A two-stage recommendation optimization algorithm based on item popularity and user features.

Financial product recommendation algorithms are mainly product-centered. This article proposes a two-stage recommendation optimization algorithm based on item popularity and user features, named CPCF-TSP, that can make full use of the demographic characteristics of users and mitigate the problem of users being more inclined to choose "hot" financial products. A popularity weight factor is introduced to normalize popularity and modify Pearson's similarity function. The modified Pearson's similarity function is combined with popularity normalization and user features to improve modeling performance. The two-stage recommendation optimization procedure was combined with a collaborative filtering algorithm to improve recommendation precision. CPCF-TSP fully considers user features in building a hybrid recommendation model and solves the problem of user cold-start. It can also mitigate popularity deviations and improve recommendation precision. MovieLens data and Santander Bank client trading data were used in a case study. The results show that the algorithm reduces inaccuracy in the calculation of the weights for recommendation popularity and similarity and is especially suitable for recommending financial products in which user information can be easily collected and the number of users is far greater than the number of products considered.

ProDiVis: a method to normalize fluorescence signal localization in 3D specimens.

A common problem in confocal microscopy is the decrease in intensity of excitation light and emission signal from fluorophores as they travel through 3D specimens, resulting in decreased signal detected as a function of depth. Here, we report a visualization program compatible with widely used fluorophores in cell biology to facilitate image interpretation of differential protein disposition in 3D specimens. Glioblastoma cell clusters were fluorescently labeled for mitochondrial complex I (COXI), P2X7 receptor (P2X7R), ß-Actin, Ki-67, and DAPI. Each cell cluster was imaged using a laser scanning confocal microscope. We observed up to ∼70% loss in fluorescence signal across the depth in Z-stacks. This progressive underrepresentation of fluorescence intensity as the focal plane deepens hinders an accurate representation of signal location within a 3D structure. To address these challenges, we developed ProDiVis: a program that adjusts apparent fluorescent signals by normalizing one fluorescent signal to a reference signal at each focal plane. ProDiVis serves as a free and accessible, unbiased visualization tool to use in conjunction with fluorescence microscopy images and imaging software.

Community Member Views on Autism Intervention: Effects of Closeness to Autistic People with Intellectual Disabilities And Nonspeaking Autistic People.

Background: Controversy regarding the neurodiversity movement (NDM), the social and medical models of disability, autism intervention goals, and causal attributions of disability contributes to divides in the autistic and autism communities. The present study investigates the views of autistic and non-autistic autistic and autism community members on these topics. We explored whether these views are shaped by having close relationships to autistic people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and nonspeaking autistic (NSA) people. Methods: A total of 504 autistic and autism community members (278 autistic, 226 non-autistic) completed an online survey about theoretical models and intervention goals. Participants reported whether they had one or more close relationships with NSA people, autistic people with ID, neither, or both. Results: Overall, there was considerable consensus regarding desired intervention goals: normalization goals were generally opposed, while participants generally supported well-being, societal reform, supportive environment, and adaptive skill goals. While autistic participants reported less support for normalization and adaptive skills goals than non-autistic participants, they expressed somewhat more enthusiasm for societal reform and supportive environments than non-autistic people. Autistic people supported the NDM more and the medical model less than non-autistic people. Those close to autistic people with ID gave higher ratings to adaptive skill goals. On average, participants not close to autistic people with ID saw the challenges of those without ID as being slightly more due to environmental/social factors than the challenges of those with ID; there was no such statistical difference among those close to autistic people with ID. Conclusion: Further research investigating community views, with the inclusion of more autistic people with ID and NSA people themselves, is needed, but the results of this study suggest that the broader autistic and autism communities see NDM-consistent intervention goals as appropriate for all autistic people, including NSA people and those with ID. As autism interventions have often pursued unpopular normalization goals, this suggests directions for reform.

