Very Low-Intensity Ultrasound Facilitates Glymphatic Influx and Clearance via Modulation of the TRPV4-AQP4 Pathway.

Recently, the glymphatic system has been proposed as a mechanism for waste clearance from the brain parenchyma. Glymphatic dysfunction has previously been shown to be associated with several neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury, and stroke. As such, it may serve as an important target for therapeutic interventions. In the present study, very low-intensity ultrasound (VLIUS) (center frequency, 1 MHz; pulse repetition frequency, 1 kHz; duty factor, 1%; spatial peak temporal average intensity [Ispta] = 3.68 mW cm2; and duration, 5 min) is found to significantly enhance the influx of cerebrospinal fluid tracers into the paravascular spaces of the brain, and further facilitate interstitial substance clearance from the brain parenchyma, including exogenous ß-amyloid. Notably, no evidence of brain damage is observed following VLIUS stimulation. VLIUS may enhance glymphatic influx via the transient receptor potential vanilloid-4-aquaporin-4 pathway in astrocytes. This mechanism may provide insights into VLIUS-regulated glymphatic function that modifies the natural course of central nervous system disorders related to waste clearance dysfunction.

Duckweed-based optical biosensor for herbicide toxicity assessment.

In response to the pervasive issue of herbicide pollution in environmental water bodies, particularly from herbicides used extensively in agriculture, traditional chemical-based water quality analysis methods have proven costly and time-consuming, often failing to meet regulatory standards. To overcome these limitations, global environmental agencies have turned to rapidly-growing species like duckweed as bioindicators for herbicide and pesticide contamination. However, conventional biological assessment methods, such as the 168-h duckweed growth inhibition test, are slow and lack real-time monitoring capabilities. To address this challenge, we developed an innovative approach by integrating opto-mechanical technology with duckweed to create a cost-effective biosensor for herbicide detection, priced under $10 USD per system. This advancement allows for the rapid detection of herbicide impacts on duckweed growth within just 48 h, significantly improving upon traditional methods. Our biosensor achieves detection limits of 10 ppm (p < 0.05) for glyphosate and 1 ppm (p < 0.05) for glufosinate, both prominent herbicides globally. This mini-biosensing platform offers a practical alternative to the official method, which requires 168 h and higher thresholds (36.4 ppm for glyphosate and 34.0 ppm for glufosinate) for routine environmental analysis. Thus, these duckweed-based optical biosensors represent a promising advancement in environmental monitoring, enhancing accessibility and efficacy for widespread adoption globally.

Differential neuropsychiatric associations of plasma biomarkers in older adults with major depression and subjective cognitive decline.

Older adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) or early cognitive decline during the subjective cognitive decline (SCD) stage may exhibit neuropsychiatric symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and subtle cognitive impairment. The clinicopathological features and biological mechanisms of MDD differ from those of SCD among older adults; these conditions thus require different treatment strategies. This study enrolled 82 participants above 50 years old with normal cognitive levels from the communities to examine biomarker-behavior correlations between MDD (n = 23) and SCD (n = 23) relative to a normal control (NC) group (n = 36). Multidomain assessments were performed for all participants, including immunomagnetic reduction tests to detect plasma beta-amyloid (Aß), total tau (Tau), phosphorylated tau-181 (p-Tau181), neurofilament light chain, and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). This study observed that depressive symptoms in MDD were associated with amyloid pathology (plasma Aß40 vs. HADS-D: R = 0.45, p = 0.031; Aß42/Aß40 vs. HADS-D: R = -0.47, p = 0.024), which was not observed in the NC (group difference p < 0.05). Moreover, cognitive decline in MDD was distinguished by a mixed neurodegenerative process involving amyloid (plasma Aß42 vs. facial memory test: R = 0.48, p = 0.025), tau (Tau/Aß42 vs. digit symbol substitution test (DSST): R = -0.53, p = 0.01), and astrocytic injury (plasma GFAP vs. Montreal cognitive assessment score: R = -0.44, p = 0.038; plasma GFAP vs. DSST: R = -0.52, p = 0.014), findings that did not apply to the NC (group difference p < 0.05). Moreover, this study revealed different biomarker-behavior correlations between individuals with SCD and the NC. Compared with the NC, cognitive decline in the SCD group might be unrelated to amyloid pathology and instead might be early manifestations of tau pathology. This study underscores the difference in clinicopathological features between MDD and SCD among older adults, which differ from those of the NC. These findings enhance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying MDD and SCD in older individuals.

