Realization of multiple charge density waves in NbTe2 at the monolayer limit

Abstract: Layered transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) down to the monolayer (ML) limit provide a fertile platform for exploring charge-density waves (CDWs). Though bulk NbTe2 is known to harbor a single axis 3*1 CDW coexisting with non-trivial quantum properties, the scenario in the ML limit is still experimentally unknown. In this study, we unveil the richness of the CDW phases in ML NbTe2, where not only the theoretically predicted 4*4 and 4*1 phases, but also two unexpected sqrt(28)*sqrt(28) and sqrt(19)*sqrt(19) phases, can be realized. For such a complex CDW system, we establish an exhaustive growth phase diagram via systematic efforts in the material synthesis and scanning tunneling microscope characterization. Moreover, we report that the energetically stable phase is the larger scale order (sqrt(19)*sqrt(19)), which is surprisingly in contradiction to the prior prediction (4*4). These findings are confirmed using two different kinetic pathways, i.e., direct growth at proper growth temperatures (T), and low-T growth followed by high-T annealing. Our results provide a comprehensive diagram of the "zoo" of CDW orders in ML 1T-NbTe2 for the first time and offer a new material platform for studying novel quantum phases in the 2D limit

Lotus seed oligosaccharides at various dosages with prebiotic activity regulate gut microbiota and relieve constipation in mice.

pre-printThe aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of lotus seed oligosaccharides (formulation consisting of LSO2, LSO3-1, LSO3-2 and LSO4; relative ratios are 1.107:0.554: 0.183:0.443, m/m/m/m) at dosages of 0.42, 0.83 g/d/kg bw and 2.49 g/d/kg bw on the microbiota composition and the propulsion of intestinal contents in the gut of mice. The results showed that fecal water content increased in treated mice; there was less gut microbiota diversity than in other groups; and there was a large number of fauna in the cecum of the mice. At the same time, the number of short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) bacterial producers increased after feeding with oligosaccharides; Lotus seed oligosaccharides (LOS) also enhanced the concentration of SCFAs in the intestine, which also increased the concentration of cytokines in the serum of mice. In conclusion, these findings suggest that LOS or combination with resistant starch has a better effect on relieving constipation

PTCDA molecular monolayer on Pb thin films: An unusual π-electron Kondo system and its interplay with a quantum-confined superconductor

The hybridization of magnetism and superconductivity has been an intriguing playground for correlated electron systems, hosting various novel physical phenomena. Usually, localized d- or f-electrons are central to magnetism. In this study, by placing a PTCDA (3,4,9,10-perylene tetracarboxylic dianhydride) molecular monolayer on ultra-thin Pb films, we built a hybrid magnetism/superconductivity (M/SC) system consisting of only sp electronic levels. The magnetic moments reside in the unpaired molecular orbital originating from interfacial charge-transfers. We reported distinctive tunneling spectroscopic features of such a Kondo screened pi-electron impurity lattice on a superconductor in the regime of TK>>delta suggesting the formation of a two-dimensional bound states band. Moreover, moiré superlattices with tunable twist angle and the quantum confinement in the ultra-thin Pb films provide easy and flexible implementations to tune the interplay between the Kondo physics and the superconductivity, which are rarely present in M/SC hybrid systems.Center for Dynamics and Control of Material

Orders Are Unwanted: Dynamic Deep Graph Convolutional Network for Personality Detection

Predicting personality traits based on online posts has emerged as an important task in many fields such as social network analysis. One of the challenges of this task is assembling information from various posts into an overall profile for each user. While many previous solutions simply concatenate the posts into a long text and then encode the text by sequential or hierarchical models, they introduce unwarranted orders for the posts, which may mislead the models. In this paper, we propose a dynamic deep graph convolutional network (D-DGCN) to overcome the above limitation. Specifically, we design a learn-to-connect approach that adopts a dynamic multi-hop structure instead of a deterministic structure, and combine it with the DGCN module to automatically learn the connections between posts. The modules of post encoder, learn-to-connect, and DGCN are jointly trained in an end-to-end manner. Experimental results on the Kaggle and Pandora datasets show the superior performance of D-DGCN to state-of-the-art baselines. Our code is available at https://github.com/djz233/D-DGCN