Why is this an important issue? Disagreements about the neurodiversity movement have divided autistic people, their family members, and autism professionals. These include debates about whether the neurodiversity movement includes and represents the interests of autistic people who may have higher support needs, such as nonspeaking individuals and autistic people with intellectual disabilities. They also include debates about what goals autism interventions and supports should focus on. What is the purpose of this study? The purpose of this study is to explore the views of autistic and autism community members (e.g., autistic people, family members, and professionals) on: the neurodiversity movement,the social model of disability (which views society as the source of disability-related challenges),the medical model of disability (which says disabled people's own characteristics cause disability-related challenges), anddifferent autism intervention goals. We explored whether these views are related to whether participants were autistic and/or had close relationships with autistic people with higher support needs. What did the researchers do? We collected online survey responses from 504 autistic people, family members, and autism professionals. Participants shared whether they were close to nonspeaking autistic people or autistic people with intellectual disabilities. Participants answered questions about various intervention goals and their support for the neurodiversity movement and other models of disability. What were the results of this study? Both autistic and non-autistic participants supported the neurodiversity movement and interventions that aim to change society, create supportive environments for autistic people, and promote well-being. Both autistic and non-autistic participants generally opposed interventions trying to make autistic people more normal, but autistic people were especially unlikely to support the goals of making autistic people normal. Autistic people were less enthusiastic about the goal of teaching "useful" skills and more strongly opposed to the medical model. Autistic people were more likely than non-autistic people to support the neurodiversity movement, reforming society and creating better environments for autistic people, but these differences were not large. Participants close to autistic people with intellectual disabilities supported teaching useful skills slightly more than those not close. What do these findings add to what is already known? These findings further our understanding of the perspectives of autistic and autism community members on neurodiversity, models of disability, and preferred intervention goals. What are the potential weaknesses of this study? The participants in this study were mostly White women from North America and Europe. We obtained few responses from people who more strongly oppose the neurodiversity movement or from autistic individuals who have the highest support needs. This means that our findings do not represent all autistic and autism community members. Different participants may also have understood the idea of a "close relationship" differently. How will these findings help autistic adults now or in the future? These findings may be useful to autistic adults and other members of the autistic and autism communities who want to connect with others and advocate for autism intervention research that fits their shared goals. Results can help professionals to develop interventions that better match the goals of different members of the autistic and autism communities.

Development of an LC-HRMS non-targeted method for comprehensive profiling of the exposome of nicotine and tobacco product users - A showcase for cigarette smokers.

The global prevalence of electronic cigarettes, heated tobacco products, and other smokeless alternatives has grown significantly in the last ten years. These products have been suggested as combustion-free alternatives for conventional tobacco products like cigarettes, aiming to reduce the negative health impacts associated with smoking. However, the impact of those products on the health and safety of the general population are still unclear, as the absolute exposure from those products has not been thoroughly studied, yet. In this project, a non-targeted LC-HRMS method was developed comprising four different analytical modes for the investigation of the exposure profile in urine of the product users. The method is characterized by its high sensitivity and reproducibility, as shown during method validation. As a proof of concept, we first applied this method to detect significant differences in biomarkers of exposure (BoEs) between smokers and non-smokers. We observed a total of 171 BoEs significantly elevated in smokers, including several well-known biomarkers of smoke exposure like nicotine and its metabolites, mercapturic acid derivatives, and phenolic compounds. Some of the detected biomarkers are present at low ng/mL concentrations in urine, proving the high sensitivity needed for a holistic exploration of the exposome. Moreover, we were able to identify BoEs that have not been reported previously for smoking, such as 2,6-dimethoxyphenol and 7-methyl-1-naphthol glucuronide.

TimeNorm: a novel normalization method for time course microbiome data.

