We report on the measurement of topological invariants in an electromagnetic topological insulator analog formed by a microwave network, consisting of the winding numbers of scattering matrix ...eigenvalues. The experiment can be regarded as a variant of a topological pump, with nonzero winding implying the existence of topological edge states. In microwave networks, unlike most other systems exhibiting topological insulator physics, the winding can be directly observed. The effects of loss on the experimental results, and on the topological edge states, are discussed.
Ground subsidence and surface cracks caused by coal mining are typical man-made geological hazards that can severely damage the ecological environment and buildings. In China, within the theme of ...sustained and stable development, accurate assessment of mining-related building damage is paramount in order to address the contradiction between coal mining enterprises and building owners. Previous research in China focused mainly on the mining areas of plains, and only a few studies have considered building damage caused by intensive mining in mountainous areas. First, based on field investigation, this study located ground surface cracks and assessed the damage to buildings in the village of Nanyetou in Shanxi Province (China) attributable to the exploitation of the 15110 working face of the Baiyangling coal mine. Second, based on the mining subsidence law and boundary angle, the surface influenced boundary caused by underground mining was determined. However, as the existing subsidence theory cannot adequately explain the phenomenon of building damage, the damage was investigated from the perspective of slope stability analysis, and the slope safety factor before and after working face mining were calculated using the Janbu method. The analytical results showed that slope instability due to a decrease of the safety factor because of the coal mining activity was the principal reason for damage to the village buildings, a finding that was confirmed by field survey and InSAR monitoring displacement. The results of this study could provide guidance and reference for the assessment of building damage caused by underground mining in mountain areas.
The paper aimed to examine the association between obesity status and successful aging among elderly adults in China and further find gender differences in the effect of components of successful ...aging on obesity status.
The data came from the follow-up survey(2015) of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and 4019 dwellers age 60 and over are included. Obesity status were defined by the body mass index (BMI) according to Chinese criteria. Successful aging was defined following Rowe and Kahn's multidimensional model. Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate the relationship between obesity status and successful aging.
The rate of successful aging in men and women was 18.87 and 9.48% respectively. For BMI, the proportion of population with underweight, overweight and obesity in men was 10.29, 23.04 and 29.63% respectively and that in women was 1.40, 11.69 and 9.47%. Men with obesity (OR = 1.587 95% CI 1.087 ~ 2.316) has an positive relationship with successful aging than normal weight men; Women with underweight (OR = 0.197 95% CI 0.058 ~ 0.824) has an negative relationship with successful aging than normal weight women; Meanwhile, no matter men and women, the relationship between obesity status and successful aging were not significant among oldest adults(≥75 years).
Obesity status was significantly association with successful aging in young older adults (60-74 years), and the components of successful aging differently were related with the obesity status of male and female.
Revealing the Immunogenic Risk of Polymers Li, Bowen; Yuan, Zhefan; Hung, Hsiang‐Chien ...
Angewandte Chemie International Edition,
October 15, 2018, Letnik:
57, Številka:
42
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) conjugation has been the gold standard to ameliorate the pharmacokinetic (PK) and immunological profiles of proteins. PEG polymer does become immunogenic once attached to ...proteins, evoking PEG‐specific antibody (Ab) responses. The anti‐PEG Abs could cause PEGylated biologic treatments to fail and even result in lethal adverse reactions. Thus the zwitterionic poly(carboxybetaine) (PCB) has been introduced as a PEG substitute for protein modification. Addressed herein is anti‐polymer Ab induction by conjugating PEG and PCB polymers to a series of carrier proteins with escalating immunogenicity. Results indicate that titers of PEG‐specific Abs were quantitatively correlated to the immunogenicity of carrier proteins, whereas the generation of PCB‐specific Abs was minimal and insensitive to increased protein immunogenicity. This work provides insight into the immunological properties of PEG and PCB and has far‐reaching implications for the development of polymer‐protein conjugates.
Risk management: Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and zwitterionic poly(carboxybetaine) (PCB) as a promising PEG substitute were explored for their immunogenic risks. A strong quantitative correlation between the level of PEG‐specific antibodies (Abs) and the immunogenicity of proteins carrying PEG was observed, revealing the propensity of PEG to become immunogenic. In contrast, PCB manifested low immunogenic risk, as PCB‐specific Abs were negligible.
