A reaction design is reported in which a substrate-bound chiral Lewis acid complex absorbs visible light and generates an excited state that directly reacts with a cosubstrate in a highly ...stereocontrolled fashion. Specifically, a chiral rhodium complex catalyzes visible-light-activated intermolecular 2+2 cycloadditions, providing a wide range of cyclobutanes with up to >99% ee and up to >20:1 d.r. Noteworthy is the ability to create vicinal all-carbon-quaternary stereocenters including spiro centers in an intermolecular fashion.
Astronomical data does not always use Cartesian coordinates. Both all-sky observational data and simulations of rotationally symmetric systems, such as accretion and protoplanetary disks, may use ...spherical polar or other coordinate systems. Standard displays rely on Cartesian coordinates, but converting non-Cartesian data into Cartesian format causes distortion of the data and loss of detail. Here, I demonstrate a method using standard techniques from computer graphics that avoids these problems with three-dimensional data in arbitrary coordinate systems. The method adds minimum computational cost to the display process and is suitable for both realtime, interactive content, and producing fixed rendered images and videos. Proof-of-concept code is provided which works for data in spherical polar coordinates.
We report the earliest and the most abundant archaeobotanical assemblage of southwest Asian grain crops from Early Bronze Age Central Asia, recovered from the Chap II site in Kyrgyzstan. The ...archaeobotanical remains consist of thousands of cultivated grains dating to the mid-late third millennium BCE. The recovery of cereal chaff and weeds suggest local cultivation at 2000 m.a.s.l., as crops first spread to the mountains of Central Asia. The site's inhabitants possibly cultivated two types of free-threshing wheats, glume wheats, and hulled and naked barleys. Highly compact caryopses of wheat and barley grains represent distinct morphotypes of cereals adapted to highland environments. While additional macrobotanical evidence is needed to confirm the presence of glume wheats at Chap II, the possible identification of glume wheats at Chap II may represent their most eastern distribution in Central Asia. Based on the presence of weed species, we argue that the past environment of Chap II was characterized by an open mountain landscape, where animal grazing likely took place, which may have been further modified by people irrigating agricultural fields. This research suggests that early farmers in the mountains of Central Asia cultivated compact morphotypes of southwest Asian crops during the initial eastward dispersal of agricultural technologies, which likely played a critical role in shaping montane adaptations and dynamic interaction networks between farming societies across highland and lowland cultivation zones.
Summary Background Artemisinin resistance in Plasmodium falciparum lengthens parasite clearance half-life during artemisinin monotherapy or artemisinin-based combination therapy. Absence of in-vitro ...and ex-vivo correlates of artemisinin resistance hinders study of this phenotype. We aimed to assess whether an in-vitro ring-stage survival assay (RSA) can identify culture-adapted P falciparum isolates from patients with slow-clearing or fast-clearing infections, to investigate the stage-dependent susceptibility of parasites to dihydroartemisinin in the in-vitro RSA, and to assess whether an ex-vivo RSA can identify artemisinin-resistant P falciparum infections. Methods We culture-adapted parasites from patients with long and short parasite clearance half-lives from a study done in Pursat, Cambodia, in 2010 (registered with ClinicalTrials.gov , number NCT00341003 ) and used novel in-vitro survival assays to explore the stage-dependent susceptibility of slow-clearing and fast-clearing parasites to dihydroartemisinin. In 2012, we implemented the RSA in prospective parasite clearance studies in Pursat, Preah Vihear, and Ratanakiri, Cambodia ( NCT01736319 ), to measure the ex-vivo responses of parasites from patients with malaria. Continuous variables were compared with the Mann-Whitney U test. Correlations were analysed with the Spearman correlation test. Findings In-vitro survival rates of culture-adapted parasites from 13 slow-clearing and 13 fast-clearing infections differed significantly when assays were done on 0–3 h ring-stage parasites (10·88% vs 0·23%; p=0·007). Ex-vivo survival rates significantly correlated with in-vivo parasite clearance half-lives (n=30, r =0·74, 95% CI 0·50–0·87; p<0·0001). Interpretation The in-vitro RSA of 0–3 h ring-stage parasites provides a platform for the molecular characterisation of artemisinin resistance. The ex-vivo RSA can be easily implemented where surveillance for artemisinin resistance is needed. Funding Institut Pasteur du Cambodge and the Intramural Research Program, NIAID, NIH.