Metagenomic time-course studies provide valuable insights into the dynamics of microbial systems and have become increasingly popular alongside the reduction in costs of next-generation sequencing technologies. Normalization is a common but critical preprocessing step before proceeding with downstream analysis. To the best of our knowledge, currently there is no reported method to appropriately normalize microbial time-series data. We propose TimeNorm, a novel normalization method that considers the compositional property and time dependency in time-course microbiome data. It is the first method designed for normalizing time-series data within the same time point (intra-time normalization) and across time points (bridge normalization), separately. Intra-time normalization normalizes microbial samples under the same condition based on common dominant features. Bridge normalization detects and utilizes a group of most stable features across two adjacent time points for normalization. Through comprehensive simulation studies and application to a real study, we demonstrate that TimeNorm outperforms existing normalization methods and boosts the power of downstream differential abundance analysis.

Combined manifestation of two geometric visual illusions.

The present study continued to investigate whether the effects of length misperception caused by cross-shaped (formed by two pairs of the oppositely oriented Müller-Lyer wings) contextual distractors can be explained by the combined manifestation of two different (i.e., the Müller-Lyer and filled-space) geometric illusions of extent. In psychophysical experiments, the luminance of one pair of wings was randomly changed, while the luminance of the other pair remained constant. Two different distractor orientations were used-when the wings with constant luminance formed the right side of the cross or the left side, otherwise. To separately evaluate the manifestation of the Müller-Lyer illusion under different luminance conditions, two distracting crosses of the same orientation were attached to the lateral stimulus terminators in the first series of experiments. In the following four series, a single distracting cross (with different orientation) was attached to one of the lateral stimulus terminators and various combinations of the constant and background luminance were used. To interpret the experimental data, we used the basic computational principles of previously developed quantitative models of hypothetical visual mechanisms underlying the emergence of the Müller-Lyer illusion and the filled-space illusion. It was shown that the results of theoretical calculations adequately approximate the experimental curves obtained for all modifications of stimuli, which strongly supports the suggestion that the joint manifestations of these two illusions can be considered among the main factors determining the features of the illusion investigated.

Bi-stochastically normalized graph Laplacian: convergence to manifold Laplacian and robustness to outlier noise.

Bi-stochastic normalization provides an alternative normalization of graph Laplacians in graph-based data analysis and can be computed efficiently by Sinkhorn-Knopp (SK) iterations. This paper proves the convergence of bi-stochastically normalized graph Laplacian to manifold (weighted-)Laplacian with rates, when [Formula: see text] data points are i.i.d. sampled from a general [Formula: see text]-dimensional manifold embedded in a possibly high-dimensional space. Under certain joint limit of [Formula: see text] and kernel bandwidth [Formula: see text], the point-wise convergence rate of the graph Laplacian operator (under 2-norm) is proved to be [Formula: see text] at finite large [Formula: see text] up to log factors, achieved at the scaling of [Formula: see text]. When the manifold data are corrupted by outlier noise, we theoretically prove the graph Laplacian point-wise consistency which matches the rate for clean manifold data plus an additional term proportional to the boundedness of the inner-products of the noise vectors among themselves and with data vectors. Motivated by our analysis, which suggests that not exact bi-stochastic normalization but an approximate one will achieve the same consistency rate, we propose an approximate and constrained matrix scaling problem that can be solved by SK iterations with early termination. Numerical experiments support our theoretical results and show the robustness of bi-stochastically normalized graph Laplacian to high-dimensional outlier noise.

Selection and Validation of Reference Genes in Dendrocalamus brandisii for Quantitative Real-Time PCR.

