Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Highly Biocompatible Carbon Nanodots for Simultaneous Bioimaging and Targeted Photodynamic Therapy In Vitro and In Vivo

Photosensitizers (PSs) are light‐sensitive molecules that are highly hydrophobic, which poses a challenge to their use for targeted photodynamic therapy. Hence, considerable efforts have been made to develop carriers for the delivery of PSs. Herein, a novel design is described of highly biocompatible, fluorescent, folic acid (FA)‐functionalized carbon nanodots (CDs) as carriers for the PS zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc) to achieve simultaneous biological imaging and targeted photodynamic therapy. FA is modified on PEG‐passivated CDs (CD‐PEG) for targeted delivery to FA‐positive cancer cells, and ZnPc is loaded onto CD‐PEG‐FA via π–π stacking interactions. CD‐PEG‐FA/ZnPc exhibits excellent targeted delivery of the PS, leading to simultaneous imaging and significant targeted photodynamic therapy after irradiation in vitro and in vivo. The present CD‐based targeted delivery of PSs is anticipated to offer a convenient and effective platform for enhanced photodynamic therapy to treat cancers in the near future.
Household preferences for energy goods and services : a choice experiment application

This thesis includes three studies on household preferences for energy goods and services. The first study examines determinants of households’ heating system choices using a choice experiment. The choice sets include six main heating alternatives (district heating, ground heat pump, exhaust air heat pump, solid wood boiler, wood pellet boiler, and electric storage heating) that are described by five attributes (supplementary heating systems, investment costs, operating costs, comfort of use and environmental friendliness). The results imply that hybrid heating appears to be accepted among households. The results also reveal differing preferences for the main heating alternatives and show that they are affected by demographic characteristics. The studied attributes also play a significant role when heating systems are being chosen. The second study is a methodological one that extends the analysis of the first study. The second study explores the effect of perceived choice complexity on the randomness of choices in choice experiments. The study investigates how different self-evaluated factors of choice complexity affect mean scale and scale variance. The findings suggest that perceived choice complexity has a systematic impact on the parameters of econometric models of choice. However, differences exist between alternative self-evaluated complexity-related covariates. The results indicate that individuals who report that answering the choice tasks is more difficult have less deterministic choices. Perceptions of the realism of home heating choice options also affect scale and scale variance. The third study utilizes the choice experiment to analyze households’ willingness to participate in demand side flexibility. The study examines whether individuals are willing to time their electricity usage and heating; whether they are interested in dynamic pricing contracts such as realtime pricing, two-rate tariffs, or power-based tariffs; and how emissions reductions affect their choices. The results indicate that households’ sensitivity to restrictions in electricity usage is much stronger than their sensitivity to restrictions in heating. Households also require compensation to choose real-time pricing over fixed fees. The findings suggest that room may exist for new dynamic electricity distribution contracts, such as power-based tariffs, in the market. Other valuecreating elements besides monetary compensation also exist that could incentivize households to offer demand side flexibility because households value power system level reductions in CO2 emissions.
Velocity analysis with multiples – NMO modeling for layered velocity structures

Several method exist to invert for a velocity model from seismic data. Most commonly used methods are defined in the image domain. However, some methods that are defined in the data domain also exist. In this paper we review and compare a few methods on synthetic data, using the convolutional model and NMO traveltimes to model the data. Special attention will be given to the behavior of the different methods in the presence of multiples. In traditional MVA methods these usually pose a problem since multiples are not flattened or focused for the correct velocity model. In the data domain multiples do focus for the correct velocity model if they are correctly modeled. This is illustrated with a simple example. Another simple example illustrates how ideas from waveform inversion and data-domain velocity analysis can be combined to obtain the correct velocity model and reflectivity from synthetic data with multiples.
Preparation of MgO added iron ore pellets and effects on a pilot scale blast furnace operation

