The extinct p-process nuclide 146Sm serves as an astrophysical and geochemical chronometer through measurements of isotopic anomalies of its alpha -decay daughter 142Nd. Based on analyses of ...146Sm/147Sm alpha -activity and atom ratios, we determined the half-life of 146Sm to be 68 plus or minus 7 (1 sigma ) million years, which is shorter than the currently used value of 103 plus or minus 5 million years. This half-life value implies a higher initial 146Sm abundance in the early solar system, (146Sm/144Sm)0 = 0.0094 plus or minus 0.0005 (2 sigma ), than previously estimated. Terrestrial, lunar, and martian planetary silicate mantle differentiation events dated with 146Sm-142Nd converge to a shorter time span and in general to earlier times, due to the combined effect of the new 146Sm half-life and (146Sm/144Sm)0 values.
To evaluate the accuracy of STOP-Bang (SBQ) questionnaire in the screening of patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
The data were collected from September, 2011 to May, 2012 at the Sleep ...Medicine Center of West China Hospital, Sichuan University. A total of 350 consecutive patients (302 males and 48 females, 19-68 years old, average (42.9±11.0) years old) with suspected OSA who underwent an overnight polysomnography (PSG) were recruited into this study. SBQ questionnaire was completed. Based on the severity of OSA which were determined by apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), the patients were classified into four groups of primary snoring (<5 events/h), mild (5-14 events/h), moderate (15-29 events/h) and severe OSA (≥30 events/h). To evaluate the accuracy of SBQ, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values, negative predictive values and the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve of SBQ questionnaire were calculated.
Of the subjects, 322 (92.0%) were classified as high risk based on th
•Transmittance loss results in a lower rated power for double-glass modules.•Reflective coating provides optical enhance effects to bifacial PV modules.•Better use of front incident light produces ...higher power generation.
In contrast to the conventional monofacial photovoltaic (PV) modules, bifacial PV modules yield more electrical energy by utilizing the reflected or scattered light from the ground and surroundings. The energy generation efficiency of bifacial modules is determined by both the front-side and the rear-side output power. In this study, we compared the IV parameters as well as field performance of different module structures to further realize the influencing factors dominating the energy gain of bifacial modules. Our results show that the glass/glass bifacial modules encapsulated with bifacial solar cells provide over 6% more energy yield compared to the glass/backsheet monofacial modules encapsulated with regular monofacial solar cells. Due to optical enhanced effects of a reflective coating on the rear glass, the energy yield gain of bifacial modules can be increased to above 10%, even though the bifaciality factors were reduced from 72% to 64%. Our study indicates that enhancing the front-side output power of bifacial modules produces more benefits.
Dark silicon phenomenon is significant in today's multi/many-core systems manufactured using new generation technology. In order to enhance performance of dark silicon systems, power budget ...constrained dynamic optimizations are performed in various ways including dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) and task scheduling. However, power budgets given by existing methods are generally over pessimistic, which greatly limit the capability of dynamic performance optimization methods. In order to resolve this problem, we propose a dynamic power budgeting method, called Greedy based Dynamic Power (GDP). Different from existing methods, which are steady state based and ignore active core distributions, GDP formulates the power budgeting problem as a thermal-constrained combinational power optimization problem. To efficiently solve this problem, we propose two new ideas: first, we transform the original power-optimization problem to an easier solving temperature-optimization problem; second, we employ a more efficient greedy based algorithm that finds a sub-optimal active core distribution which maximizes power budget. The new method can consider current temperature states and transient thermal effects, which were ignored by existing methods. Both theoretical studies and experimental results show that GDP outperforms existing methods by providing a higher and less pessimistic power budget with low computing cost and guaranteed thermal safety.