Dendrocalamus brandisii (Munro) Kurz is a sympodial bamboo species with a wide distribution in tropical and subtropical regions. Due to its remarkable regenerative ability and exceptional flavor, this species plays a pivotal role in bolstering the economies of numerous nations across these regions. We recently published a high-quality genome of this species. To date, no study results have identified the optimal reference genes for quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) normalization in Dendrocalamus brandisii. qRT-PCR offers a highly accurate and effective approach to analyzing gene expression. However, the precision of the resulting quantitative data hinges on the correct choice of reference genes. Twenty-one potential reference genes were identified from the D. brandisii transcriptomes. Their expression in 23 samples, including 8 different tissue organs and 15 samples of D. brandisii under various treatment conditions, were evaluated through qRT-PCR. Subsequently, four software programs-Delta CT, geNorm, NormFinder, and RefFinder-were employed to compare their expression stability. The results revealed that the selection of optimal reference genes varied based on the particular organ and condition being examined. EF-1-α-2 consistently exhibits the most stable expression across diverse tissues, while ACTIN-1, TUBULIN-1, and EF-1-α-2 were the most consistent reference genes in roots, culms, and leaves under various treatments, respectively. In this study, we identified and characterized appropriate internal genes utilized for calibrating qRT-PCR analyses of D. brandisii across different tissue organs and under various treatments. This research will provide key insights for advancing the study of gene functionality and molecular biology in D. brandisii and related species.

RGeasy: a reference gene analysis tool for gene expression studies via RT-qPCR.

Gene expression through RT-qPCR can be performed by the relative quantification method, which requires the expression normalization through reference genes. Therefore, it is essential to validate, experimentally, the candidate reference genes. Thus, although there are several studies that are performed to identify the most stable reference genes, most them validate genes for very specific conditions, not exploring the whole potential of the research since not all possible combinations of treatments and/or conditions of the study are explored. For this reason, new experiments must be conducted by researchers that have interest in analyzing gene expression of treatments and/or conditions present, but not explored, in these studies. Here, we present the RGeasy tool, which aims to facilitate the selection of reference genes, allowing the user to choose genes for a greater number of combinations of treatments/conditions, compared to the ones present in the original articles, through just a few clicks. RGeasy was validated with RT-qPCR data from gene expression studies performed in two coffee species, Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora, and it can be used for any animal, plant or microorganism species. In addition to displaying a rank of the most stable reference genes for each condition or treatment, the user also has access to the primer pairs for the selected reference genes.

'A void in our community': exploring the complexities of delivering and implementing primary care services for transgender individuals in Northern Ontario.

AIM: To understand how the implementation of primary care services for transgender individuals is undertaken and delivered by practitioners in Northern Ontario. BACKGROUND: Northern Ontario, Canada, has a shortage of primary care health practitioners, and of these, there are a limited number providing transgender primary care. Transgender people in Northern Ontario must also negotiate a lack of allied and specialty services related to transgender health and travel over long distances to access those services that do exist. METHODS: A convergent mixed methods design was guided by normalization process theory (NPT) to explore transgender primary care delivery and implementation by nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, social workers, and psychotherapists. A survey measuring implementation processes was elaborated through qualitative interviews with participants. Analysis of key themes emerging using the NPT framework informed understanding of primary care successes, barriers, and gaps in Northern Ontario. FINDINGS: Key themes included the need for more education on transgender primary care practice, increased need for training and awareness on transgender resources, identification of unique gaps and barriers to access in Northern Ontario transgender care, and the benefits of embedding and normalizing transgender care in clinical practice to practitioners and transgender patients. These findings are key to understanding and improving access and eliminating healthcare barriers for transgender people in Northern Ontario.

Feature-specific divisive normalization improves natural image encoding for depth perception.

Vision science and visual neuroscience seek to understand how stimulus and sensor properties limit the precision with which behaviorally-relevant latent variables are encoded and decoded. In the primate visual system, binocular disparity-the canonical cue for stereo-depth perception-is initially encoded by a set of binocular receptive fields with a range of spatial frequency preferences. Here, with a stereo-image database having ground-truth disparity information at each pixel, we examine how response normalization and receptive field properties determine the fidelity with which binocular disparity is encoded in natural scenes. We quantify encoding fidelity by computing the Fisher information carried by the normalized receptive field responses. Several findings emerge from an analysis of the response statistics. First, broadband (or feature-unspecific) normalization yields Laplace-distributed receptive field responses, and narrowband (or feature-specific) normalization yields Gaussian-distributed receptive field responses. Second, the Fisher information in narrowband-normalized responses is larger than in broadband-normalized responses by a scale factor that grows with population size. Third, the most useful spatial frequency decreases with stimulus size and the range of spatial frequencies that is useful for encoding a given disparity decreases with disparity magnitude, consistent with neurophysiological findings. Fourth, the predicted patterns of psychophysical performance, and absolute detection threshold, match human performance with natural and artificial stimuli. The current computational efforts establish a new functional role for response normalization, and bring us closer to understanding the principles that should govern the design of neural systems that support perception in natural scenes.

