Perceptual decisions require the transformation of raw sensory inputs into cortical representations suitable for stimulus discrimination. One of the best-known examples of this transformation ...involves the middle temporal area (MT) of the primate visual cortex. Area MT provides a robust representation of stimulus motion, and previous work has shown that it contributes causally to performance on motion discrimination tasks. Here we report that the strength of this contribution can be highly plastic: depending on the recent training history, pharmacological inactivation of MT can severely impair motion discrimination, or it can have little detectable influence. Further analysis of neural and behavioral data suggests that training moves the readout of motion information between MT and lower-level cortical areas. These results show that the contribution of individual brain regions to conscious perception can shift flexibly depending on sensory experience.
•Little effect of MT inactivation on motion percepts of subjects trained on gratings•After training with dots, MT inactivation impairs perception of dots and gratings•Choice probability is more correlated with neural sensitivity after dots training•Spatial integration is greater when subjects are trained with dots
Liu and Pack show that visual motion perception can rely on different brain areas, depending on training. After training with random dot stimuli, perceptual decisions rely on MT, but with training on grating stimuli, decisions are based on lower-level cortical areas.
The potential importance of the angular momentum which is gained by accreting white dwarfs (WDs) has been increasingly recognized in the context of Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) single-degenerate model. ...The expectation that the spin of the WD can delay the explosion should help the single-degenerate model to be consistent with the observed properties of most SNe Ia, in particular by avoiding hydrogen contamination. In this paper, we attempt to study the most prominent single-degenerate supersoft (WD + MS) channel when the rotation of accreting WDs is considered. We present a detailed binary population synthesis study to examine the predicted population of SNe Ia for this channel. For our standard model, we find that 77 per cent of these SNe Ia explode with WD masses which are low enough to be supported by solid-body rotation ( ≤ 1.5 M⊙); this is a substantially higher proportion than found by previous work. Only 2 per cent have WD explosion masses ≥2.0 M⊙; these require the initial WD mass to be larger than 1.0 M⊙. We further discuss the possible origin of the diversity of SNe Ia from the pre- and post-accretion properties of the WDs in this population. We also suggest that some SN Ia progenitors with substantial circumstellar hydrogen, including some apparent Type IIn SNe, might be related to WDs which required support from differential rotation to avoid explosion, since these can still be accreting from hydrogen-rich donors with a relatively high mass-transfer rate at the time of the SN explosion.
Quantum phase transitions (QPTs) are usually associated with many-body systems in the thermodynamic limit when their ground states show abrupt changes at zero temperature with variation of a ...parameter in the Hamiltonian. Recently it has been realized that a QPT can also occur in a system composed of only a two-level atom and a single-mode bosonic field, described by the quantum Rabi model (QRM). Here we report an experimental demonstration of a QPT in the QRM using a
Yb
ion in a Paul trap. We measure the spin-up state population and the average phonon number of the ion as two order parameters and observe clear evidence of the phase transition via adiabatic tuning of the coupling between the ion and its spatial motion. An experimental probe of the phase transition in a fundamental quantum optics model without imposing the thermodynamic limit opens up a window for controlled study of QPTs and quantum critical phenomena.
Magnetic Weyl semimetal phase in a Kagomé crystal Liu, D F; Liang, A J; Liu, E K ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
09/2019, Letnik:
365, Številka:
6459
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Weyl semimetals are crystalline solids that host emergent relativistic Weyl fermions and have characteristic surface Fermi-arcs in their electronic structure. Weyl semimetals with broken time ...reversal symmetry are difficult to identify unambiguously. In this work, using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we visualized the electronic structure of the ferromagnetic crystal Co
Sn
S
and discovered its characteristic surface Fermi-arcs and linear bulk band dispersions across the Weyl points. These results establish Co
Sn
S
as a magnetic Weyl semimetal that may serve as a platform for realizing phenomena such as chiral magnetic effects, unusually large anomalous Hall effect and quantum anomalous Hall effect.
The co-adsorption of H2 and C2H4 on a single Pd doping atom of Ag clusters is impossible.
Display omitted
•H2 and C2H2 can simultaneously bind with a single Pd doping atom on Ag clusters.•The ...co-adsorption of H2 and C2H4 on a single Pd doping atom is impossible.•C2H4 can be hydrogenated to form C2H6 on two neighboring Pd doping atoms.
Recently, it has been reported that the reaction selectivity of catalytic hydrogenation of acetylene to ethylene can be significantly enhanced via the approach of Pd mono-atomic catalysis Pei et al. ACS Catal. 5 (2015) 3717–3725. To explain the catalytic mechanism of this binary alloy catalyst, C2H2 hydrogenation reactions on Pd doping Ag nanoclusters are studied using density functional theory simulations. The simulation results indicate that H2 and C2H2 can simultaneously bind with a single Pd doping atom no matter it is on vertex and edge sites of Ag clusters. The following H2 dissociation and C2H2 hydrogenation are not difficult since the corresponding reaction barrier values are no more than 0.58eV. The generated C2H4 molecule can not be further hydrogenated since it locates on the top of Pd doping atom, which is the only adsorption site for H2. On two Pd doping atoms at contiguous sites of Ag clusters, C2H4 hydrogenation reactions can be carried out since there are enough sites for co-adsorption of H2 and C2H4.
