Insights on the Molecular Mechanism for the Recalcitrance of Biochars: Interactive Effects of Carbon and Silicon Components

Few studies have investigated the effects of structural heterogeneity (particularly the interactions of silicon and carbon) on the mechanisms for the recalcitrance of biochar. In this study, the molecular mechanisms for the recalcitrance of biochars derived from rice straw at 300, 500, and 700 °C (named RS300, RS500, and RS700, respectively) were elucidated. Short-term (24 h) and long-term (240 h) oxidation kinetics experiments were conducted under different concentrations of H₂O₂ to distinguish the stable carbon pools in the biochars. We discovered that the stabilities of the biochars were influenced not only by their aromaticity but also through possible protection by silicon encapsulation, which is regulated by pyrolysis temperatures. The aromatic components and recalcitrance of the biochars increased with increasing pyrolysis temperatures. The morphologies of the carbon forms in all of the biochars were also greatly associated with those of silica. Silica-encapsulation protection only occurred for RS500, not for RS300 and RS700. In RS300, carbon and silica were both amorphous, and they were easily decomposed by H₂O₂. The separation of crystalline silica from condensed aromatic carbon in RS700 eliminated the protective role of silicon on carbon. The effect of the biochar particle size on the stability of the biochar was greatly influenced by C–Si interactions and by the oxidation intensities. A novel silicon-and-carbon-coupled framework model was proposed to guide biochar carbon sequestration

Hydrotreating of Phenolic Compounds Separated from Bio-oil to Alcohols

Phenolic compounds in bio-oil are not stable and difficult to be upgraded to ideal fuels. In this study, simulated bio-oil as well as phenolic compounds separated from bio-oil by glycerol-assisted distillation were hydrotreated by Ru/SBA-15 catalyst and completely converted into C₃ to C₁₀ alcohols at mild conditions, which could be a feasible way to transfer the phenolic compounds in bio-oil or other real systems from lignin decomposition into high heating-value liquid fuel or fuel additives. The stability of the Ru/SBA-15 catalyst was also investigated. It was found that Ru/SBA-15 was stable with phenolic compounds in the simulated bio-oil but not in a real one

A Localized Implementation of the Iterative Proportional Scaling Procedure for Gaussian Graphical Models

<div><p>In this article, we propose localized implementations of the iterative proportional scaling (IPS) procedure by the strategy of partitioning cliques for computing maximum likelihood estimations in large Gaussian graphical models. We first divide the set of cliques into several nonoverlapping and nonempty blocks, and then adjust clique marginals in each block locally. Thus, high-order matrix operations can be avoided and the IPS procedure is accelerated. We modify the Swendsen–Wang Algorithm and apply the simulated annealing algorithm to find an approximation to the optimal partition which leads to the least complexity. This strategy of partitioning cliques can also speed up the existing IIPS and IHT procedures. Numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the competitive performance of our new implementations and strategies.</p></div

Overview of AP algorithm designed for CAD system.

<p>(A) Display screen of endoscopic diagnosis. (B) Display screen after starting the CAD system. (C) The seed placement automatic initialization base on white viewfinder in (B). (D) The segmentation result of AP.</p

Contractual modifications of statutory matrimonial property regime

Marriage is a topic that more or less concerns all of us. Community property is a financial aspect of marriage which is inseparably tied to it. Despite it being a fundamental problem, it is not well known to the general public. For this reason the aim of this diploma thesis is to clearly and systematically summarize the issue of contractual marital property law. For better understanding, the thesis defines basic terms of statutory matrimonial property regime, and focuses on parts of community property of spouses. Attention is focused on the issue of usual family equipment, because it was removed from the matrimonial property law due to recodification, which then instituted a new matrimonial regime: The Separate Property Regime. Except for the statutory matrimonial property regime, spouses are allowed to negotiate different property regime by using a contract of modification of community property of spouses. The contractual matrimonial property regime represents a major part of this thesis. First, the thesis deals with contractual matrimonial property regime, and then it mainly focuses on types of matrimonial property contracts, its contents and its limitations. It pays significant attention to registration of matrimonial property contracts, especially to the new publicly accessible list of..

Spline-Lasso in High-Dimensional Linear Regression

<p>We consider a high-dimensional linear regression problem, where the covariates (features) are ordered in some meaningful way, and the number of covariates <i>p</i> can be much larger than the sample size <i>n</i>. The fused lasso of Tibshirani et al. is designed especially to tackle this type of problems; it yields sparse coefficients and selects grouped variables, and encourages local constant coefficient profile within each group. However, in some applications, the effects of different features within a group might be different and change smoothly. In this article, we propose a new spline-lasso or more generally, spline-MCP to better capture the different effects within the group. The newly proposed method is very easy to implement since it can be easily turned into a lasso or MCP problem. Simulations show that the method works very effectively both in feature selection and prediction accuracy. A real application is also given to illustrate the benefits of the method. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.</p

Optical colonoscopy (OC) images with polyp.

<p>Optical colonoscopy (OC) images with polyp.</p

Comparison of preprocessing results.

<p>the top row: raw image; the middle row: preprocessing results; the bottom row polyp masks(the polyp is shown in white).</p

A schematic plot of the attraction propagation (AP).

<p>A schematic plot of the attraction propagation (AP).</p

Illustration of the RW, PW and AP.

<p>The top row: seeds of foreground and background. The second row: Segmentation results obtained by the RW [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0155371#pone.0155371.ref034" target="_blank">34</a>]. The third row: Segmentation results obtained by the PW [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0155371#pone.0155371.ref037" target="_blank">37</a>]. The last three rows: Segmentation results obtained by the PEA-AP, L2-AP and INN-AP.</p