Fast Min-Sum Algorithms for Decoding of LDPC over GF(q)

In this paper, we present a fast min-sum algorithm for decoding LDPC codes over GF(q). Our algorithm is different from the one presented by David Declercq and Marc Fossorier in ISIT 05 only at the way of speeding up the horizontal scan in the min-sum algorithm. The Declercq and Fossorier's algorithm speeds up the computation by reducing the number of configurations, while our algorithm uses the dynamic programming instead. Compared with the configuration reduction algorithm, the dynamic programming one is simpler at the design stage because it has less parameters to tune. Furthermore, it does not have the performance degradation problem caused by the configuration reduction because it searches the whole configuration space efficiently through dynamic programming. Both algorithms have the same level of complexity and use simple operations which are suitable for hardware implementations.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Information Theory Workshop, Chengdu, China, 200

Effect of Lixujieyu recipe in combination with Five Elements music therapy on chronic fatigue syndrome

AbstractObjectiveTo observe the clinical effects of the Lixujieyu recipe combined with Five Elements music therapy on chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) identified as the symptom patterns of liver stagnation and spleen deficiency in terms of Traditional Chinese Medicine.MethodsPatients with CFS were randomly divided into treatment group 1 (Lixujieyu recipe combined with Gong-Tune, n = 15); treatment group 2 (Lixujieyu recipe combined with Jiao-Tune, n = 15); treatment group 3 (Lixujieyu recipe combined with Yu-Tune, n = 15); treatment group 4 (Lixujieyu recipe combined with Shang-Tune, n = 15); treatment group 5 (Lixujieyu recipe combined with Zhi-Tune, n = 15); and the control group (Lixujieyu recipe alone, n = 15). Chinese medicine was given twice daily, and music was listened to for 45 minutes daily, 5 days a week. All patients were treated for 4 weeks. Patients were assessed via the Fatigue Scale, the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, and the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale before and after treatment.ResultsTreatment groups 1 and 2 had better effects on relieving the symptoms of physical fatigue related to anxiety and depression than the control group (P < 0.05).ConclusionLixujieyu recipe combined with Gong-Tune or Jiao-Tune significantly relieved the symptoms of CFS

Unsupervised Explanation Generation via Correct Instantiations

While large pre-trained language models (PLM) have shown their great skills at solving discriminative tasks, a significant gap remains when compared with humans for explanation-related tasks. Among them, explaining the reason why a statement is wrong (e.g., against commonsense) is incredibly challenging. The major difficulty is finding the conflict point, where the statement contradicts our real world. This paper proposes Neon, a two-phrase, unsupervised explanation generation framework. Neon first generates corrected instantiations of the statement (phase I), then uses them to prompt large PLMs to find the conflict point and complete the explanation (phase II). We conduct extensive experiments on two standard explanation benchmarks, i.e., ComVE and e-SNLI. According to both automatic and human evaluations, Neon outperforms baselines, even for those with human-annotated instantiations. In addition to explaining a negative prediction, we further demonstrate that Neon remains effective when generalizing to different scenarios.Comment: Accepted to AAAI-2

Synergetic Effect of Plasmonic Gold Nanorods and MgO for Perovskite Solar Cells

We report new structured perovskite solar cells (PSCs) using solution-processed TiO2/Au nanorods/MgO composite electron transport layers (ETLs). The proposed method is facile, convenient, and effective. Briefly, Au nanorods (NRs) were prepared and introduced into mesoporous TiO2 ETLs. Then, thin MgO overlayers were grown on the Au NRs modified ETLs by wet spinning and pyrolysis of the magnesium salt. By simultaneous use of Au NRs and MgO, the power conversion efficiency of the PSC device increases from 14.7% to 17.4%, displaying over 18.3% enhancement, compared with the reference device without modification. Due to longitudinal plasmon resonances (LPRs) of gold nanorods, the embedded Au NRs exhibit the ability to significantly enhance the near-field and far-field (plasmonic scattering), increase the optical path length of incident photons in the device, and as a consequence, notably improve external quantum efficiency (EQE) at wavelengths above 600 nm and power conversion efficiency (PCE) of PSC solar cells. Meanwhile, the thin MgO overlayer also contributes to enhanced performance by reducing charge recombination in the solar cell. Theoretical calculations were carried out to elucidate the PV performance enhancement mechanisms

X-ray performance of a customized large-format scientifc CMOS detector

In recent years, the performance of Scientifc Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (sCMOS) sensors has been improved signifcantly. Compared with CCD sensors, sCMOS sensors have various advantages, making them potentially better devices for optical and X-ray detection, especially in time-domain astronomy. After a series of tests of sCMOS sensors, we proposed a new dedicated high-speed, large-format X-ray detector in 2016 cooperating with Gpixel Inc. This new sCMOS sensor has a physical size of 6 cm by 6 cm, with an array of 4096 by 4096 pixels and a pixel size of 15 um. The frame rate is 20.1 fps under current condition and can be boosted to a maximum value around 100 fps. The epitaxial thickness is increased to 10 um compared to the previous sCMOS product. We show the results of its frst taped-out product in this work. The dark current of this sCMOS is lower than 10 e/pixel/s at 20C, and lower than 0.02 e/pixel/s at -30C. The Fixed Pattern Noise (FPN) and the readout noise are lower than 5 e in high-gain situation and show a small increase at low temperature. The energy resolution reaches 180.1 eV (3.1%) at 5.90 keV for single-pixel events and 212.3 eV (3.6%) for all split events. The continuous X-ray spectrum measurement shows that this sensor is able to response to X-ray photons from 500 eV to 37 keV. The excellent performance, as demonstrated from these test results, makes sCMOS sensor an ideal detector for X-ray imaging and spectroscopic application.Comment: 20 pages. published in PAS

Single-Atom Control of Single-Molecule van der Waals Junctions with Semimetallic Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Electrodes

Electrodes play an essential role in controlling electrode-molecule coupling. However, conventional metal electrodes require linkers to anchor the molecule. Van der Waals interaction offers a versatile strategy to connect the electrode and molecule without anchor groups. Except for graphene, the potential of other materials as electrodes to fabricate van der Waals molecular junctions remains unexplored. Herein, we utilize semimetallic transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) 1T'-WTe as electrodes to fabricate WTe /metalated tetraphenylporphyrin (M-TPP)/WTe junctions via van der Waals interaction. Compared with chemically bonded Au/M-TPP/Au junctions, the conductance of these M-TPP van der Waals molecular junctions is enhanced by ∼736%. More importantly, WTe /M-TPP/WTe junctions exhibit the tunable conductance from 10 to 10 (1.15 orders of magnitude) via single-atom control, recording the widest tunable range of conductance for M-TPP molecular junctions. Our work demonstrates the potential of two-dimensional TMDCs for constructing highly tunable and conductive molecular devices