Geometric effects of a quarter of corrugated torus

In the spirit of the thin-layer quantization scheme, we give the effective Shr\"{o}dinger equation for a particle confined to a corrugated torus, in which the geometric potential is substantially changed by corrugation. We find the attractive wells reconstructed by the corrugation not being at identical depths, which is strikingly different from that of a corrugated nanotube, especially in the inner side of the torus. By numerically calculating the transmission probability, we find that the resonant tunneling peaks and the transmission gaps are merged and broadened by the corrugation of the inner side of torus. These results show that the quarter corrugated torus can be used not only to connect two tubes with different radiuses in different directions, but also to filter the particles with particular incident~energies.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure

Leaching of amylose from wheat and corn starch

Call number: LD2668 .T4 GRSC 1989 S55Master of ScienceGrain Science and Industr

A General Theorem Relating the Bulk Topological Number to Edge States in Two-dimensional Insulators

We prove a general theorem on the relation between the bulk topological quantum number and the edge states in two dimensional insulators. It is shown that whenever there is a topological order in bulk, characterized by a non-vanishing Chern number, even if it is defined for a non-conserved quantity such as spin in the case of the spin Hall effect, one can always infer the existence of gapless edge states under certain twisted boundary conditions that allow tunneling between edges. This relation is robust against disorder and interactions, and it provides a unified topological classification of both the quantum (charge) Hall effect and the quantum spin Hall effect. In addition, it reconciles the apparent conflict between the stability of bulk topological order and the instability of gapless edge states in systems with open boundaries (as known happening in the spin Hall case). The consequences of time reversal invariance for bulk topological order and edge state dynamics are further studied in the present framework.Comment: A mistake corrected in reference

Night Eating Syndrome and Its Association with Sleep Quality and Body Mass Index Among University Students During the Covid-19

Night eating syndrome (NES) is a disordered eating behaviour characterized by hyperphagia at night and is often accompanied by a sleep disturbance. This study aims to determine the prevalence of NES and its association between sleep quality and body mass index (BMI) among the private university students during the Covid-19. A total of 166 students from a private university participated in this cross-sectional study. Online self-administered questionnaires were used to collect and determine socio-demographic data, BMI, NES, and sleep quality. NES was assessed using Night Eating Diagnostic Questionnaire (NEDQ) while sleep quality was assessed using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index Questionnaire (PSQI). The results showed that 38.6% of the participants were engaging with NES, 45.2% were having poor sleep quality and 25.9% were overweight or obese during the Covid-19. There were significant associations between NES with sleep quality and BMI, which students with NES were found to have poorer sleep quality (r=0.306, p<0.001) and higher BMI (r=0.024, p=0.763). In addition, poor sleep quality was found to be positively associated with BMI (r=0.161, p=0.038). Males (AOR=2.198, 95% CI=1.005-4.808) and poor sleepers (AOR=1.176, 95% CI=1.028-1.346) were the risk factors of NES. In conclusion, the prevalence of NES, poor sleep quality, and overweight and obesity were at an alarming rate. NES was found to be related to both poorer sleep quality and higher BMI among the students. Therefore, interventions such as behavioural and cognitive therapy should be implemented to promote healthy eating behaviour among university students

Virtual-Taobao: Virtualizing Real-world Online Retail Environment for Reinforcement Learning

Applying reinforcement learning in physical-world tasks is extremely challenging. It is commonly infeasible to sample a large number of trials, as required by current reinforcement learning methods, in a physical environment. This paper reports our project on using reinforcement learning for better commodity search in Taobao, one of the largest online retail platforms and meanwhile a physical environment with a high sampling cost. Instead of training reinforcement learning in Taobao directly, we present our approach: first we build Virtual Taobao, a simulator learned from historical customer behavior data through the proposed GAN-SD (GAN for Simulating Distributions) and MAIL (multi-agent adversarial imitation learning), and then we train policies in Virtual Taobao with no physical costs in which ANC (Action Norm Constraint) strategy is proposed to reduce over-fitting. In experiments, Virtual Taobao is trained from hundreds of millions of customers' records, and its properties are compared with the real environment. The results disclose that Virtual Taobao faithfully recovers important properties of the real environment. We also show that the policies trained in Virtual Taobao can have significantly superior online performance to the traditional supervised approaches. We hope our work could shed some light on reinforcement learning applications in complex physical environments

Overexpression of a Water-Forming NADH Oxidase Improves the Metabolism and Stress Tolerance of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in Aerobic Fermentation

Recognising that the world into which students emerge upon graduation is characterised by constant change, we embrace a critical pedagogy that can be implemented in the classroom through the use of freehand drawing. Freehand drawing is a technique that can stimulate a critical stance, as visual representations allow us to comprehend the world differently, while permitting us see how others understand the world. First year students, in their first lecture, were asked to draw their interpretations of Irish politics and to explain in writing what they had drawn. The students were then placed in groups and asked to note what they saw in each other’s drawings, allowing for the identification of general patterns and themes. In this context, freehand drawing facilitates our ability to: ‘see’ how we understand a topic and that there are multiple ways of understanding; test theories, orthodoxies and accepted truths; scrutinise tacit assumptions; and ponder other possibilities. In employing freehand drawing in this manner, our aim is to create a learning environment where students develop their capacity for critical self-reflection

Physiochemical properties of highly cross-linked maize starches and their enzymatic digestibilities by three analytical methods

Waxy maize, normal maize and high amylose maize starches were highly cross-linked (CL) with phosphate groups. The CL starches were characterized by phosphorus content, settling volume, gelatinization temperature, pasting curve, X-ray diffraction and microscopy. Their digestibilities were determined by the Englyst, Available Carbohydrate Dietary Fiber (ACDF), and AOAC 991.43 methods where starch digestion with α-amylase was done, respectively, at 37, 80 and 95 °C. The CL waxy maize starch had ∼10% more phosphorus content (0.36% vs 0.32%) than the CL normal and high-amylose maize starches. Total dietary fiber (TDF) levels of the unmodified and CL starches determined by the AOAC and ACDF methods increased with increasing amylose content. The resistant starch (RS) contents of the three CL starches decreased in the order, CL high amylose (85%) > CL waxy (82%) > CL normal (61%) maize starch. The digestibilities of the unmodified and CL maize starches at 80 and 95 °C were positively correlated with their settling volumes at those temperatures, indicating that increased granule swelling decreased TDF levels. Photomicrographs of the starch granules after digestion in the TDF and RS assays showed less internal erosion of granules in CL high-amylose starch compared to CL normal and waxy maize starches