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Traffic crash data is often greatly imbalanced with the majority of non-fatal crashes and only a small number of fatal crashes. Such data imbalance issue poses a challenge for crash severity modelling, especially for classifying and interpreting fatal crashes with very limited samples. To address the data imbalance issues, the data resampling techniques are commonly used methods to rebalance the number of samples among all categories of the dataset, such as under-sampling and over-sampling techniques. However, it is challenging for most traditional and existing deep learning-based resampling methods, e.g., synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), to handle both continuous and discrete risk factors in traffic crash datasets, since they are built upon by smooth and continuous functions which are not applicable for processing discrete variables. Though some resampling methods are capable of handling both continuous and discrete variables, they may struggle with mode collapse issues associated with sparse discrete risk factors so that the diversity of the underlying data distribution can not be captured due to oversampling repetitive and similar samples. To address the aforementioned issues, the current study proposes a traffic crash data generation method based on the Conditional Tabular GAN (CTGAN) to rebalance crash datasets for improving performance of crash severity classification and interpretation. The designed experiments are conducted to evaluate contributions of the synthetic data for improving crash severity classification, the distribution consistency between synthetic and benchmark datasets, and the parameter recovery (i.e., the accuracy of parameter estimation and probability prediction) for various resampling strategies. A 4-year real-world dataset collected in Washington State, U.S., and Monte Carlo simulations are utilized for demonstrating the designed experiments. The results indicate that crash seve

Our main contribution is to examine the reliability of confidence intervals using the SAM state-space fish stock assessment model used for the assessment of many stocks by the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas. We focus on frequentist statistical inferences and more specifically on inference conditioned on specific values of the state-space model random effects drawn from their process distribution. This is somewhat consistent with simulation self-test procedures that are commonly used to examine the reliability of state-space assessment model results. However, recent research has indicated that some estimation bias may be expected in the conditional setting. Hence, we also investigate recently proposed bias corrected confidence intervals appropriate for the conditional inference setting. The SAM simulation coverage probabilities of 95% confidence intervals for SSB and Fbar were usually slightly larger than 95%, but in a small number of years these coverage probabilities could be much smaller than 95%. The bias corrected confidence intervals were more reliable. When averaged over years, the SAM and bias corrected confidence interval coverage probabilities were similar for the Northeast Artic cod and saithe case studies, but the bias corrected confidence intervals performed much better overall for the haddock case study.

We construct new higher-order implicit-explicit (IMEX) schemes using the generalized scalar auxiliary variable (GSAV) approach for the Landau-Lifshitz equation. These schemes are linear, length preserving and only require solving one elliptic equation with constant coefficients at each time step. We show that numerical solutions of these schemes are uniformly bounded without any restriction on the time step size, and establish rigorous error estimates in $l^{\infty}(0,T;H^1(\Omega)) \bigcap l^{2}(0,T;H^2(\Omega))$ of orders 1 to 5 in a unified framework.

Crash data is often greatly imbalanced, with the majority of crashes being non-fatal crashes, and only a small number being fatal crashes due to their rarity. Such data imbalance issue poses a challenge for crash severity modeling since it struggles to fit and interpret fatal crash outcomes with very limited samples. Usually, such data imbalance issues are addressed by data resampling methods, such as under-sampling and over-sampling techniques. However, most traditional and deep learning-based data resampling methods, such as synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) and generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) are designed dedicated to processing continuous variables. Though some resampling methods have improved to handle both continuous and discrete variables, they may have difficulties in dealing with the collapse issue associated with sparse discrete risk factors. Moreover, there is a lack of comprehensive studies that compare the performance of various resampling methods in crash severity modeling. To address the aforementioned issues, the current study proposes a crash data generation method based on the Conditional Tabular GAN. After data balancing, a crash severity model is employed to estimate the performance of classification and interpretation. A comparative study is conducted to assess classification accuracy and distribution consistency of the proposed generation method using a 4-year imbalanced crash dataset collected in Washington State, U.S. Additionally, Monte Carlo simulation is employed to estimate the performance of parameter and probability estimation in both two- and three-class imbalance scenarios. The results indicate that using synthetic data generated by CTGAN-RU for crash severity modeling outperforms using original data or synthetic data generated by other resampling methods.

