Ti-substituted tunnel-type Na0.44MnO2 oxide as a negative electrode for aqueous sodium-ion batteries

The aqueous sodium-ion battery system is a safe and low-cost solution for large-scale energy storage, because of the abundance of sodium and inexpensive aqueous electrolytes. Although several positive electrode materials, for example, Na0.44MnO2, were proposed, few negative electrode materials, for example, activated carbon and NaTi2(PO4)(3), are available. Here we show that Ti-substituted Na0.44MnO2 (Na-0.44[Mn1-xTix] O-2) with tunnel structure can be used as a negative electrode material for aqueous sodium-ion batteries. This material exhibits superior cyclability even without the special treatment of oxygen removal from the aqueous solution. Atomic-scale characterizations based on spherical aberration-corrected electron microscopy and ab initio calculations are utilized to accurately identify the Ti substitution sites and sodium storage mechanism. Ti substitution tunes the charge ordering property and reaction pathway, significantly smoothing the discharge/ charge profiles and lowering the storage voltage. Both the fundamental understanding and practical demonstrations suggest that Na-0.44[Mn1-xTix]O-2 is a promising negative electrode material for aqueous sodium-ion batteries.

Epidemiology of invasive group B streptococcal disease in infants from urban area of South China, 2011–2014

YesBackground: Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in infants in both developed and developing countries. To our knowledge, only a few studies have been reported the clinical features, treatment and outcomes of the GBS disease in China. The severity of neonatal GBS disease in China remains unclear. Population-based surveillance in China is therefore required. Methods: We retrospectively collected data of <3 months old infants with culture-positive GBS in sterile samples from three large urban tertiary hospitals in South China from Jan 2011 to Dec 2014. The GBS isolates and their antibiotic susceptibility were routinely identified in clinical laboratories in participating hospitals. Serotyping and multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) were also conducted for further analysis of the neonatal GBS disease. Results: Total 70 cases of culture-confirmed invasive GBS infection were identified from 127,206 live births born in studying hospitals, giving an overall incidence of 0.55 per 1000 live births (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.44–0.69). They consisted of 49 with early-onset disease (EOD, 0.39 per 1000 live births (95% CI 0.29–0.51)) and 21 with late-onset disease (LOD, 0.17 per 1000 live births (95% CI 0.11–0.25)). The incidence of EOD increased significantly over the studying period. Five infants (4 EOD and 1 LOD) died before discharge giving a mortality rate of 7.1% and five infants (7.1%, 2 EOD and 3 LOD) had neurological sequelae. Within 68 GBS isolates from GBS cases who born in the studying hospitals or elsewhere, serotype III accounted for 77.9%, followed by Ib (14.7%), V (4.4%), and Ia (2.9%). MLST analysis revealed the presence of 13 different sequence types among the 68 GBS isolates and ST-17 was the most frequent sequence type (63.2%). All isolates were susceptible to penicillin, ceftriaxone, vancomycin and linezolid, while 57.4% and 51.5% were resistant to erythromycin and clindamycin, respectively. Conclusions: This study gains the insight into the spectrum of GBS infection in south China which will facilitate the development of the guidance for reasonable antibiotics usage and will provide evidence for the implementation of potential GBS vaccines in the future.Supported by medical and health science and technology projects of Health and Family Planning Commission of Guangzhou Municipality (grant number 20151A010034) and Guangdong provincial science and technology planning projects (grant number 2014A020212520)

Multimodales Interaktionsmanagement für einen Robotergefährten

Li S. Multi-modal interaction management for a robot companion. Bielefeld (Germany): Bielefeld University; 2007.The goal of the current work was to develop an interaction management system for a mobile robot companion. In comparison to many desktop computer applications, such a robot poses a number of new scientific questions that need to be addressed by its interaction management system. More specifically, the interaction management system should fulfill the following 8 requirements of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI): (1) handle cooperative interaction, (2) enable mixed-initiative interaction style, (3) separate interaction from domain task execution, (4) account for multi-modality of embodied interaction, (5) facilitate recognition of interaction initiated by users, (6) make use of different modalities in a meaningful way, (7) enable social behaviors, and (8) contribute to the usability of the entire robot system. In the current work, a powerful computational model of multi-modal grounding, the MMPDA model, was proposed. This model improves the existing grounding models and naturally supports multi-modal embodied communication in HRI. For the robot BIRON, the MMPDA model was implemented within two Implementation-Evaluation-Cycles (IEC), in which users played an important role in the determination of implementation foci. In the course of the IECs, various functions and behaviors were realized and their benefits were also proven in the user studies of each cycle. The MMPDA model and the implemented system completely fulfill the above eight requirements of HRI

Position Paper

Li S. Position Paper. In: Proc. 2nd Young Reseachers’ Roundtable on spoken dialog systems, In conjunction with Interspeech 2006. 2006: 43-44

Why and how to model multi-modal interaction for a mobile robot companion

Li S, Wrede B. Why and how to model multi-modal interaction for a mobile robot companion. In: AAAI Technical Report SS-07-04: Interaction Challenges for Intelligent Assistants. Stanford: AAAI Press; 2007: 71-79

A Multi-modal Dialog System for a Mobile Robot

Toptsis I, Li S, Wrede B, Fink GA. A Multi-modal Dialog System for a Mobile Robot. In: International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. Vol 1. Jeju, Korea; 2004: 273-276.A challenging domain for dialog systems is their use for the communication with robotic assistants. In contrast to the classical use of spoken language for information retrieval, on a mobile robot multi-modal dialogs and the dynamic interaction of the robot system with its environment have to be considered. In this paper we will present the dialog system developed for BIRON — the Bielefeld Robot Companion. The system is able to handle multi-modal dialogs by augmenting semantic interpretation structures derived from speech with hypotheses for additional modalities as e.g. speech-accompanying gestures. The architecture of the system is modular with the dialog manager being the central component. In order to be aware of the dynamic behavior of the robot itself, the possible states of the robot control system are integrated into the dialog model. For flexible use and easy configuration the communication between the individual modules as well as the declarative specification of the dialog model are encoded in XML. We will present example interactions with BIRON from the ’ scenario defined within the COGNIRON project