Search

Efficient and selective extraction of uranium (U(VI)) from seawater is essential for sustainable nuclear power production. This study reports a novel adsorbent zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF)-67@SiO2-A/polyacrylamide (PAM) which was synthesized by grafting the core–shell metal–organic frameworks (MOFs)-based nanostructures coated with the 3-aminopropyl triethoxysilane (APTES) functionalized SiO2 (SiO2-A) onto PAM hydrogel. The SiO2 shell was grown on the surface of MOF, which improved the acid-base resistance of MOF. The introduction of ZIF-67@SiO2-A enhances the specific surface area and adsorption efficiency of the PAM. The ZIF-67@SiO2-A/PAM shows remarkable adsorption capacity, fast adsorption kinetics, and good reusability for uranium. It has excellent adsorption property (6.33 mg·g−1, 30 d) in natural seawater. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) mappings, and density functional theory reveal that the coordination by N and O in ZIF-67@SiO2-A/PAM with uranium is the main mechanism of uranium adsorption. Thus, ZIF-67@SiO2-A/PAM has great potential to capture uranium from natural seawater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MoP as an important transition metal phosphide material, has been widely used in catalysis field due to its excellent catalytic performance and chemical stability. Combining MoP with carbon material can effectively enhance its dispersibility and stability, as well as the carrier transport rate, thereby further improving its photocatalytic performance. In this study, MoP/C nan-osheets were prepared by the sodium chloride template method, and its photocatalytic ability to degrade methylene blue was studied by adjusting the amount of MoP/C added. The results showed that MoP was uniformly distributed on the surface of the carbon nano-sheets to form the composites. The highest removal efficiency of MB (20 mg/L, 200 mL) was observed when 5 mg of MoP/C was added and reacted for 4 h under 6 °C light, reaching 70.7%, At the same time, this study systematically investigated the active substances produced during the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue, and found that ·OH and ·O2− play a key role in the photocatalytic process. Furthermore, MoP/C also used to photocatalytic degradation of tetracycline hydrochloride and diplayed good photocatalytic performance. This study provides new ideas for the application of transition metal phosphides as photocatalyst in the environmental and energy fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nipah virus (NiV) is a highly lethal zoonotic paramyxovirus that poses a severe threat to humans due to its high morbidity and the lack of viable countermeasures. Vaccines are the most crucial defense against NiV infections. Here, a recombinant chimpanzee adenovirus-based vaccine (AdC68-G) and a DNA vaccine (DNA-G) were developed by expressing the codon-optimized full-length glycoprotein (G) of NiV. Strong and sustained neutralizing antibody production, accompanied by an effective T-cell response, was induced in BALB/c mice by intranasal or intramuscular administration of one or two doses of AdC68-G, as well as by priming with DNA-G and boosting with intramuscularly administered AdC68-G. Importantly, the neutralizing antibody titers were maintained for up to 68 weeks in the mice that received intramuscularly administered AdC68-G and the prime DNA-G/boost AdC68-G regimen, without a significant decline. Additionally, Syrian golden hamsters immunized with AdC68-G and DNA-G via homologous or heterologous prime/boost immunization were completely protected against a lethal NiV virus challenge, without any apparent weight loss, clinical signs, or pathological tissue damage. There was a significant reduction in but not a complete absence of the viral load and number of infectious particles in the lungs and spleen tissue following NiV challenge. These findings suggest that the AdC68-G and DNA-G vaccines against NiV infection are promising candidates for further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient capture of uranium(VI) (U(VI)) from seawater is of great significance to the sustainable development of nuclear energy and environmental protection, which is also a serious challenge at present. In this study, hollow Zn/Co zeolitic imidazolate framework (H-ZIF) was decorated on polyacrylamide/sodium alginate (PAM/SA) hydrogel by chelating and covalently crosslinking, and a new type of PAM/SA/H-ZIF hydrogel was synthesized. The combination of PAM/SA and H-ZIF gives PAM/SA/H-ZIF hydrogel excellent mechanical properties, good stability, and abundant surface functional groups, which is beneficial to improving the adsorption properties. The extraction amount of U(VI) by PAM/SA/H-ZIF is 171.14 mg·g−1 at C0 = 99.52 mg·L−1 and pH = 5.0. The adsorption equilibrium is reached in 120 min and the adsorption process fits well with Langmuir isotherm model and pseudo-second-order rate equation. The PAM/SA/H-ZIF also showed good recyclability and stability after 10 cycles of adsorption—desorption. More importantly, the