A Digital Twin City Model for Age-Friendly Communities: Capturing Environmental Distress from Multimodal Sensory Data

As the worldwide population is aging, the demands of aging-in-place are also increasing and require smarter and more connected cities to keep mobility independence of older adults. However, today’s aging built environment often poses great environmental demands to older adults’ mobility and causes their distresses. To better understand and help mitigating older adults’ distress in their daily trips, this paper proposes constructing the digital twin city (DTC) model that integrates multimodal data (i.e., physiological sensing, visual sensing) on environmental demands in urban communities, so that such environmental demands can be considered in mobility planning of older adults. Specifically, this paper examines how data acquired from various modalities (i.e., electrodermal activity, gait patterns, visual sensing) can portray environmental demands associated with older adults’ mobility. In addition, it discusses the challenges and opportunities of multimodal data fusion in capturing environmental distresses in urban communities

New Exact Solutions to the KdV-Burgers-Kuramoto Equation with the Exp-Function Method

Based on the characteristics of the truncated Painlevé expansion method and the Exp-function method, new generalized solitary wave solutions are constructed for the KdV-Burgers-Kuramoto equation, which cannot be directly constructed from the Exp-function method. This work highlights the power of the Exp-function method in providing generalized solitary wave solutions of different physical structures

A protein domain interaction interface database: InterPare.

BACKGROUND: Most proteins function by interacting with other molecules. Their interaction interfaces are highly conserved throughout evolution to avoid undesirable interactions that lead to fatal disorders in cells. Rational drug discovery includes computational methods to identify the interaction sites of lead compounds to the target molecules. Identifying and classifying protein interaction interfaces on a large scale can help researchers discover drug targets more efficiently. DESCRIPTION: We introduce a large-scale protein domain interaction interface database called InterPare http://interpare.net. It contains both inter-chain (between chains) interfaces and intra-chain (within chain) interfaces. InterPare uses three methods to detect interfaces: 1) the geometric distance method for checking the distance between atoms that belong to different domains, 2) Accessible Surface Area (ASA), a method for detecting the buried region of a protein that is detached from a solvent when forming multimers or complexes, and 3) the Voronoi diagram, a computational geometry method that uses a mathematical definition of interface regions. InterPare includes visualization tools to display protein interior, surface, and interaction interfaces. It also provides statistics such as the amino acid propensities of queried protein according to its interior, surface, and interface region. The atom coordinates that belong to interface, surface, and interior regions can be downloaded from the website. CONCLUSION: InterPare is an open and public database server for protein interaction interface information. It contains the large-scale interface data for proteins whose 3D-structures are known. As of November 2004, there were 10,583 (Geometric distance), 10,431 (ASA), and 11,010 (Voronoi diagram) entries in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) containing interfaces, according to the above three methods. In the case of the geometric distance method, there are 31,620 inter-chain domain-domain interaction interfaces and 12,758 intra-chain domain-domain interfaces

On Jarratt's family of optimal fourth-order iterative methods and their dynamics

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0218348X14500133P. Jarratt has developed a family of fourth-order optimal methods. He suggested two members of the family. The dynamics of one of those was discussed previously. Here we show that the family can be written using a weight function and analyze all members of the family to find the best performer.Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2013R1A1A2005012)Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2013R1A1A2005012

New Exact Solutions to the KdV-Burgers-Kuramoto Equation with the Exp-Function Method

Based on the characteristics of the truncated Painlevé expansion method and the Exp-function method, new generalized solitary wave solutions are constructed for the KdV-Burgers-Kuramoto equation, which cannot be directly constructed from the Exp-function method. This work highlights the power of the Exp-function method in providing generalized solitary wave solutions of different physical structures

Catalytic Dehydration of Ethanol over WOx Nanoparticles Supported on MFI (Mobile Five) Zeolite Nanosheets

Ethylene can be synthesized in a renewable manner by dehydrating bioethanol over supported metal oxide nanoparticle catalysts. Here, a series of nanoparticulate tungsten oxides supported on MFI (Mobil five) zeolite nanosheets was prepared at different W loadings (1 to 6 mol %) using the incipient wetness method and investigated with respect to the ability to catalyze the dehydration of ethanol. The resulting samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, N2 isotherms, X-ray absorption fine structures, and by the temperature-programmed desorption of NH3. The results obtained showed that WOx nanoparticles were homogeneously distributed over the entire void space of nanosheet samples up to a loading of 2 mol %, after which large WOx nanoparticles with needle-like morphology were formed on the surface of the zeolite nanosheet beyond 2mol%. The number of acid sites increased with WOx loading and, as a result, EtOH conversion progressively increased with WOx loading up to 6 mol %. At reaction temperatures of >390 °C, homogeneously distributed WOx nanoparticles showed slightly higher ethylene selectivity than nano-needle structured WOx. However, nano-needle structured WOx exhibited greater catalytic stability. In terms of ethylene yield over 8 h, needle-like WOx nanoparticles were found to be more suitable for the acid-catalyzed dehydration of ethanol than small-sized WOx nanoparticles

Bulk crystal seeding on the generation of mesopores by organosilane surfactants in zeolite synthesis

Zeolites of MOR, CHA, and FAU-X topologies were conventionally synthesized using Na+ or an organic structure-directing agent, except that organosilane surfactants were added as a mesopore-generating agent. The organosilanes were represented by the structural formula (CH3O)(3)Si-C3H6-N+(CH3)(2)CnH2n+1, where n was varied from 12 to 16 and 18. Each zeolite synthesis was seeded with a small amount of bulk zeolites of the same structure type. The synthesis result indicated that the bulk zeolite seeds disappeared completely from the zeolite products, indicating their disintegration into tiny fragments that were undetectable by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. Nevertheless, the zeolite seeding caused a dramatic decrease in synthesis time. More importantly, crystal seeding, in comparison to unseeded synthesis, was highly effective in extending the organosilane-directed mesopore-generating strategy to a wide range of mesoporous and zeolite structures.117191sciescopu

MFI zeolite nanosponges possessing uniform mesopores generated by bulk crystal seeding in the hierarchical surfactant-directed synthesis

The synthesis of a mesoporous material with uniform mesopore diameters and crystalline MFI zeolite walls has been achieved, simply by seeding the multiammonium surfactant-directed synthesis with bulk zeolite crystals. The bulk seeds disappeared in the final product. As a result of seeding, the mesoporous zeolites could be generated rapidly even at high Al content. © the Partner Organisations 2014.133361sciescopu