LaRC TPI 1500 series polymers

The crystallization behavior and the melt flow properties of two batches of 1500 series LaRC-TPI polymers from Mitsui Toatsu Chemicals (MTC) were investigated. The characterization methods include Differential Scanning Calorimetry, the x ray diffractography and the melt rheology. The as-received materials possess initial crystalline melting peak temperatures of 295 and 305 C, respectively. These materials are less readily recrystallizable at elevated temperatures when compared to other semicrystalline thermoplastics. For the samples annealed at temperatures below 330 C, a semicrystalline polymer can be obtained. On the other hand, a purely amorphous structure is realized in the samples annealed at temperatures above 330 C. Isothermal crystallization kinetics were studied by means of the simple Avrami equation. The viscoelastic properties at elevated temperatures below and above glass transition temperature of the polymers were measured. Information with regard to the molecule sizes and distributions in these polymers were also extracted from melt rheology

COMIC: Towards A Compact Image Captioning Model with Attention

Recent works in image captioning have shown very promising raw performance. However, we realize that most of these encoder-decoder style networks with attention do not scale naturally to large vocabulary size, making them difficult to be deployed on embedded system with limited hardware resources. This is because the size of word and output embedding matrices grow proportionally with the size of vocabulary, adversely affecting the compactness of these networks. To address this limitation, this paper introduces a brand new idea in the domain of image captioning. That is, we tackle the problem of compactness of image captioning models which is hitherto unexplored. We showed that, our proposed model, named COMIC for COMpact Image Captioning, achieves comparable results in five common evaluation metrics with state-of-the-art approaches on both MS-COCO and InstaPIC-1.1M datasets despite having an embedding vocabulary size that is 39x - 99x smaller. The source code and models are available at: https://github.com/jiahuei/COMIC-Compact-Image-Captioning-with-AttentionComment: Added source code link and new results in Table

A transient solution for vesicle electrodeformation and relaxation

A transient analysis for vesicle deformation under DC electric fields is developed. The theory extends from a droplet model, with the additional consideration of a lipid membrane separating two fluids of arbitrary properties. For the latter, both a membrane-charging and a membrane-mechanical model are supplied. The vesicle is assumed to remain spheroidal in shape for all times. The main result is an ODE governing the evolution of the vesicle aspect ratio. The effects of initial membrane tension and pulse length are examined. The model prediction is extensively compared with experimental data, and is shown to accurately capture the system behavior in the regime of no or weak electroporation. More importantly, the comparison reveals that vesicle relaxation obeys a universal behavior regardless of the means of deformation. The process is governed by a single timescale that is a function of the vesicle initial radius, the fluid viscosity, and the initial membrane tension. This universal scaling law can be used to calculate membrane properties from experimental data

Eigenvalues and eigenvectors for matrices over distributive lattices

AbstractLet (L, ⩽, ∧, ∨) be a complete and completely distributive lattice. A vector ξ is said to be an eigenvector of a square matrix A over the lattice L if Aξ = γξ for some γϵL. The elements γ are called the associated eigenvalues. In this paper we characterize the eigenvalues and the eigenvectors and also the roots of the characteristic equation of A

The Influence of Culture on Attitudes Towards Humorous Advertising

open access articl

MOLECULAR ANALYSIS OF EPIGENETIC MEMORY OF STRESS ESTABLISHMENT AND LONG-TERM MAINTENANCE IN A PERENNIAL WOODY PLANT

Plants adapt to extreme environmental conditions through physiological adaptations, which are usually transient. Recent research has suggested that environmental conditions can activate a memory of stress that can result in a primed response to subsequent stress events. While the effect of priming has been observed in many plants, the underlying mechanisms are puzzling and seldom studied. A large body of research has been developed in the last decade linking response to stress, stress priming, and memory of stress with epigenetic mechanisms. This understanding of plant epigenetics has opened the door to the application of epigenetics to crop improvement, such as the use of epigenetic breeding for the generation of more resilient crops. Although well-studied in annual and model species, research on epigenetic memory of stress in perennials is still minimal. Viticulture, a perennial form of agriculture, is highly dependent on climatic conditions, not only for yield but also for fruit quality, which is the most important factor affecting produce value at the farm gate and would benefit from more in-depth knowledge on epigenetic memory of stress. Here we present the results of an experiment conducted over two growing seasons, which constitute the first comprehensive study providing insights into the memory of stress establishment and temporal maintenance, and its potential effect on priming in a perennial crop. Gene expression and DNA methylation data were obtained from 222 plants exposed to the most common forms of abiotic stress faced by vineyards (drought, heat, and combined drought and heat). Our results indicate that the effect of the combined stress on physiology and gene expression is more severe than that of individual stresses, but not simply additive. Common genes expressed under both individual and combined treatments included heat-shock proteins, mitogen-activated kinases, and sugar-metabolizing enzymes, while phenylpropanoid biosynthesis and histone-modifying genes were unique to the combined stress treatment. We also found evidence of the establishment of memory of stress after the heat and combined stress, but not after drought, and that epigenetic chromatin modifications may play an important role during this process. Additionally, we identified genes that are differentially expressed in primed plants one year after their initial exposure to environmental insult and in the absence of recurrent stress. Moreover, primed plants showed a stronger response in gene expression to recurrent stress than plants exposed for the first time to that same stress. Finally, we explored the effect that two types of vegetative propagation may have on the maintenance of epigenetic memory of stress in primed grapevines. Briefly, although primed propagules generated using callused cuttings presented more differentially expressed genes in response to a second stress than those propagated using layering, only primed layered propagules showed differentially expressed genes in the absence of a recurrent stress, suggesting that the established stress memory is, at least partially, lost during cutting propagation. Collectively, our results constitute the first molecular evidence of long-term stress memory in grapevine and lay the foundation for the development of a comprehensive model integrating plant response to stress, the establishment of epigenetic memory of stress, and its maintenance, over time and during vegetative propagation in perennial plants

ACCESS CONTROL USING WIRELESS FOR DATA COMMUNICATATION TO DATA TERMINAL

The main objective of this project is to develop wireless access control that can be accessed via HTML website using Microchip development board. TCP/IP protocol is used for its wireless technology, using ZeroG module that provides 802.11 standards. Application of wireless access control starts with initialization of hardware and computer through IP address assigned by access point

Observation of forbidden phonons and dark excitons by resonance Raman scattering in few-layer WS2_2

The optical properties of the two-dimensional (2D) crystals are dominated by tightly bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) and lattice vibration modes (phonons). The exciton-phonon interaction is fundamentally important to understand the optical properties of 2D materials and thus help develop emerging 2D crystal based optoelectronic devices. Here, we presented the excitonic resonant Raman scattering (RRS) spectra of few-layer WS$_2$ excited by 11 lasers lines covered all of A, B and C exciton transition energies at different sample temperatures from 4 to 300 K. As a result, we are not only able to probe the forbidden phonon modes unobserved in ordinary Raman scattering, but also can determine the bright and dark state fine structures of 1s A exciton. In particular, we also observed the quantum interference between low-energy discrete phonon and exciton continuum under resonant excitation. Our works pave a way to understand the exciton-phonon coupling and many-body effects in 2D materials.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure