Field margins as rapidly evolving local diversity hotspots for ground beetles (Coleoptera : Carabidae) in northern China

The diversity of carabid assemblages at newly established field margins was compared to the diversity in surrounding fields and woodland habitats at Dongbeiwang village, Beijing. Carabids were sampled using 6 pitfalls per plot at a total of 12 plots in the year 2000. Although sampled only a year after their establishment, field margins harbored the most abundant and diverse carabids assemblages of all sites. More than a quarter of carabid species encountered were furthermore restricted to catches from field margins. Also woodland and fields under rotational wheat/maize cultivation harbored some unique species. Therefore, a short term establishment of field margins is effective in enhancing diversity and abundance of carabids, an important predator group in the agricultural landscape, while only the preservation of a heterogeneous landscape will enable the conservation of the overall species diversity

SECaps: A Sequence Enhanced Capsule Model for Charge Prediction

Automatic charge prediction aims to predict appropriate final charges according to the fact descriptions for a given criminal case. Automatic charge prediction plays a critical role in assisting judges and lawyers to improve the efficiency of legal decisions, and thus has received much attention. Nevertheless, most existing works on automatic charge prediction perform adequately on high-frequency charges but are not yet capable of predicting few-shot charges with limited cases. In this paper, we propose a Sequence Enhanced Capsule model, dubbed as SECaps model, to relieve this problem. Specifically, following the work of capsule networks, we propose the seq-caps layer, which considers sequence information and spatial information of legal texts simultaneously. Then we design a attention residual unit, which provides auxiliary information for charge prediction. In addition, our SECaps model introduces focal loss, which relieves the problem of imbalanced charges. Comparing the state-of-the-art methods, our SECaps model obtains 4.5% and 6.4% absolutely considerable improvements under Macro F1 in Criminal-S and Criminal-L respectively. The experimental results consistently demonstrate the superiorities and competitiveness of our proposed model.Comment: 13 pages, 3figures, 5 table

Studies on the expansion characteristics of the granular bed present in EGSB bioreactors

In this study, the expansion characteristics of an anaerobic granular bed in EGSB reactors based on terminal settling velocity study of the granules and the Richardson-Zaki equation (1954) have been investigated. The settling velocity study shows that the mean settling velocity of the granules is in accordance with the Allen formula because the settling process falls within the intermediate flow regime range (

Generalized modal expansion of electromagnetic field in 2-D bounded and unbounded media

A generalized modal expansion theory is presented to investigate and illustrate the physics of wave-matter interaction within arbitrary two-dimensional (2-D) bounded and unbounded electromagnetic problems. We start with the bounded case where the field excited by any sources is expanded with a complete set of biorthogonal eigenmodes. In regard to non-Hermitian or nonreciprocal problems, an auxiliary system is constructed to seek for the modal-expansion solution. We arrive at the unbounded case when the boundary tends to infinity or is replaced by the perfectly matched layer (PML). Modes are approximately categorized into two types: trapped modes and radiation modes, which respond differently to environment variations. When coupled with the source, these modes contribute to the modal-expansion solution with different weights, which leads to a reduced modal representation of the excited field in some geometries. © 2002-2011 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Association between habenula dysfunction and motivational symptoms in unmedicated major depressive disorder

The lateral habenula plays a central role in reward and punishment processing and has been suggested to drive the cardinal symptom of anhedonia in depression. This hypothesis is largely based on observations of habenula hypermetabolism in animal models of depression, but the activity of habenula and its relationship with clinical symptoms in patients with depression remains unclear. High-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computational modelling were used to investigate the activity of the habenula during a probabilistic reinforcement learning task with rewarding and punishing outcomes in 21 unmedicated patients with major depression and 17 healthy participants. High-resolution anatomical scans were also acquired to assess group differences in habenula volume. Healthy individuals displayed the expected activation in the left habenula during receipt of punishment and this pattern was confirmed in the computational analysis of prediction error processing. In depressed patients, there was a trend towards attenuated left habenula activation to punishment, while greater left habenula activation was associated with more severe depressive symptoms and anhedonia. We also identified greater habenula volume in patients with depression, which was associated with anhedonic symptoms. Habenula dysfunction may contribute to abnormal response to punishment in patients with depression, and symptoms such as anhedonia

Zinc oxide tetrapods as efficient photocatalysts for organic pollutant degradation

Bisphenol A (BPA) and other organic pollutants from industrial wastewater have drawn increasing concern in the past decades regarding their environmental and biological risks, and hence developing strategies of effective degradation of BPA and other organic pollutants is imperative. Metal oxide nanostructures, in particular titanium oxide (TiO2) and zinc oxide (ZnO), have been demonstrated to exhibit efficient photodegradation of various common organic dyes. ZnO tetrapods are of special interest due to their low density of native defects which consequently lead to lower recombination losses and higher photocatalytic efficiency. Tetrapods can be obtained by relatively simple and low-cost vapor phase deposition in large quantity; the micron-scale size would also be advantageous for catalyst recovery. In this study, the photodegradation of BPA with ZnO tetrapods and TiO2 nanostructures under UV illumination were compared. The concentration of BPA dissolved in DI water was analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) at specified time intervals. It was observed that the photocatalytic efficiency of ZnO tetrapods eventually surpassed Degussa P25 in free-standing form, and more than 80% of BPA was degraded after 60 min. Photodegradation of other organic dye pollutants by tetrapods and P25 were also examined. The superior photocatalytic efficiency of ZnO tetrapods for degradation of BPA and other organic dye pollutants and its correlation with the material properties were discussed. © 2015 SPIE.published_or_final_versio

