Relevant Region Research Articles

Near-Infrared Imaging of Serotonin Release from Cells with Fluorescent Nanosensors

Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter involved in various functions of the nervous, blood, and immune system. In general, detection of small biomolecules such as serotonin in real time with high spatial and temporal resolution remains challenging with conventional sensors and methods. In this work, we designed a near-infrared (nIR) fluorescent nanosensor (NIRSer) based on fluorescent single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) to image the release of serotonin from human blood platelets in real time. The nanosensor consists of a nonbleaching SWCNT backbone, which is fluorescent in the beneficial nIR tissue transparency window (800–1700 nm) and a serotonin binding DNA aptamer. The fluorescence of the NIRSer sensor (995 nm emission wavelength for (6,5)-SWCNTs) increases in response to serotonin by a factor up to 1.8. It detects serotonin reversibly with a dissociation constant of 301 nM ± 138 nM and a dynamic linear range in the physiologically relevant region from 100 nM to 1 μM. As a proof of principle, we detected serotonin release patterns from activated platelets on the single-cell level. Imaging of the nanosensors around and under the platelets enabled us to locate hot spots of serotonin release and quantify the time delay (21–30 s) between stimulation and release in a population of platelets, highlighting the spatiotemporal resolution of this nanosensor approach. In summary, we report a nIR fluorescent nanosensor for the neurotransmitter serotonin and show its potential for imaging of chemical communication between cells.

Contribution of mixed pathology to medial temporal lobe atrophy in Alzheimer's disease.

It is unclear how different proteinopathies (tau, transactive response DNA-binding protein 43 [TDP-43], amyloid β [Aβ], and α-synuclein) contribute to atrophy within medial temporal lobe (MTL) subregions in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We utilized antemortem structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to measure MTL substructures and examined the relative contribution of tau, TDP-43, Aβ, and α-synuclein measured in post-mortem tissue from 92 individuals with intermediate to high AD neuropathology. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves were analyzed for each subregion in order to discriminate TDP-43-negative and TDP-43-positive patients. TDP-43 was strongly associated with anterior MTL regions, whereas tau was relatively more associated with the posterior hippocampus. Among the MTL regions, the anterior hippocampus showed the highest area under the ROC curve (AUC). We found specific contributions of different pathologies on MTL substructure in this population with AD neuropathology. The anterior hippocampus may be a relevant region to detect concomitant TDP-43 pathology in the MTL of patients with AD.

Brain functional effects of electroconvulsive therapy during emotional processing in major depressive disorder

BackgroundIn treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (MDD), electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a treatment with high efficacy. While knowledge regarding changes in brain structure following ECT is growing, the effects of ECT on brain function during emotional processing are largely unknown. ObjectiveWe investigated the effects of ECT on the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and amygdala during negative emotional stimuli processing and its association with clinical response. MethodsIn this non-randomized longitudinal study, patients with MDD (n = 37) were assessed before and after treatment with ECT. Healthy controls (n = 37) were matched regarding age and gender. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was obtained twice, at baseline and after six weeks using a supraliminal face-matching paradigm. In order to evaluate effects of clinical response, additional post-hoc analyses were performed comparing responders to non-responders. ResultsAfter ECT, patients with MDD showed a statistically significant increase in ACC activity during processing of negative emotional stimuli (pFWE = .039). This effect was driven by responders (pFWE = .023), while non-responders showed no increase. Responders also had lower pre-treatment ACC activity compared to non-responders (pFWE = .025). No significant effects in the amygdala could be observed. ConclusionsECT leads to brain functional changes in the ACC, a relevant region for emotional regulation during processing of negative stimuli. Furthermore, baseline ACC activity might serve as a biomarker for treatment response. Findings are in accordance with recent studies highlighting properties of pre-treatment ACC to be associated with general antidepressive treatment response.

