No abstract

No preclinical method to evaluate potential new medications for essential tremor (ET) is available currently. Although harmaline tremor is a well known animal model of ET, it has not found utility as a preclinical drug screen and has not been validated with anti-ET medications. We measured harmaline tremor in rats (10 mg/kg s.c.) and mice (20 mg/kg s.c.) with a load sensor under the cage floor and performed spectral analysis on 20-minute epochs. The motion power over the tremor frequency bandwidth (8-12 Hz in rats; 10-16 Hz in mice) was divided by the motion power over the full motion frequency range (0-15 Hz in rats; 0-34 Hz in mice). The use of these measures greatly reduced data variability, permitting experiments with small sample sizes. Three drugs that suppress ET (propranolol, ethanol, and octanol) all significantly suppressed harmaline-induced tremor. We propose that, with this methodology, harmaline-induced tremor may be useful as a preclinical method to identify potential medications for ET.

Efficient use of fertilizers, especially nitrogen, is essential and strategic to agricultural production. Among the technologies that can contribute to efficient use of fertilizers are slow- or controlled-release products. This study describes the impact on structure, urea release rate, and function in the field of urea nanocomposites associated with an exfoliated clay mineral prepared using various concentrations of hydrophilic or hydrophobic polymers. The nanocomposites have a high nutrient load (75% by weight), which itself acts as a structural matrix. Our manufacturing processthe extrusion of a plastic mixtureis simple and can be scaled up, allowing granule production without high costs. Nanocomposites were prepared by adding varying amounts (less than 4% by weight) of polyacrylamide hydrogel or polycaprolactone, which influenced mechanical properties and urea release profiles. Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in the field were reduced substantially for nanocomposites, whether composed of polyacrylamide hydrogel or polycaprolactone.

This research aims to identify the determinants of e-government satisfaction in Hanoi, Vietnam, and assess their impact. To collect data, we conducted an online questionnaire with citizens living in Hanoi in a time span of five weeks. We received 1,107 responses, divided into three groups: unaware, known, but not used, and used e-government. After leveraging past studies on satisfaction in different contexts, we arrived at six external variables that are of particular relevance to e-government satisfaction (i.e., efficiency, trust, reliability, convenience, citizen support, and transparency) as well as four control variables (i.e., age, gender, education level, and Internet frequency). We then applied both SPSS 22 and STATA 2016 to process and analyze the collected data and found that, while almost all external variables are statistically significant, all four control variables are not. Apart from convenience and trust, four factors -efficiency, reliability, citizens support, transparency -are important measures of system quality, information quality, service quality and relative benefits of e-government, which in turn positively and significantly impact citizens' satisfaction with the online public services. Furthermore, the efficiency variable has the most influence on customer satisfaction, and the level of impact on the dependent variable decreases in the following order: citizen support, reliability and transparency.

The results of Bergelson-Host-Kra and Leibman say that a multiple polynomial correlation sequence can be decomposed into a sum of a nilsequence (a sequence defined by evaluating a continuous function along an orbit in a nilsystem) and a null sequence (a sequence that goes to zero in density). We refine their results by proving that the null sequence goes to zero in density along polynomials evaluated at primes and Hardy sequence (⌊n c ⌋). On the other hand, given a rigid sequence, we construct an example of correlation whose null sequence does not approach zero in density along that rigid sequence. As a corollary of a lemma in the proof, the formula for the pointwise ergodic average along polynomials of primes in a nilsystem is also obtained.