Quantum-based Mechanical Force Realization in Pico-Newton Range

We propose mechanical force realization based on flux quantization in the pico-Newton range. By controlling the number of flux quantum in a superconducting annulus, a force can be created as integer multiples of a constant step. For a 50 nm-thick Nb annulus with the inner and outer radii of 5 $\mu$m and 10 $\mu$m, respectively, and the field gradient of 10 T/m the force step is estimated to be 184 fN. The stability against thermal fluctuations is also addressed.Comment: 5 pages; 4 figure

GRAM: Fast Fine-tuning of Pre-trained Language Models for Content-based Collaborative Filtering

Content-based collaborative filtering (CCF) provides personalized item recommendations based on both users' interaction history and items' content information. Recently, pre-trained language models (PLM) have been used to extract high-quality item encodings for CCF. However, it is resource-intensive to finetune PLM in an end-to-end (E2E) manner in CCF due to its multi-modal nature: optimization involves redundant content encoding for interactions from users. For this, we propose GRAM (GRadient Accumulation for Multi-modality): (1) Single-step GRAM which aggregates gradients for each item while maintaining theoretical equivalence with E2E, and (2) Multi-step GRAM which further accumulates gradients across multiple training steps, with less than 40\% GPU memory footprint of E2E. We empirically confirm that GRAM achieves a remarkable boost in training efficiency based on five datasets from two task domains of Knowledge Tracing and News Recommendation, where single-step and multi-step GRAM achieve 4x and 45x training speedup on average, respectively.Comment: NAACL 2022 Main Conferenc

Soil-Pile Interaction Analysis using FE-BE Coupling in Frequency Domain

In this study, a numerical method for soil-pile interaction problems in multi-layered half-plane is developed in frequency domain using FE-BE coupling technique. The soil-pile interaction system is divided into two parts, so-called near field and far field. In the near field, beam elements are used for modeling pile and plane-strain finite elements for surrounding soil media. Also, a superstructure is considered as a lumped mass on a pile. In the far field, layered soil media is modeled by boundary element formulation using the dynamic fundamental solution. Then, these two fields are assembled using FE-BE coupling technique. This coupled numerical method automatically satisfies the radiation conditions because the far field boundary element formulation can handle the radiation conditions in a half plane. Additionally, the difference of relative displacement at the interface between soil and pile is considered by applying interface spring elements. In order to verify the proposed method for soil-pile interaction system, the dynamic responses of a pile in a multi-layered half-plane are performed and the numerical results are compared with the measured values from experiments. It is shown that the developed method can be an efficient numerical tool to solve the dynamic response of a pile buried in a multi-layered half plane

Detoxification Combining Fasting with Fluid Therapy for Refractory Cases of Severe Atopic Dermatitis

To introduce and determine the clinical benefits of a detoxification program that combines fasting with fluid therapy for refractory cases of severe atopic dermatitis (AD), we performed a retrospective chart review of inpatients with AD from March 2010 to February 2012 at the Department of Ophthalmology, Otorhinolaryngology and Dermatology of Korean Medicine in the Kyung Hee Medical Center. Patients were treated with the detoxification program, which combined fasting with fluid therapy, and herbal medicine, herbal wet wrap dressings, or acupuncture treatment when clinically necessary. The primary outcome was the SCORAD total index. The secondary outcome was the pruritus visual analogue scale (VAS) score in SCORAD as evaluated by a trained dermatology specialist. Among the 130 inpatients that have done detoxification, 7 patients met the inclusion criteria. The mean total SCORAD scores significantly decreased from to () after the detoxification program. There was also a significant decrease in VAS score for pruritus from to () between admission and discharge. We suggest that fasting with fluid therapy as a complementary and alternative treatment method may provide some benefits for patients with refractory cases of severe atopic dermatitis

CSGM Designer: a platform for designing cross-species intron-spanning genic markers linked with genome information of legumes.

BackgroundGenetic markers are tools that can facilitate molecular breeding, even in species lacking genomic resources. An important class of genetic markers is those based on orthologous genes, because they can guide hypotheses about conserved gene function, a situation that is well documented for a number of agronomic traits. For under-studied species a key bottleneck in gene-based marker development is the need to develop molecular tools (e.g., oligonucleotide primers) that reliably access genes with orthology to the genomes of well-characterized reference species.ResultsHere we report an efficient platform for the design of cross-species gene-derived markers in legumes. The automated platform, named CSGM Designer (URL: http://tgil.donga.ac.kr/CSGMdesigner), facilitates rapid and systematic design of cross-species genic markers. The underlying database is composed of genome data from five legume species whose genomes are substantially characterized. Use of CSGM is enhanced by graphical displays of query results, which we describe as "circular viewer" and "search-within-results" functions. CSGM provides a virtual PCR representation (eHT-PCR) that predicts the specificity of each primer pair simultaneously in multiple genomes. CSGM Designer output was experimentally validated for the amplification of orthologous genes using 16 genotypes representing 12 crop and model legume species, distributed among the galegoid and phaseoloid clades. Successful cross-species amplification was obtained for 85.3% of PCR primer combinations.ConclusionCSGM Designer spans the divide between well-characterized crop and model legume species and their less well-characterized relatives. The outcome is PCR primers that target highly conserved genes for polymorphism discovery, enabling functional inferences and ultimately facilitating trait-associated molecular breeding