Overcoming Language Priors in VQA via Decomposed Linguistic Representations

Most existing Visual Question Answering (VQA) models overly rely on language priors between questions and answers. In this paper, we present a novel method of language attention-based VQA that learns decomposed linguistic representations of questions and utilizes the representations to infer answers for overcoming language priors. We introduce a modular language attention mechanism to parse a question into three phrase representations: type representation, object representation, and concept representation. We use the type representation to identify the question type and the possible answer set (yes/no or specific concepts such as colors or numbers), and the object representation to focus on the relevant region of an image. The concept representation is verified with the attended region to infer the final answer. The proposed method decouples the language-based concept discovery and vision-based concept verification in the process of answer inference to prevent language priors from dominating the answering process. Experiments on the VQA-CP dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

Yield and economic losses in maize caused by ambient ozone in the North China Plain (2014–2017)

Maize is the second most important crop per harvested area in the world. The North China Plain (NCP) is a highly populated and relevant agricultural region in China, experiencing some of the highest ozone (O3) concentrations worldwide. It produces ~24% of the total maize production of China in years 2014–2017. For these years, we used observational O3 data in combination with geostatistic methods to estimate county-level production and economic losses due to O3 in the NCP. AOT40 (accumulated ozone exposure over an hourly threshold of 40 ppb) values during the maize growing season (90 days before maturity) progressively increased in the four consecutive years: 13.7 ppm h, 15.4 ppm h, 16.9 ppm h and 22.7 ppm h. Mean relative yield losses were 8.2% in 2014, 9.2% in 2015, 10.4% in 2016 and 13.4% in 2017. These yield losses, derived from exposure-response functions, resulted in crop production losses of 530.3 × 104 t, 617.8 × 104 t, 713.8 × 104 t, and 953.4 × 104 t, as well as economic losses of 2343 million USD, 2672 million USD, 1887 million USD, and 2404 million USD from 2014 to 2017. The NCP is a key area in China for monitoring the effectiveness of the clean air action policies aiming at reducing emissions of air pollutants. Despite these measures, O3 concentrations have increased in NCP, and reduction of this pollutant are challenging. We suggest an increase in the number of rural air quality stations for better characterizing O3 trends in cropland areas, as well as the application of different mitigation measures. They may involve more stringent air quality regulations and changes in crops, breeding tolerant cultivars and a crop management taking into account O3 pollution.

Validation and Application of Magnetic Sub-Model Techniques in Turbogenerator End Zones for Local Eddy Current Calculation in Roebel Bars

Applying a novel magnetic sub-modeling technique allows resolving local phenomena such as eddy currents in electric machine components while incorporating effects due to magnetic fields arising from larger machine parts. Employing this procedure to turbogenerators gives the opportunity to study effects of a rotor's magnetic field impinging upon and penetrating individual copper strands of stator Roebel bars at core ends. It should be noted that the magnetically relevant end region of examined non-salient pole synchronous machines extends to several meters, whereas the complex geometry of a Roebel bar is four to five orders of magnitude smaller. This article highlights the significance of step iron design for joule heating inside stator bars and describes the mathematical framework of the applied procedure. This cutting-edge method enables accurate calculation of resulting heat generation rates due to the described phenomenon with high resolution for different end zone designs.

Stress state dependent damage modeling of self-pierce riveting process simulation using GISSMO damage model

In this study, the damage model GISSMO (Generalized Incremental Stress State dependent damage MOdel) is used to describe the evolution of ductile damage and predict the onset of fracture during the self-pierce riveting of thin aluminum (EN AW-5182) sheets. By accurate prediction of the pre-damage and material separation in the simulation of joining process, the accuracy of crashworthiness simulations can be improved. Besides, over dimensioning will be reduced and more precise components will be designed. A simple approach to illustrate the separation of upper sheet in the simulation of the joining process is based on a geometric separation criterion. Such a criterion is not predictive und cannot be used in case of variations in tool configurations, sheet thickness, and material combinations. In this work, the material failure is described in dependence of the stress state. The stress state during the process simulation is studied and the variety of damage specimens is experimental examined to characterize the parameters of damage model. The inverse analysis is used to minimize the difference between the experimental and the numerical prediction concerning the load-stroke curves and the fracture zones. The numerical simulation of self-pierce riveting with semi tubular rivet using the damage model is performed and compared with experimental produced joints. It is shown that the model predicts the separation of material in the relevant region correctly. Furthermore, the results of simulation and experiment concerning the load-stroke diagram and the geometry of the joint are in good agreement.

