123 research outputs found

    A Projection-Type Method for Multivalued Variational Inequality

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    We propose a projection-type method for multivalued variational inequality. The iteration sequence generated by the algorithm is proven to be globally convergent to a solution, provided that the multivalued mapping is continuous with nonempty compact convex values. Moreover, we present a necessary and sufficient condition on the nonemptiness of the solution set. Preliminary computational experience is also reported

    Long-term cardiovascular outcomes after pregnancy in women with heart disease

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    BACKGROUND: Women with heart disease are at risk for pregnancy complications, but their long-term cardiovascular outcomes after pregnancy are not known. METHODS AND RESULTS: We examined long-term cardiovascular outcomes after pregnancy in 1014 consecutive women with heart disease and a matched group of 2028 women without heart disease. The primary outcome was a composite of mortality, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, myocardial infarction, or arrhythmia. Secondary outcomes included cardiac procedures and new hypertension or diabetes mellitus. We compared the rates of these outcomes between women with and without heart disease and adjusted for maternal and pregnancy characteristics. We also determined if pregnancy risk prediction tools (CARPREG [Canadian Cardiac Disease in Pregnancy] and World Health Organization) could stratify long-term risks. At 20-year follow-up, a primary outcome occurred in 33.1% of women with heart disease, compared with 2.1% of women without heart disease. Thirty-one percent of women with heart disease required a cardiac procedure. The primary outcome (adjusted hazard ratio, 19.6; 95% CI, 13.8–29.0; P\u3c0.0001) and new hypertension or diabetes mellitus (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.6; 95% CI, 1.4–2.0; P\u3c0.0001) were more frequent in women with heart disease compared with those without. Pregnancy risk prediction tools further stratified the late cardiovascular risks in women with heart disease, a primary outcome occurring in up to 54% of women in the highest pregnancy risk category. CONCLUSIONS: Following pregnancy, women with heart disease are at high risk for adverse long-term cardiovascular outcomes. Current pregnancy risk prediction tools can identify women at highest risk for long-term cardiovascular events

    Turning dead leaves into an active multifunctional material as evaporator, photocatalyst, and bioplastic

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    Large numbers of leaves fall on the earth each autumn. The current treatments of dead leaves mainly involve completely destroying the biocomponents, which causes considerable energy consumption and environmental issues. It remains a challenge to convert waste leaves into useful materials without breaking down their biocomponents. Here, we turn red maple dead leaves into an active three-component multifunctional material by exploiting the role of whewellite biomineral for binding lignin and cellulose. Owing to its intense optical absorption spanning the full solar spectrum and the heterogeneous architecture for effective charge separation, films of this material show high performance in solar water evaporation, photocatalytic hydrogen production, and photocatalytic degradation of antibiotics. Furthermore, it also acts as a bioplastic with high mechanical strength, high-temperature tolerance, and biodegradable features. These findings pave the way for the efficient utilization of waste biomass and innovations of advanced materials

    ImmFusion: Robust mmWave-RGB Fusion for 3D Human Body Reconstruction in All Weather Conditions

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    3D human reconstruction from RGB images achieves decent results in good weather conditions but degrades dramatically in rough weather. Complementary, mmWave radars have been employed to reconstruct 3D human joints and meshes in rough weather. However, combining RGB and mmWave signals for robust all-weather 3D human reconstruction is still an open challenge, given the sparse nature of mmWave and the vulnerability of RGB images. In this paper, we present ImmFusion, the first mmWave-RGB fusion solution to reconstruct 3D human bodies in all weather conditions robustly. Specifically, our ImmFusion consists of image and point backbones for token feature extraction and a Transformer module for token fusion. The image and point backbones refine global and local features from original data, and the Fusion Transformer Module aims for effective information fusion of two modalities by dynamically selecting informative tokens. Extensive experiments on a large-scale dataset, mmBody, captured in various environments demonstrate that ImmFusion can efficiently utilize the information of two modalities to achieve a robust 3D human body reconstruction in all weather conditions. In addition, our method's accuracy is significantly superior to that of state-of-the-art Transformer-based LiDAR-camera fusion methods

    Internal and External Data Linkage of Complex Relational Database: Results from CorHealth Ontario