An in-cell broadband circular polarizer using liquid crystal polymer (LCP) is proposed in this paper. Specifically, a polarizer with photoalignment technology is combined on the top of it. An enhancement of the ambient contrast ratio (ACR) is achieved, which shows potential in the application of light-emitting display (LED). © 2023, John Wiley and Sons Inc. All rights reserved.

In this paper, we present an optically transparent multi-planar 3D display device based on multi-passive matrixed coded pixelated polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (PDLC). The PDLC film used in this experiment has high transparency transmission (97.1%) and fast switching time characteristics within 20ms. We provide a method to display different depth-of-field images by layering them on a multi-layer screen, by which it is possible to render near and far views in different planes, thus bringing 3-dimensional visual information to the observer, ultimately A proof-of-concept prototype of a dual-plane 3D display has been realized. © 2023, John Wiley and Sons Inc. All rights reserved.

With the continuing prosperity of LiDAR markets, the demand of a fast-scanning, high-precision and inexpensive LiDAR system is growing rapidly. In this paper, we disclose a fast-switchable ferroelectric liquid crystal Dammann grating and polarization grating-based holographic projection and detection system for 3D imaging devices and LiDAR with an extended field of view. The field of view of the proposed system can achieve ~80º with <0.5cm precision at a significantly lower cost. This improvement increases LiDAR versatility and performance in various scenarios. © 2023, John Wiley and Sons Inc. All rights reserved.

BACKGROUND Osteoarthritis (OA) progression in the lateral compartment is the most common reason for revision after medial unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA). Altered contact kinematics in the lateral compartment may be related to the pathogenesis of OA. PURPOSE To quantify the in vivo 6 degrees of freedom (6-DOF) knee kinematics and contact points in the lateral compartment during a single-leg lunge in knees after medial UKA and compare them with the contralateral native knee. STUDY DESIGN Descriptive laboratory study. METHODS Included were 13 patients (3 male, 10 female; mean age, 64.7 ± 6.2 years) who had undergone unilateral medial UKA. All patients underwent computed tomography preoperatively and 6 months postoperatively, and bilateral knee posture was tracked using dual fluoroscopic imaging system during a single-leg deep lunge to evaluate the in vivo 6-DOF kinematics. The closest points between the surface models of the femoral condyle and the tibial plateau were determined to locate the lateral compartment contact positions. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare knee kinematics and lateral contact position between the UKA and native knees. Spearman correlation was used to test the associations of bilateral 6-DOF range difference and lateral compartment contact excursion difference with bilateral limb alignment difference and functional scores. RESULTS Compared with native knees, UKA knees had an increased anterior femoral translation of 2.0 ± 0.3 mm during the entire lunge (P < .05). The lateral contact position in UKA knees was located 2.0 ± 0.9 mm posteriorly and with 3.3 ± 4.0 mm less range of contact excursion than native knees (P < .05). Decreased range of lateral compartment contact excursion in the anterior-posterior direction was significantly associated with increased hip-knee-ankle angle in the UKA side (P < .05). CONCLUSION The current study revealed altered knee 6-DOF kinematics and the reduced contact excursion range during sing

Connected and automated vehicles (CAV) are expected to deliver a much safer, more efficient, and eco-friendlier mobility. Being an indispensable component of the future transportation, their key driving features of CAVs include not only the automated functionality but also the cooperative capability. Despite the CAVs themselves are emerging and active research areas, there is a lack of a comprehensive literature review on the digital infrastructure that enables them. In this paper, we review the requirements and benefits of digital infrastructures for the CAVs including the vehicle built-in, roadside-based, operational and planning infrastructures. We then highlight challenges and opportunities on digital infrastructure research for the CAVs. Our study sheds lights on seamless integration of digital infrastructure for safe operations of CAVs., Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures, 1 table

