julilili42/papers huggingface dataset:
Entraining alpha activity using visual stimulation in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. A feasibility study
2020-04-28

Abstract Entraining alpha activity with rhythmic visual, auditory, and electrical stimulation can reduce experimentally induced pain. However, evidence for alpha entrainment and pain reduction in patients with chronic pain is limited. This feasibility study investigated whether visual alpha stimulation can increase alpha power in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain and secondarily, if chronic pain was reduced following stimulation. In a within-subject design, 22 patients underwent 4-minute periods of stimulation at 10 Hz (alpha), 7 Hz (high-theta, control), and 1 Hz (control) in a pseudo-randomized order. Patients underwent stimulation both sitting and standing and verbally rated their pain before and after each stimulation block on a 0-10 numerical rating scale. Global alpha power was significantly higher during 10 Hz compared to 1 Hz stimulation when patients were standing (t = −6.08, p &lt;.001). On a more regional level, a significant increase of alpha power was found in the right-middle and left-posterior region when patients were sitting. With respect to our secondary aim, no significant reduction of pain intensity and unpleasantness was found. However, only the alpha stimulation resulted in a minimal clinically important difference in at least 50% of participants for pain intensity (50%) and unpleasantness ratings (65%) in the sitting condition. This study provides initial evidence for the potential of visual stimulation as a means to enhance alpha activity in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. The brief period of stimulation was insufficient to reduce chronic pain. This study is the first to provide evidence that a brief period of visual stimulation at alpha frequency can significantly increase alpha power in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Further study is warranted to investigate optimal dose and individual stimulation parameters to achieve pain relief in these patients.
Short-term memory of temporal information revisited
2020-04-28

Abstract Previous studies provided diverging evidence regarding modality specificity of temporal information in short-term memory. Some authors reported modality-specific interference effects on visual and auditory duration discrimination, whereas others observed crossmodal interference effects. One reason for these diverging results could be different trade-offs between the temporal discrimination task and the interference task in these studies. Therefore, this study re-examined these effects with interference tasks (speeded color/pitch change discrimination) that were especially suited to assess potential trade-offs between the primary and the secondary tasks. The results showed that the auditory interference task selectively impaired discrimination performance for auditory durations, whereas the visual interference task proved to be inefficient as interference task. The present results agree best with an account that suggests a modality-specific representation of temporal information in short-term memory.
Magnetoencephalographic Signatures of Hierarchical Rule Learning in Newborns
2020-04-28

Abstract Estimating the extent to which newborn humans process input from their environment, especially regarding the depth of processing, is a challenging question. To approach this problem, we measured brain responses in 20 newborns with magnetoencephalography (MEG) in a “local-global” auditory oddball paradigm in which two-levels of hierarchical regularities are presented. Results suggest that infants in the first weeks of life are able to learn hierarchical rules, yet a certain level of vigilance seems to be necessary. Newborns detected violations of the first-order regularity and displayed a mismatch response between 200-400ms. Violations of the second-order regularity only evoked a late response in newborns in an active state, which was expressed by a high heart rate variability. These findings are in line with those obtained in human adults and older infants suggesting a continuity in the functional architecture from term- birth on, despite the important immaturity of the human brain at this age.
The Effects of Parenting on Children’s Noncognitive Skills in Adolescence: Evidence from a Sample of Twins in Germany
2020-04-28

Many theories in the social sciences assume that parenting affects child development. Previous research mostly supports the notion that parenting affects the skill development of children in early childhood. There are, however, no studies testing whether parenting in early adolescence has such a causal influence. We estimate the causal effects of parenting on early adolescents’ noncognitive skills using data from the German Twin Family Panel (TwinLife). Specifically, we look at the effects of parenting styles, parental activities, and extracurricular activities on the academic self-concept, motivation, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control of 10 to 14 years old children. To control for unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality, we employ twin fixed-effects models combined with longitudinal information. In addition, based on separate analyses for dizygotic (DZ) and monozygotic (MZ) twins, we test whether genetic variation moderates the effects of parenting. Our findings provide no support to the notion that parenting styles, parental activities, and extracurricular activities in early adolescence affect the development of children’s noncognitive skills. We conclude that our results, in combination with the majority of evidence from previous research, are in line with a model according to which parenting has larger effects on the skill development of children in early childhood than in early adolescence.
Food waste as a resource: grinding, dilution, and storage as a pretreatment strategy to produce fermentation intermediates
2020-04-28

