Reversible inactivation of ferret auditory cortex impairs spatial and non-spatial hearing

A central question in auditory neuroscience is how far brain regions are functionally specialized for processing specific sound features such as sound location and identity. In auditory cortex, correlations between neural activity and sounds support both the specialization of distinct cortical subfields, and encoding of multiple sound features within individual cortical areas. However, few studies have tested the causal contribution of auditory cortex to hearing in multiple contexts. Here we tested the role of auditory cortex in both spatial and non-spatial hearing. We reversibly inactivated the border between middle and posterior ectosylvian gyrus using cooling (n = 2) or optogenetics (n=1) as ferrets discriminated vowel sounds in clean and noisy conditions. Animals with cooling loops were then retrained to localize noise-bursts from multiple locations and retested with cooling. In both ferrets, cooling impaired sound localization and vowel discrimination in noise, but not discrimination in clean conditions. We also tested the effects of cooling on vowel discrimination in noise when vowel and noise were colocated or spatially separated. Here, cooling exaggerated deficits discriminating vowels with colocalized noise, resulting in increased performance benefits from spatial separation of sounds and thus stronger spatial release from masking during cortical inactivation. Together our results show that auditory cortex contributes to both spatial and non-spatial hearing, consistent with single unit recordings in the same brain region. The deficits we observed did not reflect general impairments in hearing, but rather account for performance in more realistic behaviors that require use of information about both sound location and identity.

CFD Analysis of the ESFR Reactor Pit Cooling System in Case of Sodium Leakage

The Decay Heat Removal System (DHRS) for the ESFR Concept consists of three cooling systems, which provide highly reliable, redundant and diversified decay heat removal function. Two of the systems provide strong line of defense, whereas the third system provides a weak line of defense. This third DHR system, DHRS-3, involves separate oil and water cooling loops integrated in the reactor pit, which is installed instead of the safety vessel. It is hoped that the proposed DHR concept enables a robust demonstration of the practical elimination. For its confirmation, detailed numerical analysis is needed as a basis for further investigation. Supporting this approach, the current CFD computation provides a preliminary thermal analysis of the capability of the oil cooling system in the reactor to be used for residual heat removal pit in case of an emergency. For the evaluation, different heat flux values are assumed at the vessel wall to examine the range of the resulting temperatures. The temperature of the main vessel wall should remain below 800°C. Furthermore, a sodium leakage at 500°C into the reactor pit is assumed. The concrete structure should remain below 70°C.

Performance analysis of a dual-loop cooling system for engineering vehicles

To improve the efficiency of heat transfer from the cooling system of non-road mobile machinery, a modification has been made to the classic cooling system. Specifically, we divide the classic cooling system into two independent cooling loops, namely, the high-temperature cooling loop and the low-temperature cooling loop. Through simulation and experimentation, the dual-loop cooling system was systematically studied, and it was found that the heat dissipation of the dual-loop cooling system was better than that of the single-loop cooling system. In comparison with the classic cooling system, the volume factor of our system increased by 49.3%, the power factor increased by 24.5%, the effective drag coefficient increased by 5.8%, and the compressed air loop length was shortened by 54.5%. In addition, the dual-loop cooling system can greatly reduce the temperature of pressurized air. The proposed new system can better meet the cooling needs of non-road mobile machinery.

What can observations tell us about coronal heating?

The actual source of coronal heating is one of the longest standing unsolved mysteries in all of astrophysics, but it is only in recent years that observations have begun making significant contributions. Coronal loops, their structure and sub-structure, their temperature and density details, and their evolution with time, may hold the key to solving this mystery. Because spatial resolution of current observatories cannot resolve fundamental scale lengths, information about the heating of the corona must be inferred from indirect observations. Loops with unexpectedly high densities and multi-thermal cross-field temperatures were not consistent with results expected from steady uniform heating models. The hot ( T >5 MK) plasma component of loops may also be a key observation; a new sounding rocket instrument called the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer will specifically target this observable. Finally, a loop is likely to be a tangle of magnetic strands. The High Resolution Coronal Imager observed magnetic braids untwisting and reconnecting, dispersing enough energy to heat the surrounding plasma. The existence of multi-thermal, cooling loops and hot plasma provides observational constraints that all viable coronal heating models will need to explain.