Search for: All records

Adolescence is a developmental period that is associated with physical, cognitive, and affective maturation and a time when sex biases in multiple psychiatric diseases emerge. While puberty onset marks the initiation of adolescence, it is unclear whether the pubertal rise in gonadal hormones generates sex differences in approach-avoidance behaviors that may impact psychiatric vulnerability. To examine the influence of pubertal development on adult behavior, we removed the gonads or performed sham surgery in male and female mice just prior to puberty onset and assessed performance in an odor-guided foraging task and anxiety-related behaviors in adulthood. We observed no significant sex differences in foraging or anxiety-related behaviors between intact adult male and female mice but found significant differences between adult male and female mice that had been gonadectomized (GDX) prior to puberty onset. GDX males failed to acquire the odor-guided foraging task, showed reduced locomotion, and exhibited increased anxiety-like behavior, while GDX females showed the opposite pattern of behavior. These data suggest that puberty may minimize rather than drive differences in approach-avoidance phenotypes in male and female mice. 

Emerging Internet of Things (IoT) provides connectivity to a wide range of mobile nodes including indoor wireless users, pedestrian, ground robotics, vehicles, and flying objects. Such decentralized network require rethinking user-centric communication protocols which accommodate extremely dynamic environments of autonomous nodes. The authors recently proposed a predictive routing algorithm, which enables a delay-optimal communication through incorporating network topology prediction into the Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. In this work, we extend the proposed solution to jointly optimize the end-to-end latency and total transmission power. Further, we develop a ground robotics platform in order to study the utility of the proposed algorithm in real-world applications. The simulation results which verified by the test platform, confirm the superiority of the proposed algorithm compared to the conventional shortest path algorithms by improving the delay and power consumption by a factor of 10% to 15%. 

Abstract Xe is only produced by cryogenic distillation of air, and its availability is limited by the extremely low abundance. Therefore, Xe recovery after usage is the only way to guarantee sufficient supply and broad application. Herein we demonstrate DD3R zeolite as a benchmark membrane material for CO₂/Xe separation. The CO₂permeance after an optimized membrane synthesis is one order magnitude higher than for conventional membranes and is less susceptible to water vapour. The overall membrane performance is dominated by diffusivity selectivity of CO₂over Xe in DD3R zeolite membranes, whereby rigidity of the zeolite structure plays a key role. For relevant anaesthetic composition (<5 % CO₂) and condition (humid), CO₂permeance and CO₂/Xe selectivity stabilized at 2.0×10⁻⁸ mol m⁻² s⁻¹ Pa⁻¹and 67, respectively, during long‐term operation (>320 h). This endows DD3R zeolite membranes great potential for on‐stream CO₂removal from the Xe‐based closed‐circuit anesthesia system. The large cost reduction of up to 4 orders of magnitude by membrane Xe‐recycling (>99+%) allows the use of the precious Xe as anaesthetics gas a viable general option in surgery.