Abstract In several states of the U.S., one measure to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions has been to ban food wastes from landfills. As a result, U.S.-based companies are now providing decentralized food-waste management systems for supermarkets and restaurants, which include storage as a slurry. It is unclear, however, which storage conditions (factors) would affect the spontaneous microbial activity, resulting in a different fermentation product spectra, and how this would affect further post-treatment. Here, we performed two experiments to mimic: 1) storage and 2) subsequent anaerobic digestion. For the food-waste storage system, we designed a mixed-level fractional factorial analysis with 12 experimental combinations, including separating food waste into: carbohydrate-rich, lipid-rich, and protein-rich food waste. We found that all factors that we tested correlated with the fermentation product spectra, but that especially the factors: i) storage temperature; ii) food-waste composition; and iii) storage time affected the fermentation outcome. We observed that relatively low pH levels of 3-4, which were achieved due to rapid lactic acid accumulation by microbial activity during storage, coincided with greater lactate production at a maximum chemical oxygen demand (COD) selectivity of 90%. This provides an opportunity to optimize lactate production, which is ideal for subsequent methane or chemical production. TOC/Abstract graphic
ARTS 2.0: feature updates and expansion of the Antibiotic Resistant Target Seeker for comparative genome mining
2020-04-29

Abstract Multi-drug resistant pathogens have become a major threat to human health and new antibiotics are urgently needed. Most antibiotics are derived from secondary metabolites produced by bacteria. In order to avoid suicide, these bacteria usually encode resistance genes, in some cases within the biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) of the respective antibiotic compound. Modern genome mining tools enable researchers to computationally detect and predict BGCs that encode the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. The major challenge now is the prioritization of the most promising BGCs encoding antibiotics with novel modes of action. A recently developed target-directed genome mining approach allows researchers to predict the mode of action of the encoded compound of an uncharacterized BGC based on the presence of resistant target genes. In 2017, we introduced the ‘Antibiotic Resistant Target Seeker’ (ARTS). ARTS allows for specific and efficient genome mining for antibiotics with interesting and novel targets by rapidly linking housekeeping and known resistance genes to BGC proximity, duplication and horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events. Here, we present ARTS 2.0 available at http://arts.ziemertlab.com. ARTS 2.0 now includes options for automated target directed genome mining in all bacterial taxa as well as metagenomic data. Furthermore, it enables comparison of similar BGCs from different genomes and their putative resistance genes.
The spatial–numerical association of response codes effect and math skills: why related?
2020-04-29

Abstract Evidence from multiple studies conducted in the past few decades converges on the conclusion that numerical properties can be associated with specific directions in space. Such spatial–numerical associations (SNAs), as a signature of elementary number processing, seem to be a likely correlate of math skills. Nevertheless, almost three decades of research on the spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect, the hallmark of SNAs, has not provided conclusive results on whether there is a relation with math skills. Here, going beyond reviewing the existing literature on the topic, we try to answer a more fundamental question about why the SNARC effect should (and should not) be related to math skills. We propose a multiroute model framework for a SNARC–math skills relationship. We conclude that the relationship is not straightforward and that several other factors should be considered, which under certain circumstances or in certain groups can cause effects of opposite directions. The model can account for conflicting results, and thus may be helpful for deriving predictions in future studies.
Influence of Emission Sources and Tributaries on the Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Micropollutant Mixtures and Associated Effects in a Small River
2020-04-29

Abstract Organic micropollutants of anthropogenic origin in river waters may impair aquatic ecosystem health and drinking water quality. To evaluate micropollutant fate and turnover on a catchment scale, information on input source characteristics as well as spatial and temporal variability is required. The influence of tributaries from agricultural and urban areas and the input of wastewater were investigated by grab and Lagrangian sampling under base flow conditions within a 7.7-km-long stretch of the Ammer River (southwest Germany) using target screening for 83 organic micropollutants and 4 in vitro bioassays with environmentally relevant modes of action. In total, 9 pesticides and transformation products, 13 pharmaceuticals, and 6 industrial and household chemicals were detected. Further, aryl hydrocarbon receptor induction, peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor activity, estrogenicity, and oxidative stress response were measured in the river. The vast majority of the compounds and mixture effects were introduced by the effluent of a wastewater-treatment plant, which contributed 50% of the total flow rate of the river on the sampling day. The tributaries contributed little to the overall load of organic micropollutants and mixture effects because of their relatively low discharge but showed a different chemical and toxicological pattern from the Ammer River, though a comparison to effect-based trigger values pointed toward unacceptable surface water quality in the main stem and in some of the tributaries. Chemical analysis and in vitro bioassays covered different windows of analyte properties but reflected the same picture. Environ Toxicol Chem 2020;39:1382–1391. © 2020 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of SETAC.
When was silcrete heat treatment invented in South Africa?
2020-04-29

