Thin Films of Porphyrin-Based Metal-Organic Frameworks Grown by Liquid-Phase Epitaxy

Porphyrin-based surface-mounted metal-organic frameworks (SURMOFs) were synthesized via liquid-phase epitaxy method, which were assembled into photovoltaic devices to investigate the photoconductivity and power conversion efficiency. Subsequently, the porphyrin-based surface-grafted gel (SURGEL) was synthesized from azido-porphyrin SURMOF by post-synthetic modification. Finally, liquid- and gas -phase diffusion in HKUST-1 SURMOF was investigated with a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM)

Security and privacy for data mining of RFID-enabled product supply chains

The e-Pedigree used for verifying the authenticity of the products in RFID-enabled product supply chains plays a very important role in product anti-counterfeiting and risk management, but it is also vulnerable to malicious attacks and privacy leakage. While the radio frequency identification (RFID) technology bears merits such as automatic wireless identification without direct eye-sight contact, its security has been one of the main concerns in recent researches such as tag data tampering and cloning. Moreover, privacy leakage of the partners along the supply chains may lead to complete compromise of the whole system, and in consequence all authenticated products may be replaced by the faked ones! Quite different from other conventional databases, datasets in supply chain scenarios are temporally correlated, and every party of the system can only be semi-trusted. In this paper, a system that incorporates merits of both the secure multi-party computing and differential privacy is proposed to address the security and privacy issues, focusing on the vulnerability analysis of the data mining with distributed EPCIS datasets of e-pedigree having temporal relations from multiple range and aggregate queries in typical supply chain scenarios and the related algorithms. Theoretical analysis shows that our proposed system meets perfectly our preset design goals, while some of the other problems leave for future research

ODSum: New Benchmarks for Open Domain Multi-Document Summarization

Open-domain Multi-Document Summarization (ODMDS) is a critical tool for condensing vast arrays of documents into coherent, concise summaries. With a more inter-related document set, there does not necessarily exist a correct answer for the retrieval, making it hard to measure the retrieving performance. We propose a rule-based method to process query-based document summarization datasets into ODMDS datasets. Based on this method, we introduce a novel dataset, ODSum, a sophisticated case with its document index interdependent and often interrelated. We tackle ODMDS with the \textit{retrieve-then-summarize} method, and the performance of a list of retrievers and summarizers is investigated. Through extensive experiments, we identify variances in evaluation metrics and provide insights into their reliability. We also found that LLMs suffer great performance loss from retrieving errors. We further experimented methods to improve the performance as well as investigate their robustness against imperfect retrieval. We will release our data and code at https://github.com/yale-nlp/ODSum

Liquid- and Gas-Phase Diffusion of Ferrocene in Thin Films of Metal-Organic Frameworks

The mass transfer of the guest molecules in nanoporous host materials, in particular in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), is among the crucial features of their applications. By using thin surface-mounted MOF films in combination with a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), the diffusion of ferrocene vapor and of ethanolic and hexanic ferrocene solution in HKUST-1 was investigated. For the first time, liquid- and gas-phase diffusion in MOFs was compared directly in the identical sample. The diffusion coefficients are in the same order of magnitude (~10$^{-16}$ m$^{2}$·s$^{-1}$), whereas the diffusion coefficient of ferrocene in the empty framework is roughly 3-times smaller than in the MOF which is filled with ethanol or n-hexane

RGD-conjugated gold nanorods induce radiosensitization in melanoma cancer cells by downregulating αvβ3 expression

