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The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a surge in digital payments, with over 40 % of adults in low- and middle-income countries making their first merchant payments using cards, phones, or the internet since the pandemic began. This study examines the determinants of adopting digital payments during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, the study utilized secondary data from the World Bank's most recent dataset, collected as part of the Global Findex Database 2021. A Covariance Based-Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM) was applied to analyze the data and explore the intricate pathways between variables. The mediation role of the use of technological tools on the relationship between socio-economic factors and digital payment adoption was also examined. Accordingly, mobile ownership, having an ATM/Debit card, and internet access were the technological tools significantly determining digital payment adoption. Age, education, income quantile, receiving wage payment, and engagement in formal financial transactions (as a proxy for financial inclusion) were among the socio-economic characteristics influencing digital payment adoption. Engagement in formal financial inclusion, mobile ownership, having an ATM/Debit card, and internet access were also influenced by individuals' socio-economic characteristics. Mobile ownership, having an ATM/Debit card, internet access, and engagement in formal financial transactions were significant mediating factors in the relationship between digital payment and socio-economic predictors.

Abstract Characterization of inter-regional interactions in brain is essential for understanding the mechanism relevant to normal brain function and neurological disease. The recently developed flexible micro (μ)-electrocorticography (μECoG) device is one prominent method used to examine large-scale cortical activity across multiple regions. The sheet-shaped μECoG electrodes arrays can be placed on a relatively wide area of cortical surface beneath the skull by inserting the device into the space between skull and brain. Although rats and mice are useful tools for neuroscience, current μECoG recording methods in these animals are limited to the parietal region of cerebral cortex. Recording cortical activity from the temporal region of cortex in mice has proven difficult because of surgical barriers created by the skull and surrounding temporalis muscle anatomy. Here, we developed a sheet-shaped 64-channel μECoG device that allows access to the mouse temporal cortex, and we determined the factor determining the appropriate bending stiffness for the μECoG electrode array. We also established a surgical technique to implant the electrode arrays into the epidural space over a wide area of cerebral cortex covering from the barrel field to olfactory (piriform) cortex, which is the deepest region of the cerebral cortex. Using histology and computed tomography (CT) images, we confirmed that the tip of the μECoG device reached to the most ventral part of cerebral cortex without causing noticeable damage to the brain surface. Moreover, the device simultaneously recorded somatosensory and odor stimulus-evoked neural activity from dorsal and ventral parts of cerebral cortex in awake and anesthetized mice. These data indicate that our μECoG device and surgical techniques enable the recording of large-scale cortical activity from the parietal to temporal cortex in mice, including somatosensory and olfactory cortices. This system will provide more opportunities for the investigation of physiological functions from wider areas of the mouse cerebral cortex than those currently available with existing ECoG techniques.

Hydrogen, H2, is likely to become the key renewable energy carrier for the future. Thermochemical conversion of biomass can be applied to produce H2 involving a variety of conversion technologies, including gasification, that produce a mix of synthesis gas, H2 and CO. It is of paramount importance thus having a consolidated, efficient, versatile and clean technology to produce H2 in a sustainable and continuous manner contributing to current energy policies. For this work, a bench-scale batch gasifier located at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo Tech, was used for the production of syngas from the torrefied woody biomass. These data were inputs for the development of an hybrid model for the prediction of the composition of the producer gas. The time-depending data obtained in the semi-batch gasifier process was composed of three regions (pyrolysis, oxidation and reduction zones) in which recurrent neural networks were combined with physical-based models, whose parameters were conveniently tuned to fit the experimental data.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of quadripulse transcranial magnetic stimulation-50 (QPS-50) in patients with intractable epilepsy. Methods: Four patients were included in the study. QPS-50, which induces long-term depression in healthy subjects, was administered for 30 min on a weekly basis for 12 weeks. Patients’ clinical symptoms and physiological parameters were evaluated before, during, and after the repeated QPS-50 period. We performed two control experiments: the effect in MEP (Motor evoked potential) size after a single QPS-50 session with a round coil in nine healthy volunteers, and a follow-up study of physiological parameters by repeated QPS-50 sessions in four other healthy participants. Results: Motor threshold (MT) decreased during the repeated QPS-50 sessions in all patients. Epileptic symptoms worsened in two patients, whereas no clinical worsening was observed in the other two patients. In contrast, MT remained unaffected for 12 weeks in all healthy volunteers. Conclusions: QPS-50 may not be effective as a treatment for intractable epilepsy. Significance: In intractable epilepsy patients, administering repeated QPS-50 may paradoxically render the motor cortex more excitable, probably because of abnormal inhibitory control within the epileptic cortex. The possibility of clinical aggravation should be seriously considered when treating intractable epilepsy patients with non-invasive stimulation methods.

BackgroundPatients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are known to exhibit visuospatial processing impairment, as reflected in eye movements from the early stages of the disease. We investigated whether the pattern of gaze exploration during visual tasks could be useful for detecting cognitive decline at the earliest stage.MethodsSixteen AD patients (age: 79.1 ± 7.9 years, Mini Mental State Examination [MMSE] score: 17.7 ± 5.3, mean ± standard deviation) and 16 control subjects (age: 79.4 ± 4.6, MMSE score: 26.9 ± 2.4) participated. In the visual memory task, subjects memorized presented line drawings for later recall. In the visual search tasks, they searched for a target Landolt ring of specific orientation (serial search task) or color (pop-out task) embedded among arrays of distractors. Using video-oculography, saccade parameters, patterns of gaze exploration, and pupil size change during task performance were recorded and compared between AD and control subjects.ResultsIn the visual memory task, the number of informative regions of interest (ROIs) fixated was significantly reduced in AD patients compared to control subjects. In the visual search task, AD patients took a significantly longer time and more saccades to detect the target in the serial but not in pop-out search. In both tasks, there was no significant difference in the saccade frequency and amplitude between groups. On-task pupil modulation during the serial search task was decreased in AD. The number of ROIs fixated in the visual memory task and search time and saccade numbers in the serial search task differentiated both groups of subjects with high sensitivity, whereas saccade parameters of pupil size modulation were effective in confirming normal cognition from cognitive decline with high specificity.DiscussionReduced fixation on informative ROIs reflected impaired attentional allocation. Increased search time and saccade numbers in the visual search task indicated inefficient visual processing. Decreased on-task pupil size during visual search suggested decreased pupil modulation with cognitive load in AD patients, reflecting impaired function of the locus coeruleus. When patients perform the combination of these tasks to visualize multiple aspects of visuospatial processing, cognitive decline can be detected at an early stage with high sensitivity and specificity and its progression be evaluated.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on neurology in Japan, by analyzing data on the number of neurological patients at our hospital in Tokyo. Material and Methods: We counted the number of inpatients and outpatients per month; from January 2018 to September 2020. We defined the data from April 2020 to May 2020, as the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that from July 2020 to September 2020, as the second wave. The data from each wave were compared to those in the same period within the previous 2 years. We also analyzed other data; including, inpatients with stroke, outpatients with Parkinson’s disease, and outpatients with epilepsy. Results: In the first wave, the overall number of inpatients and outpatients greatly decreased; however, the number of inpatients with stroke increased. The ratio of outpatients with Parkinson’s disease, or outpatients with epilepsy to total outpatients also increased. In the second wave, the overall number of inpatients markedly increased, while that of outpatients slightly decreased. Conclusion: All Japanese general hospitals were greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic; especially in the first wave, even if the hospitals did not have in-hospital COVID-19 infection, or were not designated for COVID-19. Three factors; i.e. governmental, hospital, and patient factors, could affect the number of neurological patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The numerical data reflecting the patients’ behavior might provide suggestions for addressing issues during other pandemics in the future.

Although deep-learning-based materials discovery has attracted considerable research attention, the application of deep learning has been limited to discovery of materials within single material types such that the discovered materials are similar to existing ones. Thus, we developed an alternative approach for discovering porous materials. A materials discovery design space was configured using several key porous materials and a conditional generative adversarial network (CGAN), which structurally hybridizes them. Hybridization was controlled using a vector design variable input as a condition to the CGAN, and each design variable component represented a key porous material intensity, which was defined as a conceptual quantity for expressing materialness. Furthermore, by varying the vector latent variable input to the CGAN, any number of similar hybrid porous materials could be generated using the same design variable. The multiobjective Bayesian optimizer efficiently discovered hybrid porous materials constituting Pareto solutions in the objective function space of the material properties, which were mapped from the design space by the CGAN structural hybridization and computational fluid dynamics property evaluation. Tradeoff properties such as the pressure drop and filtration efficiency were multiobjectively optimized for key porous materials exhibiting random, packed-sphere, and sponge structures. By flexibly adopting their structural parameters depending on the required pressure drop and filtration efficiency, the discovered optimized hybrid porous materials outperformed the key porous ones. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed framework for discovering porous materials.