Перспективы развития технологий перевозки сборных грузов в контейнерах

The article highlights the problems of cargo transportation, when, at the combined stage of development of transportation of consolidated consignments, the sender cannot count on the qualified servicing of container transportation. Today, the participation of the owner of a small consignment in the transport process comes to the goods delivery to the forwarder's site. Freight forwarding companies that have mastered the market of transport services in the relevant region are engaged in primary consolidation of goods of several senders in one container. As a result, the relations between the owner of the consignment and the carrier come into conflict with the proven practice of the effectiveness of the container as a reusable container delivering goods to the destination. A big obstacle to the development of container technologies in Russia is the mismatch of land transport infrastructure to the capacity of sea container terminals, which reduces the efficiency of the logistics process as a whole. The consignment transportation arrangement, zoning of consignment transportation using various means of upsizing have been illustrated. The technological schemes of containerization using sea transport, transportation of assorted cargoes are presented. All participants of the transport process are interested in improving the situation. In order to improve the economic efficiency of transportation and reduce the cargo liability of transport means, it is proposed to upsize the consignments combined by freight forwarders into consolidated container shipments. As a new cargo unit, an intra-container module is proposed, which has practically significant properties of the container. Introducing new tools of consolidation of LCL consignments is intended to broaden the potential use of container technology in a limited period of time (the so-called free days) for containers for sea transportation used on the land of cargo delivery to the recipient.

Radyolojik bulgularla submandibular bezde dev siyalolit: Olgu sunumu

<p class="ql-align-justify">A sialolith is defined as one or more calcific foci in oval or round form within a parenchyma or duct of a salivary gland. It is most commonly seen in the submandibular salivary gland and in the 30-60 age range. A 46-year-old male patient was admitted to the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology of Istanbul University Faculty of Dentistry for dental treatment.&nbsp;A panoramic radiography incidentally showed a radiopaque formation in the right mandible angulus. No symptoms were detected in the clinically relevant region. A cone beam computed tomography showed a mixed, hyperdense focus in the lingual area in the right angulus region and a sialolith was detected. On ultrasonography, a sialolith was found in submandibular salivary gland duct. Due to the absence of any symptoms, regular followup was provided. The determination of localization and size of the sialolith with clinical and radiographic findings are important in treatment planning. In this case report, we aimed to present the radiological findings of an asymptomatic case of a large sialolith.

Eu@C86 isomers: Calculated relative populations

Relative populations of four energy-lowest IPR (isolated-pentagon-rule) isomers of Eu@C86 are computed using the Gibbs energy based on characteristics from density functional theory calculations (M06-2X/3-21G ∼ SDD entropy term, M06-2X/6-31G*∼SDD or B2PLYP(D)/6-31G*∼SDD energetics). The calculations confirm that the recently isolated Eu@C1(7)-C86 species is a major isomer in a relevant temperature region. Relationship to the empty C86 cages is discussed, too.

Relevance of Cu–3d multiplet structure in models of high- Tc cuprates

We revisit the problem of the spectra of two holes in a CuO$_{2}$ layer, modeled as a Cu-d$^{8}$ impurity with full multiplet structure coupled to a full O-2p band as an approximation to the local electronic structure of a hole doped cuprate. Unlike previous studies that treated the O band as a featureless bath, we describe it with a realistic tight binding model. While our results are in qualitative agreement with previous work, we find considerable quantitative changes when using the proper O-2p band structure. We also find (i) that only the ligand O-2p orbitals play an essential role, within this impurity model; (ii) that the three-orbital Emery model provides an accurate description for the subspace with $^{1}\!A_1$ symmetry, which includes the ground-state in the relevant region of the phase diagram; (iii) that this ground-state has only $\sim 50\%$ overlap with a Zhang-Rice singlet; (iv) that there are other low-energy states, in subspaces with different symmetries, that are absent from the three-orbital Emery model and its one-band descendants. These states play an important role in describing the elementary excitations of doped cuprates.

