Lunar drill footplate and casing

To prevent hole collapse during lunar drilling operations, a casing has been devised of a graphite reinforced polyimide composite which will be able to withstand the lunar environment. Additionally, this casing will be inserted into the ground in segments two meters long which will penetrate the regolith simultaneously with the auger. The vertical action of the mobile platform will provide a downward force to the casing string through a special adaptor, giving the casing the needed impetus to sink the anticipated depth of ten meters. Casing segments will be connected with a simple snap arrangement. Excess casing will be cut off by a cylindrical cutting tool which will also transport the excess casing away from the hole. A footplate will be incorporated to grasp the auger rod string during rod segment additions or removals. The footplate grasping mechanism will consist of a set of vice-like arms, one end of each bearing threaded to a common power screw. The power screw will be threaded such that one end's thread pitch opposes that of the other end. The weight of the auger and rod string will be transmitted through the arms to the power screw and absorbed by a set of three ball bearing assemblies. The power screw will be driven by a one-half horsepower brushless motor actuated by radio control. The footplate will rest on four short legs and be anchored with pins that are an integral part of each leg

URLNet: Learning a URL representation with deep learning for malicious URL detection

Malicious URLs host unsolicited content and are used to perpetrate cybercrimes. It is imperative to detect them in a timely manner. Traditionally, this is done through the usage of blacklists, which cannot be exhaustive, and cannot detect newly generated malicious URLs. To address this, recent years have witnessed several efforts to perform Malicious URL Detection using Machine Learning. The most popular and scalable approaches use lexical properties of the URL string by extracting Bag-of-words like features, followed by applying machine learning models such as SVMs. There are also other features designed by experts to improve the prediction performance of the model. These approaches suffer from several limitations: (i) Inability to effectively capture semantic meaning and sequential patterns in URL strings; (ii) Requiring substantial manual feature engineering; and (iii) Inability to handle unseen features and generalize to test data. To address these challenges, we propose URLNet, an end-to-end deep learning framework to learn a nonlinear URL embedding for Malicious URL Detection directly from the URL. Specifically, we apply Convolutional Neural Networks to both characters and words of the URL String to learn the URL embedding in a jointly optimized framework. This approach allows the model to capture several types of semantic information, which was not possible by the existing models. We also propose advanced word-embeddings to solve the problem of too many rare words observed in this task. We conduct extensive experiments on a large-scale dataset and show a significant performance gain over existing methods. We also conduct ablation studies to evaluate the performance of various components of URLNet

Historical occurrences of polybrominated diphenyl ethers and polychlorinated biphenyls in Manila Bay, Philippines, and in the upper Gulf of Thailand

Historical trends of the accumulation of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in a typical tropical Asian environment were investigated using radio-dated sediment cores from Manila Bay, the Philippines and from the upper Gulf of Thailand. Vertical profiles indicated earlier usage of PCBs than of PBDEs which coincided with their industrial production. The increasing concentrations of total PBDEs and PCBs toward the surface suggested an increased consumption of PBDEs; and possible leakage of PCBs from old machineries into the aquatic environment in recent years. Current input of PCBs to the catchment of Manila Bay was supported by the analyses of air samples and plastic resin pellets. The vertical profiles of total PBDEs in the cores (i.e., rapidly increasing concentrations corresponding to the mid-1980s until mid-1990s, followed by a decrease until the early 2000s, and increasing again toward the surface) likely corresponded to the rapid economic growth in Asia in the 1990s, the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and the economic recovery since early 2000s. BDE-209 was predominant especially on the surface layers. BDEs 47 and 99 generally decreased toward the surface, reflecting the phase-out of the technical penta-PBDE products and the regulation by the Stockholm Convention in recent years. Increasing ratios of BDE-202/209, 206/209, 207/209 and decreasing % of BDE-209 down the core layers may provide evidence for the anaerobic debromination of BDE-209 in the sediment cores. Inventories in ng/cm2 of total PCBs were higher than total PBDEs (92 vs. 34 and 47 vs. 11 in the Philippines; 47 vs. 33 in Thailand). However, the doubling times indicated faster accumulation of total PBDEs (6–7 years) and BDE-209 (6–7.5 years) than of PCBs (8–11 years). Furthermore, the temporal increase in BDE-209 was comparable to or faster than those reported in other water bodies around the world

Exploring the feasibility of introducing triple artemisinin-based combination therapy in the malaria treatment policy in Vietnam

BACKGROUND: This study investigates the processes regarding changing malaria treatment policies in Vietnam. Moreover, it explores the feasibility of introducing triple artemisinin-based combination therapy (TACT) in Vietnam to support the national malaria control and elimination plan. METHODS: Data were collected via 12 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, combined with a review of policy documents. RESULTS: TACT is considered as a useful backup strategy in case future treatment failures with current artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) would occur. Moreover, TACT is also considered as a promising strategy to prevent the re-establishment of malaria. However, regulatory procedures and implementation timelines for TACT were expected to be lengthy. Therefore, strategies to engage national decision-makers, regulators, and suppliers should be initiated soon, stipulating the benefits of TACT deployment. In Vietnam, a procedure to apply for an import permit without registration that has previously been applied to the introduction of artesunate-pyronaridine was proposed to accelerate the introduction of TACT. Global-level support through the World Health Organization recommendations and prequalification were considered critical for supporting the introduction of TACT in Vietnam. CONCLUSIONS: Appropriate approach strategies and early stakeholder engagement will be needed to accelerate the introduction of TACT in Vietnam

Electrical semiconduction modulated by light in a cobalt and naphthalene diimide metal-organic framework

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as an exciting class of porous materials that can be structurally designed by choosing particular components according to desired applications. Despite the wide interest in and many potential applications of MOFs, such as in gas storage, catalysis, sensing and drug delivery, electrical semiconductivity and its control is still rare. The use and fabrication of electronic devices with MOF-based components has not been widely explored, despite significant progress of these components made in recent years. Here we report the synthesis and properties of a new highly crystalline, electrochemically active, cobalt and naphthalene diimide-based MOF that is an efficient electrical semiconductor and has a broad absorption spectrum, from 300 to 2500 nm. Its semiconductivity was determined by direct voltage bias using a four-point device, and it features a wavelength dependant photoconductive–photoresistive dual behaviour, with a very high responsivity of 2.5 × 105 A W−1

Clinical Description of a Completed Outbreak of SARS in Vietnam, February–May, 2003

We investigated the clinical manifestations and course of all probable severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) patients in the Vietnam outbreak. Probable SARS cases were defined by using the revised World Health Organization criteria. We systematically reviewed medical records and undertook descriptive statistical analyses. All 62 patients were hospitalized. On admission, the most prominent symptoms were malaise (82.3%) and fever (79.0%). Cough, chest pain, and shortness of breath were present in approximately one quarter of the patients; 79.0% had lymphopenia; 40.3% had thrombocytopenia; 19.4% had leukopenia; and 75.8% showed changes on chest radiograph. Fever developed on the first day of illness onset, and both respiratory symptoms and radiographic changes occurred on day 4. On average, maximal radiographic changes were observed on day 10, and fevers subsided by day 13. Symptoms on admission were nonspecific, although fever, malaise, and lymphopenia were common. The complications of SARS included invasive intubation and ventilation (11.3%) and death (9.7%)