The Revival of Tiantai Buddhism in the Late Ming: On the Thought of Youxi Chuandeng (1554-1628)

This dissertation is a study of Youxi Chuandeng's (1554-1628) transformation of "Buddha-nature includes good and evil," also known as "inherent evil," a unique idea representing Tiantai's nature-inclusion philosophy in Chinese Buddhism. Focused on his major treatise On Nature Including Good and Evil, this research demonstrates how Chuandeng, in his efforts to regenerate Tiantai, incorporated the important intellectual themes of the late Ming, especially those found in the Śūraṃgama Sūtra. In his treatise, Chuandeng systematically presented his ideas on doctrinal classification, the principle of nature-inclusion, and the practice of the Dharma-gate of inherent evil. Redefining Tiantai doctrinal classification, he legitimized the idea of inherent evil to be the highest Buddhist teaching and proved the superiority of Buddhism over Confucianism. Drawing upon the notions of pure mind and the seven elements found in the Śūraṃgama Sūtra, he reinterpreted nature-inclusion and the Dharma-gate of inherent evil emphasizing inherent evil as pure rather than defiled. Conversely, he reinterpreted Śūraṃgama Sūtra by nature-inclusion. Chuandeng incorporated Confucianism and the Śūraṃgama Sūtra as a response to the dominating thought of his day, this being the particular manner in which previous Tiantai thinkers upheld, defended and spread Tiantai. What set Chuandeng apart from his predecessors were his efforts to harmonize rather than criticize other Buddhist schools. The Śūraṃgama Sūtra was emblematic of the syncretic intellectual trend of the late Ming and its popularity was widespread. Chuandeng ably took ideas from the Śūraṃgama Sūtra to make his points. Chuandeng was a culminator and innovator of nature-inclusion and his thought and activities represent the revival of Tiantai in the late Ming. This study proves that the Tiantai school was not a marginal but rather an active contributor to the overall revival of Buddhism in the late Ming

Using General Anesthesia plus Muscle Relaxant in a Patient with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type IV: A Case Report

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a rare genetic disease characterized by degeneration of spinal cord motor neurons, which results in hypotonia and muscle weakness. Patients with type IV SMA often have onset of weakness from adulthood. Anesthetic management is often difficult in these patients as a result of muscle weakness and hypersensitivity to neuromuscular blocking agents as shown by (Lunn and Wang; 2008, Simic; 2008, and Cifuentes-Diaz et al.; 2002). Herein we report a case of anesthetic management of a patient with SMA type IV for mammectomy and review some other cases of SMA patients receiving different kinds of anesthesia

Information filtering in evolving online networks

Recommender systems use the records of users' activities and profiles of both users and products to predict users' preferences in the future. Considerable works towards recommendation algorithms have been published to solve the problems such as accuracy, diversity, congestion, cold-start, novelty, coverage and so on. However, most of these research did not consider the temporal effects of the information included in the users' historical data. For example, the segmentation of the training set and test set was completely random, which was entirely different from the real scenario in recommender systems. More seriously, all the objects are treated as the same, regardless of the new, the popular or obsoleted products, so do the users. These data processing methods always lose useful information and mislead the understanding of the system's state. In this paper, we detailed analyzed the difference of the network structure between the traditional random division method and the temporal division method on two benchmark data sets, Netflix and MovieLens. Then three classical recommendation algorithms, Global Ranking method, Collaborative Filtering and Mass Diffusion method, were employed. The results show that all these algorithms became worse in all four key indicators, ranking score, precision, popularity and diversity, in the temporal scenario. Finally, we design a new recommendation algorithm based on both users' and objects' first appearance time in the system. Experimental results showed that the new algorithm can greatly improve the accuracy and other metrics

Cellulose Acetate Reverse Osmosis Membranes for Desalination: A Short Review

Freshwater scarcity is a critical challenge that human society has to face in the 21st century. Desalination of seawater by reverse osmosis (RO) membranes was regarded as the most promising technology to overcome the challenge given that plenty of potential fresh water resources in oceans. However, the requirements for high desalination efficiency in terms of permeation flux and rejection rate become the bottle-neck which needs to be broken down by developing novel RO membranes with new structure and composition. Cellulose acetate RO membranes exhibited long durability, chlorine resistance, and outstanding desalination efficiency that are worthy of being recalled to address the current shortcomings brought by polyamide RO membranes. In terms of performance enhancement, it is also important to use new ideas and to develop new strategies to modify cellulose acetate RO membranes in response to those complex challenges. Therefore, we focused on the state of the art cellulose acetate RO membranes and discussed the strategies on membrane structural manipulation adjusted by either phase separation or additives, which offered anti-fouling, anti-bacterial, anti-chlorine, durability, and thermo-mechanical properties to the modified membranes associated with the desalination performance, i.e., permeation flux and rejection rate. The relationship between membrane structure and desalination efficiency was investigated and established to guide the development of cellulose acetate RO membranes for desalination. 

The Toxoplasma gondii Cyst Wall Protein CST1 Is Critical for Cyst Wall Integrity and Promotes Bradyzoite Persistence

Toxoplasma gondii infects up to one third of the world\u27s population. A key to the success of T. gondii as a parasite is its ability to persist for the life of its host as bradyzoites within tissue cysts. The glycosylated cyst wall is the key structural feature that facilitates persistence and oral transmission of this parasite. Because most of the antibodies and reagents that recognize the cyst wall recognize carbohydrates, identification of the components of the cyst wall has been technically challenging. We have identified CST1 (TGME49_064660) as a 250 kDa SRS (SAG1 related sequence) domain protein with a large mucin-like domain. CST1 is responsible for the Dolichos biflorus Agglutinin (DBA) lectin binding characteristic of T. gondii cysts. Deletion of CST1 results in reduced cyst number and a fragile brain cyst phenotype characterized by a thinning and disruption of the underlying region of the cyst wall. These defects are reversed by complementation of CST1. Additional complementation experiments demonstrate that the CST1-mucin domain is necessary for the formation of a normal cyst wall structure, the ability of the cyst to resist mechanical stress, and binding of DBA to the cyst wall. RNA-seq transcriptome analysis demonstrated dysregulation of bradyzoite genes within the various cst1 mutants. These results indicate that CST1 functions as a key structural component that confers essential sturdiness to the T. gondii tissue cyst critical for persistence of bradyzoite forms

Bis(4,6-dimethyl­pyrimidine-2-thiol­ato)dimethyl­tin(IV)

The asymmetric unit of the title complex, [Sn(CH3)2(C6H7N2S)2], contains two independent mol­ecules with similar configurations. In each, the SnIV cation is coordinated by two methyl and two 4,6-dimethyl­pyrimidine-2-thiol­ate anions in a distorted SnS2C2 tetra­hedral geometry. In the two mol­ecules, the S—Sn—S bond angles are 87.70 (5) and 88.93 (4)°, while the C—Sn—C bond angles are 125.7 (3) and 125.9 (2)°. Weak C—H⋯N hydrogen bonding is present in the crystal structure