Learning reliable-spatial and spatial-variation regularization correlation filters for visual tracking

Single-object tracking is a significant and challenging computer vision problem. Recently, discriminative correlation filters (DCF) have shown excellent performance. But there is a theoretical defects that the boundary effect, caused by the periodic assumption of training samples, greatly limit the tracking performance. Spatially regularized DCF (SRDCF) introduces a spatial regularization to penalize the filter coefficients depending on their spatial location, which improves the tracking performance a lot. However, this simple regularization strategy implements unequal penalties for the target area filter coefficients, which makes the filter learn a distorted object appearance model. In this paper, a novel spatial regularization strategy is proposed, utilizing a reliability map to approximate the target area and to keep the penalty coefficients of relevant region consistent. Besides, we introduce a spatial variation regularization component that the second-order difference of the filter, which smooths changes of filter coefficients to prevent the filter over-fitting current frame. Furthermore, an efficient optimization algorithm called alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is developed. Comprehensive experiments are performed on three benchmark datasets: OTB-2013, OTB-2015 and TempleColor-128, and our algorithm achieves a more favorable performance than several state-of-the-art methods. Compared with SRDCF, our approach obtains an absolute gain of 6.6% and 5.1% in mean distance precision on OTB-2013 and OTB-2015, respectively. Our approach runs in real-time on a CPU.

Corelation of clinical and radiological parameters with microbiological diagnosis in spinal tuberculosis: A cross sectional study

Background: Tuberculosis is the most common and deadly multisystem disease affecting the developing world. Its incidence and prevalence is on a rise in developing countries. About 10% of pulmonary tuberculosis patients present with extra-skeletal involvement of which spine is most commonly affected. It can cause neural compromise, bone destruction and spinal deformity.Material and Methods: Our study includes 30 patients with signs and symptoms of potts spine which were evaluated further by a similar protocol of investigations in last 2 years and their demographic data, clinical, radiological and microbiological findings are reported. The clinical parameters taken into consideration were fever, cough, backache and neurological complaints and any positive findings on plain radiographs of relevant spinal region and their relative presence or absence were correlated with confirmatory diagnosis on AFB culture and gene Xpert.Results: Fever & backache were most common complaints present in 19 (63.3%) of subjects. Neurological complaints were present in 15 (50%) of subjects followed by cough in 9 (30%) of subjects.22 subjects showed some finding suggestive of potts spine on plain radiograph.18 (60%) subjects were positive for MTB on culture from biopsy taken.23 (76.7%) subjects were having gene expert test positive while 7 (23%) subjects were having negative gene expert test. Total 7 out of 30 subjects had multi drug resistance (MDR) out of which 1 subject was HIV + ve while 6 were HIV –ve.2 subjects had already started the empirical ATT regimen from the peripheral centres.Conclusion: Spinal tuberculosis is still prevelant in large numbers in developing countries which remains largely undetected in most of the health centres. Our study aims to find out the role of various common clinical symptoms individually as well as combined with radiological studies as screening tests in clinical detection of spinal tuberculosis and thus faster management in its direction.

Реформування адміністративно-територіального устрою держави в умовах децентралізації органів виконавчої влади в Україні