In this paper, the dynamic behavior of gas bubbles and flow in a liquid-gas-solid oscillatory baffled reactor (OBR) was analyzed. A method based on baffle and oscillating flow induced vorticity was employed to analyze the dynamic gas bubble behavior and elucidate key parameters that govern the flow phenomena and reactor performances. Through visualization experiment for gas flow, it was observed that the fraction of gas bubbles inside OBR with oscillation increased up to 2.9 times than that without oscillation at the gas flow rate of 50 mL/min. Then it was observed that increasing the oscillation amplitude promoted the breakage of gas bubbles under the same conditions of oscillatory Reynolds number (Reo). On the other hand, particle image velocimetry (PIV) analysis revealed that the spatial distribution of streamlines and the magnitude of vorticity was almost same among operating conditions with different amplitudes of oscillation at the same Reo. In experiments for three-phase hydrogenation of 3-butyn-2-ol, the evaluated OBR showed higher reaction performance than the conventional packed bed reactor (PBR), and at the same Reo, the OBR with lower amplitude attained higher selectivity. It was considered that control of dynamic behavior of gas bubbles by the frequency and the amplitude of oscillation could enhance the reactor performances in the OBR.

The cortical silent period (CSP) induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been reported to be prolonged in 2 Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) patients who presented with periodic myoclonus. Herein, we will show a prominent prolongation of TMS-induced CSP in a patient with CJD who did not have periodic myoclonus. The patient was a 66-year-old woman who developed rapidly progressive dementia. No myoclonic jerks were observed. Brain magnetic resonance imaging showed high-intensity lesions in the cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus on diffusion-weighted images. Electroencephalography (EEG) showed diffuse and continuous slow waves, but no periodic synchronous discharges (PSDs). A TMS study revealed that the duration of CSP was prominently prolonged: the duration of CSP (370 ms) equaled that of the mean + 6.5 SD of the normal value. One month after admission, the patient exhibited akinetic mutism and developed periodic myoclonus in her limbs. The clinical course was compatible with CJD. To date, CSP has been measured in only 2 CJD patients. The common findings in both cases were marked prolongation of CSP, periodic myoclonus, and PSD on EEG. In short, we demonstrated that TMS-induced CSP was prominently prolonged even at the early stage of CJD without periodic myoclonus or PSD. In other disorders, the CSP has not been reported to be comparably prolonged to that of CJD patients. Therefore, we conclude that TMS-induced CSP could be prominently prolonged even in the early stage of CJD. The marked prolongation of the CSP might be an early biomarker of CJD.

Background: Theta burst stimulation (TBS) and quadripulse stimulation (QPS) are known to induce synaptic plasticity in humans. There have been no head-to-head comparisons of the efficacy and variability between TBS and QPS. Objective: To compare the efficacy and interindividual variability between the original TBS and QPS protocols. We hypothesized that QPS would be more effective and less variable than TBS. Methods: Forty-six healthy subjects participated in this study. Thirty subjects participated in the main comparison experiment, and the other sixteen subjects participated in the experiment to obtain natural variation in motor-evoked potentials. The facilitatory effects were compared between intermittent TBS (iTBS) and QPS5, and the inhibitory effects were compared between continuous TBS (cTBS) and QPS50. The motor-evoked potential amplitudes elicited by transcranial magnetic stimulation over the primary motor cortex were measured before the intervention and every 5 min after the intervention for 1 h. To investigate the interindividual variability, the responder/nonresponder/opposite-responder rates were also analyzed. Results: The facilitatory effects of QPS5 were greater than those of iTBS, and the inhibitory effects of QPS50 were much stronger than those of cTBS. The responder rate of QPS was significantly higher than that of TBS. QPS had a smaller number of opposite responders than TBS. Conclusion: QPS is more effective and stable for synaptic plasticity induction than TBS.

Examples of π single bonds in diradicals are rare, as they are typically unstable. Here, the authors describe a room temperature-stable closed-shell bicyclic tetrasilane that features a Si-Si π single bond between two of the non-adjacent Si centers.

Abstract Background McLeod syndrome is a rare X-linked recessive acanthocytosis associated with neurological manifestations including progressive chorea, cognitive impairment, psychiatric disturbances, seizures, and sensorimotor axonal polyneuropathy. However, no studies have investigated the functioning of central sensorimotor tracts in patients with McLeod syndrome. Case presentation A 66-year-old man had experienced slowly progressive chorea and gait disturbance due to lower limb muscle weakness since his early fifties. Blood examinations showed erythrocyte acanthocytosis and the reduction of Kell antigens in red blood cells. Brain magnetic resonance imaging showed atrophy of the bilateral caudate nuclei and putamen. The diagnosis of McLeod syndrome was confirmed by the presence of a mutation of the XK gene on the X chromosome. Somatosensory-evoked potential and transcranial magnetic stimulation studies demonstrated that the central sensory and motor conduction times were abnormally prolonged for the lower extremity but normal for the upper extremity. Conclusions This is the first report of the involvement of the central sensorimotor tracts for the legs in a patient with McLeod syndrome. The clinical neurophysiological technique revealed the central sensorimotor tracts involvements clinically masked by neuropathy.