Abstract Silcrete heat treatment, along with a suit of other innovations, have been used to argue for an early onset of modern or complex behaviours in Middle Stone Age hominins. This practice was confined to South Africa’s southern and western Cape regions where it was continuously practised since the Still Bay industry. However, the exact moment that this technological advancement occurred still remains unclear. This is partly due to the scarcity of silcrete assemblages dating to the first half of the Middle Stone Age. To determine when silcrete heat treatment began to be well-established, we compare the silcrete assemblages from two archaeological sites situated along the south western coast of South Africa: Hoedjiespunt 1, one of the earliest Middle Stone Age silcrete assemblages dating to 119–130 ka, and Duinefontein 2, one of the latest Early Stone Age assemblages dating to 200–400 ka. Our results suggest that the invention of heat treatment occurred sometime between 130 ka and 200–400 ka, as it is still absent in the earlier assemblage but fully mastered and well-integrated in the recent one. This period corresponds to the time that Homo sapiens became the major hominin species in the southern African subcontinent and it is roughly the time that silcrete use became widespread in the second half of the Cape-coastal Middle Stone Age. This opens interesting new questions on the relation between silcrete use and heat treatment and on why early modern humans spontaneously invented heat treatment when they began using silcrete in the Cape region.
Structure-Dependent Charge Transfer in Molecular Perylene-Based Donor/Acceptor Systems and Role of Side Chains
2020-04-29

In organic electronics and optoelectronics several crucial physical processes are related to charge transfer (CT) effects. In this work, we investigate mixing behavior and intermolecular coupling of donor and acceptor molecules in thin films prepared by organic molecular beam deposition (OMBD). Diindenoperylene (DIP) and pentacene (PEN) are used as the donor materials, and perylene diimide derivatives PDIR-CN2 and PDIF-CN2 as the acceptor materials.. The formation of charge transfer complexes coupled in the electronic excited state vs. noninteracting phase separating components is studied by structural and optical techniques. The CT mechanism and properties are considered in close connection with the thin film microstructure of the D/A blends which can be controlled via a change of the molecule geometry and/or growth temperature. We discuss two key findings for our systems: (1) The CT intensity correlates directly with the possibility of cocrystallization between acceptor and donor. (2) Side chain modification to tune the ground state energy levels has nearly no effect on the energy of the excited state CT, whereas replacement of molecular core modifies the CT energy correspondingly.
New retinal tack designs: an analysis of retention forces in human scleral tissue
2020-04-29

Abstract Purpose The study aimed to construct a new retinal tack design with high retention forces to prevent spontaneous disentanglement in cases of complicated retinal surgery. Methods Six new forms for the peak of a retinal tack were developed using computer-aided design (CAD); then a prototype was produced for each model. Finally, standardised design testing was conducted using human (ex vivo) sclera by logging 15 consecutive measurements for each model. Results Seven different models underwent pull-out testing (six new models and the original tack model), but two tack models (Model 4, Model 5) failed to penetrate the human tissue. The highest pull-out forces (median) were measured for Model 3, followed by Model 6, Model 2 and Model 1. The original Heimann tack (Model H) was found to have the lowest retention forces. Conclusion The different tack designs altered the penetration and holding forces. The retention forces of the proposed peak design led to a significant increase in the retention forces that were more than twice as high as those in the original Heimann Model.
Molecular surveillance of the Pfmdr1 N86Y allele among Congolese pregnant women with asymptomatic malaria
2020-04-29

Abstract Background: Malaria in pregnancy is associated with considerable morbidity and mortality Regular surveillance of artemisinin−based combination therapy tolerance or resistance molecular makers is vital for effective malaria treatment, control and eradication programmes. P. falciparum multiple drug resistance-1 gene ( Pfmdr1 ) N86Y mutation is associated with reduced susceptibility to lumefantrine. This study assessed the prevalence of Pfmdr1 N86Y in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. Methods: A total 1001 of P. falciparum− infected blood samples obtained from asymptomatic malaria pregnant women having a normal child delivery at the Madibou Integrated Health Center were analysed. Pfmdr1 N86Y genotyping was conducted using PCR-Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). Results: The wild type Pfmdr1 N86 allele was predominant (&gt;68 %) in this study whereas a few isolates carrying the either the mutant allele ( Pfmdr1 86Y) alone or both alleles (mixed genotype). The dominance of the wildtype allele ( pfmdr1 N86) indicates the plausible decline P. falciparum susceptibility to lumefantrine. Conclusion: This study gives an update on the prevalence of Pfmdr1 N86Y alleles in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. It also raises concern on the imminent emergence of resistance against artemether−lumefantrine in this setting. Our study underscores the importance to regular artemether−lumefantrine efficacy monitoring to inform malaria control programme of the Republic of Congo.
vq-wav2vec: Self-Supervised Learning of Discrete Speech Representations
2020-04-30

