A New Player in the Hippocampus: A Review on VGLUT3+ Neurons and Their Role in the Regulation of Hippocampal Activity and Behaviour

Glutamate is the most abundant excitatory amino acid in the central nervous system. Neurons using glutamate as a neurotransmitter can be characterised by vesicular glutamate transporters (VGLUTs). Among the three subtypes, VGLUT3 is unique, co-localising with other “classical” neurotransmitters, such as the inhibitory GABA. Glutamate, manipulated by VGLUT3, can modulate the packaging as well as the release of other neurotransmitters and serve as a retrograde signal through its release from the somata and dendrites. Its contribution to sensory processes (including seeing, hearing, and mechanosensation) is well characterised. However, its involvement in learning and memory can only be assumed based on its prominent hippocampal presence. Although VGLUT3-expressing neurons are detectable in the hippocampus, most of the hippocampal VGLUT3 positivity can be found on nerve terminals, presumably coming from the median raphe. This hippocampal glutamatergic network plays a pivotal role in several important processes (e.g., learning and memory, emotions, epilepsy, cardiovascular regulation). Indirect information from anatomical studies and KO mice strains suggests the contribution of local VGLUT3-positive hippocampal neurons as well as afferentations in these events. However, further studies making use of more specific tools (e.g., Cre-mice, opto- and chemogenetics) are needed to confirm these assumptions.

Measuring dominance certainty and assessing its impact on individual and societal health in a nonhuman primate model: a network approach

The notion of dominance is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom, wherein some species/groups such relationships are strictly hierarchical and others are not. Modern approaches for measuring dominance have emerged in recent years taking advantage of increased computational power. One such technique, named Percolation and Conductance (Perc), uses both direct and indirect information about the flow of dominance relationships to generate hierarchical rank order that makes no assumptions about the linearity of these relationships. It also provides a new metric, known as ‘dominance certainty’, which is a complimentary measure to dominance rank that assesses the degree of ambiguity of rank relationships at the individual, dyadic and group levels. In this focused review, we will (i) describe how Perc measures dominance rank while accounting for both nonlinear hierarchical structure as well as sparsity in data—here we also provide a metric of dominance certainty estimated by Perc, which can be used to compliment the information dominance rank supplies; (ii) summarize a series of studies by our research team reflecting the importance of ‘dominance certainty’ on individual and societal health in large captive rhesus macaque breeding groups; and (iii) provide some concluding remarks and suggestions for future directions for dominance hierarchy research. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

INDIRECT INFORMATION HIDING TECHNOLOGY ON A MULTIADIC BASIS

It is shown that the current direction of increasing the safety of information resources when transmitting information in info-communication systems is the use of methods of steganographic instruction in video imagery. The effectiveness of such methods is significantly increased when used in a complex of methods of concealment, which are based on the principles of inconsistent and cosmic communication. At the same time, existing methods of steganographic are used in the process of insertion of information mainly only laws, empty features of visual perception of video images. So, it is justified that the scientific and applied problem, which is to increase the density of embedded messages in the video container with a given level of their reliability, is relevant. The solution of this problem is based on the solution of the contradiction, which concerns the fact that increasing the density of embedded data leads to a decrease in the bit rate of the video container, steganalysis stability, reliability of special information, and video container. Therefore, the research aims to develop a methodology for the steganographic embedding of information, taking into account the regularities of the video container, which are generated by its structural and structural-statistical features. The solution to the posed problem of applying steganographic transformations is proposed to be realised by methods of indirectly embedding parts of the hidden message in certain conditions or functional relationships. The possibility of creating steganographic transformations regarding the indirect embedding and extraction of hidden information in a multiadic basis by modifying the underlying basis system within an admissible set is demonstrated. It is shown that the multiadic system, which is created in the spectral space of DCT transforms, has the potential to form a set of admissible modifications of basis systems.

Sonographic approach to the tumours of retroperitoneal space

Background: Timely diagnosis of primary retroperitoneal tumours is one of the current challenges of clinical oncology. This is due to the rarity, polymorphism and diagnostic difficulties of primitive retroperitoneal tumours. Material and methods: The study is cross-sectional, prospective and retrospective. The study group is represented by 118 patients with abdominal and retroperitoneal space tumours. Using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis curve and calculating the average quality of the diagnostic model, the informativeness of ultrasonography in the diagnosis of primary retroperitoneal tumours (PRT) was appreciated. Results: For tumour localization, the ultrasonography (USG) as a diagnostic model demonstrated an appropriate use criteria (AUC) of 0.641 (95% CI 0.541, 0.740, p <0.001), and the mean quality of the diagnostic model was 0.54. Following the statistical analysis, was found a partial correlation between the size of the tumour and the dimensions estimated at USG of 0.540 (95% CI 0.295, 0.737, p <0.001), which represents a high positive correlation. To determine the uni- or multicentric character of the tumour, the USG demonstrated an integrative value of sensitivity and specificity of 0.644 (95% CI 0.415, 0.873, p <0.001. In assessing the proximity ratio of retroperitoneal tumours, the highest AUC was recorded in the assessment of the ratio of tumour to pancreas – 0.838 (95% CI 0.705.0.971, p <0.001) and kidney – 0.861 (95% CI 0.699, 1.024, p <0.001). Conclusions: Ultrasonography is a fairly informative imaging diagnostic method in the diagnosis of retroperitoneal tumours. The characteristics of the tumours obtained after the ultrasound examination provide indirect information about the malignant or benign nature of the primitive tumour, which allows the assessment of the next stages of diagnosis and treatment.

