJYT treatment reduced the intracellular Ca2+ mean flurorescence intensity in the hippocampal neurons (P < 0.05), causing a reduction in the frequency and current amplitude of mEPSC (P < 0.05), and thus inhibited the excessive activation of post-synaptic receptors. CJJYT treatment reduced the protein and mRNA expression of SYN-α, NR2A, NR2B and PSD-95 in the hippocampal neurons (P < 0.05), increased the mRNA and protein expression of CaMKⅡ and SynGAP (P < 0.05), and thereby improved the synaptic plasticity of the hippocampal neurons. In vivo, CJJYT intervention improved sucrose preference, voluntary activity , learning and memory ability of Morris water maze test, and suppressed appetite (P < 0.05), and increased the despair feeling of forced swimming test (P < 0.05). The CORT level was reduced (P < 0.05), leading to the repair of synaptic damage in the hippocampal neurons. Conclusions: CJJYT can improve the synaptic function of hippocampal neurons and has obvious protective effects on neurons. It can repair the structural damage in the hippocampal neurons, improving the cognitive ability of the depressed model rats. The mechanism of CJJYT improving cognition in depressed rats may be related to the transmission and function of SYN-α/NR and its downstream neurotransmitters.

High frequency oscillations (HFOs) in intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) recordings are a promising clinical biomarker that can help define the epileptogenic regions in the brain. The aim of this study is to characterize the spatial and temporal distribution of HFOs in channel-wise instead of event-level as usual and to develop an automated the seizure onset zone (SOZ) identification by using a support vector machine (SVM) approach on the channel-wise features in a short-term recording. In this work, five consecutive patients with medically intractable epilepsy were enrolled. For each patient, ten-minute segments were defined from two hours of iEEG recordings during sleep state. A total of 17 channel-wise features including 6 rate-based, 6 duration-based, 3 amplitude-based, and 2 power-based features of HFOs were extracted from each 10-min segment, which including ripples (Rs, 80-250 Hz) and fast ripples (FRs, 250-500Hz) were detected automatically using validated detectors. Each channel-wise feature was ranked by using the Student's t-test method and the most distinctive features were selected to explore the characteristics of HFOs in each channel. A supervised-learning based SVM classifier with the selected channel-wise features or their combinations was developed to identify each channel within the independently clinician-defined SOZ or not. Over 3,816 chanel-10-min segments of iEEG recordings, the evaluated accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of the proposed approach with the optimal combination of top five ranked features for SOZ identification are 86.6%, 73.0%, and 94.1%, respectively, for ten-fold cross-validation, and 86.0%, 79.2 %, and 91.8%, respectively, for the leave-1-out cross-validation. Compared with the recently reported SOZ detectors based on event-wise feature of HFOs, the channel-wise features and the combination with machine learning approach demonstrate its feasibility in SOZ identification with a relative higher performance and potentially reduce the time needed currently for long-term recording and manual inspection.

In the present study, we investigated the development of Chinese character reading and its predictors in 55 children from K3 (the last year of kindergarten) to G1 (first grade) in Mainland China. It was examined to what extent first graders’ Mandarin Chinese character reading was related to their phonological awareness, Pinyin letter knowledge, and visual perception skills in kindergarten. The results showed that phonological awareness, Pinyin letter knowledge, and Chinese character reading improved from kindergarten to Grade 1, with Pinyin showing ceiling effects in Grade 1. Children’s character reading in first grade was not predicted from phonological awareness in kindergarten. However, visual discrimination showed an indirect effect on Grade 1 character reading via its effect on kindergarten character reading. It can be concluded that both kindergarten visual discrimination and character reading ability facilitate first-grade reading ability for children in Mainland China.

Word identification models assume that words are identified by at least two sources of information and analysis; one is phonological, and the other is visual. The present study investigated the influence of phonological awareness, Pinyin letter knowledge, and visual perception skills on Chinese character recognition after controlling for vocabulary, rapid naming, and verbal short-term memory in 80 Mandarin-speaking kindergarten children. Children were tested on phonological awareness (syllable awareness, onset-end rhyme awareness, and tone awareness), Pinyin letter naming, and visual perception (visual discrimination and visual-spatial relationships). The results showed that variance in Chinese character recognition could be explained by syllable awareness and tone awareness, but not by visual perception skills or Pinyin letter knowledge. Analyses further indicated that Pinyin letter knowledge moderated the relationship between tone awareness and Chinese character recognition. A focus on tone awareness and syllable awareness in the kindergarten may help Chinese children to accomplish the transition from phonological awareness to early literacy, while Pinyin letter knowledge can help children to make the connection between Chinese speech and writing.

