Structural and Optical Properties of Nickel Sulfoselenide (NiSSe) Thin Film for Photoelectrochemical Applications

The transition metal, nickel is a favourable material to create combination with chalcogenides elements (S, Se and Te) to become either binary or ternary transition metal chalcogenide such NiSe2, NiSe, NiS2 and Ni3Se. Throughout some observation from the previous research regarding the synthesis of ternary transition metal chalcogenide thin film for photoelectrochemical application, the combination of nickel with two chalcogenide elements; S and Se are rarely found due to the nature of selenium and sulphur. In this work, NiSSe thin film is being synthesis onto indium tin oxide (ITO) glass substrates using electrodeposition technique and the structural and optical properties of the films are studied. The resulted thin films are characterized using X-ray diffraction analysis and scanning electron microscope to determine the crystallographic and morphological properties. Optical are also being analysed for their bandgap values in other to determine the suitability of NiSSe thin film for photoelectrochemical properties. Results proved that nickel sulfoselenide thin films are polycrystalline in nature with a good uniformity. The intersection point for the optical analysis gave the direct bandgap. Well-adherent and dark-coloured thin films are derived from the cathodically electrodeposition by using potential in the reduction region. Experimental results proved NiSSe thin films are capable to be used in photoelectrochemical cell application

Specificity prediction of adenylation domains in nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS) using transductive support vector machines (TSVMs)

We present a new support vector machine (SVM)-based approach to predict the substrate specificity of subtypes of a given protein sequence family. We demonstrate the usefulness of this method on the example of aryl acid-activating and amino acid-activating adenylation domains (A domains) of nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS). The residues of gramicidin synthetase A that are 8 Å around the substrate amino acid and corresponding positions of other adenylation domain sequences with 397 known and unknown specificities were extracted and used to encode this physico-chemical fingerprint into normalized real-valued feature vectors based on the physico-chemical properties of the amino acids. The SVM software package SVM(light) was used for training and classification, with transductive SVMs to take advantage of the information inherent in unlabeled data. Specificities for very similar substrates that frequently show cross-specificities were pooled to the so-called composite specificities and predictive models were built for them. The reliability of the models was confirmed in cross-validations and in comparison with a currently used sequence-comparison-based method. When comparing the predictions for 1230 NRPS A domains that are currently detectable in UniProt, the new method was able to give a specificity prediction in an additional 18% of the cases compared with the old method. For 70% of the sequences both methods agreed, for <6% they did not, mainly on low-confidence predictions by the existing method. None of the predictive methods could infer any specificity for 2.4% of the sequences, suggesting completely new types of specificity

Star Unfolding Convex Polyhedra via Quasigeodesic Loops

We extend the notion of star unfolding to be based on a quasigeodesic loop Q rather than on a point. This gives a new general method to unfold the surface of any convex polyhedron P to a simple (non-overlapping), planar polygon: cut along one shortest path from each vertex of P to Q, and cut all but one segment of Q.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. v2 improves the description of cut locus, and adds references. v3 improves two figures and their captions. New version v4 offers a completely different proof of non-overlap in the quasigeodesic loop case, and contains several other substantive improvements. This version is 23 pages long, with 15 figure

Bounded Model Checking for Probabilistic Programs

In this paper we investigate the applicability of standard model checking approaches to verifying properties in probabilistic programming. As the operational model for a standard probabilistic program is a potentially infinite parametric Markov decision process, no direct adaption of existing techniques is possible. Therefore, we propose an on-the-fly approach where the operational model is successively created and verified via a step-wise execution of the program. This approach enables to take key features of many probabilistic programs into account: nondeterminism and conditioning. We discuss the restrictions and demonstrate the scalability on several benchmarks

Prognostic value of myocardial perfusion scintigraphy in type 2 diabetic patients with mild, stable angina pectoris

