The RNA-binding landscape of HAX1 protein indicates its involvement in ribosome biogenesis and translation.

HAX1 is a human protein with no known homologues or structural domains, mutations in which cause severe congenital neutropenia through mechanisms that are poorly understood. Previous studies reported RNA-binding capacity of HAX1, but the role of this binding in physiology and pathology remains unexplained. Here we report transcriptome-wide characterization of HAX1 RNA targets using RIP-seq and CRAC, indicating that HAX1 binds transcripts involved in ribosome biogenesis and rRNA processing. Using CRISPR knockouts we find that RNA targets of HAX1 partially overlap with transcripts downregulated in HAX1 KO, implying a role in mRNA stabilization. Gene ontology analysis demonstrated that genes differentially expressed in HAX1 KO (including genes involved in ribosome biogenesis and translation) are also enriched in a subset of genes whose expression correlates with HAX1 expression in four analyzed neoplasms. Functional connection to ribosome biogenesis was also demonstrated by gradient sedimentation ribosome profiles, which revealed differences in the small subunit:monosome ratio in HAX1 WT/KO. We speculate that changes in HAX1 expression may be important for the etiology of HAX1-linked diseases through dysregulation of translation.

Theta Oscillation and Functional Connectivity Alterations Related to Cerebral Small Vessel Disease with Working Memory Impairment

Background Impaired working memory (WM) is an important clinical symptom of cognitive dysfunction associated with cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). Theta oscillations play an important role in the regulation of learning, WM and synaptic plasticity. Therefore, we speculate that theta oscillation may play an important role in the process of working memory impairment in CSVD. Methods Seventy-eight patients with CSVD (mean age 66.18 ± 1.42) and 49 healthy controls (HCs) (mean age 66.53 ± 1.3) were recruited to perform the WM task. Neural oscillations and functional connectivity during the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval phases of WM were evaluated during performance of WM test. Results Compared with the control group, the working memory behavior of the CSVD group showed a significantly longer reaction time and lower accuracy rate. The energy density and functional connection (FC) strength of the theta band in frontal region of the CSVD group were significantly lower than those of the control group, and the theta oscillation in the retrieval phase was significantly higher than that in the coding phase. However, there was no significant change in FC strengths among three phases. Both in the two groups, the FC was significantly positively correlated with accuracy and negatively correlated with reaction time (RT). Conclusion Our results indicated that CSVD patients have significant working memory impairment, and the lack of theta oscillation in the frontal region and the abnormal functional connection of the brain network may be one of its potential neurophysiological mechanisms.

Exploring the Patterns of Resident Resettlement in Rural and Suburban Areas and Their Influence on the Passenger Trip Generation

The region is a complex multi-element and heterogeneous dynamic system. Regional public transport systems are characterized by heterogeneity and incompleteness of information about the processes that take place in them. The factors determining the demand for public passenger transport services, the structure of suburban population transit and the economic consequences of changing this structure have not yet been sufficiently investigated. There is no quantitative assessment of the control factors’ influence on the results of the passenger transport system functioning in suburban traffic, which complicates the effective management in this field.In order to determine the mutual influence of objects with unclear functional connection, one of the methods of computational geometry is considered, which allows quantifying and obtaining tabulated functions of various components and parameters of settlements' interaction and centers of gravity. The numerical characteristics obtained by the described method are further used in the modeling of the processes of efficient functioning and collaboration of urban passenger transport with other external transport types, in particular at interchanges.As a result of the proposed operations, we obtain a tabulated function of the investigated parameter for the area of spatial interaction of infrastructure objects and visualize the calculated parameters in the form of graphical dependencies or in the form of a three-dimensional surface. Thus, using the method of computational geometry, with constructing a Voronoi diagram and executing the Delaunay triangulation, it is possible to obtain tabulated characteristic parameters for inhomogeneous zones of mutual influence where infrastructure objects with unclear functional connection are located.

An evidence-based approach in the management of fatigue due to heart failure: breathing exercises

Fatigue is one of the common symptoms that adversely affect the quality of life of patients with heart failure. It has been reported that fatigue seen in heart failure is caused by conditions such as deterioration of peripheral circulation due to decrease in oxygen delivery, autonomic nervous system abnormalities and deterioration in the strength of the respiratory muscles. Breathing exercises are one of the integrative applications that can increase oxygen delivery due to the functional connection of the heart and lungs providing relief from fatigue. In the literature, breathing exercises have a wide range of breathing techniques that create changes in breathing form and rate. Many studies have found that breathing exercises reduce fatigue, and can have significant effects on patient care and clinical outcomes. Nurses have a major impact on patient outcomes such as reducing fatigue in heart failure patients and improving health-related quality of life. For this reason, it is very important to include breathing exercises in nursing practices. In this regard, the importance of breathing exercises in the management of fatigue due to heart failure has been addressed in this review.

Brain intrinsic connection patterns underlying tool processing in human adults are present in neonates and not in macaques

Tool understanding and use are supported by a dedicated left-lateralized, intrinsically connected network in the human adult brain. To examine this network's phylogenic and ontogenetic origins, we compared resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) among regions subserving tool processing in human adults to rsFC among homologous regions in human neonates and macaque monkeys (adolescent and mature). These homologous regions formed an intrinsic network in human neonates, but not in macaques. Network topological patterns were highly similar between human adults and neonates, and significantly less so between humans and macaques. The premotor-parietal rsFC had most significant contribution to the formation of the neonate tool network. These results suggest that an intrinsic brain network potentially supporting tool processing exists in the human brain prior to individual tool use experiences, and that the premotor-parietal functional connection in particular offers a brain basis for complex tool behaviors specific to humans.