Wall-eyed bilateral internuclear ophthalmoplegia (WEBINO) syndrome has previously been reported in only 2 patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Herein, we report a third case of WEBINO syndrome with PSP. The patient was an 81-year-old man who had experienced gradually increasing gait disturbance and occasional falls since the age of 78 years. At 80 years of age, he presented with cognitive impairment, parkinsonism, and oculomotor abnormalities. The oculomotor abnormalities consisted of vertical gaze palsy and loss of eye convergence. Brain magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated marked atrophy of the midbrain. He was diagnosed with PSP. At the age of 81 years, he presented with alternating extropia in his forward gaze and adduction paresis and outward nystagmus of the abducted eye in his horizontal gaze, both of which were compatible with WEBINO syndrome. Previously, we reported the first case of PSP with WEBINO syndrome, and another group recently reported a second case. In light of the previous cases and the present case, WEBINO syndrome in PSP should not be considered extremely rare. Furthermore, WEBINO syndrome has not been reported in other neurodegenerative disorders, which suggests that it might be a useful and specific diagnostic finding in PSP.

We report a 65-year-old man who was diagnosed with focal status epilepticus generating a dreamy state, delusions with anxiety, complex audiovisual hallucinations, elementary auditory hallucinations, and metamorphopsia with a growing large lateral temporal lobe lesion. After administrating anti-seizure drugs, all the symptoms disappeared, and brain magnetic resonance imaging revealed ipsilateral hippocampal sclerosis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report to present all the symptoms in one epilepsy case. On the basis of semiology, electroencephalography, and brain magnetic resonance imaging, we speculated that epileptic activities that have originated from the lateral lesion might have propagated to the ipsilateral mesial temporal lobe, causing hippocampal sclerosis.

Different regions of the striatum regulate different types of behavior. However, how dopamine signals differ across striatal regions and how dopamine regulates different behaviors remain unclear. Here, we compared dopamine axon activity in the ventral, dorsomedial, and dorsolateral striatum, while mice performed a perceptual and value-based decision task. Surprisingly, dopamine axon activity was similar across all three areas. At a glance, the activity multiplexed different variables such as stimulus-associated values, confidence, and reward feedback at different phases of the task. Our modeling demonstrates, however, that these modulations can be inclusively explained by moment-by-moment changes in the expected reward, that is the temporal difference error. A major difference between areas was the overall activity level of reward responses: reward responses in dorsolateral striatum were positively shifted, lacking inhibitory responses to negative prediction errors. The differences in dopamine signals put specific constraints on the properties of behaviors controlled by dopamine in these regions.

We report on a 44-year-old woman who was diagnosed with toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) during the recovery phase from autoimmune limbic encephalitis with anti-glutamate receptor antibodies. Both, autoimmune limbic encephalitis and TEN are very rare diseases. The co-existence of the two diseases has not yet been reported. We speculate that the total of 18 drugs needed for the treatment of encephalitis might have increased the risk of TEN. Similar reports would be required to elucidate the pathophysiology of the co-existence.

Hydrogen, H2, is likely to become the key renewable energy carrier for the future. Thermochemical conversion of biomass can be applied to produce H2 involving a variety of conversion technologies, including gasification, that produce a mix of synthesis gas, H2 and CO. It is of paramount importance thus having a consolidated, efficient, versatile and clean technology to produce H2 in a sustainable and continuous manner contributing to current energy policies. For this work, a bench-scale batch gasifier located at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo Tech, was used for the production of syngas from the torrefied woody biomass. These data were inputs for the development of an hybrid model for the prediction of the composition of the producer gas. The time-depending data obtained in the semi-batch gasifier process was composed of three regions (pyrolysis, oxidation and reduction zones) in which recurrent neural networks were combined with physical-based models, whose parameters were conveniently tuned to fit the experimental data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report describes a rare case presenting with dystonic seizures due to anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor encephalitis. The patient was an 18-year-old woman with repeated right-dominant dystonic seizures even under sedation. Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) showed intense hyperperfusion of the caudate nuclei, putamen, globus pallidus, thalamus, and insula on the left side, suggesting encephalitis. Antibodies against NMDA receptors were detected in the sera and cerebrospinal fluids. Immune-mediated treatments were administered. Three months later, the dystonic seizures disappeared. We diagnosed her with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. SPECT suggested that the main region of encephalitis was the basal ganglia. Therefore, we propose that the patient’s dystonic seizures may originate from the insula and be generated by intense hyperactivity of the basal ganglia.

