Designing materials for electrochemical carbon dioxide recycling

Electrochemical carbon dioxide recycling provides an attractive approach to synthesizing fuels and chemical feedstocks using renewable energy. On the path to deploying this technology, basic and applied scientific hurdles remain. Integrating catalytic design with mechanistic understanding yields scientific insights and progresses the technology towards industrial relevance. Catalysts must be able to generate valuable carbon-based products with better selectivity, lower overpotentials and improved current densities with extended operation. Here, we describe progress and identify mechanistic questions and performance metrics for catalysts that can enable carbon-neutral renewable energy storage and utilization

Topological Interactions in Warped Extra Dimensions

Topological interactions will be generated in theories with compact extra dimensions where fermionic chiral zero modes have different localizations. This is the case in many warped extra dimension models where the right-handed top quark is typically localized away from the left-handed one. Using deconstruction techniques, we study the topological interactions in these models. These interactions appear as trilinear and quadrilinear gauge boson couplings in low energy effective theories with three or more sites, as well as in the continuum limit. We derive the form of these interactions for various cases, including examples of Abelian, non-Abelian and product gauge groups of phenomenological interest. The topological interactions provide a window into the more fundamental aspects of these theories and could result in unique signatures at the Large Hadron Collider, some of which we explore.Comment: 40 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables; modifications in the KK parity discussion, final version at JHE

Functional inks of graphene, metal dichalcogenides and black phosphorus for photonics and (opto) electronics

We discuss the emerging role of solution processing and functional ink formulation in the fabrication of devices based on two dimensional (2d) materials. By drawing on examples from our research, we show that these inks allow 2d materials to be exploited in a wide variety of applications, including in photonics and (opto)electronics. Keywords: Graphene, Transition Metal Dichalcogenides, TMDs, Black Phosphorous, Phosphorene, Functional Inks, 2d Materials, Inkjet Printing, Ultrafast Lasers, Flexible Electronic

Pharmacological Effects of Active Compounds on Neurodegenerative Disease with Gastrodia and Uncaria Decoction, a Commonly Used Poststroke Decoction

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Chaotic motions in the real fuzzy electronic circuits

Fuzzy electronic circuit (FEC) is firstly introduced, which is implementing Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy chaotic systems on electronic circuit. In the research field of secure communications, the original source should be blended with other complex signals. Chaotic signals are one of the good sources to be applied to encrypt high confidential signals, because of its high complexity, sensitiveness of initial conditions, and unpredictability. Consequently, generating chaotic signals on electronic circuit to produce real electrical signals applied to secure communications is an exceedingly important issue. However, nonlinear systems are always composed of many complex equations and are hard to realize on electronic circuits. Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model is a powerful tool, which is described by fuzzy IF-THEN rules to express the local dynamics of each fuzzy rule by a linear system model. Accordingly, in this paper, we produce the chaotic signals via electronic circuits through T-S fuzzy model and the numerical simulation results provided by MATLAB are also proposed for comparison. T-S fuzzy chaotic Lorenz and Chen-Lee systems are used for examples and are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed electronic circuit. © 2013 Shih-Yu Li et al

Wave attenuation at a salt marsh margin: A case study of an exposed coast on the Yangtze estuary

To quantify wave attenuation by (introduced) Spartina alterniflora vegetation at an exposed macrotidal coast in the Yangtze Estuary, China, wave parameters and water depth were measured during 13 consecutive tides at nine locations ranging from 10 m seaward to 50 m landward of the low marsh edge. During this period, the incident wave height ranged from <0.1 to 1.5 m, the maximum of which is much higher than observed in other marsh areas around the world. Our measurements and calculations showed that the wave attenuation rate per unit distance was 1 to 2 magnitudes higher over the marsh than over an adjacent mudflat. Although the elevation gradient of the marsh margin was significantly higher than that of the adjacent mudflat, more than 80% of wave attenuation was ascribed to the presence of vegetation, suggesting that shoaling effects were of minor importance. On average, waves reaching the marsh were eliminated over a distance of similar to 80 m, although a marsh distance of >= 100 m was needed before the maximum height waves were fully attenuated during high tides. These attenuation distances were longer than those previously found in American salt marshes, mainly due to the macrotidal and exposed conditions at the present site. The ratio of water depth to plant height showed an inverse correlation with wave attenuation rate, indicating that plant height is a crucial factor determining the efficiency of wave attenuation. Consequently, the tall shoots of the introduced S. alterniflora makes this species much more efficient at attenuating waves than the shorter, native pioneer species in the Yangtze Estuary, and should therefore be considered as a factor in coastal management during the present era of sea-level rise and global change. We also found that wave attenuation across the salt marsh can be predicted using published models when a suitable coefficient is incorporated to account for drag, which varies in place and time due to differences in plant characteristics and abiotic conditions (i.e., bed gradient, initial water depth, and wave action).