White matter alterations and their associations with biomarkers and behavior in subjective cognitive decline individuals: a fixel-based analysis.

BACKGROUND: Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is an early stage of dementia linked to Alzheimer's disease pathology. White matter changes were found in SCD using diffusion tensor imaging, but there are known limitations in voxel-wise tensor-based methods. Fixel-based analysis (FBA) can help understand changes in white matter fibers and how they relate to neurodegenerative proteins and multidomain behavior data in individuals with SCD. METHODS: Healthy adults with normal cognition were recruited in the Northeastern Taiwan Community Medicine Research Cohort in 2018-2022 and divided into SCD and normal control (NC). Participants underwent evaluations to assess cognitive abilities, mental states, physical activity levels, and susceptibility to fatigue. Neurodegenerative proteins were measured using an immunomagnetic reduction technique. Multi-shell diffusion MRI data were collected and analyzed using whole-brain FBA, comparing results between groups and correlating them with multidomain assessments. RESULTS: The final enrollment included 33 SCD and 46 NC participants, with no significant differences in age, sex, or education between the groups. SCD had a greater fiber-bundle cross-section than NC (pFWE < 0.05) at bilateral frontal superior longitudinal fasciculus II (SLFII). These white matter changes correlate negatively with plasma Aß42 level (r = -0.38, p = 0.01) and positively with the AD8 score for subjective cognitive complaints (r = 0.42, p = 0.004) and the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale score for the degree of anxiety (Ham-A, r = 0.35, p = 0.019). The dimensional analysis of FBA metrics and blood biomarkers found positive correlations of plasma neurofilament light chain with fiber density at the splenium of corpus callosum (pFWE < 0.05) and with fiber-bundle cross-section at the right thalamus (pFWE < 0.05). Further examination of how SCD grouping interacts between the correlations of FBA metrics and multidomain assessments showed interactions between the fiber density at the corpus callosum with letter-number sequencing cognitive score (pFWE < 0.01) and with fatigue to leisure activities (pFWE < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Based on FBA, our investigation suggests white matter structural alterations in SCD. The enlargement of SLFII's fiber cross-section is linked to plasma Aß42 and neuropsychiatric symptoms, which suggests potential early axonal dystrophy associated with Alzheimer's pathology in SCD. The splenium of the corpus callosum is also a critical region of axonal degeneration and cognitive alteration for SCD.

Functional blindsight and its diagnosis.

Even when brain scans fail to detect a striate lesion, functional evidence for blindsight can be adduced. In the aftermath of an automobile accident, JK became blind. Results of ophthalmic exams indicated that the blindness must be cortical. Nevertheless, multiple MRI scans failed to detect structural damage to the striate cortex. Prior to the accident JK had been an athlete; after the accident he retained some athletic abilities, arousing suspicions that he might be engaged in fraud. His residual athletic abilities-e.g., hitting a handball or baseball, or catching a Frisbee-coupled with his experienced blindness, suggested blindsight. But due to the apparent absence of striate lesions, we designed a series of tasks for temporal and spatial dimensions in an attempt to detect functional evidence of his disability. Indeed, test results revealed compelling neural evidence that comport with his subjective reports. This spatiotemporal task-related method that includes contrasts with healthy controls, and detailed understanding of the patient's conscious experience, can be generalized for clinical, scientific and forensic investigations of blindsight.

Neurovascular coupling in eye-open-eye-close task and resting state: Spectral correspondence between concurrent EEG and fMRI.

