Quasi-16-day periodic meridional movement of the equatorial ionization anomaly

Based on the daytime location of the equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA) crest derived from GPS observations at low latitude over China during the 2005–2006 stratospheric sudden warming (SSW), a quasi-16-day periodic meridional movement of EIA crest with the maximum amplitude of about 2 degrees relative to the average location of EIA crest has been revealed. In addition, periodic variations that are in phase with the meridional EIA movement are also revealed in the equatorial electrojet (EEJ) and F2 layer peak height (<i>hm</i>F2) over Chinese ionosonde stations Haikou and Chongqing. The quasi-16-day periodic component in Dst index is weak, and the 16-day periodic component does not exist in F10.7 index. Such large-scale periodic meridional movement of EIA crest is likely related to the globally enhanced stratospheric planetary waves coupled with anomalous stratospheric zonal wind connected with SSW. In addition, such large-scale periodic movement of EIA should be global, and can affect the ionospheric morphology around the low-latitude belt near the EIA region. Further case analysis, simulation and theoretical studies must proceed in order to understand the periodic movements of EIA connected with the different periodic atmospheric variations

Cleaning uncertain data for top-k queries

The information managed in emerging applications, such as sensor networks, location-based services, and data integration, is inherently imprecise. To handle data uncertainty, probabilistic databases have been recently developed. In this paper, we study how to quantify the ambiguity of answers returned by a probabilistic top-k query. We develop efficient algorithms to compute the quality of this query under the possible world semantics. We further address the cleaning of a probabilistic database, in order to improve top-k query quality. Cleaning involves the reduction of ambiguity associated with the database entities. For example, the uncertainty of a temperature value acquired from a sensor can be reduced, or cleaned, by requesting its newest value from the sensor. While this 'cleaning operation' may produce a better query result, it may involve a cost and fail. We investigate the problem of selecting entities to be cleaned under a limited budget. Particularly, we propose an optimal solution and several heuristics. Experiments show that the greedy algorithm is efficient and close to optimal. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

iTag: Incentive-Based Tagging

In social tagging systems, such as Delicious1 and Flickr2, users are allowed to annotate resources (e.g., Web URLs and images) with textual descriptions called tags. Tags have proven to be invaluable building blocks in algorithms for searching, mining and recommending resources. In practice, however, not all resources receive the same attention from users, and as a result, most tags are added to the few highly-popular resources, while most of the resources receive few tags. Crucially, this incomplete tagging on resources can severely affect the effectiveness of all tagging applications. We present iTag, an incentive-based tagging system, which aims at improving tagging quality of resources, by incentivizing taggers under budget constraints. Our system is built upon traditional crowdsourcing systems such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). In our demonstration, we will show how our system allows users to use simple but powerful strategies to significantly improve the tagging quality of resources.published_or_final_versio

Comparison and analysis of flux-switching permanent-magnet double-rotor machine with 4QT used for HEV

This journal issue contains selected papers from the 2014 IEEE International Magnetics (INTERMAG) ConferenceCQ - Motors, generators and actuators VIpublished_or_final_versio

Nanoelectromechanical Resonator Arrays for Ultrafast, Gas-Phase Chromatographic Chemical Analysis

Miniaturized gas chromatography (GC) systems can provide fast, quantitative analysis of chemical vapors in an ultrasmall package. We describe a chemical sensor technology based on resonant nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) mass detectors that provides the speed, sensitivity, specificity, and size required by the microscale GC paradigm. Such NEMS sensors have demonstrated detection of subparts per billion (ppb) concentrations of a phosphonate analyte. By combining two channels of NEMS detection with an ultrafast GC front-end, chromatographic analysis of 13 chemicals was performed within a 5 s time window

Evaluation of ecotoxicity of typical surfactants for leather manufacture by luminescent bacteria

Content: Surfactants are used as auxiliaries in every wet processing process of leather production and discharged into wastewater, which would cause potential ecological risks. In this paper, fresh luminescent bacillus liquids were employed to evaluate the ecological toxicity of six surfactants, including anionic, cationic and non-ionic surfactants, and mixture of two typical ionic and nonionic surfactants after a 15-min exposure period. Non-ionic surfactants AEO and Tween80 showed slight light inhibition ie.10-35% to luminescent bacteria. The toxicity of anionic surfactants with polar sulfonic group was: penetrant T(EC50=406.81mg/L) ＞SDBS(EC50=573.37mg/L). The toxicity of cationic surfactants was: DTAB（EC50=10.68mg/L）＞SKC （EC50=73.96mg/L）. The addition of nonionic surfactants reduced the toxicity of ionic surfactants. 1-1 mixture of SKC and AEO: EC50=80.17mg/L, 1-1 mixture of SDBS and AEO: EC50=624.34mg/L. These results provided ecological parameters for the selection of surfactants in the process of ecological leather production. Take-Away: 1. The toxicity measurement by luminescent bacteria, which is simple and convenient, was used to evaluate the toxicity of surfactants, and the reproducibility was improved in our study. 2. The toxicities of six different surfactants was evaluated by EC50 which provided ecological parameters for the selection of surfactants in the process of ecological leather production

Intelectin contributes to allergen-induced IL-25, IL-33, and TSLP expression and type 2 response in asthma and atopic dermatitis.

The epithelial and epidermal innate cytokines IL-25, IL-33, and thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) have pivotal roles in the initiation of allergic inflammation in asthma and atopic dermatitis (AD). However, the mechanism by which the expression of these innate cytokines is regulated remains unclear. Intelectin (ITLN) is expressed in airway epithelial cells and promotes allergic airway inflammation. We hypothesized that ITLN is required for allergen-induced IL-25, IL-33, and TSLP expression. In two asthma models, Itln knockdown reduced allergen-induced increases in Il-25, Il-33, and Tslp and development of type 2 response, eosinophilic inflammation, mucus overproduction, and airway hyperresponsiveness. Itln knockdown also inhibited house dust mite (HDM)-induced early upregulation of Il-25, Il-33, and Tslp in a model solely inducing airway sensitization. Using human airway epithelial cells, we demonstrated that HDM-induced increases in ITLN led to phosphorylation of epidermal growth factor receptor and extracellular-signal regulated kinase, which were required for induction of IL-25, IL-33, and TSLP expression. In two AD models, Itln knockdown suppressed expression of Il-33, Tslp, and Th2 cytokines and eosinophilic inflammation. In humans, ITLN1 expression was significantly increased in asthmatic airways and in lesional skin of AD. We conclude that ITLN contributes to allergen-induced Il-25, Il-33, and Tslp expression in asthma and AD