In this paper we construct new fully decoupled and high-order implicit-explicit (IMEX) schemes for the two-phase incompressible flows based on the new generalized scalar auxiliary variable approach with optimal energy approximation (EOP-GSAV) for Cahn-Hilliard equation and consistent splitting method for Navier-Stokes equation. These schemes are linear, fully decoupled, unconditionally energy stable, only require solving a sequence of elliptic equations with constant coefficients at each time step, and provide a new technique to preserve the consistency between original energy and modified energy. We derive that numerical solutions of these schemes are uniformly bounded without any restriction on time step size. Furthermore, we carry out a rigorous error analysis for the first-order scheme and establish optimal global error estimates for the phase function, velocity and pressure in two and three-dimensional cases. Numerical examples are presented to validate the proposed schemes., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2009.09353

Recently, a new Lagrange multiplier approach was introduced by Cheng, Liu and Shen in \cite{cheng2020new}, which has been broadly used to solve various challenging phase field problems. To design original energy stable schemes, they have to solve a nonlinear algebraic equation to determine the introduced Lagrange multiplier, which can be computationally expensive, especially for large-scale and long-time simulations involving complex nonlinear terms. This paper presents an essential improved technique to modify this issue, which can be seen as a semi-implicit combined Lagrange multiplier approach. In general, the new constructed schemes keep all the advantages of the Lagrange multiplier method and significantly reduce the computation costs. Besides, the new proposed BDF2 scheme dissipates the original energy, as opposed to a modified energy for the classical Lagrange multiplier approach in \cite{cheng2020new}. We further construct high-order BDF$k$ schemes based on the new proposed approach. In addition, we establish a general framework for extending our constructed method to dissipative systems. Finally several examples have been presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

In this paper, we propose two efficient fully-discrete schemes for Q-tensor flow of liquid crystals by using the first- and second-order stabilized exponential scalar auxiliary variable (sESAV) approach in time and the finite difference method for spatial discretization. The modified discrete energy dissipation laws are unconditionally satisfied for both two constructed schemes. A particular feature is that, for two-dimensional (2D) and a kind of three-dimensional (3D) Q-tensor flows, the unconditional maximum-bound-principle (MBP) preservation of the constructed first-order scheme is successfully established, and the proposed second-order scheme preserves the discrete MBP property with a mild restriction on the time-step sizes. Furthermore, we rigorously derive the corresponding error estimates for the fully-discrete second-order schemes by using the built-in stability results. Finally, various numerical examples validating the theoretical results, such as the orientation of liquid crystal in 2D and 3D, are presented for the constructed schemes.

China’s “Belt and Road” Initiative (BRI) has been regarded as an important measure of all-round opening-up in the new era. However, in practice, the level of internationalization differs significantly across firms located in different Chinese provinces. Provisional policy responses to the BRI create varied conditions for internationalization, yet research thus far has overlooked these subnational differences. We pioneered quantitative measures of formal and informal provincial policy responses to the BRI and tested their impact on firm internationalization in a multi-level design with panel data. We found significant differences in provincial governments’ formal and informal responses, with both significantly impacting firm internationalization. Interestingly, the status of being listed as a key province targeted for development in the BRI does not add further positive conditions for internationalization; we explore the reasons for this in the discussion. This manuscript contributes to our understanding of subnational differences in local government policy responses to the BRI and their impact on firms’ internationalization.

CONTEXT: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospice Quality-Reporting Program introduced the requirement that hospices nationwide begin collecting and submitting standardized patient-level quality data on July 1, 2014. OBJECTIVES: This study examined whether this requirement has increased hospice total costs, general costs, and visiting services costs. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study using data from the 2012 and 2014 Medicare hospice cost reports linked to hospice claims. We measured total costs per patient day (PPD), general costs PPD, and visiting services costs PPD for freestanding hospices. We estimated the incremental costs of operating in 2014 vs. 2012 using hierarchical random effects models and adjusting for year, wage index, care volume, case-mix, and hospice and market characteristics, stratified by hospice ownership type. RESULTS: Both for-profit and nonprofit hospices reported higher total costs PPD and general services costs PPD in 2014 than 2012. Nonprofit hospices also reported higher general costs PPD in 2014 than 2012. In adjusted models, the total costs PPD in 2014 were $10.55 higher than in 2012 for nonprofit hospices and $6.43 higher for for-profit hospices. The increase in general costs PPD and visiting services costs PPD ranged from $3.15 to $5.87 by ownership and type of costs. Both for-profit and nonprofit hospices showed lower costs PPD for all types associated with more patients and longer length of stay. CONCLUSION: Hospice costs increased after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospice Quality-Reporting Program quality data collection/submission requirement. Complementary studies need to understand whether increased costs brought additional benefits.