Neurovascular coupling serves as an essential neurophysiological mechanism in functional neuroimaging, which is generally presumed to be robust and invariant across different physiological states, encompassing both task engagement and resting state. Nevertheless, emerging evidence suggests that neurovascular coupling may exhibit state dependency, even in normal human participants. To investigate this premise, we analyzed the cross-frequency spectral correspondence between concurrently recorded electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, utilizing them as proxies for neurovascular coupling during the two conditions: an eye-open-eye-close (EOEC) task and a resting state. We hypothesized that given the state dependency of neurovascular coupling, EEG-fMRI spectral correspondences would change between the two conditions in the visual system. During the EOEC task, we observed a negative phase-amplitude-coupling (PAC) between EEG alpha-band and fMRI visual activity. Conversely, in the resting state, a pronounced amplitude-amplitude-coupling (AAC) emerged between EEG and fMRI signals, as evidenced by the spectral correspondence between the EEG gamma-band of the midline occipital channel (Oz) and the high-frequency fMRI signals (0.15-0.25 Hz) in the visual network. This study reveals distinct scenarios of EEG-fMRI spectral correspondence in healthy participants, corroborating the state-dependent nature of neurovascular coupling.

Micro-scale urbanization-based risk factors for dengue epidemics.

Dengue is one of the world's most rapidly spreading mosquito-borne viral diseases. As it is found mostly in urban and semi-urban areas, urbanization and associated human activities that affect the environment and larval habitats could become risk factors (e.g., lane width, conditions of street ditches) for the spread of dengue. However, there are currently no systematic studies of micro-scale urbanization-based risk factors for the spread of dengue epidemics. We describe the study area, two micro-scale environmental risk factors associated with urbanization, and meteorological data. Since the observations involve spatial and temporal correlations, we also use some statistical methods for the analysis of spatial and spatial-temporal data for the relationship between urbanization and dengue. In this study, we analyzed data from Kaohsiung, a densely populated city in southern Taiwan, and found a positive correlation between environmental risk factors associated with urbanization (ditches positive for mosquito larvae and closely packed streets termed "dengue lanes") and clustering effects in dengue cases. The statistical analysis also revealed that the occurrence of positive ditches was significantly associated with that of dengue lanes in the study area. The relationship between climate variables and positive ditches was also analyzed in this paper, indicating a relationship between dengue and both rainfall and temperature, with temperature having a greater effect. Overall, this work is immediately relevant and applicable for policymakers in government, who will need to reduce these favorable habitats for vector-born disease spreaders and implement regulations for new urban constructions to thus reduce dengue spread in future outbreaks.

Potential of thermoresponsive hydrogel as an alternative therapy for rat knee osteoarthritis.

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative condition that is highly prevalent and primarily affects the joints. The knee is the most commonly affected site, impacting the lives of over 300 million individuals worldwide. This study presents a potential solution to address the unmet need for a minimally invasive technique in the treatment of osteoarthritis: a biocompatible, injectable, and thermoresponsive hydrogel. In comparison to commercially available products such as lyophilized platelets, dextrose, and triamcinolone, the thermoresponsive hydrogel exhibits significantly superior performance in dynamic behaviors, including print area, stability, and step cycle, when tested on rats with knee osteoarthritis. However, it demonstrates similar treatment efficacy to these products in static behaviors, as observed through histopathological and immunohistochemical analysis. Therefore, the thermoresponsive hydrogel holds promise as an effective alternative therapy for osteoarthritis. Moreover, by blending the hydrogel with drugs, controlled and sustained release can be achieved, thereby facilitating the long-term management of osteoarthritis symptoms.

Stock Market Forecasting Based on Spatiotemporal Deep Learning.

This study introduces the Spacetimeformer model, a novel approach for predicting stock prices, leveraging the Transformer architecture with a time-space mechanism to capture both spatial and temporal interactions among stocks. Traditional Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) and recent Transformer models lack the ability to directly incorporate spatial information, making the Spacetimeformer model a valuable addition to stock price prediction. This article uses the ten minute stock prices of the constituent stocks of the Taiwan 50 Index and the intraday data of individual stock on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. By training the Timespaceformer model with multi-time-step stock price data, we can predict the stock prices at every ten minute interval within the next hour. Finally, we also compare the prediction results with LSTM and Transformer models that only consider temporal relationships. The research demonstrates that the Spacetimeformer model consistently captures essential trend changes and provides stable predictions in stock price forecasting. This article proposes a Spacetimeformer model combined with daily moving windows. This method has superior performance in stock price prediction and also demonstrates the significance and value of the space-time mechanism for prediction. We recommend that people who want to predict stock prices or other financial instruments try our proposed method to obtain a better return on investment.

