Shuttle-like supramolecular nanostructures formed by self-assembly of a porphyrin via an oil/water system

In this paper, in terms of the concentration of an aqueous solution of a surfactant, we investigate the self-assembly behavior of a porphyrin, 5, 10, 15, 20-tetra(4-pyridyl)-21H, 23H-porphine [H2TPyP], by using an oil/water system as the medium. We find that when a chloroform solution of H2TPyP is dropwise added into an aqueous solution of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide [CTAB] with a lower concentration, a large amount of irregular nanoarchitectures, together with a small amount of well-defined shuttle-like nanostructures, hollow nanospheres, and nanotubes, could be produced. While a moderate amount of shuttle-like nanostructures accompanied by a few irregular nanoarchitectures, solid nanospheres, and nanorods are produced when a CTAB aqueous solution in moderate concentration is employed, in contrast, a great quantity of shuttle-like nanostructures together with a negligible amount of solid nanospheres, nanofibers, and irregular nanostructures are manufactured when a high-concentration CTAB aqueous solution is involved. An explanation on the basis of the molecular geometry of H2TPyP and in terms of the intermolecular π-π interactions between H2TPyP units, and hydrophobic interactions between CTAB and H2TPyP has been proposed. The investigation gives deep insights into the self-assembly behavior of porphyrins in an oil/water system and provides important clues concerning the design of appropriate porphyrins when related subjects are addressed. Our investigation suggests that an oil/aqueous system might be an efficient medium for producing unique organic-based nanostructures

The role of autistic traits in the perception of emotion from faces and voices: a behavioural and fMRI investigation

This thesis combined behavioural and fMRI approaches in the study of the role of autistic traits in the perception of emotion from faces and voices, addressing research questions concerning: behavioural recognition of a full range of six basic emotions across multiple domains (face, voice, and face-voice); neural correlates during the processing of a wide range of emotional expressions from the face, the voice and the combination of both; neural circuity in responding to an incongruence effect (incongruence vs. congruence). The behavioural study investigated the effects of autistic traits as quantified by the Autism- Spectrum Quotient (AQ) on emotional processing in forms of unimodal (faces, voices) and crossmodal (emotionally congruent face-voice expressions) presentations. In addition, by taking into account the degree of anxiety, the role of co-morbid anxiety on emotion recognition in autistic traits was also explored. Compared to an age and gender-matched group of individuals with low levels of autistic traits (LAQ), a trend of no general deficit was found in individuals with high levels of autistic traits (HAQ) in recognizing emotions presented in faces and voice, regardless of their co-morbid anxiety. However, co-morbid anxiety did moderate the relationship between autistic traits and the recognition of emotions (e.g., fear, surprise, and anger), and this effect tended to be different for the two groups. Specifically, with greater anxiety, individuals with HAQ were found to show less probility of correct response in recognizing the emotion of fear. In contrast, individuals with LAQ showed greater probability of correct response in recognizing fear expressions. For response time, anxiety symptoms tended to be significantly associated with greater response latency in the HAQ group but less response latency in the LAQ group in the recognition of emotional expressions, negative emotions in particular (e.g., anger, fear, and sadness); and this effect of anxiety was not restricted to specific modalities. Despite the absence of finding a general emotion recognition deficit in individuals with considerable autistic traits compared to those with low levels of autistic traits, it did not necessarily mean that these two groups shared same neural network when processing emotions. Therefore, it was useful to explore the neural correlates engaged in processing of emotional expressions in individuals with high levels of autistic traits. Results of this investigation tended to suggest a hypo activation of brain areas dedicated to multimodal integration, particularly for displays showing happiness and disgust. However, both the HAQ group and LAQ group showed similar patterns of brain response (mainly in temporal regions) in response to face-voice combination. In response to emotional stimuli in single modality, the HAQ group activated a number of frontal and temporal regions (e.g., STG, MFG, IFG); these differences may suggested a more effortful and less automatic processing in individual with HAQ. In everyday life, emotional information is often conveyed by both the face and voice. Consequently, concurrently presented information by one source can alter the way that information from the other source is perceived and leads to emotional incongruence if information from the two sources was incongruent. Using fMRI, the present work also examined the neural circuity involved in responding to an incongruence effect (incongruence vs. congruence) from face-voice pairs in a group of individuals with considerable autistic traits. In addition, the differences in brain responses for emotional incongruity between explicit instructions to attend to facial expression and explicit instructions to attend to tone of voice in autistic traits was also explored. It was found that there was no significant incongruence effect between groups, given that individuals with a high level of autistic traits are able to recruit more normative neural networks for processing incongruence as individuals with a low level of autistic traits, regardless of instructions. Though no between group differences, individuals with HAQ showed negative activation in regions involved in the default- mode network. However, taken into account changes of instructions, a stronger incongruence effect was more likely to be occurred in the voice-attend condition for individuals with HAQ while in the face-attend condition for individuals with LAQ

