Canect: Matching You the Best-fit Translation Service

In this thesis, a new service: Canect is designed to challenge the problems of current translation service providing. Briefly speaking, Canect is a service that helps international travelers and companies to find and manage the best-fit translation services. While the traditional translation service industry staying in the black box, Canect is designed to be more transparent, flexible and reliable. It will improve the translation service experience from the early stage to the end evaluation stage. To limit the language scope, this project will focus on English speaker who seek Chinese translation services. The design process followed a typical interaction design process including design research, user needs mining, personal and scenario development, prototyping and evaluation

Ekelandʼs variational principle for an L¯0-valued function on a complete random metric space

AbstractMotivated by the recent work on conditional risk measures, this paper studies the Ekelandʼs variational principle for a proper, lower semicontinuous and lower bounded L¯0-valued function, where L¯0 is the set of equivalence classes of extended real-valued random variables on a probability space. First, we prove a general form of Ekelandʼs variational principle for such a function defined on a complete random metric space. Then, we give a more precise form of Ekelandʼs variational principle for such a local function on a complete random normed module. Finally, as applications, we establish the Bishop–Phelps theorem in a complete random normed module under the framework of random conjugate spaces

Testing the upper limit of luminescence dating based on standardised growth curves for MET-pIRIR signals of K-feldspar grains from northern China

© 2020 Elsevier B.V. The standardised growth curve (SGC) method has been applied to potassium-rich feldspar (K-feldspar) from samples at the Nihewan Basin, northern China. It was observed that the shapes of SGCs obtained from multiple-aliquot regenerative-dose (MAR) and single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) procedures are different at high doses (\u3e900 Gy) for the multiple-elevated-temperature post-IR IRSL (MET-pIRIR) signals observed at high temperatures (e.g., 290 °C) This difference can be attributed to the presence of residual signals in the MAR SGCs due to solar bleaching involved in the MAR procedure. Similar shapes of the SAR and MAR SGCs were obtained after correcting for the residual signals. Comparing the De estimates for both methods suggests that the SAR SGCs yield more reliable results. We tested the SAR SGCs for sediments from the Dadaopo section in the Nihewan Basin, including materials from the Brunhes/Matuyama (B/M) boundary (~780 ka). By interpolating the central re-normalised Ln/Tn ratios onto the corresponding SAR SGCs, the 290 °C MET-pIRIR signals yielded ages in stratigraphic order, and the sample from the B/M boundary yielded an age estimate broadly consistent with the expected age. Our results suggest that the MET-pIRIR SAR SGC method has the potential to date samples up to ~700–800 ka in this region

Developmental Signaling and Acute Lung Injury

The present study is initiated to explore the potential implication of developmental signaling in AEC I injury, acute inflammatory response, and host defense against pathogen invasion during the pathogenesis of ALI/ARDS. We demonstrated that P2X7R induced AEC I death by suppressing Wnt/beta-catenin signaling through activating GSK-3beta and proteasome. On the other hand, Wn3a overrides the effect of P2X7R on inhibiting Wnt/beta-catenin signaling to prevent the AEC I death and restricts the severity of ALI/ARDS. Our study on Wnt/beta-catenin signaling and P2X7R-mediated purinergic signaling provides insights for future drug development and new therapeutic strategies to limit AEC I damage in ALI/ARDS patients.Furthermore, we identified platelet-derived Dkk1 as the major Wnt antagonist, contributing to the depression of Wnt/beta-catenin signaling during ALI/ARDS. Intratracheal administration of Wnt3a or neutralization of Dkk1 inhibited neutrophil influx into alveolar airspace of the injured lungs potentially through the attenuated ICAM-1/VCAM-1 mediated adhesion of inflammatory cells. We reported for the first time a role of Wnt/beta-catenin signaling in modulating inflammatory response, and a functional communication between platelets and AEC during ALI/ARDS. Targeting Wnt/beta-catenin signaling and this communication therefore represents a potential therapeutic strategy to reduce acute inflammation in ALI/ARDS patients.At last, we discovered that Axin1, a scaffold protein, was degraded during influenza virus infection of mice. More importantly, we found that Axin1 boosted type I IFN response to influenza virus infection through the stimulation of JNK/c-Jun and Smad3 signaling. Axin1 also interacted with IFIT1/2/3, a viral RNA sensor complex. In addition, Axin1 specifically promoted the degradation of hnRNP M, a nucleoprotein required for efficient activity of influenza virus polymerases, and sequentially EZH2. Axin1 and its chemical stabilizer, XAV939, successfully reduced influenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus replication, and protected the mice from influenza virus infection. Thus, our study provides new mechanistic insights into the regulation of type I IFN response and presents a new potential therapeutics of targeting Axin1 against influenza virus infection and reducing the incidence of viral pneumonia.Veterinary Biomedical Science

Spatial light modulation for interferometric scattering microscopy

Interferometric scattering (iSCAT) microscopy enables high speed and label-free detection of individual molecules and small nanoparticles. Here we apply point spread function engineering to provide adaptive control of iSCAT images using spatial light modulation. With this approach we demonstrate improved dynamic spatial filtering, real-time background subtraction, focus control, and signal modulation based on sample orientation

Security of a new two-way continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocol

The original two-way continuous-variable quantum-key-distribution (CV QKD) protocols [S. Pirandola, S. Mancini, S. Lloyd, and S. L. Braunstein, Nature Physics 4, 726 (2008)] give the security against the collective attack on the condition of the tomography of the quantum channels. We propose a family of new two-way CV QKD protocols and prove their security against collective entangling cloner attacks without the tomography of the quantum channels. The simulation result indicates that the new protocols maintain the same advantage as the original two-way protocols whose tolerable excess noise surpasses that of the one-way CV-QKD protocol. We also show that all sub-protocols within the family have higher secret key rate and much longer transmission distance than the one-way CV-QKD protocol for the noisy channel.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in International Journal of Quantum Informatio