AN EFFECTIVE INITIALIZATION FOR ORTHOGONAL NONNEGATIVE MATRIX FACTORIZATION

National Natural Science Foundation of China [10961010]The orthogonal nonnegative matrix factorization (ONMF) has many applications in a variety of areas such as data mining, information processing and pattern recognition. In this paper, we propose a novel initialization method for the ONMF based on the Lanczos bidiagonalization and the nonnegative approximation of rank one matrix. Numerical experiments are given to show that our initialization strategy is effective and efficient

Accelerated Laboratory Weathering of Polypropylene/Poly (Lactic Acid) Blends

To solve the pollution problems that result from polypropylene (PP), suitable biopolymers such as poly (lactic acid) (PLA) were selected to blend with PP. Since PP/PLA blends are often exposed to the natural environment, it is necessary to study the photodegradation behavior of PP/PLA blends. In this paper, PP/PLA blends with different compositions were prepared by extrusion and subjected to the accelerated laboratory weathering equipment. The effects of compatibilizers on the degradation behavior of PP/PLA blends were also studied. The weatherability of PP/PLA blends was studied through weight loss, optical microscope, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results revealed that PP is easy to degrade than PLA during accelerated laboratory weathering. PP/PLA blends are susceptible to the accelerated laboratory weathering process, and PP-rich and PLA-rich blends reduce the weathering resistance. Moreover, the results indicate that the initial degradation temperature, melting temperature, and crystallization temperature decrease after weathering related to the decreased thermal stability of PP/PLA blends. For instance, the initial degradation temperature of PP/PLA8.2 reduces from 332.2 °C to 320.2 °C. Moreover, the compatibilized sample is generally more resistant to weathering conditions than the uncompatibilized one due to the higher compatibility of PP and PLA

Mechanism Assay of Honeysuckle for Heat-Clearing Based on Metabolites and Metabolomics

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as cyclooxygenase (Cox)-1/2 inhibitor, have emerged as potent antipyretics and analgesics. However, few herbs with Cox-1/2 inhibitory activity are commonly used for heat-clearing in China. Although these are known to have antipyretic activity, there is a lack of molecular data supporting their activity. Using the traditional Chinese medicine herb honeysuckle (Hon) as an example, we explored key antipyretic active compounds and their mechanisms of action by assessing their metabolites and metabolomics. Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) 3 and protein kinase B (AKT) 1 were suggested as key targets regulated primarily by chlorogenic acid (CA) and swertiamarin (SWE). CA and SWE synergistically inhibited the production of interleukin (IL)-1 and IL-6, alleviated generation of prostaglandin E2, and played an antipyretic role equivalent to honeysuckle extract at the same dose contents within 3 h. Collectively, these findings indicated that lipopolysaccharide-induced fever can be countered by CA with SWE synergistically, allowing the substitution of a crude extract of complex composition with active compounds. Our findings demonstrated that, unlike the traditional NSAIDs, the Hon extract showed a remote and indirect mechanism for alleviating fever that depended on the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase–AKT and MAPK pathways by regulating the principal mediator of inflammation

Mining heuristic evidence sentences for more interpretable document-level relation extraction

Current research on evidence sentences is aimed at developing document-level relational extraction models with improved interpretability. Evidence sentences extracted using existing methods are often incomplete, leading to poor relationship prediction accuracy. To address this problem, we developed a novel efficient heuristic rule and entity representation method. First, a heuristic rule is constructed according to the interactions between different mentions of the head and tail entities of the target entity pair, and evidence sentences are subsequently extracted. Second, pseudo documents, constructed according to the original document order, are used as input text to remove noisy statements. Finally, different representations of the same entity in different entity pairs are learned to represent it more accurately through the interactive mention of head and tail entities. Experiments on the document-level general domain dataset DocRED indicated that our heuristic rules improved sentence extraction by 6.01% compared to that achieved by the baseline model Paths-BiLSTM. In terms of relation prediction, the accuracy of the proposed method was comparable to those of existing models that use the entire document as input text; however, the input text used by the proposed method was shorter and more interpretable

Structural Manipulation of 3D Graphene-Based Macrostructures for Water Purification

The rapid development of graphene-based nanotechnologies in recent years has drawn extensive attention in environmental applications, especially for water treatment. Three-dimensional graphene-based macrostructures (GBMs) have been considered to be promising materials for practical water purification due to their well-defined porous structure and integrated morphology, and displayed outstanding performance in pollutant abatement with easy recyclability. Three-dimensional GBMs could not only retain the intrinsic priorities of 2D graphene, but also emerge with extraordinary properties by structural manipulation, so rational design and construction of 3D GBMs with desirable microstructures are important to exploit their potential for water treatment. In this review, some important advances in surface modification (chemical doping, wettability, surface charge) and geometrical control (porous structure, oriented arrangement, shape and density) with respect to 3D GBMs have been described, while their applications in water purification including adsorption (organic pollutants, heavy metal ions), catalysis (photocatalysis, Fenton-like advanced oxidation) and capacitive desalination (CDI) are detailly discussed. Finally, future challenges and prospective for 3D GBMs in water purification are proposed