Aim: To determine the prognostic value of reversible myocardial perfusion defects on myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (MPS) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and mild anginal complaints. Methods and results: In the MERIDIAN trial, patients with diabetes mellitus type 2, stable, mild anginal symptoms (Canadian Cardiovascular Society classification (CCS) I-II/IV) and reversible perfusion defects were randomized to either continued pharmacological treatment or early invasive treatment. In this sub analysis, the severity of the myocardial perfusion defect was related to the occurrence of cardiac death and non-fatal myocardial infarction, in 319 patients (63% male, 65 ± 9 years). During follow-up (2.2 ± 0.6 years), 14 patients had a cardiac event: 3 in 171 patients without myocardial ischemia and 11 in 148 patients with myocardial ischemia. Annual event rates rose from 0.8% to 5.8% with increasing severity of myocardial ischemia. Multivariable analysis identified the presence of severe myocardial ischemia (hazard ratio (HR) 5.45, 95%CI 1.89-15.71) and insulin use (HR 4.00, 95%CI 1.25-12.75) as independent predictors of cardiac events. Conclusions: Type 2 diabetics with mild anginal symptoms with no or moderate myocardial ischemia have a low annual cardiac event rate. In patients with severe myocardial ischemia event rate increased 3-6 fold

Prognostic utility of sestamibi lung uptake does not require adjustment for stress-related variables: A retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Increased (99m)Tc-sestamibi stress lung-to-heart ratio (sLHR) has been shown to predict cardiac outcomes similar to pulmonary uptake of thallium. Peak heart rate and use of pharmacologic stress affect the interpretation of lung thallium uptake. The current study was performed to determine whether (99m)Tc-sestamibi sLHR measurements are affected by stress-related variables, and whether this in turn affects prognostic utility. METHODS: sLHR was determined in 718 patients undergoing (99m)Tc-sestamibi SPECT stress imaging. sLHR was assessed in relation to demographics, hemodynamic variables and outcomes (mean follow up 5.6 ± 1.1 years). RESULTS: Mean sLHR was slightly greater in males than in females (P < 0.01) and also showed a weak negative correlation with age (P < 0.01) and systolic blood pressure (P < 0.01), but was unrelated to stress method or heart rate at the time of injection. In patients undergoing treadmill exercise, sLHR was also positively correlated with peak workload (P < 0.05) but inversely with double product (P < 0.05). The combined explanatory effect of sex, age and hemodynamic variables on sLHR was less than 10%. The risk of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or death increased by a factor of 1.7–1.8 for each SD increase in unadjusted sLHR, and was unaffected by adjustment for sex, age and hemodynamic variables (hazard ratios 1.6–1.7). The area under the ROC curve for the unadjusted sLHR was 0.65 (95% CI 0.59–0.71, P < 0.0001) and was unchanged for the adjusted sLHR (0.65, 95% CI 0.61–0.72, P < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: Stress-related variables have only a weak effect on measured sLHR. Unadjusted and adjusted sLHR provide equivalent prognostic information for prediction of AMI or death

Continuously Growing Rodent Molars Result from a Predictable Quantitative Evolutionary Change over 50 Million Years

The fossil record is widely informative about evolution, but fossils are not systematically used to study the evolution of stem-cell-driven renewal. Here, we examined evolution of the continuous growth (hypselodonty) of rodent molar teeth, which is fuelled by the presence of dental stem cells. We studied occurrences of 3,500 North American rodent fossils, ranging from 50 million years ago (mya) to 2 mya. We examined changes in molar height to determine whether evolution of hypselodonty shows distinct patterns in the fossil record, and we found that hypselodont taxa emerged through intermediate forms of increasing crown height. Next, we designed a Markov simulation model, which replicated molar height increases throughout the Cenozoic and, moreover, evolution of hypselodonty. Thus, by extension, the retention of the adult stem cell niche appears to be a predictable quantitative rather than a stochastic qualitative process. Our analyses predict that hypselodonty will eventually become the dominant phenotype.Peer reviewe