Core Eigenmodes and their Impact on the Earth’s Rotation

Changes in the Earth’s rotation are deeply connected to fluid dynamical processes in the outer core. This connection can be explored by studying the associated Earth eigenmodes with periods ranging from nearly diurnal to multi-decadal. It is essential to understand how the rotational and fluid core eigenmodes mutually interact, as well as their dependence on a host of diverse factors, such as magnetic effects, density stratification, fluid instabilities or turbulence. It is feasible to build detailed models including many of these features, and doing so will in turn allow us to extract more (indirect) information about the Earth’s interior. In this article, we present a review of some of the current models, the numerical techniques, their advantages and limitations and the challenges on the road ahead.

Agricultural Production on Erosion-Affected Land from the Perspective of Remote Sensing

In this article, we discuss the influence of soil erosion on crop yield in the erosion-prone chernozem region of South Moravia. Erosional and depositional areas show significant differences in soil properties, which are also reflected in total crop yield. Plots of winter wheat, grown during the years 2016–2019 were used for analysis. The Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), referred to in literature as one of the best correlates of yield, was used to provide indirect information on yield. Although erosional areas are visible on orthophoto images on chernozem soils, the necessary orthophoto images are not always available. Thus, we have proposed a method for the identification of such erosion-affected areas based on the use of Sentinel 2 satellite images and NDVI or NBR2 indices. The relationship between yield and erosion was expressed through Pearson’s correlation on a sample of pixels randomly selected on the studied plots. The results showed a statistically significant linear reduction in yield depending on the level of degradation. All plots were further reclassified, according to level of degradation, as high, medium, or low state of degradation, where the average EVI values were subsequently calculated. Yield on non-degraded soil is 16 ± 1% higher on average.

A Relational Theory of Reputational Stability and Change

An ongoing discussion in organizational studies has focused on the path-dependent nature of organizational reputation. To date, however, there has been little explanation about when and why some constituents’ reputation judgments remain stable, whereas others are more prone to change. We contribute to this research by developing a relational theory of reputational stability and change. Our fundamental argument is that differences in constituent-organization relationships, as well as in the reputational communities that surround these relationships, affect the stability and change of reputation judgments. First, we highlight three relationship characteristics—favorability, history, and directness—and theorize that the reputation judgments of constituents with more unfavorable, longer, and more direct relationships with an organization are more stable, whereas the reputation judgments of constituents with more favorable, shorter, and more indirect relationships with the organization are less stable. We then develop the concept of reputational communities as a key source of indirect information about organizations. We highlight that the immediacy, size, and level of agreement within reputational communities affect how influential they are in changing individual constituents’ reputation judgments. Specifically, we propose that more immediate and larger reputational communities with a higher level of agreement are most likely to change individual constituents’ reputation judgments, whereas more distant and smaller reputational communities with a lower level of agreement are least likely to do so. Overall, we position constituents’ relationships with an organization and the communities that surround these relationships as central elements for understanding reputational stability and change.

Morphometric Analysis of Lungfish Endocasts Elucidates Early Dipnoan Palaeoneurological Evolution

ABSTRACTLungfish (Dipnoi) are lobe-finned fish (Sarcopterygii) that have persisted for over 400 million years from the Devonian Period to present day. They are the extant sister group to tetrapods and thus have the ability to provide unique insight into the condition of the earliest tetrapods as well as their own evolutionary history. The evolution of their dermal skull and dentition is relatively well understood, but this is not the case for the central nervous system. While the brain itself has very poor preservation potential and is not currently known in any fossil lungfish, substantial indirect information about it and associated structures such as the inner ears can be obtained from the cranial endocast. However, before the recent development of X-ray tomography as a palaeontological tool, these endocasts could not be studied non-destructively, and few detailed studies were undertaken. Here we describe and illustrate the endocasts of six Palaeozoic lungfishes (Iowadipterus halli, Gogodipterus paddyensis, Pillararhynchus longi, Griphognathus whitei, Orlovichthys limnatis, and Rhinodipterus ulrichi) from tomographic scans. We combine these with six previously described lungfish endocasts (4 fossil and 2 recent taxa), also based on tomographic studies, into a 12-taxon data set for multivariate morphometric analysis using 17 variables. We find that the olfactory region appears to be more highly plastic than the hindbrain, and undergoes significant elongation in several taxa. Further, while the semicircular canals covary as an integrated module, the utriculus and sacculus of the inner ear instead vary independently of each other. The functional and phylogenetic implications of our findings are discussed.

CIME: Context-aware geolocation of emergency-related posts

Information extracted from social media has proven to be very useful in the domain of emergency management. An important task in emergency management is rapid crisis mapping, which aims to produce timely and reliable maps of affected areas. During an emergency, the volume of emergency-related posts is typically large, but only a small fraction is relevant and help rapid mapping effectively. Furthermore, posts are not useful for mapping purposes unless they are correctly geolocated and, on average, less than 2% of posts are natively georeferenced. This paper presents an algorithm, called CIME, that aims to identify and geolocate emergency-related posts that are relevant for mapping purposes. While native geocoordinates are most often missing, many posts contain geographical references in their metadata, such as texts or links that can be used by CIME to filter and geolocate information. In addition, social media creates a social network and each post can be enhanced with indirect information from the post’s network of relationships with other posts (for example, a retweet can be associated with other geographical references which are useful to geolocate the original tweet). To exploit all this information, CIME uses the concept of context, defined as the information characterizing a post both directly (the post’s metadata) and indirectly (the post’s network of relationships). The algorithm was evaluated on a recent major emergency event demonstrating better performance with respect to the state of the art in terms of total number of geolocated posts, geolocation accuracy and relevance for rapid mapping.