Remodeling of skeletal muscle myosin metabolic states in hibernating mammals.

Hibernation is a period of metabolic suppression utilized by many small and large mammal species to survive during winter periods. As the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms remain incompletely understood, our study aimed to determine whether skeletal muscle myosin and its metabolic efficiency undergo alterations during hibernation to optimize energy utilization. We isolated muscle fibers from small hibernators, and and larger hibernators, and .

Remodelling of Skeletal Muscle Myosin Metabolic States in Hibernating Mammals.

Hibernation is a period of metabolic suppression utilized by many small and large mammal species to survive during winter periods. As the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms remain incompletely understood, our study aimed to determine whether skeletal muscle myosin and its metabolic efficiency undergo alterations during hibernation to optimize energy utilization. We isolated muscle fibers from small hibernators, Ictidomys tridecemlineatus and Eliomys quercinus and larger hibernators, Ursus arctos and Ursus americanus.

Development of Mandarin Chinese Vowel Perception in Young Children With Normal Hearing and Cochlear Implants.

Purpose Depicting the development pattern of vowel perception for children with normal hearing (NH) and cochlear implants (CIs) would be useful for clinicians and school teachers to monitor children's auditory rehabilitation. The study was to investigate the development of Mandarin Chinese vowel perception for Mandarin Chinese native-speaking children with the ages of 4-6 years. Method Vowel identification of children with NH and CIs were tested.

Impaired interaural correlation processing in people with schizophrenia.

Detection of transient changes in interaural correlation is based on the temporal precision of the central representations of acoustic signals. Whether schizophrenia impairs the temporal precision in the interaural correlation process is not clear. In both participants with schizophrenia and matched healthy-control participants, this study examined the detection of a break in interaural correlation (BIC, a change in interaural correlation from 1 to 0 and back to 1), including the longest interaural delay at which a BIC was just audible, representing the temporal extent of the primitive auditory memory (PAM).

Phosphoproteomics Identifies Significant Biomarkers Associated with the Proliferation and Metastasis of Prostate Cancer.

The spider peptide toxins HNTX-III and JZTX-I are a specific inhibitor and activator of TTX-S VGSCs, respectively. They play important roles in regulating MAT-LyLu cell metastasis in prostate cancer. In order to identify key biomarkers involved in the regulation of MAT-LyLu cell metastasis, iTRAQ-based quantitative phosphoproteomics analysis was performed on cells treated with HNTX-III, JZTX-I and blank.

Differences in auditory associative memory between younger adults and older adults.

Aging impairs visual associative memories. Up to date, little is known about whether aging impairs auditory associative memories. Using the head-related-transfer function to induce perceived spatial locations of auditory phonemes, this study used an audiospatial paired-associates-learning (PAL) paradigm to assess the auditory associative memory for phoneme-location pairs in both younger and older adults.

A "Brick" Mass Spectrometer with Photoionization for Direct Analysis of Trace Volatile Compounds.

With high portability and favorable performance, miniature mass spectrometers have become one of the most attractive tools for on-site analysis of trace volatile compounds. Based on the "Brick" mass spectrometer (BMS) developed previously, a hand-held BMS integrated with a photoionization source (PI-BMS) was developed in this study for volatile compound analysis. With compact dimensions of 30 cm × 18.

The mediating effect of perceived social support on the relationship between mindfulness and burnout in special education teachers.

This study aimed to explore the mediating effect of perceived social support on the relationship between mindfulness and burnout in Chinese special education teachers. Three hundred and seven teachers completed the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, Multi-dimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support Scale, and Teacher Burnout Inventory. The results showed that burnout was negatively correlated with mindfulness and perceived social support, while perceived social support was positively correlated with mindfulness.

Mechanistic insights into Nav1.7-dependent regulation of rat prostate cancer cell invasiveness revealed by toxin probes and proteomic analysis.

Voltage-gated sodium channels are involved in tumor metastasis, as potentiating or attenuating their activities affects the migration and invasion process of tumor cells. In the present study, we tested the effect of two peptide toxins, JZTX-I and HNTX-III which function as Nav1.7 activator and inhibitor, respectively, on the migration and invasion ability of prostate cancer (PCa) cell line Mat-LyLu.

venom peptide reduces pain by selectively blocking the voltage-gated sodium channel Nav1.8.

The voltage-gated sodium channel Nav1.8 is preferentially expressed in peripheral nociceptive neurons and contributes to inflammatory and neuropathic pain. Therefore, Nav1.

Both Val158Met Polymorphism of Catechol-O-Methyltransferase Gene and Menstrual Cycle Affect Prepulse Inhibition but Not Attentional Modulation of Prepulse Inhibition in Younger-Adult Females.

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) can be modulated by both the Val158Met (rs4680) polymorphism of the Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (COMT) gene and the menstrual-cycle-related hormone fluctuations, each of which affects the subcortical/cortical dopamine metabolism. PPI can also be modulated by attention. The attentional modulation of PPI (AMPPI) is sensitive to psychoses.

