Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Silica prepared in the presence of alkylphosphonium-based ionic liquids and its performance in electrorheological fluids

This work highlights the effect of silica particles prepared by a sol–gel process in the presence of different phosphonium-based ionic liquids on the electrorheological behavior of the corresponding suspension in silicone oil. The silica particles were prepared by hydrolysis/condensation of tetraetoxy silane (TEOS) in basic medium and in the presence of three different commercial ionic liquids: tri-isobutyl(methyl)phosphoniumtosylate (IL106), tri(n-butyl)(tetradecyl)phosphonium-dodecylbenzene-sulfonate (IL201) and trihexyl-(tetradecyl)-phosphonium-bis-2,4,4-(trimethylpentyl)-phosphinate (IL104). The resulting material was characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and dielectric properties. The confinement of the ionic liquids inside the silica particles was suggested by thermogravimetric analysis. The presence of ILs also exerts a strong influence on the morphology and imparts good polarization ability to the silica. The electro-rheological response of the corresponding ionogel suspensions in silicone oil was investigated. A significant ER effect was observed for the fluid containing silica prepared in the presence of IL106. In fact, a very good response under the action of an electrical field corresponding to 3 kV mm−1 was achieved, with a shear stress value as high as 1215 Pa. This behavior may be attributed to the presence of the IL confined in the silica particles and also to the peculiar morphology which favors the formation of a columnar structure to a high extent.
Evidence of a liquid–liquid transition in a glass-forming ionic liquid

Significance The liquid–liquid transition (LLT) in a single-component liquid reflects changes in the liquid structure on the molecular level. In the case of ionic liquids (ILs), a hierarchical liquid structure is present due to charge-alternation constraints and segregation of nonpolar alkyl chains. We present experimental evidence of structural reorganization in a glass-forming IL corresponding to an LLT. The change in liquid structure correlates to changes in the dynamics and dielectric properties of the IL, which may be useful for potential applications. A liquid–liquid transition (LLT) is a transformation from one liquid to another through a first-order transition. The LLT is fundamental to the understanding of the liquid state and has been reported in a few materials such as silicon, phosphorus, triphenyl phosphite, and water. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the unique properties of materials such as water, which is critical for life on the planet, are linked to the existence of the LLT. However, the experimental evidence for the existence of an LLT in many molecular liquids remains controversial, due to the prevalence and high propensity of the materials to crystallize. Here, we show evidence of an LLT in a glass-forming trihexyltetradecylphosphonium borohydride ionic liquid that shows no tendency to crystallize under normal laboratory conditions. We observe a step-like increase in the static dielectric permittivity at the transition. Furthermore, the sizes of nonpolar local domains and ion-coordination numbers deduced from wide-angle X-ray scattering also change abruptly at the LLT. We independently corroborate these changes in local organization using Raman spectroscopy. The experimental access to the evolution of local order and structural dynamics across a liquid–liquid transition opens up unprecedented possibilities to understand the nature of the liquid state.
Fat soluble anti-oxidant vitamins A, E and carotenoids

The fat soluble vitamins A and E are hydrophobic. Vitamin A which has numerous functions, is carried by a specific carrier, retinol binding protein while vitamin E and carotenoids are carried by lipoproteins. Vitamin A is ingested as retinyl esters and is also produced from the metabolism of the pro-vitamin A carotenoids, β-carotene and β-cryptoxanthin. Lycopene, a carotenoid from tomatoes, has high anti-oxidant activity, but cannot be converted to vitamin A. About 20% of persons ingesting high levels of β-carotene develop hypercarotenaemia, with yellow discoloration of the skin. The diagnosis of hypercarotenaemia requires serum to be assayed for all carotenoids. Vitamin E is ubiquitous in the diet and deficiency is caused by fat malabsorption especially with biliary problems. Vitamin E is a potent anti-oxidant in many tissues and low concentrations result in damage to red cells, lungs, retina and nervous tissues. Malabsorption of fat also results in malabsorption of the fat soluble vitamins. Therefore in all malabsorption states, serum concentration of vitamins A, E and carotenoids should
CoMoO4·0.9H2O nanorods grown on reduced graphene oxide as advanced electrochemical pseudocapacitor materials