Suppression of hypoxia inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) by YC-1 is dependent on murine double minute 2 (Mdm2)

Inhibition of HIF-1α activity provides an important strategy for the treatment of cancer. Recently, 3-(5′-hydroxymethyl-2′-furyl)-1-benzyl indazole (YC-1) has been identified as an anti-HIF-1α drug in cancer therapy with unclear molecular mechanism. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the effect and mechanism of YC-1 on HIF-1α in a hepatocellular carcinoma cell line under hypoxic condition, which was generated by incubating cells with 0.1% O2. The phenotypic and molecular changes of cells were determined by cell proliferation assay, apoptosis assay, luciferase promoter assay, and Western blot analysis. YC-1 arrested tumor cell growth in a dose-dependent manner, whereas it did not induce cell apoptosis. Hypoxia-induced upregulation of HIF-1α was suppressed by YC-1 administration. YC-1 inhibited HIF-1α protein synthesis under normoxia and affected protein stability under hypoxia. YC-1 suppressed the expression of total and phosphorylated forms of murine double minute 2 (Mdm2), whereas this inhibitory effect was blocked by overexpression of Mdm2. In conclusion, YC-1 suppressed both protein synthesis and stability of HIF-1α in HCC cells, and its inhibitory effects on HIF-1α were dependent on Mdm2. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.postprin

On utilization of the grid computing technology for video conversion and 3D rendering

[[abstract]]In this paper, we investigate the recent popular computing technique called grid computing, and use video conversion and 3D rendering applications to demonstrate this technology's effectiveness and high performance. We also report on developing a resource broker called Phantom that runs on our grid computing testbed and whose main function is querying nodes in grid computing environments and showing their system information to aid in selecting the best nodes for job assignments to have the jobs executed in the least amount of time. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Dynamic partitioning of loop iterations on heterogeneous PC clusters

[[abstract]]Loop partitioning on parallel and distributed systems has been a critical problem. Furthermore, it becomes more difficult to deal with on the emerging heterogeneous PC cluster environments. In the past, some loop self-scheduling schemes have been proposed to be applicable to heterogeneous cluster environments. In this paper, we propose a performance-based approach, which partitions loop iterations according to the performance ratio of cluster nodes. To verify the proposed approach, a heterogeneous cluster is built, and three types of application programs are implemented to be executed in this testbed. Experimental results show that the proposed approach performs better than traditional schemes

A joint moment projection method and maximum entropy approach for simulation of soot formation and oxidation in diesel engines

A joint moment projection method and maximum entropy approach for treating the soot population balance equations is developed and presented in this work. The moment projection method is used to solve the population balance equations and generate moments that are supplied to the maximum entropy approach as a post-processing technique to reconstruct the soot particle size distribution. The particle size range required by the maximum entropy for particle size distribution reconstruction is determined based on the weighted particles generated in the moment projection method. The performance of the joint approach is first evaluated by solving a set of simplified population balance equations in Matlab, then it is implemented into a Stochastic Reactor Model engine code to simulate the formation and oxidation of soot particles in a single-cylinder direct injection diesel engine. Results suggest that the joint approach has the advantages of ease of implementation, high accuracy and low computational cost. It enables a detailed analysis on the soot formation and oxidation processes in diesel engines. Complete information on the soot particle size distribution can be provided with little CPU cost induced