Anode modification is vital for improving device performance of organic solar cells (OSCs). PEDOT:PSS is the most widely applied hole transport layer (HTL) in OSCs. In this work, three kinds of modified HTLs, namely PEDOT:PSS‐PA, PEDOT:PSS‐TA, and PEDOT:PSS‐DA are readily prepared via simple doping of phenylethylamine derivatives into commercially available Al 4083, by modulating the number of hydroxyl groups on the adulterant molecules. All of them exhibit enhanced work functions (WFs) and conductivities. Matching with PM6:Y6 composed active layers, PEDOT:PSS‐TA based devices achieves the highest performance with a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.10%, while the PM6:ITC‐2Cl system demonstrates a highest PCE of 14.17% in devices with PEDOT:PSS‐DA, and the optimal PCE of PM6:PIDTC‐T based OSCs is equal to 9.55% while the HTL is PEDOT:PSS‐PA. Further investigations reveal that the different adulterants formed various amount of hydrogen bonds in HTLs, inducing dissimilar interfacial morphology and mobility, and thus unidentical degrees of change in recombination. Afterwards, the doping strategy is extended to a newly proposed high‐performance system PM6:PY‐IT, and successfully drags its efficiency from 14.78% to 15.62%, another world‐class breakthrough for all‐polymer solar cells. In summary, this study not only achieves a series of OSCs with improved PCEs, but also delivers a deep understanding of PEDOT:PSS improvement.

Data provenance tools seek to facilitate reproducible data science and auditable data analyses by capturing the analytics steps used in generating data analysis results. However, analysts must choose among workflow provenance systems, which allow arbitrary code but only track provenance at the granularity of files; provenance APIs, which provide tuple-level provenance, but incur overhead in all computations; and database provenance tools, which track tuple-level provenance through relational operators and support optimization, but support a limited subset of data science tasks. None of these solutions are well suited for tracing errors introduced during common ETL, record alignment, and matching tasks—for data types such as strings, images, etc. Additionally, we need a provenance archival layer to store and manage the tracked fine-grained provenance that enables future sophisticated reasoning about why individual output results appear or fail to appear. For reproducibility and auditing, the provenance archival system should be tamper-resistant. On the other hand, the provenance collecting over time or within the same query computation tends to be repeated partially (i.e., the same operation with the same input records in the middle computation step). Hence, we desire efficient provenance storage (i.e., it compresses repeated results).We address these challenges with novel formalisms and algorithms, implemented in the PROVision system, for reconstructing fine-grained provenance for a broad class of ETL-style workflows. We extend database-style provenance techniques to capture equivalences, support optimizations, and enable lazy evaluations. We develop solutions for storing fine-grained provenance in relational storage systems while both compressing and protecting it via cryptographic hashes. We experimentally validate our proposed solutions using both scientific and OLAP workloads.

Triplet excitons have both longer lifetimes and diffusion lengths than singlet excitons due to the nature of triplet excitons, which is expected to increase the photocurrent and further improve the performance of organic solar cells (OSCs). However, the working mechanism of triplet excitons in OSCs is not clearly clarified. Therefore, it is urgent to develop new triplet acceptors for in-depth understanding. Herein, a series of acceptors (BTn-4Cl) are synthesized by fine-tuning of the side-chain branch positions. The generation of triplet excitons of BTn-4Cl is confirmed by the time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) spectra, magnetophotocurrent (MPC) experiment, and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectra. The effects of side-chain engineering on the optoelectronic properties, packing behaviors, energy losses, charge transport properties, spin lifetimes of triplet polarons, and blend film morphologies are systematically studied. These results show that D18:BT3-4Cl-based OSCs possess the best power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.31% due to lower energy losses, less recombination losses, more balanced charge carrier mobilities, longer spin-lattice (T-1) relaxation time, and more favorable morphology. This work enhances the understanding of the structure-property relationship for high-performance triplet acceptors., Funding Agencies|NSFCNational Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [21774130, 51925306]; National Key R&D Program of China [2018FYA 0305800]; Key Research Program of the Chinese Academy of SciencesChinese Academy of Sciences [XDPB08-2]; Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of SciencesChinese Academy of Sciences [XDB28000000]; China Postdoctoral Science FoundationChina Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2020M670425]

