Protargol Synthesis: An In-House Protocol

The protargol staining method has proved to be indispensable for revealing the cellular structures of a variety of protozoa, especially the flagellates and ciliates. Protargol provides permanent stains of a variety of cellular structures: nuclei, extrusomes, basal bodies, and microfilamentous constituents of cells. Together with the older silver nitrate methods, protargol impregnations have provided the basis for the detailed descriptions of nearly all ciliates to date. The performance of commercially available preparations has varied widely. Recently, suppliers have stopped stocking the effective forms of protargol resulting in a worldwide shortage. Thus, it has become necessary for protistologists to explore on-site synthesis of this critically important agent. An optimum protocol for synthesis of protargol should be rapid, relatively inexpensive, simple enough to be done by non-chemists, and achievable without specialized equipment. In this article, the authors briefly review the interesting history of protargol and describe a protocol, based on the early studies of neuroanatomists, that yields a protargol producing impregnations of ciliates comparable to those obtained with previously available commercial preparations

A Semantic Invariant Robust Watermark for Large Language Models

Watermark algorithms for large language models (LLMs) have achieved extremely high accuracy in detecting text generated by LLMs. Such algorithms typically involve adding extra watermark logits to the LLM's logits at each generation step. However, prior algorithms face a trade-off between attack robustness and security robustness. This is because the watermark logits for a token are determined by a certain number of preceding tokens; a small number leads to low security robustness, while a large number results in insufficient attack robustness. In this work, we propose a semantic invariant watermarking method for LLMs that provides both attack robustness and security robustness. The watermark logits in our work are determined by the semantics of all preceding tokens. Specifically, we utilize another embedding LLM to generate semantic embeddings for all preceding tokens, and then these semantic embeddings are transformed into the watermark logits through our trained watermark model. Subsequent analyses and experiments demonstrated the attack robustness of our method in semantically invariant settings: synonym substitution and text paraphrasing settings. Finally, we also show that our watermark possesses adequate security robustness. Our code and data are available at https://github.com/THU-BPM/Robust_Watermark.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, 2 table

A comparative study of using two numerical strategies to simulate the biochemical processes in microbially induced calcite precipitation

In this study, we carried out a comparative study of two different numerical strategies for the modeling of the biogeochemical processes in microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) process. A simplified MICP model was used, which is based on the mass transport theory. Two numerical strategies, namely the operator splitting (OS) and the global implicit (GI) strategies, were adopted to solve the coupled reactive mass transport problems. These two strategies were compared in the aspects of numerical accuracy, convergence property and computational efficiency by solving the presented MICP model. To look more into the details of the model, sensitivity analysis of some important modeling parameters was also carried out in this paper

A Private Watermark for Large Language Models

Recently, text watermarking algorithms for large language models (LLMs) have been mitigating the potential harms of text generated by the LLMs, including fake news and copyright issues. However, the watermark detection of current text algorithms requires the key from the generation process, making them susceptible to breaches and counterfeiting. In this work, we propose the first private watermarking algorithm, which extends the current text watermarking algorithms by using two different neural networks respectively for watermark generation and detection, rather than using the same key at both stages. Meanwhile, part of the parameters of the watermark generation and detection networks are shared, which makes the detection network achieve a high accuracy very efficiently. Experiments show that our algorithm ensures high detection accuracy with minimal impact on generation and detection speed, due to the small parameter size of both networks. Additionally, our subsequent analysis demonstrates the difficulty of reverting the watermark generation rules from the detection network.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, 3 table

Characterization of particle size and composition of respirable coal mine dust

Respirable coal mine dust (RCMD) particles, particularly the nano-sized fraction (\u3c1 \u3eμm) of the RCMD if present, can cause severe lung diseases in coal miners. Characterization of both the particle size and chemical composition of such RCMD particles remains a work in progress, in par-ticular, with respect to the nano-sized fraction of RCMD. In this work, various methods were sur-veyed and used to obtain both the size and chemical composition of RCMD particles, including scanning electron microscopy (SEM), scanning transmission electron microscopy (S-TEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation (AsFIFFF). It was found that the micron-sized fraction (\u3e1 μm) of RCMD particles collected at the miner location, from an underground coal mine, contained more coal particles, while those collected at the bolter location contained more rock dust particles. Two image processing procedures were developed to determine the size of individual RCMD particles. The particle size distribution (PSD) results showed that a significant amount (~80% by number) of nano-sized particles were present in the RCMD sample collected in an underground coal mine. The presence of nano-sized RCMD particles was confirmed by bulk sample analysis, using both DLS and AsFIFFF. The mode particle size at the peak frequency of the size distribution was found to be 300–400 nm, which was consistent with the result obtained from SEM analysis. The chemical composition data of the nano-sized RCMD showed that not only diesel particles, but also both coal and rock dust particles were present in the nano-sized fraction of the RCMD. The presence of the nano-sized fraction of RCMD particles may be site and location dependent, and a detailed analysis of the entire size range of RCMD particles in different underground coal mines is needed

Pemphigus Associated with Psoriasis Vulgaris: A Retrospective Study of Seven Patients and a Review of the Literature

The aim of this study was to analyze the characteristics and the treatment for patients with psoriasis who presented with subsequent pemphigus after their treatment. A retrospective study of seven patients with psoriasis associated with pemphigus was performed, including the clinical assessment and treatments. The patients with a median age of 74 (range from 54 to 85) were significantly older than those in previously reported cases, where the median age was 58 (range from 15 to 77) (P&lt;0.05). Six out of seven patients were male, which represents a higher ratio than that reported in literature (10/20). The duration between the diagnosis of psoriasis and onset of pemphigus ranged from 4 to 30 years, and previous studies reported a much wider range that, from a few months to 52 years. Patients developed pemphigus after the treatments for psoriasis with ultraviolet light, steroids, or immunosuppressant. Our study represents a distinct subset of patients with psoriasis accompanied with pemphigus who share typical clinical characteristics. Among these patients, most are elderly men and the dominant subtype is pemphigus foliaceus. Our data suggests that no treatment for psoriasis specifically correlated with the development of pemphigus. The combination treatment of steroids with immunosuppressant lead to an improvement of the disease. </p

Morphology and Phylogeny of Four Marine Scuticociliates (Protista, Ciliophora), with Descriptions of Two New Species: Pleuronema elegans spec. nov. and Uronema orientalis spec. nov.

The morphology and infraciliature of four marine scuticociliates, Pleuronema elegans spec. nov., P. setigerum Calkins, 1902, P. grolierei Wang et al., 2008 and Uronema orientalis spec. nov., collected from China seas, were investigated through live observation and protargol staining methods. Pleuronema elegans spec. nov. can be recognized by the combination of the following characters: size in vivo 90–115 × 45–60 µm, slender oval in outline with a distinctly pointed posterior end; about 10 prolonged caudal cilia; consistently two preoral kineties and 18 or 19 somatic kineties; membranelle 2a double-rowed with its posterior end straight; membranelle 3 three-rowed; one macronucleus; marine habitat. Uronema orientalis spec. nov. is distinguished by the following features: in vivo about 40–55 × 20–30 μm with a truncated apical plate; consistently twenty somatic kineties; membranelle 1 single-rowed and divided into two parts which comprise four and three basal bodies respectively; contractile vacuole pore positioned at the end of the second somatic kinety; marine habitat. We also provide improved diagnoses for P. grolierei Wang et al., 2008 and P. setigerum Calkins, 1902 based on current and previous reports. The small subunit rRNA gene of U. orientalis, P. elegans, P. grolierei and P. puytoraci were sequenced. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that Uronema and Pleuronema are not monophyletic