Antiferromagnets are competitive candidates for the next generation of spintronic devices owing to their superiority in small-scale and low-power-consumption devices. The electrical manipulation of the magnetization and exchange bias (EB) driven by spin-orbit torque (SOT) in ferromagnetic (FM)/antiferromagnetic (AFM) systems has become focused in spintronics. Here, the realization of a large perpendicular EB field in Co/IrMn and the effective manipulation of the magnetic moments of the magnetic Co layer and EB field by SOT in Pt/Co/IrMn system is reported. During the SOT-driven switching process, an asymmetrically manipulated state is observed. Current pulses with the same amplitude but opposite directions induce different magnetization states. Magneto-optical Kerr measurements reveal that this is due to the coexistence of stable and metastable antiferromagnetic domains in the AFM. Exploiting the asymmetric properties of these FM/AFM structures, five spin logic gates, namely AND, OR, NOR, NAND, and NOT, are realized in a single cell via SOT. This study provides an insight into the special ability of SOT on AFMs and also paves an avenue to construct the logic-in-memory and neuromorphic computing cells based on the AFM spintronic system.

The adaptive control of walking is often studied on a split-belt treadmill, where people gradually reduce their step length asymmetries (SLAs) by modulating foot placement and timing. Although it is proposed that this adaptation may be driven in part by a desire to reduce instability, it is unknown if changes in asymmetry impact people\'s ability to maintain balance in response to destabilizing perturbations. Here, we used intermittent perturbations to determine if changes in SLA affect reactive balance control as measured by whole-body angular momentum (WBAM) in the sagittal and frontal planes. Sixteen neurotypical older adults (70.0 ± 5.3 years old; 6 males) walked on a treadmill at a 2:1 belt speed ratio with real-time visual feedback of their achieved and target step lengths. We used mixed-effects models to determine if there were associations between SLA or foot placement and WBAM during the applied perturbations. Walking with more positive SLAs was associated with small reductions in forward WBAM (p < 0.001 for fast and slow belts) but increased lateral WBAM (p = 0.045 for fast belt; p = 0.003 for slow belt) during perturbations. When participants walked with more positive SLAs, they shortened their foot placement on the slow belt, and this shortening was associated with moderate reductions in forward WBAM (p < 0.001) and small increases in lateral WBAM (p = 0.008) during slow-belt perturbations. Our findings suggest that spatiotemporal changes that occur during split-belt treadmill walking may improve sagittal-plane stability by reducing people\'s susceptibility to losses of balance, but this may come at the expense of frontal-plane stability.

The existence of Virtual Reality Motion Sickness (VRMS) is a key factor restricting the further development of the VR industry, and the premise to solve this problem is to be able to accurately and effectively detect its occurrence. In view of the current lack of high-accuracy and effective detection methods, this paper proposes a VRMS detection method based on entropy asymmetry and cross-frequency coupling value asymmetry of EEG. First of all, the EEG of the four selected pairs of electrodes on the bilateral brain are subjected to Multivariate Variational Mode Decomposition (MVMD) respectively, and three types of entropy values on the low-frequency and high-frequency components are calculated, namely approximate entropy, fuzzy entropy and permutation entropy, as well as three types of phase-amplitude coupling features between the low-frequency and high-frequency components, namely the mean value, standard deviation and correlation coefficient; Secondly, the difference of the entropies and the cross-frequency coupling features between the left electrodes and the right electrodes are calculated; Finally, the final feature set are selected via t-test and fed into the SVM for classification, thus realizing the automatic detection of VRMS. The results show that the three classification indexes under this method, i.e., accuracy, sensitivity and specificity, reach 99.5 %, 99.3 % and 99.7 %, respectively, and the value of the area under the ROC curve reached 1, which proves that this method can be an effective indicator for detecting the occurrence of VRMS.

Understanding and predicting population responses to climate change is a crucial challenge. A key component of population responses to climate change are cases in which focal biological rates (e.g., population growth rates) change in response to climate change due to non-compensatory effects of changes in the underlying components (e.g., birth and death rates) determining the focal rates. We refer to these responses as non-compensatory climate change effects. As differential responses of biological rates to climate change have been documented in a variety of systems and arise at multiple levels of organization within and across species, non-compensatory effects may be nearly ubiquitous. Yet, how non-compensatory climate change responses combine and scale to influence the demographics of populations is often unclear and requires mapping them to the birth and death rates underlying population change. We provide a flexible framework for incorporating non-compensatory changes in upstream rates within and among species and mapping their consequences for additional downstream rates across scales to their eventual effects on population growth rates. Throughout, we provide specific examples and potential applications of the framework. We hope this framework helps to enhance our understanding of and unify research on population responses to climate change.