Radial free forearm flap versus pectoralis major pedicled flap for reconstruction in patients with tongue cancer : assessment of quality of life

This study investigated the quality of life of Chinese patients with tongue cancer who had undergone immediate flap reconstruction surgery. In addition, we compared 2 groups of patients: those who had received radial forearm free flap (RFFF) surgery and others who had received pectoralis major myocutaneous flap (PMMF) surgery. Patients who received RFFF or PMMF reconstruction after primary tongue cancer treated with total and subtotal tongue resection were eligible for the current study. The patients? demographic data, medical history, and quality of life scores (14-item Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) and the University of Washington Quality of Life (UW-QOL) questionnaires) were collected. A total of 41 of 63 questionnaires were returned (65.08%). There were significant differences between the 2 groups in the gender (p< .05). Patients reconstructed with RFFF performed better in the shoulder domains, in addition to worse appearance domains. Using either RFFF or PMMF for reconstruction of defects after tongue cancer resection significantly influences a patient?s quality of life. Data from this study provide useful information for physicians and patients during their discussion of reconstruction modalities for tongue cancers

Construction of stable Ta3N5/g-C3N4 metal/non-metal nitride hybrids with enhanced visible-light photocatalysis

In this paper, a novel Ta3N5/g-C3N4 metal/non-metal nitride hybrid was successfully synthesized by a facile impregnation method. The photocatalytic activity of Ta3N5/g-C3N4 hybrid nitrides was evaluated by the degradation of organic dye rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light irradiation, and the result indicated that all Ta3N5/g-C3N4 samples exhibited distinctly enhanced photocatalytic activities for the degradation of RhB than pure g-C3N4. The optimal Ta3N5/g-C3N4 composite sample, with Ta3N5 mass ratio of 2%, demonstrated the highest photocatalytic activity, and its degradation rate constant was 2.71 times as high as that of pure g-C3N4. The enhanced photocatalytic activity of this Ta3N5/g-C3N4 metal/metal-free nitride was predominantly attributed to the synergistic effect which increased visible-light absorption and facilitated the efficient separation of photoinduced electrons and holes. The Ta3N5/g-C3N4 hybrid nitride exhibited excellent photostability and reusability. The possible mechanism for improved photocatalytic performance was proposed. Overall, this work may provide a facile way to synthesize the highly efficient metal/metal-free hybrid nitride photocatalysts with promising applications in environmental purification and energy conversion

A Unitary Weights Based One-Iteration Quantum Perceptron Algorithm for Non-Ideal Training Sets

In order to solve the problem of non-ideal training sets (i.e., the less-complete or over-complete sets) and implement one-iteration learning, a novel efficient quantum perceptron algorithm based on unitary weights is proposed, where the singular value decomposition of the total weight matrix from the training set is calculated to make the weight matrix to be unitary. The example validation of quantum gates {H, S, T, CNOT, Toffoli, Fredkin} shows that our algorithm can accurately implement arbitrary quantum gates within one iteration. The performance comparison between our algorithm and other quantum perceptron algorithms demonstrates the advantages of our algorithm in terms of applicability, accuracy, and availability. For further validating the applicability of our algorithm, a quantum composite gate which consists of several basic quantum gates is also illustrated.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure