Direct Observation of Long-Term Durability of Superconductivity in YBa2_2Cu3_3O7_7-Ag2_2O Composites

We report direct observation of long-term durability of superconductivity of several YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_7$-Ag$_2$O composites that were first prepared and studied almost 14 years ago [J. J. Lin {\it et al}., Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. {\bf 29}, 497 (1990)]. Remeasurements performed recently on both resistances and magnetizations indicate a sharp critical transition temperature at 91 K. We also find that such long-term environmental stability of high-temperature superconductivity can only be achieved in YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_7$ with Ag$_2$O addition, but not with pure Ag addition.Comment: to be published in Jpn. J. Appl. Phy

An Exploration of Activities, Reasons, and Barriers of Using Social Media for Food Allergy Management

Managing food allergies can be overwhelming for affected individuals. Social media (SoMe) may serve as a platform for individuals with food allergies to access and share useful information. This study investigates SoMe use among adults with food allergies. Fifty individuals with food allergies answered a series of open-ended questions related to their SoMe use behaviors. The answers were used to develop an online anonymous survey, which was completed by 319 individuals with food allergies. Results indicate that SoMe users mainly use SoMe to gather updated information about food allergies and hear somebody else’s experiences and advices about food allergies. Lack of privacy, concerns about reliability of the information, and lack of efficiency were barriers to the use of SoMe. Those who were younger, had an allergic reaction in restaurants in the past, and who were newly diagnosed with food allergy were more likely to engage in SoMe use for food allergy related purposes. SoMe administrators may seek strategies to remove barriers and share information from credible resources to benefit those in need of such information

Physical Layer Security in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks Under A Hybrid Full-/Half-Duplex Receiver Deployment Strategy

This paper studies physical layer security in a wireless ad hoc network with numerous legitimate transmitter-receiver pairs and eavesdroppers. A hybrid full-/half-duplex receiver deployment strategy is proposed to secure legitimate transmissions, by letting a fraction of legitimate receivers work in the full-duplex (FD) mode sending jamming signals to confuse eavesdroppers upon their information receptions, and letting the other receivers work in the half-duplex mode just receiving their desired signals. The objective of this paper is to choose properly the fraction of FD receivers for achieving the optimal network security performance. Both accurate expressions and tractable approximations for the connection outage probability and the secrecy outage probability of an arbitrary legitimate link are derived, based on which the area secure link number, network-wide secrecy throughput and network-wide secrecy energy efficiency are optimized respectively. Various insights into the optimal fraction are further developed and its closed-form expressions are also derived under perfect self-interference cancellation or in a dense network. It is concluded that the fraction of FD receivers triggers a non-trivial trade-off between reliability and secrecy, and the proposed strategy can significantly enhance the network security performance.Comment: Journal paper, double-column 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted by IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 201

Effect of Ceramic Dust as Partial Replacement of Cement on Lightweight Foamed Concrete

Disposal of waste into the landfill causes a severe impact on the environment. One of the waste products is ceramic waste. Ceramic waste has some excellent properties in its durability, hardness, and highly resistant to biological, chemical, and physical degradation forces. These excellent properties of the ceramic waste may make it suitable to be used in concrete. This study investigates the effect on the compressive strength of lightweight foamed concrete with different percentage of ceramic dust replacement level towards the cement and three different levels of water-cement ratio. 0%, 5%, 15%, and 25% of replacement level with 0.52, 0.56, and 0.60 water-cement ratios respectively for each replacement level was used as the parameter to investigate the fresh properties, and strength performance of lightweight foamed concrete. The stability and consistency of every mix are studied as well. From this study, it was observed that the incorporation of ceramic waste dust partially replaced the cement did not affect on the fresh properties of the foamed concrete. However, the compressive strength of foamed concrete affected by ceramic waste dust partially replaced the cement

Differentiation of Foot-and-Mouth Disease-Infected pigs from Vaccinated Pigs Using Antibody-Detecting Sandwich ELISA

The presence of serum antibodies for nonstructural proteins of the foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) can differentiate FMDV-infected animals from vaccinated animals. In this study, a sandwich ELISA was developed for rapid detection of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) antibodies; it was based on an Escherichia coli-expressed, highly conserved region of the 3ABC nonstructural protein of the FMDV O/TW/99 strain and a monoclonal antibody derived from the expressed protein. The diagnostic sensitivity of the assay was 98.4%, and the diagnostic specificity was 100% for naïve and vaccinated pigs; the detection ability of the assay was comparable those of the PrioCHECK and UBI kits. There was 97.5, 93.4 and 66.6% agreement between the results obtained from our ELISA and those obtained from the PrioCHECK, UBI and CHEKIT kits, respectively. The kappa statistics were 0.95, 0.87 and 0.37, respectively. Moreover, antibodies for nonstructural proteins of the serotypes A, C, Asia 1, SAT 1, SAT 2 and SAT 3 were also detected in bovine sera. Furthermore, the absence of cross-reactions generated by different antibody titers against the swine vesicular disease virus and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) was also highlighted in this assay's specificit