Magnetic Temporal Interference for Noninvasive Focal Brain Stimulation

Non-invasive stimulation of deep brain regions has been a major goal for neuroscience and neuromodulation in the past three decades. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), for instance, cannot target deep regions in the brain without activating the overlying tissues and has a poor spatial resolution. In this manuscript, we propose a new concept that relies on the temporal interference of two high-frequency magnetic fields generated by two electromagnetic solenoids. To illustrate the concept, custom solenoids were fabricated and optimized to generate temporal interfering electric fields for rodent brain stimulation. C-Fos expression was used to track neuronal activation. C-Fos expression was not present in regions impacted by only one high-frequency magnetic field indicating ineffective recruitment of neural activity in non-target regions. In contrast, regions impacted by two fields that interfere to create a low-frequency envelope display a strong increase in c-Fos expression. Therefore, this magnetic temporal interference solenoid-based system provides a framework to perform further stimulation studies that would investigate the advantages it could bring over conventional TMS systems.

Redefining the role of Ca2+-permeable channels in photoreceptor degeneration using diltiazem

Hereditary degeneration of photoreceptors has been linked to over-activation of Ca2+-permeable channels, excessive Ca2+-influx, and downstream activation of Ca2+-dependent calpain-type proteases. Unfortunately, after more than 20 years of pertinent research, unequivocal evidence proving significant and reproducible photoreceptor protection with Ca2+-channel blockers is still lacking. Here, we show that both D- and L-cis enantiomers of the anti-hypertensive drug diltiazem were very effective at blocking photoreceptor Ca2+-influx, most probably by blocking the pore of Ca2+-permeable channels. Yet, unexpectedly, this block neither reduced the activity of calpain-type proteases, nor did it result in photoreceptor protection. Remarkably, application of the L-cis enantiomer of diltiazem even led to a strong increase in photoreceptor cell death. These findings shed doubt on the previously proposed links between Ca2+ and retinal degeneration and are highly relevant for future therapy development as they may serve to refocus research efforts towards alternative, Ca2+-independent degenerative mechanisms.

Modulation of Human Hydrogen Sulfide Metabolism by Micronutrients, Preliminary Data

Background: Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a pivotal gasotransmitter networking with nitric oxide (NO) and carbon monoxide (CO) to regulate basic homeostatic functions. It is released by the alternative pathways of transulfuration by the enzymes Cystathionine Beta Synthase (CBS) and Cystathionine Gamma Lyase (CSE), and by Cysteine AminoTransferase (CAT)/ 3-Mercaptopyruvate Sulfur Transferase (3MPST). A non-enzymatic, intravascular release is also in place. We retrospectively investigated the possibility to modulate the endogenous H2S release and signaling in humans by a dietary manipulation with supplemented micronutrients (L-cystine, Taurine and pyridoxal 5-phopsphate/P5P). Methods: Patients referring for antiaging purposes underwent a 10-day supplementation. Blood was collected at baseline and after treatment and the metabolome was investigated by mass spectrometry to monitor the changes in the metabolites reporting on H2S metabolism and related pathways. Results: Data were available from 6 middle aged subjects (2 women). Micronutrients increased 3-mercaptopyruvate ( P = .03), reporting on the activity of CAT that provides the substrate for H2S release within mitochondria by 3MPST, decreased lanthionine ( P = .024), reporting the release of H2S from CBS, and had no significant effect of H2S release from CSE. This is compatible with a homeostatic balancing. We also recorded a strong increase of reporters of H2S-induced pathways including 5-MethylTHF ( P = .001) and SAME ( P = .022), reporting on methylation capacity, and of BH4 ( P = .021) and BH2 ( P = .028) reporting on nitric oxide metabolism. These activations may be explained by the concomitant induction of non-enzymatic release of H2S. Conclusions: Although the current evidences are weak and will need to be confirmed, the effect of micronutrients was compatible with an increase of the H2S endogenous release and signaling within the control of homeostatic mechanisms, further endorsing the role of feeding in health and disease. These effects might result in a H2S boosting effect in case of defective activity of pathologic origin, which should be checked in duly designed clinical trials.

