Herein we describe a novel microfluidic method for the generation of proteinosome micro-droplets, based on bovine serum albumin and glucose oxidase conjugated to PNIPAAm chains. The size of such water-in-oil droplets is regulated via control of the input reagent flow rate, with generated proteinosome populations exhibiting narrower size distributions than those observed when using standard bulk methodologies. Importantly, proteinosomes transferred from an oil to an aqueous-environment remain intact, become fully hydrated and exhibit an increase in average size. Moreover, functional proteinosomes prepared via microfluidics exhibit lower Km values and higher enzymatic activities than proteinosomes produced by bulk methodologies.
Let {Gi} be the random graph process: starting with an empty graph G0 with n vertices, in every step i ≥ 1 the graph Gi is formed by taking an edge chosen uniformly at random among the nonexisting ones and adding it to the graph Gi − 1. The classical “hitting‐time” result of Ajtai, Komlós, and Szemerédi, and independently Bollobás, states that asymptotically almost surely the graph becomes Hamiltonian as soon as the minimum degree reaches 2, that is if δ(Gi) ≥ 2 then Gi is Hamiltonian. We establish a resilience version of this result. In particular, we show that the random graph process almost surely creates a sequence of graphs such that for m≥(16+o(1))nlogn edges, the 2‐core of the graph Gm remains Hamiltonian even after an adversary removes (12−o(1))‐fraction of the edges incident to every vertex. A similar result is obtained for perfect matchings.
The electron spectrometer, SPEDE, has been developed and will be employed in conjunction with the Miniball spectrometer at the HIE-ISOLDE facility, CERN. SPEDE allows for direct measurement of internal conversion electrons emitted in-flight, without employing magnetic fields to transport or momentum filter the electrons. Together with the Miniball spectrometer, it enables simultaneous observation of $ \gamma$ γ rays and conversion electrons in Coulomb excitation experiments using radioactive ion beams.
Some aspects of patent searching are similar to searching other kinds of technical literature, such as articles in popular science magazines or papers in professional and academic journals. However some aspects of searching patents are sufficiently different from searching conventional literature, that a dedicated mindset, strategy and tactics need to be applied to the task. The difference between searching conventional publications and patents arise, amongst other things, from the nature of the patent documents themselves, the interrelations between them and the unique way in which patent databases are constructed. This article describe an approach, and initial techniques for searching patents, which will enable the absolute beginner to make a start, and gain confidence is searching patent literature.
Horizontal tube bundles are often used as falling film evaporators in absorption chillers, especially for systems working at low pressure with H2O/LiBr. The heat and mass transfer processes in these apparatuses are affected by several physical effects and the geometrical design of the heat exchanger, for example the material properties of the working fluid or the surface structure of the heat exchanger. Several influencing parameters are summarized and evaluated. Correlations for the prediction of the heat transfer coefficients of falling film evaporators from the literature are discussed concerning their applicability in dependence of the working conditions of the evaporator in an absorption chiller. In this work, experimental investigations are carried out in a falling film evaporator consisting of a horizontal tube bundle with eighty horizontal tubes installed in an absorption chiller because of a lack of consistent data for heat and mass transfer in the literature. The heat and mass transfer mechanisms and the flow pattern in the falling film are analysed and compared with correlations from literature. The deviations of the experimental data from those of the correlations are within a tolerance of 30%. These deviations may be explained by a change of the flow pattern at a lower Reynolds number than compared to the literature.
In a driving simulator study we evaluated a speech-based driver assistance system for urban intersections (called Assistance on Demand AoD system) which supports the driver in monitoring and decision making. The system provides recommendations for suitable time gaps to enter the intersection based on the observation of crossing traffic. Following an “on-demand”-concept, the driver activates the assistance only if support is desired. In one drive, drivers used the AoD system in every situation they experienced to guarantee that every driver had the same exposure to the system when evaluating it. During another drive, drivers were free to decide if they want to use the system or not. The experimental study compared the AoD system with driving manually and with driving supported by a more conventional visual-based system which was always active at intersections (system showing colored arrows in a simulated head-up display (HUD) to visualize the crossing traffic). This resulted in four drives the drivers had to perform. Every drive consisted of several intersections with varying traffic conditions. The drivers had to turn left at every intersection. A total of 24 drivers took part in the study; one group with 14 middle-aged drivers and another group with ten high-aged drivers. Several questionnaires and online ratings were used to assess drivers’ acceptance, perceived usefulness, benefits and specific characteristics of both system variants. In addition, driving behaviour with regard to gap choice and drivers’ monitoring behaviour (using head tracking data) were analyzed. The results show that the AoD system reaches high acceptance ratings and is preferred compared to the visual, always active system. Using the speech modality for communication and the on-demand concept were both highly appreciated by the drivers. With regard to driving behaviour, the AoD system is comparably safe as manual driving while at the same time making driving easier by facilitating the monitoring of vehicles while waiting at an intersection.
