Environmental Sensing by Wearable Device for Indoor Activity and Location Estimation

We present results from a set of experiments in this pilot study to investigate the causal influence of user activity on various environmental parameters monitored by occupant carried multi-purpose sensors. Hypotheses with respect to each type of measurements are verified, including temperature, humidity, and light level collected during eight typical activities: sitting in lab / cubicle, indoor walking / running, resting after physical activity, climbing stairs, taking elevators, and outdoor walking. Our main contribution is the development of features for activity and location recognition based on environmental measurements, which exploit location- and activity-specific characteristics and capture the trends resulted from the underlying physiological process. The features are statistically shown to have good separability and are also information-rich. Fusing environmental sensing together with acceleration is shown to achieve classification accuracy as high as 99.13%. For building applications, this study motivates a sensor fusion paradigm for learning individualized activity, location, and environmental preferences for energy management and user comfort.Comment: submitted to the 40th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON

Fast Generation of High-Fidelity Mechanical Non-Gaussian States via Additional Amplifier and Photon Subtraction

Non-Gaussian states (NGSs) with higher-order correlation properties have wide-range applications in quantum information processing. However, the preparation of such states with high quality still faces practical challenges. Here, we propose a protocol to rapidly generate two types of mechanical NGSs, Schr\"{o}dinger cat states and Fock states, in dissipative optomechanical systems, even when the cooperativity is smaller than one ($g^2/\kappa\gamma<1$). In contrast to the usual scheme of directly applying non-Gaussian operations on the entangled optical mode, we show that an additional phase-sensitive amplifier can accelerate the generation and also precisely control the type of NGSs. Then, a principally deterministic multi-photon subtraction induced by the Rydberg-blockade effect is adopted to produce large-sized NGSs. The protocol can be implemented with state-of-the-art experimental systems with close to unit fidelity. Moreover, it can also be extended to generate a four-component cat state and provide new possibilities for future quantum applications of NGSs.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Methyl 3-carboxy-5-nitrobenzoate

The structure of the title compound, C9H7NO6, is essentially planar [maximum deviation 0.284 (2)Å] except for the methyl H atoms. The crystal structure is stabilized by asymmetric O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds linking the hydrogen carboxyl­ates into pairs around the inversion centres. There is also π–π stacking of the benzene rings [centroid–centroid distance 3.6912 (12) Å]

Mechanical properties and energy dissipation of rock under acid corrosion and coupled static-dynamic loads

The dynamic impact experiment were carried out to investigate the dynamic mechanical properties of different types of rocks under acidic environment and coupled static-dynamic loads. The experimental results showed that the mechanical properties of marble and red sandstone are affected by acid corrosion, impact pressure and coupled loading. Based on the principle of energy conservation and the experimental results, the energy dissipation law of the red sandstone under coupled static-dynamic loads was analyzed. The analysis results show that with the increasing of the impact pressure, the average strain rate increases, and the incident energy increases linearly, and the reflection energy and energy absorption show a slow growth trend; The transmission energy is almost unaffected by the impact pressure, and the fitting curve is approximate to a straight line. The results show that there is an obvious correlation between the dynamic strength of rock and the absorbed energy. The higher the impact pressure is, the greater the absorption energy is, the higher the strength of the rock under static and dynamic combination is

Fragmentation fractal of sandstone under acid corrosion and coupled static-dynamic loads

The analysis results show that the fragment of broken rock is a fractal distribution, and the smaller the impact pressure is, the less specimen fragments is,the lower degree of fragmentation degree is, and the lower fractal dimension is. Research shows that fractal dimension increases with the dynamic compression strength of rock increasing, and the incident energy and the absorb energy increase linear with the fracture fractal dimension increasing. The fragmentation distribution of the specimens becomes more and more uniform with the increasing of the incident energy, and the characteristic scale of rupture decreased gradually

Hederagenin from the leaves of ivy (Hedera helix L.) induces apoptosis in human LoVo colon cells through the mitochondrial pathway

BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer has become one of the leading cause of cancer morbidity and mortality throughout world. Hederagenin, a derivative of oleanolic acid isolated from the leaves of ivy (Hedera helix L.), has been shown to have potential anti-tumor activity. The study was conducted to evaluate whether hederagenin could induce apoptosis of human colon cancer LoVo cells and explore the possible mechanism. METHODS: MTT assay was used for evaluating cell viability while Annexin V-FITC/PI assay and Hoechst 33342 nuclear stainining were used for the determination of apoptosis and mitochondrial membrane potential. DCFH-DA fluorescence staining and flow cytometry were used to measure ROS generation. Real-time PCR and western blot analysis were performed for apoptosis-related protein expressions. RESULTS: MTT assay showed that hederagenin could significantly inhibit the viability of LoVo cells in a concentration-dependent and time-dependent manner by IC(50) of 1.39 μM at 24 h and 1.17 μM at 48 h. The apoptosis ratio was significantly increased to 32.46% and 81.78% by the induction of hederagenin (1 and 2 μM) in Annexin V-FITC/PI assay. Hederagenin could also induce the nuclear changes characteristic of apoptosis by Hoechst 33342 nuclear stainining under fluorescence microscopy. DCFH-DA fluorescence staining and flow cytometry showed that hederagenin could increase significantly ROS generation in LoVo cells. Real-time PCR showed that hederagenin induced the up-regulation of Bax and down-regulation of Bcl-2, Bcl-xL and Survivin. Western blotting analysis showed that hederagenin decreased the expressions of apoptosis-associated proteins Bcl-2, procaspase-9, procaspase-3, and polyADP- ribosepolymerase (PARP) were increased, while the expressions of Bax, caspase-3, caspase-9 were increased. However, there was no significant change on caspase-8. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicated that the disruption of mitochondrial membrane potential might contribute to the apoptosis of hederagenin in LoVo cells. Our findings suggested that hederagenin might be a promising therapeutic candidate for human colon cancer