A Study of Localized Spontaneous Activity Changes in Cerebral White Matter in Adolescent Smoking Addiction.

Introduction: Previous research has primarily concentrated on alterations in spontaneous brain activity within the gray matter of young smokers; however, the influence of nicotine addiction on spontaneous brain activity in the white matter was unknown.

Methods: The current study encompassed 45 male smokers and 45 male non-smokers. Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) and Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations (ALFF) analyses were applied to examine regional neural activity in the white matter.

The Biased Reaction and Higher Cortical Coherence Under Smoking Cue in Young Smokers.

Introduction: Nicotine addiction is a widespread problem globally, causing millions of deaths and illnesses every year. People who start smoking at a young age are more likely to become addicted to nicotine. The cue-induced craving paradigm is used to study the nervous system related to nicotine dependence.

Transition of Microscale Tribological Regimes from Severe Plastic Deformation to Lubricant Precipitation with Rising Temperatures.

Although high-temperature (HT) solid-lubricating coatings have been developed to control the friction and wear of tribological interfaces operating under HT conditions, the wear and lubrication mechanisms are not well understood. Here, we proposed silicon-assisted sample heating and platinum deposition colloidal probe reinforcement methods, thereby achieving microscale tribological tests between Ni-based alloy microspheres and HT solid-lubricating coatings up to 710 °C in ultrahigh-vacuum atomic force microscopy. The friction evolutions at 465 and 710 °C were significantly different, attributed to a transition of tribological regimes from wear characterized with oxide film removal and severe plastic deformation to lubrication precipitation and enrichment at the sliding interface.

Electroencephalography microstates predict 12-h abstinence-induced craving changes in young smokers.

Nicotine abstinence inhibits the function of the mesolimbic dopamine system to enhance craving. EEG microstates may provide spatiotemporal characteristics of global brain neuronal activity. However, little is known about the temporal dynamics and spatial topography of microstates in young smokers after abstinence.

The Phase-Amplitude Coupling Changes Induced by Smoking Cue After 12-H Abstinence in Young Smokers.

Tobacco use causes more than 8 million deaths globally each year, and the number of younger smokers is growing. It is of great practical importance to explore the underlying neural mechanisms behind the behaviour of young smokers. During cue-induced craving, reward system in the brain generates neural oscillations at specific frequencies.

Thiazolium-Linked Crystalline Porous Covalent Organic Frameworks for Mixed Electronic-Ionic Transport.

Developing efficiently mixed electronic-ionic (MEI) conductive microcosmic pathways within a single functional material is essential yet challenging for electronic devices. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) feature pre-designed functionalities and uniform pores, making them highly desirable platforms for transporting electrons and ions. However, for MEI conductive COFs, achieving high crystallinity when incorporating high-density ionic groups within the extensively π-electron delocalized skeletons remain a challenge due to intermolecular interactions.

Abnormal power and spindle wave activity during sleep in young smokers.

Introduction: Smoking is associated with significant alterations in sleep architecture. Previous studies have revealed changes in the subjective sleep of young smokers, but research on objective sleep assessment using polysomnography (PSG) is limited. This study aims to explore electroencephalography (EEG) power and sleep spindle activity during the sleep of young smokers, as well as to assess the relationship between sleep and smoking variables.

Reconfigurations of dynamic functional network connectivity after 1HZ repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in insomnia disorder.

Aims: The objective of the current study was to investigate the dynamic functional connectivity among large-scale brain networks in patients with insomnia, and to assess the efficacy of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment in these individuals.

Methods: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data from 62 insomnia patients and 69 healthy controls were used to compare differences in dynamic functional connectivity between the two groups. A total of 26 insomnia patients underwent rTMS for four weeks.

Investigation of white matter functional networks in young smokers.

Aims: This study investigated the changes in the organizational and intrinsical activities of the white matter functional networks (WMFNs) in young smokers using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Methods: A data-driven approach was used to characterize the WMFNs of 30 young smokers and 30 non-smokers. We applied K-means clustering to the neuroimaging data to delineate the WMFNs.

The changes of intrinsic connectivity contrast in young smokers.

Previous studies demonstrated that reward circuit plays an important role in smoking. The differences of functional and structural connectivity were found among several brain regions such as thalamus and frontal lobe. However, few studies focused on functional connectivity (FC) in whole-brain voxel level of young smokers.

Determining Roles of Potassium-Feldspar Surface Characters in Affecting Ice Nucleation.

The roles of surface characteristics of the feldspar surface on ice nucleation have remained elusive. Here, simple strategies are reported to quantitatively analyze the effects of the surface morphology and molecular composition of the potassium-feldspar surface on ice nucleation. The steps are found to be responsible to the high ice nucleation efficacy according to the fact that water drop freezing temperature increases by about 4.