Inspired by large and medium-sized birds, two kinds of flapping-wing flying robots with wingspans beyond 2 meters were developed. They have the appearance of a hawk and a phoenix respectively, so they are called HIT-Hawk and HIT-Phoenix. In this paper, the bionic concept, theoretical analysis, design and manufacturing are introduced in detail. Firstly, the flight principle and characteristics of large and medium-sized birds were summarized. Then, the aerodynamics was modeled based on the thin airfoil theory, and the main design basis was established. Secondly, the mechanical structures of HIT-Hawk and HIT-Phoenix were designed to ensure the lateral and longitudinal stability and have optimized flight performance. Moreover, an autonomous flight control method was proposed and realized in highly integrated on-onboard controller; it satisfies the strict restrictions on mass, size, power and shape. Finally, the prototypes were fabricated and verified through practical flight experiments. The wingspans of these two flapping wing aircrafts are 2.0 m and 2.3 m respectively, the take-off weights are 1.15 kg and 0.86 kg, and the maximum stable endurance is 65 min (with battery of 3S LiPo, 4300 mAh) and 8 min (with battery of 3S LiPo, 800 mAh). Their wind resistance can both reach level 4. Compared with the small and micro flapping-wing aerial vehicles that mimic insects or small birds, they both have strong load capacity, strong wind resistance and long endurance.

Featured by extreme flexibility, hyper-redundant manipulators are gradually developed and applied to perform detection and maintenance tasks in confined on-orbit environments. However, its configuration planning is very challenging due to a large number of degrees of freedom. This paper proposes a simultaneous planning method considering both overall configuration and end pose for hyper-redundant manipulators. First, the end effector and intermediate universal joints of the hyper-redundant manipulator are selected as the follow-up controlled points. The corresponding active control points are freely set near the follow-up controlled points. Then, the Euclidean distance between the active control point and the follow-up controlled point is calculated. Combined with gradient projection method, the calculated Euclidean distance is taken as the objective function to be optimized. By adjusting the active control point and the scale factor of gradient projection method, the adjustment of follow-up controlled points (i.e. overall configuration and end pose) can be realized. What is more, this method can optimize its overall configuration to adjust the follow-up controlled points close to or far from the active control point to achieve other planning goals (i.e. obstacle avoidance, singularity avoidance and so on). Therefore, this method satisfies the requirements of simultaneous planning considering both overall configuration and end pose for hyper-redundant manipulators. Finally, the proposed simultaneous planning method is executed in physical experiment system. Results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

High-frequency oscillations (HFOs) of 80~500 Hz in the intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG) recordings are considered as a reliable marker for epileptic location. However, a significant challenge to the clinical use of HFOs is due to the time-consuming procedure of visually identifying them. A new methodology is presented in this paper for the automated detection of HFOs based on their 2D time-frequency map employing the short-time energy (STE) estimation and the convolutional neural network (CNN) classification algorithm. The effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed method are evaluated using the clinical iEEG data acquired from five patients (28.4 ± 13.0 years) with medically intractable epilepsy. The proposed methodology presents the following significant advantages: 1) compared with the recently reported HFOs detector based on the CNN using only the 1D temporal EEG signal, the proposed method achieves a higher accuracy using the deep CNN classifier on 2D time-frequency map of HFOs, of which the evaluated sensitivity and false discovery rate (FDR) for identifying ripples are 88.16% and 12.58%, respectively, and the corresponding sensitivity and FDR are 93.37% and 8.1% for detecting fast ripples, respectively; 2) it is capable of automatically extracting the shared features of HFOs events of different patients and would be much robust, unlike other automated methodologies proposed in the literature where the characteristics of HFOs were extracted manually on the basis of researchers' knowledge, which, probably, is prone to observer bias; and 3) with the proposed STE estimation, all suspicious ripples and fast ripples could be initially found out and transformed into time-frequency map for subsequently CNN-based classification, rather than transforming and classifying the raw data, thus requiring a lower computational resource. In addition, the time occurrence of each transient event of the HFOs can be identified to be potentially useful for further seizure analysis. In conclusion, this automated detection of the HFOs combing the STE and the CNN could allow analyzing large amounts of data in a short time while assuring a relatively higher accuracy and, thus, would potentially serve to provide a clinically useful tool.