У статті досліджено питання реформування адміністративно-територіального устрою держави в умовах децентралізації органів виконавчої влади в Україні. Окрему увагу приділено Проектам Закону про засади адміністративно-територіального устрою України, поданих до Верховної Ради України та зареєстрованих за № 8051 від 22 лютого 2018 року та № 2804 від 24 січня 2020 року. З аналізу окремих положень Концепції реформування місцевого самоврядування та територіальної організації влади в Україні визначено цілі реформування адміністративно-територіального устрою держави в контексті децентралізації, до яких віднесено:&#x0D; 1) формування нової системи адміністративно-територіального устрою держави;2) розмежування повноважень (оптимальний розподіл) між органами місцевого самоврядування та органами виконавчої влади на різних рівнях адміністративно-територіального устрою;3) формування критеріїв для адміністративно-територіальних одиниць різного рівня адміністративно-територіального устрою держави.&#x0D; Розглянуто трирівневу структуру побудови адміністративно-територіального устрою (базовий, районний та регіональний рівні). Шляхом визначення конституційно встановленої системи адміністративно-територіального устрою України з'ясовано проблемні аспекти введення до такої системи нового елементу - громади, а також доцільність уведення такого терміну до законодавства. Висвітлено особливості Швейцарсько-українського проекту «Підтримка децентралізації в Україні» DESPRO у сприянні проведення реформи децентралізації в Україні. Звернено увагу на особливості формування адміністративно-територіальних одиниць відповідної області із дотриманням вимог, Методичні рекомендації щодо критеріїв формування адміністративно-територіальних одиниць субрегіонального (районного) рівня. Визначено базові засади реформування адміністративно-територіального устрою держави в умовах проведення децентралізації в Україні.

Cross section of α -induced reactions on Au197 at sub-Coulomb energies

Statistical model calculations have to be used for the determination of reaction rates in large-scale reaction networks for heavy-element nucleosynthesis. A basic ingredient of such a calculation is the a-nucleus optical model potential. Several different parameter sets are available in literature, but their predictions of a-induced reaction rates vary widely, sometimes even exceeding one order of magnitude. This paper presents the result of a-induced reaction cross-section measurements on gold which could be carried out for the first time very close to the astrophysically relevant energy region. The new experimental data are used to test statistical model predictions and to constrain the a-nucleus optical model potential. For the measurements the activation technique was used. The cross section of the (a,n) and (a,2n) reactions was determined from g-ray counting, while that of the radiative capture was determined via X-ray counting. The cross section of the reactions was measured below E$_a=20.0$~MeV. In the case of the $^{197}$Au(a,2n)$^{199}$Tl reaction down to 17.5~MeV with 0.5-MeV steps, reaching closer to the reaction threshold than ever before. The cross section of $^{197}$Au(a,n)$^{200}$Tl and $^{197}$Au(a,g)$^{201}$Tl was measured down to E$_a=13.6$ and 14.0~MeV, respectively, with 0.5-MeV steps above the (a,2n) reaction threshold and with 1.0-MeV steps below that. The new dataset is in agreement with the available values from the literature, but is more precise and extends towards lower energies. Two orders of magnitude lower cross sections were successfully measured than in previous experiments which used g-ray counting only, thus providing experimental data at lower energies than ever before. The new precision dataset allows us to find the best-fit a-nucleus optical model potential and to predict cross sections in the Gamow window with smaller uncertainties.

Experimental and numerical investigation of drainage mechanisms at sports fields under simulated rainfall

Infiltration and drainage are complex hydrological considerations to determine unsaturated flow processes in case of irrigation, root growth and pollutant transport in porous media consisting of multi-layered soils. Considering sports fields, this affects the quality of sports organization in terms of player’s health, the participation of spectators and the cancellation of games. This study investigated the drainage behavior of sports fields both experimentally and numerically under simulated rainfall. To achieve this goal, a newly-developed experimental setup which consists of a rainfall simulator (RS) that is able to simulate the natural rainfall, and a drainage tank (DT) that is able to pack stratified drainage layers same as in the sports fields were used. Experimental rainfall hyetographs were designed to simulate various rainfall conditions for the relevant region in Istanbul, Turkey. Numerous experiments were conducted to investigate hydrological description of unsaturated flow by using packed drainage layers in the laboratory. Time-dependent water contents were also monitored using soil moisture sensors (10-HS, Decagon Devices) at different depths in the drainage layers. Soil water retention curve (SWRC) of each drainage layer obtained from calibration tests and empirical parameters (α,n) were optimized with HYDRUS-3D model by using water contents and suction pressure results. Observed drain outflow hydrographs were compared with simulated drain outflow hydrographs by using statistical indices of Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) index, Kling and Gupta Efficiency (KGE) index and determination coefficient (R2). Experimental results and HYDRUS-3D simulations showed good compatibility with the values of NSE, KGE and R2 varied between 0.859–0.958, 0.594–0.972 and 0.868–0.975, respectively. In the present study, experimental and numerical investigation of the drainage mechanisms for sports fields was evaluated by considering unsaturated flow characteristics through the different drainage layers.