In this exploratory study we compare and contrast two methods for deriving a laterality index (LI) from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data: the weighted bootstrapped mean from the LI Toolbox (toolbox method), and a novel method that uses subtraction of activations from homologous regions in left and right hemispheres to give an array of difference scores (mirror method). Data came from 31 individuals who had been selected to include a high proportion of people with atypical laterality when tested with functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD). On two tasks, word generation and semantic matching, the mirror method generally gave better agreement with fTCD laterality than the toolbox method, both for individual regions of interest, and for a large region corresponding to the middle cerebral artery. LI estimates from this method had much smaller confidence intervals (CIs) than those from the toolbox method; with the mirror method, most participants were reliably lateralised to left or right, whereas with the toolbox method, a higher proportion were categorised as bilateral (i.e., the CI for the LI spanned zero). Reasons for discrepancies between fMRI methods are discussed: one issue is that the toolbox method averages the LI across a wide range of thresholds. Furthermore, examination of task-related t-statistic maps from the two hemispheres showed that language lateralisation is evident in regions characterised by deactivation, and so key information may be lost by ignoring voxel activations below zero, as is done with conventional estimates of the LI.

OBJECTIVE: Current handgrip strength (HGS) protocols employ a variety of criteria, affecting the assessment of asymmetric HGS. The impact of these different criteria on fall prediction is understudied. This study was devised to compare the relative performance of average and maximum HGS asymmetry criteria as tools to predict fall incidence among middle-aged or older adults in China.
METHODS: 9627 Chinese adults 50 + years of age who were participants in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2013-2015 waves) were evaluated. The measurement of HGS was achieved based on either the maximum recorded value (HGSmax) or the average (HGSave), and these values were employed for the calculation of HGS asymmetry. Fall incidence over a 2-year period was evaluated based on self-reported data. Logistic regression analyses were utilized to determine the predictive performance of HGSmax asymmetry or HGSave asymmetry when gaging 2-year fall risk.
RESULTS: Significant differences in overall rates of HGS asymmetry and the rates of subdivisions thereof were observed when comparing the HGSmax and HGSave criteria, with moderate consistency (kappa = 0.599, p < 0.001). Over the 2-year follow-up period, 1743 fall incidents were recorded. Adjusted logistic regression models indicated that only HGSmax asymmetry > 30.0% was significantly related to fall risk (p = 0.034, odds ratio = 1.36, 95% confidence interval: 1.02-1.81).
CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the importance of HGS criteria in detecting HGS asymmetry, and suggest that HGSmax is a more robust criterion for predicting fall risk among Chinese adults 50 + years of age.

The role of brain asymmetries of dopaminergic neurons in motor symptoms of Parkinson\'s disease is still undefined. Local field recordings from the subthalamic nucleus revealed some neurophysiological biomarkers of the disease: increased beta activity, increased low-frequency activity and high-frequency oscillations. Phase-amplitude coupling coordinates the timing of neuronal activity and allows determining the mechanism for communication within distinct regions of the brain. In this study, we discuss the use of phase-amplitude coupling to assess the differences between the two hemispheres in a cohort of 24 patients with Parkinson\'s disease before and after levodopa administration. Subthalamic low- (12-20 Hz) and high-beta (20-30 Hz) oscillations were compared with low- (30-45 Hz), medium- (70-100 Hz) and high-frequency (260-360 Hz) bands. We found a significant beta-phase-amplitude coupling asymmetry between left and right and an opposite-side-dependent effect of the pharmacological treatment, which is associated with the reduction of motor symptoms. In particular, high coupling between high frequencies and high-beta oscillations was found during the OFF condition (P < 0.01) and a low coupling during the ON state (P < 0.0001) when the right subthalamus was assessed; exactly the opposite happened when the left subthalamus was considered in the analysis, showing a lower coupling between high frequencies and high-beta oscillations during the OFF condition (P < 0.01), followed by a higher one during the ON state (P < 0.01). Interestingly, these asymmetries are independent of the motor onset side, either left or right. These findings have important implications for neural signals that may be used to trigger adaptive deep brain stimulation in Parkinson\'s and could provide more exhaustive insights into subthalamic dynamics.