A stable and scalable polymer-stabilized liquid crystal window which electrically switches from transparent to opaque has been fabricated. Scanning electron microscope measurement shows that higher polymer concentration will induce denser polymer network in polymer stabilized liquid crystal system and then stronger anchoring force between polymer network and liquid crystal molecules, which resulting in larger operating voltage. The cell with larger cell gap has a lower saturated transmittance in the voltage-on state, which attributed to a larger number of scattering domains in thick cell. The optimized cell exhibits a highly transparent voltage-off state (3.5% haze) and a voltage-on scattering state (98% haze) with the threshold voltage of around 20 V. The durability test shows that the optical device switches at least 100,000 times without degradation of optical contrast and shows a high temperature tolerance. Meanwhile, a 40 × 50 cm2 window has been developed in an industrial production line showing the same optical properties. Our results demonstrate the fabrication of smart windows with a highly transparent rest state and high optical contrast on a commercial mass production scale, making them attractive for applications in buildings, automobiles, and switchable sunglasses for light management and potentially energy saving.

In this paper, the rotor system with nonlinear bearing force and base excitation load was modeled based on finite element method, and its response characteristic under the excitation of base load was studied. The results show that the response of the rotor is the superposition of the basic impulse response and the unbalanced response. The pulse excitation energy can be dispersed while the rotation speed and pulse frequency are close to each other. When the phase difference of unbalanced excitation is 180°, the response amplitude of rotor bearing system was the smallest. The correctness of the rotor bearing system model was verified by experiments.

In order to study the dynamics similarity of original model similar to normal model, the similarity criteria and the similarity ratio of the normal and original models for the rotor system were derived by the dimension analysis method. ANSYS was used to numerically calculate the critical speeds, modal shapes and harmonic response of the original and normal models of rotor system. The analysis results show that, for the rotor system, the dynamic characteristics of the normal and original models satisfy the requirement of the similarity criteria perfectly. The dynamic characteristics of the original model can be predicted accurately by the corresponding normal model.

Numerical methods were conducted to simulate the characteristics of SFD under different clearance, eccentricity and precession angular velocity and verified by bidirectional excitation experiments, which is comparatively leading initiative in characteristic measurement of SFD. In addition, finite difference method was introduced to derive Reynolds equation and SOR method to obtain the distribution of oil film, the convergence was also mathematical proof. The results indicate the rotor system keep large vibration state for a long time due to the increasing of actual critical speed of system, which result from the oil film stiffness increases nonlinear excessively with the increase of eccentricity; clearance make a great influence on SFD, especially SFD with large radial size should be kept within 2 ‰.

A smart design of transport systems involves efficient use and allocation of the limited urban road capacity in the multimodal environment. This paper intends to understand the system-wide effect of dividing the road space to the private and public transport modes and how the public transport service provider responds to the space changes. To this end, the bimodal dynamic user equilibrium is formulated for separated road space. The Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD) model is employed to depict the dynamics of the automobile traffic for its state-dependent feature, its inclusion of hypercongestion, and its advantage of capturing network topology. The delay of a bus trip depends on the running speed which is in turn affected by bus lane capacity and ridership. Within the proposed bimodal framework, the steady-state equilibrium traffic characteristics and the optimal bus fare and service frequency are analytically derived. The counter-intuitive properties of traffic condition, modal split, and behavior of bus operator in the hypercongestion are identified. To understand the interaction between the transport authority (for system benefit maximization) and the bus operator (for its own benefit maximization), we examine how the bus operator responds to space changes and how the system benefit is influenced with the road space allocation. With responsive bus service, the condition, under which expanding bus lane capacity is beneficial to the system as a whole, has been analytically established. Then the model is applied to the dynamic framework where the space allocation changes with varying demand and demand-responsive bus service. We compare the optimal bus services under different economic objectives, evaluate the system performance of the bimodal network, and explore the dynamic space allocation strategy for the sake of social welfare maximization.