In this work, one-dimensional CoMoO4·0.9H2O nanorods grown on reduced graphene oxide hybrid composites (CoMoO4·0.9H2O–rGO) with good electrochemical properties have been synthesized by a simple and environmentally friendly hydrothermal synthesis procedure. The conductive graphene not only improves the electron conductivity of the overall electrode but also provides strong synergistic effects with Faradaic pseudo-capacitance (CoMoO4·0.9H2O). Meanwhile, rGO can act as a buffer for the volume change, which can provide an assurance for better cycling performance of the CoMoO4·0.9H2O–rGO hybrid composites. An exceptionally high specific capacitance of 802.2 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1 and good cycle stability with capacitance retention of ∼86.3% after 5000 cycles is obtained for the CoMoO4·0.9H2O–rGO composites. The remarkable electrochemical performance can make the CoMoO4·0.9H2O–rGO composites one of the most competitive electrode materials for electrochemical energy storage.
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Point cloud registration (PCR) is an important and fundamental problem in 3D computer vision, whose goal is to seek an optimal rigid model to register a point cloud pair. Correspondence-based PCR techniques do not require initial guesses and gain more attentions. However, 3D keypoint techniques are much more difficult than their 2D counterparts, which results in extremely high outlier rates. Current robust techniques suffer from very high computational cost. In this paper, we propose a polynomial time (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(N^2)$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mi>O</mml:mi><mml:mo>(</mml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msup><mml:mo>)</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="li-ieq2-3065021.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, where <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mi>N</mml:mi></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="li-ieq3-3065021.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> is the number of correspondences. ) outlier removal method. Its basic idea is to reduce the input set into a smaller one with a lower outlier rate based on bound principle. To seek tight lower and upper bounds, we originally define two concepts, i.e., correspondence matrix (CM) and augmented correspondence matrix (ACM). We propose a cost function to minimize the determinant of CM or ACM, where the cost of CM rises to a tight lower bound and the cost of ACM leads to a tight upper bound. Then, we propose a scale-adaptive Cauchy estimator (SA-Cauchy) for further optimization. Extensive experiments on simulated and real PCR datasets demonstrate that the proposed method is robust at outlier rates above 99 percent and 1<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mo>∼</mml:mo></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="li-ieq4-3065021.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>2 orders faster than its competitors. The source code will be made publicly available in <uri>https://ljy-rs.github. io/web/</uri>.
Improvement of sexual dysfunction in patients after treatment of hepatitis C virus using directly acting antivirals

Abstract Objective The impact on male and female sexual dysfunction of treating hepatitis C virus (HCV) using direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs) has not been sufficiently studied. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of HCV clearance with DAAs on sexual dysfunction (SD) in both sexes. Methods In chronic HCV patients who were eligible for DAAs, 100 sexually active men completed the Arabic version of the international index of erectile function questionnaire (IIEF-5), and the same number of sexually active women completed Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), before, at the end of, and 3 months after, treatment for HCV. Result The mean of the IIEF-5 scores for male patients was 16.29 ±. 07 before treatment, 16.88 ± 3.63 3 months after treatment (p < .01), and was significantly higher, at 19.06 ± 3.31 6 months after treatment cessation (p < .01). In female patients, the mean total FSFI score at baseline was 19.22 ± 2.40 and after 3 months of treatment was 21.61 ± 3.45 (p < .01), with a significant increase (25.09 ± 4.52) after 6 months (p < .01). No difference in the improvement of sexual function was reported either after 3 months or at the end of treatment between males and females (p > .05). Conclusions Significant improvement in SD associated with HCV infection in both sexes was recorded following viral clearance using DAAs treatment.
SANet: A Slice-Aware Network for Pulmonary Nodule Detection

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death worldwide. A timely diagnosis of the pulmonary nodules makes it possible to detect lung cancer in the early stage, and thoracic computed tomography (CT) provides a convenient way to diagnose nodules. However, it is hard even for experienced doctors to distinguish them from the massive CT slices. The currently existing nodule datasets are limited in both scale and category, which is insufficient and greatly restricts its applications. In this paper, we collect the largest and most diverse dataset named PN9 for pulmonary nodule detection by far. Specifically, it contains 8,798 CT scans and 40,439 annotated nodules from 9 common classes. We further propose a slice-aware network (SANet) for pulmonary nodule detection. A slice grouped non-local (SGNL) module is developed to capture long-range dependencies among any positions and any channels of one slice group in the feature map. And we introduce a 3D region proposal network to generate pulmonary nodule candidates with high sensitivity, while this detection stage usually comes with many false positives. Subsequently, a false positive reduction module (FPR) is proposed by using the multi-scale feature maps. To verify the performance of SANet and the significance of PN9, we perform extensive experiments compared with several state-of-the-art 2D CNN-based and 3D CNN-based detection methods. Promising evaluation results on PN9 prove the effectiveness of our proposed SANet. The dataset and source code is available at https://mmcheng.net/SANet/.
Dielectric Properties of Human Active Liver, Kidney and Spleen Compared to Those of Respective Inactive Tissues, Porcine Tissues and the Data Provided by a Database in the Frequency Range of 10 Hz to 100 MHz