rate of uranium adsorption is 0.196 mg·g−1·day−1 after 30 days, which implies that the PAM/SA/H-ZIF could serve as a potential adsorbent for the development of uranium capture from seawater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to develop a gene signature related to the immune system that can be used to create personalized immunotherapy for Uterine Corpus Endometrial Carcinoma (UCEC). To classify the UCEC samples into different immune clusters, we utilized consensus clustering analysis. Additionally, immune correlation algorithms were employed to investigate the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) in diverse clusters. To explore the biological function, we conducted GSEA analysis. Next, we developed a Nomogram by integrating a prognostic model with clinical features. Finally, we performed experimental validation in vitro to verify our prognostic risk model. In our study, we classified UCEC patients into three clusters using consensus clustering. We hypothesized that cluster C1 represents the immune inflammation type, cluster C2 represents the immune rejection type, and cluster C3 represents the immune desert type. The hub genes identified in the training cohort were primarily enriched in the MAPK signaling pathway, as well as the PD-L1 expression and PD-1 checkpoint pathway in cancer, all of which are immune-related pathways. Cluster C1 may be a more suitable for immunotherapy. The prognostic risk model showed a strong predictive ability. Our constructed risk model demonstrated a high level of accuracy in predicting the prognosis of UCEC, while also effectively reflecting the state of TIME. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) are frequently found in low-grade gliomas, secondary glioblastoma, chondrosarcoma, acute myeloid leukemias, and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. However, the molecular mechanisms of how IDH2 mutations induce carcinogenesis remain unclear. Using overlapping PCR, transfection, immunoblotting, immunoprecipitation, measurements of enzyme activity, glucose, lactic acid, ATP, and reactive oxygen species (ROS), cell viability, protein degradation assays post-inhibition of the 26S proteasome (bortezomib) or HSP90 (17-AAG), and a homology model, we demonstrated that the properties of ten cancer-associated IDH2 variants (R140G/Q/W and R172S/K/M/W/G/C/P) arising from point mutations are closely related to their structure and stability. Compared with wild-type IDH2, the R172 and R140 point mutations resulted in a decrease in IDH2 activity, ROS, and lactate levels and an increase in glucose and ATP levels under normal and hypoxic conditions, indicating that mutant IDH2 increases cell dependency on mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, and reduces glycolysis under hypoxia. Overexpression of most of IDH2 point mutants showed anti-proliferative effects in the 293T and BV2 cell lines by inhibition of PI3K/AKT signaling and cyclin D1 expression and/or induced the expression of TNF-α and IL-6. Furthermore, bortezomib treatment resulted in dramatic degradation of IDH2 mutants, including R140G, R140Q, R140W, R172S and R172K, whereas it had little impact on the expression of WT and other mutants (R172M, R172W, R172G, R172C and R172P). In addition, targeting HSP90 minimally affected the expression of mutated IDH2 due to a lack of interaction between HSP90 and IDH2. The homology model further revealed that changes in conformation and IDH2 protein stability appeared to be associated with these point mutations. Taken together, our findings provide information important for understanding the molecular mechanisms of IDH2 mutations in tumors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A three-dimensional hydrodynamic-ecological lake model combined with field measurements and sampling was applied to investigate the impacts of floating photovoltaic (PV) systems on hydrodynamics and water quality in a shallow tropical reservoir in Singapore. The model was validated using field data and subsequently applied to predict temperature and water quality changes for a hypothetical 42 ha placement of floating photovoltaic panels, covering about 30% of the water surface and capable of generating up to 50 MW of energy. The impact of the panel placement was studied numerically. The area of the reservoir where panels are placed experiences both light limiting and reduced wind stress conditions. The model indicated an average water temperature increase of 0.3 °C beneath the panels, consistent with the field observation from a 1 ha demonstration installation. Comparisons of model results between the uncovered and covered areas reveal greater stability of the water column (increase in Richardson number from 2.3 to 3.3) and reduction in mixing energy (from 9 × 10–7 to 7 × 10–7 W/kg) under the PV panels. Furthermore, the model predicted that chlorophyll a, total organic carbon and dissolved oxygen concentrations would decline by up to 30%, 15% and 50%, respectively, under the photovoltaic panels. Total nitrogen and total phosphorus, averaged over the water column, increased by 10% and 30%, respectively, under the panels. Distant from the floating solar panels, temperature, stability and water quality were unaffected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic inflammation and immune response are two central hallmarks of the tumor microenvironment (TME), teeming with immune cells and inflammatory cytokines that promote tumor progression. Intriguingly, there is mutual regulation between immune cells and cytokines. Indeed, the differentiation and function of immune cells depend on cytokines secreted from tumor cells, whereas immune activation affects the dynamics of cytokines, reshaping the TME together. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) as a blooming molecule are virtually involved in physiology and pathology events, especially TME. Notably, the regulatory loop between lncRNAs and cytokines or immune activation plays a vital role in tumor growth. Thus, this review concentrates on the interaction between lncRNAs and immune cells. It puts special attention to the intertwist between lncRNAs and cytokines or immune cells, providing a theoretical basis for lncRNAs as a potential biomarker and therapeutic tumor target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One new species and one new record species of Sphaerolaimus are described. Sphaerolaimus longispiculatus sp. nov. is characterized by body length 2 213–2 470 µm, amphideal fovea 12%–16% corresponding body diameters in males and 9%–10% corresponding body diameters in females, long slender spicules 2.8–3.8 cloacal body diameters, eight small papilliform precloacal supplements, gubernaculum without apophysis, and tail conico-cylindrical, 2.5–3.7 cloacal/anal body diameters long. Sphaerolaimus gracilis is recorded from the first time in the mangroves wetlands, it can be distinguished from the original desceiption by longer spicules (66–71 µm vs 56 µm) and wider body (a=20.1–21.4 vs 25). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the acaricidal activity of Senecio cannabifolius essential oil, and two of its constituents, eucalyptol and camphor. Efficacy against females and larvae of Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus was assessed by the adult immersion test (AIT) and the larval immersion test (LIT). The oil was analyzed by gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID) and GC-mass spectrometry (MS) and in total 68 components were identified representing 99.2% of the essential oil. AIT revealed that the oil, eucalyptol, and camphor at the highest concentration presented efficacy of 68.9, 57.1, and 71.9%, respectively. LIT revealed that the essential oil and camphor achieved 100% mortality at concentration of 1.6% wt/vol, whereas eucalyptol showed moderate inhibitory activity. Biochemical assays indicated that the essential oil and camphor can reduce significantly overall detoxification enzyme activities in engorged females and larvae at high concentration (≥ 0.4% wt/vol), whereas the inhibitory effect of eucalyptol is weaker than that of the oil and camphor. Taken together our results indicated that the S. cannabifolius essential oil and its isolated constituent had potential for the development of a new and safe acaricide for the control of R. microplus ticks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the sixth most common malignancy in the world, and it is extremely rare that HNSCC occurs with salivary gland tumor(s). Here, we presented a rare case that squamous cell carcinoma of floor of mouth occurred simultaneously with Warthin's tumor in the submandibular gland. Case Presentation: A 65-year-old Chinese male presented with a 6-month history of an ulcer on the floor of the mouth and preoperative biopsy pathological examination demonstrated it was squamous cell carcinoma. Postoperative microscopic examination unexpectedly found the carcinoma occurred simultaneously with two Warthin's tumors in the right submandibular gland. Conclusion: This case serves as a reminder to oral surgeons that in head and neck carcinomas, enlarged lump may be caused by inflammation or secondary primary focus rather than lymph node metastasis. Recognition and implication of the unexpected pathologic findings in patients with head and neck cancer are thus worth of studying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A luminescent metal organic framework was prepared by encapsulating Zn–Ag–In–S quantum dots into "French fries"-like MIL-68(In) metal organic frameworks (ZAISQDs@MIL-68(In)). The ZAISQDs@MIL-68(In) had a maximum excitation wavelength at 370 nm and maximum emission wavelength at 620 nm. It was found that the ZAISQDs@MIL-68(In) was efficiently quenched by cytochrome c (Cyt c), which is an important biomarker of early cell apoptosis. The quenching mechanism was ascribed to be an inner filter effect and dynamic quenching of Cyt c towards the ZAISQDs@MIL-68(In), and the enrichment effect of MIL-68(In). Benefiting from the multiple advantages, ZAISQDs@MIL-68(In) was developed as an assay strategy of Cyt c with logarithmic relation between signal quenching and