Mal de débarquement syndrome (MdDS) is a motion-induced disorder of oscillating vertigo that persists after the motion has ceased. The neuroimaging characteristics of the MdDS brain state have been investigated with studies on brain metabolism, structure, functional connectivity, and measurements of synchronicity. Baseline metabolism and resting-state functional connectivity studies indicate that a limbic focus in the left entorhinal cortex and amygdala may be important in the pathology of MdDS, as these structures are hypermetabolic in MdDS and exhibit increased functional connectivity to posterior sensory processing areas and reduced connectivity to the frontal and temporal cortices. Both structures are tunable with periodic stimulation, with neurons in the entorhinal cortex required for spatial navigation, acting as a critical efferent pathway to the hippocampus, and sending and receiving projections from much of the neocortex. Voxel-based morphometry measurements have revealed volume differences between MdDS and healthy controls in hubs of multiple resting-state networks including the default mode, salience, and executive control networks. In particular, volume in the bilateral anterior cingulate cortices decreases and volume in the bilateral inferior frontal gyri/anterior insulas increases with longer duration of illness. Paired with noninvasive neuromodulation interventions, functional neuroimaging with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and simultaneous fMRI-EEG have shown changes in resting-state functional connectivity that correlate with symptom modulation, particularly in the posterior default mode network. Reduced parieto-occipital connectivity with the entorhinal cortex and reduced long-range fronto-parieto-occipital connectivity correlate with symptom improvement. Though there is a general theme of desynchronization correlating with reduced MdDS symptoms, the prediction of optimal stimulation parameters for noninvasive brain stimulation in individuals with MdDS remains a challenge due to the large parameter space. However, the pairing of functional neuroimaging and noninvasive brain stimulation can serve as a probe into the biological underpinnings of MdDS and iteratively lead to optimal parameter space identification.

Recently, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has been utilized to image the hemodynamic activities and connectivity in the human brain. With the advantage of economic efficiency, portability, and fewer physical constraints, fNIRS enables studying of the human brain at versatile environment and various body positions, including at bed side and during exercise, which complements the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, like fMRI, fNIRS imaging can be influenced by the presence of a strong global component. Yet, the nature of the global signal in fNIRS has not been established. In this study, we investigated the relationship between fNIRS global signal and electroencephalogram (EEG) vigilance using simultaneous recordings in resting healthy subjects in high-density and whole-head montage. In Experiment 1, data were acquired at supine, sitting, and standing positions. Results found that the factor of body positions significantly affected the amplitude of the resting-state fNIRS global signal, prominently in the frequency range of 0.05–0.1 Hz but not in the very low frequency range of less than 0.05 Hz. As a control, the task-induced fNIRS or EEG responses to auditory stimuli did not differ across body positions. However, EEG vigilance plays a modulatory role in the fNIRS signals in the frequency range of less than 0.05 Hz: resting-state sessions of low EEG vigilance measures are associated with high amplitudes of fNIRS global signals. Moreover, in Experiment 2, we further examined the epoch-to-epoch fluctuations in concurrent fNIRS and EEG data acquired from a separate group of subjects and found a negative temporal correlation between EEG vigilance measures and fNIRS global signal amplitudes. Our study for the first time revealed that vigilance as a neurophysiological factor modulates the resting-state dynamics of fNIRS, which have important implications for understanding and processing the noises in fNIRS signals.

Patients who underwent laparoscopic partial nephrectomy from the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University from May 2016 to May 2019 were randomly divided into enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) and control groups. The clinical indicators, preoperative and postoperative anxiety, depression, and postoperative quality of life were compared between the two groups. The recovery time, hospitalization cost, incidence of complications, and postoperative anxiety of patients in the ERAS group were lower than those of the control group. The satisfaction during hospitalization, scores of physical function, role function, emotional function, and general health status of the ERAS group were also significantly increased. Applying the ERAS to patients undergoing laparoscopic partial nephrectomy can improve their prognosis, experience of medical treatment, and life quality after surgery as well as have certain economic advantages.