Irrigation expansion has kept pace with the CO2 fertilization effect on vegetation growth in a typical arid region

Abstract Dynamics of vegetation in arid areas have drawn worldwide attention. The expansion of irrigated cropland (ICE) in arid regions contributes to increased food security and impacts on the extent and development of regional vegetation. However, the quantitative attribution of vegetation growth variation from ICE and biogeochemical factors (e.g., atmospheric CO2 concentration, climatic factors) is still lacking. Here, we assessed key drivers of vegetation growth in the inland arid region of Northwest China (IANC) from 1982 to 2018, including ICE, increased nitrogen rates, elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration (eCO2) and climate drivers, using normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and ecosystem gross primary productivity (GPP) as measures. These variables were quantified through trend decomposition, machine learning algorithms, and a satellite-based model. The results show that vegetation growth was increased in IANC mainly due to eCO2 and ICE. After 1995, as the regional climatic aridity intensified, the CO2 fertilization effect on vegetation growth decreased, as the atmospheric CO2 concentration continued to increase. Meanwhile, irrigated cropland area increased sharply, and ICE-driven GPP variation exceeded that driven by eCO2 in the whole region, while the ICE-driven NDVI variation exceeded that due to eCO2 when the ICE reached 6.38%. The ICE effect on regional vegetation growth rather than the CO2 fertilization effect has mitigated the slowdown of the rate of vegetation growth caused by climate changes. Although the ICE is conducive to food security and continuous greening of arid areas, further reclamation will exacerbate water scarcity. Our results provide research base for identifying the scale of sustainable agricultural development

Polymerizable ionic liquid-derived carbon for oxygen reduction and evolution

A polymerizable ionic liquid is explored as the precursor to produce nitrogen-doped carbon powders. The ionic liquid is functionalized with NO3− anions, which decompose and release gases during the pyrolysis process, facilitating the formation of a carbon foam. Scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy analyses show that the carbon foam is composed of curved carbon nanosheets with the maximum thickness of 70 nm. The favorable compositional (nitrogen doping to provide catalytically active sites) and morphological (curved nanosheet architecture to increase the contact area between electrolytes and catalytically active sites) characteristics make the present carbon powders a potential metal-free electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction and oxygen evolution reactions. As expected, the nitrogen-doped and curved carbon nanosheets exhibit a considerable activity towards the oxygen reduction reaction as well as a moderate ability for catalyzing the oxygen evolution reaction in KOH solutions.Accepted versio

Significantly different clinical features between hypertriglyceridemia and biliary acute pancreatitis: a retrospective study of 730 patients from a tertiary center

Abstract Background Unlike western world, gallstones and hypertriglyceridemia (HTG) are among the first two etiologies of acute pancreatitis (AP) in China. But yet, detailed differences in clinical features and outcomes between hypertriglyceridemia and biliary acute pancreatitis have not been well described. Methods This retrospective study enrolled 730 acute pancreatitis patients from July 1, 2013 to October 1, 2016 in Jinling Hospital. The causes of the study patients were defined according to specific diagnostic criteria. The clinical features and outcomes of patients with hypertriglyceridemia acute pancreatitis (HTG-AP) and biliary acute pancreatitis (BAP) were compared in terms of general information, disease severity, laboratory data, system complications, local complications, and clinical outcome. Results In the enrolled 730 AP patients, 305 (41.8%) were HTG-AP, and 425 (58.2%) were BAP. Compared to BAP, the HTG-AP patients were found to be younger, with higher body mass Index (BMI), and much higher proportion of diabetes, fatty liver and high fat diet. Besides that, HTG-AP patients had significantly higher C-reactive protein (CRP) (p<0.01) and creatinine (p = 0.031), together with more acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) (p = 0.039), acute kidney injury (AKI) (p<0.001), deep venous thrombosis (p = 0.008) and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) (p = 0.032) in systematic complications. As for local complications, HTG-AP patients had significantly less infected pancreatitis necrosis (p = 0.005). However, there was no difference in mortality, hospital duration and costs between the groups. Conclusion HTG-AP patients were younger, more male, having high fat diet and with higher BMI compared to BAP patients. The prevalence of AKI/ARDS/DVT/MODS in HTG-AP patients was higher than BAP patients, while BAP patients had a greater possibility in development of infected pancreatitis necrosis (IPN). According to the multivariate analysis, only the complication of AKI was independently related with the etiology of HTG, however, BMI contributes to AKI, ARDS and DVT