concentration in the range 0.02 to 3.5 μM. The linear equation was (F0–F)/F0 = 0.5043 + 0.2678 × logcCyt c with a detection limit of 8 nM. Cyt c released by drug induced apoptotic cells was determined by ZAISQDs@MIL-68(In), and this strategy has been utilized for the screening of anticancer drug activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents observations of diurnal cycles of stratification and vertical mixing in Kranji Reservoir, a shallow tropical reservoir with an average depth of 6.7 m located in the northwest corner of Singapore, via field measurements, focusing on a series of three 24-h self-contained autonomous microprofiler (SCAMP) measurements. This data, representing one of the most complete data sets, shows vertical mixing parameters for a tropical shallow reservoir over a diurnal cycle. Responding to diurnal cycles, the observations indicate that the thermal and flow structures are delineated by two distinct thermoclines: a three-layer structure during the daytime and a two-layer structure during the night-time when the two thermoclines merged into one. The daytime structure consisted of a thin surface mixed layer (SML) above the diurnal thermocline, an intermediate hypolimnion layer with the two thermoclines as its boundaries, and an underflow layer below the secondary thermocline. This underflow is shown to primarily arise from a horizontal temperature gradient generated by the daytime wind and stratification, and maintained by night-time differential cooling. The nocturnal structure is comprised of a SML deepened by penetrative cooling and the underflow layer. Analysis of relevant dimensionless numbers, the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) budget, and FrT–ReT turbulent phase diagram provide a consistent picture of the different mixing mechanisms within each layer. This short time scale variability of vertical mixing as observed in Kranji Reservoir would be a factor in favouring primary production for such shallow tropical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microneedle arrays have emerged as an alternative method for transdermal drug delivery. Although micromolding using a centrifugation method is widely used to prepare microneedles in laboratory, few researchers were focused on manufacturing processes capable of facile scale-up. A novel female mold was initially designed in this study, namely double-penetration female mold (DPFM) with the pinpoints covered by waterproof breather membrane which was beneficial to reduce the influence of gas resistance and solution viscosity. In addition, DPFM-based positive-pressure microperfusion technique (PPPT) was proposed for the scale-up fabrication of dissolving microneedle arrays (DMNA). In this method, polymer solution and base solution were poured into the DPFM by pressure difference, followed by drying and demolding. The results of optimal microscopy and SEM revealed that the obtained microneedles were uniformly distributed conical-shaped needles. The skin penetration test showed that DMNA prepared using PPPT were able to penetrate the rat skin with a high penetration rate. To realize the transition of microneedles fabrication from laboratory to industry, an automatic equipment was further designed in this study. Different from micromolding method using centrifugation, the equipment based on PPPT and DPFM has superiorities in the scale-up fabrication of microneedles in a highly effective, controllable, and scalable way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two new free-living marine nematode species from the mangrove wetlands of Fujian Province, China are identified and illustrated. Sabatieria conicoseta sp. nov. is characterized by its short conical somatic setae. There are 12-15 tubular pre-cloacal supplements and 12-15 μm long straight gubernacular apophyses. Dorylaimopsis papilla sp. nov. is characterized by spicules which are 1.5-1.8 a. b. d. long with media cuticularized strip along entire spicules, and have a cephalated proximal end with small hooked. There are 16-18 small papillate precloacal supplements and 37-40 μm long dorso-caudal gubernacular apophyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study applied an atmospheric Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model and a three-dimensional hydrodynamic-ecological lake model to investigate the impacts of variable wind forcing on lake hydrodynamics and water quality. The CFD model was used to predict the wind field over the lake surface which served as the meteorological forcing for the lake model. The study was carried out for the Marina Reservoir in downtown Singapore where field measurements of the wind field showed that temporal and spatial differences in wind field were found to be significant. By comparing simulations using uniform and spatially variable wind inputs in terms of thermal stratification, Richardson number, vorticity, and spatial gradients, this study demonstrates that the variability in wind forcing in urban lakes that arise from shielding and seasonal effects can have significant impacts on the hydrodynamics and