Evaluation of thermal effects in high-speed shifting tillage operations on share-point wear in sandy loam soil.

A share-point is a cutting edge of the ploughshare, the crucial component of a horizontally reversible plough (HRP). Our previous trials in sandy loam soil indicated that severe abrasion/attrition wear with white materials appeared at the share-point section in the high-speed shifting tillage operation of the HRP. This mechanical fatigue was demonstrated to be caused by the flowing soil-tool interaction.

Opposing effects of prior information on relational representation and visual cues in dynamic social interaction perception.

Social interaction, as a crucial component of relational representation, is essential for understanding human social cognition. While visual cues play a pivotal role in perceiving interactions, little is known about how individuals utilize past visual and interaction-related relational judgments when making decisions under uncertainty. This study investigated how past visual information and interpersonal relational judgments influence the current interaction perception.

Recent, but not long-term, priors induce behavioral oscillations in peri-saccadic vision.

Perception of a continuous world relies on our ability to integrate discontinuous sensory signals when we make saccadic eye movements, which abruptly change the retinal image. Here we investigate the role of oscillations in integrating pre-saccadic information with the current sensory signals. We presented to participants (N = 24) a brief pre-saccadic Gabor stimulus (termed the inducer) before voluntary 16° saccades, followed by a test Gabor stimulus at various times before or after saccadic onset.

Serial dependence in orientation judgments at the time of saccades.

We actively seek information from the environment through saccadic eye movements, necessitating continual integration of presaccadic and postsaccadic signals, which are displaced on the retina by each saccade. We tested whether trans-saccadic integration may be related to serial dependence (a measure of how perceptual history influences current perception) by measuring how viewing a presaccadic stimulus affects the perceived orientation of a subsequent test stimulus presented around the time of a saccade. Participants reproduced the position, and orientation of a test stimulus presented around a 16° saccade.

Investigating Medical Cost and Mortality Among Psychiatric Patients Involuntary Admissions: A Nationwide Propensity Score-Matched Study.

Objective: Involuntary admission to psychiatric inpatient care can protect both patients with severe mental illnesses and individuals around them. This study analyzed annual healthcare costs per person for involuntary psychiatric admission and examined categories of mental disorders and other factors associated with mortality.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study collected 1 million randomly sampled beneficiaries from the National Health Insurance Database for 2002-2013.

Perceptual learning of motion direction discrimination: Location specificity and the uncertain roles of dorsal and ventral areas.

One interesting observation of perceptual learning is the asymmetric transfer between stimuli at different external noise levels: learning at zero/low noise can transfer significantly to the same stimulus at high noise, but not vice versa. The mechanisms underlying this asymmetric transfer have been investigated by psychophysical, neurophysiological, brain imaging, and computational modeling studies. One study (PNAS 113 (2016) 5724-5729) reported that rTMS stimulations of dorsal and ventral areas impair motion direction discrimination of moving dot stimuli at 40% coherent ("noisy") and 100% coherent (zero-noise) levels, respectively.

A new perceptual training strategy to improve vision impaired by central vision loss.

Patients with central vision loss depend on peripheral vision for everyday functions. A preferred retinal locus (PRL) on the intact retina is commonly trained as a new "fovea" to help. However, reprogramming the fovea-centered oculomotor control is difficult, so saccades often bring the defunct fovea to block the target.

Profile of Pathogenic Proteins and MicroRNAs in Plasma-derived Extracellular Vesicles in Alzheimer's Disease: A Pilot Study.

Protein and miRNA enrichment within extracellular vesicles (EVs) isolated from patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been shown to have putative diagnostic value. However, whether a combination of both will be more advantageous is unknown. EVs were enriched from serum samples obtained from patients with sporadic AD (n = 13), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n = 10), vascular dementia (VaD) (n = 10), and healthy controls (HC) (n = 10).

A new format of perceptual learning based on evidence abstraction from multiple stimuli.

Perceptual learning, which improves stimulus discrimination, typically results from training with a single stimulus condition. Two major learning mechanisms, early cortical neural plasticity and response reweighting, have been proposed. Here we report a new format of perceptual learning that by design may have bypassed these mechanisms.

New -ditetralonyl glucoside from the green walnut husk of .

One new -ditetralonyl glucoside (, was isolated from the green walnut husk of (Juglandaceae), together with twelve known compounds (). The structure of the new compound was determined as (2,4,10,12)-2-[7-(12,13,16-trihydroxy--tetralonyl-13---D-glucopyranoside)]- 4,8-dihydroxy--tetralone-4---D-glucopyranoside (), on the basis of detailed spectroscopic analyses, and acidic hydrolysis. Compounds , and were isolated from the genus for the first time.

Perceptual learning of Vernier discrimination transfers from high to zero noise after double training.

Perceptual learning is often interpreted as learning of fine stimulus templates. However, we have proposed that perceptual learning is more than template learning, in that more abstract statistical rules may have been learned, so that learning can transfer to stimuli at different precisions. Here we provide new evidence to support this view: Perceptual learning of Vernier discrimination at high noise, which has thresholds approximately 10 times as much as those at zero noise, is initially non-transferrable to zero noise.

Double training downshifts the threshold vs. noise contrast (TvC) functions with perceptual learning and transfer.

Location specific perceptual learning can transfer to a new location if the new location is trained with a secondary task that by itself does not impact the performance of the primary learning task (double training). Learning may also transfer to other locations when double training is performed at the same location. Here we investigated the mechanisms underlying double-training enabled learning and transfer with an external noise paradigm.

A novel method for contributing to composting start-up at low temperature by inoculating cold-adapted microbial consortium.

Low temperature climate presented a technical challenge to start-up composting in northern region of China. This study investigated if the cold-adapted microbial consortium (CAMC) could promote composting start-up at low temperature. In this work, the CAMC was inoculated when food waste was composted at 10°C.

Malaria control along China-Myanmar Border during 2007-2013: an integrated impact evaluation.

Background: Implementing effective interventions remain a lot of difficulties along all border regions. The emergence of artemisinin resistance of Plasmodium falciparum strains in the Greater Mekong Subregion is a matter of great concern. China has effectively controlled cross-border transmission of malaria and artemisinin resistance of P.

Assessment of the Fluorescence Spectra Characteristics of Dissolved Organic Matter Derived from Organic Waste Composting Based on Projection Pursuit Classification (PPC).

The characteristics of fluorescence spectra of dissolved organic matter (DOM) derived from composting is one of the key ways to assess the compost maturity. However, the existing methods mainly focus on the qualitative description for the humification degree of compost. In this paper, projection pursuit classification (PPC) was conducted to quantitative assess the grades of compost maturity, based on the characteristics of fluorescence spectra of DOM.

Perceptual Learning at a Conceptual Level.

Unlabelled: Humans can learn to abstract and conceptualize the shared visual features defining an object category in object learning. Therefore, learning is generalizable to transformations of familiar objects and even to new objects that differ in other physical properties. In contrast, visual perceptual learning (VPL), improvement in discriminating fine differences of a basic visual feature through training, is commonly regarded as specific and low-level learning because the improvement often disappears when the trained stimulus is simply relocated or rotated in the visual field.

Location and direction specificity in motion direction learning associated with a single-level method of constant stimuli.

Recent studies reported significantly less location specificity in motion direction learning than in previous classical studies. The latter performed training with the method of constant stimuli containing a single level of direction difference. In contrast the former used staircase methods that varied the direction difference trial by trial.