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Herein we describe the fabrication and characterization of Ag and Au bimetallic plasmonic crystals as a system that exhibits improved capabilities for quantitative, bulk refractive index (RI) sensing and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) as compared to monometallic plasmonic crystals of similar form. The sensing optics, which are bimetallic plasmonic crystals consisting of sequential nanoscale layers of Ag coated by Au, are chemically stable and useful for quantitative, multispectral, refractive index and spectroscopic chemical sensing. Compared to previously reported homometallic devices, the results presented herein illustrate improvements in performance that stem from the distinctive plasmonic features and strong localized electric fields produced by the Ag and Au layers, which are optimized in terms of metal thickness and geometric features. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations theoretically verify the nature of the multimode plasmonic resonances generated by the devices and allow for a better understanding of the enhancements in multispectral refractive index and SERS-based sensing. Taken together, these results demonstrate a robust and potentially useful new platform for chemical/spectroscopic sensing.

This paper proposes a method to enhance the effectiveness of classifying imbalanced data. The main contribution of the method is integrating the K-means clustering algorithm and the minority oversampling technique VCIR to generate synthetic samples that closely represent the actual data characteristics. Experimental results have shown that the proposed method performs better on several metrics than current popular methods for handling imbalanced data, such as SMOTE, Borderline-SMOTE, Kmeans-SMOTE, and SVM-SMOTE.

Vietnamese higher education has been entering the era of digital technology education. This is considered an opportunity for educational institutions to change the content and form of teaching to meet the individualized needs of learners, helping them adapt to the future learning and working environment. Through investigating and synthesizing theoretical knowledge and analyzing strengths and weaknesses from previous research, the article analyzes the role, meaning and challenges of Vietnamese higher education when applying personalization according to the adaptive learning model; From there, propose a number of solutions that contribute to orienting educational institutions to improve the content and forms of learning in accordance with the goals, abilities and needs of individualized adaptive learning of learners, guiding learners to the community learning environment and learning society in the future.

This study investigated the axial compressive behavior of circular reinforced concrete (RC) stub columns jacketed by ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) and ultra-high performance fiber reinforced concrete (UHPFRC). Eighteen composite columns were tested under compressive loadings on the entire section and only the RC section, while three control RC columns were tested under axial compression. Loading on the entire section exhibited a higher maximum compressive load and better expansion restraint than loading on the RC section. Adding 1 % and 2 % steel fibers by volume significantly increased the maximum compressive load and ductility index. However, the difference between 1 % and 2 % fiber content was not substantial. Maximum compressive load when loading on the entire section surpassed that when loading on the RC section, increasing by 75.6 %, 76.18 %, and 76.78 % for 0 %, 1 %, and 2 % steel fiber volume, respectively. Loading on the RC section led to faster cracking and failure, resulting in more tensile stress and lateral strain in the UHPC and UHPFRC jackets. Conversely, loading on the entire section maintained the expansion restraint even after reaching the maximum load. Columns with higher steel fiber volume demonstrated a greater enhancement in strength and ductility. Furthermore, a finite element model (FEM) using ABAQUS software was built to identify the experiments. Material models for UHPC, UHPFRC, and NSC core were proposed. The comparison between FEM and the test results shows that the FEM can predict accurately the behavior of tested columns. Based on developed FEM, a parametric study with the change of two variables, including the thickness and the compressive strength of the UHPC and UHPFRC layers, was conducted. The increase in the thickness of the UHPC or UHPFRC layer led to a remarkable increase in the maximum compressive load and ductility, indicating the importance of the thickness of the UHPC and UHPFRC jackets in restraining the expansion of the RC core. However, increasing the compressive strength of UHPC and UHPFRC had minimal impact on the maximum compressive load and ductility. Derived from these findings, UHPC and UHPFRC can be considered alternative material to provide lateral confinement to RC columns in addition to the traditional materials, indicating the potential application in strengthening or repairing damaged RC columns

The magnetic properties of core/shell nanoparticles (NPs) depend on the various parameters, including the magnetic interactions, but these effects have not been well studied. Here, we systematically investigated the structure and magnetic properties of Fe3O4@CoFe2O4 core/shell NPs. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) confirmed the formation of Fe3O4@CoFe2O4 core/shell NPs. Magnetic measurements of the core/shell NPs were performed on both dried-pressed and well-dispersed in wax states. For the dried-pressed NPs, we found that the temperature-dependent magnetization curves of core/shell NPs vary significantly compared to that of core NPs due to spin interactions at the core/shell interface. Besides, the hysteresis loops of the core/shell NPs at 10 K are constricted, probably due to the interparticle interaction. For the core/shell NPs dispersed in wax, the hysteresis loops were smooth at all temperatures between 10 and 300 K due to the attenuated interparticle interaction. The high HC of 9.14 kOe (at 10 K) of the dispersed NPs is twice larger than that of the dried-pressed powders (4.23 kOe). Our study provides new insights into the effects of shell thickness and interparticle interaction on the magnetic properties of Fe3O4@CoFe2O4 core/shell NPs.