40-Hz Blue Light Changes Hippocampal Activation and Functional Connectivity Underlying Recognition Memory

Research on light modulation has typically examined the wavelength, intensity, and exposure time of light, and measured rhythm, sleep, and cognitive ability to evaluate the regulatory effects of light variables on physiological and cognitive functions. Although the frequency of light is one of the main dimensions of light, few studies have attempted to manipulate it to test the effect on brain activation and performance. Recently, 40-Hz light stimulation has been proven to significantly alleviate deficits in gamma oscillation of the hippocampus caused by Alzheimer’s disease. Although this oscillation is one of the key functional characteristics of performing memory tasks in healthy people, there is no evidence that 40-Hz blue light exposure can effectively regulate brain activities related to complex cognitive tasks. In the current study, we examined the difference in the effects of 40-Hz light or 0-Hz light exposure on brain activation and functional connectivity during a recognition memory task. Through joint augmentation of visual area activation, 40-Hz light enhanced brain areas mostly in the limbic system that are related to memory, such as the hippocampus and thalamus. Conversely, 0-Hz light enhanced brain areas mostly in the prefrontal cortex. Additionally, functional connection analysis, with the hippocampus as the seed point, showed that 40-Hz light enhanced connection with the superior parietal lobe and reduced the connection with the default network. These results indicate that light at a frequency of 40 Hz can change the activity and functional connection of memory-related core brain areas. They also indicate that in the use of light to regulate cognitive functions, its frequency characteristics merit attention.

Methodological Fundamentals for Forming Art Values of Students-Musicians in Arts and Educational Activities

The article is devoted to the problem of value formation of a future music teacher in the process of professional training. Art education is considered as a component of training that accumulates performing, musical, methodological directions. The artistic education for Music teachers determines the poly-artistic vector of professional training, which includes understanding music and other arts. The success of artistic education is ensured by the subjectivity of a future teacher-musician who accepts such activities as a universal professional value. The hierarchy of pedagogical conditions of effective arts and educational activities is substantiated. The initial positions for substantiation of methodological fundamentals of arts and educational activities of the future Music teacher are specified, namely teacher’s focus on self-development and on values of other people. The groups of methods relate to motivation for the complex of musical activity, poly-artistic development, thesaurus in the field of various arts. The core of the methodological fundamentals is personal artistic communication with art as well as interpersonal artistic communication. The need for the functioning of a specific arts and educational environment is substantiated in order to provide artistic communication, The functional connection of pedagogical conditions and methods of formation of artistic values of students-musicians in arts and educational activities as subjects of environmental art education is explained. The prospects of research of the problem caused by actualization of processes of virtual communication, risks of minimizing of interpersonal art communication are defined. Key words: students-musicians, arts and educational

Insights into fucose metabolism: SLC35C1-independent fucosylation discriminates against mannose-derived GDP-fucose

Mutations in the SLC35C1 gene, encoding the Golgi GDP-fucose transporter, cause leukocyte adhesion deficiency II (LADII). Fucosylation improvement in LADII patients treated with fucose suggests the existence of an SLC35C1-independent route of GDP-fucose transport, which still remains a mystery. Here, we developed and characterized a human cell-based model deficient in the SLC35C1 activity. The knockout cells displayed low but detectable levels of fucosylation. Strikingly, the fucosylation defect was almost completely reversed upon treatment with millimolar concentrations of fucose. Even if fucose was supplemented at nanomolar concentrations, it was still incorporated into glycans by the knockout cells. We also found that the SLC35C1-independent transport preferred the salvage pathway over the de novo pathway as a source of GDP-fucose. Our results imply that the Golgi systems of GDP-fucose transport discriminate between the substrate pools obtained from different metabolic pathways, which suggests a functional connection between nucleotide sugar transporters and nucleotide sugar synthetases.

Diagnosis of Schizophrenia Based on Deep Learning Using fMRI

Schizophrenia is a brain disease that frequently occurs in young people. Early diagnosis and treatment can reduce family burdens and reduce social costs. There is no objective evaluation index for schizophrenia. In order to improve the classification effect of traditional classification methods on magnetic resonance data, a method of classification of functional magnetic resonance imaging data is proposed in conjunction with the convolutional neural network algorithm. We take functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data for schizophrenia as an example, to extract effective time series from preprocessed fMRI data, and perform correlation analysis on regions of interest, using transfer learning and VGG16 net, and the functional connection between schizophrenia and healthy controls is classified. Experimental results show that the classification accuracy of fMRI based on VGG16 is up to 84.3%. On the one hand, it can improve the early diagnosis of schizophrenia, and on the other hand, it can solve the classification problem of small samples and high-dimensional data and effectively improve the generalization ability of deep learning models.

Third party stabilization of unstable coordination in systems of coupled oscillators

The Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) system of equations is a well-developed model for dyadic rhythmic coordination in biological systems. It captures ubiquitous empirical observations of bistability – the coexistence of in-phase and antiphase motion – in neural, behavioral, and social coordination. Recent work by Zhang and colleagues has generalized HKB to many oscillators to account for new empirical phenomena observed in multiagent interaction. Utilising this generalization, the present work examines how the coordination dynamics of a pair of oscillators can be augmented by virtue of their coupling to a third oscillator. We show that stable antiphase coordination emerges in pairs of oscillators even when their coupling parameters would have prohibited such coordination in their dyadic relation. We envision two lines of application for this theoretical work. In the social sciences, our model points toward the development of intervention strategies to support coordination behavior in heterogeneous groups (for instance in gerontology, when younger and older individuals interact). In neuroscience, our model will advance our understanding of how the direct functional connection of mesoscale or microscale neural ensembles might be switched by their changing coupling to other neural ensembles. Our findings illuminate a crucial property of complex systems: how the whole is different than the system’s parts.