We propose vq-wav2vec to learn discrete representations of audio segments through a wav2vec-style self-supervised context prediction task. The algorithm uses either a gumbel softmax or online k-means clustering to quantize the dense representations. Discretization enables the direct application of algorithms from the NLP community which require discrete inputs. Experiments show that BERT pre-training achieves a new state of the art on TIMIT phoneme classification and WSJ speech recognition.
Nonequilibrium Quantum Many-Body Rydberg Atom Engine
2020-04-30

The standard approach to quantum engines is based on equilibrium systems and on thermodynamic transformations between Gibbs states. However, nonequilibrium quantum systems offer enhanced experimental flexibility in the control of their parameters and, if used as engines, a more direct interpretation of the type of work they deliver. Here we introduce an out-of-equilibrium quantum engine inspired by recent experiments with cold atoms. Our system is connected to a single environment and produces mechanical work from many-body interparticle interactions arising between atoms in highly excited Rydberg states. As such, it is not a heat engine but an isothermal one. We perform many-body simulations to show that this system can produce work. The setup we introduce and investigate represents a promising platform for devising new types of microscopic machines and for exploring quantum effects in thermodynamic processes.
From Plant to Paddy—How Rice Root Iron Plaque Can Affect the Paddy Field Iron Cycling
2020-04-30

Iron plaque on rice roots represents a sink and source of iron in paddy fields. However, the extent of iron plaque in impacting paddy field iron cycling is not yet fully deciphered. Here, we followed iron plaque formation during plant growth in laboratory-controlled setups containing a transparent soil matrix. Using image analysis, microsensor measurements, and mineral extractions, we demonstrate that radial oxygen loss (ROL) is the main driver for rhizosphere iron oxidation. While O2 was restricted to the vicinity of roots, root tips showed highest spatio-temporal variation in ROL (&lt;5–50 μM) following diurnal patterns. Iron plaque covered &gt;30% of the total root surface corresponding to 60–180 mg Fe(III) per gram dried root and gradually transformed from low-crystalline minerals (e.g., ferrihydrite) on root tips, to &gt;20% higher-crystalline minerals (e.g., goethite) within 40 days. Iron plaque exposed to an Fe(III)-reducing Geobacter spp. culture resulted in 30% Fe(II) remobilization and &gt;50% microbial transformation to Fe(II) minerals (e.g., siderite, vivianite, and Fe–S phases) or persisted by &gt;15% as Fe(III) minerals. Based on the collected data, we estimated that iron plaque formation and reductive dissolution can impact more than 5% of the rhizosphere iron budget which has consequences for the (im)mobilization of soil contaminants and nutrients.
When and where do patients with bone metastases actually break their femurs?
2020-04-30

Aims Accurate estimations of the risk of fracture due to metastatic bone disease in the femur is essential in order to avoid both under-treatment and over-treatment of patients with an impending pathological fracture. The purpose of the current retrospective in vivo study was to use CT-based finite element analyses (CTFEA) to identify a clear quantitative differentiating factor between patients who are at imminent risk of fracturing their femur and those who are not, and to identify the exact location of maximal weakness where the fracture is most likely to occur. Methods Data were collected on 82 patients with femoral metastatic bone disease, 41 of whom did not undergo prophylactic fixation. A total of 15 had a pathological fracture within six months following the CT scan, and 26 were fracture-free during the five months following the scan. The Mirels score and strain fold ratio (SFR) based on CTFEA was computed for all patients. A SFR value of 1.48 was used as the threshold for a pathological fracture. The sensitivity, specificity, positive, and negative predicted values for Mirels score and SFR predictions were computed for nine patients who fractured and 24 who did not, as well as a comparison of areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC of the ROC curves). Results The sensitivity of SFR was 100% compared with 88% for the Mirels score, and the specificity of SFR was 67% compared with 38% for the Mirels score. The AUC was 0.905 for SFR compared with 0.578 for the Mirels score (p = 0.008). Conclusion All the patients who sustained a pathological fracture of the femur had an SFR of &gt; 1.48. CTFEA was far better at predicting the risk of fracture and its location accurately compared with the Mirels score. CTFEA is quick and automated and can be incorporated into the protocol of CT scanners. Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2020;102-B(5):638–645.