Basolateral amygdala is not critical for cognitive memory of contextual fear conditioning

Evidence that lesions of the basolateral amygdala complex (BLC) impair memory for fear conditioning in rats, measured by lack of “freezing” behavior in the presence of cues previously paired with footshocks, has suggested that the BLC may be a critical locus for the memory of fear conditioning. However, evidence that BLC lesions may impair unlearned as well as conditioned freezing makes it difficult to interpret the findings of studies assessing conditioned fear with freezing. The present study investigated whether such lesions prevent the expression of several measures of memory for contextual fear conditioning in addition to freezing. On day 1, rats with sham lesions or BLC lesions explored a Y maze. The BLC-lesioned rats (BLC rats) displayed a greater exploratory activity. On day 2, each of the rats was placed in the “shock” arm of the maze, and all of the sham and half of the BLC rats received footshocks. A 24-hr retention test assessed the freezing, time spent per arm, entries per arm, and initial entry into the shock arm. As previously reported, shocked BLC rats displayed little freezing. However, the other measures indicated that the shocked BLC rats remembered the fear conditioning. They entered less readily and less often and spent less time in the shock arm than did the control nonshocked BLC rats. Compared with the sham rats, the shocked BLC rats entered more quickly and more often and spent more time in the shock arm. These findings indicate that an intact BLC is not essential for the formation and expression of long-term cognitive/explicit memory of contextual fear conditioning.

Cocaine-predictive stimulus induces drug-seeking behavior and neural activation in limbic brain regions after multiple months of abstinence: Reversal by D1 antagonists

The conditioning of cocaine's subjective actions with environmental stimuli may be a critical factor in long-lasting relapse risk associated with cocaine addiction. To study the significance of learning factors in persistent addictive behavior as well as the neurobiological basis of this phenomenon, rats were trained to associate discriminative stimuli (SD) with the availability of i.v. cocaine vs. nonrewarding saline solution, and then placed on extinction conditions during which the i.v. solutions and SDs were withheld. The effects of reexposure to the SD on the recovery of responding at the previously cocaine-paired lever and on Fos protein expression then were determined in two groups. One group was tested immediately after extinction, whereas rats in the second group were confined to their home cages for an additional 4 months before testing. In both groups, the cocaine SD, but not the non-reward SD, elicited strong recovery of responding and increased Fos immunoreactivity in the basolateral amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (areas Cg1/Cg3). The response reinstatement and Fos expression induced by the cocaine SD were both reversed by selective dopamine D1 receptor antagonists. The undiminished efficacy of the cocaine SD to elicit drug-seeking behavior after 4 months of abstinence parallels the long-lasting nature of conditioned cue reactivity and cue-induced cocaine craving in humans, and confirms a significant role of learning factors in the long-lasting addictive potential of cocaine. Moreover, the results implicate D1-dependent neural mechanisms within the medial prefrontal cortex and basolateral amygdala as substrates for cocaine-seeking behavior elicited by cocaine-predictive environmental stimuli.

Evolution as a self-organized critical phenomenon.

We present a simple mathematical model of biological macroevolution. The model describes an ecology of adapting, interacting species. The environment of any given species is affected by other evolving species; hence, it is not constant in time. The ecology as a whole evolves to a "self-organized critical" state where periods of stasis alternate with avalanches of causally connected evolutionary changes. This characteristic behavior of natural history, known as "punctuated equilibrium," thus finds a theoretical explanation as a self-organized critical phenomenon. The evolutionary behavior of single species is intermittent. Also, large bursts of apparently simultaneous evolutionary activity require no external cause. Extinctions of all sizes, including mass extinctions, may be a simple consequence of ecosystem dynamics. Our results are compared with data from the fossil record.

The Health Behavior Change Competency Checklist (HBCCC): Instrument development and psychometric evaluation.

