Synthesis And Characterization Of Metal Complexes Containing Tetrazolate, Poly(tetrazolyl)borate, And Aryl Pentazole Ligands As High Energy Density Materials

Heavier alkaline earth metal tetrazolates have been prepared as cryatals contain aqua ligands and as anhydrous powders, and were characterized by spectral and analytical methods. Potassium bis(tetrazolyl)borate complexes K(BH2(RCN4)2)(H2O)n (R = H, Me, NMe2, and NiPr2) and their 18-crown-6 adducts have been synthesized. In the solid state, complexes where R = H and Me have B-N bonds to the nitrogen atoms proximal to the carbon atom, whereas those with R = NMe2 and NiPr2 possess isomeric B-N bonds to the nitrogen atoms distal to the core carbon. With small R groups, the bis(tetrazolyl)borate ligands adopt bridging μ2 coordination modes to the [18-crown-6]+ fragments, while with larger R groups, they adopt chelating κ3-N,N\u27,H coordination modes in the 18-crown-6 adducts. Bis(5-methyltetrazolyl)borate complexes of lithium and heavier alkaline earth metals have been prepared. The new group 2 metal complexes were structurally characterized. Crystals of sodium cyano(tetrazolyl)borate complexes with or without methanol ligands have been prepared. The methanol ligands are lost rapidly at 23 °C from crystals of Na(H2B(CN)(HCN4))(CH3OH) and Na(H2B(CN)(MeCN4))(CH3OH)·(CH3OH) once they are isolated from the solution. All of the new complexes mentioned above are air stable and thermally stable between 210 °C and 325 °C. They are insensitive toward impact, friction, and electrostatic discharge. The new complexes have potential use as propellants or secondary energetic materials; the barium tetrazolates may behave as primary energetic materials. The group 2 metal complexes are good candidates for colorants in pyrotechnic compositions. The potassium and sodium complexes can serve as starting materials to make other high nitrogen content bis(tetrazolyl)borate and cyano(tetrazolyl)borate complexes, respectively. A series of rhenium isocyanate complexes (ç5-C5H5)Re(CO)(NCO)(N2Ar) was obtained by treatment of the specific rhenium aryldiazenido complexes [(ç5-C5H5)Re(CO)2(N2Ar)][BF4] (ç5-C5H5)Re(CO)(NCO)(N2Ar) (Ar = 4-methoxyphenyl, 2,4-dimethoxyphenyl, 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl, 2-trifluoromethylphenyl, and phenyl) with sodium azide. Treatment of CpRe(CO)2(THF) with Et2NC6H5N5 made in situ affords the isocyanate complex (ç5-C5H5)Re(CO)(NCO)(N2C6H5NEt2) and the methoxycarbonyl complex (ç5-C5H5)Re(CO)(COOCH3)(N2C6H5NEt2). The attempted preparation of rhenium aryl pentazole complexes did not proceed to form the desired products

Automated Refactoring of Nested-IF Formulae in Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are the most popular end-user programming software, where formulae act like programs and also have smells. One well recognized common smell of spreadsheet formulae is nest-IF expressions, which have low readability and high cognitive cost for users, and are error-prone during reuse or maintenance. However, end users usually lack essential programming language knowledge and skills to tackle or even realize the problem. The previous research work has made very initial attempts in this aspect, while no effective and automated approach is currently available. This paper firstly proposes an AST-based automated approach to systematically refactoring nest-IF formulae. The general idea is two-fold. First, we detect and remove logic redundancy on the AST. Second, we identify higher-level semantics that have been fragmented and scattered, and reassemble the syntax using concise built-in functions. A comprehensive evaluation has been conducted against a real-world spreadsheet corpus, which is collected in a leading IT company for research purpose. The results with over 68,000 spreadsheets with 27 million nest-IF formulae reveal that our approach is able to relieve the smell of over 99\% of nest-IF formulae. Over 50% of the refactorings have reduced nesting levels of the nest-IFs by more than a half. In addition, a survey involving 49 participants indicates that for most cases the participants prefer the refactored formulae, and agree on that such automated refactoring approach is necessary and helpful

Costly External Finance: Implications for Capital Markets Anomalies

In a frictionless world, investment is perfectly elastic to changes in the discount rate. With financial frictions, investment is less elastic, meaning that a given magnitude of change in investment is associated with a higher magnitude of change in the discount rate. Equivalently, investment is a more powerful predictor of future stock returns. Consistent with this prediction, we document that the asset growth, external finance, and accrual anomalies in the cross-section of stock returns are much stronger in financially more constrained firms than in financially less constrained firms. Further tests show that this effect of financial constraints is distinct from the effect of financial distress and the effect of limits of arbitrage on the magnitude of the anomalies.

Aerosol Delivery of Recombinant Antigen 85B in Microparticle Vaccine Systems for Protection Against Tuberculosis

