Predicted percentage dissatisfied with vertical temperature gradient

A vertical thermally stratified environment provides opportunities for improved ventilation effectiveness and energy efficiency, but vertical temperature gradient can also cause local thermal discomfort. ASHRAE 55 and ISO 7730 prescribe a 3 °C/m limit between head and feet for seated persons. However, an increasing amount of evidence suggests that this limit is too restrictive. To revisit how vertical temperature gradient affects local thermal comfort, we conducted laboratory tests with four nominal vertical temperature gradients (0.4, 2.9, 5.9, and 8.4 °C/m). Ninety-eight seated college-age students participated in a blind within-subject experiment. Cold-feet discomfort is more frequently rated than warm-head discomfort with increasing temperature gradients. By using logistic regression modeling, we show that the whole-body dissatisfaction increases only slightly (< 10 %) with vertical temperature gradient, even up to 8.4 °C/m. Sex does not significantly affect the results except at 8.4 °C/m. Acceptable vertical temperature gradient changes with thermal sensation votes. The results suggest that the vertical temperature gradient could be increased to 5 °C/m between head and feet when the subject is thermally neutral

Review of fan-use rates in field studies and their effects on thermal comfort, energy conservation, and human productivity

This paper is a literature review of field studies on fan-use rates and their effects on thermal comfort, energy conservation, and human productivity. In the assessed literature, fans are more popular in Asia, and more used in mixed-mode (MM) and naturally ventilated (NV) buildings than in air-conditioned (AC) buildings. On the basis of collected fan-use models, probit regression models of fan-use rates and ambient environments were obtained and indicate that the essential trigger of fan-use is a warm environment rather than building types. This result helps us to understand the control behaviors and comfort requirements of occupants. Also, fans could provide benefits in three aspects: widening neutral temperatures, saving energy, and improving occupants’ productivity. First, using fans in buildings elevates the neutral temperature and the upper limit of neutral zone (0.5 thermal sensation scale) averages by about 3 K in ranges from 25.7℃ to 28.7℃ and 27.5℃ to 30.7℃, respectively. Second, fan-use reduces AC-use rates in MM buildings in summer. The regression models based on the collected AC-use rate models illustrate that, on average, AC-use is expected to be reduced by about 15% in summer when fans are used. Third, providing occupants access to fans could improve occupants’ productivity. Based on the limited data available, a 3-K temperature extension is achieved by fans ensuring productivity not decreasing. This review could shed some light on the extension of the neutral temperature range, predictions of MM buildings’ energy consumptions, and methods to enhance productivity. Additionally, this review suggests some valuable directions for future research on fans

Semantic-Aware Fine-Grained Correspondence

Establishing visual correspondence across images is a challenging and essential task. Recently, an influx of self-supervised methods have been proposed to better learn representations for visual correspondence. However, we find that these methods often fail to leverage semantic information and over-rely on the matching of low-level features. In contrast, human vision is capable of distinguishing between distinct objects as a pretext to tracking. Inspired by this paradigm, we propose to learn semantic-aware fine-grained correspondence. Firstly, we demonstrate that semantic correspondence is implicitly available through a rich set of image-level self-supervised methods. We further design a pixel-level self-supervised learning objective which specifically targets fine-grained correspondence. For downstream tasks, we fuse these two kinds of complementary correspondence representations together, demonstrating that they boost performance synergistically. Our method surpasses previous state-of-the-art self-supervised methods using convolutional networks on a variety of visual correspondence tasks, including video object segmentation, human pose tracking, and human part tracking.Comment: 26 page

For Pre-Trained Vision Models in Motor Control, Not All Policy Learning Methods are Created Equal