Recent observations suggest that some Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) originate from the merging of two carbon-oxygen white dwarfs (CO WDs). Meanwhile, recent hydrodynamical simulations have indicated ...that the accretion-induced collapse may be avoided under certain conditions when double WDs merge violently. However, the properties of SNe Ia from this violent merger scenario are highly dependent on a particular mass-accretion stage, the so-called WD + He subgiant channel, during which the primary WD is able to increase its mass by accreting He-rich material from an He subgiant before the systems evolves into a double WD system. In this paper, we aim to study this particular evolutionary stage systematically and give the properties of violent WD mergers. By employing the Eggleton stellar evolution code, we followed a large number of binary calculations and obtained the regions in parameter space for producing violent mergers based on the WD + He subgiant channel. According to these simulations, we found that the primary WDs can increase their mass by ~ 0.10-0.45 M... during the mass-accretion stage. We then conducted a series of binary population synthesis calculations and found that the Galactic SN Ia birthrate from this channel is about 0.01-0.4 x 10 super( -3) yr super( -1). This suggests that the violent WD mergers from this channel may only contribute to ~0.3-10 per cent of all SNe Ia in our Galaxy. The delay times of violent WD mergers from this channel are = 1.7 Gyr, contributing to the SNe Ia in old populations. We also found that the WD + He subgiant channel is the dominant way for producing violent WD mergers that may be able to eventually explode as SNe Ia. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
To evaluate a reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) assay for detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and compare it with RT-PCR.
...We designed primers specific to the orf1ab and S genes of SARS-CoV-2. Total viral RNA was extracted using the QIAamp Viral RNA Mini Kit. We optimized the RT-LAMP assay, and evaluated it for its sensitivity and specificity of detection using real-time turbidity monitoring and visual observation.
The primer sets orf1ab-4 and S-123 amplified the genes in the shortest times, the mean (±SD) times were 18 ± 1.32 min and 20 ± 1.80 min, respectively, and 63°C was the optimum reaction temperature. The sensitivities were 2 × 101 copies and 2 × 102 copies per reaction with primer sets orf1ab-4 and S-123, respectively. This assay showed no cross-reactivity with 60 other respiratory pathogens. To describe the availability of this method in clinical diagnosis, we collected 130 specimens from patients with clinically suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection. Among them, 58 were confirmed to be positive and 72 were negative by RT-LAMP. The sensitivity was 100% (95% CI 92.3%–100%), specificity 100% (95% CI 93.7%–100%). This assay detected SARS-CoV-2 in a mean (±SD) time of 26.28 ± 4.48 min and the results can be identified with visual observation.
These results demonstrate that we developed a rapid, simple, specific and sensitive RT-LAMP assay for SARS-CoV-2 detection among clinical samples. It will be a powerful tool for SARS-CoV-2 identification, and for monitoring suspected patients, close contacts and high-risk groups.
In the visual system, the response to a stimulus in a neuron's receptive field can be modulated by stimulus context, and the strength of these contextual influences vary with stimulus intensity. ...Recent work has shown how a theoretical model, the stabilized supralinear network (SSN), can account for such modulatory influences, using a small set of computational mechanisms. Although the predictions of the SSN have been confirmed in primary visual cortex (V1), its computational principles apply with equal validity to any cortical structure. We have therefore tested the generality of the SSN by examining modulatory influences in the middle temporal area (MT) of the macaque visual cortex, using electrophysiological recordings and pharmacological manipulations. We developed a novel stimulus that can be adjusted parametrically to be larger or smaller in the space of all possible motion directions. We found, as predicted by the SSN, that MT neurons integrate across motion directions for low-contrast stimuli, but that they exhibit suppression by the same stimuli when they are high in contrast. These results are analogous to those found in visual cortex when stimulus size is varied in the space domain. We further tested the mechanisms of inhibition using pharmacological manipulations of inhibitory efficacy. As predicted by the SSN, local manipulation of inhibitory strength altered firing rates, but did not change the strength of surround suppression. These results are consistent with the idea that the SSN can account for modulatory influences along different stimulus dimensions and in different cortical areas.
Visual neurons are selective for specific stimulus features in a region of visual space known as the receptive field, but can be modulated by stimuli outside of the receptive field. The SSN model has been proposed to account for these and other modulatory influences, and tested in V1. As this model is not specific to any particular stimulus feature or brain region, we wondered whether similar modulatory influences might be observed for other stimulus dimensions and other regions. We tested for specific patterns of modulatory influences in the domain of motion direction, using electrophysiological recordings from MT. Our data confirm the predictions of the SSN in MT, suggesting that the SSN computations might be a generic feature of sensory cortex.
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