The preparation of MgO bearing iron ore pellets in the mini and pilot scales, and the application for 4070m3 blast furnace were conducted in this paper. The results show that with increasing the MgO content, the compressive strength of fired pellets decreased significantly, while the metallurgical performances, such as RI (reducibility index), RDI (reduction degradation index) and RSI (reduction swelling index) were improved. The scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive spectrometry was used to test the microstructures and the compositions of iron oxide, and the slag of pellets. With increasing the MgO content, MgO exists in the form of magnesium ferrite and monticellite, which presents the high melting temperature, decreasing the content of liquid phase. The pilot scale experiment was performed on a commercial running grate-rotary kiln with the annual output of 2.4 million tons of pellets, which agrees with the results obtained in the mini scale experiment. The application of MgO-bearing pellets was carried out in the 4070 m3 blast furnace of Meisteel China, and the production indexes improved with increasing the yield and reducing the coke ratio, and the total benefits are 7067 USD/d, which presents the superior economic benefits.
Gold photosensitized SrTiO3 for visible-light water oxidation induced by Au interband transitions

Gold nanoparticle (NP) photosensitization over semiconductors with a large band gap has emerged as a promising strategy for developing visible-light responsive photocatalytic materials. However, its application in harsh photocatalytic oxidation still remains a significant challenge. Furthermore, energetic charge carriers created in Au interband transitions under visible light are frequently ignored in this field. In the current work, for the first time, a remarkable visible-light photocatalytic water oxidation activity (14.9 μmol h−1: 0.2 g catalyst, 5 mmol AgNO3), even slightly higher than that of commercial WO3, was achieved over Au photosensitized SrTiO3 (1.1 wt%). In an elaborate study, electron transfer from gold to SrTiO3 was confirmed by STEM-EDS characterization on selective Ag deposition over SrTiO3. A combined investigation of apparent quantum efficiency results, theoretical simulation study on Au NPs optical excitation and relative band position analysis in Au/SrTiO3 reveals that these hot electrons transferred from gold to SrTiO3 mainly come from Au interband transitions other than plasmon resonance, while leaving holes on Au with enough oxidative potentials are responsible for water oxidation. The capability of involving Au interband transition in photosensitization for visible light water oxidation opens up new opportunities in designing and preparing visible-light responsive photocatalysts.
Isolation and characterisation of Vibrio harveyi as etiological agent of foot pustule disease in the abalone Haliotis discus

Foot pustule disease is an important disease affecting abalones. In the present study, microbiological and histopathological investigations were carried out in the Japanese abalone Haliotis discus hannai, affected by foot pustule disease. Diseased abalones became lethargic, weak and eventually died. The remarkable symptoms were apparent foot pustules and atrophy of the foot muscle. A predominant bacterium designated as BV2 was isolated from the pustules of diseased abalones. Experimental infection by immersion challenge showed that BV2 was virulent to abalones and caused symptoms of foot pustule disease with median lethal dose value of ≈7.76×105 cfu ml-1. BV2 was infectious to all tested abalones with high mortality. Histopathological investigations showed degeneration and collapse of foot muscles as well as connective tissues. Tissues in round pustules were necrotic and disorganised. The BV2 bacterium was identified as Vibrio harveyi based on the results of phenotypic and biochemical tests as well as 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. The bacterium was found resistant to kanamycin and clindamycin, and sensitive to other 11 antibiotics tested.
A Wireless Mesh Network PSK Authentication Protocol Based on Secure Multiparty Computation

To solve the existing wireless Mesh network authentication security problem, a novel improved pre-shared key authentication protocol is designed and proposed, based on secure multi-party computation theory. The approach combined uses pre-shared key, key recovery, secret sharing and other methods, and applies the Lagrange polynomial. The security and performance of proposed protocol are analyzed. The preshared key of proposed protocol applies secure multiparty computation in the (t, n) threshold secret sharing scheme. Improved PSK authentication protocol will divide a master key into n shares, which are associated with the n-Mesh nodes. The master key can be recovered if and only if t or more than t shared key of Mesh nodes are joined together. Analysis indicates that the proposed pre-shared key protocol based on secure multi-party computation and threshold secret sharing is safer and more effective, and can be more applicable.
Telescope Matching : Reducing Model Dependence in the Estimation of Direct Effects *

