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Muscular hydrostats, such as the elephant trunk, can perform precise motor actions. A new study has revealed that the elephant trunk contains a dense network of tiny muscle fascicles, suggesting that muscle miniaturization may be a key toward understanding how soft organs achieve both strength and dexterity.

The brain generates complex sequences of movements that can be flexibly configured based on behavioural context or real-time sensory feedback1, but how this occurs is not fully understood. Here we developed a sequence licking task in which mice directed their tongue to a target that moved through a series of locations. Mice could rapidly branch the sequence online based on tactile feedback. Closed-loop optogenetics and electrophysiology revealed that the tongue and jaw regions of the primary somatosensory (S1TJ) and motor (M1TJ) cortices2 encoded and controlled tongue kinematics at the level of individual licks. By contrast, the tongue premotor (anterolateral motor) cortex3-10 encoded latent variables including intended lick angle, sequence identity and progress towards the reward that marked successful sequence execution. Movement-nonspecific sequence branching signals occurred in the anterolateral motor cortex and M1TJ. Our results reveal a set of key cortical areas for flexible and context-informed sequence generation.

LEACH routing protocol is a classical clustering routing method in wireless sensor networks. However, in severely limited wireless networks, high power consumption and short lifetime of nodes seriously affect network performance. In this paper, an improved efficient LEACH-X protocol based on energy balance is proposed. By joining the optimal number of cluster head, the surplus energy correction factor is put forward. Considering the residual energy of nodes,the number of cluster head during the period and density factor, and partitioning the deployment area， the cluster head election threshold function is modified by adjusting the weight of the distance factor gain parameters for the region.Then, the second competition is in progress and ultimately the cluster head is selectd, so as to reduce the energy consumption of nodes, the survival time of WSN can be extended to some extent. Simulation results show that compared with the traditional LEACH protocol, the LEACH-X protocol reduces the network energy consumption and prolongs the network lifetime.

Sensory neurons perceive environmental cues and are important of organismal survival. Peripheral sensory neurons interact intimately with glial cells. While the function of axonal ensheathment by glia is well studied, less is known about the functional significance of glial interaction with the somatodendritic compartment of neurons. Herein, we show that three distinct glia cell types differentially wrap around the axonal and somatodendritic surface of the polymodal dendritic arborization (da) neuron of the Drosophila peripheral nervous system for detection of thermal, mechanical, and light stimuli. We find that glial cell-specific loss of the chromatin modifier gene dATRX in the subperineurial glial layer leads to selective elimination of somatodendritic glial ensheathment, thus allowing us to investigate the function of such ensheathment. We find that somatodendritic glial ensheathment regulates the morphology of the dendritic arbor, as well as the activity of the sensory neuron, in response to sensory stimuli. Additionally, glial ensheathment of the neuronal soma influences dendritic regeneration after injury.

The selection of different examination sequences of painless gastroscopy in patients with difficult airway risk was explored in this study. A total of 45 patients undergoing painless gastroscopy with Mallampati airway score of III-IV were randomly assigned into two groups (A group and B group) according to the sequence of colonoscopy and gastroscopy. Group A was first examined by gastroscopy after anesthesia, and then by colonoscopy. Group B was examined in the opposite order, first by colonoscopy, and then by gastroscopy. Ramsay Sedation scores were evaluated every five minutes when gastroscopy was performed in the two groups. The dosage of propofol, blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, recovery time, hospital leaving time, and adverse reactions after induction and endoscopy were recorded. The dosage of propofol and change of vital signs in B group was less than that in A group. Operation time, recovery time, hospital leaving time and postoperative adverse reactions have no significant difference between two groups. For patients at risk of difficult airway, colonoscopy followed by gastroscopy has more stable intraoperative vital signs and less propofol consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enhance the safety of grid operations, this paper proposes a high-precision short-term photovoltaic (PV) power forecasting method that integrates information from surrounding PV stations and deep learning prediction models. The proposed method utilizes numerical weather prediction (NWP) data of the target PV station and highly correlated features from nearby stations as inputs. This study first analyzes the correlation between irradiance and power sequences and calculates a comprehensive similarity index based on distance factors. Stations with high-similarity indices are selected as data sources. Subsequently, Bayesian optimization is employed to determine the optimal data fusion ratio. The selected data are then used to model power predictions through the convolutional long short-term memory with attention (Conv-LSTM-ATT) deep neural network. Experimental results show that the proposed model significantly outperforms three classical models in terms of forecasting accuracy. The data fusion strategy determined by Bayesian optimization reduces the root mean square error (RMSE) of the test set by 20.04%, 28.24%, and 30.94% under sunny, cloudy, and rainy conditions, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]