In recent years, increasing attention has been directed to leveraging pre-trained vision models for motor control. While existing works mainly emphasize the importance of this pre-training phase, the arguably equally important role played by downstream policy learning during control-specific fine-tuning is often neglected. It thus remains unclear if pre-trained vision models are consistent in their effectiveness under different control policies. To bridge this gap in understanding, we conduct a comprehensive study on 14 pre-trained vision models using 3 distinct classes of policy learning methods, including reinforcement learning (RL), imitation learning through behavior cloning (BC), and imitation learning with a visual reward function (VRF). Our study yields a series of intriguing results, including the discovery that the effectiveness of pre-training is highly dependent on the choice of the downstream policy learning algorithm. We show that conventionally accepted evaluation based on RL methods is highly variable and therefore unreliable, and further advocate for using more robust methods like VRF and BC. To facilitate more universal evaluations of pre-trained models and their policy learning methods in the future, we also release a benchmark of 21 tasks across 3 different environments alongside our work

Direct observation of ordered configurations of hydrogen adatoms on graphene

Ordered configurations of hydrogen adatoms on graphene have long been proposed, calculated and searched for. Here we report direct observation of several ordered configurations of H adatoms on graphene by scanning tunneling microscopy. On the top side of the graphene plane, H atoms in the configurations appear to stick to carbon atoms in the same sublattice. A gap larger than 0.6 eV in the local density of states of the configurations was revealed by scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements. These findings can be well explained by density functional theory calculations based on double sided H configurations. In addition, factors that may influence H ordering are discussed

Pročišćavanje i karakterizacija fibrinolitičkog enzima iz plijesni Rhizopus microsporus var. tuberosus

Extracellular fibrinolytic enzyme from Rhizopus microsporus var. tuberosus was purified and characterised. The microorganism was isolated in a distillery from daqu, a fermentative agent used in the production of Chinese liquor and vinegar at diff erent temperatures. The fibrinolytic enzyme was partially purifi ed by ammonium sulphate precipitation, dialysis, DEAE Sepharose® Fast Flow ion exchange chromatography and Sephadex G-75 gel filtration chromatography. The molecular mass of the fi brinolytic enzyme was estimated to be 24.5 kDa by SDS-PAGE. The purified enzyme showed optimal activity at pH=7.0 and 37 °C by fibrin plate method. It showed stronger resistance to the inhibition by trypsin and was stable at 37 °C retaining 96.1 % residual activity aft er 4 h of incubation. The fibrinolytic activity of the enzyme was enhanced by Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+ and Mn2+. Conversely, Zn2+ and Cu2+ partly inhibited enzymatic activity. Using fibrin plate method, we found that the enzyme not only degrades fibrin directly, but also activates plasminogen into plasmin to degrade fibrin. The results indicate that the pure enzyme has a potential in dissolving blood clot, and the possibility for application in the treatment of thrombosis.U radu je pročišćen i ispitan izvanstanični fibrinolitički enzim iz plijesni Rhizopus microsporus var. tuberosus. Mikroorganizam je izoliran u distileriji iz starter kulture koja se koristi za fermentaciju tradicionalnog kineskog likera i octa pri različitim temperaturama, tzv. daqu. Fibrinolitički je enzim djelomično pročišćen taloženjem pomoću amonijevog sulfata, dijalizom, ionskom kromatografijom na koloni DEAE Sepharose Fast Flow i gel-filtracijskom kromatografijom na koloni Sephadex G-7. Molekularna masa fibrinolitičkog enzima, određena pomoću SDS-PAGE, iznosila je 24,5 kDa. Optimalni uvjeti za aktivnost pročišćenog enzima bili su pH=7,0 i 37 °C. Enzim je bio otporan na inhibiciju tripsinom, stabilan pri 37 °C, te je zadržao 96,1 % aktivnosti nakon 4 sata inkubacije. Fibrinolitička se aktivnost enzima pojačala u prisutnosti iona Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+ i Mn2+, dok su ioni Zn2+ i Cu2+ djelomično inhibirali njegovu aktivnost. Utvrđeno je da enzim izravno razgrađuje fibrin, i aktivira plazminogen, pri čemu nastali plazmin razgrađuje fibrin. Rezultati pokazuju da se pročišćeni enzim može primijeniti u liječenju tromboze, jer ima sposobnost razgradnje krvnih ugrušaka

EGFR inhibitor C225 increases the radiosensitivity of human lung squamous cancer cells