The olfactory bulb is arranged in glomeruli defined by their olfactory receptor expression. The authors identify an olfactory receptor for fox odour, TMT, and show that activation of the glomerulus expressing that receptor in mice leads to immobility, but does not lead to other fear behaviours.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) have been applied to many research issues because these stimulation techniques can modulate neural activity in the human brain painlessly and non-invasively with weak electrical currents. However, there are no formal safety guidelines for the selection of stimulus parameters in either tDCS or tACS. As a means of gathering the information that is needed to produce safety guidelines, in this article, we summarize the adverse events of tDCS and tACS. In both stimulation techniques, most adverse effects are mild and disappear soon after stimulation. Nevertheless, several papers have reported that, in tDCS, some adverse events persist even after stimulation. The persistent events consist of skin lesions similar to burns, which can arise even in healthy subjects, and mania or hypomania in patients with depression. Recently, one paper reported a pediatric patient presenting with seizure after tDCS, although the causal relationship between stimulation and seizure is not clear. As this seizure is the only serious adverse events yet reported in connection with tDCS, tDCS is considered safe. In tACS, meanwhile, no persistent adverse events have been reported, but considerably fewer reports are available on the safety of tACS than on the safety of tDCS. Therefore, to establish the safety of tDCS and tACS, we need to scan the literature continuously for information on the adverse events of both stimulation techniques. Further safety investigations are also required. Keywords: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), Safety, Adverse effect, Side effect

Degradation of hazardous organic compounds using ultrasound is an attractive advanced oxidation technology for wastewater treatment, and it is well known that the ultrasonic degradation reaction is enhanced by particle addition. In this study, the effects of ultrasonic irradiation conditions and particle addition on the degradation rate constant were investigated using pseudo-first-order chemical reaction model. Moreover, the application of this model to degradation of other organic compounds in the presence of particles by other research groups has been investigated. The degradation reaction was enhanced by particle addition, and the apparent degradation rate constant is proportional to the increase in amount of particle. In addition, the constant of proportionality is not influenced by degraded material and ultrasonic frequency. However, particle type influences the constant of proportionality.

Kinetics, isotherm and thermodynamics of sterol adsorption on styrene-divinylbenzene based ion-exchange resin with strong acid was investigated at temperature in the range of 298 to 313 K using a model solution of stigmasterol in n-heptane with initial concentration in the range of 0.3(10-3 to 1.8(10-3 kg/kg-solution. Adsorbent (5 wt%) was added to the model solution and isothermal adsorption was performed at 3.33 rps for 7.2(103 s. Kinetics of sterol adsorption was analysed based on pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order models. The results revealed that pseudo-second-order model agreed with the experimental data, much better than pseudo-first-order model. At the equilibrium of adsorption, adsorption capacity (qe) decreased when the temperature was increased. This result indicated that sterol adsorption was exothermic. Analysis of adsorption isotherm data based on Langmuir, Freundlich and linear models showed that Freundlich was the best model that could predict the adsorption isotherm data. Adsorption equilibrium constants calculated based on Freundlich model at various temperatures were used to calculate Gibb’s free energy change (ΔG), enthalpy change (ΔH), and entropy change (ΔS). The increase of ΔG with respect to temperature indicated that the adsorption was more favourable at lower temperatures. The negative value of ΔH indicated that the adsorption was exothermic and agreed well with the effect of temperature on adsorption capacity. The negative value of ΔS indicated associative adsorption and decrease of the randomness between the solid/liquid interfaces due to the adsorption.

Dopamine is thought to regulate learning from appetitive and aversive events. Here we examined how optogenetically-identified dopamine neurons in the lateral ventral tegmental area of mice respond to aversive events in different conditions. In low reward contexts, most dopamine neurons were exclusively inhibited by aversive events, and expectation reduced dopamine neurons’ responses to reward and punishment. When a single odor predicted both reward and punishment, dopamine neurons’ responses to that odor reflected the integrated value of both outcomes. Thus, in low reward contexts, dopamine neurons signal value prediction errors (VPEs) integrating information about both reward and aversion in a common currency. In contrast, in high reward contexts, dopamine neurons acquired a short-latency excitation to aversive events that masked their VPE signaling. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering the contexts to examine the representation in dopamine neurons and uncover different modes of dopamine signaling, each of which may be adaptive for different environments.