We report the observation of new properties of primary iron (Fe) cosmic rays in the rigidity range 2.65 GV to 3.0 TV with 0.62×10^{6} iron nuclei collected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer ...experiment on the International Space Station. Above 80.5 GV the rigidity dependence of the cosmic ray Fe flux is identical to the rigidity dependence of the primary cosmic ray He, C, and O fluxes, with the Fe/O flux ratio being constant at 0.155±0.006. This shows that unexpectedly Fe and He, C, and O belong to the same class of primary cosmic rays which is different from the primary cosmic rays Ne, Mg, and Si class.
Aims. The process of gravitational fragmentation in the L1482 molecular filament of the California molecular cloud is studied by combining several complementary observations and physical estimates. ...We investigate the kinematic and dynamical states of this molecular filament and physical properties of several dozens of dense molecular clumps embedded therein. Methods. We present and compare molecular line emission observations of the J = 2−1 and J = 3−2 transitions of 12CO in this molecular complex, using the Kölner Observatorium für Sub-Millimeter Astronomie (KOSMA) 3-m telescope. These observations are complemented with archival data observations and analyses of the 13CO J = 1−0 emission obtained at the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) 13.7-m radio telescope at Delingha Station in QingHai Province of west China, as well as infrared emission maps from the Herschel Space Telescope online archive, obtained with the SPIRE and PACS cameras. Comparison of these complementary datasets allows for a comprehensive multiwavelength analysis of the L1482 molecular filament. Results. We have identified 23 clumps along the molecular filament L1482 in the California molecular cloud. For these molecular clumps, we were able to estimate column and number densities, masses, and radii. The masses of these clumps range from ~6.8 to 62.8 M⊙ with an average value of 24.7-16.2+31.1 M⊙. Eleven of the identified molecular clumps appear to be associated with protostars and are thus referred to as protostellar clumps. Protostellar clumps and the remaining starless clumps of our sample appear to have similar temperatures and linewidths, yet on average, the protostellar clumps appear to be slightly more massive than the latter. All these molecular clumps show supersonic nonthermal gas motions. While surprisingly similar in mass and size to the much better known Orion molecular cloud, the formation rate of high-mass stars appears to be suppressed in the California molecular cloud compared with that in the Orion molecular cloud based on the mass–radius threshold derived from the static Bonnor-Ebert sphere. The largely uniform 12CO J = 2 − 1 line-of-sight velocities along the L1482 molecular cloud shows that it is a generally coherent filamentary structure. Since the NGC 1579 stellar cluster is at the junction of two molecular filaments, the origin of the NGC 1579 stellar cluster might be merging molecular filaments fed by converging inflows. Our analysis suggests that these molecular filaments are thermally supercritical and molecular clumps may form by gravitational fragmentation along the filament. Instead of being static, these molecular clumps are most likely in processes of dynamic evolution.
The electrochemical reactions of SiC film with Li
have been investigated by electrochemical characterization and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The SiC film is prepared by ...inductively-coupled-plasma chemical-vapor-deposition (ICP-CVD) technique and displays an amorphous state due to the low processing temperature (∼350 °C). An irreversible reaction of SiC with Li
occurs with the formation of lithium silicon carbide (Li
Si
C) and elemental Si, followed by a reversible alloying/dealloying reaction of the elemental Si with Li
. The 500 nm SiC film shows an initial reversible specific capacity of 917 mA h g
with a capacity retention of 41.0% after 100 cycles at 0.3C charge/discharge current, and displays much better capacity retention than the Si film (5.2%). It is found that decreasing the SiC thickness effectively improves the specific capacity by enhancing the reaction kinetics but also degrades the capacity retention (for 250 nm SiC, its initial capacity is 1427 mA h g
with a capacity retention of 25.7% after 100 cycles). The better capacity retention of the 500 nm SiC anode is mainly because residual SiC exists in the film due to its incomplete reaction caused by its lower reaction kinetics, and it has high hardness and can act as a buffer matrix to alleviate the anode volume change, thus improving the mechanical stability and capacity retention of the SiC anode.
Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) plays a very important role in facilitating the replication of many viruses. Until now, little has been known about the role of Hsp90 in Bombyx mori virus infection. In ...this study, we explored the role of BmHsp90 in B. mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) replication. We found that BmHsp90 inhibition by geldanamycin (GA) significantly reduced the BmNPV titre, the protein expression level of BmNPV nucleocapsid protein 39 (VP39) and the transcript level of BmNPV genes. Silencing the hsp90 gene in BmN cells by small interfering RNA suppressed BmNPV replication whereas overexpression of hsp90 promoted the replication of BmNPV. After inhibition of Hsp90, the expression of three key genes signal transducing activator of transcription (stat), suppressor of cytokine signalling protein 2 (socs2), socs6 involved in the Janus kinase/STAT pathway significantly changed, with up‐regulation of stat and down‐regulation of socs2 and socs6. In addition, the expression of two antiapoptosis genes, BmNPV inhibitor of apoptosis protein1 (BmNPV‐iap1) and Bmiap2, was greatly decreased in GA‐treated cells, whereas their expression was significantly increased in hsp90‐overexpressed silkworm larvae. Our results indicated that inhibition of Hsp90 can suppress BmNPV proliferation in B. mori. Our findings may provide new clues to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of silkworm–virus interactions.
Inhibition of Bombyx mori heat shock protein 90 (BmHsp90) by geldanamycin and RNA interference can suppress B. mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) proliferation.
Overexpression of BmHsp90 can promote BmNPV proliferation in B. mori.
Inhibition of BmHsp90 can change the transcript level of genes related to the Janus kinase/signal transducing activator of transcription/ immune pathway and cell apoptosis.
We conducted a retrospective analysis to evaluate outcomes of haploidentical transplantation in adult severe aplastic anaemia (SAA) patients. Fifty-one adults received haploidentical transplantation ...between May 2011 and December 2016. Patients were administered busulfan (Bu), cyclophosphamide (Cy) and anti-thymoglobulin (ATG) as conditioning regimens, followed by bone marrow and peripheral blood transplantation. The patients' median age was 25 years. Forty-nine patients survived for more than 28 days and all achieved donor myeloid engraftment. The median time for myeloid engraftment and platelet recovery was 13 days (range, 10-21) and 17.5 (range, 7-101) days. The cumulative incidence (CI) of grade II-IV and III-IV acute GvHD) was 20.00±0.33% and 6.00±0.12%, respectively. The incidence of chronic GvHD was 14.00±0.36% and 25.90±0.71%, and that of moderate-severe chronic GvHD was 2.51±0.06% and 6.92±0.25% at 1 and 3 years, respectively. The 3-year estimated overall survival and failure-free survival were both 83.5±5.4% with a median follow-up of 21.1 months. Multivariate analysis showed hematopoietic cell transplantation-specific comorbidity index (HCT-CI) score of ⩾3 was significantly associated with worse outcome. Haploidentical transplantation conditioning including Bu/Cy/ATG was a safe and effective strategy for adult SAA patients, and HCT-CI might be an outcome predictor in these patients.
Clarifying the crystallization path, from the thermodynamic point of view, is of importance for the structure and properties of metallic glasses (MGs). The influence of oxygen on the crystallization ...pathway of Ni65Zr35 MG was investigated by in-situ heating transmission electron microscopy (TEM). As temperature increases, crystalline Ni7Zr2 and t-ZrO2 phases are formed first rather than the Ni10Zr7 and Ni21Zr8 phases, which are the main crystallization products following the phase diagram. Oxygen changes the crystallization pathway by varying the Ni/Zr ratio, indicating that the effects of oxygen on the crystallization in nanometer-sized MG cannot be neglected even in high vacuum TEMs.
•Oxidation happened in TEM column during in-situ heating.•The primary crystallization products are Ni7Zr2 and t-ZrO2 phases.•Large amounts of fcc-ZrO phase formed when temperature reached 1073 K.
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