Abnormal functional connectivity of the salience network in insomnia.

The salience network plays an important role in detecting stimuli related to behavior and integrating neural processes. The aim of this study was to investigate changes in functional connectivity of the salience network in insomnia patients. Independent component analysis combined with a dual regression approach was used to examine functional connectivity differences in the salience network between patients with insomnia (n = 33) and healthy controls (n = 33).

200-m/500-Mbps underwater wireless optical communication system utilizing a sparse nonlinear equalizer with a variable step size generalized orthogonal matching pursuit.

Linear and nonlinear impairments in underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems caused by the limited bandwidth and nonlinearity of devices severely degrade the system performance. In this paper, we propose a sparse Volterra series model-based nonlinear post equalizer with greedy algorithms to mitigate the nonlinear impairments and the inter-symbol interference (ISI) in a UWOC system. A variable step size generalized orthogonal matching pursuit (VSgOMP) algorithm that combines generalized orthogonal matching pursuit (gOMP) and adaptive step size method is proposed and employed to compress the Volterra equalizer with low computational cost.

Monochromatic Fluorescent Barcodes Hierarchically Assembled from Modular DNA Origami Nanorods.

With the rapid advancement of fluorescence microscopy, there is a growing interest in the multiplexed detection and identification of various bioanalytes (e.g., nucleic acids and proteins) for efficient sample processing and analysis.

18.5% Efficiency Organic Solar Cells with a Hybrid Planar/Bulk Heterojunction.

The donor:acceptor heterojunction has proved as the most successful approach to split strongly bound excitons in organic solar cells (OSCs). Establishing an ideal architecture with selective carrier transport and suppressed recombination is of great importance to improve the photovoltaic efficiency while remains a challenge. Herein, via tailoring a hybrid planar/bulk structure, highly efficient OSCs with reduced energy losses (E s) are fabricated.

Dynamic Neuroimaging Biomarkers of Smoking in Young Smokers.

Objective: To examine potential changes in the dynamic characteristics of regional neural activity in young smokers and to detect whether the changes were associated with smoking behavior.

Methods: The dynamic regional homogeneity (dReHo) and dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (dALFF) in 40 young smokers and 42 nonsmokers were compared. Correlation analyses were also performed between dReHo and dALFF in areas showing group differences and smoking behavior [e.

Electrophysiological Evidence of Event-Related Potential Changes Induced by 12 h Abstinence in Young Smokers Based on the Flanker Study.

The cognitive control processes may be disrupted by abstinence in smokers, which may be helpful in the development and maintenance of addictive behavior. The purpose of this study was to measure the performance of cognitive task after 12 h of smoking abstinence by using event-related potentials (ERPs), including the error-related negativity (ERN) and the error positivity (Pe). In Eriksen flanker task, electroencephalography (EEG) signals of 24 smokers were recorded in two conditions: satiety and 12 h abstinence.

Conformational Dynamics and Cleavage Sites of Cas12a Are Modulated by Complementarity between crRNA and DNA.

Cas12a is an RNA-guided endonuclease, which displays great potentials and several advantages over the well-known Cas9 in genome editing and engineering. Here, we established a quantitative kinetic scheme to describe the conformational dynamics of Cas12a/crRNA/dsDNA ternary complexes. The highly dynamic nature of Cas12a complexes, including their reversible formation, disassembly, and transition between different conformational states, is likely to be one of the key aspects contributing to their high specificity.

The ethanol-induced global alteration in Arthrobacter simplex and its mutants with enhanced ethanol tolerance.

Arthrobacter simplex has received considerable interests due to its superior Δ-dehydrogenation ability. Ethanol used as co-solvent is a stress commonly encountered during biotransformation. Therefore, studies of ethanol tolerance of A.

Sequence elements upstream of the core promoter are necessary for full transcription of the capsule gene operon in Streptococcus pneumoniae strain D39.

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major bacterial pathogen in humans. Its polysaccharide capsule is a key virulence factor that promotes bacterial evasion of human phagocytic killing. While S.

The effect of ethanol on cell properties and steroid 1-en-dehydrogenation biotransformation of Arthrobacter simplex.

Resting cells of Arthrobacter simplex with 1-en-dehydrogenation ability were prepared and treated by ethanol at subinhibitory concentrations (4%-15%, v/v), then added into the ethanol-free system containing low concentration of cortisone acetate (1 g L(-1)) to produce prednisone acetate by C1,2 dehydrogenation reaction. Results showed that, within the range of ethanol concentration, the initial conversion rate was varied significantly with the concentration of ethanol and the maximum was obtained at 8% (v/v) ethanol, which was increased by 32.6% compared with the control.