Research Priorities of Applying Low-Cost PM2.5 Sensors in Southeast Asian Countries

The low-cost and easy-to-use nature of rapidly developed PM2.5 sensors provide an opportunity to bring breakthroughs in PM2.5 research to resource-limited countries in Southeast Asia (SEA). This review provides an evaluation of the currently available literature and identifies research priorities in applying low-cost sensors (LCS) in PM2.5 environmental and health research in SEA. The research priority is an outcome of a series of participatory workshops under the umbrella of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project–Monsoon Asia and Oceania Networking Group (IGAC–MANGO). A literature review and research prioritization are conducted with a transdisciplinary perspective of providing useful scientific evidence in assisting authorities in formulating targeted strategies to reduce severe PM2.5 pollution and health risks in this region. The PM2.5 research gaps that could be filled by LCS application are identified in five categories: source evaluation, especially for the distinctive sources in the SEA countries; hot spot investigation; peak exposure assessment; exposure–health evaluation on acute health impacts; and short-term standards. The affordability of LCS, methodology transferability, international collaboration, and stakeholder engagement are keys to success in such transdisciplinary PM2.5 research. Unique contributions to the international science community and challenges with LCS application in PM2.5 research in SEA are also discussed

SR-POD : sample rotation based on principal-axis orientation distribution for data augmentation in deep object detection

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have outperformed most state-of-the-art methods in object detection. However, CNNs suffer the difficulty of detecting objects with rotation, because the dataset used to train the CCNs often does not contain sufficient samples with various angles of orientation. In this paper, we propose a novel data-augmentation approach to handle samples with rotation, which utilizes the distribution of the object's orientation without the time-consuming process of rotating the sample images. Firstly, we present an orientation descriptor, named as "principal-axis orientation" to describe the orientation of the object's principal axis in an image and estimate the distribution of objects’ principal-axis orientations (PODs) of the whole dataset. Secondly, we define a similarity metric to calculate the POD similarity between the training set and an additional dataset, which is built by randomly selecting images from the benchmark ImageNet ILSVRC2012 dataset. Finally, we optimize a cost function to obtain an optimal rotation angle, which indicates the highest POD similarity between the two aforementioned data sets. In order to evaluate our data augmentation method for object detection, experiments, conducted on the benchmark PASCAL VOC2007 dataset, show that with the training set augmented using our method, the average precision (AP) of the Faster RCNN in the TV-monitor is improved by 7.5%. In addition, our experimental results also demonstrate that new samples generated by random rotation are more likely to result in poor performance of object detection

On the Road to 6G: Visions, Requirements, Key Technologies and Testbeds

Fifth generation (5G) mobile communication systems have entered the stage of commercial development, providing users with new services and improved user experiences as well as offering a host of novel opportunities to various industries. However, 5G still faces many challenges. To address these challenges, international industrial, academic, and standards organizations have commenced research on sixth generation (6G) wireless communication systems. A series of white papers and survey papers have been published, which aim to define 6G in terms of requirements, application scenarios, key technologies, etc. Although ITU-R has been working on the 6G vision and it is expected to reach a consensus on what 6G will be by mid-2023, the related global discussions are still wide open and the existing literature has identified numerous open issues. This paper first provides a comprehensive portrayal of the 6G vision, technical requirements, and application scenarios, covering the current common understanding of 6G. Then, a critical appraisal of the 6G network architecture and key technologies is presented. Furthermore, existing testbeds and advanced 6G verification platforms are detailed for the first time. In addition, future research directions and open challenges are identified for stimulating the on-going global debate. Finally, lessons learned to date concerning 6G networks are discussed

Omics-based interpretation of synergism in a soil-derived cellulose-degrading microbial community

Reaching a comprehensive understanding of how nature solves the problem of degrading recalcitrant biomass may eventually allow development of more efficient biorefining processes. Here we interpret genomic and proteomic information generated from a cellulolytic microbial consortium (termed F1RT) enriched from soil. Analyses of reconstructed bacterial draft genomes from all seven uncultured phylotypes in F1RT indicate that its constituent microbes cooperate in both cellulose-degrading and other important metabolic processes. Support for cellulolytic inter-species cooperation came from the discovery of F1RT microbes that encode and express complimentary enzymatic inventories that include both extracellular cellulosomes and secreted free-enzyme systems. Metabolic reconstruction of the seven F1RT phylotypes predicted a wider genomic rationale as to how this particular community functions as well as possible reasons as to why biomass conversion in nature relies on a structured and cooperative microbial community

Therapeutic Effect of Repurposed Temsirolimus in Lung Adenocarcinoma Model

Lung cancer is one of the major cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The poor prognosis and resistance to both radiation and chemotherapy urged the development of potential targets for lung cancer treatment. In this study, using a network-based cellular signature bioinformatics approach, we repurposed a clinically approved mTOR inhibitor for renal cell carcinomans, temsirolimus, as the potential therapeutic candidate for lung adenocarcinoma. The PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway is known as one of the most frequently dysregulated pathway in cancers, including non-small-cell lung cancer. By using a well-documented lung adenocarcinoma mouse model of human pathophysiology, we examined the effect of temsirolimus on the growth of lung adenocarcinoma in vitro and in vivo. In addition, temsirolimus combined with reduced doses of cisplatin and gemcitabine significantly inhibited the lung tumor growth in the lung adenocarcinoma mouse model compared with the temsirolimus alone or the conventional cisplatin–gemcitabine combination. Functional imaging techniques and microscopic analyses were used to reveal the response mechanisms. Extensive immunohistochemical analyses were used to demonstrate the apparent effects of combined treatments on tumor architecture, vasculature, apoptosis, and the mTOR-pathway. The present findings urge the further exploration of temsirolimus in combination with chemotherapy for treating lung adenocarcinoma

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011