Amino acids (AA) are one of the key nutrients that regulate cell proliferation and casein synthesis in cow mammary epithelial cells (CMEC), but the mechanism of this regulation is not yet clear. In this study, the effect of SESN2 on AA-mediated cell proliferation and casein synthesis in CMEC was assessed. After 12 h of AA starvation, CMECs were cultured in the absence of all AA (AA-), in the presences of only essential AA (EAA+), or of all AA (AA+). Cell proliferation, casein expression, and activation of the mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) pathway were increased; but SESN2 expression was decreased in response to increased EAA or AA supply. Overexpressing or inhibiting SESN2 demonstrated that cell proliferation, casein expression, and activation of the mTORC1 pathway were all controlled by SESN2 expression. Furthermore, the increase in cell proliferation, casein expression, and activation of the mTORC1 pathway in response to AA supply was inhibited by overexpressing SESN2, and those effects were reversed by inhibiting SESN2. These results indicate that SESN2 is an important inhibitor of mTORC1 in CMEC blocking AA-mediated cell proliferation and casein synthesis.

Amino acids (AA) are one of the key nutrients that regulate cell proliferation and casein synthesis in cow mammary epithelial cells (CMEC), but the mechanism of this regulation is not yet clear. In this study, the effect of SESN2 on AA-mediated cell proliferation and casein synthesis in CMEC was assessed. After 12 h of AA starvation, CMECs were cultured in the absence of all AA (AA-), in the presences of only essential AA (EAA+), or of all AA (AA+). Cell proliferation, casein expression, and activation of the mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) pathway were increased; but SESN2 expression was decreased in response to increased EAA or AA supply. Overexpressing or inhibiting SESN2 demonstrated that cell proliferation, casein expression, and activation of the mTORC1 pathway were all controlled by SESN2 expression. Furthermore, the increase in cell proliferation, casein expression, and activation of the mTORC1 pathway in response to AA supply was inhibited by overexpressing SESN2, and those effects were reversed by inhibiting SESN2. These results indicate that SESN2 is an important inhibitor of mTORC1 in CMEC blocking AA-mediated cell proliferation and casein synthesis.

ObjectivesHospice enrollment is known to reduce risk of hospitalizations for nursing home residents who use it. We examined whether residing in facilities with a higher hospice penetration: (1) reduces hospitalization risk for nonhospice residents; and (2) decreases hospice-enrolled residents' hospitalization risk relative to hospice-enrolled residents in facilities with a lower hospice penetration.MethodsMedicare Beneficiary File, Inpatient and Hospice Claims, Minimum Data Set Version 2.0, Provider of Services File, and Area Resource File. Retrospective analysis of long-stay nursing home residents who died during 2005-2007. Overall, 505,851 nonhospice (67.66%) and 241,790 hospice-enrolled (32.34%) residents in 14,030 facilities nationwide were included. We fit models predicting the probability of hospitalization conditional on hospice penetration and resident and facility characteristics. We used instrumental variable method to address the potential endogeneity between hospice penetration and hospitalization. Distance between each nursing home and the closest hospice was the instrumental variable.ResultsIn the last 30 days of life, 37.63% of nonhospice and 23.18% of hospice residents were hospitalized. Every 10% increase in hospice penetration leads to a reduction in hospitalization risk of 5.1% for nonhospice residents and 4.8% for hospice-enrolled residents.ConclusionsHigher facility-level hospice penetration reduces hospitalization risk for both nonhospice and hospice-enrolled residents. The findings shed light on nursing home end-of-life care delivery, collaboration among providers, and cost benefit analysis of hospice care.

