ab-plane tilt angles in REBCO conductors

Critical current (Ic) of REBCO tapes is strongly aniso-tropic with respect to the orientation of the magnetic field. Usually, Ic is at maximum when the ab-plane of the REBCO crystal is parallel to the magnetic field. In commercial REBCO tapes, it is commonly assumed that the ab-plane is coincide with the tape plane. While in fact, the ab-plane is near but slightly tilted from the tape plane in the transverse direction. To accurately measure Ic as a function of the field angle {\theta} , which is defined as the angle between ab-plane and the magnetic field direction, and to design and fabricate REBCO mag-net coils based on the measured Ic(angle), it is important to measure the tilt angle. In this work, we used x-ray diffraction (XRD) to measure the tilt angles at room temperature for a large number of REBCO conductors made by SuperPower Inc. Transmission electron mi-croscopy (TEM) was also used to investigate the origin of this tilt. The measured data are presented, and the measurement uncer-tainty is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure

Cross-modal Hashing with Semantic Deep Embedding

Cross-modal hashing has demonstrated advantages on fast retrieval tasks. It improves the quality of hash coding by exploiting semantic correlation across different modalities. In supervised cross-modal hashing, the learning of hash function replies on the quality of extracted features, for which deep learning models have been adopted to replace the traditional models based on handcraft features. All deep methods, however, have not sufficiently explored semantic correlation of modalities for the hashing process. In this paper, we introduce a novel end-to-end deep cross-modal hashing framework which integrates feature and hash-code learning into the same network. We take both between and within modalities data correlation into consideration, and propose a novel network structure and a loss function with dual semantic supervision for hash learning. This method ensures that the generated binary codes keep the semantic relationship of the original data points. Cross-modal retrieval experiments on commonly used benchmark datasets show that our method yields substantial performance improvement over several state-of-the-art hashing methods

Bmp signaling represses Vegfa to promote outflow tract cushion development

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is a devastating anomaly that affects ∼1% of live births. Defects of the outflow tract (OFT) make up a large percentage of human CHD. We investigated Bmp signaling in mouse OFT development by conditionally deleting both Bmp4 and Bmp7 in the second heart field (SHF). SHF Bmp4/7 deficiency resulted in defective epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) and reduced cardiac neural crest ingress, with resultant persistent truncus arteriosus. Using a candidate gene approach, we found that Vegfa was upregulated in the Bmp4/7 mutant hearts. To determine if Vegfa is a downstream Bmp effector during EMT, we examined whether Vegfa is transcriptionally regulated by the Bmp receptor-regulated Smad. Our findings indicate that Smad directly binds to Vegfa chromatin and represses Vegfa transcriptional activity. We also found that Vegfa is a direct target for the miR-17-92 cluster, which is also regulated by Bmp signaling in the SHF. Deletion of miR-17-92 reveals similar phenotypes to Bmp4/7 SHF deletion. To directly address the function of Vegfa repression in Bmp-mediated EMT, we performed ex vivo explant cultures from Bmp4/7 and miR-17-92 mutant hearts. EMT was defective in explants from the Bmp4/7 double conditional knockout (dCKO; Mef2c-Cre;Bmp4/7(f/f)) and miR-17-92 null. By antagonizing Vegfa activity in explants, EMT was rescued in Bmp4/7 dCKO and miR-17-92 null culture. Moreover, overexpression of miR-17-92 partially suppressed the EMT defect in Bmp4/7 mutant embryos. Our study reveals that Vegfa levels in the OFT are tightly controlled by Smad- and microRNA-dependent pathways to modulate OFT development