Mapping Plastic Greenhouses With LANDSAT 8 Imagery in Valparaiso, Chile

In the last decades there has been a strong increase around the world in the use of plastic greenhouses (PGs). The Valparaíso region, in the central valley of Chile, has not been the exception, and the area covered by greenhouses has also experienced an increase over the years, reaching 1180 ha in 2007. Taking into account that agriculture in this region employs more than 60,000 people and accounts for 4% of the regional GDP, this information should be available to be included in territorial planning and incorporated into hydrological, economic, and food security models. To do this, the authors propose a new method for identifying the surface covered by PGs based on the intersection of the normalized difference indices and the areas excluded by the masks. The results showed that this methodology was able to identify with a general precision of 86.25% which allowed to classify 1409.85 ha. This area is consistent with the agricultural census carried out in 2007 and with the increase of more than 900 subsidies granted by the government for the installation of new structures.

Properties of Polysiloxane/Nanosilica Nanodielectrics for Wearable Electronic Devices

Polymer nanodielectrics characterized by good flexibility, processability, low dielectric loss and high dielectric permittivity are materials of interest for wearable electronic devices and intelligent textiles, and are highly in demand in robotics. In this study, an easily scalable and environmentally friendly method was applied to obtain polysiloxane/nanosilica nanocomposites with a large content of nanofiller, of up to 30% by weight. Nanosilica was dispersed both as individual particles and as agglomerates; in nanocomposites with a lower amount of filler, the former prevailed, and at over 20 wt% nanosilica the agglomerates predominated. An improvement of both the tensile strength and modulus was observed for nanocomposites with 5–15 wt% nanosilica, and a strong increase of the storage modulus was observed with the increase of nanofiller concentration. Furthermore, an increase of the storage modulus of up to seven times was observed in the nanocomposites with 30 wt% nanosilica. The tensile modulus was well fitted by models that consider the aggregation of nanoparticles and the role of the interface. The dielectric spectra showed an increase of the real part of the complex relative permittivity with 33% for 30 wt% nanosilica in nanocomposites at a frequency of 1 KHz, whereas the loss tangent values were lower than 0.02 for all tested nanodielectrics in the radio frequency range between 1 KHz and 1 MHz. The polysiloxane–nanosilica nanocomposites developed in this work showed good flexibility; however, they also showed increased stiffness along with a stronger dielectric response than the unfilled polysiloxane, which recommends them as dielectric substrates for wearable electronic devices.

Electrodeposition of Indium from an Ionic Liquid Investigated by In Situ Electrochemical XPS

The electrochemical behavior and electrodeposition of indium in an electrolyte composed of 0.1 mol/L InCl3 in 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide ([Py1,4]TFSI) on a gold electrode were investigated. The cyclic voltammogram revealed several reduction and oxidation peaks, indicating a complex electrochemical behavior. In the cathodic regime, with the formation of an In-Au alloy, the reduction of In(III) to In(I) and of In(I) to In(0) takes place. In situ electrochemical X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was employed to investigate the reduction process by monitoring the oxidation states of the components during the cathodic polarization of 0.1 mol/L InCl3/[Py1,4]TFSI on a gold working electrode under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions. The core electron binding energies of the IL components (C 1s, O 1s, F 1s, N 1s, and S 2p) shift almost linearly to more negative values as a function of the applied cell voltage. At −2.0 V versus Pt-quasi reference, In(I) was identified as the intermediate species during the reduction process. In the anodic regime, a strong increase in the pressure in the XPS chamber was recorded at a cell voltage of more than −0.5 V versus Pt quasi reference, which indicated, in addition to the oxidation reactions of In species, that the oxidation of Cl− occurs. Ex situ XPS and XRD results revealed the formation of metallic In and of an In-Au alloy.

Water intake of cellulose materials monitored by positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy

In this study, for the first time, the experimental technique of positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) has been applied to monitor in situ the microstructural changes of cellulose-based materials, i.e. paper, during water intake. For three different cellulose samples, bleached fine paper without filler, Kraft paper without filler, and a viscose fiber sheet, the mean positron lifetime $$\Delta \tau _{\mathrm {mean}}$$ Δ τ mean showed a strong increase with time in humid atmosphere, but exhibiting different trends depending on the type of sample. For all the cellulose samples investigated, the mean positron lifetime $$\Delta \tau _{\mathrm {mean}}$$ Δ τ mean shows an initial strong increase simultaneously occurring (t<10 h) to the mass increase of the samples due to water intake. Interestingly, the variations of $$\Delta \tau _{\mathrm {mean}}$$ Δ τ mean of the viscose fiber sheet and the Kraft paper sample both show a second increase on longer timescales (t>60 h in humid atmosphere) during which the mass increase of these samples has already been saturated. The results of this study show that by the means of PALS, water transport in paper can be reliably followed over a long timespan and it is even possible to distinguish between different types of cellulose materials. The second stage increase of the mean positron lifetime after long times in humid atmosphere for the Kraft paper sample and the pure viscose sheets even suggest that not only water intake itself can be monitored but also further atomistic processes in the material are accessible.

Accounting for the Rising Caesarean Section Rate in Canada: What Are the Roles of Changing Needs, Practices, and Incentives?

In most high-income countries, including Canada, the share of births by Caesarean section (C‑section) has risen over the past decades to far exceed World Health Organization recommendations of the proportion justified on medical grounds (15 percent). Although unnecessary C-sections represent an important cost for health care systems, they are not associated with clear benefits for the mother and the child and can sometimes represent additional risks. Drawing on administrative records of nearly four million births in Canada, as well as macro data from the United States and Australia, we provide a comprehensive account of rising C-section rates. We explicitly consider the contributions of the main factors brought forward in the policy literature, including changing characteristics of mothers, births, and physicians as well as changing financial incentives for C-section deliveries. These factors account for at most one-half of the increase in C-section rates. The majority of the remaining increase in C-sections over the period 1994–2011 occurred in the early 2000s. We suggest that some event or shock in the early 2000s is likely the primary determinant of the recent strong increase in the C-section rate in Canada.

Achieving Net Zero Emissions in Italy by 2050: Challenges and Opportunities

This paper contributes to the climate policy discussion by focusing on the challenges and opportunities of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 in Italy. To support Italian energy planning, we developed energy roadmaps towards national climate neutrality, consistent with the Paris Agreement objectives and the IPCC goal of limiting the increase in global surface temperature to 1.5 °C. Starting from the Italian framework, these scenarios identify the correlations among the main pillars for the change of the energy paradigm towards net emissions by 2050. The energy scenarios were developed using TIMES-RSE, a partial equilibrium and technology-rich optimization model of the entire Italian energy system. Subsequently, an in-depth analysis was developed with the sMTISIM, a long-term simulator of power system and electricity markets. The results show that, to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, the Italian energy system will have to experience profound transformations on multiple and strongly related dimensions. A predominantly renewable-based energy mix (at least 80–90% by 2050) is essential to decarbonize most of the final energy consumption. However, the strong increase of non-programmable renewable sources requires particular attention to new flexibility resources needed for the power system, such as Power-to-X. The green fuels produced from renewables via Power-to-X will be a vital energy source for those sectors where electrification faces technical and economic barriers. The paper’s findings also confirm that the European “energy efficiency first” principle represents the very first step on the road to climate neutrality.

Heritage Education in Myanmar – developing resilience and sustainability through community engagement | မြန်ြာနိုင်ငံ၏အမြေအနှစ်ဆိုင်ရာပညာမရး ( လူထုအားမြင့် ကြံ့ခိုင်မရးနှ ငမ့် ရရညှ ်တည်တ့နံ ုငိ မ် ရး)