Segmentation of Relevant Region in Breast Histopathology Images using FCM with Guided Initialization

This study proposes a modified initialization approach for the conventional FCM, namely FCM with guided initialization. The FCM with guided initialization was implemented to segment the relevant regions in the breast histopathology images. The initialization method to select initial centers is based on the Cyan (C) channel histogram. Area Overlap Measure (AOM) and Combined Equal Importance (CEI) were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed FCM with guided initialization. The obtained AOM and CEI for the overall dataset achieved promising results: 0.89 in AOM and 0.88 in CEI. When comparing the number of iterations required to complete the proposed FCM clustering algorithm, the FCM with guided initialization is found to be effective in reducing the search space by showing a lower number of iterations.

Governance of factors for the regional insurance market development (evidence from Russia)

Insurance is the most important institution for social and financial protection. Therefore, the development level of the regional insurance market not only determines the volume and quality of this protection, but also influences the social and economic development of the region through the coverage of risks and the provision of additional jobs. In turn, many factors have a significant impact on the development of the regional insurance market itself. This study is aimed at developing a model for governing the development factors of the regional insurance market, which (governance) focuses on improving the development efficiency of not only the regional insurance market itself, but also the socio-economic development of the relevant region. In this regard, the model for governing the factors of development of the regional insurance market involves solving the following scientific problems: identifying national factors for the functioning and development of the Russian insurance market that influence the development of the regional insurance market; determining regional development factors affecting the regional insurance market; identifying the impact of the regional insurance market on the socio-economic development of the region; developing recommendations on the effective impact of national and regional factors on the regional insurance market development and, through it, on the socio-economic development of the region. Implementation of the proposed model for governing the factors for the regional insurance market development will increase its efficiency and strengthen the socio-economic development of the region.

Adaptive Attention Annotation Model: Optimizing the Prediction Path through Dependency Fusion

Previous methods build image annotation model by leveraging three basic dependencies: relations between image and label (image/label), between images (image/image) and between labels (label/label). Even though plenty of researches show that multiple dependencies can to improve annotation performance, different dependencies actually do not work jointly in their diagram, whose performance is largely depending on the result predicted by image/label section. To address this problem, we propose the adaptive attention annotation model (AAAM) to associate these dependencies with the prediction path, which is composed of a series of labels (tags) in the order they are detected. In particular, we optimize the prediction path by detecting the relevant labels from the easy-to-detect to the hard-to-detect, which are found using Binary Cross-Entropy (BCE) and Triplet Margin (TM) losses, respectively. Besides, in order to capture the inforamtion of each label, instead of explicitly extracting regional featutres, we propose the self-attention machanism to implicitly enhance the relevant region and restrain those irrelevant. To validate the effective of the model, we conduct experiments on three well-known public datasets, COCO 2014, IAPR TC-12 and NUSWIDE, and achieve better performance than the state-of-the-art methods.

The Main Developments in the Education System in Russia in 2018

In 2018, the main developments in the education system can be divided into the two unequal phases: one before the President’s May 2018 Decree and the other after it. Before May 2018, the main attention was focused on teachers’ salaries; the “struggle” to raise them to the average pay in a relevant region was already waged for six years running. Average salaries of higher-education teaching personnel attract less attention though by 2000 their value was to be equal to 200 percent of the average salary in a relevant subject of the Russian Federation where the higher educational institution was situated. From May 2018, the main focus in education was switched over to development of the “Education” national project and the volume of budget funding to be allocated on the specified goals. In addition, in the higher education system serious debates started on the issue of state accreditation of higher educational establishment.