A question of scale

If you search for 'collective behaviour' with your web browser most of the texts popping up will be about group activities of humans, including riots, fashion and mass panic. Nevertheless, collective behaviour is also considered to be an important aspect of observed phenomena in atoms and molecules, for example, during spontaneous magnetization. In your web search, you might also find articles on collectively migrating bacteria, insects or birds; or phenomena where groups of organisms or non- living objects synchronize their signals or motion (think of fireflies flashing in unison or people clapping in phase during rhythmic applause).Comment: Concepts essay, published in Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6836/full/411421a0.htm

Modelling coupled water and heat transport in a soil–mulch–plant–atmosphere continuum (SMPAC) system

Author name used in this publication: K. W. Chau2006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Aligning Manifolds of Double Pendulum Dynamics Under the Influence of Noise

This study presents the results of a series of simulation experiments that evaluate and compare four different manifold alignment methods under the influence of noise. The data was created by simulating the dynamics of two slightly different double pendulums in three-dimensional space. The method of semi-supervised feature-level manifold alignment using global distance resulted in the most convincing visualisations. However, the semi-supervised feature-level local alignment methods resulted in smaller alignment errors. These local alignment methods were also more robust to noise and faster than the other methods.Comment: The final version will appear in ICONIP 2018. A DOI identifier to the final version will be added to the preprint, as soon as it is availabl

Metalloporphyrin-incorporated diphosphine ligands for metal ion-binding

Poster: no. P48Diphosphine ligands have been widely used in organometallic chemistry and catalysis.1 By incorporation of functional units such as metallomacrocycles, the resulting functionalized diphosphines could exhibit unusual properties or binding behavior. In this study, we prepared several examples of ruthenium porphyrin phosphine complexes [RuII(Por)(dppm)2] (1; Por = TTP, 4-MeO-TPP, F20-TPP; dppm = bis(diphenylphosphino)methane) by a similar method to that previously reported for their congeners.2 Reaction of complexes 1 with a number of metal …published_or_final_versio

Sample entropy analysis of EEG signals via artificial neural networks to model patients' consciousness level based on anesthesiologists experience.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, as it can express the human brain's activities and reflect awareness, have been widely used in many research and medical equipment to build a noninvasive monitoring index to the depth of anesthesia (DOA). Bispectral (BIS) index monitor is one of the famous and important indicators for anesthesiologists primarily using EEG signals when assessing the DOA. In this study, an attempt is made to build a new indicator using EEG signals to provide a more valuable reference to the DOA for clinical researchers. The EEG signals are collected from patients under anesthetic surgery which are filtered using multivariate empirical mode decomposition (MEMD) method and analyzed using sample entropy (SampEn) analysis. The calculated signals from SampEn are utilized to train an artificial neural network (ANN) model through using expert assessment of consciousness level (EACL) which is assessed by experienced anesthesiologists as the target to train, validate, and test the ANN. The results that are achieved using the proposed system are compared to BIS index. The proposed system results show that it is not only having similar characteristic to BIS index but also more close to experienced anesthesiologists which illustrates the consciousness level and reflects the DOA successfully.This research is supported by the Center forDynamical Biomarkers and Translational Medicine, National Central University, Taiwan, which is sponsored by Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant no. MOST103-2911-I-008-001). Also, it is supported by National Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology in Taiwan (Grant nos. CSIST-095-V301 and CSIST-095-V302)

Effects of optical beam angle on quantitative optical coherence tomography (OCT) in normal and surface degenerated bovine articular cartilage

2010-2011 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Water Oxidation Catalysed by Iron Complex of N,N′-dimethyl-2,11-diaza[3,3](2,6)pyridinophane. Spectroscopy of Iron–oxo Intermediates and Density Functional Theory Calculations

published_or_final_versio

Enhancement of vaccinia virus based oncolysis with histone deacetylase inhibitors

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDI) dampen cellular innate immune response by decreasing interferon production and have been shown to increase the growth of vesicular stomatitis virus and HSV. As attenuated tumour-selective oncolytic vaccinia viruses (VV) are already undergoing clinical evaluation, the goal of this study is to determine whether HDI can also enhance the potency of these poxviruses in infection-resistant cancer cell lines. Multiple HDIs were tested and Trichostatin A (TSA) was found to potently enhance the spread and replication of a tumour selective vaccinia virus in several infection-resistant cancer cell lines. TSA significantly decreased the number of lung metastases in a syngeneic B16F10LacZ lung metastasis model yet did not increase the replication of vaccinia in normal tissues. The combination of TSA and VV increased survival of mice harbouring human HCT116 colon tumour xenografts as compared to mice treated with either agent alone. We conclude that TSA can selectively and effectively enhance the replication and spread of oncolytic vaccinia virus in cancer cells. © 2010 MacTavish et al

Balancing charge-transfer strength and triplet states for deep-blue thermally activated delayed fluorescence with an unconventional electron rich dibenzothiophene acceptor

Manipulation of the emission properties of deep-blue emitters exhibiting thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) through molecular design is challenging. We present an effective strategy to probe deeper into the role of localized (LE) and charge transfer (CT) states in the reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) mechanism. In a series of donor–acceptor–donor (D–A–D) blue emitters the dibenzothiophene functionality is used as an unconventional acceptor, while derivatives of 9,10-dihydro-9,9-dimethylacridine are used as electron-donors. tert-Butyl and methoxy substituents in the para-positions of the donor greatly enhance the donor strength, which allows exploration of different energy alignments among CT and LE triplet states. In the tert-butyl substituted compound the low energy triplet is localized on the acceptor unit, with the RISC mechanism (kRISC = 0.17 × 105 s−1) likely involving the mixture of CT and LE triplet states that are separated by less than 0.09 eV. An optimized organic light-emitting diode (OLED) based on the tBu-compound presents a maximum external quantum efficiency of 10.5% and deep-blue emission with Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage coordinates of (0.133, 0.129). However, when methoxy substituents are used, the low-energy triplet state moves away from the emissive 1CT singlet increasing the energy gap to 0.24 eV. Despite a larger ΔEST, a faster RISC rate (kRISC = 2.28 × 105 s−1) is observed due to the upper-state RISC occurring from the high-energy triplet state localized on the D (or A) units. This work shows the importance of fine-tuning the electronic interactions of the donor and acceptor units to control the TADF mechanism and achieve a deep-blue TADF OLED