Determination of optimal reversed field with maximal electrocaloric cooling by a direct entropy analysis

Application of a negative field on a positively poled ferroelectric sample can enhance the electrocaloric cooling and appears as a promising method to optimize the electrocaloric cycle. Experimental measurements show that the maximal cooling does not appear at the zero-polarization point, but around the shoulder of the P-E loop. This phenomenon cannot be explained by the theory based on the constant total entropy assumption under adiabatic condition. In fact, adiabatic condition does not imply constant total entropy when irreversibility is involved. A direct entropy analysis approach based on work loss is proposed in this work, which takes the entropy contribution of the irreversible process into account. The optimal reversed field determined by this approach agrees with the experimental observations. This study signifies the importance of considering the irreversible process in the electrocaloric cycles

Plaquette order and deconfined quantum critical point in the spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice

We have precisely determined the ground state phase diagram of the quantum spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic Heisenberg model on the honeycomb lattice using the tensor renormalization group method. We find that the ferromagnetic, ferroquadrupolar, and a large part of the antiferromagnetic phases are stable against quantum fluctuations. However, around the phase where the ground state is antiferroquadrupolar ordered in the classical limit, quantum fluctuations suppress completely all magnetic orders, leading to a plaquette order phase which breaks the lattice symmetry but preserves the spin SU(2) symmetry. On the evidence of our numerical results, the quantum phase transition between the antiferromagnetic phase and the plaquette phase is found to be either a direct second order or a very weak first order transition.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figures, published versio

Sequential Recommendation Based on Multivariate Hawkes Process Embedding With Attention.

Recommender systems are important approaches for dealing with the information overload problem in the big data era, and various kinds of auxiliary information, including time and sequential information, can help improve the performance of retrieval and recommendation tasks. However, it is still a challenging problem how to fully exploit such information to achieve high-quality recommendation results and improve users' experience. In this work, we present a novel sequential recommendation model, called multivariate Hawkes process embedding with attention (MHPE-a), which combines a temporal point process with the attention mechanism to predict the items that the target user may interact with according to her/his historical records. Specifically, the proposed approach MHPE-a can model users' sequential patterns in their temporal interaction sequences accurately with a multivariate Hawkes process. Then, we perform an accurate sequential recommendation to satisfy target users' real-time requirements based on their preferences obtained with MHPE-a from their historical records. Especially, an attention mechanism is used to leverage users' long/short-term preferences adaptively to achieve an accurate sequential recommendation. Extensive experiments are conducted on two real-world datasets (lastfm and gowalla), and the results show that MHPE-a achieves better performance than state-of-the-art baselines

Zoonotic disease risk perceptions and infection control practices of Australian veterinarians: Call for change in work culture

This study was conducted to determine the perceptions of zoonotic disease risk among Australian veterinarians, the infection control practices they use to protect themselves from zoonotic diseases, and the factors influencing their use of these protective practices. A questionnaire was designed and piloted prior to its administration to veterinarians at the annual Australian Veterinary Association Conference in May 2011. The questionnaire comprised 21 closed, semi-closed and open questions. Data from the questionnaire were analyzed using ordinal logistic regression analyses to determine significant factors for veterinarians’ use of personal protective equipment (PPE). A total of 344 veterinarians completed the questionnaire of which 63.7% were women, 63.2% worked in small/companion animal practice, and 79.9% worked in private veterinary practice. Of the respondents, 44.9% reported contracting a zoonosis during their careers with 19.7% reporting a suspected case and 25.2% reporting a confirmed incidence. Around 40–60% of veterinarians perceived exposure to zoonosis likely or very likely in a variety of situations. With reference to current national industry guidelines, the reported use of PPE was less than “adequate” for most scenarios except for performing postmortems, surgery or dental procedures. No PPE was used by 60–70% of veterinarians for treating respiratory and neurological cases and by 40–50% when treating gastrointestinal and dermatological cases. Workplace conditions need improvement as 34.8% of workplaces did not have isolation units for infected animals, 21.1% did not have separate eating areas for staff, and 57.1% did not have complete PPE kits for use. Veterinarians were more likely to use PPE if they had undertaken postgraduate education, perceived that zoonosis exposure from animals and procedures was likely, consciously considered PPE use for every case they dealt with and believed that liability issues and risks encouraged use of PPE. In contrast, those working in private practices, those who tended to ‘just hope for the best’ when trying to avoid zoonotic diseases, and those who were not aware of industry guidelines were less likely to use PPE. The results suggest that veterinarians’ perceptions and workplace policies and culture substantially influence their use of PPE. Efforts should be made to encourage veterinarians and their workplaces to use infection control practices to protect themselves and their staff from zoonotic diseases

