Oxytocin sets the stage for childbirth by initiating uterine contractions, lactation and maternal bonding behaviours. Mice lacking secreted oxcytocin ( Oxt −/− , Cd38 −/− ) or its receptor ( Oxtr −/− ) fail to nurture. Normal maternal behaviour is restored by peripheral oxcytocin replacement in Oxt −/− and Cd38 −/− , but not Oxtr −/− mice, implying that circulating oxcytocin crosses the blood-brain barrier. Exogenous oxcytocin also has behavioural effects in humans. However, circulating polypeptides are typically excluded from the brain. We show that oxcytocin is transported into the brain by receptor for advanced glycation end-products (RAGE) on brain capillary endothelial cells. The increases in oxcytocin in the brain which follow exogenous administration are lost in Ager −/− male mice lacking RAGE, and behaviours characteristic to abnormalities in oxcytocin signalling are recapitulated in Ager −/− mice, including deficits in maternal bonding and hyperactivity. Our findings show that RAGE-mediated transport is critical to the behavioural actions of oxcytocin associated with parenting and social bonding.

Abstract. Recently, the requirement for development of soft actuator for the rehabilitation device and power assisting devices is increasing. However, development of a flexible actuator that has both larger force and longer stroke has not been carried out. In addition, it is also difficult to realize a flexible displacement sensor with long stroke while deforming its form according to the actuator's shape. In this paper, development of the flexible actuator with larger force and longer stroke that can adjust its stroke by giving stepping motion using pneumatic balloons and brakes is described. The fundamental performance of tested actuator is also investigated.

facilities to enable DR researchers ground truth data acquisition and evaluation workflow for quantitative evaluation of DR methods using the data. In this paper, our main target is OB-DR because IB-DR problems do not have a single solution represented as ground truth, i.e., solutions of IB-DR, in principle, are viewer-Abstract Diminished reality (DR) refers to interactive techniques for deleting or diminishing undesirable objects from a perceived environment, whereas augmented/mixed reality seamlessly merges a real and virtual scene. In this paper, we introduce data acquisition facilities and evaluation workflow towards DR method benchmark. In the proposed data acquisition facilities, simulated indoor and outdoor scenes are constructed, illumed, and photographed, using full-scale and miniature sets, a cinematography-based lighting system, and camera attached 6 degrees of freedom industrial robot arm respectively. Consequently, it facilitates acquisition of paired image sequence with and without target objects of interest, i.e., source and ground truth image sequences, to evaluate DR methods in indoor and outdoor scenarios. Through operations test, several datasets are recorded and test benches of DR methods are evaluated using the dataset to show that such data is usable for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of DR methods.

No abstract

No abstract