EEG activities in the orbitofrontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the development of morphine dependence, tolerance and withdrawal in rhesus monkeys

Investigating the activities of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the process of addiction is valuable for understanding the neural mechanism underlying the impairments of the PFC after drug abuse. However, limited data are obtained from primate animals and few studies analyze Electroencephalogram (EEG) in the gamma band, which plays an important role in cognitive functions. In addition, it is yet unclear whether drug abuse affects the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) - the two most important subregions of the PFC - in similar ways or not. The aim of this study is to address these issues. We recorded EEG in the OFC and DLPFC in three rhesus monkeys. All animals received a course of saline (NaCl 0.9%, 2 ml) injection (5 days) followed by 10 days of morphine injection (every 12 h), and then a further series of saline injection (7 days). A main finding in the present study was that morphine decreased EEG power in all frequency bands in a short period after injection in both the OFC and DLPFC in monkeys. And gamma power decreased not just in short period after morphine injection but lasted to 12 h after injection. Moreover, we found that although the changes in EEG activities in the OFC and DLPFC at 30-35 min after injection were similar, the DLPFC was more sensitive to the effect of morphine than the OFC. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

3D FE Analyses of Buried Pipeline with Elbows Subjected to Lateral Loading

This study investigates the interaction between soil and pipeline in sand subjected to lateral ground displacements with emphasis on the peak force exerted to a bended elbow-pipe. A series of three-dimensional (3D) finite-element (FE) analyses were performed in both opening and closing modes of the elbow section for different initial pipe bending angles. To model the mechanical behavior of sands, two soil models were adopted: Mohr-Coulomb and Nor-Sand soil model. Investigations also included the effects of pipe embedment depth and soil density. Results show that the opening mode exhibits higher ultimate forces and greater localized deformations than the closing mode. Nondimensional charts that account for pipeline location, bending angle, and soil density are developed. Soil-spring pipeline analyses of an elbow-pipe were performed using modified F-δ soil-spring models based on the 3D FE results and were compared to the findings of conventional spring model analyses using the standard two-dimensional soil-spring model. Results show that the pipe strain does not change in the closing mode case. However, in the opening mode case, the pipe strain computed by the modified analysis is larger than that by the conventional analysis and the difference is more pronounced when the pipe stiffness is stiffer. © 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Embodied Energy and Gas Emissions of Retaining Wall Structures

The embodied energy (EE) and gas emissions of four design alternatives for an embankment retaining wall system are analyzed for a hypothetical highway construction project. The airborne emissions considered are carbon dioxide (CO 2), methane (CH 4), nitrous oxide (N 2O), sulphur oxides (SO X), and nitrogen oxides (NO X). The process stages considered in this study are the initial materials production, transportation of construction machineries and materials, machinery operation during installation, and machinery depreciations. The objectives are (1) to determine whether there are statistically significant differences among the structural alternatives; (2) to understand the relative proportions of impacts for the process stages within each design; (3) to contextualize the impacts to other aspects in life by comparing the computed EE values to household energy consumption and car emission values; and (4) to examine the validity of the adopted EE as an environmental impact indicator through comparison with the amount of gas emissions. For the project considered in this study, the calculated results indicate that propped steel sheet pile wall and minipile wall systems have less embodied energy and gas emissions than cantilever steel tubular wall and secant concrete pile wall systems. The difference in CO 2 emission for the retaining wall of 100 m length between the most and least environmentally preferable wall design is equivalent to an average 2.0 L family car being driven for 6.2 million miles (or 62 cars with a mileage of 10,000 miles/year for 10 years). The impacts in construction are generally notable and careful consideration and optimization of designs will reduce such impacts. The use of recycled steel or steel pile as reinforcement bar is effective in reducing the environmental impact. The embodied energy value of a given design is correlated to the amount of gas emissions. © 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Data fusion approaches and applications for construction engineering

Data fusion can be defined as the process of combining data or information for estimating the state of an entity. Data fusion is a multidisciplinary field that has several benefits, such as enhancing the confidence, improving reliability, and reducing ambiguity of measurements for estimating the state of entities in engineering systems. It can also enhance completeness of fused data that may be required for estimating the state of engineering systems. Data fusion has been applied to different fields, such as robotics, automation, and intelligent systems. This paper reviews some examples of recent applications of data fusion in civil engineering and presents some of the potential benefits of using data fusion in civil engineering.

以人精子抗原消化道免疫后的体液免疫反应

在Balb/c、C57和昆明鼠的消化道不同部位以人精子抗原免疫后, 取其脾、 肠系膜淋巴结、Peyer氏淋巴小结及子宫或附睾中的淋巴细胞进行培养。Balb/c 和昆明鼠抗精子免疫反应较强, 且雌性强于雄性。免疫部位以小肠及Peyer氏淋 巴小结内注射的免疫效果较好, 不仅可引起消化道局部免疫反应, 而且子宫、附 睾等生殖道组织也有淋巴细胞分泌抗精子抗体。表3参18

灵长类社会行为的生态选择

其它部委、高等院校基金;国家自然科学基金;中国科学院基金

Automatic object segmentation from calibrated images

This paper addresses the problem of automatically obtaining the object/background segmentation of a rigid 3D object observed in a set of images that have been calibrated for camera pose and intrinsics. Such segmentations can be used to obtain a shape representation of a potentially texture-less object by computing a visual hull. We propose an automatic approach where the object to be segmented is identified by the pose of the cameras instead of user input such as 2D bounding rectangles or brush-strokes. The key behind our method is a pairwise MRF framework that combines (a) foreground/background appearance models, (b) epipolar constraints and (c) weak stereo correspondence into a single segmentation cost function that can be efficiently solved by Graph-cuts. The segmentation thus obtained is further improved using silhouette coherency and then used to update the foreground/background appearance models which are fed into the next Graph-cut computation. These two steps are iterated until segmentation convergences. Our method can automatically provide a 3D surface representation even in texture-less scenes where MVS methods might fail. Furthermore, it confers improved performance in images where the object is not readily separable from the background in colour space, an area that previous segmentation approaches have found challenging. © 2011 IEEE.