More than half of morbidity and mortality in the United States can be attributed to behavior-related disease, such as tobacco use, physical inactivity, poor diet and alcohol consumption. Given the increased prevalence of behaviorally related medical health concerns, physician competence in the implementation of effective behavior change strategies is quickly becoming an essential skill. However, only recently have primary care residency programs begun to systematically teach and evaluate motivational interviewing skills critical to influencing health behavior, and use of standardized, objective assessment tools to assess skillfulness has been largely absent. This paper reports the development of a checklist, the Health Behavior Change Competency Checklist (HBCCC). The instrument captures the theoretical model of behavior change, motivational interviewing, in a practical and versatile manner. Psychometric evaluation demonstrated moderate efficacy. Namely, results indicated the HBCCC possesses good reliability, as evidenced by high internal consistency, and adequate construct validity. It also displayed considerable utility and practical application. While these results provide several reasons for confidence in the HBCCC, item revision and additional testing are required in order to establish it as a meaningful and valuable instrument.

Social Support Networks and Self-Efficacy of Peruvian Women Diagnosed with Cancer: A Biocultural Analysis of Health Behavior Constructs

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Mollusca Non-Grata: The influence of top-down control and residence time on the abundance, distribution, and behavior of non-native marine snails in Washington State

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Gene-environment interactions between adult lead exposure and Apolipoprotein E4 on adult hippocampal neurogenesis and cognitive behavior in mice

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Critical fluctuations and entanglement in the nondegenerate parametric oscillator

We present a fully quantum mechanical treatment of the nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator both below and near threshold. This is a nonequilibrium quantum system with a critical point phase transition, that is also known to exhibit strong yet easily observed squeezing and quantum entanglement. Our treatment makes use of the positive P representation and goes beyond the usual linearized theory. We compare our analytical results with numerical simulations and find excellent agreement. We also carry out a detailed comparison of our results with those obtained from stochastic electrodynamics, a theory obtained by truncating the equation of motion for the Wigner function, with a view to locating regions of agreement and disagreement between the two. We calculate commonly used measures of quantum behavior including entanglement, squeezing, and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlations as well as higher order tripartite correlations, and show how these are modified as the critical point is approached. These results are compared with those obtained using two degenerate parametric oscillators, and we find that in the near-critical region the nondegenerate oscillator has stronger EPR correlations. In general, the critical fluctuations represent an ultimate limit to the possible entanglement that can be achieved in a nondegenerate parametric oscillator.

Effects of potential models on the adsorption of ethane and ethylene on graphitized thermal carbon black. Study of two-dimensional critical temperature and isosteric heat versus loading

Adsorption of ethylene and ethane on graphitized thermal carbon black and in slit pores whose walls are composed of graphene layers is studied in detail to investigate the packing efficiency, the two-dimensional critical temperature, and the variation of the isosteric heat of adsorption with loading and temperature. Here we used a Monte Carlo simulation method with a grand canonical Monte Carlo ensemble. A number of two-center Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential models are investigated to study the impact of the choice of potential models in the description of adsorption behavior. We chose two 2C-LJ potential models in our investigation of the (i) UA-TraPPE-LJ model of Martin and Siepmann (J. Phys. Chem. B 1998,102, 25692577) for ethane and Wick et al. (J. Phys. Chem. B 2000,104, 8008-8016) for ethylene and (ii) AUA4-LJ model of Ungerer et al. (J. Chem. Phys. 2000,112, 5499-5510) for ethane and Bourasseau et al. (J. Chem. Phys. 2003, 118, 3020-3034) for ethylene. These models are used to study the adsorption of ethane and ethylene on graphitized thermal carbon black. It is found that the solid-fluid binary interaction parameter is a function of adsorbate and temperature, and the adsorption isotherms and heat of adsorption are well described by both the UA-TraPPE and AUA models, although the UA-TraPPE model performs slightly better. However, the local distributions predicted by these two models are slightly different. These two models are used to explore the two-dimensional condensation for the graphitized thermal carbon black, and these values are 110 K for ethylene and 120 K for ethane.

