Motor-learning literature focuses on simple laboratory-tasks due to their controlled manner and the ease to apply manipulations to induce learning and adaptation. Recently, we introduced a billiards ...paradigm and demonstrated the feasibility of real-world-neuroscience using wearables for naturalistic full-body motion-tracking and mobile-brain-imaging. Here we developed an embodied virtual-reality (VR) environment to our real-world billiards paradigm, which allows to control the visual feedback for this complex real-world task, while maintaining sense of embodiment. The setup was validated by comparing real-world ball trajectories with the trajectories of the virtual balls, calculated by the physics engine. We then ran our short-term motor learning protocol in the embodied VR. Subjects played billiard shots when they held the physical cue and hit a physical ball on the table while seeing it all in VR. We found comparable short-term motor learning trends in the embodied VR to those we previously reported in the physical real-world task. Embodied VR can be used for learning real-world tasks in a highly controlled environment which enables applying visual manipulations, common in laboratory-tasks and rehabilitation, to a real-world full-body task. Embodied VR enables to manipulate feedback and apply perturbations to isolate and assess interactions between specific motor-learning components, thus enabling addressing the current questions of motor-learning in real-world tasks. Such a setup can potentially be used for rehabilitation, where VR is gaining popularity but the transfer to the real-world is currently limited, presumably, due to the lack of embodiment.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Sepsis is the third leading cause of death worldwide and the main cause of mortality in hospitals
, but the best treatment strategy remains uncertain. In particular, evidence suggests that current ...practices in the administration of intravenous fluids and vasopressors are suboptimal and likely induce harm in a proportion of patients
. To tackle this sequential decision-making problem, we developed a reinforcement learning agent, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Clinician, which extracted implicit knowledge from an amount of patient data that exceeds by many-fold the life-time experience of human clinicians and learned optimal treatment by analyzing a myriad of (mostly suboptimal) treatment decisions. We demonstrate that the value of the AI Clinician's selected treatment is on average reliably higher than human clinicians. In a large validation cohort independent of the training data, mortality was lowest in patients for whom clinicians' actual doses matched the AI decisions. Our model provides individualized and clinically interpretable treatment decisions for sepsis that could improve patient outcomes.
Renal ischemia-reperfusion injury (RIRI) is one of the main causes for acute kidney injury (AKI). Many previous attempts failed to adopt a suitable treatment regimen for AKI. Recently, combined ...melatonin (Mel) and mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-derived exosomes (Exo) therapy gave a promising therapeutic option for acute liver ischemic injury, however this treatment approach has not been tested against RIRI yet. This study tested the hypothesis that administration of exosomes derived from MSCs preconditioned with Mel gave best protection against RIRI as compared to therapy by MSCs or exosomes derived from non-preconditioned MSCs. Female adult rats (n = 60) equally divided into control group, sham group, RIRI group (induced by bilateral renal arteries clamping), RIRI + MSCs group (1 × 10
bone marrow derived MSCs), RIRI + Exo group (250 μg Exo derived from no-preconditioned MSCs), and RIRI + Mel + Exo group (250 μg Exo derived from Mel preconditioned MSCs). MSCs or Exo was bilaterally injected once in each renal artery during reperfusion. The obtained results revealed notable improvement in RIRI following all treatment (MSCs, Exo, and Exo + Mel) with best improvement in Exo + Mel group as evidenced by: 1) decreased kidney injury histopathological score; 2) reduced blood levels of kidney damage markers blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine; 3) declined oxidative stress status (MDA level,
gene, and NOX2 protein); 4) increased anti-oxidant status (
gene, and SOD, CAT, GPX activities); 5) declined apoptosis (caspase 3 activity and mRNA, and
,
genes), 6) induced anti-apoptotic effect (
gene); 7) inhibition of inflammation (decreased MPO activity and
genes and increased
genes); 8) improved regeneration (bFGF, HGF and SOX9 proteins); and 9) enhanced angiogenesis (
gene). These data indicate that treatment with exosomes derived from MSCs preconditioned with melatonin gave best protective effect against renal ischemia-reperfusion injury as compared to therapy by non-preconditioned MSCs or their exosomes.
We aimed to obtain magnesium/iron (Mg/Fe)-layered double hydroxides (LDHs) nanoparticles-immobilized on waste foundry sand-a byproduct of the metal casting industry. XRD and FT-IR tests were applied ...to characterize the prepared sorbent. The results revealed that a new peak reflected LDHs nanoparticles. In addition, SEM-EDS mapping confirmed that the coating process was appropriate. Sorption tests for the interaction of this sorbent with an aqueous solution contaminated with Congo red dye revealed the efficacy of this material where the maximum adsorption capacity reached approximately 9127.08 mg/g. The pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order kinetic models helped to describe the sorption measurements, indicating that the physical and chemical forces governed the removal process.
This manuscript spans over 180years of ideas, discoveries, inventions, breakthroughs and research in Capacitive Deionisation (CDI) and Membrane CDI (MCDI) desalination. Starting with the first ...discovery of the dissociation of ions in solution under an electric field by M. Faraday (1833), through the pioneering work of carbon aerogel flow through capacitors by J. Farmer's group (1996) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), to the utilization of novel graphene and carbon nanotube (CNT) materials as electrodes, the CDI and MCDI technologies are progressively making its path to the desalination industry. Through this review various deficiencies of this technology have been identified, first and far most was the need for low cost and efficient electrode materials. The review identified that a low cost and high efficiency electrode capable of processing high salinity (seawater) stream still does not exists and is considered important if the technology is to make it to the industry. Furthermore, the lack of long term reliability, operation demonstrations and experience meant that information about scaling and fouling are rather scarce. Taking a step further, no comprehensive environmental assessment such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been performed yet.