Temporal consistency of neurovascular components on awakening: preliminary evidence from electroencephalography, cerebrovascular reactivity, and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Sleep inertia (SI) is a time period during the transition from sleep to wakefulness wherein individuals perceive low vigilance with cognitive impairments; SI is generally identified by longer reaction times (RTs) in attention tasks immediately after awakening followed by a gradual RT reduction along with waking time. The sluggish recovery of vigilance in SI involves a dynamic process of brain functions, as evidenced in recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies in within-network and between-network connectivity. However, these fMRI findings were generally based on the presumption of unchanged neurovascular coupling (NVC) before and after sleep, which remains an uncertain factor to be investigated. Therefore, we recruited 12 young participants to perform a psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) and a breath-hold task of cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) before sleep and thrice after awakening (A1, A2, and A3, with 20 min intervals in between) using simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG)-fMRI recordings. If the NVC were to hold in SI, we hypothesized that time-varying consistencies could be found between the fMRI response and EEG beta power, but not in neuron-irrelevant CVR. Results showed that the reduced accuracy and increased RT in the PVT upon awakening was consistent with the temporal patterns of the PVT-induced fMRI responses (thalamus, insula, and primary motor cortex) and the EEG beta power (Pz and CP1). The neuron-irrelevant CVR did not show the same time-varying pattern among the brain regions associated with PVT. Our findings imply that the temporal dynamics of fMRI indices upon awakening are dominated by neural activities. This is the first study to explore the temporal consistencies of neurovascular components on awakening, and the discovery provides a neurophysiological basis for further neuroimaging studies regarding SI.

Integrated diffusion image operator (iDIO): A pipeline for automated configuration and processing of diffusion MRI data.

The preprocessing of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) data involve numerous steps, including the corrections for head motion, susceptibility distortion, low signal-to-noise ratio, and signal drifting. Researchers or clinical practitioners often need to configure different preprocessing steps depending on disparate image acquisition schemes, which increases the technical threshold for dMRI analysis for nonexpert users. This could cause disparities in data processing approaches and thus hinder the comparability between studies. To make the dMRI data processing steps transparent and adapt to various dMRI acquisition schemes for researchers, we propose a semi-automated pipeline tool for dMRI named integrated diffusion image operator or iDIO. This pipeline integrates features from a wide range of advanced dMRI software tools and targets at providing a one-click solution for dMRI data analysis, via adaptive configuration for a set of suggested processing steps based on the image header of the input data. Additionally, the pipeline provides options for post-processing, such as estimation of diffusion tensor metrics and whole-brain tractography-based connectomes reconstruction using common brain atlases. The iDIO pipeline also outputs an easy-to-interpret quality control report to facilitate users to assess the data quality. To keep the transparency of data processing, the execution log and all the intermediate images produced in the iDIO's workflow are accessible. The goal of iDIO is to reduce the barriers for clinical or nonspecialist users to adopt the state-of-art dMRI processing steps.

Blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier opening by modified single pulse transcranial focused shockwave.

Transcranial focused shockwave (FSW) is a novel noninvasive brain stimulation that can open blood-brain barriers (BBB) and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barriers (BCSFB) with a single low-energy (energy flux density 0.03 mJ/mm2) pulse and low-dose microbubbles (2 × 106/kg). Similar to focused ultrasound, FSW deliver highly precise stimulation of discrete brain regions with adjustable focal lengths that essentially covers the whole brain. By opening the BCSFB, it allows for rapid widespread drug delivery to the whole brain by cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) circulation. Although no definite adverse effect or permeant injury was noted in our previous study, microscopic hemorrhage was infrequently observed. Safety concerns remain the major obstacle to further application of FSW in brain. To enhance its applicability, a modified single pulse FSW technique was established that present 100% opening rate but much less risk of adverse effect than previous methods. By moving the targeting area 2.5 mm more superficially on the left lateral ventricle as compared with the previous methods, the microscopic hemorrhage rate was reduced to zero. We systemically examine the safety profiles of the modified FSW-BCSFB opening regarding abnormal behavior and brain injury or hemorrhage 72 hr after 0, 1, and 10 pulses of FSW-treatment. Animal behavior, physiological monitor, and brain MRI were examined and recorded. Brain section histology was examined for hemorrhage, apoptosis, inflammation, oxidative stress related immunohistochemistry and biomarkers. The single pulse FSW group demonstrated no mortality or gross/microscopic hemorrhage (N = 30), and no observable changes in all examined outcomes, while 10 pulses of FSW was found to be associated with microscopic and temporary RBC extravasation (N = 6/30), and abnormal immunohistochemistry biomarkers which showed a trend of recovery at 72 hrs. The results suggest that single pulse low-energy FSW-BCSFB opening is effective, safe and poses minimal risk of injury to brain tissue (Sprague Dawley, SD rats).

