No abstract

Homeostatic regulation of food consumption and stress is critical to survival, yet certain environmental conditions facilitate aberrant feeding behaviors. Nociceptin and its receptor, nociceptin opioid peptide (NOP) receptor have a vast neuromodulatory network spanning multiple stress and reward-related brain nuclei and have been demonstrated to modulate feeding and stress regulation. Previous data has shown that stimulation of nociceptin-expressing neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus (ARC) increases food consumption. Similarly, stimulation of these neurons afferent projections within the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) also increases food consumption. Here, we examined how this nociceptinergic neruocircuitry controls palatable food consumption in a model of stress-induced binge eating behavior where animals are given intermittent food restriction and palatable food access similar to "yo-yo" dieting. We used inhibitory opsin, parapinopsin (PPO) in Pnoc-Cre mice to inhibit nociceptin-expressing ARC projections in the BNST during food stress and palatable food access. We found that BNST-afferent ARC Pnoc neuron inhibition reduces stress-induced food consumption in animals previously exposed to cycles of food restriction and ad libitum palatable food access.

No abstract

Origami processes can generate both rigid and compliant structures from the same homogeneous sheet material. In this article, we advance the origami robotics literature by showing that it is possible to construct an arbitrary rigid kinematic chain with prescribed joint compliance from a single tubular sheet. Our "Kinegami" algorithm converts a Denavit-Hartenberg specification into a single-sheet crease pattern for an equivalent serial robot mechanism by composing origami modules from a catalogue. The algorithm arises from the key observation that tubular origami linkage design reduces to a Dubins path planning problem. The automatically generated structural connections and movable joints that realize the specified design can also be endowed with independent user-specified compliance. We apply the Kinegami algorithm to a number of common robot mechanisms and hand-fold their algorithmically generated single-sheet crease patterns into functioning kinematic chains. We believe this is the first completely automated end-to-end system for converting an abstract manipulator specification into a physically realizable origami design that requires no additional human input.