Matching methods are widely used to reduce the dependence of causal inferences on modeling assumptions, but their application has been mostly limited to the overall effect of a single treatment. Direct effect analyses, which estimate the effect of a treatment not due to some mediator, have become increasingly popular in the social sciences for a wide variety of inferential targets, including understanding the causalmechanisms of a treatment. Standardmatching analyses, however, are not directly applicable to direct effect analyses because of their tendency to induce post-treatment bias, and so almost all applications are dependent on the correct specification of several models. In this paper, we propose a novel two-step matching approach to estimating direct effects, telescope matching, that reduces model dependence without inducing post-treatment bias. This method uses matching with replacement to impute missing counterfactual outcomes in a flexible manner and relies on regression models to correct for bias induced by imperfect matches. We show in simulations that our approach is more robust to misspecification of these regression models than non-matching estimators. We derive the asymptotic properties of this estimator and provide a consistent estimator for its variance. Finally, we apply this approach to estimating the direct effect of a job training program on long-term mental health not due to employment and show that it can generate substantively different inferences than standard approaches. *Thanks toAlberto Abadie, Paul Kellstedt, Gary King, Jamie Robins, Jann Spiess, and Yiqing Xu for valuable feedback and discussions. Any remaining errors are our own. Software to implement the methods in this paper will be found in the DirectEffects R package on CRAN. †Department of Government and Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge St, ma 02138. web: http://www.mattblackwell. org email: mblackwell@gov.harvard. edu ‡University of Pennsylvania Law School, 3501 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, web: https://www.antonstrezhnev. com/ email: astrezhn@law.upenn. edu
A Reproducible Approach of Preparing High-Quality Overdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ Single Crystals by Oxygen Annealing and Quenching Method

We report a reproducible approach in preparing high-quality overdoped Bi2Sr2 CaCu2 O8+δ (Bi2212) single crystals by annealing Bi2212 crystals in high oxygen pressure followed by a fast quenching. In this way, high-quality overdoped and heavily overdoped Bi2212 single crystals are obtained by controlling the annealing oxygen pressure. We find that, beyond a limit of oxygen pressure that can achieve most heavily overdoped Bi2212 with a Tc ∼63 K, the annealed Bi2212 begins to decompose. This accounts for the existence of the hole-doping limit and thus the Tc limit in the heavily overdoped region of Bi2212 by the oxygen annealing process. These results provide a reliable way in preparing high-quality overdoped and heavily overdoped Bi2212 crystals that are important for studies of the physical properties, electronic structure and superconductivity mechanism of the cuprate superconductors.
Identifying Important Life Events from Twitter Using Semantic and Syntactic Patterns

Identifying global events from social media has been the focus of much research in recent years. However, the identification of personal life events poses new requirements and challenges that have received relatively little research attention. In this paper we explore a new approach for life event identification, where we expand social media posts into both semantic, and syntactic networks of content. Frequent graph patterns are mined from these networks and used as features to enrich life-event classifiers. Results show that our approach significantly outperforms the best performing baseline in accuracy (by 4.48% points) and F-measure (by 4.54% points) when used to identify five major life events identified from the psychology literature: Getting Married, Having Children, Death of a Parent, Starting School, and Falling in Love. In addition, our results show that, while semantic graphs are effective at discriminating the theme of the post (e.g. the topic of marriage), syntactic graphs help identify whether the post describes a personal event (e.g. someone getting married).
Imaging study of NGC 3372, the Carina nebula – I. UBVRIJHK photometry of Tr 14, Tr 15, Tr 16 and Car I