Background: The purpose of the present study is to investigate the direct biological effects of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor C225 on the radiosensitivity of human lung squamous cancer cell-H520. H520 cells were treated with different dosage of (60)Co gamma ray irradiation (1.953 Gy/min) in the presence or absence of C225. The cellular proliferation, colony forming capacity, apoptosis, the cell cycle distribution as well as caspase-3 were analyzed in vitro. Results: We found that C225 treatment significantly increased radiosensitivity of H-520 cells to irradiation, and led to cell cycle arrest in G(1) phase, whereas (60)Co gamma ray irradiation mainly caused G(2) phase arrest. H-520 cells thus displayed both the G(1) and G(2) phase arrest upon treatment with C225 in combination with (60)Co gamma ray irradiation. Moreover, C225 treatment significantly increased the apoptosis percentage of H-520 cells (13.91% +/- 1.88%) compared with the control group (5.75% +/- 0.64%, P < 0.05). Conclusion: In this regard, C225 treatment may make H-520 cells more sensitive to irradiation through the enhancement of caspase-3 mediated tumor cell apoptosis and cell cycle arrest.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000284001800001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701OncologySCI(E)PubMed2ARTICLE391

Crystallographic Disorder and Strong Magnetic Anisotropy in Dy3.1Pt2.0Sb3.8

We report the crystal growth and characterization of a rare-earth-containing ternary material, Dy3.1(3)Pt2.0(7)Sb3.8(4). This compound possesses a similar structure to the previously reported Y3Pt4Ge6, but lacks two layers of Pt atoms. Crystallographic disorder was found in Dy3.1Pt2.0Sb3.8. Additionally, the Dy-Dy framework was found to have both square net and triangular lattices. Dy3.1Pt2.0Sb3.8 was determined to be antiferromagnetically ordered around ~15 K while a competing antiferromagnetic sublattice also exists at lower temperature. Strong magnetic anisotropy was observed and several metamagnetic transitions were seen in the hysteresis loops. Furthermore, the Curie-Weiss fitting revealed unusually small effective moment of Dy, which is far below the expected value of Dy2+ (10.6 muB), Dy3+ (10.65 muB) and Dy4+ (9.72 muB). This novel material might provide a new platform to study the relation between crystallographic disorder and magnetism.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figure

A multi-factorial genetic model for prognostic assessment of high risk melanoma patients receiving adjuvant interferon

Purpose: IFNa was the first cytokine to demonstrate anti-tumor activity in advanced melanoma. Despite the ability of high-dose IFNa reducing relapse and mortality by up to 33%, large majority of patients experience side effects and toxicity which outweigh the benefits. The current study attempts to identify genetic markers likely to be associated with benefit from IFN-a2b treatment and predictive for survival. Experimental design: We tested the association of variants in FOXP3 microsatellites, CTLA4 SNPs and HLA genotype in 284 melanoma patients and their association with prognosis and survival of melanoma patients who received IFNa adjuvant therapy. Results: Univariate survival analysis suggested that patients bearing either the DRB1*15 or HLA-Cw7 allele suffered worse OS while patients bearing either HLA-Cw6 or HLA-B44 enjoyed better OS. DRB1*15 positive patients suffered also worse RFS and conversely HLA-Cw6 positive patients had better RFS. Multivariate analysis revealed that a five-marker genotyping signature was prognostic of OS independent of disease stage. In the multivariate Cox regression model, HLA-B38 (p = 0.021), HLA-C15 (p = 0.025), HLA-C3 (p = 0.014), DRB1*15 (p = 0.005) and CT60*G/G (0.081) were significantly associated with OS with risk ratio of 0.097 (95% CI, 0.013-0.709), 0.387 (95% CI, 0.169-0.889), 0.449 (95% CI, 0.237-0.851), 1.948 (95% CI, 1.221-3.109) and 1.484 (95% IC, 0.953-2.312) respectively. Conclusion: These results suggest that gene polymorphisms relevant to a biological occurrence are more likely to be informative when studied in concert to address potential redundant or conflicting functions that may limit each gene individual contribution. The five markers identified here exemplify this concept though prospective validation in independent cohorts is needed