Glutamate spillover drives robust all-or-none dendritic plateau potentials-an in silico investigation using models of striatal projection neurons.

Plateau potentials are a critical feature of neuronal excitability, but their all-or-none behavior is not easily captured in modeling. In this study, we investigated models of plateau potentials in multi-compartment neuron models and found that including glutamate spillover provides robust all-or-none behavior. This result arises due to the prolonged duration of extrasynaptic glutamate. When glutamate spillover is not included, the all-or-none behavior is very sensitive to the steepness of the Mg2+ block. These results suggest a potentially significant role of glutamate spillover in plateau potential generation, providing a mechanism for robust all-or-none behavior across a wide range of slopes of the Mg2+ block curve. We also illustrate the importance of the all-or-none plateau potential behavior for nonlinear computation with regard to the nonlinear feature binding problem.

Neurological manifestation in COVID-19 disease with neuroimaging studies.

OBJECTIVE: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain or spine examines the findings as well as the time interval between the onset of symptoms and other adverse effects in coronavirus disease that first appeared in 2019 (COVID-19) patients. The goal of this study is to look at studies that use neuroimaging to look at neurological and neuroradiological symptoms in COVID-19 patients. METHODS: We try to put together all of the research on how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes neurological symptoms and cognitive-behavioral changes and give a full picture. RESULTS: We have categorized neuroimaging findings into subtitles such as: headache and dizziness; cerebrovascular complications after stroke; Intracerebral Hemorrhage (ICH); Cerebral Microbleeds (CMBs); encephalopathy; meningitis; encephalitis and myelitis; altered mental status (AMS) and delirium; seizure; neuropsychiatric symptoms; Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) and its variants; smell and taste disorders; peripheral neuropathy; Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI); and myopathy and myositis. CONCLUSION: In this review study, we talked about some MRI findings that show how COVID-19 affects the nervous system based on what we found.

Effect of Stafne bone defect on the adjacent tooth: A review of the literature.

Purpose: This report presents a case of an unusual and rare presentation of Stafne bone defect (SBD) with apical resorption extending from the lower right lateral incisor to the right first premolar. A systematic search of the current literature on cases where SBD affected the adjacent teeth was conducted. Materials and Methods: From 259 identified articles, 114 studies were examined, containing 12 individuals with a mean age of 41.58 years. Ten cases in the anterior mandible and 2 in the posterior mandible were found. Results: The results of SBD varied from apical blunting to severe root resorption, and some cases showed close apical contact with the lesion or involvement of the root without any effect. Conclusion: SBD is an unusual incidental finding in the anterior region of the mandible, and unexpected behavior of the lesion, such as root resorption, must be considered.

A Bayesian approach on the two-piece scale mixtures of normal homoscedastic nonlinear regression models.

In this application note paper, we propose and examine the performance of a Bayesian approach for a homoscedastic nonlinear regression (NLR) model assuming errors with two-piece scale mixtures of normal (TP-SMN) distributions. The TP-SMN is a large family of distributions, covering both symmetrical/ asymmetrical distributions as well as light/heavy tailed distributions, and provides an alternative to another well-known family of distributions, called scale mixtures of skew-normal distributions. The proposed family and Bayesian approach provides considerable flexibility and advantages for NLR modelling in different practical settings. We examine the performance of the approach using simulated and real data.

Molecular and Physiological Variability in Bread Wheat and Its Wild Relative (Aegilops tauschii Coss.) Species under Water-Deficit Stress Conditions.