Strategy for introducing antibacterial activity under ambient illumination in titania nanoparticles

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a wide bandgap (∼3.4 eV) semiconductor material which is commonly used as a photocatalyst and antibacterial material. UV illumination with energy similar to the bandgap is often needed to make the material active. It would be favorable for practical applications, if its action can also be activated under ambient. Recently, robust antibacterial action was demonstrated on ZnO nanoparticles under ambient illumination. In this study, we demonstrated robust antibacterial activity of TiO2 nanoparticles induced by annealing under ambient illumination. It was found that the antibacterial activity could be significantly changed by tuning the annealing temperatures and using different crucibles containing the nanoparticles. Bacterium Escherichia coli was used as the model organism in the test. It was observed that although no significant antibacterial activity was observed on the starting material (untreated commercial TiO2 nanoparticles), the activity increases significantly if the nanoparticles were annealed above 650 °C with crucible lined with copper foil. The survival rate of E. coli bacteria approaches to zero if the nanoparticles annealing temperature reaches 850 °C. Under optimized conditions, three different titania nanoparticle samples exhibited antibacterial activity under ambient illumination. This work sheds light on the development of ambient-active antibacterial coating and in particular, on the modification of any TiO2 material to become ambient-active with a suitable treatment. © 2015 SPIE.published_or_final_versio

Experimental study of subcooled flow boiling heat transfer on micro-pin-finned surfaces in short-term microgravity

The flow boiling heat transfer of subcooled air-dissolved FC-72 on micro-pin-finned surfaces was studied in microgravity by utilizing the drop tower facility in Beijing. The micro-pin-fins with the dimension of 30 x 30 x 60 mu m(3) (width x thickness x height), named PF30-60, were fabricated on a silicon chip by using the dry etching technique. For comparison, experiments of flow boiling heat transfer in terrestrial gravity were also conducted. The effects of inlet velocity on both flow boiling heat transfer and bubble behavior were explored. It was found that gravity has nearly no effect on flow boiling heat transfer for the departure of the inertial-force dominant bubbles in the low and moderate heat fluxes regions. In contrast, in the high-heat-flux region, the flow boiling heat transfer deteriorates and the critical heat flux (CHF) decreases due to the bubble accumulation in the channel. For PF30-60 at V = 0.5 m/s, the CHF point can be inferred to be between 20.8 and 24.5 W/cm(2), which is 63.0-74.2% of that in normal gravity. Regarding PF30-60 at V = 1.0 m/s, the CHF point can be inferred to be between 25.4 and 31.6 W/cm(2), which is 67.6-84.0% of that in normal gravity. The impact of gravity on CHF is closely linked to the channel geometry parameter and surface modification. The dimensionless numbers, Ch (Channel number) and Sf (Surface number), were proposed to describe the effect of the channel geometry and surface modification on the ratio of CHF in microgravity to that in normal gravity (CHF mu g/CHF1g). An empirical correlation based on We (Weber number), Ch and Sf was proposed to predict the value of CHF mu g/CHF1g ratio in good agreement with the experimental data. This study provides a new perspective to determine the threshold inlet velocity of inertial-force-dominant flow boiling under different experimental conditions at different gravity levels

SPECTRAL CORRECTION FACTORS FOR CONVENTIONAL NEUTRON DOSE METERS USED IN HIGH-ENERGY NEUTRON ENVIRONMENTS-IMPROVED AND EXTENDED RESULTS BASED ON A COMPLETE SURVEY OF ALL NEUTRON SPECTRA IN IAEA-TRS-403

This paper presents improved and extended results of our previous study on corrections for conventional neutron dose meters used in environments with high-energy neutrons (En > 10 MeV). Conventional moderated-type neutron dose meters tend to underestimate the dose contribution of high-energy neutrons because of the opposite trends of dose conversion coefficients and detection efficiencies as the neutron energy increases. A practical correction scheme was proposed based on analysis of hundreds of neutron spectra in the IAEA-TRS-403 report. By comparing 252Cf-calibrated dose responses with reference values derived from fluence-to-dose conversion coefficients, this study provides recommendations for neutron field characterization and the corresponding dose correction factors. Further sensitivity studies confirm the appropriateness of the proposed scheme and indicate that (1) the spectral correction factors are nearly independent of the selection of three commonly used calibration sources: 252Cf, 241Am-Be and 239Pu-Be; (2) the derived correction factors for Bonner spheres of various sizes (6”−9”) are similar in trend and (3) practical high-energy neutron indexes based on measurements can be established to facilitate the application of these correction factors in workplaces

WIJAM: a mobile collaborative improvisation platform under Master-players Paradigm

Music jamming is an extremely difficult task for musical novices. Trying to extend this meaningful and highly enjoyable activity to a larger recipient group, we present WIJAM, a mobile application for an ad-hoc group of musical novices to perform improvisation along with a music master. In this master-players' paradigm, the master offers a music backing, orchestrates the musical flow, and gives feedbacks to the players; the players improvise by tapping and sketching on their smartphones. We argue that this paradigm can be a significant contribution to the possibility of music playing by a group of novices with no instrumental training leading to decent musical results.published_or_final_versio