The top-two primary system changes the typical two-stage electoral process by creating scenarios in which two candidates from the same party may face each other in the general election. In two-party contests, voters receive information from candidate party labels and from campaign outreach, which is facilitated by campaign expenditures. Combined, this information helps voters make decisions on Election Day. In the absence of differentiating party labels in one-party contests, the information provided by candidate spending should matter more. Specifically, I argue that expenditures made by challengers facing same-party opponents should be more effective for increasing vote share than expenditures made by those facing opposite-party opponents. This study examines state legislative elections in California and Washington to investigate how the effectiveness of challenger campaign expenditures is conditioned by the presence of either a one-party or two-party contest. Results find that as challengers in one-party contests spend more, they are able to increase their vote share at more than double the pace per dollar spent when compared to challengers in two-party contests. Findings complement a broad literature investigating the role of electoral institutions in shaping voter and candidate behavior.
This paper is concerned with paraphrase detection, i.e., identifying sentences that are semantically identical. The ability to detect similar sentences written in natural language is crucial for several applications, such as text mining, text summarization, plagiarism detection, authorship authentication and question answering. Recognizing this importance, we study in particular how to address the challenges with detecting paraphrases in user generated short texts, such as Twitter, which often contain language irregularity and noise, and do not necessarily contain as much semantic information as longer clean texts. We propose a novel deep neural network-based approach that relies on coarse-grained sentence modelling using a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a recurrent neural network (RNN) model, combined with a specific fine-grained word-level similarity matching model. More specifically, we develop a new architecture, called DeepParaphrase, which enables to create an informative semantic representation of each sentence by (1) using CNN to extract the local region information in form of important n-grams from the sentence, and (2) applying RNN to capture the long-term dependency information. In addition, we perform a comparative study on state-of-the-art approaches within paraphrase detection. An important insight from this study is that existing paraphrase approaches perform well when applied on clean texts, but they do not necessarily deliver good performance against noisy texts, and vice versa. In contrast, our evaluation has shown that the proposed DeepParaphrase-based approach achieves good results in both types of texts, thus making it more robust and generic than the existing approaches.
The plate dent test is one of the simplest tools for fast determination of the detonation pressure. The test is based on the observation that the detonation pressure correlates with the depth of the dent produced by a detonating explosive on a metal witness plate. The present study is aimed at developing a model for estimating the dent depth, which is used not only to obtain the detonation pressure, but also to evaluate the brisance relative to a reference explosive. It is shown that the experimental dent depth values for CHNO and CHNOClF explosives can be successfully reproduced by a model based on few parameters, namely: loading density, number of moles of gaseous detonation products per gram of the explosive, and average molecular weight of the gaseous products, where the number of moles and the mean molecular weight of the gaseous products are calculated according to the [H2O-CO2] arbitrary decomposition assumption. Furthermore, the predicted values of the dent depth and the Kamlet-Jacobs method are used to estimate the detonation pressure for 37 explosives. The results show that the pressures obtained on the basis of the dent depth values are in better agreement with experimental/thermochemical code data than the predictions of the Kamlet-Jacobs method.
Delaying laminar-turbulent transition is considered a crucial issue with respect to the reduction of airplanes’ environmental impact, allowing the reduction of skin friction drag and thus fuel consumption. As part of this theme, boundary-layer destabilizing effects of surface imperfections (assembly gaps, steps, rivets, waviness, and holes) have been investigated by ONERA scientists for many years. Experimental, numerical, and theoretical works provided fruitful results partly described in this paper, which especially focuses on gaps effects. Geometrical triggering criteria were searched and found to reproduce transition at a realistic chord percentage on reduced scale models. More recently, predicting the impact of gaps on laminar flow transition was also studied so as to provide a numerical tool for defining tolerances compatible with natural laminar flow airfoils. A specific model based on a ΔN approach has been developed to quantify the transition displacement caused by transverse gaps with a rectangular section. Detailed experimental studies that recently contributed to its validation are also presented in this paper.