We present the results of a large-scale imaging photometric study of the stellar population in the northern part of NGC 3372 in the UBVRIJHK bands with a wavelength coverage from 0.33 to 2.5 µm. The observations were made at Las Campanas Observatory. The optical CCD mosaics cover an area approximately of 32 × 22 arcmin 2 centred between the Tr 14 and Tr 16 clusters. The survey was extended to cover 12 × 12 arcmin 2 at the location of Tr 15. Near-infrared NICMOS3 mosaics covering the areas occupied by these clusters were obtained in the JHK photometric bands. By means of star counts in V, the centres and sizes of each cluster were redetermined yielding: Tr 14 (r = 264 arcsec), Tr 15 (r = 320 arcsec) and Tr 16 (r = 320 arcsec). It was confirmed that Cr 232 is not a true cluster. Multicolour optical photometry was obtained for 4152 stars. Two colour and colour-magnitude diagrams are presented and analysed for each individual cluster and compared to those of the field. We confirm the widespread variations in the dust density and also in the dust size distribution leading to widely different values of AV and reddening laws towards Tr 14 and Tr 16. No spatial patterns were found for these variations. Spectroscopic parallaxes were computed and the results are consistent with all three clusters being at a similar distance from the Sun (�d �= 2.7 kpc) but the data have shown very large scatter in both AV and d. Analyses of the extinction-corrected colour-magnitude diagrams suggest ages between 3 and 60 million years for the stars in Tr 15 and between less than 1 and 6 million years for Tr 14 and Tr 16. A small number of infrared-excess stars were found in Tr 16 and Tr 14 but not in Tr 15. The distribution of stars in Tr 14 seen in the near-infrared suggests that this cluster is partially embedded in a molecular cloud. This molecular cloud extends towards the west reaching its highest density, marked by a CO peak emission, some three arcmin to the south-west of the nucleus of Tr 14. The rich ultraviolet field created by the Tr 14 stars ionizes most of the visible H II region in its vicinity and most of the radio H II region Car I. Evidence is found of ionization fronts leading into the molecular cloud, which appears to be ‘wrapping’ the Tr 14 cluster. Deep JHK images of the Car I region reveal the presence of an embedded stellar population illuminating a large infrared reflection nebula. It includes at least one O9‐B0 star associated with an ultracompact H II region. Nebulous 2.2 µm emission from three of the mid-infrared sources in the Tr 14 region is also found.
Development and validation of an Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) for gentamicin quantification in dried blood spot samples

A competitive enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) procedure has been developed for the quantification of gentamicin in dried blood spot (DBS) samples collected from paediatric patients on Guthrie cards. Gentamicin was extracted from DBS samples by vortexing with the ELISA extraction buffer for 30 minutes. The ELISA assay was successfully validated using ICH guidelines for assay validation over the concentration range of 0.15-2.5 μg/ml. The standard deviation, mean, coefficient of variation (CV%) and relative error (RE%) were evaluated and demonstrated good assay reproducibility. The validated ELISA method can be applied to clinical DBS samples. This assay will be utilised to quantify gentamicin in DBS samples collected from paediatric (premature neonatal) patients, in which the quantification data will be utilised for population pharmacokinetic studies of gentamicin in premature neonates.
Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Impact of Consciousness Energy Healing Treatment on the Physicochemical and Thermal Properties of 6-Mercaptopurine