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    Introduction CorHealth Ontario, formerly Cardiac Care Network (CCN), maintains a registry of patients undergoing select cardiac procedures/surgeries in Ontario, Canada. This population-based database contains over 35 datasets with complex structure, linked by unique primary key or multiple keys. Objectives and Approach We aimed to simplify the complex CorHealth database so that research analysts could create study cohorts more efficiently and effectively, and to enrich the study cohort by getting more clinical information through database linkage. Through internal linkage, we could combine clinical fields from multiple CorHealth datasets. While the CorHealth dataset may not have all the clinical information needed for a given study, we may link the CorHealth study cohort externally to other administration databases to obtain additional fields via the probability matching (i.e., identical patient ID, hospital ID and procedure/surgery date). Results After identifying the primary keys on the relational database flowchart, we designed new data structures by combining similar topic datasets. The total number of datasets was reduced from 35 to 13. This simplified CorHealth dataset includes one main CorHealth dataset (including demographic information, referral data, comorbidities) plus 12 other linkable specific datasets (including stent, vessel, TAVI, STEMI). Through internal linkage, we can get the stent numbers, lengths and types of Percutaneous Coronary Interventions from the Stent dataset. Linking to Discharge Abstract Database (DAD), we can get the hospital length of stay and the episode of care of hospital transfer for each procedure; linking to The Ontario Health Insurance Plan database (OHIP), we can find the graft numbers and vessel types of Coronary Artery Bypass Graft. Conclusion/Implications To improve the research capacity and increase the value of the CorHealth database, analysts could create enhanced cardiovascular study cohorts derived from the simplified CorHealth database, plus internal linkage from other CorHealth datasets, and external data linkage from population-based administrative sources. We have accomplished three reports (PCI/CABG/TAVI) accordingly in 2017/18

    Outstanding hydrogen evolution reaction catalyzed by porous nickel diselenide electrocatalysts

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    To relieve our strong reliance on fossil fuels and to reduce greenhouse effects, there is an ever-growing interest in using electrocatalytic water splitting to produce green, renewable, and environment-benign hydrogen fuel via the hydrogen evolution reaction. For commercially feasible water electrolysis, it is imperative to develop electrocatalysts that perform as efficiently as Pt but using only earth-abundant commercial materials. However, the highest performance current catalysts consist of nanostructures made by using complex methods. Here we report a porous nickel diselenide (NiSe_2) catalyst that is superior for water electrolysis, exhibiting much better catalytic performance than most first-row transition metal dichalcogenide-based catalysts, well-studied MoS_2, and WS_2-based catalysts. Indeed NiSe2 performs comparably to the state-of-the-art Pt catalysts. We fabricate NiSe_2 directly from commercial nickel foam by acetic acid-assisted surface roughness engineering. To understand the origin of the high performance, we use first-principles calculations to identify the active sites. This work demonstrates the commercial possibility of hydrogen production via water electrolysis using porous bulk NiSe_2 catalysts

    Efficient hydrogen evolution by ternary molybdenum sulfoselenide particles on self-standing porous nickel diselenide foam

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    With the massive consumption of fossil fuels and its detrimental impact on the environment, methods of generating clean power are urgent. Hydrogen is an ideal carrier for renewable energy; however, hydrogen generation is inefficient because of the lack of robust catalysts that are substantially cheaper than platinum. Therefore, robust and durable earth-abundant and cost-effective catalysts are desirable for hydrogen generation from water splitting via hydrogen evolution reaction. Here we report an active and durable earth-abundant transition metal dichalcogenide-based hybrid catalyst that exhibits high hydrogen evolution activity approaching the state-of-the-art platinum catalysts, and superior to those of most transition metal dichalcogenides (molybdenum sulfide, cobalt diselenide and so on). Our material is fabricated by growing ternary molybdenum sulfoselenide particles on self-standing porous nickel diselenide foam. This advance provides a different pathway to design cheap, efficient and sizable hydrogen-evolving electrode by simultaneously tuning the number of catalytic edge sites, porosity, heteroatom doping and electrical conductivity

    Aluminate red phosphor in light-emitting diodes : theoretical calculations, charge varieties and high-pressure luminescence analysis

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    This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (Contract Nos. MOST 104-2113-M- 002-012-MY3 and MOST 104-2923-M-002-007-MY3). This research was also supported by National Centre for Re- search and Development, Poland (Grant No. PL- TW2/8/2015).Searching for a non-rare earth-based oxide red-emitting phosphor is crucial for phosphor-converted light- emitting diodes (LEDs). In this study, we optimized a blue and UV-light excited Sr4Al14O25:Mn phosphor exhibiting red emission peaked at ~653 nm, which was successfully synthesized by solid-state reaction. The crystal structure, micromorphology, and luminescent properties of Sr4Al14O25:Mn phosphors were characterized by X-ray Rietveld refinement, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, and photoluminescence spectra. The band gap and electronic structure of Sr4Al14O25 were analyzed by density functional theory calculation using the hybrid exchange- correlation functional. The crystal field environment effect of Al sites from introducing activator Mn ions was investigated with the aid of Raman 27Al nuclear magnetic resonance spectra and electron spin resonance. The pressure dependent on the luminescent properties and decay time of this compound were presented. The tricolor display spectrum by combining blue InGaN chips, commercial β-SiAlON:Eu2+ green phosphor, and Sr4Al14O25:Mn red phosphor were evaluated for commercial applications: using the present Sr4Al14O25:Mn red phosphor converted LED as backlighting source.PostprintPeer reviewe
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