In situ photogalvanic acceleration of optofluidic kinetics: a new paradigm for advanced photocatalytic technologies

A multiscale-designed optofluidic reactor is demonstrated in this work, featuring an overall reaction rate constant of 1.32 s¯¹ for photocatalytic decolourization of methylene blue, which is an order of magnitude higher as compared to literature records. A novel performance-enhancement mechanism of microscale in situ photogalvanic acceleration was found to be the main reason for the superior optofluidic performance in the photocatalytic degradation of dyes as a model reaction

Discovering the core semantics of event from social media

© 2015 Elsevier B.V. As social media is opening up such as Twitter and Sina Weibo,1 large volumes of short texts are flooding on the Web. The ocean of short texts dilutes the limited core semantics of event in cyberspace by redundancy, noises and irrelevant content on the web, which make it difficult to discover the core semantics of event. The major challenges include how to efficiently learn the semantic association distribution by small-scale association relations and how to maximize the coverage of the semantic association distribution by the minimum number of redundancy-free short texts. To solve the above issues, we explore a Markov random field based method for discovering the core semantics of event. This method makes semantics collaborative computation for learning association relation distribution and makes information gradient computation for discovering k redundancy-free texts as the core semantics of event. We evaluate our method by comparing with two state-of-the-art methods on the TAC dataset and the microblog dataset. The results show our method outperforms other methods in extracting core semantics accurately and efficiently. The proposed method can be applied to short text automatic generation, event discovery and summarization for big data analysis

Uncertainty Analysis for the Keyword System of Web Events

© 2015 IEEE. Webpage recommendations for hot Web events can assist people to easily follow the evolution of these Web events. At the same time, there are different levels of semantic uncertainty underlying the amount of Webpages for a Web event, such as recapitulative information and detailed information. Apparently, the grasp of the semantic uncertainty of Web events could improve the satisfactoriness of Webpage recommendations. However, traditional hit-rate-based or clustering-based Webpage recommendation methods have overlooked these different levels of semantic uncertainty. In this paper, we propose a framework to identify the different underlying levels of semantic uncertainty in terms of Web events, and then utilize these for Webpage recommendations. Our idea is to consider a Web event as a system composed of different keywords, and the uncertainty of this keyword system is related to the uncertainty of the particular Web event. Based on keyword association linked network Web event representation and Shannon entropy, we identify the different levels of semantic uncertainty, and construct a semantic pyramid (SP) to express the uncertainty hierarchy of a Web event. Finally, an SP-based Webpage recommendation system is developed. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm can significantly capture the different levels of the semantic uncertainties of Web events and it can be applied to Webpage recommendations

Ce–Nd separation by solid-phase micro-extraction and its application to high-precision 142Nd/144Nd measurements using TIMS in geological materials

In view of the low initial abundance of 146Sm, 142Nd anomalies are expected to be extremely small (less than 40 ppm), and their detection requires ultra-precise 142Nd/144Nd measurements. A rapid solid-phase micro-extraction (SPME) technique, using HEHEHP resin as sorbent, is established to completely separate Ce from rare earth element (REE) mixtures. This technique is applied to ultra-high-precision 142Nd/144Nd measurements in geological materials. In contrast to the traditional liquid–liquid micro-extraction (LLME) technique, the benefits of the SPME tandem column are high Nd recovery, low residual Ce (Ce/Nd 3.0. Thus, 142Ce interferences on 142Nd never exceed 1.3 ppm. Ultra-high-precision thermal ionization mass spectrometry analyses of silicate standards show that the internal precision of all runs are better than 4 ppm (2 RSE) for 142Nd/144Nd values. 142Nd/144Nd values for JNdi-1, JR-3, and BCR-2 have external precisions of ±4.8, ±4.4, and ±3.9 ppm (2 RSD), respectively. The external reproducibility is sufficient to distinguish and resolve 5 ppm anomalies in 142Nd/144Nd values

Trigger efficiencies at BES III

Trigger efficiencies at BES III were determined for both the J/psi and psi' data taking of 2009. Both dedicated runs and physics datasets are used; efficiencies are presented for Bhabha-scattering events, generic hadronic decay events involving charged tracks, dimuon events and psi' -> pi+pi-J/psi, J/psi -> l+l- events (l an electron or muon). The efficiencies are found to lie well above 99% for all relevant physics cases, thus fulfilling the BES III design specifications.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

The Tongde Picritic Dikes in the Western Yangtze Block: Evidence for Ca. 800-Ma Mantle Plume Magmatism in South China during the Breakup of Rodinia

Secondary ion mass spectroscopy U-Pb zircon ages and mineralogical, geochemical, and Nd isotopic data are reported for the Tongde picritic dikes in the Yanbian area of the western Yangtze Block, South China. The picritic dikes, which intruded in the ca. 820-Ma Tongde complex, are dated at 796+-5 Ma. Most of the picritic rocks are highly porphyritic (ca. 15–35 vol% phenocrysts) with dominant olivine (Fo = 82–92) phenocrysts that are high in CaO (up to 0.43 wt%), Cr2O3, and Ni. All the studied rocks are high-Ti and alkaline in composition and exhibit light rare earth element– enriched and “humped” incompatible trace-element patterns, similar to the alkaline basalts within the ocean islands and continental rifts. Variably high εNd(T) values between +6.9 and +8.7 indicate that these rocks were derived from an asthenospheric mantle source with inappreciable crustal contamination. Geochemical modeling suggests a primary melt of 22.7% MgO for batch melting and 21.4% MgO for fractional melting. The high MgO content in the modelled primary magmas implies a minimum melt temperature of >1400˚C and a mantle potential temperature of 1600˚– 1620˚C. The Tongde picritic dikes were therefore generated by melting of an anomalously hot mantle source with a potential temperature ca. 200˚C higher than that of the ambient mid-ocean ridge basalt–source mantle, similar to that of modern mantle plumes. Thus, the Tongde picritic dikes provide solid petrological evidence for the proposed Neoproterozoic mantle plume that led to the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia

Van der Waals epitaxy of Bi2Se3 on Si(111) vicinal surface: An approach to prepare high-quality thin films of topological insulator

Epitaxial growth of topological insulator Bi2Se3 thin films on nominally flat and vicinal Si(111) substrates is studied. In order to achieve planner growth front and better quality epifilms, a two-step growth method is adopted for the van der Waal epitaxy of Bi2Se3 to proceed. By employing vicinal Si(111) substrate surfaces, the in-pane growth rate anisotropy of Bi2Se3 is explored to achieve single crystalline Bi2Se3 epifilms, in which threading defects and twins are effectively suppressed. Optimization of the growth parameters has resulted in vicinal Bi2Se3 films showing a carrier mobility of ~ 2000 cm2V-1s-1 and the background doping of ~ 3 x 1018 cm-3 of the as-grown layers. Such samples not only show relatively high magnetoresistance but also a linear dependence on magnetic field.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

Effects of Ru Substitution on Dimensionality and Electron Correlations in Ba(Fe_{1-x}Ru_x)_2As_2

We report a systematic angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy study on Ba(Fe$_{1-x}$Ru$_x$)$_2$As$_2$ for a wide range of Ru concentrations (0.15 $\leq$ \emph{x} $\leq$ 0.74). We observed a crossover from two-dimension to three-dimension for some of the hole-like Fermi surfaces with Ru substitution and a large reduction in the mass renormalization close to optimal doping. These results suggest that isovalent Ru substitution has remarkable effects on the low-energy electron excitations, which are important for the evolution of superconductivity and antiferromagnetism in this system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure