Prebiotic synthesis of sequential peptides on the Hadean beach by a molecular engine working with nitrogen oxides as energy sources

Addressing the still open question of the prebiotic origin of sequential macromolecules (peptides, nucleic acids) on the primitive Earth, we describe a molecular engine (the primary pump), which works at ambient temperature and continuously generates, elongates and complexifies sequential peptides. This new scenario is based on a cyclic reaction sequence, whose keystep is the activation of amino acids into their N‐carboxyanhydrides (NCA) through nitrosation by NOx. This process could have taken place on tidal beaches; it requires a buffered ocean, emerged land and a nitrosating atmosphere. With the help of geochemical studies and computer simulations of atmosphere photochemistry, we show that the primitive Earth during the Hadean may have satisfied all these requirements. © 2001 Society of Chemical Industry.     

红外警戒系统作战环境的计算机仿真

文中论述了红外警戒系统视景仿真研究的主要内容，给出了仿真软件流程。探讨了满足红外警戒系统全方位、多目标视景生成的实时性方法。     

Obituaries: Martin Deutsch (1926-2002).

Reports the death of Martin Deutsch (1926-2002) and notes his contributions to the field of developmental psychology. Deutsch believed that environmental influences were critical for cognitive development during children's early years and that it was possible to design programs that would provide some of those experiences for children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal depression and early positive parenting predict future conduct problems in young children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at risk for adverse outcomes such as substance abuse and criminality, particularly if they develop conduct problems. Little is known about early predictors of the developmental course of conduct problems among children with ADHD, however. Parental psychopathology and parenting were assessed in 108 children who first met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) criteria for ADHD at 4-7 years old. When demographic variables and baseline ADHD and conduct problems were controlled, maternal depression predicted conduct problems 2-8 years following the initial assessment, whereas positive parenting during the structured parent- child interaction task predicted fewer future conduct problems. These findings suggest that maternal depression is a risk factor, whereas early positive parenting is a protective factor, for the developmental course of conduct problems among children with ADHD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

激光对抗技术发展动态

激光对抗主要包括激光侦察告警、激光无源干扰和有源干扰，以及激光防护几方面。本文概述了激光对抗技术的发展。     

IT投资风险预警的研究

进行IT投资风险预警的基础是对IT投资风险域进行分析;文章提出了基于IT投资目标、信息化生命周期以及企业架构的IT投资风险域的三维框架,并引入贝叶斯网络的原理建立预警机制。最后,在此基础上进行了IT投资风险预警的案例分析。     

重症监护病房紧急状况预警算法

重症监护病房中的病人身体状况通常很不稳定,常出现各种需要医护人员介入治疗的紧急状况。由于医疗资源有限,医护人员可能无法及时发现并处理这些紧急状况,给病人的存活率带来严重的负面影响。如果可以预测这些紧急状况的发生,并及时通知相关医护人员,将大大提高病人的存活率。常见重症监护病房紧急状况包括突然死亡、败血症、肺部感染、急性低血压、以及器官衰竭等。紧急状况预警建模主要采用病人的长时间生命体征监测数据,预测在一定时间之后发生某种紧急状况的可能性。预警模型所采用的监测数据分为静态数据、事件数据和时间序列数据等三类。静态数据具有容易采集、但预测准确性偏低的特点。事件数据或时间序列数据、以及多种类型数据的混合数据对于紧急状况预警模型的预测性能的提高有重要作用,将会获得更广泛的应用。     

Evaluation of the Effects of Developmental Trauma on Neurotransmitter Systems Using Functional Molecular Imaging

Early life stress (ELS) is strongly associated with psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia in adulthood. To date, biological, behavioral, and structural aspects of ELS have been studied extensively, but their functional effects remain unclear. Here, we examined NeuroPET studies of dopaminergic, glutamatergic, and serotonergic systems in ELS animal models. Maternal separation and restraint stress were used to generate single or complex developmental trauma. Body weights of animals exposed to single trauma were similar to those of control animals; however, animals exposed to complex trauma exhibited loss of body weight when compared to controls. In behavioral tests, the complex developmental trauma group exhibited a decrease in time spent in the open arm of the elevated plus-maze and an increase in immobility time in the forced swim test when compared to control animals. In NeuroPET studies, the complex trauma group displayed a reduction in brain uptake values when compared to single trauma and control groups. Of neurotransmitter systems analyzed, the rate of decrease in brain uptake was the highest in the serotonergic group. Collectively, our results indicate that developmental trauma events induce behavioral deficits, including anxiety- and depressive-like phenotypes and dysfunction in neurotransmitter systems.     

Vibrational Spectroscopy in Assessment of Early Osteoarthritis—A Narrative Review

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative disease, and there is currently no effective medicine to cure it. Early prevention and treatment can effectively reduce the pain of OA patients and save costs. Therefore, it is necessary to diagnose OA at an early stage. There are various diagnostic methods for OA, but the methods applied to early diagnosis are limited. Ordinary optical diagnosis is confined to the surface, while laboratory tests, such as rheumatoid factor inspection and physical arthritis checks, are too trivial or time-consuming. Evidently, there is an urgent need to develop a rapid nondestructive detection method for the early diagnosis of OA. Vibrational spectroscopy is a rapid and nondestructive technique that has attracted much attention. In this review, near-infrared (NIR), infrared, (IR) and Raman spectroscopy were introduced to show their potential in early OA diagnosis. The basic principles were discussed first, and then the research progress to date was discussed, as well as its limitations and the direction of development. Finally, all methods were compared, and vibrational spectroscopy was demonstrated that it could be used as a promising tool for early OA diagnosis. This review provides theoretical support for the application and development of vibrational spectroscopy technology in OA diagnosis, providing a new strategy for the nondestructive and rapid diagnosis of arthritis and promoting the development and clinical application of a component-based molecular spectrum detection technology.     

Automatic classification and prediction models for early Parkinson’s disease diagnosis from SPECT imaging

Early and accurate diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is important for early management, proper prognostication and for initiating neuroprotective therapies once they become available. Recent neuroimaging techniques such as dopaminergic imaging using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) with ¹²³I-Ioflupane (DaTSCAN) have shown to detect even early stages of the disease. In this paper, we use the striatal binding ratio (SBR) values that are calculated from the ¹²³I-Ioflupane SPECT scans (as obtained from the Parkinson’s progression markers initiative (PPMI) database) for developing automatic classification and prediction/prognostic models for early PD. We used support vector machine (SVM) and logistic regression in the model building process. We observe that the SVM classifier with RBF kernel produced a high accuracy of more than 96% in classifying subjects into early PD and healthy normal; and the logistic model for estimating the risk of PD also produced high degree of fitting with statistical significance indicating its usefulness in PD risk estimation. Hence, we infer that such models have the potential to aid the clinicians in the PD diagnostic process.