We herein report a visible-light-mediated heterogeneous [4+2] annulation of N-cyclobutylanilines with alkynes catalyzed by self-doped Ti3+ @TiO2 . The self-doped Ti3+ @TiO2 is stable under photooxidation conditions, easy to recycle, and can be used multiple times without appreciable loss of activity. Extensive mechanistic studies suggest that the annulation reaction is mediated by singlet oxygen, which is generated through the photosensitization of oxygen in the air by the self-doped Ti3+ @TiO2 . In contrast, the homogeneous variant catalyzed by a far more expensive iridium complex proceeds under an inert atmosphere, which indicates a different mechanism. The substrate scopes of the two processes are comparable.

CD22ΔE12 has emerged as a driver lesion in the pathogenesis of pediatric B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and a new molecular target for RNA therapeutics. Here we report a 43-gene CD22ΔE12 signature transcriptome that shows a striking representation in primary human leukemia cells from patients with relapsed BPL. Our data uniquely indicate that CD22ΔE12 is a candidate driver lesion responsible for the activation of MAPK and PI3-K pathways in aggressive forms of B-lineage ALL.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Rochester. School of Medicine & Dentistry. Dept. of Community and Preventive Medicine, 2011., Nursing home residents are frequently transferred to hospitals at the end-of life and many die there. Furthermore, many residents with severe cognitive impairment receive feeding tubes at the end-of-life. The prevalent use of these aggressive treatments at the end-of-life has been a public health and policy concern. This dissertation examines the influence of nursing home organization of work on two care processes: 1) hospitalization among residents at the end-of-life and 2) feeding tube insertion among end-of-life residents with severe cognitive impairment. Four measures of work organization are examined: hospice concentration (the percentage of residents receiving hospice in the last 30 days of life), staff perceived work effectiveness, use of direct care teams, and the use of consistent assignment. The analyses are conducted at the individual-level, employing seven datasets. These datasets include: the Medicare beneficiary file, Minimum Data Set, Medicare inpatient claims and Medicare hospice claims for 2005-2007; a nursing home staff survey (n=7,418) collected in 162 New York state facilities in 2006-2007; and the provider of services and area resource files for 2007. The relationships between hospice concentration and the care processes were tested on national samples of decedent nursing home residents. Instrumental variable models were employed to address the endogeneity between hospice concentration and the care processes. The associations between the other three measures—perceived work effectiveness, the use of direct care teams and the use of consistent assignment—and the two care processes were tested on samples of decedent nursing home residents in New York State. Multivariate logit models were fit to examine the associations. The findings show that residents in facilities with higher hospice concentration, higher (i.e. better) staff perceived work effectiveness and greater use of direct care teams are at lower risk of end-of-life hospitalization. The ass

Spherical, submicronic TiO2 assemblage with high specific surface area and controllable phase composition was prepared in the process of ultrasonic spray drying/pyrolysis in a wide temperature range (150-800 degrees C) by using as a precursor aqueous colloidal solution consisting of TiO2 nanoparticles (4.5 nm). Submicronic, soft and grained spherical TiO2 particles (d = 370-500 nm) comprising clustered nanocrystals ( LT 10 nm) were obtained at low processing temperature, while particle densification, intensive growth of the clustered primary units and anatase-to-rutile transformation (similar to 30 wt%) were observed at the higher temperatures. Detailed structural and morphological characterisation were performed by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning and field emission electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and laser particle size analysis. Moreover, the surface modification of TiO2 particles through the formation of charge-transfer (CT) complex was achieved with different ligands: ascorbic acid, dopamine, catechol, 2,3-dihydroxynaphthalene, and anthrarobin. Optical properties of the surface-modified TiO2 particles were studied by using diffuse reflection spectroscopy. The binding structure between the surface titanium atoms and different ligands was determined by using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The formation of CT complexes induced significant red shift of optical absorption in comparison to unmodified TiO2 particles.

