Burning bright

In the deeps of an old mountain, the forest has long lost its vitality. A brave young boy geared with his sword and a mystery bag, sets out on a journey to solve the mystery about the forest and save this dying world. Burning Bright is a six minutes 3D animation short mixing with hand-drawn flair. The total production time is about one year and three months. The following thesis report describes the technical and artistic process of making the film

Giant Magnons and Spiky Strings on S^3 with B-field

We study solutions for a rotating string on S^3 with a background NS-NS B-field and show the existence of spiky string and giant magnon as two limiting solutions. We make a connection to the sine-Gordon model via the Polyakov worldsheet action and study the effect of B-field. In particular, we find the magnon solution can be mapped to the excitation of a fractional spin chain. We conjecture a B-deformed SYM to be the gauge theory dual to this background.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures, more references adde

Competency Model: A Study on the Cultivation of College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Ability

Objectives: This study was designed to analyze entrepreneurial competency and enhance college students' abilities in innovation and entrepreneurship. Methods: Ten relevant factors were summarized based on the interview records. Relevant data were collected through questionnaires and tested for reliability and validity. The effectiveness of the ten factors on entrepreneurial competency was tested using the regression analysis method. Then, an analytic hierarchy process model of entrepreneurial competency was established to calculate the relevant weights. Findings: The data collected from the survey questionnaire had sufficient reliability and validity. The ten relevant factors were effective in developing entrepreneurial competence. The weight distribution in the analytic hierarchy model indicated that entrepreneurial knowledge was most important, followed by entrepreneurial ability, and intrinsic potential was least significant. Novelty:The novelty of this article lies in not only verifying the effectiveness of relevant factors through regression analysis but also further analyzing the weight of these factors through an analytic hierarchy process. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2023-04-04-011 Full Text: PD

Side-chain Charge Effects and Conductance Determinants in the Pore of ClC-0 Chloride Channels

The charge on the side chain of the internal pore residue lysine 519 (K519) of the Torpedo ClC-0 chloride (Cl−) channel affects channel conductance. Experiments that replace wild-type (WT) lysine with neutral or negatively charged residues or that modify the K519C mutant with various methane thiosulfonate (MTS) reagents show that the conductance of the channel decreases when the charge at position 519 is made more negative. This charge effect on the channel conductance diminishes in the presence of a high intracellular Cl− concentration ([Cl−]i). However, the application of high concentrations of nonpermeant ions, such as glutamate or sulfate (SO42−), does not change the conductance, suggesting that the electrostatic effects created by the charge at position 519 are unlikely due to a surface charge mechanism. Another pore residue, glutamate 127 (E127), plays an even more critical role in controlling channel conductance. This negatively charged residue, based on the structures of the homologous bacterial ClC channels, lies 4–5 Å from K519. Altering the charge of this residue can influence the apparent Cl− affinity as well as the saturated pore conductance in the conductance-Cl− activity curve. Amino acid residues at the selectivity filter also control the pore conductance but mutating these residues mainly affects the maximal pore conductance. These results suggest at least two different conductance determinants in the pore of ClC-0, consistent with the most recent crystal structure of the bacterial ClC channel solved to 2.5 Å, in which multiple Cl−-binding sites were identified in the pore. Thus, we suggest that the occupancy of the internal Cl−-binding site is directly controlled by the charged residues located at the inner pore mouth. On the other hand, the Cl−-binding site at the selectivity filter controls the exit rate of Cl− and therefore determines the maximal channel conductance