The only available tuberculosis vaccine, bacille Calmette Guérin (BCG) has highly variable efficacy. Antigen 85B (Ag85B) is a protein secreted by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in the early culture and a promising subunit antigen. Pulmonary vaccination is an attractive immunization route. It was proposed that Ag85B/adjuvants in microparticle formulations intended for pulmonary delivery would target macrophages, elicit related cell-mediated immune response sufficient to protect guinea pigs from tuberculosis. Three specific aims were adopted to test the hypotheses. (1) To express recombinant Ag85 (rAg85B) from E. coli suitable for inclusion in polymeric microparticles for (2) in vitro screening of particle formulations with respect to related cell-mediated immunity and for (3) assessment of protection from infection in a guinea pig model of tuberculosis. rAg85B was expressed from two E. coli strains and encapsulated by spray-drying in poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) microparticles with adjuvants muramyl dipeptide (MDP) or trehalose dibehenate (TDB) to be delivered as dry powder aerosols. The antigenicity of the recombinant forms was evaluated by monitoring IL-2 secretion from T hybridoma cells DB-1 after recognition of Ag85B97-112 epitope presented by THP-1, antigen presenting cells. The powders were administered as single or multiple doses to guinea pigs to evaluate protection from a low dose aerosol infection with MTB strain H37Rv. Spray-dried microparticles exhibited mass median aerodynamic diameters (MMAD) of 2.5-3.0[mu]m, suitable for inhalation aerosols. The amount of IL-2, an indicator of antigenicity, released from T hybridoma cells following PLGA-Ag85B microparticle administration to THP-1 phagocytic cells, was 92-360 fold that of rAg85B solutions. Surface-associated rAg85B played a significant role in the observed IL-2 release. This formulation extended epitope presentation as demonstrated by duration and extent of IL-2 production. BCG prime: PLGA-Ag85B aerosol boosts (x2) appeared to enhance protection from infection with virulent MTB strain H37Rv compared to BCG alone. However, further work is required to demonstrate this effect conclusively. This is a clinically meaningful observation since many susceptible individuals in the developing world have been immunized with BCG. The results indicate that microparticles encapsulating rAg85B were immunologically effective, with preliminary evidence for protection and, potential for pulmonary vaccination to prevent MTB infection

Monobutyl phthalate induces the expression change of G-Protein-Coupled Receptor 30 in rat testicular Sertoli cells

The aim of the study was to explore whether G-Protein-Coupled Receptor 30 (GPR30) was expressed in rat testicular Sertoli cells and to assess the impact of monobutyl phthalate (MBP) on the expression of GPR30 in Sertoli cells. By using RT-PCR, Western-Blot and immunofluorescent microscopy, the expression of GPR30 in rat Sertoli cells was found at both gene and protein level. Cultures of Sertoli cells were exposed to MBP (10– –1000 mM) or a vehicle. The results indicated that the expression of GPR30 increased at gene and protein levels in Sertoli cells following administration of MBP even at a relatively low concentration. We suggest that changes of GPR30 expression may play an important role in the effects of the xenoestrogen MBP on Sertoli cell function. (Folia Histochemica et Cytobiologica 2013, Vol. 51, No. 1, 18–24

Conservative State Value Estimation for Offline Reinforcement Learning

Offline reinforcement learning faces a significant challenge of value over-estimation due to the distributional drift between the dataset and the current learned policy, leading to learning failure in practice. The common approach is to incorporate a penalty term to reward or value estimation in the Bellman iterations. Meanwhile, to avoid extrapolation on out-of-distribution (OOD) states and actions, existing methods focus on conservative Q-function estimation. In this paper, we propose Conservative State Value Estimation (CSVE), a new approach that learns conservative V-function via directly imposing penalty on OOD states. Compared to prior work, CSVE allows more effective in-data policy optimization with conservative value guarantees. Further, we apply CSVE and develop a practical actor-critic algorithm in which the critic does the conservative value estimation by additionally sampling and penalizing the states \emph{around} the dataset, and the actor applies advantage weighted updates extended with state exploration to improve the policy. We evaluate in classic continual control tasks of D4RL, showing that our method performs better than the conservative Q-function learning methods and is strongly competitive among recent SOTA methods

The influence of grit on nurse job satisfaction: Mediating effects of perceived stress and moderating effects of optimism

IntroductionNurse job satisfaction, defined as the positive emotional state experienced by nurses regarding their profession, factors related to job performance and outcomes, can affect their career planning and development. Grit, defined as an individual’s relentless effort and enduring enthusiasm for long-term goals, is essential for developing nurses’ competence, increasing job satisfaction, and reducing the willingness to leave the profession. The present study aims to explore the correlation between grit and job satisfaction, whether perceived stress could act as a mediator of the relationship and whether optimism moderated the mediating effect among nurses working in hospitals in southwest China.MethodsThe cross-sectional study utilized self-reported data gathered from 709 nurses in southwest China. To analyze mediating and moderating effects, bootstrapping regressions were conducted.ResultsPerceived pressure mediated the relationship between grit and job satisfaction (indirect effect = 0.195, 95%CI [0.145,0.250]). Furthermore, moderated mediated analysis revealed that optimism moderated grit’s impact on perceived stress (moderating effect = 0.036, 95% CI [0.010, 0.061]).DiscussionLow levels of grit might reduce nurses’ job satisfaction as their perceived stress levels increase. However, optimism among nurses could diminish this negative effect. Nursing managers should actively seek to improve the grit and optimism of hospital nurses while reducing their perceived pressure, thereby improving job satisfaction

Empower Large Language Model to Perform Better on Industrial Domain-Specific Question Answering

Large Language Model (LLM) has gained popularity and achieved remarkable results in open-domain tasks, but its performance in real industrial domain-specific scenarios is average since there is no specific knowledge in it. This issue has attracted widespread attention, but there are few relevant benchmarks available. In this paper, we provide a benchmark Question Answering (QA) dataset named MSQA, which is about Microsoft products and IT technical problems encountered by customers. This dataset contains industry cloud-specific QA knowledge, which is not available for general LLM, so it is well suited for evaluating methods aimed at improving domain-specific capabilities of LLM. In addition, we propose a new model interaction paradigm that can empower LLM to achieve better performance on domain-specific tasks where it is not proficient. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the approach following our model fusion framework outperforms the commonly used LLM with retrieval methods.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur