Raman Spectroscopy for Monitoring Strain on Graphene and Oxidation Corrosion on Nuclear Claddings

Raman scattering can explore a material’s structure, composition, and condition. In this chapter, we demonstrate the application of Raman scattering to monitor the change in the physical properties and chemical composition of materials. We provide two examples: (1) the Raman peak profile and shift reveal the strain in graphene induced by nanostructure and (2) the appearance and intensity of the Raman peaks indicate the oxidation corrosion on Zircaloy nuclear fuel cladding. The Raman spectroscopy is capable of providing evident and precise signals for the monitoring tasks. Through this research, we propose Raman spectroscopy to be a sensitive, accurate, and nondestructive tool for monitoring material conditions

New definition of legibility index to examine off-axis viewing of text and graphics

IESNA Annual Conference: Light Matters 2007: Integrating Light Into Our Environments. General Lighting Topics. January 28-30, 2007. Phoenix, AZ.Reading text and graphics is a common issue in lighting design and practice. Legibility of text and graphics is often measured using the Legibility Index, conventionally defined as the distance at which material can be read with perfect accuracy (the legibility distance) divided by the character height. The ratio equals to the inverse tangent of the visual angle V. This definition assumes the material to be read is perpendicular to the viewer, which is always not true. Off-axis viewing of text and graphics is common in reality, yet rarely researched. To examine off-axis legibility, this paper has developed a new definition of the Legibility Index, defined as the inverse square root of solid angle ω subtended by the target, based on a hypothesis that the three-dimensional solid angle, rather than the two-dimensional visual angle, captures how people recognize text and graphics. This hypothesis has been verified in light of how retinal images activate cones. When viewed, text or graphics form a retinal image that activates the underlying cones in the center fovea of viewer’s eyes. Legibility is then determined by the spatial distribution of these activated cones. For linear targets, their retinal images have only one dimension. Their activated cones are linearly distributed. Thus, visual angle is sufficient to examine the legibility of linear targets. For common nonlinear targets, their retinal images usually have two significant dimensions (width and height) and activate a two-dimensional collection of cones. Solid angle should be used to examine the legibility of these real viewing targets.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65017/1/102438.pd

MPCFormer: fast, performant and private Transformer inference with MPC

Enabling private inference is crucial for many cloud inference services that are based on Transformer models. However, existing private inference solutions for Transformers can increase the inference latency by more than 60x or significantly compromise the quality of inference results. In this paper, we design the framework MPCFORMER using secure multi-party computation (MPC) and Knowledge Distillation (KD). It can be used in tandem with many specifically designed MPC-friendly approximations and trained Transformer models. MPCFORMER significantly speeds up Transformer model inference in MPC settings while achieving similar ML performance to the input model. We evaluate MPCFORMER with various settings in MPC. On the IMDb dataset, we achieve similar performance to BERTBASE, while being 5.3x faster. On the GLUE benchmark, we achieve 97% performance of BERTBASE with a 2.2x speedup. We show that MPCFORMER remains effective with different trained Transformer weights such as ROBERTABASE and larger models including BERTLarge. In particular, we achieve similar performance to BERTLARGE, while being 5.93x faster on the IMDb dataset

Guest Editorial Special Issue on Advances in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

[EN] With the advances in vehicle and sensor technologies, there is a growing interest in the design and deployment of Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs). A typical UASN employs underwater nodes, surface sinks, autonomous underwater vehicles and low-power gliders to collaboratively perform underwater operating missions. For the ease of deployment as well as the ability in intellectualization information processing, UASNs are envisioned to enable marine applications for oceanographic data collection, pollution monitoring, offshore exploration, disaster prevention, assisted navigation and tactical surveillance. Compared with traditional monitoring technologies, e.g., remote sensing or sonar sweeping, USANs have clear advantages in terms of infrastructureless, real-time, high-precision and low-cost detectionHan, G.; Shu, L.; Rodrigues, JJPC.; Kim, K.; Lloret, J.; Wu, H. (2016). Guest Editorial Special Issue on Advances in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks. IEEE Sensors Journal. 16(11):3994-3994. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2016.2550282S39943994161

A van der Waals antiferromagnetic topological insulator with weak interlayer magnetic coupling.