6-Mercaptopurine is a thiopurine-derivative antimetabolite, which is used for the treatment of cancer, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and autoimmune diseases. The aim of this research work was to evaluate the impact of the Trivedi Effect® on the physicochemical, and thermal properties of 6-mercaptopurine using the modern analytical technique. 6-Mercaptopurine powder sample was divided into two parts. One part of the sample was considered as a control sample (no Biofield Energy Treatment was provided), whereas the other part was treated with Biofield Energy Treatment remotely by a renowned Biofield Energy Healer, Dahryn Trivedi and termed as a treated sample. The particle size values in the treated 6-mercaptopurine powder sample were significantly decreased by 5.72%(d10), 5.16%(d50), 3.75%(d90), and 4.54%{D(4,3)}; therefore, the specific surface area was increased by 4.76% compared to the control sample. The PXRD peak intensities and crystallite sizes of the treated powder sample were significantly altered ranging from-25% to 14.12% and-35.09% to 71.3%, respectively; whereas the average crystallite size was decreased by 2.77% compared with the control sample. The latent heat of evaporation and latent heat of fusion of the treated sample was significantly altered by 3.05% and-39.48% compared with the control sample. The total weight loss was significantly increased by 9.72%; however, the residue amount was significantly decreased by 79.89% in the treated sample compared with the control sample. The maximum thermal degradation temperature of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd peaks of the treated sample was increased by 1.54%, 0.13%, and 5.56% compared with the control sample. From the results, it was concluded that the biofield energy treatment might have generated a new polymorphic form of 6-mercaptopurine which may offer better solubility, dissolution, absorption, and bioavailability compared with the control sample. The Biofield Energy Treated 6-mercaptopurine would be very useful to design better pharmaceutical formulations that might offer better therapeutic response against acute lymphocytic leukemia, chronic myeloid leukemia, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and autoimmune diseases.
FREQUENCIES OF LOCALIZED ACOUSTIC MODES IN DEPENDENCE ON MUTUAL RELATION OF COMPONENTS OF Au/V NANOLAYERS

The paper presents the study of frequencies of the acoustic l ocalized modes in metallic Au/V nanolayers. On the basis of Rytov model describing acou stic wave propagation in periodic layered medium and Djafari–Rouhani formula the freque ncies of localized modes were numerically calculated. Dependencies of localized modes f requencies were presented graphically as a function of b/L nanolayer parameter ( b – thickness of Au sublayer, L – thickness of Au/V bilayer) for first and second phononic stop bands. Obtai ned experimentally frequencies of localized modes for Au/V nanolayers were compared with ca lcul ted values. Accordance between experimental and theoretical results is satisfact ory.
Stem rot of jewel orchids caused by a new forma specialis, <i><fc>F</fc>usarium oxysporum</i> f. sp. <i>anoectochili</i> in <fc>T</fc>aiwan

Stem rot of Anoectochilus formosanus (Af) caused by Fusarium oxysporum (Fo) is a major limiting factor to jewel orchid production in Taiwan. Fo causes discoloration in vascular tissues. However, some newly collected Fo isolates from Af stem rot do not cause vascular discoloration, suggesting changes may have occurred in the pathogen. Among recent Fo isolates from Af there are two colony types, the cottony alba (CA) and the sporodochial (S). In order to confirm that both colony types cause Af stem rot, 200 isolates were obtained from diseased stems in Nantou County and characterized by colony type and whether or not the infected plants had vascular discoloration. Isolates of both the CA and S types caused stem rot of Af; some isolates in each colony type caused vascular discoloration whilst others did not. Pathogenicity tests with 22 isolates resulted in stem rot disease severity ratings on Af of 3 1–4 0 and 2 1–4 0 with CA and S type colonies, respectively. The same isolates failed to cause disease on Cattleya, Dendrobium or Phalaenopsis plants. Phylogenetic analysis of partial intergenic spacer sequences showed that these isolates were distinguishable from other formae speciales of Fo and could be separated into two groups correlated with the CA or S type colonies with high bootstrap. Based on pathogenic, morphological and molecular characterizations, the Fo that causes stem rot of Af is proposed to be a new forma specialis, F. oxysporum f. sp. anoectochili, with different pathotypes.
versus Nailing for after

Background Aim: compare intramedullary nailing with external fixation for knee arthrodesis after failed 33 infected total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Primary outcome: radiographic union. Secondary 34 outcomes: recurrent deep infection, revision arthrodesis, and amputation. 35 Methods 37 Systematic review and meta-analysis of studies comparing outcomes from intramedullary 38 nailing and external fixation in patients with infected TKA undergoing arthrodesis procedures. 39 Randomised controlled trials and cohort studies were included. Results systematic meta-analysis intramedullary nailing and external fixation for knee arthrodesis after failed infected TKA. radiographic 44.22 fixation.