Projectile vomiting as presentation of duodenal intramural metastasis from cervical cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To report a case and review literature of bowel metastases from cervical squamous cell carcinoma. CASE REPORT: A 49-year-old woman with a history of FIGO 2013 stage IVB cervical squamous cell carcinoma presented with refractory nausea, projectile vomiting, anorexia, postprandial abdominal pain, and significant weight loss for six months. Restaging images didn't reveal viable tumors but thickened duodenal wall indicating gastric outlet obstruction. Initially, the etiology was masked by chronic erosive duodenitis and mistreated as a duodenal ulcer. After repeated gastrointestinal endoscopic biopsy confirming intramural duodenal metastasis from cervical squamous cell carcinoma, the patient was treated successfully by gastrojejunostomy and adjuvant chemotherapy. She has remained asymptomatic and disease-free for more than 12 months since the surgical metastasectomy. CONCLUSION: Intestine metastasis from cervical cancer is a rare cause that may present as projectile vomiting due to gastric outlet obstruction. Prompt recognition and surgical intervention may provide good outcomes despite the metastatic nature.

A Real-World Study on Ge Gen Tang in Combination with Herbal Medicines for Relieving Common Cold-Associated Symptoms.

Purpose: Real-world evidence refers to patient data derived from the healthcare process. In this study, we used National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) assessments and clinical studies of Ge Gen Tang (GGT, ) in patients with common cold to establish a real-world study model of Traditional Chinese Medicine formulae. GGT is widely prescribed for the treatment of common cold in Taiwan, generally in combination with other medicines. The aim of this study was to determine whether a correlation exists between GGT combined with other medicines and an improvement in cold symptoms. We also established a GGT prescription compatibility system by analyzing Taiwan's NHIRD records for GGT prescription patterns in patients with different types of common cold. Materials and Methods: We extracted and analyzed records from the NHIRD for the period 2000-2015 to determine the most common clinical applications of GGT. GGT and GGT with Chuan Xiung Cha Tiao San were most commonly prescribed for common cold, as per NHIRD recommendations. Records for adults aged 20-65 years who were prescribed GGT for the treatment of common cold (Diagnosis Code ICD-9-460) were included in this study. We assessed the following indicators of the common cold, before and after treatment with GGT: nasal congestion, cough, runny nose, sneezing, sore throat, hoarseness, stiff shoulder, headache, and general physical condition. Results: The cold symptom scores before and after taking the GGT prescriptions significantly differed in the 29 volunteers. The 29 volunteers reported a significantly lower headache severity score after medication than before medication (p < 0.004). Furthermore, patient scores for general physical condition decreased significantly (p < 0.01) after medication.

Functional Connectivity Dynamics Altered of the Resting Brain in Subjective Cognitive Decline.

