Free-Standing Porous Carbon Nanofiber Networks from Electrospinning Polyimide for Supercapacitors

Free-standing porous carbon nanofiber networks (CFNs) were synthesized by electrospinning method and carbonization procedure. We study the implementation of porous CFNs as supercapacitor electrodes and electrochemical measurements demonstrated that porous CFNs exhibit a specific capacitance (205 F/g at the scan rate of 5 mV/s) with high flexibility and good rate capability performance (more than 70% of its initial capacitance from 5 mV/s to 200 mV/s). Furthermore, porous CFNs exhibited an excellent cycling stability (just 12% capacitance loss after 10,000 cycles). These results suggest that porous CFNs are very promising candidates as flexible supercapacitor electrodes

Application of bioabsorbable screw fixation for anterior cervical decompression and bone grafting

OBJECTIVES: To examine the application of bioabsorbable screws for anterior cervical decompression and bone grafting fixation and to study their clinical effects in the treatment of cervical spondylosis. METHODS: From March 2007 to September 2012, 56 patients, 36 males and 20 females (38-79 years old, average 58.3±9.47 years), underwent a novel operation. Grafts were fixed by bioabsorbable screws (PLLA, 2.7 mm in diameter) after anterior decompression. The bioabsorbable screws were inserted from the midline of the graft bone to the bone surface of the upper and lower vertebrae at 45 degree angles. Patients were evaluated post-operatively to observe the improvement of symptoms and evaluate the fusion of the bone. The Japanese Orthopaedic Association (JOA) score was used to evaluate the recovery of neurological functions. RESULTS: All screws were successfully inserted, with no broken screws. The rate of symptom improvement was 87.5%. All of the grafts fused well with no extrusion. The average time for graft fusion was 3.8±0.55 months (range 3-5 months). Three-dimensional reconstruction of CT scans demonstrated that the grafts fused with adjacent vertebrae well and that the screws were absorbed as predicted. The MRI findings showed that the cerebrospinal fluid was unobstructed. No obvious complications appeared in any of the follow-up evaluations. CONCLUSIONS: Cervical spondylosis with one- or two-level involvement can be effectively treated by anterior decompression and bone grafting with bioabsorbable screw fixation. This operative method is safe and can avoid the complications induced by metal implants

The Application of Time-Delay Dependent H

This paper uses a time-delay dependent H∞ control model to analyze the effect of manufacturing decisions on the process of transmission from resources to capability. We establish a theoretical framework of manufacturing management process based on three terms: resource, manufacturing decision, and capability. Then we build a time-delay H∞ robust control model to analyze the robustness of manufacturing management. With the state feedback controller between manufacturing resources and decision, we find that there is an optimal decision to adjust the process of transmission from resources to capability under uncertain environment. Finally, we provide an example to prove the robustness of this model

Embedding Compression with Isotropic Iterative Quantization

Continuous representation of words is a standard component in deep learning-based NLP models. However, representing a large vocabulary requires significant memory, which can cause problems, particularly on resource-constrained platforms. Therefore, in this paper we propose an isotropic iterative quantization (IIQ) approach for compressing embedding vectors into binary ones, leveraging the iterative quantization technique well established for image retrieval, while satisfying the desired isotropic property of PMI based models. Experiments with pre-trained embeddings (i.e., GloVe and HDC) demonstrate a more than thirty-fold compression ratio with comparable and sometimes even improved performance over the original real-valued embedding vectors

The preprophase band-associated kinesin-14 OsKCH2 is a processive minus-end-directed microtubule motor.

In animals and fungi, cytoplasmic dynein is a processive minus-end-directed motor that plays dominant roles in various intracellular processes. In contrast, land plants lack cytoplasmic dynein but contain many minus-end-directed kinesin-14s. No plant kinesin-14 is known to produce processive motility as a homodimer. OsKCH2 is a plant-specific kinesin-14 with an N-terminal actin-binding domain and a central motor domain flanked by two predicted coiled-coils (CC1 and CC2). Here, we show that OsKCH2 specifically decorates preprophase band microtubules in vivo and transports actin filaments along microtubules in vitro. Importantly, OsKCH2 exhibits processive minus-end-directed motility on single microtubules as individual homodimers. We find that CC1, but not CC2, forms the coiled-coil to enable OsKCH2 dimerization. Instead, our results reveal that removing CC2 renders OsKCH2 a nonprocessive motor. Collectively, these results show that land plants have evolved unconventional kinesin-14 homodimers with inherent minus-end-directed processivity that may function to compensate for the loss of cytoplasmic dynein

Edge Charge Asymmetry in Top Pair Production at the LHC

In this brief report, we propose a new definition of charge asymmetry in top pair production at the LHC, namely the edge charge asymmetry (ECA). ECA utilizes the information of drifting direction only for single top (or anti-top) with hadronically decay. Therefore ECA can be free from the uncertainty arising from the missing neutrino in the $t\bar{t}$ event reconstruction. Moreover rapidity $Y$ of top (or anti-top) is required to be greater than a critical value $Y_{\rm C}$ in order to suppress the symmetric $t\bar{t}$ events mainly due to the gluon-gluon fusion process. In this paper ECA is calculated up to next-to-leading order QCD in the standard model and the choice of the optimal $Y_{\rm C}$ is investigated.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure