CO2 Reforming with CH4 via Plasma Catalysis System

Reforming of CO2 and CH4 into syngas (mixture of H2/CO) can be an economical way to reduce anthropogenic emission of CO2 and CH4 and to generate alternative fuel. Up to date, catalysis and nonthermal plasma are two feasible techniques for CO2/CH4 reforming. However, both techniques face some obstacles which limit their applications. For catalysis, high energy consumption and catalyst deactivation are the major disadvantages while nonthermal plasma has the drawbacks of low selectivity and unwanted byproduct formation. To overcome the above obstacles, combining catalyst and nonthermal plasma as a hybrid system can induce synergistic effects to enhance syngas production rate and stability of the operating system. For the purpose of enhancing CO2 utilization efficiency, understanding the interactions between catalyst and nonthermal plasma is essential

Construction and Characterization of Insect Cell-Derived Influenza VLP: Cell Binding, Fusion, and EGFP Incorporation

We have constructed virus-like particles (VLPs) harboring hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA), matrix protein 1 (M1) ,and proton channel protein (M2) using baculovirus as a vector in the SF9 insect cell. The size of the expressed VLP was estimated to be ~100 nm by light scattering experiment and transmission electron microscopy. Recognition of HA on the VLP surface by the HA2-specific monoclonal antibody IIF4 at acidic pH, as probed by surface plasmon resonance, indicated the pH-induced structural rearrangement of HA. Uptake of the particle by A549 mediated by HA-sialylose receptor interaction was visualized by the fluorescent-labeled VLP. The HA-promoted cell-virus fusion activity was illustrated by fluorescence imaging on the Jurkat cells incubated with rhodamine-loaded VLP performed at fusogenic pH. Furthermore, the green fluorescence protein (GFP) was fused to NA to produce VLP with a pH-sensitive probe, expanding the use of VLP as an antigen carrier and a tool for viral tracking

DESIGN OF SIMULATIVE PITCHING MACHINE AND IT'S EFFECT

The purpose of this study was to design a simulative device that attached on pitching machine to create the similar pitching motion of real pitcher, and to investigate the subsequent training effect. A photo sensor and automatic switch were used in the design of a simulative device in this study. When light from the photo sensor was cut off by the pitcher's throwing arm, the automatic switch would be turned on immediately and allow a ball to roll down into the pitching machine. Twelve collegiate baseball batters were divided into three groups. A cross-over experimental design was used. Each group involved one of three types of practice after one days rest. The three groups were Type-A: do nothing. Type-B: batting practice by traditional pitching machine. Type-C: batting practice by simulative pitching machine. Each batter hit six balls before and after batting practice for investigating training effect and two baseball experts evaluated batting performance. The results showed that there was significantly increased batting performance after Type-B and Type-C practice (p < .05). Type-C achieved significantly higher batting scores than type-A and Type-B (p < .05) methods. The results suggest that batting practice using a pitching machine with simulative device was an effective batting training method

Annealing Effects of Sputtered Cu 2

Cuprous oxide (Cu2O) films were prepared on an indium tin oxide glass substrate by radiofrequency magnetron sputtering using a high-purity Cu target. The temperature of annealing was varied to obtain Cu2O thin films with various elements, compositions, and surface structures. The p-Cu2O thin films thus formed were characterized by FESEM and XRD. After annealing at 500∘C, the bilayer structure which consisted of Cu nanoclusters on the surface of a film of Cu2O nanocolumns was observed. The Cu2O solar cell with the bilayered structure exhibited poor power conversion efficiency

Case report: Steroid-responsive acute chorea as first presentation of the coexistence of Moyamoya and Graves' disease

BackgroundChorea is a movement disorder characterized by abrupt, rapid, and uncontrollable, random movements from one part of the body to another with motor impersistence. Sporadic chorea is rarely caused by either thyrotoxicosis or Moyamoya disease (MMD).Methods and resultsIn this case report, we describe a female patient with chorea with the rare coexistence of Graves' disease and Moyamoya disease. Tc-99m ethyl cysteinate dimer (ECD) brain perfusion single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) showed mild to moderate hypoperfusion in bilateral frontal and left temporal regions. After administering dexamethasone 20 mg for 5 days, her choreic movement symptoms recovered rapidly.ConclusionAlthough uncommon, thyrotoxicosis and Moyamoya disease can co-occur, especially in Asian female adults. Excessive thyroid hormones contribute to the dysregulation of neurotransmitters in basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits. Moyamoya disease is responsible for ischemic changes affecting the excitatory–inhibitory circuits between the basal ganglia and the neocortex. Under a state of coexistence, thyrotoxicosis exaggerates cerebral metabolism, aggravating the impaired cerebral perfusion induced by Moyamoya disease. Moreover, inflammatory reactions caused by thyroid autoantibodies may also promote the progression of Moyamoya disease. In our experience, treatment with steroids may not only synergize the anti-thyroid effect but may also be a way to modulate the neurotransmitters within the basal ganglia or restore cerebral perfusion. We suggest that evaluation of the thyroid function status in Moyamoya disease is essential

Toward Joint Language Modeling for Speech Units and Text

Speech and text are two major forms of human language. The research community has been focusing on mapping speech to text or vice versa for many years. However, in the field of language modeling, very little effort has been made to model them jointly. In light of this, we explore joint language modeling for speech units and text. Specifically, we compare different speech tokenizers to transform continuous speech signals into discrete units and use different methods to construct mixed speech-text data. We introduce automatic metrics to evaluate how well the joint LM mixes speech and text. We also fine-tune the LM on downstream spoken language understanding (SLU) tasks with different modalities (speech or text) and test its performance to assess the model's learning of shared representations. Our results show that by mixing speech units and text with our proposed mixing techniques, the joint LM improves over a speech-only baseline on SLU tasks and shows zero-shot cross-modal transferability.Comment: EMNLP findings 202

The squeeze film effect on micro-electromechanical resonators

The air squeeze film damping effect on the dynamic responses of clamped micro- electromechanical resonators is investigated in this study. A dynamic model for a clamped micro-electromechanical resonator with the damping consideration is derived using Lagrange’s equation. The corresponding resonator eigen solutions are formulated and solved by employing the assumed-mode method. The effect of different parameters; i.e. the resonator size, ambient temperature and pressure on the squeeze film damping characteristics were simulated and investigated. The results indicate that the squeeze film damping effect may significantly affect the dynamic responses of micro-scale electromechanical resonator

MetaSquare: An integrated metadatabase of 16S rRNA gene amplicon for microbiome taxonomic classification

MOTIVATION: Taxonomic classification of 16S ribosomal RNA gene amplicon is an efficient and economic approach in microbiome analysis. 16S rRNA sequence databases like SILVA, RDP, EzBioCloud and HOMD used in downstream bioinformatic pipelines have limitations on either the sequence redundancy or the delay on new sequence recruitment. To improve the 16S rRNA gene-based taxonomic classification, we merged these widely used databases and a collection of novel sequences systemically into an integrated resource. RESULTS: MetaSquare version 1.0 is an integrated 16S rRNA sequence database. It is composed of more than 6 million sequences and improves taxonomic classification resolution on both long-read and short-read methods. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Accessible at https://hub.docker.com/r/lsbnb/metasquare_db and https://github.com/lsbnb/MetaSquare. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online