Aegilops and Triticum spp. are two ideal gene pools for the breeding purposes of wheat. In this study, a set of Iranian accessions of Aegilops tauschii Coss. and Triticum aestivum L. species were evaluated in terms of some physiological and biochemical features under control and water-deficit stress conditions. Moreover, several simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were employed to identify marker loci associated with the measured traits. The results indicated that water-deficit stress significantly affected all measured traits and the highest reductions due to water-deficit were recorded for shoot fresh and dry biomasses (SFB and SDB), stomatal conductance (Gs), leaf relative water content (RWC), and chlorophyll b content (Chl b). In molecular analysis, 25 SSR markers generated 50 fragments, out of which 49 fragments (98%) were polymorphic. Furthermore, the genetic variation observed within species is more than between species. The results of cluster and Bayesian model analysis classified all evaluated accessions into three main clusters. Under control and water-deficit stress conditions, 28 and 27 significant marker-trait associations (MTAs) were identified, respectively. Furthermore, 10 MTAs showed sufficiently stable expression across both growth conditions. Of these, the markers Xgwm-111, Xgwm-44, Xgwm-455, Xgwm-272, and Xgwm-292 were associated with multiple traits. Hence, these markers could serve as useful molecular tools for population characterization, gene tagging, and other molecular breeding studies.

Fabrication of ZIF-71/Fe3O4/polythionine nanoarray-functionalized carbon cotton cloth for simultaneous extraction and quantitation of febuxostat and diclofenac.

A sustainable hybrid material based on carbonized cotton cloth/zeolite imidazolate framework-71/Fe3O4/polythionine (CC/ZIF-71/Fe3O4/PTh) was synthesized and applied in ultrasound-assisted dispersive magnetic solid-phase extraction (USA-DMSPE) followed with high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection (HPLC-UV) for simultaneous quantitation of diclofenac (DIC) and febuxostat (FEB) in human plasma. The surface of CC was modified with nanoarrays of zeolite imidazolate framework-71/Fe3O4/Polythionine. At first, an in situ synthesis of ZIF-71 in the presence of CC was carried out, and followed with magnetization process and oxidative polymerization of thionine. The nano-modifier agents improved the merits of the sorbent involving stability, porosity, mast transfer, π-π interactions and selectivity of CC. Characterizations of the hybrid sorbent were examined with different instrumental techniques. The limits of detection (LODs, S/N = 3) were recognized 2.1 ng mL-1 for DIC and 3.7 ng mL-1 for FEB. Acceptable linearity (0.992 ≤ r 2 ≤0.996) and relatively broad dynamic ranges of 10.0-1800.0 ng mL-1 and 15.0-2500.0 ng mL-1 were achieved for DIC and FEB, respectively. Reasonable intra-assay (≤7.2%, n = 9) and inter-assay (≤7.5%, n = 9) precisions as well as appropriate accuracies (≤8.0%) were provided illustrating applicability of the current approach for analytical purposes. Eventually, CC/ZIF-71/Fe3O4/PTh was employed as four-part sorbent for the assessment of DIC and FEB in human plasma at trace levels and subsequently main pharmacokinetic data such as T 1/2, T max, C max, and AUC0-24 of these drugs were comprehensively investigated.

A Fuzzy Controller for Movement Stabilization Using Afferent Control: Controller Synthesis and Simulation.

Stimulation of spinal sensorimotor circuits can improve motor control in animal models and humans with spinal cord injury (SCI). More recent evidence suggests that the stimulation increases the level of excitability in the spinal circuits, activates central pattern generators, and it is also able to recruit distinctive afferent pathways connected to specific sensorimotor circuits. In addition, the stimulation generates well-defined responses in leg muscles after each pulse. The problem is that in most of the neuromodulation devices, electrical stimulation parameters are regulated manually and stay constant during movement. Such a technique is likely suboptimal to intercede maximum therapeutic effects in patients. Therefore, in this article, a fuzzy controller has been designed to control limb kinematics during locomotion using the afferent control in a neuromechanical model without supraspinal drive simulating post-SCI situation. The proposed controller automatically tunes the weights of group Ia afferent inputs of the spinal cord to reset the phase appropriately during the reaction to an external perturbation. The kinematic motion data and weights of group Ia afferent inputs were the input and output of the controller, respectively. Simulation results showed the acceptable performance of the controller to establish adaptive locomotion against the perturbing forces based on the phase resetting of the walking rhythm.

Effect of Treadmill Training Protocols on Locomotion Recovery in Spinalized Rats.

