Construction of Meta-Thinking Educational Program Based on Mental-Brain Simulation (MTMBS) and Evaluating its Effectiveness on Executive Functions, Emotion Regulation, and Impulsivity in Children With ADHD: A Resting-State Functional MRI Study.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of present research was to make a Meta-Thinking educational program based on mental-brain simulation and to evaluate its effectiveness on executive functions, emotion regulation and impulsivity in children with ADHD. METHODS: The research method was Embedded Design: Embedded Experimental Model. The research sample included 32 children with ADHD who were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. The intervention was implemented for eight sessions of 1.5 hr for the experimental group, and fMRI images were taken from them, while the control group didn't receive any treatment. Finally, using semi-structured interviews, coherent information was collected from the parents of the experimental group about the changes made. Data were analyzed with SPSS-24, MAXQDA, fMRIprep, and FSL software. RESULTS: The Meta-Thinking Educational Program had effect on performance of ADHD children and suppressed brain regions related to DMN. CONCLUSION: The Implementation of this educational program plays a vital role in improving psychological problems of children with ADHD.

4K-memristor analog-grade passive crossbar circuit.

The superior density of passive analog-grade memristive crossbar circuits enables storing large neural network models directly on specialized neuromorphic chips to avoid costly off-chip communication. To ensure efficient use of such circuits in neuromorphic systems, memristor variations must be substantially lower than those of active memory devices. Here we report a 64 × 64 passive crossbar circuit with ~99% functional nonvolatile metal-oxide memristors. The fabrication technology is based on a foundry-compatible process with etch-down patterning and a low-temperature budget. The achieved <26% coefficient of variance in memristor switching voltages is sufficient for programming a 4K-pixel gray-scale pattern with a <4% relative tuning error on average. Analog properties are also successfully verified via experimental demonstration of a 64 × 10 vector-by-matrix multiplication with an average 1% relative conductance import accuracy to model the MNIST image classification by ex-situ trained single-layer perceptron, and modeling of a large-scale multilayer perceptron classifier based on more advanced conductance tuning algorithm.

Combinatorial optimization by weight annealing in memristive hopfield networks.

The increasing utility of specialized circuits and growing applications of optimization call for the development of efficient hardware accelerator for solving optimization problems. Hopfield neural network is a promising approach for solving combinatorial optimization problems due to the recent demonstrations of efficient mixed-signal implementation based on emerging non-volatile memory devices. Such mixed-signal accelerators also enable very efficient implementation of various annealing techniques, which are essential for finding optimal solutions. Here we propose a "weight annealing" approach, whose main idea is to ease convergence to the global minima by keeping the network close to its ground state. This is achieved by initially setting all synaptic weights to zero, thus ensuring a quick transition of the Hopfield network to its trivial global minima state and then gradually introducing weights during the annealing process. The extensive numerical simulations show that our approach leads to a better, on average, solutions for several representative combinatorial problems compared to prior Hopfield neural network solvers with chaotic or stochastic annealing. As a proof of concept, a 13-node graph partitioning problem and a 7-node maximum-weight independent set problem are solved experimentally using mixed-signal circuits based on, correspondingly, a 20 × 20 analog-grade TiO2 memristive crossbar and a 12 × 10 eFlash memory array.

Molecular survey of avian circoviruses in some non-psittacine birds and detection of a novel canary circovirus in a pigeon.

BACKGROUND: Circoviruses are small, non-enveloped, single stranded DNA viruses. There is scarce information about these agents in non-psittacine birds. AIMS: It is attempted to detect and characterize circoviruses in non-psittacine birds. METHODS: Forty-five samples were collected from different non-psittacine species belonging to seven avian orders. A nested polymerase chain reaction (nested-PCR) for the detection of rep gene of circoviruses was applied. RESULTS: Two different types of circoviruses were detected in two pigeon samples (2/11, 18.2%). One of the detected circoviruses was placed in clade A next to a polish strain based on phylogenetic analysis. Interestingly, the other detected circovirus was closely related to canary circoviruses (CaCVs). CONCLUSION: In addition to the molecular diagnosis of a pigeon circovirus (PiCV), this is the first report of the detection of CaCv in a pigeon. The possible hypotheses of such circumstance are discussed.