Magnetic topological insulators (TI) provide an important material platform to explore quantum phenomena such as quantized anomalous Hall effect and Majorana modes, etc. Their successful material realization is thus essential for our fundamental understanding and potential technical revolutions. By realizing a bulk van der Waals material MnBi4Te7 with alternating septuple [MnBi2Te4] and quintuple [Bi2Te3] layers, we show that it is ferromagnetic in plane but antiferromagnetic along the c axis with an out-of-plane saturation field of ~0.22 T at 2 K. Our angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements and first-principles calculations further demonstrate that MnBi4Te7 is a Z2 antiferromagnetic TI with two types of surface states associated with the [MnBi2Te4] or [Bi2Te3] termination, respectively. Additionally, its superlattice nature may make various heterostructures of [MnBi2Te4] and [Bi2Te3] layers possible by exfoliation. Therefore, the low saturation field and the superlattice nature of MnBi4Te7 make it an ideal system to investigate rich emergent phenomena

Diagnostic tool or screening programme? Asymptomatic testing for SARS-CoV-2 needs clear goals and protocols.

Background: Drug-resistant enteric fever is increasingly common in the Indian subcontinent. Correctly determining azithromycin resistance matters where drug-resistant enteric fever is common and oral therapy necessary. Case report: In two patients returning from Pakistan to the UK with cephalosporin-resistant Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, gradient strip testing erroneously indicated azithromycin resistance; the errors were detected by repeat testing and confirmed by whole genome sequencing. Results: Both patients were treated with meropenem and, when revised susceptibility results were known, with azithromycin, allowing a switch to oral therapy. Conclusion: As cephalosporin resistance becomes more common, azithromycin will be key for treating enteric fever and optimizing practice in susceptibility testing will be crucial. Practitioners should be aware of key steps to minimize error in azithromycin susceptibility testing, and should be alert for possible errors when reported azithromycin resistance is discordant with known prevalence of resistance.Mason Medical Research Foundatio

Digital karyotyping reveals probable target genes at 7q21.3 locus in hepatocellular carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a worldwide malignant liver tumor with high incidence in China. Subchromosomal amplifications and deletions accounted for major genomic alterations occurred in HCC. Digital karyotyping was an effective method for analyzing genome-wide chromosomal aberrations at high resolution.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A digital karyotyping library of HCC was constructed and 454 Genome Sequencer FLX System (Roche) was applied in large scale sequencing of the library. Digital Karyotyping Data Viewer software was used to analyze genomic amplifications and deletions. Genomic amplifications of genes detected by digital karyotyping were examined by real-time quantitative PCR. The mRNA expression level of these genes in tumorous and paired nontumorous tissues was also detected by real-time quantitative RT-PCR.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 821,252 genomic tags were obtained from the digital karyotyping library of HCC, with 529,162 tags (64%) mapped to unique loci of human genome. Multiple subchromosomal amplifications and deletions were detected through analyzing the digital karyotyping data, among which the amplification of 7q21.3 drew our special attention. Validation of genes harbored within amplicons at 7q21.3 locus revealed that genomic amplification of SGCE, PEG10, DYNC1I1 and SLC25A13 occurred in 11 (21%), 11 (21%), 11 (21%) and 23 (44%) of the 52 HCC samples respectively. Furthermore, the mRNA expression level of SGCE, PEG10 and DYNC1I1 were significantly up-regulated in tumorous liver tissues compared with corresponding nontumorous counterparts.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results indicated that subchromosomal region of 7q21.3 was amplified in HCC, and SGCE, PEG10 and DYNC1I1 were probable protooncogenes located within the 7q21.3 locus.</p