There are different theories cited as the cause of Motion Sickness. Asymmetrical otolithic organ function is one of the etiology theories of motion sickness. In our study, the aim was to reveal whether there is a cause originating from the sacculocolic reflex pathway in the physiopathology of seasickness. The patient group included 15 man sailors with diagnosis of seasickness and the control group included 15 man sailors without seasickness in our study. Cervical evoked myogenic vestibular potential (cVEMP) findings were compared between the groups. In the right and left ears of sailors with seasickness, the mean latencies of the p13 and n23 waves at 100, 95, and 90 dB normal hearing level (nHL) levels were found significantly shorter than in the control group (p < 0.05, for all). In the seasickness group, cVEMP interaural wave amplitude asymmetry ratio at 100 nHL level were found significantly higher than the control group (p = 0.001). The findings of our study indicated that there may be reasons arising rom the sacculocolic reflex pathway in the pathophysiology of seasickness.

UNASSIGNED: The nasal septum is crucial in the development of the craniofacial structures. Deviated nasal septum is one of the anatomical causes of mouth breathing which in turn lead to malocclusion.
UNASSIGNED: To evaluate the dentofacial and cephalometric characteristics in individuals with nasal breathing obstruction brought on by nasal septal deviation, as well as the relationship between these defects and various malocclusions and the degree of facial asymmetry.
UNASSIGNED: A two-point evaluation was adopted for the selected patients, one at the ENT department using clinical examination and CT-PNS and the severity classified according to the Mladina classification and another at the dental department, using clinical examinations, PA cephalograms, lateral cephalograms, and facial photographs.
UNASSIGNED: The association between malocclusion and various grades of septal deviation was statistically significant with a P value of 0.006. Results showed that 13 patients are with Class I skeletal pattern, 20 patients with Class II, and 7 patients with Class III skeletal pattern. None of the grade 7 nasal septal deviation patients had class I malocclusion and none of the grade 2 nasal septal deviation patients had class III malocclusion. Class II division I malocclusion was the most common type noted in patients with nasal septal deviation. Grade 7 nasal septal deviation was associated with the maximum amount of ANS and mentioned deviation indicating significant facial asymmetry.
UNASSIGNED: Class-II Division-1 malocclusion was the most common type noted and Class III malocclusion was more common in higher grades of nasal septal deviation. Maxillary and mandibular asymmetry worsens significantly with an increase in the grade of nasal septal deviation and is one of the significant factors in causing facial asymmetry.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate interocular asymmetry (IA) of retinal structure and vessel density in patients with Parkinson\'s disease (PD) and normal controls (NC).
METHODS: Seventy-eight subjects including 40 PD patients and 38 NC had completed optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) and neurological examinations for three rating scales (UPDRS-III, MMSE and MoCA). The IA was calculated by the absolute value of difference in right and left eyes. The IA of thickness in macular ganglion cell inner-plexiform layer (GCIPL), peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL), and vessel density of superficial capillary plexus (SCP), deep capillary plexus (DCP), radial peripapillary capillary (RPC) were obtained from OCTA.
RESULTS: The motor-symptom-onset side of eyes showed lower vessel density in parafovea of SCP (51.09 ± 3.46 vs 49.81 ± 4.16, P = 0.03) and superior hemi of perifovea DCP (49.55 ± 5.81 vs 47.33 ± 5.71, = 0.04). The PD patients showed larger IA in thickness of superior half of pRNFL (5.27 [2.67, 10.87] vs 3.08 [1.62, 5.61], P = 0.02) and parafovea GCIPL (2.40[1.25, 6.35] vs 1.40[0.50, 2.45], P = 0.02). No significant interocular asymmetry was found in vessel density between PD and NC. A higher UPDRS-III scale was associated with larger IA in GCIPL (β = 0.093, P = 0.001) and smaller IA in DCP (β = -0.065, P = 0.037).
CONCLUSIONS: The motor-symptom-onset side of eyes showed more severe loss of macular vessel density than the other side of eyes. The PD patients showed asymmetrical structural change in GCIPL and pRNFL, which showed the potential as the diagnostic biomarker for PD.