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It has been known that a number of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-positive neurons, which are regarded as dopaminergic (DA) neurons, exist in the dorsal raphe (DR). These DA neurons in the DR and periaqueductal gray (PAG) region (DA DR-PAG neurons) are thought to belong to the A10 cluster, which is known to be heterogeneous. This DA population projects to the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and has been reported to modulate various affective behaviors. The DA transporter (DAT) neurons, which are well overlapping with DA neurons, in the DR-PAG region are also expected to be heterogeneous. However, even though the heterogeneity of DA/DAT DR-PAG neurons has been suggested, the characteristics of each DA/DAT DR-PAG neuron subpopulation are not well investigated. In this paper, we summarize the previous reports investigating the heterogeneity of DA/DAT DR-PAG neurons and the functional importance of DA/DAT DR-PAG neurons on various affective behaviors and introduce our recent findings that DAT DR-PAG neurons consist of two subpopulations: TH+/vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP)- putative DA neurons and TH-/VIP+ putative glutamatergic neurons.

To reduce the limit of detection (LOD) and allow the accurate determination of Ge, a dry ashing method was performed to enrich the Ge in plant samples. A method for the determination.of trace Ge in plant samples by HG-AFS was established. Study of the effect of temperature on the ashing of plant samples showed that no volatile loss of Ge occurred even at 900 °C. Additional experiments indicated that a 4 h burning process at 600 °C would be sufficient to fully ash the plant samples. Various digestion methods (involving nitric acid, hydrofluoric acid, and sulfuric acid digestion methods) for ashed samples were investigated. High-temperature ashing with large sample weights was used, which could reduce the reagent doses and the method's LOD effectively and simultaneously, the precision of the method was improved. The method's LOD was 0.27 ng · g(-1), and the relative standard deviation was 3.99%-6.81%. Verified with national biological reference materials (grade I), the proposed method was accurate and reliable.

Atmospheric particles have become the primary atmospheric pollutions, of which the heavy metals, owing to non-degradability and hysteresis, a serious threat to human life and natural environment, have become a hot research issue currently. The analytical methods of heavy metals in atmospheric particles are summarized in the present review, including atomic absorption spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, neutron activation analysis, fluorescence spectrometry, glow discharge atomic emission spectrometry, microwave plasma atomic emission spectrometry, and laser induced breakdown spectroscopy, and some proposals are tried to make for improving the shortcomings of these technologies: continuum source Atomic absorption spectrometry for simultaneously measuring multi-elements, atomic emission spectrometry for direct determination of particulates, high resolution laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for determination of solid samples, low scattering synchrotron fluorescence spectrum for determination of atmospheric particulate matter and k0 neutron activation analysis for determination of radioactive elements in the troposphere Analysis techniques of heavy metals in atmospheric particulate matter are promoted to develop toward being real-time, fast, low- detection-limit, direct-measurement and simple-operation due to the spatial and temporal distribution difference of the heavy metals in atmospheric particles and human requirement for improvement of ambient air quality as well as rapid development of modern instrument science and technology.

The present study examined influences of reading aloud and performing simple calculation on the cognitive functioning of healthy elderly adults, based on the findings that these tasks activated the prefrontal lobe. The elderly adults' memory and inhibitory functions were assesed by Short-Term memory, CST, Stroop, and SRC tasks, before and after intervention for 18 months. The study found that the learning group had significant improvement from the pre- to the post-test for the short-term memory, STM, CST, and Stroop tasks. On the other hand, there was significant decline over the 18 months in the control group which was given only the assessment tasks. These results are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of cognitive training.