Some argue that hippocampus supports declarative memory, our capacity to recall facts and events, whereas others view the hippocampus as part of a system dedicated to calculating routes through ...space, and these two contrasting views are pursued largely independently in current research. Here we offer a perspective on where these views can and cannot be reconciled and update a bridging framework that will improve our understanding of hippocampal function.
Currently, separate lines of research focus on hippocampal function in spatial navigation or in declarative memory. Here, Eichenbaum and Cohen update their relational memory account to reconcile these approaches and offer new insights into the fundamental mechanisms of memory.
Currency Power Cohen, Benjamin J
2015, 2015., 20150901, 2015-09-01
eBook
Overview: Monetary rivalry is a fact of life in the world economy. Intense competition between international currencies like the US dollar, Europe's euro, and the Chinese yuan is profoundly ...political, going to the heart of the global balance of power. But what exactly is the relationship between currency and power, and what does it portend for the geopolitical standing of the United States, Europe, and China? Popular opinion holds that the days of the dollar, long the world's dominant currency, are numbered. By contrast, Currency Power argues that the current monetary rivalry still greatly favors America's greenback. Benjamin Cohen shows why neither the euro nor the yuan will supplant the dollar at the top of the global currency hierarchy. Cohen presents an innovative analysis of currency power and emphasizes the importance of separating out the various roles that international money might have. After systematically exploring the links between currency internationalization and state power, Cohen turns to the state of play among today's top currencies. The greenback, he contends, is the "indispensable currency"--The one that the world can't do without. Only the dollar is backed by all the economic and political resources that make a currency powerful. Meanwhile, the euro is severely handicapped by structural defects in the design of its governance mechanisms, and the yuan suffers from various practical limitations in both finance and politics. Contrary to today's growing opinion, Currency Power demonstrates that the dollar will continue to be the leading global currency for some time to come.
Elucidating the role of the rodent hippocampus in object recognition memory is critical for establishing the appropriateness of rodents as models of human memory and for their use in the development ...of memory disorder treatments. In mammals, spatial memory 1–6 and nonspatial memory 7, 8 depend upon the hippocampus and associated medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures. Although well established in humans 1, 9, the role of the rodent hippocampus in object memory remains highly debated due to conflicting findings across temporary and permanent hippocampal lesion studies 10–22 and evidence that the perirhinal cortex may support object memory 17, 23, 24. In the current studies, we used intrahippocampal muscimol microinfusions to transiently inactivate the male C57BL/6J mouse hippocampus at distinct stages during the novel object recognition (NOR) task: during object memory encoding and consolidation, just consolidation, and/or retrieval. We also assessed the effect of temporary hippocampal inactivation when objects were presented in different contexts, thus eliminating the spatial or contextual components of the task. Lastly, we assessed extracellular dorsal hippocampal glutamate efflux and firing properties of hippocampal neurons while mice performed the NOR task. Our results reveal a clear and compelling role of the rodent hippocampus in nonspatial object memory.
•In mice, the hippocampus is required for distinct stages of object memory processing•Retrieval of object memory independent of context also requires the hippocampus•Glutamate efflux measurements during NOR support hippocampal involvement in mice•NOR test session performance increased firing rates of hippocampal pyramidal neurons
Intermediate-risk patients with aortic stenosis were randomly assigned to undergo either transcatheter or surgical aortic-valve replacement. At 5 years, there was no significant difference between ...the two groups in the incidence of death or disabling stroke. The incidence of aortic regurgitation was higher with transcatheter AVR.
In vivo histology using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a newly emerging research field that aims to non-invasively characterize tissue microstructure. The implications of in vivo histology are ...many, from discovering novel biomarkers to studying human development, to providing tools for disease diagnosis and monitoring the effects of novel treatments on tissue. This review focuses on quantitative MRI (qMRI) techniques that are used to map spinal cord microstructure. Opening with a rationale for non-invasive imaging of the spinal cord, this article continues with a brief overview of the existing MRI techniques for axon and myelin imaging, followed by the specific challenges and potential solutions for acquiring and processing such data. The final part of this review focuses on histological validation, with suggested tissue preparation, acquisition and processing protocols for large-scale microscopy.
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•Combine contrasts such as diffusion and magnetization transfer to gain specificity.•Standardize acquisition protocols to promote reproducibility and multi-center studies.•Standardize analysis methods via templates and open-source software to minimize bias.•Validation of qMRI using simulations, synthetic and ex vivo phantoms is necessary.
As the size of graphs for analysis continues to grow, methods of graph processing that scale well have become increasingly important. One way to handle large datasets is to disperse them across an ...array of networked computers, each of which implements simple sorting and accumulating, or MapReduce, operations. This cloud computing approach offers many attractive features. If decomposing useful graph operations in terms of MapReduce cycles is possible, it provides incentive for seriously considering cloud computing. Moreover, it offers a way to handle a large graph on a single machine that can't hold the entire graph as well as enables streaming graph processing. This article examines this possibility.
Housing plays a significant role in impelling demand for natural resources and driving economic growth in high-income countries. Public policies, commercial prerogatives, and other inducements have ...encouraged construction and occupancy of ever-larger homes and this pattern has persisted in the face of decreasing household size, declining fertility, ageing populations, and increasing complexity of domestic relationships. This situation has created a perverse mismatch between available housing stocks and residential requirements. Additionally, imperatives to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions and to hasten progress on the United Nations 2030 Agenda demand new planning priorities. Building on the sufficiency turn in the field of sustainable consumption, this paper first formulates parameters for estimating an environmentally tenable and globally equitable amount of per person living area. It then highlights five emblematic cases of "space-efficient" housing. While acknowledging that prevalent spatial norms are evolving, the conclusion discusses the profound challenges of achieving a successful sustainable consumption transition.
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