The Long-Term Effectiveness of Eco-Driving Training: A Pilot Study

Eco-driving has been proven to have a great benefit in reducing vehicle fuel consumption in many developed countries. However, the potential of ecodriving on energy-saving in China is not very clear. Taking three taxi drivers from Beijing Beiqi Taxi Group Company as examples, the petrol consumption, travel distance and many other factors influencing vehicle fuel use before and after ecodriving training were collected through survey forms. The short-term and long-term effect of eco-driving was compared. The results showed that, taking one month as the statistical cycle, the benefit of eco-driving in saving fuel consumption averaged is 19.04%; while it reduced to 14.41% after four months from taking eco-driving training. Thus, drivers would partially regressed back to less economically driving behaviors and thus resulting in lower fuel savings after sometime. This study laid a foundation to evaluate the benefit of eco-driving in saving energy use

Functionalized MoS2 nanosheet-capped periodic mesoporous organosilicas as a multifunctional platform for synergistic targeted chemo-photothermal therapy

The combination of different therapies into a single platform has attracted increasing attention as a potential synergistic tumor treatment. Herein, the fabrication of a novel folate targeted system for chemo-photothermal therapy by using thioether-bridged periodic mesoporous organosilica nanoparticles (PMOs) as a drug-loading vehicle is described. The novel targeted molecular bovine serum albumin-folic acid-modified MoS2 sheets (MoS2-PEI-BSA-FA) were successfully synthesized and characterized, and then utilized as a capping agent to block PMOs to control the drug release and to investigate their potential in near-infrared photothermal therapy. The resulting PMOs–DOX@MoS2–PEI-BSA-FA complexes had a uniform diameter (196 nm); high DOX loading capacity (185 mg/g PMOs-SH); excellent photothermal transformation ability; and good biocompatibility in physiological conditions. The PMOs–DOX@MoS2–PEI-BSA-FA exhibited pH-dependence and near infrared (NIR) laser irradiation-triggered DOX release. In vitro experimental results confirmed that the material exhibits excellent photothermal transfer ability, outstanding tumor killing efficiency and specificity to target tumor cells via an FA-receptor-mediated endocytosis process. The in vivo experiments further demonstrated that the platform for synergistic chemo-photothermal therapy could significantly inhibit tumor growth, which is superior to any monotherapy. Meanwhile, cytotoxicity assays and histological assessments show that the engineered PMOs@MoS2–PEI-BSA-FA have good biocompatibility, further inspiring potential biomedical applications. Overall, this work describes an excellent drug delivery system for chemo-photothermal synergistic targeted therapy having good drug release properties, which have great potential in cancer therapy

Quadratically convergent multiple roots finding method without derivatives

AbstractIn this paper, an iteration method without derivatives for multiple roots is proposed. This method proved to be quadratically convergent. Its efficiency and accuracy are illustrated by numerical experiments

6-Amino-8-(2-bromo­phen­yl)-1,7,8,8a-tetrahydro-3H-isothio­chromene-5,7,7-tricarbonitrile dimethyl­formamide solvate

In the title compound, C18H13BrN4S·C3H7NO, the thio­pyran ring and the adjacent six-numbered ring adopt distorted boat conformations. The mol­ecules, lying about inversion centers, form hydrogen-bonded dimers involving one of the H atoms on the amino group with the N atom of a cyano group of an adjacent mol­ecule, resulting in a 12-membered ring system [R 2 2(12) ring motif]. The other H atom of the amino group forms an inter­molecular hydrogen bond with the O atom of the dimethyl­formamide (DMF) mol­ecule. Another lone pair of electrons on the same carbonyl O atom of DMF mol­ecule forms a non-classical C—H⋯O inter­molecular hydrogen bond, resulting in a chain of mol­ecules

Prediction of Yield Surface of Single Crystal Copper from Discrete Dislocation Dynamics and Geometric Learning

A yield surface of a material is a set of critical stress conditions beyond which macroscopic plastic deformation begins. For crystalline solids, plastic deformation occurs by the motion of dislocations, which can be captured by discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) simulations. In this paper, we predict the yield surfaces and strain-hardening behaviors using DDD simulations and a geometric manifold learning approach. The yield surfaces in the three-dimensional space of plane stress are constructed for single-crystal copper subjected to uniaxial loading along the $[100]$ and $[110]$ directions, respectively. With increasing plastic deformation under $[100]$ loading, the yield surface expands nearly uniformly in all directions, corresponding to isotropic hardening. In contrast, under $[110]$ loading, latent hardening is observed, where the yield surface remains nearly unchanged in the orientations in the vicinity of the loading direction itself, but expands in other directions, resulting in an asymmetric shape. This difference in hardening behaviors is attributed to the different dislocation multiplication behaviors on various slip systems under the two loading conditions

Orthogonality catastrophe and quantum speed limit for dynamical quantum phase transition

We investigate the orthogonality catastrophe and quantum speed limit in the Creutz model for dynamical quantum phase transitions. We demonstrate that exact zeros of the Loschmidt echo can exist in finite-size systems for specific discrete values. We highlight the role of the zero-energy mode when analyzing quench dynamics near the critical point. We also examine the behavior of the time for the first exact zeros of the Loschmidt echo and the corresponding quantum speed limit time as the system size increases. While the bound is not tight, it can be attributed to the scaling properties of the band gap and energy variance with respect to system size. As such, we establish a relation between the orthogonality catastrophe and quantum speed limit by referencing the full form of the Loschmidt echo. Significantly, we find the possibility of using the quantum speed limit to detect the critical point of a static quantum phase transition, along with a decrease in the amplitude of noise induced quantum speed limit.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Solvothermal synthesis of uniform bismuth nanospheres using poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone) as a reducing agent

Uniform bismuth nanospheres were successfully prepared from bismuth nitrate in the presence of poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone) (PVP) by solvothermal process. The product was characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, selected area electron diffraction, and energy-dispersive X-ray. PVP plays a critical role both as a reducing agent and a capping agent in the formation of bismuth nanospheres. Shape and size of bismuth nanospheres could be tuned by changing the employed PVP/bismuth salt ratio. It was also found the solvent had an effect on the morphologies of bismuth nanomaterials. The possible formation and growth mechanism of bismuth nanospheres were also discussed and proposed to explain the reduction step