Critical Behavior and Duality in Dimensionally Reduced Planar Chern-Simons Superconductors

Tha quantum electrodynamics of particles constrained to move on a plane is not a fully dimensionally reduced theory because the gauge fields through which they interact live in higher dimensions. By constraining the gauge field to the surface of the bulk, we obtain a fully reduced planar Abelian Chern-Simons Higgs model that can describe the vortex dynamics and second-order superconducting-normal phase transitions in planar Chern-Simons superconductors. Dual analyses performed before and after dimensional reduction yield the same Lagrangian for describing the vortex dynamics, indicating the self-consistency of our reduced theory. Compared to ordinary (2+1)-dimensional electrodynamics, we obtain anomalous fermion statistical vortices, consistent with results considering boundary effects. An additional electric charge constraint and different Chern-Simons parameter constraints are also found, which may help define a self-dual conformal field theory. Our renormalization group analysis shows that the quantized critical exponent depends on the Chern-Simons parameter. Quench disorder can bring more stable fixed points with different dynamical critical exponents. If we dimensionally reduce to a curved surface, our theory can also be extended to curved spacetimes, where geometric flow will be introduced and compete with vortex flow.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

Recruitment of cyanobacteria from the sediments in the eutrophic Shanzi Reservoir

This study investigated the impact of four environmental factors on the recruitment of cyanobacteria from bottom sediments in the eutrophic Shanzi Reservoir. Temperature and light were identified as the key determinants for the recruitment of Microcystis and Oscillatoria. Cyanobacteria became dominant at higher temperature (20°C) and light intensity (2000 lx) and Microcystis and Oscillatoria were the major species. Detailed recruitment simulation undertaken with the respective gradients of temperature and light suggested that both Microcystis and Oscillatoria are temperature sensitive and that their critical temperature point was 10°C. However, distinct light impacts were observed only on Microcystis. The recruitment of Oscillatoria was light independent, whereas Microcystis had a positive relationship with light intensity. Physical disturbance promoted Microcystis recruitment and also affected the structure of the recruited cyanobacterial community at the water–sediment interface, based on quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and phylogenetic analysis

Generate, Filter, and Fuse: Query Expansion via Multi-Step Keyword Generation for Zero-Shot Neural Rankers

Query expansion has been proved to be effective in improving recall and precision of first-stage retrievers, and yet its influence on a complicated, state-of-the-art cross-encoder ranker remains under-explored. We first show that directly applying the expansion techniques in the current literature to state-of-the-art neural rankers can result in deteriorated zero-shot performance. To this end, we propose GFF, a pipeline that includes a large language model and a neural ranker, to Generate, Filter, and Fuse query expansions more effectively in order to improve the zero-shot ranking metrics such as nDCG@10. Specifically, GFF first calls an instruction-following language model to generate query-related keywords through a reasoning chain. Leveraging self-consistency and reciprocal rank weighting, GFF further filters and combines the ranking results of each expanded query dynamically. By utilizing this pipeline, we show that GFF can improve the zero-shot nDCG@10 on BEIR and TREC DL 2019/2020. We also analyze different modelling choices in the GFF pipeline and shed light on the future directions in query expansion for zero-shot neural rankers

A novel glue attachment approach for precise anchoring of hydrophilic EGCG to enhance the separation performance and antifouling properties of PVDF membranes

A novel glue attachment approach was proposed to form a durable hydration layer on a hydrophobic PVDF hollow fiber membrane (PVDF HFM) surface to improve its hydrophilicity and antifouling ability during wastewater filtration. The functional glue was synthesized from reclaimed styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) and a hydroxyl group was created with an epoxidation reaction (ESBR). The hydrophilic epigallocatechin-s-gallate (EGCG) was then precisely anchored via hydrogen bonding with multiple phenolic hydroxyl groups in the ESBR without penetrating into the inner matrix of the PVDF to prevent flux decline. The hydrophilicity of the PVDF membrane increased drastically and the water contact angle decreased from 62.7° to 45.1° with only a 25% decline in the pure water flux. Furthermore, due to precise anchoring of the EGCG, the modified EGCG-ESBR/PVDF membrane showed a higher pure water flux (110.6 L m−2h−1) and much higher BSA and oil (kerosene) rejection rates (approximately 94.5% and 99.5%, respectively) compared to membranes directly coated with EGCG (EGCG-PVDF). Moreover, the modified membrane also showed higher water flux recovery after multiple filtration cycles. This promising and efficient hydrophilic modification suggests great potential for application of the eco-friendly material in wastewater treatment.</p

Imprinting and Promoter Usage of Insulin-Like Growth Factor II in Twin Discordant Placenta

Case reports from infant twins suggest that abnormal genomic imprinting may be one of the important causes of twin discordance, but it is unknown whether abnormal genomic imprinting occurs in the placenta. Therefore, we sought to determine the relationship between the imprinting of insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II) in placenta and twin discordance. We analyzed the imprinting and promoter usage of IGF-II in placenta of normal twins (T0 group), weight discordance (T1 group), and phenotype discordance (T2 group). We found the incidence of loss of imprinting (LOI) for IGF-II was higher in the T2 group than that in the T0 and T1 groups, while there was no difference between T0 and T1 groups. The transcripts of promoter 3 were lower in the T2 group than in the T0 and T1 groups, and lower in the twin placenta with LOI than in those with normal imprinting. Our findings indicate that the promoter 3 specific LOI of the IGF-II gene may be closely related with phenotype discordance, not weight discordance

Realization of Colored Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cells with SiO 2

We presented a method to use SiO2/SiNx:H double layer antireflection coatings (DARC) on acid textures to fabricate colored multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) solar cells. Firstly, we modeled the perceived colors and short-circuit current density (Jsc) as a function of SiNx:H thickness for single layer SiNx:H, and as a function of SiO2 thickness for the case of SiO2/SiNx:H (DARC) with fixed SiNx:H (refractive index n=2.1 at 633 nm, and thickness = 80 nm). The simulation results show that it is possible to achieve various colors by adjusting the thickness of SiO2 to avoid significant optical losses. Therefore, we carried out the experiments by using electron beam (e-beam) evaporation to deposit a layer of SiO2 over the standard SiNx:H for 156×156 mm2 mc-Si solar cells which were fabricated by a conventional process. Semisphere reflectivity over 300 nm to 1100 nm and I-V measurements were performed for grey yellow, purple, deep blue, and green cells. The efficiency of colored SiO2/SiNx:H DARC cells is comparable to that of standard SiNx:H light blue cells, which shows the potential of colored cells in industrial applications

Progress on fabrication, modification and applications of titania nanotube Arrays

Titania nanotube arrays as a novel nano-material has unique highly ordered array structure, good mechanical and chemical stability, as well as excellent corrosion resistance. It has been fabricated by electrochemical anodization of pure Ti sheet in electrolytes containing small amounts of fluoric ions. This paper reviews the new research achievements of TiO2 nanotube arrays on the preparation processes, forming mechanism, modification and the applications in the photocatalytic degradation of pollutants, solar cells, gas sensor materials, photolysis water. The existing problems and further prospects in this field are also discussed

Correction: Hong, K. et al. Actinomycetes for Marine Drug Discovery Isolated from Mangrove Soils and Plants in China. Mar. Drugs 2009, 7, 24–44

We found an error in our paper published in Marine Drugs [1]. [...