SYNTHESIS OF PROPYLENE CARBONATE FROM UREA AND 1,2-PROPYLENE GLYCOL OVER METAL CARBONATES

A series of single-metal carbonates and Pb-Zn mixed-metal carbonates were prepared as catalysts for alcoholysis of urea with 1,2-propylene glycol (PG) for the synthesis of propylene carbonate (PC). The mixed carbonates all show much better catalytic activities than the single carbonates, arising from a strong synergistic effect between the two crystalline phases, hydrozincite and lead carbonate. The mixed carbonate with Pb/Zn = 1:2 gives the highest yield of PC, followed by the mixed carbonate with Pb/Zn = 1:3. Furthermore, Taguchi method was used to optimize the synthetic process for improving the yield of PC. It is shown that the reaction temperature is the most significant factor affecting the yield of PC, followed by the reaction time, and that the optimal reaction conditions are the reaction time 5 h, the reaction temperature 180 °C and the catalyst amount 1.8 mass%, resulting in the highest PC yield of 96.3%

Network Intrusion Detection with Edge-Directed Graph Multi-Head Attention Networks

A network intrusion usually involves a number of network locations. Data flow (including the data generated by intrusion behaviors) among these locations (usually represented by IP addresses) naturally forms a graph. Thus, graph neural networks (GNNs) have been used in the construction of intrusion detection models in recent years since they have an excellent ability to capture graph topological features of intrusion data flow. However, existing GNN models treat node mean aggregation equally in node information aggregation. In reality, the correlations of nodes and their neighbors as well as the linked edges are different. Assigning higher weights to nodes and edges with high similarity can highlight the correlation among them, which will enhance the accuracy and expressiveness of the model. To this end, this paper proposes novel Edge-Directed Graph Multi-Head Attention Networks (EDGMAT) for network intrusion detection. The proposed EDGMAT model introduces a multi-head attention mechanism into the intrusion detection model. Additional weight learning is realized through the combination of a multi-head attention mechanism and edge features. Weighted aggregation makes better use of the relationship between different network traffic data. Experimental results on four recent NIDS benchmark datasets show that the performance of EDGMAT in terms of weighted F1-Score is significantly better than that of four state-of-the-art models in multi-class detection tasks

Solubilization of Hydroxypropyl-β-Cyclodextrin on Cholesterol in Aqueous Solution

Hydroxypropyl-β-Cyclodextrin (HP-β-CD), prepared via reaction of β-Cyclodextrin (β-CD) and propylene oxide (PO), is utilized to research solubilization of HP-β-CD on cholesterol in aqueous solution. HP-β-CD is characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FT-IR), and concentrations of cholesterol solution are measured by ultraviolet and visible (UV VIS) spectrophotometer. The research on optimal synthesis conditions of HP-β-CD indicates that sodium hydroxide amounts have the most effect on yields of product. The maximum solubilization multiples of HP-β-CD reaches 15, below which molecular rate of HP-β-CD and cholesterol in inclusion complex is 1:1

Monitoring human cytomegalovirus infection with nested PCR: comparison of positive rates in plasma and leukocytes and with quantitative PCR

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection poses a significant health threat to immunocompromised individuals. Here we performed this study to set up a highly sensitive nested PCR method applicable for detecting HCMV infection in high-risk individuals. In this work, 106 blood specimens from 66 patients with potential HCMV infection were obtained. Total DNA was extracted separately from plasma and peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL) of each sample. HCMV DNA was detected in parallel by nested PCR and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR), and the results were compared.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Serial dilution test revealed that the detection limit of nested PCR was 180 copies/ml. The nested PCR showed a higher positive rate than qRT-PCR (34.9% vs. 12.3%, p < 0.001). The positive rate of nested PCR based on PBL DNA was significantly higher than that based on plasma DNA (34.9% vs. 18.9%, p = 0.002). Of the 14 patients with serial samples, 11 were positive for HCMV DNA in PBL while only 7 were positive in plasma. Moreover, for each patient, nested PCR using PBL DNA also detected more positive samples than that using plasma DNA.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Combined use of nested PCR with PBL DNA is highly sensitive in defining HCMV infection. This assay is particularly useful in the case of quantification not essential.</p

Origin of Difference in Photocatalytic Activity of ZnO (002) Grown on a- and c-Face Sapphire

The oriented (002) ZnO films were grown on a- and c-face sapphire by pulsed laser deposition. The X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the oriented (002) ZnO films were epitaxially grown on the substrate successfully. The sample on a-face sapphire had higher crystal quality. However, the photocatalytic activity for Rhodamine B degradation of ZnO film on c-face sapphire was higher than that on a-face sapphire. The Raman spectrum and XPS analysis suggested that the sample on a-face sapphire had higher concentration of defects. The result of the contact angle measurement revealed that the sample on c-face sapphire had higher surface energy. And the investigation of the surface conductance implied that the higher light conductance was helpful for the photocatalytic activity