Summary: Leukemia stem cells (LSCs) are believed to have more distinct vulnerabilities than the bulk acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells, but their rarity and the lack of universal markers for their prospective isolation hamper their study. We report that genetically clonal induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from an AML patient and characterized by exceptionally high engraftment potential give rise, upon hematopoietic differentiation, to a phenotypic hierarchy. Through fate-tracking experiments, xenotransplantation, and single-cell transcriptomics, we identify a cell fraction (iLSC) that can be isolated prospectively by means of adherent in vitro growth that resides on the apex of this hierarchy and fulfills the hallmark features of LSCs. Through integrative genomic studies of the iLSC transcriptome and chromatin landscape, we derive an LSC gene signature that predicts patient survival and uncovers a dependency of LSCs, across AML genotypes, on the RUNX1 transcription factor. These findings can empower efforts to therapeutically target AML LSCs.

Increasing reports showed that artificial food additives might increase the incidence of ulcerative colitis (UC). Phloridzin is a natural food additive and a pharmacologic agent, whether phloridzin could induce or treat UC is not clear. We investigated the effects of phloridzin on acute colitis in mice and elucidated the potential mechanism. Phloridzin was given to mice with acute UC induced by 4% dextran sulfate sodium orally (60 mg/kg) and daily. Body weight, food and water intake and disease activity index scores were recorded every day. The colon length and thickness, and histopathological changes were determined after mice being sacrificed. Data showed that phloridzin could improve the symptoms of acute colitis, protect the intestinal brush border, and may raise the expression of sodium glycogen transporter 1, phospho-p38MAPK and Ezrin, resulting in promoting the activation and transportation of Na+/H+ exchanger. Therefore, phloridzin may be a food additive and dietary supplementary of UC.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a trauma- and stressor-related disorder that may emerge following a traumatic event. Neuroimaging studies have shown evidence of functional abnormality in many brain regions and systems affected by PTSD. Exaggerated threat detection associated with abnormalities in the salience network, as well as abnormalities in executive functions involved in emotions regulations, self-referencing and context evaluation processing are broadly reported in PTSD. Here we aimed to investigate the behavior and dynamic properties of fMRI resting state networks in combat-related PTSD, using a novel, multimodal imaging approach. Simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to measure neurobiological brain activity among 36 veterans with combat-related PTSD and 20 combat-exposed veterans without PTSD. Based on the recently established method of measuring temporal-independent EEG microstates, we developed a novel strategy to integrate EEG and fMRI by quantifying the fast temporal dynamics associated with the resting state networks. We found distinctive occurrence rates of microstates associated with the dorsal default mode network and salience networks in the PTSD group as compared with control. Furthermore, the occurrence rate of the microstate for the dorsal default mode network was positively correlated with PTSD severity, whereas the occurrence rate of the microstate for the anterior salience network was negatively correlated with hedonic tone reported by participants with PTSD. Our findings reveal a novel aspect of abnormal network dynamics in combat-related PTSD and contribute to a better understanding of the pathophysiology of the disorder. Simultaneous EEG and fMRI will be a valuable tool in continuing to study the neurobiology underlying PTSD. Keywords: Posttraumatic stress disorder, Combat veterans, Simultaneous EEG and fMRI, Resting state networks, Functional connectivity, Temporal independent EEG microstates

Phosphodiesterase 2 (PDE2) has been regarded as a novel target for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In this study, we obtained (R)-LZ77 as a hit compound with moderate PDE2 inhibitory activity (IC50 = 261.3 nM) using a high-throughput virtual screening method based on molecular dynamics. Then, we designed and synthesized 28 dihydropyranopyrazole derivatives as PDE2 inhibitors. Among them, compound (+)-11h was the most potent PDE2 inhibitor, with an IC50 value of 41.5 nM. The molecular docking of PDE2-(+)-11h reveals that the 4-(trifluoromethyl)benzyl)oxyl side chain of the compound enters the H-pocket and forms strong hydrophobic interactions with L770/L809/F862, which improves inhibitory activity. The above results may provide insight for further structural optimization of highly potent PDE2 inhibitors and may lay the foundation for their use in the treatment of AD.

Abstract We give a systematical study on the recently reported excited charm and charm–strange mesons with potential $$1^-$$ 1 - spin–parity, including the $$D^*_{s1}(2700)^+$$ D s 1 ∗ ( 2700 ) + , $$D^*_{s1}(2860)^+$$ D s 1 ∗ ( 2860 ) + , $$D^*(2600)^0$$ D ∗ ( 2600 ) 0 , $$D^*(2650)^0$$ D ∗ ( 2650 ) 0 , $$D^*_1(2680)^0$$ D 1 ∗ ( 2680 ) 0 and $$D^*_1(2760)^0$$ D 1 ∗ ( 2760 ) 0 . The main strong decay properties are obtained in the framework of Bethe–Salpeter (BS) methods. Our results reveal that the two $$1^-$$ 1 - charm–strange mesons can be well described by the further $$2^3\!S_1$$ 2 3 S 1 – $$1^3\!D_1$$ 1 3 D 1 mixing scheme with a mixing angle of $$(8.7^{+3.9}_{-3.2})^\circ $$ ( 8 . 7 - 3.2 + 3.9 ) ∘ . The predicted decay ratio $$\frac{\mathcal {B}(D^*K)}{\mathcal {B}(D~K)}$$ B ( D ∗ K ) B ( D K ) for $$D^*_{s1}(2860)$$ D s 1 ∗ ( 2860 ) is $$0.62^{+0.22}_{-0.12}$$ 0 . 62 - 0.12 + 0.22 . $$D^*(2600)^0$$ D ∗ ( 2600 ) 0 can also be explained as the $$2^3\!S_1$$ 2 3 S 1 predominant state with a mixing angle of $$-(7.5^{+4.0}_{-3.3})^\circ $$ - ( 7 . 5 - 3.3 + 4.0 ) ∘ . Considering the mass range, $$D^*(2650)^0$$ D ∗ ( 2650 ) 0 and $$D^*_1(2680)^0$$ D 1 ∗ ( 2680 ) 0 are more likely to be the $$2^3\!S_1$$ 2 3 S 1 predominant states, although the total widths under the two $$2^3\!S_1$$ 2 3 S 1 and $$1^3\!D_1$$ 1 3 D 1 assignments have no great conflict with the current experimental data. The calculated width for the LHCb $$D^*_1(2760)^0$$ D 1 ∗ ( 2760 ) 0 seems to be about 100 MeV larger than the experimental measurement if taking it as $$1^3\!D_1$$ 1 3 D 1 or $$1^3\!D_1$$ 1 3 D 1 dominant state $$c\bar{u}$$ c u ¯ . The comparisons with other calculations and several important decay ratios are also presented. For the identification of these $$1^-$$ 1 - charm mesons, further experimental information, such as $$\frac{\mathcal {B}(D\pi )}{\mathcal {B}(D^*\pi )}$$ B ( D π ) B ( D ∗ π ) , is necessary.

Pose (position and attitude) measurement of a space non-cooperative target is very important for on-orbital servicing tasks, including malfunctioning target repairing, space debris removal, and so on. However, such targets are generally non-cooperative, i.e., no markers are mounted on it and there is no prior knowledge. Therefore, the identification and measurement of a non-cooperative target is very challenging. In this paper, we propose an efficient method to recognize the natural objects with circular or near-circular shapes on the target, reducing the computation load and improving accuracy. First, the geometry properties of a practical non-cooperative target are analyzed. A stereo vision system is correspondingly designed to measure the relative pose of the target. Second, the error sources and time-consuming factors of the traditional method are analyzed. Then, a solution concept is proposed. Third, the efficient method is detailed to solve the geometry equation and determine the pose information, reducing the calculation complexity and increasing the accuracy. The image pre-processing and target detecting algorithms are realized on FPGAs, further accelerating the calculation speed. Finally, we develop an experiment system and verify the proposed method through practical experiments. The experiment system is composed of satellite mockup, binocular camera, and high precision laser tracker. The experiment results show that the proposed method has high accuracy and efficiency.