Penile cancer is a rare malignancy and usually refers to penile squamous cell carcinoma (PSCC), which accounts for more than 95% of all penile malignancies. Although organ-sparing surgery is an ...effective treatment for early-stage PSCC, surgical intervention alone is often not curative for advanced PSCC with metastases to the inguinal and/or pelvic lymph nodes; thus, systemic therapy is required (usually platinum-based chemotherapy and surgery combined). However, chemotherapy for PSCC has proven to be of limited efficacy and is often accompanied by high toxicity, and patients with advanced PSCC usually have poor prognosis. The limited treatment options and poor prognosis indicate the unmet need for advanced PSCC. Immune-based therapies have been approved for a variety of genitourinary and squamous cell carcinomas but are rarely reported in PSCC. To date, several studies have reported high expression of PDL1 in PSCC, supporting the potential application of immune checkpoint inhibitors in PSCC. In addition, human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is highly prevalent in PSCC and plays a key role in the carcinogenesis of HPV-positive PSCC, suggesting that therapeutic HPV vaccine may also be a potential treatment modality. Moreover, adoptive T cell therapy (ATC) has also shown efficacy in treating advanced penile cancer in some early clinical trials. The development of new therapeutics relies on understanding the underlying biological mechanisms and processes of tumor initiation, progression and metastasis. Therefore, based on the interest, we reviewed the tumor immune microenvironment and the emerging immunotherapy for penile cancer.
Job Scheduling at Cascading Machines Huang, Edward; Kan Wu
IEEE transactions on automation science and engineering,
2017-Oct., 2017-10-00, Letnik:
14, Številka:
4
Journal Article
We consider the serial batching scheduling problem in which a group of machines can process multiple jobs continuously to reduce the processing times of the second and subsequent jobs. The maximum ...batch size is finite. Since all jobs in the same batch are loaded and unloaded simultaneously, a completed job has to wait for the others. We examine how to schedule all jobs to minimize the total completion time. If the batch size is only one, i.e., a single job per batch, the total processing time will be longer, since no reduction in processing time is possible. As a consequence, the total completion time will also be longer. On the other hand, if the batch size is large, the total completion time can be large. Each job has to wait until all jobs in the same batch are completed. We identify several optimality properties of the optimal batching sequence. These properties are used to develop a dynamic programming algorithm to optimize the batching sequences efficiently. The complexity of the proposed method depends only on the maximum batch size and the number of jobs. The improvement achieved with the proposed method when compared with two other batching rules is illustrated using two practical applications.
Medical devices face nonspecific biofouling from proteins, cells, and microorganisms, which significantly contributes to complications and device failure. Imparting these devices with nonfouling ...capabilities remains a major challenge, particularly for those made from elastomeric polymers. Current strategies, including surface coating and copolymerization/physical blending, necessitate compromise among nonfouling properties, durability, and mechanical strength. Here, a new strategy is reported to achieve both high bulk mechanical strength and excellent surface nonfouling properties, which are typically contradictory, in one material. This is realized through a nonfouling polymeric elastomer based on zwitterionic polycarboxybetaine derivatives. By hiding both charged moieties of the zwitterionic compounds with hydrocarbon ester and tertiary amine groups, the bulk polymer itself is elastomeric and hydrophobic while its superhydrophilic surface properties are restored upon hydrolysis. This coating‐free nonfouling elastomer is a highly promising biomaterial for biomedical and engineering applications.
A stable nonfouling polymeric elastomer is demonstrated. This elastomer, based on zwitterionic polycarboxybetaine derivatives, requires no hydrophilic surface coating to achieve excellent nonfouling surface properties. By hiding both charged moieties of the zwitterionic compounds, a hydrophobic elastomer is fabricated; hydrolysis of its outermost surface then restores superhydrophilic and nonfouling surface properties, while maintaining excellent bulk mechanical characteristics.
This work reports the molecular design, synthesis, and systematic study on the bulk self-assembly behaviors of three series of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS)-based multiheaded giant ...surfactants XDPOSS-PS n (X = 2, 3, and 4), which are composed of two, three, or four hydrophilic hydroxyl-group-functionalized DPOSS cages attached via one junction point to a hydrophobic polystyrene (PS) chain. These series of hybrid polymeric amphiphiles with precisely defined chemical structure and controllable molecular architecture are synthesized by the sequential usage of “click” reactions. By tuning molecular weights of the PS tail, we established full phase diagrams of XDPOSS-PS n as a function of the volume fractions of PS chains (V f PS). We found that the self-assembled structures were greatly influenced by the molecular architecture. Strikingly, our results showed that the lamellar morphology, which usually existed at relatively symmetric compositions in common diblock copolymers, became the thermodynamically stable phase in the 3DPOSS-PS n and 4DPOSS-PS n samples even at an asymmetric composition up to V f PS = 0.842, with the ratio between the thicknesses of PS and DPOSS lamellae up to 5.32. This unusual phenomenon induced by molecular architectural variation could be explained by the large cross-sectional area of DPOSS cages at the nanophase-separated domain interface and high elastic deformation energy of clustered DPOSS cages which have relatively rigid conformation. The unique bulk self-assembly behaviors in our POSS-based multiheaded giant surfactants provide insights in developing hybrid nanomaterials toward unconventional nanostructures.
In order to solve the problems of low efficiency and poor robustness of single-mode speech emotion recognition, this paper uses a multi-mode fusion mechanism to fuse speech and visual information ...across modes to build an audio-visual speech recognition (AVSR) system. The results show that the modal attention mechanism can automatically adjust to a more stable and reliable state according to the quality of a single signal, so that the audio-visual multimodal perception is accurate and the recognition efficiency is high.
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