Land Change Modeler Application: Summer Internship with Clark Labs

This paper is a description of our internship with Clark Labs in the summer of 2015. We worked as research assistants in the Land Change Modeler Application (App) project. This project aimed to display the land cover changes in the United States from 2001 to 2010, show the vulnerability in 48 states and predict changes from the yaer 2050. Our responsibility was to extract eight variables (slope, elevation, surface water, roads, high intensity land, protected areas, county subdivisions, and cultivated crops) in TerrSet, and use them in several models to test the accuracy of prediction. The internship is a great opportunity for us to learn more about changes of land cover and differences among several land change models. From this internship, we became more familiar with ArcGIS and TerrSet. We highly recommend this internship with Clark Labs to people who are interested in land change analysis. The following pages provides information on the introduction of the organization, our internship responsibilities, and the assessment of our internship

Synthesis and Characterization of YAG Nanoparticles by Ultrasound-Assisted and Ultrasound-Microwave-Assisted Alkoxide Hydrolysis Precipitation Methods

Yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG, Y3Al5O12) nanoparticles were synthesized by ultrasound-assisted and ultrasound-microwave-assisted alkoxide hydrolysis precipitation methods. The effect of reaction parameters including pH value, ultrasonic radiation time, and calcination temperature on the composition of the products was investigated. The YAG nanoparticles and their precursor were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), differential thermal analysis (DTA), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The results show that the single ultrasound-assisted method to synthesize YAG phase often contains intermediate phases of YAM (Y4Al2O9) and YAP (YAlO3); pure YAG phase can form only at special conditions and as single crystal. The pure phase YAG powders can be obtained at each experimental condition when using ultrasound-microwave-assisted synthesis and the grain is polycrystalline. This is due to the microwave radiation which promotes atomic diffusion and forms a lot of crystal nuclei of YAG in the precursor. The YAG nanoparticles with a grain size of 18 nm can be obtained at a calcination temperature of 900°C when using ultrasound-microwave-assisted method

FIMCE: A fully isolated micro-computing environment for multicore systems

Singapore National Research Foundatio

The chlamydial periplasmic stress response serine protease cHtrA is secreted into host cell cytosol

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The periplasmic High Temperature Requirement protein A (HtrA) plays important roles in bacterial protein folding and stress responses. However, the role of chlamydial HtrA (cHtrA) in chlamydial pathogenesis is not clear.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The cHtrA was detected both inside and outside the chlamydial inclusions. The detection was specific since both polyclonal and monoclonal anti-cHtrA antibodies revealed similar intracellular labeling patterns that were only removed by absorption with cHtrA but not control fusion proteins. In a Western blot assay, the anti-cHtrA antibodies detected the endogenous cHtrA in Chlamydia-infected cells without cross-reacting with any other chlamydial or host cell antigens. Fractionation of the infected cells revealed cHtrA in the host cell cytosol fraction. The periplasmic cHtrA protein appeared to be actively secreted into host cell cytosol since no other chlamydial periplasmic proteins were detected in the host cell cytoplasm. Most chlamydial species secreted cHtrA into host cell cytosol and the secretion was not inhibitable by a type III secretion inhibitor.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Since it is hypothesized that chlamydial organisms possess a proteolysis strategy to manipulate host cell signaling pathways, secretion of the serine protease cHtrA into host cell cytosol suggests that the periplasmic cHtrA may also play an important role in chlamydial interactions with host cells.</p

When STING meets viruses: Sensing, trafficking and response

To effectively defend against microbial pathogens, the host cells mount antiviral innate immune responses by producing interferons (IFNs), and hundreds of IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs). Upon recognition of cytoplasmic viral or bacterial DNAs and abnormal endogenous DNAs, the DNA sensor cGAS synthesizes 2\u27,3\u27-cGAMP that induces STING (stimulator of interferon genes) undergoing conformational changes, cellular trafficking, and the activation of downstream factors. Therefore, STING plays a pivotal role in preventing microbial pathogen infection by sensing DNAs during pathogen invasion. This review is dedicated to the recent advances in the dynamic regulations of STING activation, intracellular trafficking, and post-translational modifications (PTMs) by the host and microbial proteins

Addressing Data Scarcity in Optical Matrix Multiplier Modeling Using Transfer Learning

We present and experimentally evaluate using transfer learning to address experimental data scarcity when training neural network (NN) models for Mach-Zehnder interferometer mesh-based optical matrix multipliers. Our approach involves pre-training the model using synthetic data generated from a less accurate analytical model and fine-tuning with experimental data. Our investigation demonstrates that this method yields significant reductions in modeling errors compared to using an analytical model, or a standalone NN model when training data is limited. Utilizing regularization techniques and ensemble averaging, we achieve < 1 dB root-mean-square error on the matrix weights implemented by a 3x3 photonic chip while using only 25% of the available data