The Italian National Health Service (NHS) provides universal coverage to all citizens, granting primary and hospital care with a copayment system for outpatient and drug services. Financing of Local Health Trusts (LHTs) is based on a capitation system adjusted only for age, gender and area of residence. We applied a risk-adjustment system (Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups System, ACG® System) in order to explain health care costs using routinely collected administrative data in the Veneto Region (North-eastern Italy). All residents in the Veneto Region were included in the study. The ACG system was applied to classify the regional population based on the following information sources for the year 2015: Hospital Discharges, Emergency Room visits, Chronic disease registry for copayment exemptions, ambulatory visits, medications, the Home care database, and drug prescriptions. Simple linear regressions were used to contrast an age-gender model to models incorporating more comprehensive risk measures aimed at predicting health care costs. A simple age-gender model explained only 8% of the variance of 2015 total costs. Adding diagnoses-related variables provided a 23% increase, while pharmacy based variables provided an additional 17% increase in explained variance. The adjusted R-squared of the comprehensive model was 6 times that of the simple age-gender model. ACG System provides substantial improvement in predicting health care costs when compared to simple age-gender adjustments. Aging itself is not the main determinant of the increase of health care costs, which is better explained by the accumulation of chronic conditions and the resulting multimorbidity.
A sustainable metal-free route to urethanes and ureas based on a photocatalyzed oxidative decarboxylation of oxamic acids is described. The reaction includes in situ generation of an isocyanate from the oxamic acid, using an organic dye as a photocatalyst, a hypervalent iodine reagent as an oxidant and a light source, which trigger the free-radical decarboxylation. This protocol successfully avoids the isolation, purification and storage of carcinogenic iso-cyanates and allows elaboration of urethanes and ureas in a one-pot process from commercially available sources.
Tuber magnatum, the Italian white truffle, is the world’s most valuable truffle. Despite the economic importance, its biology and ecology are largely unexplored. This gap of knowledge makes difficult to find reliable methods for its cultivation and to protect and increase the production of the natural productive areas. In this study, the vertical distribution of T. magnatum mycelium in productive soil patches was evaluated using a quantitative PCR (qPCR) approach. Data were then used to develop for the first time a simulation model to predict the mycelial dynamics of T. magnatum at varying soil temperatures and moisture. T. magnatum mycelium was abundant up to 30-cm depth, while the model determined the optimal temperature (20 °C) and water potential (~ 0 kPa) for growth of T. magnatum mycelium in soil. Such information could be useful to establish proper irrigation scheduling and to enhance the management of T. magnatum sites, for increasing mycelial growth and fruiting body production.
Critical evaluation underpins the practices of science. In a three-year classroom-based research project, we developed and tested instructional scaffolds for Earth science content in which students evaluate lines of evidence with respect to alternative explanations of scientific phenomena (climate change, fracking and earthquakes, wetlands and land use, and formation of Earth’s Moon). The present paper documents a quasi-experimental study where high school Earth science students completed these instructional scaffolds, including an explanation task scored for evaluative levels (erroneous, descriptive, relational, and critical), along with measures of plausibility reappraisal and knowledge. Repeated measures analyses of variance reveal significant increases in plausibility and knowledge scores for students completing instructional scaffolds that promoted students’ evaluations about the connections between lines of evidence and two alternative explanations, whereas evaluations about connections between lines of evidence and only one alternative show no change in scores. A structural equation model suggests that students’ evaluation may influence post instructional plausibility and knowledge. The results of this study demonstrate that students’ active evaluation of scientific alternatives and explicit reappraisal of plausibility judgments can support deeper learning of Earth science content.