The long-term use of herbicides to remove weeds in fallow croplands can impair soil biodiversity, affect the quality of agricultural products, and threaten human health. Consequently, the identification of methods that can effectively limit the weed seed bank and maintain fallow soil fertility without causing soil pollution for the next planting is a critical task. In this study, four weeding treatments were established based on different degrees of disturbance to the topsoil: natural fallow (N), physical clearance (C), deep tillage (D), and sprayed herbicide (H). The changes in the soil weed seed banks, soil nutrients, and soil microbial biomass were carefully investigated. During the fallow period, the C treatment decreased the annual and biennial weed seed bank by 34% against pretreatment, whereas the H treatment did not effectively reduce the weed seed bank. The D treatment had positive effects on the soil fertility, increasing the available nitrogen 108% over that found in the N soil. In addition, a pre-winter deep tillage interfered with the rhizome propagation of perennial weeds. The total biomass of soil bacterial, fungal, and actinomycete in H treatment was the lowest among the four treatments. The biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in the N treatment was respectively 42%, 35%, and 91%, higher than that in the C, D, and H treatments. An ecological weeding strategy was proposed based on our findings, which called for exhausting seed banks, blocking seed transmission, and taking advantage of natural opportunities to prevent weed growth for fallow lands. This study could provide a theoretical basis for weed management in fallow fields and organic farming systems.

Cable-driven serpentine manipulators (CDSMs), having strong compliance and flexibility, are suitable for flexible operation in confined workspace. Like many other manipulators, it is an important issue to sense the tip pose of CDSMs. In much previous research, the manipulator’s tip pose is usually determined by the driving cable lengths. However, little literature has talked about the tip positioning accuracy. This paper focused on this issue, and investigated the effect of the cable hole location error and cable length error on the tip positioning accuracy of CDSMs. For this aim, we firstly established the kinematic model, and then analyzed the influence factors of the tip positioning accuracy. Simulation results show that the cable hole location error and cable length error have significant effects on the tip positioning accuracy, and especially in certain configurations, it can cause an approximate 30 mm deviation in position. Therefore, in order to improve the tip positioning accuracy of CDSMs, it is necessary to compensate for the cable hole location error and cable length error in the modeling.

Real-time fMRI neurofeedback (rtfMRI-nf) is an emerging approach for studies and novel treatments of major depressive disorder (MDD). EEG performed simultaneously with an rtfMRI-nf procedure allows an independent evaluation of rtfMRI-nf brain modulation effects. Frontal EEG asymmetry in the alpha band is a widely used measure of emotion and motivation that shows profound changes in depression. However, it has never been directly related to simultaneously acquired fMRI data. We report the first study investigating electrophysiological correlates of the rtfMRI-nf procedure, by combining the rtfMRI-nf with simultaneous and passive EEG recordings. In this pilot study, MDD patients in the experimental group (n = 13) learned to upregulate BOLD activity of the left amygdala using an rtfMRI-nf during a happy emotion induction task. MDD patients in the control group (n = 11) were provided with a sham rtfMRI-nf. Correlations between frontal EEG asymmetry in the upper alpha band and BOLD activity across the brain were examined. Average individual changes in frontal EEG asymmetry during the rtfMRI-nf task for the experimental group showed a significant positive correlation with the MDD patients' depression severity ratings, consistent with an inverse correlation between the depression severity and frontal EEG asymmetry at rest. The average asymmetry changes also significantly correlated with the amygdala BOLD laterality. Temporal correlations between frontal EEG asymmetry and BOLD activity were significantly enhanced, during the rtfMRI-nf task, for the amygdala and many regions associated with emotion regulation. Our findings demonstrate an important link between amygdala BOLD activity and frontal EEG asymmetry during emotion regulation. Our EEG asymmetry results indicate that the rtfMRI-nf training targeting the amygdala is beneficial to MDD patients. They further suggest that EEG-nf based on frontal EEG asymmetry in the alpha band would be compatible with the amygdala-based rtfMRI-nf. Combination of the two could enhance emotion regulation training and benefit MDD patients.

This article adopts a research method that combined with theoretical analysis and system design, analyzes multiple dimensions of common safety hazard events, uses support vector machine classification algorithms to filter and mine valuable information in massive data, and establishes a common safety hazard event feature set. This kind of technology can realize the automatic classification of safety hazards and extract their characteristic information, introduce the semantic analysis, word segmentation clustering method to determine the typical processing measures of events, and generate knowledge items to add methods and models to the processing measures database, which can solve the grid safety hazard data entry specifications, In-depth analysis and other issues.