Background: Melanoma is known to be radioresistant and traditional treatments have been intractable. Therefore, novel approaches are required to improve the therapeutic efficacy of melanoma treatment. In our study, gold nanorods conjugated with Arg-Gly-Asp peptides (RGD-GNRs) were used as a sensitizer to enhance the response of melanoma cells to 6 mV radiation. Methods and materials: A375 melanoma cells were treated by gold nanorods or RGD-GNRs with or without irradiation. The antiproliferative impact of the treatments was measured by MTT assay. Radiosensitizing effects were determined by colony formation assay. Apoptosis and cell cycle data were measured by flow cytometry. Integrin alpha(v)beta(3) expression was also investigated by flow cytometry. Results: Addition of RGD-GNRs enhanced the radiosensitivity of A375 cells with a dose-modifying factor of 1.35, and enhanced radiation-induced apoptosis. DNA flow cytometric analysis indicated that RGD-GNRs plus irradiation induced significant G2/M phase arrest in A375 cells. Both spontaneous and radiation-induced expressions of integrin alpha(v)beta(3) were downregulated by RGD-GNRs. Conclusion: Our study indicated that RGD-GNRs could sensitize melanoma A375 cells to irradiation. It was hypothesized that this was mainly through downregulation of radiation-induced alpha(v)beta(3), in addition to induction of a higher proportion of cells within the G2/M phase. The combination of RGD-GNRs and radiation needs further investigation.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000302718200001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701Nanoscience & NanotechnologyPharmacology & PharmacySCI(E)22ARTICLE915-924

BMQE system: a MQ equations system based on ergodic matrix

In this paper, we propose a multivariate quadratic (MQ) equation system based on ergodic matrix (EM) over a finite field with q elements (denoted as F^q). The system actually implicates a problem which is equivalent to the famous Graph Coloring problem, and therefore is NP complete for attackers. The complexity of bisectional multivariate quadratic equation (BMQE) system is determined by the number of the variables, of the equations and of the elements of Fq, which is denoted as n, m, and q, respectively. The paper shows that, if the number of the equations is larger or equal to twice the number of the variables, and qn is large enough, the system is complicated enough to prevent attacks from most of the existing attacking schemes

An Earlier Predictive Rollover Index Designed for Bus Rollover Detection and Prevention

As vehicle rollovers annually cause a great deal of traffic-related deaths, an increasing number of vehicles are being equipped with rollover prevention systems with the aim of avoiding such accidents. To improve the functionality of active rollover prevention systems, this study provided a potential enhanced method with the intention to predict the tendency of the lateral load transfer ratio (LTR), which is the most common rollover index. This will help provide a certain amount of lead time for the control system to respond more effectively. Before the prediction process, an estimation equation was proposed to better estimate the LTR; the equation was validated using Simulink and TruckSim. Further, to eliminate the influence of drawbacks and make this method practical, a buffer operator was added. Simulation results showed that grey LTR (GLTR) was able to roundly predict the future trend of the LTR based on current and previous data. Under the tests of “Sine with Dwell” (Sindwell) and double lane change (DLC), the GLTR could provide the control system with sufficient time beforehand. Additionally, to further examine the performance of the GLTR, a differential system model was adopted to verify its effectiveness. Through the Sindwell maneuver, it was demonstrated that the GLTR index could improve the performance of the rollover prevention systems by achieving the expected response. Document type: Articl

Infection of inbred BALB/c and C57BL/6 and outbred Institute of Cancer Research mice with the emerging H7N9 avian influenza virus

A new avian-origin influenza virus A (H7N9) recently crossed the species barrier and infected humans; therefore, there is an urgent need to establish mammalian animal models for studying the pathogenic mechanism of this strain and the immunological response. In this study, we attempted to develop mouse models of H7N9 infection because mice are traditionally the most convenient models for studying influenza viruses. We showed that the novel A (H7N9) virus isolated from a patient could infect inbred BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice as well as outbred Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) mice. The amount of bodyweight lost showed differences at 7 days post infection (d.p.i.) (BALB/c mice 30%, C57BL/6 and ICR mice approximately 20%), and the lung indexes were increased both at 3 d.p.i. and at 7 d.p.i.. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated the existence of the H7N9 viruses in the lungs of the infected mice, and these findings were verified by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and 50% tissue culture infectious dose (TCID50) detection at 3 d.p.i. and 7 d.p.i.. Histopathological changes occurred in the infected lungs, including pulmonary interstitial inflammatory lesions, pulmonary oedema and haemorrhages. Furthermore, because the most clinically severe cases were in elderly patients, we analysed the H7N9 infections in both young and old ICR mice. The old ICR mice showed more severe infections with more bodyweight lost and a higher lung index than the young ICR mice. Compared with the young ICR mice, the old mice showed a delayed clearance of the H7N9 virus and higher inflammation in the lungs. Thus, old ICR mice could partially mimic the more severe illness in elderly patients. </p