A cogent technique to circumvent the use of (some) ratio measures in physiology.

Physiologists often express the change in the value of a measurement made on two occasions as a ratio of the initial value. This is usually motivated by an assumption that the absolute change fails to capture the true extent of the alteration that has occurred in attaining the final value - if there is initial variation among individual cases. While it may appear reasonable to use ratios to standardize the magnitude of change in this way, the perils of doing so have been widely documented. Ratios frequently have intractable statistical properties, both when taken in isolation and when analysed using techniques such as regression. A new method of computing a standardized metric of change, based on principal components analysis (PCA), is described. It exploits the collinearity within sets of initial, absolute change and final values. When these sets define variables subjected to PCA, the standardized measure of change is obtained as the product of the loading of absolute change onto the first principal component (PC1) and the eigenvalue of PC1. It is demonstrated that a sample drawn from a population of these standardized measures: approximates a normal distribution (unlike the corresponding ratios); lies within the same range; and preserves the rank order of the ratios. It is also shown that this method can be used to express the magnitude of a physiological response in an experimental condition relative to that obtained in a control condition. KEY POINTS: The intractable statistical properties of ratios and the perils of using ratios to standardize the magnitude of change are well known. A new method of computing a standardized metric, based on principal components analysis (PCA), is described, which exploits the collinearity within sets of initial, absolute change and final values. A sample drawn from a population of these PCA-derived measures: approximates a normal distribution (unlike the corresponding ratios); lies within the same range as the ratios; and preserves the rank order of the ratios. The method can also be applied to express the magnitude of a physiological response in an experimental condition relative to a control condition.

Improvement in antibacterial use in intensive care units from Argentina: A quality improvement collaborative process evaluation using Normalization Process Theory.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare-associated infections and antibiotic resistance worsen globally. Antibiotic stewardship programs (ASP) aim to optimise infection treatment and curb resistance, yet implementation hurdles persist. This study examined ASP challenges in ICUs. METHODS: This study employed a qualitative methodological design to evaluate the implementation process of an antibiotic stewardship program (ASP) in eight intensive care units (ICUs) across Argentina. Thirty-four semi-structured interviews with healthcare workers (HCWs) were conducted. Interviews were analysed guided by Normalisation Process Theory, examining coherence, cognitive participation, collective action, and reflexive monitoring constructs. RESULTS: Key challenges included insufficient human resources, lack of institutional support, and resistance to change, particularly among staff not initially involved in the study. Despite these challenges, the program saw partial success in improving ICU practices, particularly in antibiotic use and communication across departments. The main strategy implemented in this quality improvement collaborative was the use of improvement cycles, which served as the central component for driving change. However, participation in improvement cycles was inconsistent, and sustainability post-intervention remains uncertain due to workload pressures and the need for continuous education. Concerns about workload and communication barriers persisted. Many participants did not perceive training as a separate component, which led to low engagement. Resistance to change became evident during modifications to clinical guidelines. The intervention had a positive impact on various processes, including communication and record keeping. CONCLUSION: This study underscores the persistent challenges in implementing ASPs in healthcare, emphasising the need for enhanced collaboration, workforce capacity building, and evidence-based practices to overcome barriers and optimize antimicrobial use to improve patient outcomes.

Automated registration-based skull stripping procedure for feline neuroimaging.

Skull stripping is a fundamental preprocessing step in modern neuroimaging analyses that consists of removing non-brain voxels from structural images. When performed entirely manually, this laborious step can be rate-limiting for analyses, with the potential to influence the population size chosen. This emphasizes the need for a fully- or semi-automated masking procedure to decrease man-hours without an associated decline in accuracy. These algorithms are plentiful in human neuroimaging but are relatively lacking for the plethora of animal species used in research. Unfortunately, software designed for humans cannot be easily transformed for animal use due to the high amount of tailoring required to accurately account for the considerable degree of variation within the highly folded human cortex. As most animals have a relatively less complex cerebral morphology, intersubject variability is consequently decreased, presenting the possibility to simply warp the brain mask of a template image into subject space for the purpose of skull stripping. This study presents the use of the Cat Automated Registration-based Skull Stripper (CARSS) tool on feline structural images. Validation metrics revealed that this method was able to perform on par with manual raters on >90 % of scans tested, and that its consistency across multiple runs was superior to that of masking performed by two independent raters. Additionally, CARSS outperformed three well-known skull stripping programs on the validation dataset. Despite a handful of manual interventions required, the presented tool reduced the man-hours required to skull strip 60 feline images over tenfold when compared to a fully manual approach, proving to be invaluable for feline neuroimaging studies, particularly those with large population sizes.

Stability and expression patterns of housekeeping genes in Mediterranean mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) under field investigations.

The use of marine mussels as biological models encompasses a broad range of research fields, in which the application of RNA analyses disclosed novel biomarkers of environmental stress and investigated biochemical mechanisms of action. Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) is the gold standard for these studies, and despite its wide use and available protocols, it may be affected by technical flaws requiring reference gene data normalization. In this study, stability of housekeeping genes commonly employed as reference genes in qPCR analyses with Mytilus galloprovincialis was explored under field conditions. Mussels were collected from farms in the Northwestern Adriatic Sea. The sampling strategy considered latitudinal gradients of environmental parameters (proxied by location), gender, and their interactions with seasonality. Analyses of gene stability were performed using different algorithms. BestKeeper and geNorm agreed that combination of the ribosomal genes 18S ribosomal RNA (18S) and 28S ribosomal RNA (28S) was the best normalization strategy in the conditions tested, which agrees with available evidence. NormFinder provided different normalization strategies, involving combinations of tubulin (TUB)/28S (Gender/Season effect) or TUB/helicase (HEL) (Location/Season effect). Since NormFinder considers data grouping and computes both intra- and inter-group stability variations, it should work better with complex experimental designs and dataset structuring. Under the selected normalization strategies, expressions of the variable housekeeping genes actin (ACT) and elongation factor-1α (EF1) correlated with seasonal and latitudinal changes of abiotic environmental factors and mussel physiological status. Results point to consider ACT and EF1 expressions as molecular biomarkers of mussel general physiological status in field studies.

Joint coordinate attention mechanism and instance normalization for COVID online comments text classification.

Background: The majority of extant methodologies for text classification prioritize the extraction of feature representations from texts with high degrees of distinction, a process that may result in computational inefficiencies. To address this limitation, the current study proposes a novel approach by directly leveraging label information to construct text representations. This integration aims to optimize the use of label data alongside textual content. Methods: The methodology initiated with separate pre-processing of texts and labels, followed by encoding through a projection layer. This research then utilized a conventional self-attention model enhanced by instance normalization (IN) and Gaussian Error Linear Unit (GELU) functions to assess emotional valences in review texts. An advanced self-attention mechanism was further developed to enable the efficient integration of text and label information. In the final stage, an adaptive label encoder was employed to extract relevant label information from the combined text-label data efficiently. Results: Empirical evaluations demonstrate that the proposed model achieves a significant improvement in classification performance, outperforming existing methodologies. This enhancement is quantitatively evidenced by its superior micro-F1 score, indicating the efficacy of integrating label information into text classification processes. This suggests that the model not only addresses computational inefficiencies but also enhances the accuracy of text classification.