BackgroundTrachoma recrudescence after elimination as a public health problem has been reached is a concern for control programs globally. Programs typically conduct district-level trachoma surveillance surveys (TSS) ≥ 2 years after the elimination threshold is achieved to determine whether the prevalence of trachomatous inflammation-follicular (TF) among children ages 1 to 9 years remains Methods/principal findingsThese post-surveillance surveys, conducted in 2021, were multi-stage cluster surveys whereby certified graders assessed trachoma signs. Children ages 1 to 9 years provided a dried blood spot and children ages 1 to 5 years provided a conjunctival swab. TF prevalence in Metema and Woreta Town were 3.6% (95% Confidence Interval [CI]:1.4-6.4) and 2.5% (95% CI:0.8-4.5) respectively. Infection prevalence was 1.2% in Woreta Town and 0% in Metema. Seroconversion rates to Pgp3 in Metema and Woreta Town were 0.4 (95% CI:0.2-0.7) seroconversions per 100 child-years and 0.9 (95% CI:0.6-1.5) respectively.Conclusions/significanceBoth study districts had a TF prevalence

Adjuvant radiotherapy for breast cancer may involve some incidental exposure of the ipsilateral internal mammary artery to ionizing radiation. However, the relevant evidence is limited and inconsistent. The dataset presented in this article contains the information used to assess the effects of accidental radiation exposure on the internal mammary artery in patients with unilateral total mastectomy followed radiotherapy for breast cancer. The study population consists of two groups: the irradiated group and the control group. The left and right internal mammary arteries were assessed through the second intercostal spaces using a computed sonography system (Vivid S6; GE, Tirat Carmel, Israel) equipped with a 5.5 - 11 MHz transducer. The recorded parameters were the diameter, time-averaged maximum velocity, and blood flow of the internal mammary artery.The dataset contains two files of data: a raw and an analyzed data. The raw data file contains the individual information of each participant, including demographic characteristics and the parameters of the internal mammary artery duplex ultrasound imaging. The analyzed data file was made up of R Markdown, a markup language of R. The results of data analysis were presented in the related research article which has been accepted for publication in the Annals of Vascular Surgery. The dataset presented in this article may be reused for further studies in which the internal mammary artery is considered as potential donor or recipient vessels for a vascular bypass or free flap anastomosis.

This study isolated and identified Bacillus amyloliquefaciens B1 from Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda by carrying out the 16S rRNA sequence analysis, reconstructing the phylogenetic tree based on the Environment for Tree Exploration (ETE3) v3.1.1 belonging to the GenomeNet. By an indirect competitive enzyme-labeled immunoassay, B1 could produce tetrodotoxin (TTX) in MRS was more highly than LB media. After purification, TTX producing ability in B1 could be detected in ELISA assay, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The gel permeation chromatography and gas chromatography were applied to determine the molecular weight of EPS and the concentration of glucose in EPS. The results indicated the highest molecular weight of exopolysaccharides (EPS) estimated 1.33 × 106 Da consisted of glucose (150.09 µg/g). TTX yield was proportional to EPS production in the bacterium. The antimicrobial activities of EPS were determined by agar well diffusion method. Diameter of inhibition zone (mm) of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens EPS on the test microorganisms. The EPS could inhibit against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Vibrio parahaemolyticus ATCC 17802 and Micrococcus luteus ATCC 10240. In silico prediction, TTX might interact with Bacillus amyloliquefaciens via the extracellular domain of noncanonic ABC-type transporter from gram positive bacteria. TTX might also interact with peptidase S54, mistic, metal binding protein of Bacillus subtilis and tryptophan-rich sensory protein of Bacillus cereus. This study provides the understanding of TTX producing Bacillus amyloliquefaciens B1 isolated from Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda.

AbstractThe US dollar is the most prevalent currency to settle internationally traded merchandise. A few existing studies demonstrate that the US dollar can significantly impact a country’s trade balance with a non-US partner. Nevertheless, the current literature indicates the remarkable deficiency of empirical results for the case of India despite the vital importance of the US dollar in its international trade. Recognizing the European Union (EU) as the largest trading partner of India over the 2000Q1–2022Q2 period, this study is the first to explore how the US dollar influences India’s trade balance with the EU by employing the Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) method. The results show that, no matter if the US dollar is employed, the depreciation of rupee cannot facilitate India’s trade balance, and the appreciation has a negative effect. Therefore, devaluation is an ineffectual policy for supporting India’s trade balance with the EU.

Despite their promise, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)-based assays for multi-cancer early detection face challenges in test performance, due mostly to the limited abundance of ctDNA and its inherent variability. To address these challenges, published assays to date demanded a very high-depth sequencing, resulting in an elevated price of test. Herein, we developed a multimodal assay called SPOT-MAS (screening for the presence of tumor by methylation and size) to simultaneously profile methylomics, fragmentomics, copy number, and end motifs in a single workflow using targeted and shallow genome-wide sequencing (~0.55×) of cell-free DNA. We applied SPOT-MAS to 738 non-metastatic patients with breast, colorectal, gastric, lung, and liver cancer, and 1550 healthy controls. We then employed machine learning to extract multiple cancer and tissue-specific signatures for detecting and locating cancer. SPOT-MAS successfully detected the five cancer types with a sensitivity of 72.4% at 97.0% specificity. The sensitivities for detecting early-stage cancers were 73.9% and 62.3% for stages I and II, respectively, increasing to 88.3% for non-metastatic stage IIIA. For tumor-of-origin, our assay achieved an accuracy of 0.7. Our study demonstrates comparable performance to other ctDNA-based assays while requiring significantly lower sequencing depth, making it economically feasible for population-wide screening.