Efficacy of Thermostable Newcastle Disease Virus Strain I-2 in Broiler Chickens Challenged with Highly Virulent Newcastle Virus.

Newcastle disease (ND) is a major threat to poultry industry production throughout developing countries. The Newcastle disease viruses (NDVs) infecting industrialized and indigenous poultry in Iran are velogenic strains and responsible for the frequent outbreaks of ND in poultry farms even in vaccinated flocks causing serious economic losses in the commercial and indigenous poultry. However, vaccination is the only way to protect against endemic ND, and the conventional vaccines are not heat stable and consequently require complex cold-chains to be transferred to users leading to not much resistance. The present study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of thermostable NDV strain I-2 in broiler chickens vaccinated via drinking water and coated on oiled wheat grain. The horizontal transmission of I-2 strain and transmission of disease from vaccinated to unvaccinated chickens were also evaluated in this study. The obtained results showed that both routes of administration, following primary and/or secondary dose, provoked the production of necessary antibody titer and adequate protective immunity in broiler chickens. Moreover, the horizontal transmission of I-2 strain from vaccinated to unvaccinated chickens housed together induced an antibody response and protected unvaccinated chickens against a local field isolate of a virulent strain of NDV (The intravenous pathogenicity index 2.46, mean death time 59 h). Nevertheless, all unvaccinated and Newcastle challenged broilers chickens against the NDV died in this study. It is noteworthy that the transmission of the virus from challenged broiler chickens was very low to induce clinical signs in susceptible chickens. The obtained results of this study revealed the efficacy of NDV strain I-2 coated on the oiled wheat and via drinking water as it protects broiler chickens from highly virulent NDV.

Spike-timing-dependent plasticity learning of coincidence detection with passively integrated memristive circuits.

Spiking neural networks, the most realistic artificial representation of biological nervous systems, are promising due to their inherent local training rules that enable low-overhead online learning, and energy-efficient information encoding. Their downside is more demanding functionality of the artificial synapses, notably including spike-timing-dependent plasticity, which makes their compact efficient hardware implementation challenging with conventional device technologies. Recent work showed that memristors are excellent candidates for artificial synapses, although reports of even simple neuromorphic systems are still very rare. In this study, we experimentally demonstrate coincidence detection using a spiking neural network, implemented with passively integrated metal-oxide memristive synapses connected to an analogue leaky-integrate-and-fire silicon neuron. By employing spike-timing-dependent plasticity learning, the network is able to robustly detect the coincidence by selectively increasing the synaptic efficacies corresponding to the synchronized inputs. Not surprisingly, our results indicate that device-to-device variation is the main challenge towards realization of more complex spiking networks.

Implementation of multilayer perceptron network with highly uniform passive memristive crossbar circuits.

The progress in the field of neural computation hinges on the use of hardware more efficient than the conventional microprocessors. Recent works have shown that mixed-signal integrated memristive circuits, especially their passive (0T1R) variety, may increase the neuromorphic network performance dramatically, leaving far behind their digital counterparts. The major obstacle, however, is immature memristor technology so that only limited functionality has been reported. Here we demonstrate operation of one-hidden layer perceptron classifier entirely in the mixed-signal integrated hardware, comprised of two passive 20 × 20 metal-oxide memristive crossbar arrays, board-integrated with discrete conventional components. The demonstrated network, whose hardware complexity is almost 10× higher as compared to previously reported functional classifier circuits based on passive memristive crossbars, achieves classification fidelity within 3% of that obtained in simulations, when using ex-situ training. The successful demonstration was facilitated by improvements in fabrication technology of memristors, specifically by lowering variations in their I-V characteristics.

Molecular detection and characterization of beak and feather disease virus in psittacine birds in Tehran, Iran.