Epidemiological characteristics of sporadic nosocomial COVID-19 infections from June 2020 to June 2021 in China: an overview of vaccine breakthrough infection events

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has wreaked havoc to human beings around the world. Although China quickly brought the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic under control, there have been several sporadic outbreaks in different regions of China since then. This article describes the chronological nosocomial COVID-19 infection events that related to several sporadic outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 in different regions of China. We reported epidemiological characteristics and management measures of sporadic nosocomial COVID-19 infections from June 2020 to June 2021 in China, specially focused on domestic COVID-19 breakthrough infection in China — a vaccinated healthcare professional working in the isolation ward of a designated COVID-19 hospital

High energy pseudogap and its evolution with doping in Fe-based superconductors as revealed by optical spectroscopy

We report optical spectroscopic measurements on electron- and hole-doped BaFe2As2. We show that the compounds in the normal state are not simple metals. The optical conductivity spectra contain, in addition to the free carrier response at low frequency, a temperature-dependent gap-like suppression at rather high energy scale near 0.6 eV. This suppression evolves with the As-Fe-As bond angle induced by electron- or hole-doping. Furthermore, the feature becomes much weaker in the Fe-chalcogenide compounds. We elaborate that the feature is caused by the strong Hund's rule coupling effect between the itinerant electrons and localized electron moment arising from the multiple Fe 3d orbitals. Our experiments demonstrate the coexistence of itinerant and localized electrons in iron-based compounds, which would then lead to a more comprehensive picture about the metallic magnetism in the materials.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Heterogeneity of Altered Cytokine Levels Across the Clinical Spectrum of Diabetes in China

OBJECTIVE - To determine the relationship between selected cytokines and diabetes in Chinese subjects. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS - Adult patients with recent-onset type 1 diabetes (n = 53), latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) (n = 250), and type 2 diabetes (n= 285) from multiple centers were compared with normal subjects (n = 196). We centrally tested serum GAD antibodies (GADAs), interleukin-6 (IL-6), lipocalin 2 (LCN2), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), and adiponectin. RESULTS - After adjustment for age, sex, and BMI, all diabetes types had increased IL-6 and LCN2 (P < 0.01), and all four cytokines were increased in LADA (P < 0.01). In type 1 diabetes, adiponectin but not hs-CRP was increased (P < 0.01), whereas in type 2 diabetes, hs-CRP but not adiponectin was increased (P < 0.01). Adiponectin was correlated positively with GADA titer and negatively with hs-CRP (P < 0.01 for both). CONCLUSIONS - In China, inflammatory markers are increased in all three major types of diabetes, but probably for different reasons, even in autoimmune diabetes. © 2011 by the American Diabetes Association.link_to_OA_fulltex

Study on Alcoholysis of Waste PET and Its Application in Wood Modification

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a thermoplastic polyester, is frequently used in plastic packaging such as bottles, films, and synthetic fibers. Due to its slow degradation in the natural environment, the accumulation of PET in large quantities poses a serious threat to the ecosystem. In this study, camphor pine wood was impregnated with these products by first alcoholyzing the waste PET, followed by the creation of a functional resin. The process of PET binary alcoholysis and unsaturated polyester (UPR) synthesis successfully incorporated certain characteristic groups from the PET raw material structure into the subsequent products of each stage, and cured them into a bulk unsaturated polyester with p-phenylene structure. The curing reaction primarily occurred in the carbon-carbon double bonds, according to the FTIR analysis of the PET raw material and the products at each stage. Under ideal conditions, the vacuum impregnation enhancement modification of camphor pine led to a 52.1 % increase in compressive strength and a decrease in water absorption from 103.8 % to 42 %, effectively enhancing the wood’s compressive strength and resistance to water absorption