water quality in the reservoir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, hollow Fe-Co double shell particles were synthesized successfully by electroless plating different amount of Fe on hollow Co particles. The atom content ratio of Fe and Co of three samples were 3:7, 5:5, and 7:3. The electromagnetic (EM) wave absorption properties of three samples were investigated. The results indicated that the atom content ratio of Fe and Co was critical to the EM wave absorption properties of hollow Fe-Co double shell when blended with 60 wt% in paraffin-based samples. Hollow Fe-Co double shell particles with the atom ratio of Fe/Co of 5:5 showed the best EM wave absorption properties with minimum reflection loss of − 47.30 dB, effective bandwidth of 4.93 GHz under − 10 dB and the thickness of 1.5 mm. The present work has a significant potential for the development of EM wave absorbing materials with hollow structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the effect of magnetic field heat treatment on electromagnetic wave absorption properties of FeCoNiCr alloy powders. The electromagnetic wave absorption properties of FeCoNiCr alloy powders for as-prepared, heating without magnetic field, and heating with magnetic field of 10 T are compared. The as-prepared FeCoNiCr alloy powders were fabricated by mechanical alloying with mixture structure of BCC and FCC, then the structure of powders transformed from mixture-phase of BCC and FCC to FCC-phase. The results indicate that the heat treatment with magnetic field is critical to the electromagnetic wave absorption properties of FeCoNiCr alloy powders when blended with 40 wt% in paraffin-based samples. The reflection loss (RL) of as-prepared FeCoNiCr alloy powders is only −20.93 dB. However, FeCoNiCr alloy powders heating with magnetic field exhibit the best RL of −60.96 dB and FeCoNiCr alloy powders heating without magnetic field show a RL of −32.58 dB. The present work has a significant potential for development of EM wave absorbing materials with magnetic field heat treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Markov random fields (MRF) have become an important tool for many vision applications, and the optimization of MRFs is a problem of fundamental importance. Recently, Veksler and Kumar et al. proposed the range move algorithms, which are some of the most successful optimizers. Instead of considering only two labels as in previous move-making algorithms, they explore a large search space over a range of labels in each iteration, and significantly outperform previous move-making algorithms. However, two problems have greatly limited the applicability of range move algorithms: (1) They are limited in the energy functions they can handle (i.e., only truncated convex functions); (2) They tend to be very slow compared to other move-making algorithms (e.g., $$\alpha $$ -expansion and $$\alpha \beta $$ -swap). In this paper, we propose two generalized range move algorithms (GRMA) for the efficient optimization of MRFs. To address the first problem, we extend the GRMAs to more general energy functions by restricting the chosen labels in each move so that the energy function is submodular on the chosen subset. Furthermore, we provide a feasible sufficient condition for choosing these subsets of labels. To address the second problem, we dynamically obtain the iterative moves by solving set cover problems. This greatly reduces the number of moves during the optimization. We also propose a fast graph construction method for the GRMAs. Experiments show that the GRMAs offer a great speedup over previous range move algorithms, while yielding competitive solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated FeCoNiCrAl0.8 high entropy alloy and amorphous alloy powders synthesized simply via high energy ball milling for 10 and 20 h. The electromagnetic wave absorption properties of FeCoNiCrAl0.8 high entropy alloy and amorphous alloy powders were investigated. The structure and morphology of FeCoNiCrAl0.8 were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive spectrometry and x-ray diffraction, which demonstrated that FeCoNiCrAl0.8 powders were in irregular shape and monodisperse with an average size of 5–15 µm. The minimum reflection loss of FeCoNiCrAl0.8 high entropy alloy powders was −41.8 dB at 11.9 GHz with a thickness of 2.3 mm and effective bandwidth (RL ≤ −10 dB) was up to 4.7 GHz (8.7–13.4 GHz), while the minimum reflection loss of FeCoNiCrAl0.8 amorphous alloy powders was observed to be −35.5 dB at 14.6 GHz with a thickness of 1.7 mm and effective bandwidth varied from 12.7 to 16.3 GHz (3.6 GHz). Electromagnetic wave absorption properties of FeCoNiCrAl0.8 high entropy alloy powders is better than that of amorphous alloy powders, which demonstrated that phase structures of FeCoNiCrAl0.8 alloy powders affect electromagnetic wave absorption properties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