Beak and feather disease virus (BFDV), a member of genus circovirus, is a small, non-enveloped, single stranded DNA virus. Although BFDVs are among the most well studied circoviruses, there is little to no information about BFDVs in Iran. The aim of the present study was to detect and identify BFDV molecules from the birds referred to the avian clinic of The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Tehran University, Iran. A total of 55 DNA samples were extracted from birds from nine different species of the order psittaciformes. A robust conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was applied to detect the rep gene of the virus. Ten out of 55 samples, from four different species, were tested positive for BFDVs in PCR (Melopsittacus undulates (4), Psittacula Krameri (3), Psittacus erithacus (2), Platycercus eximius (1)). Molecular identification of the detected BFDVs was performed based on their rep gene sequences. The phylogenetic analysis revealed that the Iranian BFDVs from this study were clustered into four genetically distinct clades belonging to different genetic subtypes of BFDVs (L1, N1, T1, and I4). Although the relation between the samples and their related subtypes in the tree are discussed, further studies are needed to elucidate the host specificity and incidence of the BFDVs from different genetic subtypes.

Efficacy of thermostable I-2 Newcastle disease vaccine compared to B1 commercial vaccine in broiler chicken.

Frequent vaccination failures have occurred in the broiler farms in Eurasian countries during Newcastle disease outbreaks. The disease is enzootic in many countries of the region, especially in southwest Asia. I-2 vaccine has been used successfully in village chickens in many Asian and African countries. Our preliminary study showed good efficacy of the vaccine in broiler chickens. Therefore the current experimental study was conducted to compare viral shedding period of heat resistance I-2 vaccine with B1 commercial vaccine following challenge with Herts'33. For this purpose three hundred commercial broilers were randomly allocated into four groups; 1) Thermostable I-2 vaccine, 2) Hitchner B1 vaccine, 3) Challenge group with no vaccine, and 4) Negative control group. Experimental chicks were vaccinated on days 19 and 26 by the eye drop route and then the birds were challenged via intra ocular route on day 40 with a suspension containing 106 EID50/ml challenge virus. Experimental chickens were monitored by collecting buccal and cloacal swabs at different times. Collected swabs were submitted to PCR test. The results showed that vaccination can protect the birds against mortality and also decrease virus shedding; also there was not a significant difference between vaccination with I-2 and B1 vaccines.

Cumulus cell expansion and first polar body extrusion during in vitro oocyte maturation in relation to morphological and morphometric characteristics of the dromedary camel ovary.

The morphological and morphometric characteristics of the ovary are fundamental properties for in vitro oocyte maturation. Nuclear maturation, including first polar body (1PB) extrusion, cytoplasmic maturation and cumulus cell (CC) expansion are the criteria for in vitro maturation (IVM) of oocyte. This study was designed to determine the effect of morphological and morphometric features of the ovary on CC expansion and 1PB extrusion during IVM of oocyte in the adult female dromedary camel. The weight, volume and three dimensions of ovaries from slaughtered dromedary camels and oocytes inside zona diameter and zona pellucida thickness were measured. The follicles were classified in regard to the size and oocytes according to their ooplasm appearance and CC compactness. Aspirated cumulus oocyte complexes (COCs) were incubated for 48 hr (with a 6-hr interval) in Hams-F10, and CC expansion and 1PB extrusion were assessed. Significant differences were seen in the shape, weight, volume and three dimensions of the ovaries between ≤4-year-old and >4-year-old dromedary camel (p < .5). Approximately, 95.82% of follicles were 2-4 mm in diameter. The mean (±SD) of inside zona diameter of the oocyte and zona pellucida thickness was 132.22 ± 13.8 and 14.64 ± 2.24 µm, respectively, in >4-year-old dromedary camel. The CC expansion and 1PB extrusion were seen in 86% and 21.88% of COCs, respectively. Age and sexual conditions of dromedary camel influence the morphological and morphometric characteristics of the ovary. Most COCs retrieved from 2-6 mm follicles are cultivable. The most slaughterhouse-derived COCs retrieved from 2-6 mm follicles of non-pregnant dromedary camels are excellent and good and yielding a most favourable diameter to achieve the developmental competence for IVM in an optimal time of 24-30 hr; the optimal time for CC expansion is 24-30 hr in this species. However, the CC expansion is a prerequisite process, but not sufficient for IVM.