Contrasting Ultra-Low Frequency Raman and Infrared Modes in Emerging Metal Halides for Photovoltaics

Lattice dynamics are critical to photovoltaic material performance, governing dynamic disorder, hot-carrier cooling, charge-carrier recombination, and transport. Soft metal-halide perovskites exhibit particularly intriguing dynamics, with Raman spectra exhibiting an unusually broad low-frequency response whose origin is still much debated. Here, we utilize ultra-low frequency Raman and infrared terahertz time-domain spectroscopies to provide a systematic examination of the vibrational response for a wide range of metal-halide semiconductors: FAPbI3, MAPbI x Br3–x , CsPbBr3, PbI2, Cs2AgBiBr6, Cu2AgBiI6, and AgI. We rule out extrinsic defects, octahedral tilting, cation lone pairs, and “liquid-like” Boson peaks as causes of the debated central Raman peak. Instead, we propose that the central Raman response results from an interplay of the significant broadening of Raman-active, low-energy phonon modes that are strongly amplified by a population component from Bose–Einstein statistics toward low frequency. These findings elucidate the complexities of light interactions with low-energy lattice vibrations in soft metal-halide semiconductors emerging for photovoltaic applications

Characterization of New Virulence Factors Involved in the Intracellular Growth and Survival of Burkholderia pseudomallei.

Burkholderia pseudomallei, the causative agent of melioidosis, has complex and poorly understood extracellular and intracellular lifestyles. We used transposon-directed insertion site sequencing (TraDIS) to retrospectively analyze a transposon library that had previously been screened through a BALB/c mouse model to identify genes important for growth and survival in vivo. This allowed us to identify the insertion sites and phenotypes of negatively selected mutants that were previously overlooked due to technical constraints. All 23 unique genes identified in the original screen were confirmed by TraDIS, and an additional 105 mutants with various degrees of attenuation in vivo were identified. Five of the newly identified genes were chosen for further characterization, and clean, unmarked bpsl2248, tex, rpiR, bpsl1728, and bpss1528 deletion mutants were constructed from the wild-type strain K96243. Each of these mutants was tested in vitro and in vivo to confirm their attenuated phenotypes and investigate the nature of the attenuation. Our results confirm that we have identified new genes important to in vivo virulence with roles in different stages of B. pseudomallei pathogenesis, including extracellular and intracellular survival. Of particular interest, deletion of the transcription accessory protein Tex was shown to be highly attenuating, and the tex mutant was capable of providing protective immunity against challenge with wild-type B. pseudomallei, suggesting that the genes identified in our TraDIS screen have the potential to be investigated as live vaccine candidates

Design and baseline characteristics of the finerenone in reducing cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in diabetic kidney disease trial

Background: Among people with diabetes, those with kidney disease have exceptionally high rates of cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality and progression of their underlying kidney disease. Finerenone is a novel, nonsteroidal, selective mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist that has shown to reduce albuminuria in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) while revealing only a low risk of hyperkalemia. However, the effect of finerenone on CV and renal outcomes has not yet been investigated in long-term trials. Patients and Methods: The Finerenone in Reducing CV Mortality and Morbidity in Diabetic Kidney Disease (FIGARO-DKD) trial aims to assess the efficacy and safety of finerenone compared to placebo at reducing clinically important CV and renal outcomes in T2D patients with CKD. FIGARO-DKD is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, event-driven trial running in 47 countries with an expected duration of approximately 6 years. FIGARO-DKD randomized 7,437 patients with an estimated glomerular filtration rate >= 25 mL/min/1.73 m(2) and albuminuria (urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio >= 30 to <= 5,000 mg/g). The study has at least 90% power to detect a 20% reduction in the risk of the primary outcome (overall two-sided significance level alpha = 0.05), the composite of time to first occurrence of CV death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or hospitalization for heart failure. Conclusions: FIGARO-DKD will determine whether an optimally treated cohort of T2D patients with CKD at high risk of CV and renal events will experience cardiorenal benefits with the addition of finerenone to their treatment regimen. Trial Registration: EudraCT number: 2015-000950-39; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02545049

Corporate focus, aftermarket returns & earnings management : a study on IPO firms.

