Casual Information Visualization on Exploring Spatiotemporal Data

The goal of this thesis is to study how the diverse data on the Web which are familiar to everyone can be visualized, and with a special consideration on their spatial and temporal information. We introduce novel approaches and visualization techniques dealing with different types of data contents: interactively browsing large amount of tags linking with geospace and time, navigating and locating spatiotemporal photos or videos in collections, and especially, providing visual supports for the exploration of diverse Web contents on arbitrary webpages in terms of augmented Web browsing

CELLULOSE TO COKE BOTTLES

This project explores the plant-scale process design and economic viability of production of ethylene glycol using a patented direct route from cellulose. Switchgrass was selected as the source of cellulose because it is a low-cost, non-feedstock plant capable of growing under a variety of conditions. The plant is designed to produce 100 million pounds of 99.5 % pure ethylene glycol which is the required purity for ethylene glycol used in plastic bottle production. The project is environmentally friendly and meets the Federal and state emission regulations. The process design consists of three major components: pre-treatment, reaction and separation. In the pre-treatment stage, the switchgrass is ground and cellulose is extracted using highly dilute base. The reaction occurs in water solvent under 5 MPa of hydrogen in a fixed bed catalytic reactor with a retention time of 30 minutes. The ethylene glycol product is separated from the solvent and byproducts by flash vessels and column distillation in order to attain 99.5 % purity. A side product, propylene glycol, is also produced at 99.5 % purity and is separated in a similar fashion. For the economic analysis, the plant was assumed to be located in Tennessee (near the Gulf Coast) where switchgrass is readily available. The total capital investment is $349,000,000, including a working capital of$7,747,000. The process is sensitive to the amount of solvent used. In the base case scenario using the same amount of solvent as used in the patent with ethylene glycol priced at $0.50/lb, propylene glycol byproduct priced at$0.78/lb, switchgrass priced at $50/dry ton, hydrogen priced at$1.00/lb, and catalyst priced at $5.08/lb, the net present value (NPV) of the project is negative$565,500,000 based on an interest rate of 15%, and the investor’s rate of return (IRR) is negative. The process is not profitable under the current conditions but may become profitable with advances in technology as described by the sensitivity analysis section of the report. Although the current version of the process is unprofitable, it is expect that the further development of the technology described in the referenced patent will allow for profitable future versions of this process, and it is recommended by the design team that the management retain this report for future referenc

COVID-19 - Revealing Unaddressed Systemic Barriers in the 45th Anniversary of the Southeast Asian American Experience

2020 marks the 45th year anniversary of the Southeast Asian American (SEAA) experience, starting with the first wave of refugees who fled Cambodia, Laos, and Viet Nam as a result of American occupation and wars throughout the region. Collectively, this community is the largest community of refugees ever to be resettled in America. Yet despite four decades in this country, Southeast Asian Americans continue to face disparate challenges like other low-income, immigrant, refugee, communities of color — ranging from poverty, to educational inequity, health disparities, and harsh immigration policies. COVID-19 pandemic has also revealed and exacerbated systemic barriers that have always existed for Southeast Asian American communities. This paper explores those impacts in economic, education, health, and immigration enforcement and concludes with thoughts on the way forward

Convergence analysis of a Crank-Nicolson Galerkin method for an inverse source problem for parabolic equations with boundary observations

This work is devoted to an inverse problem of identifying a source term depending on both spatial and time variables in a parabolic equation from single Cauchy data on a part of the boundary. A Crank-Nicolson Galerkin method is applied to the least squares functional with an quadratic stabilizing penalty term. The convergence of finite dimensional regularized approximations to the sought source as measurement noise levels and mesh sizes approach to zero with an appropriate regularization parameter is proved. Moreover, under a suitable source condition, an error bound and corresponding convergence rates are proved. Finally, several numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the theoretical findings.Comment: Inverse source problem, Tikhonov regularization, Crank-Nicolson Galerkin method, Source condition, Convergence rates, Ill-posedness, Parabolic proble

KOPPA: Improving Prompt-based Continual Learning with Key-Query Orthogonal Projection and Prototype-based One-Versus-All

Drawing inspiration from prompt tuning techniques applied to Large Language Models, recent methods based on pre-trained ViT networks have achieved remarkable results in the field of Continual Learning. Specifically, these approaches propose to maintain a set of prompts and allocate a subset of them to learn each task using a key-query matching strategy. However, they may encounter limitations when lacking control over the correlations between old task queries and keys of future tasks, the shift of features in the latent space, and the relative separation of latent vectors learned in independent tasks. In this work, we introduce a novel key-query learning strategy based on orthogonal projection, inspired by model-agnostic meta-learning, to enhance prompt matching efficiency and address the challenge of shifting features. Furthermore, we introduce a One-Versus-All (OVA) prototype-based component that enhances the classification head distinction. Experimental results on benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method empowers the model to achieve results surpassing those of current state-of-the-art approaches by a large margin of up to 20%

