Smoking and Health Profiles of Hypertensive Patients with COVID-19: An Exploratory Study of Key Physiological Markers.

: Smoking and hypertension are major contributors to cardiovascular diseases, with smoker hypertensives typically presenting with exacerbated health risks. These factors are associated with COVID-19 aggravation, but their cumulative impact in the context of this disease remains understudied. Our hypothesis was that hypertensive smokers display a more vulnerable health profile (versus non-smokers) upon hospital admission for COVID-19.

Single-trial detection of auditory cues from the rat brain using memristors.

Implantable devices hold the potential to address conditions currently lacking effective treatments, such as drug-resistant neural impairments and prosthetic control. Medical devices need to be biologically compatible while providing enhanced performance metrics of low-power consumption, high accuracy, small size, and minimal latency to enable ongoing intervention in brain function. Here, we demonstrate a memristor-based processing system for single-trial detection of behaviorally meaningful brain signals within a timeframe that supports real-time closed-loop intervention.

DNA Methylation Machinery in Gastropod Mollusks.

The role of DNA methylation in mollusks is just beginning to be understood. This review synthesizes current knowledge on this potent molecular hallmark of epigenetic control in gastropods-the largest class of mollusks and ubiquitous inhabitants of diverse habitats. Their DNA methylation machinery shows a high degree of conservation in CG maintenance methylation mechanisms, driven mainly by DNMT1 homologues, and the presence of MBD2 and MBD2/3 proteins as DNA methylation readers.

Rhoa/ROCK, mTOR and Secretome-Based Treatments for Ischemic Stroke: New Perspectives.

Ischemic stroke triggers a complex cascade of cellular and molecular events leading to neuronal damage and tissue injury. This review explores the potential therapeutic avenues targeting cellular signaling pathways implicated in stroke pathophysiology. Specifically, it focuses on the articles that highlight the roles of RhoA/ROCK and mTOR signaling pathways in ischemic brain injury and their therapeutic implications.

Mass-Spectrometry-Based Research of Cosmetic Ingredients.

Cosmetic products are chemical substances or mixtures used on the skin, hair, nails, teeth, and the mucous membranes of the oral cavity, whose use is intended to clean, protect, correct body odor, perfume, keep in good condition, or change appearance. The analysis of cosmetic ingredients is often challenging because of their huge complexity and their adulteration. Among various analytical tools, mass spectrometry (MS) has been largely used for compound detection, ingredient screening, quality control, detection of product authenticity, and health risk evaluation.

A memristor fingerprinting and characterisation methodology for hardware security.

The modern IC supply chain encompasses a large number of steps and manufacturers. In many applications it is critically important that chips are of the right quality and are assured to have been obtained from the legitimate supply chain. To this end, it is necessary to be able to uniquely identify systems to aid in supply chain tracking and quality assurance.

A study on the clusterability of latent representations in image pipelines.

Latent representations are a necessary component of cognitive artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Here, we investigate the performance of various sequential clustering algorithms on latent representations generated by autoencoder and convolutional neural network (CNN) models. We also introduce a new algorithm, called Collage, which brings views and concepts into sequential clustering to bridge the gap with cognitive AI.

Preliminary Analysis of the Glycolipid Profile in Secondary Brain Tumors.

Glycosphingolipids (GSLs) play numerous roles in cellular processes, including cell proliferation, apoptosis, inflammation, and cell signaling. Alteration of the GSLs metabolism leads to the accumulation of particular species of GSLs, which can lead to various pathologies, including carcinogenesis and metastasis; in essence, all neoplasms are characterized by the synthesis and aberrant organization of GSLs expressed on the cell surface. Secondary brain tumors make up the majority of intracranial cancers and generally present an unfavorable prognosis.

An FPGA-based system for generalised electron devices testing.

Electronic systems are becoming more and more ubiquitous as our world digitises. Simultaneously, even basic components are experiencing a wave of improvements with new transistors, memristors, voltage/current references, data converters, etc, being designed every year by hundreds of R &D groups world-wide. To date, the workhorse for testing all these designs has been a suite of lab instruments including oscilloscopes and signal generators, to mention the most popular.

Palimpsest memories stored in memristive synapses.

Biological synapses store multiple memories on top of each other in a palimpsest fashion and at different time scales. Palimpsest consolidation is facilitated by the interaction of hidden biochemical processes governing synaptic efficacy during varying lifetimes. This arrangement allows idle memories to be temporarily overwritten without being forgotten, while previously unseen memories are used in the short term.

Selectively biased tri-terminal vertically-integrated memristor configuration.

Memristors, when utilized as electronic components in circuits, can offer opportunities for the implementation of novel reconfigurable electronics. While they have been used in large arrays, studies in ensembles of devices are comparatively limited. Here we propose a vertically stacked memristor configuration with a shared middle electrode.

Technology agnostic frequency characterization methodology for memristors.

Over the past decade, memristors have been extensively studied for a number of applications, almost exclusively with DC characterization techniques. Studies of memristors in AC circuits are sparse, with only a few examples found in the literature, and characterization methods with an AC input are also sparingly used. However, publications concerning the usage of memristors in this working regime are currently on the rise.

Mathematical Modeling of Brain Activity under Specific Auditory Stimulation.

Understanding the connection between different stimuli and the brain response represents a complex research area. However, the use of mathematical models for this purpose is relatively unexplored. The present study investigates the effects of three different auditory stimuli on cerebral biopotentials by means of mathematical functions.

Author Correction: Memristive synapses connect brain and silicon spiking neurons.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Memristive synapses connect brain and silicon spiking neurons.

Brain function relies on circuits of spiking neurons with synapses playing the key role of merging transmission with memory storage and processing. Electronics has made important advances to emulate neurons and synapses and brain-computer interfacing concepts that interlink brain and brain-inspired devices are beginning to materialise. We report on memristive links between brain and silicon spiking neurons that emulate transmission and plasticity properties of real synapses.

A semi-holographic hyperdimensional representation system for hardware-friendly cognitive computing.

One of the main, long-term objectives of artificial intelligence is the creation of thinking machines. To that end, substantial effort has been placed into designing cognitive systems; i.e.

An Electrical Characterisation Methodology for Benchmarking Memristive Device Technologies.

The emergence of memristor technologies brings new prospects for modern electronics via enabling novel in-memory computing solutions and energy-efficient and scalable reconfigurable hardware implementations. Several competing memristor technologies have been presented with each bearing distinct performance metrics across multi-bit memory capacity, low-power operation, endurance, retention and stability. Application needs however are constantly driving the push towards higher performance, which necessitates the introduction of a standard benchmarking procedure for fair evaluation across distinct key metrics.

Spike sorting using non-volatile metal-oxide memristors.

Electrophysiological techniques have improved substantially over the past years to the point that neuroprosthetics applications are becoming viable. This evolution has been fuelled by the advancement of implantable microelectrode technologies that have followed their own version of Moore's scaling law. Similarly to electronics, however, excessive data-rates and strained power budgets require the development of more efficient computation paradigms for handling neural data in situ; in particular the computationally heavy task of events classification.

Seamlessly fused digital-analogue reconfigurable computing using memristors.

As the world enters the age of ubiquitous computing, the need for reconfigurable hardware operating close to the fundamental limits of energy consumption becomes increasingly pressing. Simultaneously, scaling-driven performance improvements within the framework of traditional analogue and digital design become progressively more restricted by fundamental physical constraints. Emerging nanoelectronics technologies bring forth new prospects yet a significant rethink of electronics design is required for realising their full potential.

Sub 100 nW Volatile Nano-Metal-Oxide Memristor as Synaptic-Like Encoder of Neuronal Spikes.

Advanced neural interfaces mediate a bioelectronic link between the nervous system and microelectronic devices, bearing great potential as innovative therapy for various diseases. Spikes from a large number of neurons are recorded leading to creation of big data that require online processing under most stringent conditions, such as minimal power dissipation and on-chip space occupancy. Here, we present a new concept where the inherent volatile properties of a nano-scale memristive device are used to detect and compress information on neural spikes as recorded by a multielectrode array.

Multibit memory operation of metal-oxide bi-layer memristors.

Emerging nanoionic memristive devices are considered as the memory technology of the future and have been winning a great deal of attention due to their ability to perform fast and at the expense of low-power and -space requirements. Their full potential is envisioned that can be fulfilled through their capacity to store multiple memory states per cell, which however has been constrained so far by issues affecting the long-term stability of independent states. Here, we introduce and evaluate a multitude of metal-oxide bi-layers and demonstrate the benefits from increased memory stability via multibit memory operation.

Improving Detection Accuracy of Memristor-Based Bio-Signal Sensing Platform.

Recently a novel neuronal activity sensor exploiting the intrinsic thresholded integrator capabilities of memristor devices has been proposed. Extracellular potentials captured by a standard bio-signal acquisition platform are fed into a memristive device which reacts to the input by changing its resistive state (RS) only when the signal ampitude exceeds a threshold. Thus, significant peaks in the neural signal can be stored as non-volatile changes in memristor resistive state whilst noise is effectively suppressed.

Resistive switching of Pt/TiO /Pt devices fabricated on flexible Parylene-C substrates.

Pt/TiO /Pt resistive switching (RS) devices are considered to be amongst the most promising candidates in memristor family and the technology transfer to flexible substrates could open the way to new opportunities for flexible memory implementations. Hence, an important goal is to achieve a fully flexible RS memory technology. Nonetheless, several fabrication challenges are present and must be solved prior to achieving reliable device fabrication and good electronic performances.