Development of Digital Stereotaxic Instrument for Pigeons(Columba Livia)

Stereotaxic instrument is an indispensable tool for numerous types of neuroscience studies and is routinely performed in neuroscience laboratories as part of a variety of experimental procedures.Due to the development of robotics and automation,the stereotaxic instrument for rodents has made great progress,while it is relatively backward and scarce for birds.A digital stereotaxic instrument for pigeons(Columba livia),a classic animal model for learning,memory and cognition,was developed in this study.Its performance was verified from three aspects including stereotaxic accuracy,stereotaxic stability and stereotaxic reproducibility.The developed stereotaxic instrument has the following characteristics:(1)a digital positioning system was used,which is characterized by high stereotaxic accuracy;(2)a novel head-fixation system was developed to increase the adaptability of head-fixation;(3)a four-point fixation method was suggested,improving the stability of head-fixation;(4)the stereotaxic instrument has strong versatility,which can be suitable for a wide variety of birds.Moreover,the proposed stereotaxic instrument has better positioning accuracy and stability,which will promote the study of neural mechanisms for pigeons.

Automatic test system development for digital beam position monitor of HEPS and BEPCII

Purpose Hundreds of digital beam position monitor processors(DBPM)are required to be produced during the construction of projects such as High Energy Photon Source(HEPS)and the upgrade project of the Beijing Electron Positron Collider(BEPCII),which brings great challenges to the test work.In order to achieve accurate,fast,and complete mass production tests of DBPMs,an automatic test system(ATS)has been developed in this article.Methods According to the test items of DBPM,the standardized testing softwareflow is designed based on virtual instru-ment program control technology and experimental physics and industrial control system(EPICS),which realize automatic adjustment of test parameters and automatic acquisition of test result data.Results and conclusions The ATS can realize one-button testing of channel coefficients,channel linearity,attenuator linearity,beam current dependence(BCD)and sampling signal-to-noise ratio(SNR),and generate test reports.The total test time is less than 3 minutes,which is significantly more efficient compared to manual testing.More than 90 BEPCII DBPMs has been tested by this ATS in the lab.The test results proved that such a system could automatically recognize defective products and satisfy the requirements of mass testing.