43 research outputs found
淺論小說《悟空傳》的反抗意識
《悟空傳》是一本由網絡作家今何在於二千年寫成,共二十章的中短篇網絡小說,作品面世後隨即因其風格突破創新而廣受讀者青睞。二零零一年正式出版成書,後來經歷多次加印再版,並被改編成由郭子健執導的同名電影《悟空傳》,可見此作的文學價值和地位廣受認可。電影二零一七年上映至今,原著小說《悟空傳》亦因而受到更多的目光注視,研究此作及改編電影的論文漫山遍野,惟那些論題多集中探討《悟空傳》電影及小說之異同,鮮少論及原著小説《悟空傳》本身的文學價值,而在各大論壇上提及小說《悟空傳》的文章則只是簡單概述小說內容、將人物故事線分開陳述或單單對情節安排作出猜測,猜測內容的同時並無引用任何學說或理論以加強合理性,引致其中某些猜測顯得異想天開,故這類文章只能顯示《悟空傳》一書受到大眾熱烈的討論,並不算是正式的研究。
有見及此,本論文將從兩個方向入手分析小說《悟空傳》的反抗意識,首先指出孫悟空一角於前文本及現文本中反抗形象之流變,再從英雄形象及二心(妄心與本心)角度說明《悟空傳》對前文本的顛覆,然後從現文本與現實的關係著手,印證小說提出對神佛崇拜及社會的再思考,以證《悟空傳》文學價值之所在
Identification of microbial community in the urban environment: The concordance between conventional culture and nanopore 16S rRNA sequencing
IntroductionMicrobes in the built environment have been implicated as a source of infectious diseases. Bacterial culture is the standard method for assessing the risk of exposure to pathogens in urban environments, but this method only accounts for <1% of the diversity of bacteria. Recently, full-length 16S rRNA gene analysis using nanopore sequencing has been applied for microbial evaluations, resulting in a rise in the development of long-read taxonomic tools for species-level classification. Regarding their comparative performance, there is, however, a lack of information.MethodsHere, we aim to analyze the concordance of the microbial community in the urban environment inferred by multiple taxonomic classifiers, including ARGpore2, Emu, Kraken2/Bracken and NanoCLUST, using our 16S-nanopore dataset generated by MegaBLAST, as well as assess their abilities to identify culturable species based on the conventional culture results.ResultsAccording to our results, NanoCLUST was preferred for 16S microbial profiling because it had a high concordance of dominant species and a similar microbial profile to MegaBLAST, whereas Kraken2/Bracken, which had similar clustering results as NanoCLUST, was also desirable. Second, for culturable species identification, Emu with the highest accuracy (81.2%) and F1 score (29%) for the detection of culturable species was suggested.DiscussionIn addition to generating datasets in complex communities for future benchmarking studies, our comprehensive evaluation of the taxonomic classifiers offers recommendations for ongoing microbial community research, particularly for complex communities using nanopore 16S rRNA sequencing
Emergence of the rtA181T/sW172* mutant increased the risk of hepatoma occurrence in patients with lamivudine-resistant chronic hepatitis B
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Development of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) rtA181T/sW172* mutant could occur during prolonged lamivudine (LAM) therapy, conferring cross resistance to adefovir. Recent studies demonstrated an increased oncogenic potential of this mutant in NIH3T3 cells. In this study, we aimed to investigate the clinical significance of this finding.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Serum samples from 123 LAM-resistant chronic hepatitis B patients were submitted for virological assays. A highly sensitive amplification created restriction enzyme site (ACRES) method was devised to detect small amounts of the rtA181T mutant in the serum. Virological factors including HBV-DNA level, genotype, precore G1896A, BCP A1762T/G1764A, rtM204I/V, rtA181T and pre-S internal deletion mutations as well as clinical variables including subsequent use of rescue drugs were submitted for outcome analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>By use of the highly sensitive ACRES method, the rtA181T mutant was detectable in 10 of the 123 LAM-resistant patients. During the mean follow-up period of 26.2 ± 16.4 months (range 2 to 108 months), 3 of the 10 (30.0%) rtA181T-positive patients and 2 of the 113 (1.8%) rtA181T-negative patients developed hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that the presence of rtA181T mutation (P < 0.001), age > 50 years (P = 0.001), and liver cirrhosis (P < 0.001) were significantly associated with subsequent occurrence of HCC. All 5 HCC patients belonged to the older age and cirrhosis groups.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Emergence of the rtA181T/sW172* mutant in LAM-resistant patients increased the risk of HCC development in the subsequent courses of antiviral therapy.</p
Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data
Observation of gravitational waves from the coalescence of a 2.5−4.5 M⊙ compact object and a neutron star
Detection Schemes for Distributed Space-Time Block Coding in Time-Varying Wireless Cooperative Systems
Abstract — In this paper, we investigate the influence of time-varying channels on the bit-error-rate (BER) performance for distributed space-time block coded system. We make use of pilot symbol assisted modula-tion (PSAM) to estimate the time-varying channel coefficients. We assess the performance of different reception methods, one of which is our newly considered receiver called cooperative maximum likelihood detector. The others are maximum likelihood detection in [12], Alamouti’s receiver, zero-forcing detection and decision-feedback detection. Our results show that all detection methods, except cooperative maximum likelihood detection, achieve nearly the same BER performance over time-varying channels, un-like the results obtained in [12] by assuming perfect channel estimation. In many cases, cooperative maximum likelihood detection performs better by about dB due to the diversity gain. In addition, we have found that the time-varying nature contributes to the error flooring effect. Keywords-Cooperative communications, space-time block coding, fading channels, time-varying. I
Stabilization of Lead-Reduced Metal Halide Perovskite Nanocrystals by High-Entropy Alloying
Colloidal metal halide perovskite (MHP) nanocrystals (NCs) are an emerging class of fluorescent quantum dots (QDs) for next-generation optoelectronics. A great hurdle hindering practical applications, however, is their high lead content, where most attempts addressing the challenge in the literature compromised the material's optical performance or colloidal stability. Here, we present a postsynthetic approach that stabilizes the lead-reduced MHP NCs through high-entropy alloying. Upon doping the NCs with multiple elements in considerably high concentrations, the resulting high-entropy perovskite (HEP) NCs remain to possess excellent colloidal stability and narrowband emission, with even higher photoluminescence (PL) quantum yields, ηPL, and shorter fluorescence lifetimes, τPL. The formation of multiple phases containing mixed interstitial and doping phases is suggested by X-ray crystallography. Importantly, the crystalline phases with higher degrees of lattice expansion and lattice contraction can be stabilized upon high-entropy alloying. We show that the lead content can be approximately reduced by up to 55% upon high-entropy alloying. The findings reported here make one big step closer to the commercialization of perovskite NCs.ISSN:0002-7863ISSN:1520-512