Polymers and Solvents Used in Membrane Fabrication: A Review Focusing on Sustainable Membrane Development

(1) Different methods have been applied to fabricate polymeric membranes with non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) being one of the mostly widely used. In NIPS, a solvent or solvent blend is required to dissolve a polymer or polymer blend. N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), dimethylacetamide (DMAc), dimethylformamide (DMF) and other petroleum-derived solvents are commonly used to dissolve some petroleum-based polymers. However, these components may have negative impacts on the environment and human health. Therefore, using greener and less toxic components is of great interest for increasing membrane fabrication sustainability. The chemical structure of membranes is not affected by the use of different solvents, polymers, or by the differences in fabrication scale. On the other hand, membrane pore structures and surface roughness can change due to differences in diffusion rates associated with different solvents/co-solvents diffusing into the non-solvent and with differences in evaporation time. (2) Therefore, in this review, solvents and polymers involved in the manufacturing process of membranes are proposed to be replaced by greener/less toxic alternatives. The methods and feasibility of scaling up green polymeric membrane manufacturing are also examined

BaFe2As2 Surface Domains and Domain Walls: Mirroring the Bulk Spin Structure

High-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements on BaFe2As2-one of the parent compounds of the iron-based superconductors-reveals a (1x1) As-terminated unit cell on the (001) surface. However, there are significant differences of the surface unit cell compared to the bulk: only one of the two As atoms in the unit cell is imaged and domain walls between different (1x1) regions display a C2 symmetry at the surface. It should have been C2v if the STM image reflected the geometric structure of the surface or the orthorhombic bulk. The inequivalent As atoms and the bias dependence of the domain walls indicate that the origin of the STM image is primarily electronic not geometric. We argue that the surface electronic topography mirrors the bulk spin structure of BaFe2As2, via strong orbital-spin coupling

Multiclass Cancer Classification by Using Fuzzy Support Vector Machine and Binary Decision Tree With Gene Selection

We investigate the problems of multiclass cancer classification with gene selection from gene expression data. Two different constructed multiclass classifiers with gene selection are proposed, which are fuzzy support vector machine (FSVM) with gene selection and binary classification tree based on SVM with gene selection. Using F test and recursive feature elimination based on SVM as gene selection methods, binary classification tree based on SVM with F test, binary classification tree based on SVM with recursive feature elimination based on SVM, and FSVM with recursive feature elimination based on SVM are tested in our experiments. To accelerate computation, preselecting the strongest genes is also used. The proposed techniques are applied to analyze breast cancer data, small round blue-cell tumors, and acute leukemia data. Compared to existing multiclass cancer classifiers and binary classification tree based on SVM with F test or binary classification tree based on SVM with recursive feature elimination based on SVM mentioned in this paper, FSVM based on recursive feature elimination based on SVM can find most important genes that affect certain types of cancer with high recognition accuracy

3D Axon Structure Extraction and Analysis in Confocal Fluorescence Microscopy Images

The morphological properties of axons, such as their branching patterns and oriented structures, are of great interest for biologists in the study of the synaptic connectivity of neurons. In these studies, researchers use triple immunofluorescent confocal microscopy to record morphological changes of neuronal processes. Three-dimensional (3D) microscopy image analysis is then required to extract morphological features of the neuronal structures. In this article, we propose a highly automated 3D centerline extraction tool to assist in this task. For this project, the most difficult part is that some axons are overlapping such that the boundaries distinguishing them are barely visible. Our approach combines a 3D dynamic programming (DP) technique and marker-controlled watershed algorithm to solve this problem. The approach consists of tracking and updating along the navigation directions of multiple axons simultaneously. The experimental results show that the proposed method can rapidly and accurately extract multiple axon centerlines and can handle complicated axon structures such as cross-over sections and overlapping objects.Molecular and Cellular Biolog

Dynamics of Freely Cooling Granular Gases

We study dynamics of freely cooling granular gases in two-dimensions using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. We find that for dilute systems the typical kinetic energy decays algebraically with time, E(t) ~ t^{-1}, in the long time limit. Asymptotically, velocity statistics are characterized by a universal Gaussian distribution, in contrast with the exponential high-energy tails characterizing the early homogeneous regime. We show that in the late clustering regime particles move coherently as typical local velocity fluctuations, Delta v, are small compared with the typical velocity, Delta v/v ~ t^{-1/4}. Furthermore, locally averaged shear modes dominate over acoustic modes. The small thermal velocity fluctuations suggest that the system can be heuristically described by Burgers-like equations.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

10-qubit entanglement and parallel logic operations with a superconducting circuit

Here we report on the production and tomography of genuinely entangled Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with up to 10 qubits connecting to a bus resonator in a superconducting circuit, where the resonator-mediated qubit-qubit interactions are used to controllably entangle multiple qubits and to operate on different pairs of qubits in parallel. The resulting 10-qubit density matrix is unambiguously probed, with a fidelity of $0.668 \pm 0.025$. Our results demonstrate the largest entanglement created so far in solid-state architectures, and pave the way to large-scale quantum computation.Comment: Revised version with 16 pages, 13 figures, and 2 table