Resting state networks (RSNs) have been found in human brains during awake resting states. RSNs are composed of spatially distributed regions in which spontaneous activity fluctuations are temporally and dynamically correlated. A new computational framework for reconstructing RSNs with human EEG data has been developed in the present study. The proposed framework utilizes independent component analysis (ICA) on short-time Fourier transformed inverse source maps imaged from EEG data and statistical correlation analysis to generate cortical tomography of electrophysiological RSNs. The proposed framework was evaluated on three sets of resting-state EEG data obtained in the comparison of two conditions: (1) healthy controls with eyes closed and eyes open; (2) healthy controls and individuals with a balance disorder; (3) individuals with a balance disorder before and after receiving repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment. In these analyses, the same group of five RSNs with similar spatial and spectral patterns were successfully reconstructed by the proposed framework from each individual EEG dataset. These EEG RSN tomographic maps showed significant similarity with RSN templates derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Furthermore, significant spatial and spectral differences of RSNs among compared conditions were observed in tomographic maps as well as their spectra, which were consistent with findings reported in the literature. Beyond the success of reconstructing EEG RSNs spatially on the cortical surface as in fMRI studies, this novel approach defines RSNs further with spectra, providing a new dimension in understanding and probing basic neural mechanisms of RSNs. The findings in patients' data further demonstrate its potential in identifying biomarkers for the diagnosis and treatment evaluation of neuropsychiatric disorders.

The auditory steady-state response (ASSR) is one of the main approaches in clinic for health screening and frequency-specific hearing assessment. However, its generation mechanism is still of much controversy. In the present study, the linear superposition hypothesis for the generation of ASSRs was investigated by comparing the relationships between the classical 40 Hz ASSR and three synthetic ASSRs obtained from three different templates for transient auditory evoked potential (AEP). These three AEPs are the traditional AEP at 5 Hz and two 40 Hz AEPs derived from two deconvolution algorithms using stimulus sequences, i.e., continuous loop averaging deconvolution (CLAD) and multi-rate steady-state average deconvolution (MSAD). CLAD requires irregular inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs) in the sequence while MSAD uses the same ISIs but evenly-spaced stimulus sequences which mimics the classical 40 Hz ASSR. It has been reported that these reconstructed templates show similar patterns but significant difference in morphology and distinct frequency characteristics in synthetic ASSRs. The prediction accuracies of ASSR using these templates show significant differences (p < 0.05) in 45.95, 36.28, and 10.84% of total time points within four cycles of ASSR for the traditional, CLAD, and MSAD templates, respectively, as compared with the classical 40 Hz ASSR, and the ASSR synthesized from the MSAD transient AEP suggests the best similarity. And such a similarity is also demonstrated at individuals only in MSAD showing no statistically significant difference (Hotelling's T2 test, T2 = 6.96, F = 0.80, p = 0.592) as compared with the classical 40 Hz ASSR. The present results indicate that both stimulation rate and sequencing factor (ISI variation) affect transient AEP reconstructions from steady-state stimulation protocols. Furthermore, both auditory brainstem response (ABR) and middle latency response (MLR) are observed in contributing to the composition of ASSR but with variable weights in three templates. The significantly improved prediction accuracy of ASSR achieved by MSAD strongly supports the linear superposition mechanism of ASSR if an accurate template of transient AEPs can be reconstructed. The capacity in obtaining both ASSR and its underlying transient components accurately and simultaneously has the potential to contribute significantly to diagnosis of patients with neuropsychiatric disorders.

Purpose – Full parallax integral 3D display is one of the promising future displays that provide different perspectives according to viewing direction. In this paper, the authors review the recent integral 3D display and image processing techniques for improving the performance, such as viewing resolution, viewing angle, etc.Design/methodology/approach – Firstly, to improve the viewing resolution of 3D images in the integral imaging display with lenslet array, the authors present 3D integral imaging display with focused mode using the time-multiplexed display. Compared with the original integral imaging with focused mode, the authors use the electrical masks and the corresponding elemental image set. In this system, the authors can generate the resolution-improved 3D images with the n×n pixels from each lenslet by using n×n time-multiplexed display. Secondly, a new image processing technique related to the elemental image generation for 3D scenes is presented. With the information provided by the Kinect device, the array of elemental images for an integral imaging display is generated.Findings – From their first work, the authors improved the resolution of 3D images by using the time-multiplexing technique through the demonstration of the 24 inch integral imaging system. Authors’ method can be applied to a practical application. Next, the proposed method with the Kinect device can gain a competitive advantage over other methods for the capture of integral images of big 3D scenes. The main advantage of fusing the Kinect and the integral imaging concepts is the acquisition speed, and the small amount of handled data.Originality / Value – In this paper, the authors review their recent methods related to integral 3D display and image processing technique.Research type – general review.