Auditory spatial attention modulates the unmasking effect of perceptual separation in a "cocktail party" environment.

The perceptual separation between a signal speech and a competing speech (masker), induced by the precedence effect, plays an important role in releasing the signal speech from the masker, especially in a reverberant environment. The perceptual-separation-induced unmasking effect has been suggested to involve multiple cognitive processes, such as selective attention. However, whether listeners' spatial attention modulate the perceptual-separation-induced unmasking effect is not clear.

A preliminary study on time-compressed speech recognition in noise among teenage students who use personal listening devices.

Objective: To compare speech perception obtained with different time compression rates in teenagers that do or do not use personal listening devices (PLDs).

Design: Teenagers in a high school were recruited to complete questionnaires reporting their recreational noise exposure using PLDs. The dose of individual recreational noise exposure was calculated.

Speaking rhythmically improves speech recognition under "cocktail-party" conditions.

This study examines whether speech rhythm affects speech recognition under "cocktail-party" conditions. Against a two-talker masker, but not a speech-spectrum noise masker, recognition of the last (third) keyword in a normal rhythmic sentence was significantly better than that of the first keyword. However, this word-position-related speech-recognition improvement disappeared for rhythmically hybrid target sentences that were constructed by grouping parts from different sentences with different artificially modulated rhythms (rates) (fast, normal, or slow).

Neural correlates of perceptual separation-induced enhancement of prepulse inhibition of startle in humans.

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is the suppression of the startle reflex when the intense startling stimulus is shortly preceded by a weaker non-startling stimulus (prepulse). In rats, the auditory precedence-effect-induced perceived spatial separation between the fear-conditioned prepulse and a noise masker facilitates selective attention to the prepulse and enhances PPI. However, whether the perceptual separation between the prepulse and a noise masker can also enhance PPI in humans remains unclear.

Mental imagery of face enhances face-sensitive event-related potentials to ambiguous visual stimuli.

Visual mental imagery forms mental representations of visual objects when correspondent stimuli are absent and shares some characters with visual perception. Both the vertex-positive-potential (VPP) and N170 components of event-related potentials (ERPs) to visual stimuli have a remarkable preference to faces. This study investigated whether visual mental imagery modulates the face-sensitive VPP and/or N170 components.

A novel tarantula toxin stabilizes the deactivated voltage sensor of bacterial sodium channel.

Voltage-gated sodium channels (Nas) are activated by transiting the voltage sensor from the deactivated to the activated state. The crystal structures of several bacterial Nas have captured the voltage sensor module (VSM) in an activated state, but structure of the deactivated voltage sensor remains elusive. In this study, we sought to identify peptide toxins stabilizing the deactivated VSM of bacterial Nas.

Attentional modulation of informational masking on early cortical representations of speech signals.

To recognize speech in a noisy auditory scene, listeners need to perceptually segregate the target talker's voice from other competing sounds (stream segregation). A number of studies have suggested that the attentional demands placed on listeners increase as the acoustic properties and informational content of the competing sounds become more similar to that of the target voice. Hence we would expect attentional demands to be considerably greater when speech is masked by speech than when it is masked by steady-state noise.

Synergetic action of domain II and IV underlies persistent current generation in Nav1.3 as revealed by a tarantula toxin.

The persistent current (INaP) through voltage-gated sodium channels enhances neuronal excitability by causing prolonged depolarization of membranes. Nav1.3 intrinsically generates a small INaP, although the mechanism underlying its generation remains unclear.

Natural mutations change the affinity of μ-theraphotoxin-Hhn2a to voltage-gated sodium channels.

μ-Theraphotoxin-Hhn2a (HNTX-III) isolated from the venom of the spider Ornithoctonus hainana is a selective antagonist of neuronal tetrodotoxin-sensitive (TTX-S) voltage-gated sodium channels (VGSCs). Intriguingly, previous transcriptomic study revealed HNTX-III family consists of more than 15 precursors, in which the 20(th) and 24(th) residues of the mature sequences are variable. Try20 and Ser24 of HNTX-III are mutated to His20 and Asn24 of other members, respectively.

Attentional modulation of the early cortical representation of speech signals in informational or energetic masking.

It is easier to recognize a masked speech when the speech and its masker are perceived as spatially segregated. Using event-related potentials, this study examined how the early cortical representation of speech is affected by different masker types and perceptual locations, when the listener is either passively or actively listening to the target speech syllable. The results showed that the two-talker-speech masker induced a much larger masking effect on the N1/P2 complex than either the steady-state-noise masker or the amplitude-modulated speech-spectrum-noise masker did.

[High transmission and low group velocity of a photonic crystal coupled-cavity waveguide].

A two-dimensional photonic crystal coupled-cavity waveguide was designed and optimized by combining photonic crystal wavguide and cavity, transmission spectra of the waveguide were calculated by using FDTD method, and the transmittance and the group velocity were obtained through the transmission spectra. The calculation results show that a group velocity of upsilon(g) = c/130 and corresponding transmission of 20.1% can be obtained at wavelength 1.