Pulse Reshaping by the Two-port Nonlinear Fiber Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

In this article, the reshaping of the series of sinuous pulses and Gaussian pulses with arbitrary amplitude of laser signal by two-port nonlinear fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer are simulated. The output series of close to flat-form pulses of laser signal is obtained. The influence of the input intensity, length of the nonlinear fiber, and nonlinear coefficient of refractive index on the shape of output pulse is discussed.Pulse Reshaping by the Two-port Nonlinear Fiber Mach-Zehnder Interferomete

Effects of hormone and fertilizers on early flower induction of Dendrobium anosmum hybrid seedlings under ex vitro condition

Early flowering of new orchids is important to save time for selecting valuable flowers and artificial induction of flowering is a critical consideration in the orchid production industry. In this study, a new Dendrobium anosmum hybrid was generated by cross-breeding between D. anosmum ‘Chau Nhu’ and D. anosmum ‘Di Linh’. The ancestors and hybrid seedlings from in-vitro culture were trained in the net house and their growth and flowering were evaluated under ex vivo conditions with specific fertilizers and hormones. The results suggest that the hybrid plants grew better than their parents in terms of stem height, stem diameter, and leaf number. Growth hormones were applied to stimulate early flowering in matured hybrids and it was discovered that ‘Keiki pro’, a commercial hormone product, produced the best results, with a flowering rate of 66.67% after two applications. Hybrid flowers varied in width from 36.36% (3.0-6.0 cm) to 63.64 % (more than 6.0 cm) from ancestral width in medium-sized and large-sized flowers, respectively. Also, the hybrid flower colours was mostly a combination of pink/violet (75C) and purple/pink (68A), which is different from their parents. Importantly, the dorsal sepal, petal colours, and shape of hybrid flowers varied significantly among individual hybrids, between hybrids and their progenitors. Some mutations in the lips and columns of the novel hybrid flowers were also visualized. Hence, the D. anosmum hybrid seedlings successfully induced flowers after a year of culture under optimal hormones and fertilizers conditions. The results can serve as a critical reference for the early flowering of the orchid seedlings

Optical Bistability Effect of Two-port Nonlinear Fiber Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

In this article, the dependence of bistability characteristic of the two-port nonlinear fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (TPNFMZI) on initial phase shift, wavelength of input signal, nonlinear coefficient of refractive index and length of nonlinear fiber is investigated and discussed. The results of this work play an important role in designing the TPNFMZI and its application in the future

Nonlinear Coupler for Optical Fiber Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

In this article the equations for two waves propagating in two fibers of nonlinear Kerr coupler for optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer are derived. Based on the resolution of those equations, the expressions describing relation between coherent length, input intensity of the wave, nonlinear coefficient of refractive index for 3dB Kerr coupler are introduced and discussed

Covid-19 vaccines production and societal immunization under the serendipity-mindsponge-3D knowledge management theory and conceptual framework

Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), tremendous efforts have been made by scientists, health professionals, business people, politicians, and laypeople around the world. Covid-19 vaccines are one of the most crucial innovations that help fight against the virus. This paper attempts to revisit the Covid-19 vaccines production process by employing the serendipity-mindsponge-3D creativity management theory. Vaccine production can be considered an information process and classified into three main stages. The first stage involved the processes of absorbing information (e.g., digital data and open science) and rejecting unhelpful information (e.g., misinformation and fake news) for effectively acquiring useful insights. Useful insights were later employed by experts, enterprises, governments, and international organizations through interdisciplinary coordinated efforts for developing vaccines within a short period. Finally, the appearance of multiple types of vaccines enabled more strategic options for vaccine distribution and administration. Findings from this vaccine creativity management process could be used as critical lessons for further improvements of vaccination programs

A Multinational Data Set of Game Players' Behaviors in a Virtual World and Environmental Perceptions

Video gaming has been rising rapidly to become one of the primary entertainment media, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Playing video games has been reported to associate with many psychological and behavioral traits. However, little is known about the connections between game players' behaviors in the virtual environment and environmental perceptions. Thus, the current data set offers valuable resources regarding environmental worldviews and behaviors in the virtual world of 640 Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) game players from 29 countries around the globe. The data set consists of six major categories: 1) socio-demographic profile, 2) COVID-19 concern, 3) environmental perception, 4) game-playing habit, 5) in-game behavior, and 6) game-playing feeling. By making this data set open, we aim to provide policymakers, game producers, and researchers with valuable resources for understanding the interactions between behaviors in the virtual world and environmental perceptions, which could help produce video games in compliance with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals

Efficient inference of large prokaryotic pangenomes with PanTA

Pangenome inference is an indispensable step in bacterial genomics, yet its scalability poses a challenge due to the rapid growth of genomic collections. This paper presents PanTA, a software package designed for constructing pangenomes of large bacterial datasets, showing unprecedented efficiency levels multiple times higher than existing tools. PanTA introduces a novel mechanism to construct the pangenome progressively without rebuilding the accumulated collection from scratch. The progressive mode is shown to consume orders of magnitude less computational resources than existing solutions in managing growing datasets. The software is open source and is publicly available at https://github.com/amromics/panta and at 10.6084/m9.figshare.23724705

AMRomics: a scalable workflow to analyze large microbial genome collections

Whole genome analysis for microbial genomics is critical to studying and monitoring antimicrobial resistance strains. The exponential growth of microbial sequencing data necessitates a fast and scalable computational pipeline to generate the desired outputs in a timely and cost-effective manner. Recent methods have been implemented to integrate individual genomes into large collections of specific bacterial populations and are widely employed for systematic genomic surveillance. However, they do not scale well when the population expands and turnaround time remains the main issue for this type of analysis. Here, we introduce AMRomics, an optimized microbial genomics pipeline that can work efficiently with big datasets. We use different bacterial data collections to compare AMRomics against competitive tools and show that our pipeline can generate similar results of interest but with better performance. The software is open source and is publicly available at https://github.com/amromics/amromics under an MIT license

Integrating of PLS-SEM and the Importance Performance Matrix Analysis to Exploring the Role of Provincial Competitiveness Index to Growth

Provincial competitiveness was one of the engines of growth under the institutional theory. The Vietnam Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) has been surveyed since 2005 to reflect the perceptions of local business environments, categorized into 10 sub-indices with 128 indicators. The current PCI has challenged the governance due to its broad construction. This study aimed to reconstruct the indicators in each PCI sub-index to be more specific for improving governance. The paper further explored the importance-of performance of both the PCI sub-index and its indicators to the provincial growth in Vietnam. Secondary data of 63 provinces during the period of 2017-2020 have been used with the employment of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM), and the extension of the importance-performance matrix analysis (IPMA). Our results showed the reliability and validity of 21 measured items under 5 PCI sub-indices. The findings confirmed the positive impact of the PCI index on growth. Moreover, the highest importance but lowest performance of SLO (law and order) was implied. SLA (land access and security of tenure), on the contrary, peaked the performance with the lowest importance. The importance of STC (time costs and regulatory compliance), SPA (proactive provincial leadership), and SLP (labor quality) has been ranked with the former sharing the highest priority while similar performance of the four sub-indices has been found. The results implied that the provincial authorities should prioritize their efforts to improve governance based on the importance-performance analysis of PCI sub-indices. Moreover, the importance and performance of each sub-index indicator reflected the great governance improvement with an average performance of 50%. However, special attention should be focused on vocational training, effective state officials, and legal support to the business due to their high importance but low performance

Kinetics of cardiovascular and inflammatory biomarkers in paediatric dengue shock syndrome

Glycocalyx disruption and hyperinflammatory responses are implicated in the pathogenesis of dengue-associated vascular leak, however little is known about their association with clinical outcomes of patients with dengue shock syndrome (DSS). We investigated the association of vascular and inflammatory biomarkers with clinical outcomes and their correlations with clinical markers of vascular leakage. We performed a prospective cohort study in Viet Nam. Children ≥5 years of age with a clinical diagnosis of DSS were enrolled into this study. Blood samples were taken daily during ICU stay and 7–10 days after hospital discharge for measurements of plasma levels of Syndecan-1, Hyaluronan, Suppression of tumourigenicity 2 (ST-2), Ferritin, N-terminal pro Brain Natriuretic Peptide (NT-proBNP), and Atrial Natriuretic Peptide (ANP). The primary outcome was recurrent shock. Ninety DSS patients were enrolled. Recurrent shock occurred in 16 patients. All biomarkers, except NT-proBNP, were elevated at presentation with shock. There were no differences between compensated and decompensated DSS patients. Glycocalyx markers were positively correlated with inflammatory biomarkers, haematocrit, percentage haemoconcentration, and negatively correlated with stroke volume index. While Syndecan-1, Hyaluronan, Ferritin, and ST-2 improved with time, ANP continued to be raised at follow-up. Enrolment Syndecan-1 levels were observed to be associated with developing recurrent shock although the association did not reach the statistical significance at the P < 0.01 (OR = 1.82, 95% CI 1.07–3.35, P = 0.038). Cardiovascular and inflammatory biomarkers are elevated in DSS, correlate with clinical vascular leakage parameters and follow different kinetics over time. Syndecan-1 may have potential utility in risk stratifying DSS patients in ICU