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Among numerous functions performed by the human eye, reading is a common task that best reflects an individual’s understanding and cognitive patterns. Previous studies showed that text comprehension may be determined by comprehension monitoring, a metacognitive process that evaluates and regulates the pattern of comprehension. Herein, we propose a hypothesis: an individual’s cognitive pattern during reading is predictive of the level of reading comprehension. According to the criteria of the College English Test Band Six (CET-6), 80 participants (sophomore and junior) were divided into a pass group (n = 40) and a non-pass group (n = 40). Heatmaps of eye fixation counts were collected by an eye-tracker while each participant executed four reading comprehension tests. Using these heatmaps as inputs, we proposed the Siamese convolutional neural network models to predict the English level of participants. Both strategies of “Trained from scratch” and “Pretrained with fine-tuning” were employed. “Soft Voting” was applied to integrate the predictions from four tests. Results showed that the Siamese network model trained by the datasets with the cluster radius of fixation equal to 25 pixels and connection layer by L1 norm distance has a satisfactory or superior performance to other comparative experiments. The AUC values of Siamese networks trained by the two strategies reach 0.941 and 0.956, respectively. This indicates that the individual reading cognitive pattern captured by the eye-tracker can predict the level of reading comprehension through advanced deep learning models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The superconducting magnet, as a main component of the international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER), is critical to the ITER's long-term stability. Polyimide (PI) not only has excellent electrical properties at cryogenic temperature, but also has strong irradiation resistance, which has become the common choice of insulating materials for the superconducting magnet. Due to the pulsed power supply used in the ITER, PI is facing the dual challenges of cryogenic temperature and pulsed voltage. The surface charge characteristics of irradiated PI film by different doses of electron beam were studied in this paper. The surface charging is completed under the pulse voltage with 40% relative humidity. The partial discharge initial voltage (PDIV) and breakdown voltage in liquid nitrogen (LN2) were measured by electrostatic voltmeter. The findings indicate that proper irradiation can help to minimize charge accumulation and decrease the trap level. At the same time, the PDIV and breakdown voltage can be increased by irradiation. However, too much irradiation can weaken this influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epoxy resin is widely used in magnetic confinement fusion reactors, and high thermal conductivity is also required to dissipate heat rapidly under the cooling and quench condition. In this paper, epoxy/BN/SiC composites are cured under ac and dc electric fields. An electric field is used to induce nanoparticle orientation to obtain higher thermal conductivity. Thermal and electrical properties of the prepared materials were tested. The results show that electric field induction can improve the thermal conductivity of composite. The orientation of SiC particles along the electric field could cause the increase of bulk conductivity. Charge dissipation of the filled samples becomes slower compared with the pure epoxy. The effect of ac electric field induction is larger than that of the dc electric field, which would affect the conductivity, charge, and trap characteristics of composites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenolic-novolac-Zinc composite materials with hexamethylenetramine (HMTA) 8 wt% at Zinc powder content weight from 2% to 11% are investigated by Scanning Electron Microscope, Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Thermogravimetric analysis, and Kissinger method. It is found that a nano-porous structure is synthesized in phenolic-novolac porous with 8 wt% HMTA and 5 wt% Zn powder. The thermal and anti-corrosion analysis shows that the composite with nano-pores structure produces the highest glass-transtion temperature, decomposition temperature, and the best anti-corrosion property comparing with other samples. Furthermore, it introduces a novel method to prepare the nano-porous phenolic-novolac-Zn composite material which can be used as the functional material. POLYM. COMPOS., 36:1346-1351, 2015. © 2014 Society of Plastics Engineers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: LiFePO4/C particles were coated with highly conductive La0.6Sr0.4CoO3−δ (LSC) via a suspension mixing method followed by heat-treating. The effects of LSC coating were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), galvanostatic charge/discharge test, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), potential step chronoamperometry (PSCA) and cyclic voltammetry (CV). The results of HRTEM and XRD showed that the incomplete carbon network could be repaired by nanometer-sized LSC while the co-coated composite retained the structure of LiFePO4. Electrochemical test results indicated that LSC coating could significantly improve the electrochemical performances at high charge/discharge rates. The 4wt.% LSC-coated LiFePO4/C sample exhibited the best electrochemical performance with discharge capacities of 136, 125 and 96mAhg−1 at the rates of 1, 2 and 5C, respectively. These data were much higher than those of the uncoated sample. This improvement could be mainly attributed to the lower charge transfer resistance and higher diffusion coefficients of Li+ ions resulted from the higher conductivity of LSC and the faster kinetic process between the LSC/LiFePO4 interfaces. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In search for components of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades in maize ( Zea mays) involved in response to abscisic acid (ABA) stimulus, a novel MAPK gene, ZmMPK3, from ABA-treated maize leaves cDNA was isolated and characterized. The full length of the ZmMPK3 gene is 1 520 bp and encodes a 376 amino acid protein with a predicted molecular mass of 43.5 kD and a pI of 5.83. ZmMPK3 contains all 11 MAPK conserved subdomains and the phosphorylation motif TEY. Amino acid sequence alignment revealed that ZmMPK3 shared high identity with group-A MAPK in plants. A time course (30–360 min) experiment using a variety of signal molecules and stresses revealed that the transcripts level of ZmMPK3 accumulated markedly and rapidly when maize seedlings were subjected to exogenous signaling molecules: ABA, H2O2, jasmonic acid and salicylic acid, various abiotic stimuli such as cold, drought, ultraviolet light, salinity, heavy metal and mechanical wounding. Its transcription was also found to be tissue-specific regulated. Here, we show that ABA and H2O2 induced a significant increase in the ZmMPK3 activity using immunoprecipitation and in-gel kinase assay. Furthermore, the results showed that the ZmMPK3 protein is localized mainly to the nucleus. These results suggest that the ZmMPK3 may play an important role in response to environmental stresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]