Researching recipient feedback is one of the important actions to enhance the quality of the communication process. This study was conducted to provide some solutions to improve the effectiveness of Dalat University’s enrollment communication process by analyzing student feedback. A survey was conducted in 2021 with a sample of 655 students from Dalat University. The results showed that students mainly knew about Dalat University through word of mouth and the Facebook channel, and that tuition fees, the benchmark, and geographical location were the main reasons students chose the university. In addition, most students showed an interest in receiving content in the form of short videos. The research results can be applied by the communication department of Dalat University and can contribute to the field of university communication research, which has not received much attention in Vietnam.

Hand gesture recognition is an efficient and practical solution for the non-contact human–machine interaction in smart devices. To date, vision-based methods are widely used in this research area, but they are susceptible to light conditions. To address this issue, radar-based gesture recognition using micro-Doppler signatures can be applied as an alternative. Accordingly, the use of a novel densely convolutional neural network model, Dop-DenseNet, is proposed in this paper for improving hand gesture recognition in terms of classification accuracy and latency. The model was designed with cross or skip connections in a dense architecture so that the former features, which can be lost in the forward-propagation process, can be reused. We evaluated our model with different numbers of filter channels and experimented with it using the Dop-Net dataset, with different time lengths of input data. As a result, it was found that the model with 64 3 × 3 filters and 200 time bins of micro-Doppler spectrogram data could achieve the best performance trade-off, with 99.87% classification accuracy and 3.1 ms latency. In comparison, our model remarkably outperformed the selected state-of-the-art neural networks (GoogLeNet, Res-Net-50, NasNet-Mobile, and MobileNet-V2) using the same Dop-Net dataset.

Bilateral absence of common iliac arteries or aortic quadfurcation is an extremely rare congenital vascular variant in which aorta terminated directly into four branches: two internal iliac arteries and two external iliac arteries. In the case of this anomaly combined with an abdominal aortic aneurysm, the treatment method should be carefully selected regarding various factors, especially the possibility of pelvic perfusion preservation.This article reports a case with an abdominal aortic aneurysm quadfurcation which was successfully treated by open repair using a transperitoneal approach with preservation of two internal iliac arteries.

CuSO4/hydrazine hydrate was used as a catalyst system for copper(I)-catalyzed alkyne-azide cycloaddition (CuAAC) of AZT and 5′-azido adenosine with terminal alkynes to give 30 novel 1,2,3-triazole derivatives. Screening for their anticancer, anti-inflammatory, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), and 3C-like protease (3CLpro) inhibitory activities showed that several triazoles of AZT containing murayafoline A and indirubin-3′-oxime inhibited the growth of HepG2 and LU-1 with the IC50 values ranging from 11.01 to 19.87 μg/mL. Besides that, some triazole derivatives of adenosine exhibited anti-inflammatory activity against RAW264.7 cells with the IC50 values within an interval of 12.00–59.48.00 μg/mL. Especially, two triazoles of adenosine with indirubin-3′-oxime at O- and N1 positions expressed the ACE2 and 3CLpro inhibitory activities in which the triazole of adenosine with indirubin-3′-oxime at N1 inhibited both ACE2 and 3CLpro inhibitory activities with IC50 values of 135.62 and 142.95 μg/mL, respectively.

Abstract Correlated metals with high carrier density and strongly correlated electron effects provide an alternative route to achieve transparent conducting materials, different from the conventional degenerately doped wide‐bandgap transparent conducting oxides (TCO). The extremely low electrical resistivity and high optical transparency in the ultraviolet‐visible spectral range shown in 4d correlated metals present an advantage over conventional TCOs. However, most of the 4d correlated metals are grown epitaxially on single crystal substrates. Here, it has been shown that Ca2Nb3O10 nanosheets with different buffer layers promote the growth of high‐quality 4d2 SrMoO3 films on fused silica substrates, overcoming the use of expensive and size‐limited single‐crystal substrates. The room temperature electrical resistivity of SrMoO3 is as low as 61 µΩ cm, the lowest reported value on amorphous transparent substrates to date, without compromising its high optical transmittance. 4d1 correlated metal SrNbO3 on Ca2Nb3O10 nanosheets also exhibits similarly high optical transmittance but a higher room temperature resistivity of 174 µΩ cm. These findings facilitate the use of highly conducting and transparent 4d correlated metals not only as TCOs on technologically relevant substrates for the applications in the ultraviolet‐visible spectral range but also as electrodes for other oxide‐based thin film technologies.