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Herein we report on the formation of the adduct salts [Xe(OTeF5)(pyF)][Al(OTeF5)4] (pyF = C5F5N, C5H3F2N) by abstraction of an –OTeF5 group from Xe(OTeF5)2 with the Lewis superacid Al(OTeF5)3 and subsequent adduct formation of the generated [XeOTeF5]+ cation with fluorinated pyridines. These salts represent the first xenonium cations with the weakly coordinating [Al(OTeF5)4]− anion. The strong oxidizing property of these compounds is further assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privacy-utility tradeoff remains as one of the fundamental issues of differentially private machine learning. This paper introduces a geometrically inspired kernel-based approach to mitigate the accuracy-loss issue in classification. In this approach, a representation of the affine hull of given data points is learned in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHS). This leads to a novel distance measure that hides privacy-sensitive information about individual data points and improves the privacy-utility tradeoff via significantly reducing the risk of membership inference attacks. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated through experiments on MNIST dataset, Freiburg groceries dataset, and a real biomedical dataset. It is verified that the approach remains computationally practical. The application of the approach to federated learning is considered and it is observed that the accuracy-loss due to data being distributed is either marginal or not significantly high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, we successfully fabricated porous nanocomposite membranes decorated with high loadings of nickel nanoparticles (25–45 wt %) by using chelating additives (sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and Fumion) for the film casting cum phase separation approach. These additives decreased the nickel agglomeration and promoted the presentation of particles at the pore surface of the final membranes, leading to increased water permeances (450 to 1200–2400 L/m2 hbar) and porosities (56% to 70–78%) in comparison to a nanocomposite membrane made without additives. The hydrophobic ionomer Fumion, incorporated into the polyethersulfone matrix during solidification, further allowed us to tune the membrane hydrophobicity. We discovered that the same nickel nanoparticles exhibited a 5× increased H2 generation rate during the catalytic hydrogen formation from ammonia borane when presented in a membrane with a higher water contact angle (85° compared to 60°). We could attribute this improvement to the lower capillary pressure in more hydrophobic pores, which facilitates the release of H2 bubbles. The nanocomposite membranes were further employed as flow-through reactors for the catalytic hydrogenation of p-nitrophenol (p-NP) in the presence of ammonia borane. Membranes with an additive-directed nickel nanoparticle presentation at the pore surface demonstrated 6 to 7× higher p-NP turnover frequencies (TOFs). We also observed that the formation of hydrogen gas from ammonia borane results in a permeance decrease during the flow-through p-NP conversion. However, this effect was mitigated in more hydrophilic membranes with an anisotropic pore structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cortical neural dynamics mediate information processing for the cerebral cortex, which is implicated in fundamental biological processes such as vision and olfaction, in addition to neurological and psychiatric diseases. Spontaneous pain is a key feature of human neuropathic pain. Whether spontaneous pain pushes the cortical network into an aberrant state and, if so, whether it can be brought back to a "normal" operating range to ameliorate pain are unknown. Using a clinically relevant mouse model of neuropathic pain with spontaneous pain-like behavior, we report that orofacial spontaneous pain activated a specific area within the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), displaying synchronized neural dynamics revealed by intravital two-photon calcium imaging. This synchronization was underpinned by local GABAergic interneuron hypoactivity. Pain-induced cortical synchronization could be attenuated by manipulating local S1 networks or clinically effective pain therapies. Specifically, both chemogenetic inhibition of pain-related c-Fos-expressing neurons and selective activation of GABAergic interneurons significantly attenuated S1 synchronization. Clinically effective pain therapies including carbamazepine and nerve root decompression could also dampen S1 synchronization. More important, restoring a "normal" range of neural dynamics through attenuation of pain-induced S1 synchronization alleviated pain-like behavior. These results suggest that spontaneous pain pushed the S1 regional network into a synchronized state, whereas reversal of this synchronization alleviated pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]