We examined the dynamics of the carbonate system in a complex mixing scheme with enhanced biological consumption modulated by both a river plume and summer coastal upwelling in a large shelf system, the northern South China Sea (NSCS) shelf. The plume waters originated from a large flooding upstream the Pearl River, and extended from the mouth of the Pearl River estuary to the middle shelf and were characterized by low dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and total alkalinity (TAlk), and a high aragonite saturation state (Omega(arag)). In contrast, the upwelled water occupying the nearshore area was distinguished by high DIC and TAlk and a low Omega(arag). While the dynamics of the carbonate system were largely shaped by physical mixing through plume and upwelling processes between the plume water, the offshore subsurface water and the offshore surface water, biological consumption of DIC was observable in both the river plume and the coastal upwelling areas and contributed to the elevated Omega(arag) during their pathway. Correlations between salinity normalized TAlk and DIC indicated that organic carbon production rather than biocalcification exclusively induced the DIC removal. By using a three end-member mixing model, we estimated the net community productivity in the plume water and the upwelled water to be 36 +/- 19 mmol C m(-2) d(-1) and 23 +/- 26 mmol C m(-2) d(-1), respectively. With the combination of stoichiometric relationship analysis of the carbonate system and applying the three end-member mixing model, we successfully differentiated semiquantitatively the biologically mediated DIC variations from its overall mixing control. We also attempted to link this natural process to the carbonate saturation on the NSCS shelf, contending that at present natural factors associated with the river plume and the coastal upwelling largely modulate the dynamics of the carbonate system on the NSCS shelf, whereas anthropogenic stressors such as ocean acidification currentl

Underground coal mining inevitably results in land surface subsidence. Acquiring information on land surface subsidence is important in the detection of surface change. However, conventional data acquisition techniques cannot always retrieve information on the whole subsidence area. This study focuses on the reconstruction of a digital elevation model (DEM) with terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point cloud data. Firstly, the methodology of the DEM with terrestrial 3-dimensional laser scanning is introduced. Then, a DEM modeling approach that involves the application of curved non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) surface is put forward. Finally, the performance of the DEM modelling approach with different surface inverse methods is demonstrated. The results indicate that the DEM based on the point cloud data and curved NURBS surface can achieve satisfactory accuracy. In addition, the performance of the hyperbolic paraboloid appears to be better than that of the elliptic paraboloid. The reconstructed DEM is continuous and can easily be integrated into other programs. Such features are of great importance in monitoring dynamic ground surface subsidence. (Authors.), Underground coal mining inevitably results in land surface subsidence. Acquiring information on land surface subsidence is important in the detection of surface change. However, conventional data acquisition techniques cannot always retrieve information on the whole subsidence area. This study focuses on the reconstruction of a digital elevation model (DEM) with terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point cloud data. Firstly, the methodology of the DEM with terrestrial 3-dimensional laser scanning is introduced. Then, a DEM modeling approach that involves the application of curved non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) surface is put forward. Finally, the performance of the DEM modelling approach with different surface inverse methods is demonstrated. The results indicate that the DEM based on the point cloud data and curved NURBS surface can achieve satisfactory accuracy. In addition, the performance of the hyperbolic paraboloid appears to be better than that of the elliptic paraboloid. The reconstructed DEM is continuous and can easily be integrated into other programs. Such features are of great importance in monitoring dynamic ground surface subsidence. (Authors.)

The use of a global navigation satellite system network for monitoring large-area mining subsidence with mm-level precision is described, based on the nearby international global navigation satellite system service stations as reference points when the observation time is more than 4 h. A case study of a coal mine located in northern Anhui province, China showed that the robust Kalman filtering model to determine coordinate data of the monitoring network was more effective than the prediction method and the weekly solution from international global navigation satellite system service centres. This method was found to provide an efficient and accurate means of monitoring large-area mining subsidence., The use of a global navigation satellite system network for monitoring large-area mining subsidence with mm-level precision is described, based on the nearby international global navigation satellite system service stations as reference points when the observation time is more than 4 h. A case study of a coal mine located in northern Anhui province, China showed that the robust Kalman filtering model to determine coordinate data of the monitoring network was more effective than the prediction method and the weekly solution from international global navigation satellite system service centres. This method was found to provide an efficient and accurate means of monitoring large-area mining subsidence.