Comparative evaluation of microscopic car-following behavior

Microscopic traffic-simulation tools are increasingly being applied to evaluate the impacts of a wide variety of intelligent transport, systems (ITS) applications and other dynamic problems that are difficult to solve using traditional analytical models. The accuracy of a traffic-simulation system depends highly on the quality of the traffic-flow model at its core, with the two main critical components being the car-following and lane-changing models. This paper presents findings from a comparative evaluation of car-following behavior in a number of traffic simulators [advanced interactive microscopic simulator for urban and nonurban networks (AIMSUN), parallel microscopic simulation (PARAMICS), and Verkehr in Statiten-simulation (VISSIM)]. The car-following algorithms used in these simulators have been developed from a variety of theoretical backgrounds and are reported to have been calibrated on a number of different data sets. Very few independent studies have attempted to evaluate the performance of the underlying algorithms based on the same data set. The results reported in this study are based on a car-following experiment that used instrumented vehicles to record the speed and relative distance between follower and leader vehicles on a one-lane road. The experiment was replicated in each tool and the simulated car-following behavior was compared to the field data using a number of error tests. The results showed lower error values for the Gipps-based models implemented in AIMSUN and similar error values for the psychophysical spacing models used in VISSIM and PARAMICS. A qualitative drift and goal-seeking behavior test, which essentially shows how the distance headway between leader and follower vehicles should oscillate around a stable distance, also confirmed the findings.

Muscle fiber and motor unit behavior in the longest human skeletal muscle

The sartorius muscle is the longest muscle in the human body. It is strap-like, up to 600 mm in length, and contains five to seven neurovascular compartments, each with a neuromuscular endplate zone. Some of its fibers terminate intrafascicularly, whereas others may run the full length of the muscle. To assess the location and timing of activation within motor units of this long muscle, we recorded electromyographic potentials from multiple intramuscular electrodes along sartorius muscle during steady voluntary contraction and analyzed their activity with spike-triggered averaging from a needle electrode inserted near the proximal end of the muscle. Approximately 30% of sartorius motor units included muscle fibers that ran the full length of the muscle, conducting action potentials at 3.9 +/- 0.1 m/s. Most motor units were innervated within a single muscle endplate zone that was not necessarily near the midpoint of the fiber. As a consequence, action potentials reached the distal end of a unit as late as 100 ms after initiation at an endplate zone. Thus, contractile activity is not synchronized along the length of single sartorius fibers. We postulate that lateral transmission of force from fiber to endomysium and a wide distribution of motor unit endplates along the muscle are critical for the efficient transmission of force from sarcomere to tendon and for the prevention of muscle injury caused by overextension of inactive regions of muscle fibers.

An automated failure mode and effect analysis based on high-level design specificication with behavior trees

Formal methods have significant benefits for developing safety critical systems, in that they allow for correctness proofs, model checking safety and liveness properties, deadlock checking, etc. However, formal methods do not scale very well and demand specialist skills, when developing real-world systems. For these reasons, development and analysis of large-scale safety critical systems will require effective integration of formal and informal methods. In this paper, we use such an integrative approach to automate Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), a widely used system safety analysis technique, using a high-level graphical modelling notation (Behavior Trees) and model checking. We inject component failure modes into the Behavior Trees and translate the resulting Behavior Trees to SAL code. This enables us to model check if the system in the presence of these faults satisfies its safety properties, specified by temporal logic formulas. The benefit of this process is tool support that automates the tedious and error-prone aspects of FMEA.

Bile-salt-induced aggregation of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) and lowering of the lower critical solution temperature in aqueous solutions

The effect of sodium cholate (NaC; concentration 1-16 mM), a biological surfactant, on the aggregation behavior of 1% (w/v, 2.2 × 10(-3) M) poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) aqueous solutions was studied as a function of temperature. From turbidity, dynamic light scattering, viscosity, and fluorescence measurements, it was observed that (i) there is NaC-induced nanoscale aggregation of PNIPAM in its sol state and (ii) the lower critical solution temperature corresponding to sol-gel transition shifts to a lower temperature by about 2 °C.

Building bank brands:how leadership behavior influences employee commitment

Front line employees are critical to service brand success, as their performance brings brand promises to life. Banking employees, like others, must remain committed to their employers, to live the brand, particularly during periods of economic uncertainty and customer frustration. Employees' commitment influences their brand adoption and brand-supporting behavior during service encounters. Effective leadership fosters employee commitment and brand supporting behaviors. This study examines the nature of employee commitment in banking, distinguishing between affective, continuance and normative commitment. The study explores bank leaders, examining whether initiating structure leader behavior or considerate leader behavior is most effective in encouraging employee commitment. Data from a sample of 438 employees in a leading Irish bank reveals the optimal leadership style for employee commitment. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.

Well-Behavior, Well-Posedness and Nonsmooth Analysis

AMS subject classification: 90C30, 90C33.