Objective: The purpose of this work is to study whether the active state and species of biological tissues can influence changes in their dielectric properties. Methods: In this paper, the dielectric properties of liver, kidney and spleen tissues from human active, human inactive and animal tissues are measured in the frequency range of 10 Hz to 100 MHz. The four- and two-electrode methods are used to measure dielectric properties at different frequencies. Statistical analysis and the pattern recognition method are used to compare the dielectric properties of human active tissues, human inactive tissues, animal tissues and data provided by the IFAC database. Results: The results show that the dielectric properties of human active tissues are significantly different from those of human inactive tissues and animal tissues, resulting in a great difference between the dielectric properties provided by the IFAC database and those of human active tissues. The dielectric properties of human active tissues can be identified by the pattern recognition method based on principal component analysis, which further proves that the dielectric properties of human active tissues cannot be replaced. Conclusion: The dielectric properties of biological tissues are closely related to the activity and species of tissues. The dielectric properties of human active tissues cannot be replaced by those of human cadaver tissues or animal tissues. Significance: The significance of this study is suggesting that the IFAC database should be updated with the dielectric properties of human active tissues to provide accurate data for bioelectromagnetics research.
Green synthesis of chitosan-based nanofibers and their applications

We report here a simple and green method for the preparation of chitosan and chitosan-based nanofibers by freeze-drying dilute aqueous solutions, without the use of organic solvent, high concentration of acid solutions, or the need to pre-treat chitosan. Chitosan nanofibers with diameters ranging from 100 to 700 nm were obtained from aqueous chitosan solutions with the concentrations equal to or below 0.1 wt %. Chitosan/poly(vinyl alcohol) blend nanofibers with different mass ratios were produced by freeze-drying the mixture solutions. The effects of solution concentration, chitosan molecular weight, and freezing temperature were examined. The morphology and thermal stability of the nanofibers were analyzed. Pore size and pore volume of the bulk fibrous materials were measured. A uniform coating of calcium phosphate was formed on the chitosan nanofibers in a 5 times concentrated simulated body fluid. The adsorption of copper ions by chitosan nanofibers from aqueous solutions was investigated. It was found that chitosan nanofibers exhibited a high adsorption capacity of Cu2+ at 2.57 mmol g−1 of chitosan for aqueous CuSO4 solution at a concentration of 1000 ppm. Loading and release of small molecules (Rhodamine B) and protein molecules (bovine serum albumin) with chitosan nanofibers as scaffolds were also investigated.
Biologic treatments in Behçet's disease

Behçet's disease (BD) significantly increases morbidity and mortality, especially in young men. While vascular involvement is the most frequent cause of mortality, ocular involvement, which can cause visual loss, is the most important cause of morbidity in BD. Immunosuppressive treatment is the mainstay for major organ involvement. However, despite optimal immunosuppressive treatment, relapses and disease-related damage develop in a subgroup of patients, especially among those with ocular or vascular involvement. With the recent understanding of the immuno-pathogenesis, biologic treatments targeting potential pathogenic cells, cytokines or pathways are better optimized in BD. Data from large series showed that tumor necrosis factor-α inhibitors and interferon-α are effective and safe treatment options for the treatment of refractory and major organ involvement, such as ocular, neurologic, vascular, and gastrointestinal. Anakinra and ustekinumab also seem to be promising agents for refractory mucocutaneous disease. IL-1 inhibitors and tocilizumab may be alternatives for the treatment of patients with refractory eye involvement. Still, randomized controlled trials of biologic agents, especially for the treatment of major organ involvement, are insufficient, and further prospective, long-term follow-up studies are needed to clarify the efficacy, safety, and optimal treatment duration of biologic agents in BD.
Chromatographic Methods Used to Identify and Quantify Organic Polymer Additives

Abstract In this paper, methods for identification and quantitation of organic polymer additives are presented. Information is given in convenient tabular form and detailed references are provided. Reprinted from the Encyclopedia of Chromatography, Jack Cazes, Ed., Marcel Dekker, Inc. (© 2003); URL: http://www.dekker. com. /servlet/product/productid/E‐ECHR
B Lymphocytes, but Not Dendritic Cells, Efficiently HIV-1 Trans Infect Naive CD4+ T Cells: Implications for the Viral Reservoir