A longitudinal mixed methods evaluation of a facilitation training intervention to build implementation capacity.

Background: There is a demand for facilitators who can ease the collaboration within a team or an organization in the implementation of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) and who are positioned to build the implementation capacity in an organization. This study aimed to evaluate the results the Building implementation capacity for facilitation (BIC-F) intervention had on the participants' perceived knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy to facilitate implementation and the normalization of a systematic implementation model into their work routines, and its use into their respective organizations. Methods: The BIC-F intervention was delivered to 37 facilitators in six workshops, which focused on teaching participants to apply a systematic implementation model and various facilitation tools and strategies. A longitudinal mixed methods design was used to evaluate the intervention. Data was collected pre- and post-intervention using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews grounded on the Normalization Process Theory (NPT). Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive (mean, SD) and inferential (paired t-tests) methods. Qualitative data were analyzed using deductive content analysis according to NPT. Results: An increase in the participants' perceived knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy was observed post-intervention. Normalization of the systematic implementation model in the participants' work routines was in an early phase, facilitated by high coherence, however, other NPT mechanisms were not sufficiently activated yet to contribute to full normalization. In the organizations where participants initiated the normalization process, they were still working towards achieving coherence and cognitive participation among relevant stakeholders. Conclusion: The intervention had positive results on the participants' perceived knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy and these recognized the value of a systematic implementation model for their practice. However, further efforts are needed to apply it consistently as a part of their work routines and in the organization. Future interventions should provide long-term support for facilitators, and include methods to transfer training between organizational levels and to overcome contextual barriers.

Behavioral state and stimulus strength regulate the role of somatostatin interneurons in stabilizing network activity.

Inhibition stabilization enables cortical circuits to encode sensory signals across diverse contexts. Somatostatin-expressing (SST) interneurons are well-suited for this role through their strong recurrent connectivity with excitatory pyramidal cells. We developed a cortical circuit model predicting that SST cells become increasingly important for stabilization as sensory input strengthens. We tested this prediction in mouse primary visual cortex by manipulating excitatory input to SST cells, a key parameter for inhibition stabilization, with a novel cell-type specific pharmacological method to selectively block glutamatergic receptors on SST cells. Consistent with our model predictions, we find antagonizing glutamatergic receptors drives a paradoxical facilitation of SST cells with increasing stimulus contrast. In addition, we find even stronger engagement of SST-dependent stabilization when the mice are aroused. Thus, we reveal that the role of SST cells in cortical processing gradually switches as a function of both input strength and behavioral state.

Selection and Validation of Reference Genes for Quantitative Real-Time PCR Analysis in Cockroach Parasitoid Tetrastichus hagenowii (Ratzeburg).

Parasitoid wasps play a crucial role in the efficient control of pests, a substantial menace to human health and well-being. Tetrastichus hagenowii (Ratzeburg) stands out as the most effective egg parasitoid wasp for controlling American cockroaches, but accurate and stable reference genes for quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction of T. hagenowii genes are still lacking. In this study, we assessed seven candidate nuclear genes, including α-tubulin (α-TUB), elongation factor-1-alpha (EF-1α), ß-actin (Actin), ribosomal protein 49 (RP49), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), and elongation factor 2 (EF2) of T. hagenowii. By analyzing expression stability with four algorithms (Delta Ct, geNorm, NormFinder, and BestKeeper), as well as comprehensive ranking with RefFinder, we identified α-TUB as the most stable reference gene for the larval, pupal, female adult, and male adult stages. Subsequently, we estimated the transcript levels of vitellogenin (Vg) and cuticle protein (CP) after normalization with α-TUB across various developmental stages. Significantly higher expression levels of CP and Vg were observed in pupae and female adults, respectively, consistent with previous findings in other insects. This study offers a reliable reference gene for normalizing transcription levels of T. hagenowii genes.