Background: Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) appears in the preclinical stage of the Alzheimer's disease continuum. In this stage, dynamic features are more sensitive than static features to reflect early subtle changes in functional brain connectivity. Therefore, we studied local and extended dynamic connectivity of the resting brain of people with SCD to determine their intrinsic brain changes. Methods: We enrolled cognitively normal older adults from the communities and divided them into SCD and normal control (NC) groups. We used mean dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (mdALFF) to evaluate region of interest (ROI)-wise local dynamic connectivity of resting-state functional MRI. The dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) between ROIs was tested by whole-brain-based statistics. Results: When comparing SCD (N = 40) with NC (N = 45), mdALFFmean decreased at right inferior parietal lobule (IPL) of the frontoparietal network (FPN). Still, it increased at the right middle temporal gyrus (MTG) of the ventral attention network (VAN) and right calcarine of the visual network (VIS). Also, the mdALFFvar (variance) increased at the left superior temporal gyrus of AUD, right MTG of VAN, right globus pallidum of the cingulo-opercular network (CON), and right lingual gyrus of VIS. Furthermore, mdALFFmean at right IPL of FPN are correlated negatively with subjective complaints and positively with objective cognitive performance. In the dFC seeded from the ROIs with local mdALFF group differences, SCD showed a generally lower dFCmean and higher dFCvar (variance) to other regions of the brain. These weakened and unstable functional connectivity appeared among FPN, CON, the default mode network, and the salience network, the large-scale networks of the triple network model for organizing neural resource allocations. Conclusion: The local dynamic connectivity of SCD decreased in brain regions of cognitive executive control. Meanwhile, compensatory visual efforts and bottom-up attention rose. Mixed decrease and compensatory increase of dynamics of intrinsic brain activity suggest the transitional nature of SCD. The FPN local dynamics balance subjective and objective cognition and maintain cognitive preservation in preclinical dementia. Aberrant triple network model features the dFC alternations of SCD. Finally, the right lateralization phenomenon emerged early in the dementia continuum and affected local dynamic connectivity.

Baseline Cerebro-Cerebellar Functional Connectivity in Afferent and Efferent Pathways Reveal Dissociable Improvements in Visuomotor Learning.

Visuomotor coordination is a complex process involving several brain regions, primarily the cerebellum and motor cortex. Studies have shown inconsistent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) results in the cerebellar cortex and dentate nucleus of the cerebro-cerebellar connections. Echoing anatomical pathways, these two different cerebellar regions are differentially responsible for afferent and efferent cerebro-cerebellar functional connections. The aim of this study was to measure the baseline resting-state functional connectivity of different cerebellar afferent and efferent pathways and to investigate their relationship to visuomotor learning abilities. We used different cerebellar repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) frequencies before a pursuit rotor task to influence visuomotor performance. Thirty-eight right-handed participants were included and randomly assigned to three different rTMS frequency groups (1 Hz, 10 Hz and sham) and underwent baseline rsfMRI and pursuit rotor task assessments. We report that greater baseline functional connectivity in the afferent cerebro-cerebellar pathways was associated with greater accuracy improvements. Interestingly, lower baseline functional connectivity in the efferent dentato-thalamo-cortical pathways was associated with greater stability in visuomotor performance, possibly associated with the inhibitory role of the dentate nucleus and caused a reduction in the efferent functional connectivity. The functional dissociation of the cerebellar cortex and dentate nucleus and their connections, suggests that distinct mechanisms in the cerebellum regarding visuomotor learning, which should be investigated in future research.

Cross-Scale Dynamicity of Entropy and Connectivity in the Sleeping Brain.

Introduction: The concept of local sleep refers to the phenomenon of local brain activity that modifies neural networks during unresponsive global sleep. Such network rewiring may differ across spatial scales; however, the global and local alterations in brain systems remain elusive in human sleep. Materials and Methods: We examined cross-scale changes of brain networks in sleep. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired from 28 healthy participants during nocturnal sleep. We adopted both metrics of connectivity (functional connectivity [FC] and regional homogeneity [ReHo]) and complexity (multiscale entropy) to explore the global and local functionality of the neural assembly across nonrapid eye movement sleep stages. Results: Long-range FC decreased with sleep depth, whereas local ReHo peaked at the N2 stage and reached its lowest level at the N3 stage. Entropy exhibited a general decline at the local scale (Scale 1) as sleep deepened, whereas the coarse-scale entropy (Scale 3) was consistent across stages. Discussion: The negative correlation between Scale-1 entropy and ReHo reflects the enhanced signal regularity and synchronization in sleep, identifying the information exchange at the local scale. The N2 stage showed a distinctive pattern toward local information processing with scrambled long-distance information exchange, indicating a specific time window for network reorganization. Collectively, the multidimensional metrics indicated an imbalanced global-local relationship among brain functional networks across sleep-wake stages.

Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Centrality of Event Scale across multiple trauma-exposed Taiwanese samples.

The widely used Centrality of Event Scale (CES) measures the extent that a traumatic event serves as a central component of self-identity, a reference point, and a turning point in an individual's life story. The present study aimed to develop a Chinese version of the CES and assess its reliability, criterion validity, and factor structure. Data were collected from three samples of trauma-exposed Taiwanese individuals (N = 939), including 420 earthquake survivors, 300 trauma-exposed community adults, and 219 trauma-exposed undergraduate students. We conducted an exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis and compared the resulting models with a one-factor model and the originally proposed model. The results indicated that a new three-factor model, S-Bχ2 (167, N = 519) = 687.01, p < .001, CFI = .95, IFI = .95, NNFI = .94, RMSEA = .078, SRMR = .047, might better represent the construct compared to the one-factor or originally proposed model. Furthermore, the Chinese CES demonstrated excellent internal consistency, Cronbach's αs = .89-.94; adequate 1-month reliability, rs = .54-.64, and 6-month temporal stability, rs = .52-.67; and good concurrent and predictive validity. The findings indicate that the Chinese version of the CES demonstrates good psychometric properties with a three-factor structure, and it could be used to assess event centrality among nonclinical trauma-exposed Taiwanese adults.

Facilitating drug delivery in the central nervous system by opening the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier with a single low energy shockwave pulse.

BACKGROUND: The blood-cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) barrier (BCSFB) is critically important to the pathophysiology of the central nervous system (CNS). However, this barrier prevents the safe transmission of beneficial drugs from the blood to the CSF and thus the spinal cord and brain, limiting their effectiveness in treating a variety of CNS diseases. METHODS: This study demonstrates a method on SD rats for reversible and site-specific opening of the BCSFB via a noninvasive, low-energy focused shockwave (FSW) pulse (energy flux density 0.03 mJ/mm2) with SonoVue microbubbles (2 × 106 MBs/kg), posing a low risk of injury. RESULTS: By opening the BCSFB, the concentrations of certain CNS-impermeable indicators (70 kDa Evans blue and 500 kDa FITC-dextran) and drugs (penicillin G, doxorubicin, and bevacizumab) could be significantly elevated in the CSF around both the brain and the spinal cord. Moreover, glioblastoma model rats treated by doxorubicin with this FSW-induced BCSFB (FSW-BCSFB) opening technique also survived significantly longer than untreated controls. CONCLUSION: This is the first study to demonstrate and validate a method for noninvasively and selectively opening the BCSFB to enhance drug delivery into CSF circulation. Potential applications may include treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, CNS infections, brain tumors, and leptomeningeal carcinomatosis.

Vanadium oxides obtained by chimie douce reactions: The influences of transition metal species on crystal structures and electrochemical behaviors in zinc-ion batteries.

Rechargeable aqueous zinc-ion batteries (RAZIBs) have received increasing attention due to cost-effectiveness and inherent safety. A wide variety of advanced cathode materials have been revealed with promising performance in RAZIBs. However, these materials usually require sophisticated procedures at high temperatures, which greatly limit further practical application. Herein, a chimie douce approach is adopted to prepare vanadium oxides from V2O5 suspension with the addition of various transition metal cations (Mn2+, Zn2+, Ag+, and Fe3+) by simple liquid-solid mixing under ambient conditions. For the cases of Mn2+ and Zn2+, the dissolution-recrystallization process takes place leading to layered Mn0.31V3O7·1.40H2O (MnVO) and Zn0.32V3O7·1.52H2O (ZnVO). The use of Ag+ forms tunneled Ag0.33V2O5 (AgVO), and the present of Fe3+ stays mainly unreacted V2O5. The underlying reaction chemistries are proposed, for which the pH values of precursor solutions are found to be a key factor. Among the prepared materials, layered vanadium oxides exhibit promising battery performance. Particularly, MnVO delivers 340 and 217 mAh g-1 at 1 and 8 A g-1, respectively. A specific capacity of 164 mAh g-1 can be retained after 500 cycles at 1 A g-1. By contrast, AgVO and FeVO demonstrate inferior performance with retaining only 89 and 20 mAh g-1 after 500 cycles.