The latent human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) reservoir in persons on antiretroviral therapy (ART) represents a major barrier to a cure. Although most studies have focused on the HIV-1 reservoir in the memory T cell subset, replication-competent HIV-1 has been isolated from TN, and CCR5-tropic HIV-1 has been recovered from CCR5neg TN from ART-suppressed HIV-1-infected individuals. ABSTRACT Insight into the establishment and maintenance of HIV-1 infection in resting CD4+ T cell subsets is critical for the development of therapeutics targeting the HIV-1 reservoir. Although the frequency of HIV-1 infection, as quantified by the frequency of HIV-1 DNA, is lower in CD4+ naive T cells (TN) than in the memory T cell subsets, recent studies have shown that TN harbor a large pool of replication-competent virus. Interestingly, however, TN are highly resistant to direct (cis) HIV-1 infection in vitro, in particular to R5-tropic HIV-1, as TN do not express CCR5. In this study, we investigated whether TN could be efficiently HIV-1 trans infected by professional antigen-presenting B lymphocytes and myeloid dendritic cells (DC) in the absence of global T cell activation. We found that B cells, but not DC, have a unique ability to efficiently trans infect TN in vitro. In contrast, both B cells and DC mediated HIV-1 trans infection of memory and activated CD4+ T cells. Moreover, we found that TN isolated from HIV-1-infected nonprogressors (NP) harbor significantly disproportionately lower levels of HIV-1 DNA than TN isolated from progressors. This is consistent with our previous finding that antigen-presenting cells (APC) derived from NP do not efficiently trans infect CD4+ T cells due to alterations in APC cholesterol metabolism and cell membrane lipid raft organization. These findings support that B cell-mediated trans infection of TN with HIV-1 has a more profound role than previously considered in establishing the viral reservoir and control of HIV-1 disease progression. IMPORTANCE The latent human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) reservoir in persons on antiretroviral therapy (ART) represents a major barrier to a cure. Although most studies have focused on the HIV-1 reservoir in the memory T cell subset, replication-competent HIV-1 has been isolated from TN, and CCR5-tropic HIV-1 has been recovered from CCR5neg TN from ART-suppressed HIV-1-infected individuals. In this study, we showed that CCR5neg TN are efficiently trans infected with R5-tropic HIV-1 by B lymphocytes, but not by myeloid dendritic cells. Furthermore, we found that TN isolated from NP harbor no or significantly fewer copies of HIV-1 DNA than those from ART-suppressed progressors. These findings support that B cell-mediated trans infection of TN with HIV-1 has a more profound role than previously considered in establishing the viral reservoir and control of HIV-1 disease progression. Understanding the establishment and maintenance of the HIV-1 latent reservoir is fundamental for the design of effective treatments for viral eradication.
Size dependence of the solvation free energies of large solutes

The solvation Gibbs free energy of linear molecules is shown to be a linear function of the length, or number of units, of the molecule when this length exceeds the correlation length of the solute due to the solvent. For large molecules in simple solvents, the solvation Gibbs energy, in leading order, scales as the solute volume, not the solute surface area, as might be expected. The solvation Gibbs energy, as determined from experimental measurements on solute concentrations in coexisting phases, needs no correction due to solute-solvent size ratio. A critique of a recent assertion to the contrary is presented
Dynamical Pose Estimation

We study the problem of aligning two sets of 3D geometric primitives given known correspondences. Our first contribution is to show that this primitive alignment framework unifies five perception problems including point cloud registration, primitive (mesh) registration, category-level 3D registration, absolution pose estimation (APE), and category-level APE. Our second contribution is to propose DynAMical Pose estimation (DAMP), the first general and practical algorithm to solve primitive alignment problem by simulating rigid body dynamics arising from virtual springs and damping, where the springs span the shortest distances between corresponding primitives. We evaluate DAMP in simulated and real datasets across all five problems, and demonstrate (i) DAMP always converges to the globally optimal solution in the first three problems with 3D-3D correspondences; (ii) although DAMP sometimes converges to suboptimal solutions in the last two problems with 2D-3D correspondences, using a scheme for escaping local minima, DAMP always succeeds. Our third contribution is to demystify the surprising empirical performance of DAMP and formally prove a global convergence result in the case of point cloud registration by charactering local stability of the equilibrium points of the underlying dynamical system.1
Joint Active and Passive Beam Training for IRS-Assisted Millimeter Wave Systems

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a competitive solution to address blockage issues in millimeter wave (mmWave) and Terahertz (THz) communications due to its capability of reshaping wireless transmission environments. Nevertheless, obtaining the channel state information of IRS-assisted systems is quite challenging because of the passive characteristics of the IRS. In this paper, we consider the problem of beam training/alignment for IRS-assisted downlink mmWave/THz systems, where a multi-antenna base station (BS) with a hybrid structure serves a single-antenna user aided by IRS. By exploiting the inherent sparse structure of the BS-IRS-user cascade channel, the beam training problem is formulated as a joint sparse sensing and phaseless estimation problem, which involves devising a sparse sensing matrix and developing an efficient estimation algorithm to identify the best beam alignment from compressive phaseless measurements. Theoretical analysis reveals that the proposed method can identify the best alignment with only a modest amount of training overhead. Simulation results show that, for both line-of-sight (LOS) and NLOS scenarios, the proposed method obtains a significant performance improvement over existing state-of-art methods. Notably, it can achieve performance close to that of the exhaustive beam search scheme, while reducing the training overhead by 95%.