Expression, purification and evaluation of recombinant L-asparaginase inmehthylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris: Expression, purification and evaluation of recombinant L-asparaginase in mehthylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris: Research article

L-asparaginase (EC 3.5.1.1), a therapeutic enzyme used in the treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Hence, the goal of this work is study the expression and evaluation of hydrolysis activity of native sequence (X12746) encoding for L-asparaginase from Erwinia chrysanthemi NCPBB1125 in the popular expression system Pichia pastoris. The sequence of asn encoded for mature protein was expressed in P. pastoris SMD1168 and X33. SDS-PAGE analysis showed recombinant L-asparaginase was secreted efficiently. Stable and high hydrolysis activity of extracellular L-asparaginase in P. pastoris SMD1168 making it a potential candidate to produce recombinant protein. After purification, a specific band whose appearance approximately 45 kDa indicating the glycosylated protein with specific activity by 6.251 Umg-1 and about 3 folds purifications.L-asparaginase (EC 3.5.1.1), một loại enzyme được sử dụng trong điều trị bệng ung thư bạch cầu mãn tính ở trẻ em. Mục tiêu của nghiên cứu này là biểu hiện và đánh giá hoạt tính thủy phân của L-asparaginase mã hóa bởi đoạn gene (X12746) tương ứng từ Erwinia chrysanthemi NCPBB1125 được biểu hiện trong nấm men Pichia pastoris. Gene đã được cắt signal peptide và biểu hiện trong P. pastoris SMD1168 and X33. Qua phân tích kết quả điện di SDS-PAGE của môi trường sau lên men, L-asparaginase tái tổ hợp được tìm thấy trong dịch ngoại bào của P. pastoris. Với khả năng sản xuất protein có hoạt tính cao hơn so với chủng P. pastoris X33, SMD1168 được lựa chọn để biểu hiện L-asparaginase tái tổ hợp. Sau khi tinh sạch, sự xuất hiện của một băng có kích khối lượng phân tử xấp xỉ 45 kDa trên điện di SDS-PAGE cho thấy protein tái tổ hợp đã bị glycosyl hóa với hoạt tính riêng 6.251 Umg-1 và đạt độ sạch 3.471 lần

A node-based strain smoothing technique for free vibration analysis of textile-like sheet materials

This paper presents an implementation of the node-based smoothed finite element method and Reissner-Mindlin plate theory for a four node isoparametric shell element to improve the numerical precision and computational efficiency subjected to free vibration analysis of textile-like sheet materials. A one smoothing cell integration scheme in the strain smoothing technique is implemented to contrast the shear locking phenomenon that may exists in the analysis for moderatelythick and thick shell models. Various numerical results of free vibration analysis for a multi-layer nonwoven fabric sample are compared with other existing analytical solutions and numerical solutions in literatures to demonstrate the effectiveness of the present method. An advantage of the present formulation is that it can improve the numerical precision without decreasing the computational efficiency.The first and fourth author acknowledge FCT for the conceded financial support through Project UID/CTM/00264/2019 of 2C2T – Centro de Ciência e Tecnologia Têxtil, hold by National Founds of FCT/MCTES. The second and third author acknowledge support by FCT/MCTES through national funds and when applicable co-funded EU funds under the project SFRH/BD/136554/2018

Pretreatment of Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) via wet torrefaction in inert and oxidative atmospheres

This study investigates the possibility of utilizing waste heat sources such as hot flue gas or hot air for wet torrefaction (WT) processes. Although waste heat sources are cheaper alternatives than pure nitrogen used as purging and pressurizing gas for WT, they contain some fractions of non-inert gases and potentially affect the yield and fuel properties of the solid product (hydrochar). To assess these possible influences, Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) was subjected to WT in different atmospheres, including N2, CO2, O2, air and synthetic flue gas (SFG), and the produced hydrochars were characterized. The results show that WT in different gas atmospheres at 200 °C and 20 bar yields 72.24–73.82% of hydrochar. In general, the fuel properties of the hydrochars are found to be superior to those of the untreated pine: the O/C ratio decreases from 0.703 (raw pine) to 0.582–0.588 (hydrochars), and the HHV increases from 19.22 MJ/kg (raw pine) to 20.80–20.99 MJ/kg (hydrochars). Furthermore, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and pairwise t-test were performed, and the results reveal that the effects of different atmospheres in WT are not statistically meaningful (p-values >0.05), except for the influence of CO2 on ash content. The results also indicate that the presence of oxidative gases such as O2 and CO2 in WT process at appropriate pressures and temperatures has almost insignificant effects on the yields and fuel properties of the hydrochar products. The findings from this study could encourage the utilization of waste heat sources for WT to reduce operating costs.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe