High-Throughput Genetic Screen Reveals that Early Attachment and Biofilm Formation Are Necessary for Full Pyoverdine Production by .

is a re-emerging, multidrug-resistant, opportunistic pathogen that threatens the lives of immunocompromised patients, patients with cystic fibrosis, and those in critical care units. One of the most important virulence factors in this pathogen is the siderophore pyoverdine. Pyoverdine serves several critical roles during infection.

Static and Dynamic Measures of Human Brain Connectivity Predict Complementary Aspects of Human Cognitive Performance.

In cognitive network neuroscience, the connectivity and community structure of the brain network is related to measures of cognitive performance, like attention and memory. Research in this emerging discipline has largely focused on two measures of connectivity-modularity and flexibility-which, for the most part, have been examined in isolation. The current project investigates the relationship between these two measures of connectivity and how they make separable contribution to predicting individual differences in performance on cognitive tasks.

The Role of Multiple Neuromodulators in Reinforcement Learning That Is Based on Competition between Eligibility Traces.

The ability to maximize reward and avoid punishment is essential for animal survival. Reinforcement learning (RL) refers to the algorithms used by biological or artificial systems to learn how to maximize reward or avoid negative outcomes based on past experiences. While RL is also important in machine learning, the types of mechanistic constraints encountered by biological machinery might be different than those for artificial systems.

A Topological Model of the Hippocampal Cell Assembly Network.

It is widely accepted that the hippocampal place cells' spiking activity produces a cognitive map of space. However, many details of this representation's physiological mechanism remain unknown. For example, it is believed that the place cells exhibiting frequent coactivity form functionally interconnected groups-place cell assemblies-that drive readout neurons in the downstream networks.

Mixed Effects Models for Resampled Network Statistics Improves Statistical Power to Find Differences in Multi-Subject Functional Connectivity.

Many complex brain disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders, exhibit a wide range of symptoms and disability. To understand how brain communication is impaired in such conditions, functional connectivity studies seek to understand individual differences in brain network structure in terms of covariates that measure symptom severity. In practice, however, functional connectivity is not observed but estimated from complex and noisy neural activity measurements.

Design and Optimization of an EEG-Based Brain Machine Interface (BMI) to an Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Stroke Survivors.

This study demonstrates the feasibility of detecting motor intent from brain activity of chronic stroke patients using an asynchronous electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain machine interface (BMI). Intent was inferred from movement related cortical potentials (MRCPs) measured over an optimized set of EEG electrodes. Successful intent detection triggered the motion of an upper-limb exoskeleton (MAHI Exo-II), to guide movement and to encourage active user participation by providing instantaneous sensory feedback.

Topological Schemas of Cognitive Maps and Spatial Learning.

Spatial navigation in mammals is based on building a mental representation of their environment-a cognitive map. However, both the nature of this cognitive map and its underpinning in neural structures and activity remains vague. A key difficulty is that these maps are collective, emergent phenomena that cannot be reduced to a simple combination of inputs provided by individual neurons.

Viral Outbreak in Corals Associated with an In Situ Bleaching Event: Atypical Herpes-Like Viruses and a New Megavirus Infecting Symbiodinium.

Previous studies of coral viruses have employed either microscopy or metagenomics, but few have attempted to comprehensively link the presence of a virus-like particle (VLP) to a genomic sequence. We conducted transmission electron microscopy imaging and virome analysis in tandem to characterize the most conspicuous viral types found within the dominant Pacific reef-building coral genus Acropora. Collections for this study inadvertently captured what we interpret as a natural outbreak of viral infection driven by aerial exposure of the reef flat coincident with heavy rainfall and concomitant mass bleaching.