Short-term auricular electrical stimulation rapidly elevated cortical blood flow and promoted the expression of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor α4 in the 2 vessel occlusion rats model.

BACKGROUND: Vascular dementia is the second dementing illness after Alzheimer's disease and caused by reduced blood flow to the brain, and affects cognitive abilities. Our previous study found that auricular electrical stimulation (ES) improved motor and learning impairment, and this phenomenon related with nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) expressed cells. However, the underlying mechanism was not clear. In the present study, we investigated the effects of auricular ES on cortical blood flow (CBF) and acetylcholine (ACh) - nAChRs expressed cells. METHODS: Vascular dementia rat animal model was established by permanent occlusions of common carotid arteries with 6-0 nylon suture filament. At 21 day after surgery, motor impairment was confirmed by rotarod test. 15-Hz auricular ES were applied to the ears for 20 min and CBF was recorded at the mean time. The brains were immediately dissected for immunohistochemical stain and western blot analysis. RESULTS: Our results showed that 15-Hz auricular ES rapidly elevated CBF in the middle cerebral artery. The numbers of nAChR α4 immuno-positive cells and western blot levels were significally increased by 15-Hz auricular ES in the hippocampal CA2 output cortex. The numbers of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) - a key enzyme for biosynthesis of ACh - immuno-positive cells and western blot levels had no significant differences. CONCLUSIONS: The present data suggested that the 15-Hz auricular ES for 20 min rapidly elevated cortical blood flow, promoted the expression of nAChR α4, and would be beneficial for the treatment of Alzheimer type and vascular type dementia.

Donor-acceptor interactions in red-emitting thienylbenzene-branched dendrimers with benzothiadiazole core.

Synthesis and characterization of dendrimers containing thienylbenzene repeating units, red-emitting benzothiadiazole core, and triarylamine peripheries that bear naphthyl units are reported. The relevant dendrimers of different generations are classified as G(nb) (n=1-3), while the tert-butyl dendrimers G(na) with the acceptor alone were also synthesized to serve as control chromophores that avoid donor-acceptor interactions. The resulting dendrimers are capable of harvesting photon energy through efficient energy transfer among donor-acceptor moieties, so that highly luminescent red fluorophores result. Transient fluorescence studies suggest that the energy transfer and its efficiency are approximately unity in all G(a) dendrimers, whereas the rate of energy transfer for the G(b) dendrimers is suppressed, that is, charge transfer from the core to the periphery is a significant quenching pathway. These dendrimers are amorphous in nature with high glass transition temperatures (176-201 degrees C). Electroluminescent devices were fabricated by using the dendrimers as hole-transporting emitters, and the devices exhibit promising red emission parameters.

Efficacy of cheap amendments for stabilizing trace elements in contaminated paddy fields.

In situ stabilization of trace elements by adding cheap amendments is an emerging technology for large-scale soil remediation. Various amendments have been examined well in the literature, but related have focused predominantly on short-term laboratory scale incubation or pot experiments. This study applied dolomitic lime at 40 ton ha-1, oyster shell (OS) at 80 ton ha-1, and sugarcane bagasse compost (SC) at 60 ton ha-1 to a paddy field in Taiwan for two rice (Oryza sativa L.) cropping seasons. The aims of study were to gain an understanding of the bioavailable concentrations of Cr, Ni, Cu, and Zn in the amended soil and the metal uptake of rice for practical amendment use in field-scale remediation of contaminated soils. The treatments of lime and OS significantly (p < 0.05) decreased the 0.1 N HCl-extractable metals in the soil. The increase in soil pH was the key factor in decreasing the bioavailable pool of metals in the soil by using lime and OS. The concentrations of Cu, Zn, and Ni in the brown rice were substantially reduced only through the addition of OS, and thus OS met the requirement of being a cheap, locally available, and environmentally compatible amendment for field-scale soil remediation. The translocation of Cr in rice plants is heavily restricted, and thus no significant differences in Cr uptake by rice grain were observed between the different amendment treatments. However, SC is not recommended as an immobilization agent because it caused a pH decrease in the amended soil.

Radiometric Compensation of Images Projected on Non-White Surfaces by Exploiting Chromatic Adaptation and Perceptual Anchoring.

Flat surfaces in our living environment to be used as replacements of a projection screen are not necessarily white. We propose a perceptual radiometric compensation method to counteract the effect of color projection surfaces on image appearance. It reduces color clipping while preserving the hue and brightness of images based on the anchoring property of human visual system. In addition, it considers the effect of chromatic adaptation on perceptual image quality and fixes the color distortion caused by non-white projection surfaces by properly shifting the color of the image pixels toward the complementary color of the projection surface. User ratings show that our method outperforms the existing methods in 974 out of 1020 subjective tests.

Enhancement of backlight-scaled images.

Switching the liquid crystal display (LCD) backlight of a portable multimedia device to a low power level saves energy but results in poor image quality especially for the low-luminance image areas. In this paper, we propose an image enhancement algorithm that overcomes such effects of dim LCD backlight by taking the human visual property into consideration. It boosts the luminance of image areas below the perceptual threshold while preserving the contrast of the other image areas. We apply the just noticeable difference theory and decompose an image into an HVS response layer and a background luminance layer. The boosting and compression processes, which enhance the visibility of the low-luminance image areas, are carried out in the background luminance layer to avoid luminance gradient reversal and over-compensation. The contrast of the processed image is further enhanced by exploiting the Craik-O'Brein-Cornsweet visual illusion. Experimental results are provided to show the performance of the proposed algorithm.

Learning-based prediction of visual attention for video signals.

Visual attention, which is an important characteristic of human visual system, is a useful clue for image processing and compression applications in the real world. This paper proposes a computational scheme that adopts both low-level and high-level features to predict visual attention from video signal by machine learning. The adoption of low-level features (color, orientation, and motion) is based on the study of visual cells, and the adoption of the human face as a high-level feature is based on the study of media communications. We show that such a scheme is more robust than those using purely single low- or high-level features. Unlike conventional techniques, our scheme is able to learn the relationship between features and visual attention to avoid perceptual mismatch between the estimated salience and the actual human fixation. We also show that selecting the representative training samples according to the fixation distribution improves the efficacy of regressive training. Experimental results are shown to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed scheme.

Palladium-catalyzed three-component assembling of allenes, organic halides, and arylboronic acids.

An efficient method for the construction of two carbon-carbon bonds in a regio- and stereoselective fashion via palladium-catalyzed assembling of allenes, organic halides, and arylboronic acids is described. Organic halides (RI = C(6)H(5)I, o-, m-, and p-CH(3)OC(6)H(4)I, p-C(2)H(5)OCOC(6)H(4)I, p-CH(3)COC(6)H(4)I, p-CH(3)C(6)H(4)I, p-CH(3)C(6)H(4)Br, p-CH(3)C(6)H(4)Cl, p-NO(2)C(6)H(4)I, p-NO(2)C(6)H(4)Br, p-NO(2)C(6)H(4)Cl, p-IC(6)H(4)Cl, 1-iodonaphthalene, 2-iodothiophene, 3-iodo-2-cyclopenten-1-one, 3-iodo-5,5-dimethyl-2-cyclohexen-1-one, C(6)Eta(5)(Br)C=CH(2) and ICH(2)CO(2)C(2)H(5)), and arylboronic acids (ArB(OH)(2), Ar = C(6)H(5), p-CH(3)OC(6)H(4), m-NO(2)C(6)H(4), p-FC(6)H(4), 1-C(10)H(7), and o-, m-, and p-CHOC(6)H(4)) undergo Suzuki-type three-component assembling with 1,1-dimethylallene to give the corresponding allylic derivatives, (CH(3))(2)=CRCH(2)Ar, in DMF at 70 degrees C in the presence of CsF using Pd(dba)(2) as the catalyst. Higher yields of products were obtained for aryl iodides than for the corresponding aryl bromides and chlorides. This three-component assembling is highly regioselective, with the organic group on halides adding to the middle carbon and the aryl group on arylboronic acids to the unsubstituted terminal carbon of allenes. Monosubstituted allenes 1b-e (cyclopentylallene, cyclohexylallene, tert-butylallene, and n-butylallene) also undergo similar assembling reaction with organic halides and arylboronic acids to afford the corresponding products 7a-i with high regio- and stereoselectivity. Based on the known palladium chemistry, a mechanism is proposed to account for the catalytic reaction and the stereochemistry.