We present a study of the distribution of radio jet position angles of radio galaxies over an area of 1 square degree in the ELAIS N1 field. ELAIS N1 was observed with the Giant Metrewave Radio ...Telescope at 612 MHz to an rms noise level of 10 μJy and angular resolution of 6 arcsec × 5 arcsec. The image contains 65 resolved radio galaxy jets. The spatial distribution reveals a prominent alignment of jet position angles along a ‘filament’ of about 1°. We examine the possibility that the apparent alignment arises from an underlying random distribution and find that the probability of chance alignment is less than 0.1 per cent. An angular covariance analysis of the data indicates the presence of spatially coherence in position angles on scales >0
$_{.}^{\circ}$
5. This angular scales translates to a comoving scale of >20 Mpc at a redshift of 1. The implied alignment of the spin axes of massive black holes that give rise to the radio jets suggest the presence of large-scale spatial coherence in angular momentum. Our results reinforce prior evidence for large-scale spatial alignments of quasar optical polarization position angles.
Celestial amplitudes provide holographic imprints of four-dimensional scattering processes in terms of conformal correlation functions on a two-dimensional sphere describing Minkowski space at null ...infinity. We construct the generators of Poincaré and conformal groups in the celestial representation and discuss how these symmetries are manifest in the amplitudes.
Multivalent-ion batteries (MVIBs) provide economical and energy-dense alternatives to Li-ion batteries. In the academic pursuit to finding high-performance beyond Li-ion batteries, identifying a ...suitable cathode is a primary issue. More specifically, a cathode that supports high energy density, competitive charge/discharge rates, diffusion kinetics, and cyclability is desireable. In this regard, we computationally investigate layered TiSe2 as a cathode for beyond Li-ion batteries. We find voltages as high as 2.0, 2.0, 1.1, and 1.8 V for Li, Na, Mg, and Ca respectively. We compute voltage profiles, diffusion energy barriers, and formation energies, as well as consider the impact of swelling and electronic properties. While we consider several intercalants, we are especially interested in Ca, which we find to experience an energy barrier of approximately 0.4 eV, similar to the energy barrier experienced by Li, and lower than that of Mg. While Mg is the popular choice for multivalent-ion battery materials, we find that TiSe2 is able to accept more Ca per formula unit than Mg, and exhibits higher voltages than Mg, while experiencing improved diffusion kinetics. We advocate for the exploitation of TiSe2 layered cathodes for beyond Li-ion batteries, and especially for Ca-ion batteries.
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•We model the intercalation of M = Li, Na, Mg, Ca within a layered MxTiSe2 cathode.•CaxTiSe2 yields a voltage range of 1.8 V - 0.5 V, which is competitive with other Ca-ion batteries.•We find that Ca experiences an energy barrier of approximately 0.4 eV, which is quite low for a Ca-ion battery.
This paper presents SmartFall, an Android app that uses accelerometer data collected from a commodity-based smartwatch Internet of Things (IoT) device to detect falls. The smartwatch is paired with a ...smartphone that runs the SmartFall application, which performs the computation necessary for the prediction of falls in real time without incurring latency in communicating with a cloud server, while also preserving data privacy. We experimented with both traditional (Support Vector Machine and Naive Bayes) and non-traditional (Deep Learning) machine learning algorithms for the creation of fall detection models using three different fall datasets (Smartwatch, Notch, Farseeing). Our results show that a Deep Learning model for fall detection generally outperforms more traditional models across the three datasets. This is attributed to the Deep Learning model's ability to automatically learn subtle features from the raw accelerometer data that are not available to Naive Bayes and Support Vector Machine, which are restricted to learning from a small set of extracted features manually specified. Furthermore, the Deep Learning model exhibits a better ability to generalize to new users when predicting falls, an important quality of any model that is to be successful in the real world. We also present a three-layer open IoT system architecture used in SmartFall, which can be easily adapted for the collection and analysis of other sensor data modalities (e.g., heart rate, skin temperature, walking patterns) that enables remote monitoring of a subject's wellbeing.
Commentary: Interleukin 2: The gasoline that lit the immunotherapeutic fire Ripley, R. Taylor
Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery/The Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery/The journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery,
April 2022, 2022-04-00, 20220401, Letnik:
163, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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