•We review 180years of breakthroughs and research in Capacitive Deionisation (CDI).•The critical deficiency in CDI is the need of low cost/high efficiency electrodes.•The CDI complex electrosorption process requires a comprehensive and robust model.•No comprehensive environmental assessment is done yet for CDI.•The CDI field lacks long term reliability and operation, pilot scale demonstration.
The pollution of groundwater by organic or inorganic pollutants, originating from either soil leaching or anthropogenic activities, is one of the major environmental issues. Remediation of this water ...source is of highest priority because many countries use it for drinking purpose. Pump-and-treat method is represented for many decades the major technique to treat groundwater infected with organic/inorganic pollutants. In last two decades, this technique becomes to be in lack with the sense of modern concepts of sustainability and renewable energy. Permeable reactive barriers (PRBs) technology was introduced as an alternative method for traditional pump-and-treat systems to remediate contaminated groundwater that was achieving these concepts. Within this issue, this technology has been proven to be a successful and most efficient promising method used by many researchers and in several projects due to its direct and simple techniques to remediate groundwater. A rapid progress from bench scale to field scale implementation in the PRB technique is recognized through the last few years. In addition, this technique was modeled theoretically for characterizing the migration of contaminants spatially and temporally through the barrier and, consequently, these models can be used for estimating the longevity of this barrier. An overview of this technique and the promising horizons for scientific research that integrates this method with sustainability and green technology practices are presented in the present study.
Putting touch into action Faisal, A Aldo
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
2021-May-21, 2021-05-21, 20210521, Letnik:
372, Številka:
6544
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Bidirectional brain-machine interfaces boost movement restoration in a paralyzed user
Human tactile senses maintain contact with the environment and are essential for the ability to manipulate ...objects dexterously (
1
). People suffering from upper spinal cord injuries, nerve injuries, and other forms of arm paralysis lose the ability not only to move their hand but also to feel with their fingers. Over the past decades, brain-machine interfacing has achieved the ability to read out action intentions from the human brain and restore movement by enabling paralyzed patients to control robotic arms (
2
) or to electrically stimulate muscles so paralyzed arms can move again (
3
). It is commonly assumed that this needs to be complemented with restoring sensory feedback. On page 831 of this issue, Flesher
et al.
(
4
) demonstrate a substantial practical benefit for a paralyzed patient whose ability to manipulate objects through a brain-controlled robotic arm was substantially increased through artificial tactile feedback.
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Pyran is a heterocyclic group containing oxygen that possesses a variety of pharmacological effects. Pyran is also one of the most prevalent structural subunits in natural products, ...such as xanthones,coumarins, flavonoids,benzopyrans, etc. Additionally demonstrating the neuroprotective properties of pyrans is the fact that this heterocycle has recently attracted the attention of scientists worldwide. Alzheimer's Disease (AD) treatment and diagnosis are two of the most critical research objectives worldwide. Increased amounts of extracellular senile plaques, intracellular neurofibrillary tangles, and a progressive shutdown of cholinergic basal forebrain neuron transmission are often related with cognitive impairment. This review highlights the various pyran scaffolds of natural and synthetic origin that are effective in the treatment of AD. For better understanding synthetic compounds are categorized as different types of pyran derivatives like chromene, flavone, xanthone, xanthene, etc. The discussion encompasses both the structure–activity correlations of these compounds as well as their activity against AD. Because of the intriguing actions that were uncovered by these pyran-based scaffolds, there is no question that they are at the forefront of the search for potential medication candidates that could treat Alzheimer's disease.
Human behaviors from toolmaking to language are thought to rely on a uniquely evolved capacity for hierarchical action sequencing. Testing this idea will require objective, generalizable methods for ...measuring the structural complexity of real-world behavior. Here we present a data-driven approach for extracting action grammars from basic ethograms, exemplified with respect to the evolutionarily relevant behavior of stone toolmaking. We analyzed sequences from the experimental replication of ~ 2.5 Mya Oldowan vs. ~ 0.5 Mya Acheulean tools, finding that, while using the same "alphabet" of elementary actions, Acheulean sequences are quantifiably more complex and Oldowan grammars are a subset of Acheulean grammars. We illustrate the utility of our complexity measures by re-analyzing data from an fMRI study of stone toolmaking to identify brain responses to structural complexity. Beyond specific implications regarding the co-evolution of language and technology, this exercise illustrates the general applicability of our method to investigate naturalistic human behavior and cognition.
Many recent studies found signatures of motor learning in neural beta oscillations (13–30Hz), and specifically in the post-movement beta rebound (PMBR). All these studies were in controlled ...laboratory-tasks in which the task designed to induce the studied learning mechanism. Interestingly, these studies reported opposing dynamics of the PMBR magnitude over learning for the error-based and reward-based tasks (increase versus decrease, respectively). Here we explored the PMBR dynamics during real-world motor-skill-learning in a billiards task using mobile-brain-imaging. Our EEG recordings highlight the opposing dynamics of PMBR magnitudes (increase versus decrease) between different subjects performing the same task. The groups of subjects, defined by their neural dynamics, also showed behavioural differences expected for different learning mechanisms. Our results suggest that when faced with the complexity of the real-world different subjects might use different learning mechanisms for the same complex task. We speculate that all subjects combine multi-modal mechanisms of learning, but different subjects have different predominant learning mechanisms.
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