Both treadmill training and epidural stimulation can help to reactivate the central pattern generator (CPG) in the spinal cord after a spinal cord injury. However, designing an appropriate training approach and a stimulation profile is still a controversial issue. Since the spinal afferent signals are the input signals of CPG in the spinal cord, it can be concluded that the number of input afferent signals can affect the quality of movement recovery, such a phenomenon is in accordance with Hebbian theory. Therefore, at first in this paper, through some simulation studies on a model of CPGs, the effective influence of increasing the afferent input weight on activating CPG model was certified. Then, the performance of two different types of treadmill training along with epidural stimulation was compared. The numbers of spinal afferents involved during each designed training approach were different. Experiments were conducted on two groups of spinalized rats. Three quantized integer qualitative measures, with 0-2 scales, were envisioned to evaluate the performance of training protocols. According to the experimental results, the assigned scales to the rats using the training approach involving more afferents, the rats have been creeping on a treadmill, was 2. Also, the assigned scales to the rats using the training approach involving less afferents, the rats have been performing bipedal locomotion, was 0 or 1. Such experimental results coincide with achieved simulation results elucidating the effect of increasing the afferent input weights on activating CPG model.

Computational study for the circular redox reaction of N2O with CO catalyzed by fullerometallic cations C60Fe+ and C70Fe.

We applied density functional calculations to study the circular redox reaction mechanism of N2O with CO catalyzed by fullerometallic cations C60Fe+ and C70Fe+. The on-top sites of six-membered rings (η6) of fullerene cages are the most preferred binding sites for Fe+ cation, and the hexagon to pentagon migration of Fe+ is unlikely under ambient thermodynamic conditions. The initial ion/molecule reaction, N2O rearrangement and N2 abstraction on the considered fullerometallic cations are easier than those on the bare Fe+ cation in the gas phase. Generally, our results indicate that fullerometallic ions, C60Fe+ and C70Fe+, are more favorable substrates for redox reaction of N2O with CO in comparison to the other previously studied carbon nanostructures such as graphene and nanotubes.

Mixed micellization of gemini and conventional surfactant in aqueous solution: a lattice Monte Carlo simulation.

In the current study, we have investigated the micellization of pure gemini surfactants and a mixture of gemini and conventional surfactants using a 3D lattice Monte Carlo simulation method. For the pure gemini surfactant system, the effects of tail length on CMC and aggregation number were studied, and the simulation results were found to be in excellent agreement with the experimental results. For a mixture of gemini and conventional surfactants, variations in the mixed CMC, interaction parameter ß, and excess Gibbs free energy G(E) with composition revealed synergism in micelle formation. Simulation results were compared to estimations made using regular solution theory to determine the applicability of this theory for non-ideal mixed surfactant systems. A large discrepancy was observed between the behavior of parameters such as the activity coefficients fi and the excess Gibbs free energy G(E) and the expected behavior of these parameters as predicted by regular solution theory. Therefore, we have used the modified version of regular solution theory. This three parameter model contains two parameters in addition to the interaction parameters: the size parameter, ρ, which reflects differences in the size of components, and the packing parameter, P*, which reflects nonrandom mixing in mixed micelles. The proposed model provides a good description of the behavior of gemini and conventional surfactant mixtures. The results indicated that as the chain length of gemini surfactants in mixture is increased, the size parameter remains constant while the interaction and packing parameters increase.

Monte Carlo simulation of binary surfactant/contaminant/water systems.

Surfactant-enhanced remediation (SER) is an effective approach for the removal of absorbed hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) from contaminated soils. The solubilization of contaminants by mixed surfactants with attractive and repulsive head-head interactions was studied by measuring the micelle-water partition coefficient (K(C)) and molar solubilization ratio (MSR) using the lattice Monte Carlo method. The effect of surfactant mixing on the MSR and K(C) of contaminants displayed the following trend: C4 > C3 > C2. Synergistic binary surfactant mixtures showed greater solubilization capacities for contaminants than the corresponding individual surfactants. Mixed micellization parameters, including the interaction parameter ß, and activity coefficient f(i), were evaluated with Rubingh's approach. Synergistic mixed-surfactant systems can improve the performance of surfactant-enhanced remediation of soils and groundwater by decreasing the amount of applied surfactant and the cost of remediation.