SnRK2 is a plant-specific protein kinase family involved in abiotic stress signalling. In this study, NtSnRK2.1, NtSnRK2.2, and NtSnRK2.3, were cloned from tobacco by in silico cloning and reverse transcription PCR. The three protein kinases were classed into subfamily II of the SnRK2 family using a phylogenetic tree and C-terminus analysis. Subcellular localization revealed NtSnRK2s in the nuclear and cytoplasmic compartments. Dynamic expression of NtSnRK2s in tobacco plants that were exposed to drought, salt, or cold stressors were characterised using quantitative real-time PCR. It was revealed that the three genes showed similar patterns of transcription under abiotic stress responses; there was evidence NtSnRK2s participated in abscisic acid-dependent signalling pathways. NtSnRK2.1- 3 responded much faster to drought and salt than to cold stress. To investigate the role of NtSnRK2s under abiotic stresses, NtSnRK2.1 gene was over-expressed in tobacco. A stress tolerance assay showed that tobacco plants that over-expressed NtSnRK2.1 plants had greater salt tolerance. The results indicate that NtSnRK2s are involved in abiotic stress response pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the multi-task metric learning problem, i.e., the problem of learning multiple metrics from several correlated tasks simultaneously. Despite the importance, there are only a limited number of approaches in this field. While the existing methods often straightforwardly extend existing vector-based methods, we propose to couple multiple related metric learning tasks with the von Neumann divergence. On one hand, the novel regularized approach extends previous methods from the vector regularization to a general matrix regularization framework; on the other hand and more importantly, by exploiting von Neumann divergence as the regularization, the new multi-task metric learning method has the capability to well preserve the data geometry. This leads to more appropriate propagation of side-information among tasks and provides potential for further improving the performance. We propose the concept of geometry preserving probability and show that our framework encourages a higher geometry preserving probability in theory. In addition, our formulation proves to be jointly convex and the global optimal solution can be guaranteed. We have conducted extensive experiments on six data sets (across very different disciplines), and the results verify that our proposed approach can consistently outperform almost all the current methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metric learning has been widely studied in machine learning due to its capability to improve the performance of various algorithms. Meanwhile, multi-task learning usually leads to better performance by exploiting the shared information across all tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to make metric learning benefit from jointly training all tasks. Based on the assumption that discriminative information is retained in a common subspace for all tasks, our framework can be readily used to extend many current metric learning methods. In particular, we apply our framework on the widely used Large Margin Component Analysis (LMCA) and yield a new model called multi-task LMCA. It performs remarkably well compared to many competitive methods. Besides, this method is able to learn a low-rank metric directly, which effects as feature reduction and enables noise compression and low storage. A series of experiments demonstrate the superiority of our method against three other comparison algorithms on both synthetic and real data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) nanofibers that were doubly-doped with a donor, 1,3,5-triphenyl-2-pyrzoline (TPP), and an acceptor, 4-(dicyanomethylene)-2-methyl-6-( p-dimethyl-aminostyryl)-4H-pyran (DCM), were prepared by electrospinning to be 200-300 nm in diameter. Fluorescence from DCM was caused by non-radiative Forster-type fluorescence resonance energy transfer from photo-excited TPP to DCM. The color of the fluorescence from the PEO-TPP/DCM nanofibers was controllable through variation of the TPP:DCM molar ratio and ranged from blue to orange to white. [Figure not available: see fulltext.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tetranuclear manganese complex [Mn4(HL)4(MeOH)4(SCN)2]·3MeOH (1) and a one-dimensional assembly of [Mn4] units, [Mn4(HL)4(MeOH)4(N(CN)2)2]·2.5MeOH (2) (H3L = 2,6-bis(hydroxymethyl)-4-methylphenol), have been synthesized and studied. Complexes 1 and 2 crystallize in the triclinic space group P $$ \bar 1 $$ and monoclinic space group P21/n, respectively. Complex 1 possesses a mixed-valence tetranuclear dicubane unit, which comprises two MnII and two MnIII ions. Complex 2 is built from the similar tetranuclear [Mn4] units connected through two N(CN) anions into a 1-D chain. The temperature dependence of the magnetic susceptibilities of 1 and 2 indicates ferromagnetic interactions between the manganese ions. Frequency-dependent out-of-phase signals of alternating current magnetic susceptibilities are observed in the low temperature range for both complexes, indicating a slow magnetic relaxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]