Clustering-Aware Negative Sampling for Unsupervised Sentence Representation

Contrastive learning has been widely studied in sentence representation learning. However, earlier works mainly focus on the construction of positive examples, while in-batch samples are often simply treated as negative examples. This approach overlooks the importance of selecting appropriate negative examples, potentially leading to a scarcity of hard negatives and the inclusion of false negatives. To address these issues, we propose ClusterNS (Clustering-aware Negative Sampling), a novel method that incorporates cluster information into contrastive learning for unsupervised sentence representation learning. We apply a modified K-means clustering algorithm to supply hard negatives and recognize in-batch false negatives during training, aiming to solve the two issues in one unified framework. Experiments on semantic textual similarity (STS) tasks demonstrate that our proposed ClusterNS compares favorably with baselines in unsupervised sentence representation learning. Our code has been made publicly available.Comment: accepted to Finding of ACL2023, 16 page

A C2H2 zinc finger protein FEMU2 is required for fox1 expression in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii fox1 gene encodes a ferroxidase that is involved in cellular Fe uptake and highly induced during Fe deficient conditions. In an effort to identify fox1 promoter regulatory elements, an insertional library was generated in a transgenic Chlamydomonas strain (2A38) harboring an arylsulfatase (ARS) reporter gene driven by the fox1 promoter. Mutants with a defective response to low iron conditions were selected for further study. Among these, a strain containing a disrupted femu2 gene was identified. Activation of the fox1 promoter by the femu2 gene product was confirmed by silencing the femu2 gene using RNA interference. In three femu2 RNAi transgenic lines (IR3, IR6, and IR7), ARS reporter gene activities declined by 84.3%, 86.4%, and 88.8%, respectively under Fe deficient conditions. Furthermore, RT-PCR analysis of both the femu2 mutant and the RNAi transgenic lines showed significantly decreased transcript abundance of the endogenous fox1 gene under Fe deficient conditions. Amino acid sequence analysis of the femu2 gene product identified three potential C2H2 zinc finger (ZF) motifs and a nuclear localization study suggests that FEMU2 is localized to the nucleus. In addition, a potential FEMU2 binding site ((G/T)TTGG(G/T)(G/T)T) was identified using PCR-mediated random binding site selection. Taken together, this evidence suggests that FEMU2 is involved in up-regulation of the fox1 gene in Fe deficient cells

Short-term Creep Behavior of an Additive Manufactured Non-weldable Nickel-base Superalloy Evaluated by Slow Strain Rate Testing

Additive manufacturing (AM) of high γ′ strengthened Nickel-base superalloys, such as IN738LC, is of high interest for applications in hot section components for gas turbines. The creep property acts as the critical indicator of component performance under load at elevated temperature. However, it has been widely suggested that the suitable service condition of AM processed IN738LC is not yet fully clear. In order to evaluate the short-term creep behavior, slow strain rate tensile (SSRT) tests were performed. IN738LC bars were built by laser powder-bed-fusion (L-PBF) and then subjected to hot isostatic pressing (HIP) followed by the standard two-step heat treatment. The samples were subjected to SSRT testing at 850 °C under strain rates of 1 × 10−5/s, 1 × 10−6/s, and 1 × 10−7/s. In this research, the underlying creep deformation mechanism of AM processed IN738LC is investigated using the serial sectioning technique, electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM). On the creep mechanism of AM polycrystalline IN738LC, grain boundary sliding is predominant. However, due to the interlock feature of grain boundaries in AM processed IN738LC, the grain structure retains its integrity after deformation. The dislocation motion acts as the major accommodation process of grain boundary sliding. Dislocations bypass the γ′ precipitates by Orowan looping and wavy slip. The rearrangement of screw dislocations is responsible for the formation of subgrains within the grain interior. This research elucidates the short-creep behavior of AM processed IN738LC. It also shed new light on the creep deformation mechanism of additive manufactured γ′ strengthened polycrystalline Nickel-base superalloys.Funding Agencies|Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, (Vinnova)Vinnova [2016-05175, 2018-00804]; Linkoping University [2009-00971]</p

Schematic diagram of FEMU2 C2H2 ZF domain and expression of FEMU2 C2H2 ZF domain.

<p>(A) Schematic diagram of the function domains of FEMU2 protein; (B) Expression and purification of FEMU2 3 of C2H2 ZF domain and 2 of the C2H2 ZF domain in <i>E. coli</i> BL21 after induced by IPTG. M, Marker; lane1, GST-3C2H2 fusion protein (35.4 KD); 2, GST-2C2H2 fusion protein (32.5 KD); 3, GST only (26 KD); 4, <i>E. coli</i> BL21 total protein; 6, purified GST-3C2H2 fusion protein; 7, purified GST-2C2H2 fusion protein; 8, purified GST.</p