In this paper, we examine the relation between the degree of business complexity and the level of earnings management. We study firms that have issued initial public offerings from 1993 to 1998. Our analysis indicates that greater corporate diversification is associated with an increased level of discretionary accruals

Profiling customers against characteristics of corporate responses to complaints.

This research attempts to draw a link between these two areas of study and find relationships between a number of variables and some aspects of corporate responses. Specifically, it attempts to find out what consumers look for in corporate responses via profiling

Arbitrary Factor Image Interpolation using Geodesic Distance Weighted 2D Autoregressive Modeling

Least square regression has been widely used in image interpolation. Some existing regression-based interpolation methods used ordinary least squares (OLS) to formulate cost functions. These methods usually have difficulties at object boundaries because OLS is sensitive to outliers. Weighted least squares (WLS) is then adopted to solve the outlier problem. Some weighting schemes have been proposed in the literature. In this paper we propose to use geodesic distance weighting in that geodesic distance can simultaneously measure both the spatial distance and color difference. Another contribution of this paper is that we propose an optimization scheme that can handle arbitrary factor interpolation. The idea is to separate the problem into two parts, an adaptive pixel correlation model and a convolution based image degradation model. Geodesic distance weighted 2D autoregressive model is used to model the pixel correlation which preserves local geometry. The convolution based image degradation model provides the flexibility to handle arbitrary interpolation factor. The entire problem is formulated as a WLS problem constrained by a linear equality. © 2013 IEEE

Improved Combined Inter-intra Prediction Using Spatial-variant Weighted Coefficient

In current video coding standard H.264/AVC, pixel prediction is applied to reduce spatial and temporal redundancy existed in video signal. Previously, it has been shown that better coding performance is achieved compared to H.264/AVC by combining inter and intra prediction to generate a more accurate prediction. In this paper, an improved combined prediction scheme is presented which allows the video codec to tune weighted coefficient for inter prediction and intra prediction adaptively to local signal characteristics. In order to avoid additional overhead signalling, statistics of already coded neighboring block is analyzed to predict the weighted coefficients of the combined prediction for current macroblock. Compared to H.264/AVC, coding performance is increased by up to 1.9%. And compared to the latest combined prediction method using spatial-invariant weighted coefficients, simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves additional coding gain of up to 0.66%. © 2011 IEEE

Edge-based predictive scanning scheme of DCT coefficients for inter-frame video coding

Scanning of quantized transform coefficients is a very significant procedure in video coding. In H.264, it affects the coding efficiency of the following CABAC or CAVLC entropy coder directly. In this paper, we propose a novel edge-based predictive scanning scheme to improve the coding efficiency for inter-frame coding. This scheme includes three scanning pattern candidates. Besides zigzag pattern as defined in H.264, two alternative patterns are obtained by on-line training on frame level. Specifically, reference block is utilized to predict edge information in current 88 block. Based on predictive edge information, a suitable scanning pattern will be selected to scan the quantized coefficients of current 88 block. Since a similar prediction process can be done in the decoder side as well, no overhead is needed to be transmitted in the bit-stream. Experimental results show that the proposed edge-based predictive scanning scheme yields an average of 0.42% BD-bitrate reduction over the H.264 high profile. © 2011 IEEE

A low power and standard-compliant RDO motion estimation hardware architecture for VBSME

Motion Estimation (ME) is the most computationally intensive part in the whole video compression process. The ME algorithms can be divided into full search ME (FS) and fast ME (FME). The FS is not suitable for high definition (HD) frame size videos because its relevant high computation load and hard to deal with complex motions in limited search range. A lot of FME algorithms have been proposed which can significantly reduce the computation load compared to FS. Though many kinds of hardware implementations of ME have been proposed, almost all of them fail to consider about the motion vector field (MVF) coherence and rate-distortion (RD) cost which have significant impact to the coding efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel hardware-oriented motion estimation algorithm called RD Optimized single-MVP-biased FS (RDOMFS), and corresponding highly data reusable hardware architecture. Simulation results show that the proposed ME algorithm performs better RD performance than conventional FME algorithm. The design is implemented with TSMC 0.13um CMOS technology and costs 103k gates. At a clock frequency of 61 MHz, the architecture achieves real-time 1920 × 1080 RDO-VBSME at 30fps. © 2010 IEEE