Over the last decade Myanmar has experienced a strong increase in interest in Myanmar’s heritage and a demand for local expertise in heritage management. However, in Myanmar there is no formal education in heritage studies. This is recognised as a significant gap in Myanmar’s abilities to manage and develop world heritage sites, as well as national and local level heritage sites, to international standards. To address this gap a group of researchers are preparing models for Myanmar Heritage Education considering short, medium and long-term goals. The models consider local and national heritage management needs, and ways to up-skill local staff working in heritage fields so course content can be delivered by Myanmar experts and become selfsustaining. Formal government accredited courses of study will take some time to implement. In the current covid-19 environment there is opportunity to focus on the role of community groups in heritage management. This paper will discuss current activities undertaken by community groups in heritage areas, and outline opportunities to engage community more fully in the longterm management of Myanmar’s cultural heritage. The aim is to develop local resources that are resilient and sustainable. မြန်ြာနိုင်ငံ၏ အ မြေအနှစ်ထိန်းသိြ်း မေးလုပ်ငန်းြျားတေင် ဆယ်နှစ်အတေင်း စိတ်ဝင်စားြှု တိူးတက်လာပပီး မပည်တေင်းကျွြ်းကျင်သူြျားစေားေှိေန် လိုအပ်လာပါသည်။ မြန်ြာနိုင်ငံေှိ တက္ကသိုလ်ြျား တေင် ယခု အချနိ ် အထိ အမ ြေအနှစ် ထိန်းသိြ်းမ ေး ပညာေပ်အတေက် ဘေဲ့ မပးနိုင်သည့် အဆင့် ထိ သင်ကကား မပးနိုင်ြှု ြေှိ မသးပါ။ ထို အချက်သည် ကြ္ဘာ အ မြေအနှစ်၊ နိုင်ငံအ မြေအနှစ်နှင့် မေသဆိုင်ော အ မြေအနှစ်ြျားကိုထိန်းသိြ်း မစာင့် မေှာက်ောတေင် မြန်ြာနိုင်ငံ ၏ အ မေးတကကီးလိုအပ်လျက် ေှိမသာကေက်လပ် အမြစ်သတိမပုနိုင်ပါသည်။ ထိုကေက်လပ်ကို မမြေှင်းနိုင်ေန်အတေက် သု မတသနပညာေှင်တစ်စုသည် မြန်ြာ့အ မြေအနှစ်ထိန်းသိြ်း မေးပညာ အတေက် ကာလတို၊ အလယ်အလတ်နှင့် ကာလေှည် ေည်ြှန်းချက်ြျားချြှတ်ပပီး လုပ် မဆာင်နိုင်ြည့်ပုံ စံြျားကိုမပင်ဆင် မနပါသည်။ ထိုလုပ် မဆာင်နိုင်ြည့်ပုံစံြျားတေင် မေသဆိုင်ောနှင့် နိုင်ငံလုံးဆိုင်ော အ မြေအနှစ်ထိန်းသိြ်း မေးလိုအပ်ချက်ြျား၊ နိုင်ငံတေင်းသက်ဆိုင်ော လုပ်ငန်းလုပ် မဆာင် မနသူြျားကို အေည် အ မသေးမြှင့်တင်နိုင်ြည့်နည်းလြ်းြျားကို စဥ်းစားထားပပီး၊ မြန်ြာ ပညာေှင်ြျားက ပို့ချ၍ ကိုယ်တိုင် ေပ်တည်နိုင်ြည့် အ မမခအ မနကိုစဥ်းစားထားပါသည်။ အစိုးေြှ အသိအြှတ်မပု မသာ ပုံြှန် (ဘေဲ့)သင်တန်းြျားြေင့်လှစ်ေန် အချနိ ်ယူေြည် မြစ်ပါသည်။ လတ်တ မ လာ Covid 19 ကူးစက်မပန့်ပေားမ နချနိ ်တေင် အ မြေအနှစ်ထိန်းသိြ်းမ ေး အတေက် လူြှုအြေဲ့အစည်း၏ပါဝင်ြှု အခန်း ကဏ္ဍ ကိုအာရုံစိုက်ေန် အခေင့် အ မေးပင်မြစ်ပါသည်။ ဤစာတြ်းတေင် သက်ဆိုင်ော အ မြေအနှစ်မေသ အသီးသီးြှ လူြှု အြေဲ့ြျား၏ လှုပ်ေှားြှုြျား၊ မြန်ြာ့ယဥ် မကျးြှု အ မြေအနှစ်ြျား မေေှည်ထိန်းသိြ်းြှုတေင် လူြှု အြေဲ့အစည်းြျားြှ ပိုြိုပါဝင်နိုင်ြည့် အခေင့်အလြ်းြျား ချြှတ်မခင်းတို့ပါဝင်ပါသည်။ ခံနိုင်ေည်ေမှိ သာ၊ အနာဂတ်ြျုိးဆက်အတေက်လက်ေှိ စေြ်းအားြျားကို အ မကာင်းအတိုင်းချန်ထားနိုင် မသာ မပည်တေင်းစေြ်းအားစုြျားကို ပိုြို တိုးတက်လာ မအာင် မဆာင်ေွက်ေန်ေည်ေွယ်ပါသည်။