Comparative feedbacks, that is personalized messages describing how one's behavior compares to that of relevant others, are currently widely used in order to change people's behaviors. Such feedbacks may induce recipients to update their beliefs about both reachable material outcomes and perceived self/social esteem. Both channels are very hard to disentangle in the field, which notably makes welfare analysis a very challenging task. This paper uses an online experiment that makes it possible to focus, within the considered setting, on the role of pure information on material outcomes. Despite an absence of normative pressure, comparative feedbacks are found to trigger comparable or even greater changes in behaviors than other kinds of informative and more accurate feedbacks. A possible explanation may be that comparative feedbacks more effectively conveyed to participants the idea that it should not be too difficult for them to reach a better outcome.
In this paper, we investigate whether there are benefits in disaggregating GDP into its components when nowcasting GDP. To answer this question, we conduct a realistic out-of-sample experiment that deals with the most prominent problems in short-term forecasting: mixed frequencies, ragged-edge data, asynchronous data releases and a large set of potential information. We compare a direct leading indicator-based GDP forecast with two bottom-up procedures—that is, forecasting GDP components from the production side or from the demand side. Generally, we find that the direct forecast performs relatively well. Among the disaggregated procedures, the production side seems to be better suited than the demand side to form a disaggregated GDP nowcast.
About fifteen years ago, the GALSI pipeline was projected to connect Algeria and Italy by crossing the Mediterranean Sea. This has suggested the opportunity to provide natural gas to households and firms of the Sardinia Island, since a gas supply network was lacking in the region. Currently, although the GALSI pipeline is no more on the agenda, investments to equip many Sardinian municipalities with local gas networks are still carried on. The analysis we perform is twofold. Firstly, we estimate the likely natural gas consumption in 89 municipalities of the island. Subsequently, we focus on the economic viability of the local gas networks both from the public and the private point of view. The former perspective considers the public funds as outflows and the taxes levied on gas consumptions as inflows. The latter perspective aims to measure the yield rate for the private investors. Here we show that the projects are worth to be subsidized, although not all of them are palatable for the private partners. However, the most problematic finding concerns the allocation of the public funds, which has been found to be inconsistent with the underlying demographic and socio-economic conditions that drive natural gas consumptions. The irrational distribution of the grants causes that some local networks are over-subsidized and highly profitable for the private partners, while others are under-subsidized and characterized by a poor economic attractiveness for the investors. Moreover, the overall amount of grants is by far higher than the amount that would suffice.
Despite its wide range of application, cyclophosphamide (CP) exhibits a wide range of adverse effects including reproductive toxicity. The emerging field of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) therapy may provide a new hope for prevention of CP induced gonadal toxicity. Herein, we aim to investigate the possible role of ZnO NPs as a new strategy to protect against CP induced testicular injury. Sixty adult male albino rats were divided into 3 groups; control, CP treated and CP + ZnO NPs treated groups. CP group was injected with CP (5 mg/kg/day), whereas CP + ZnO NPs group was concomitantly injected with CP and ZnO NPs (5 mg/kg/day). Testicular specimens were processed for histological, ultrastructural and c-kit immunohistochemical study. Biochemical analysis for tissue malondialdehyde and serum testosterone was done in addition to sperm morphology assay and cytogenetic study. Our results revealed that CP induced deleterious testicular histopathological, biochemical and genetic alterations that were effectively prevented by ZnO NPs.
Ecological processes in small-order streams are dependent on their community. A threat to the appropriate functioning of these processes is the water warming of streams since changes in temperature can modify the behavior, abundance, and distribution of the species. Away to predict the consequences of global warming on ecological processes in these ecosystems is to study their aquatic community. Here we evaluated behavioral and metabolic changes in Aegla longirostri at different temperatures (21 degrees C and 24 degrees C). Experiments were performed in laboratory conditions. We calculated leaf consumption and quantified glycogen, protein and amino acid composition in the hepatopancreas. We also conducted a behavioral test to investigate the activity level of aeglids. Leaf consumption did not differ between temperatures. However, the amount of protein was higher at 21 degrees C, and the amino acid and glycogen levels were greater at 24 degrees C. In the present study we evaluated only the activity of hepatopancreas, so we can assume that the organ may have used glucose through the breakdown of glycogen and also performing some protein break. However, this hypothesis needs to be confirmed by checking for muscle activity. Animals kept at 24 degrees C showed a lower level of activity. This strategy possibly occurs to save energy, as in elevated temperature crustaceans spend extra energy to maintain their homeostasis. This study indicates that a future increase temperature of streams will impact the populations of aeglids by changing their metabolism and behavior.
