From differential equation solvers to accelerated first-order methods for convex optimization

Mathematical Programming - Convergence analysis of accelerated first-order methods for convex optimization problems are developed from the point of view of ordinary differential equation solvers. A...     

How do peace dividends bring about human development and productivity?

Annals of Operations Research - The main purpose of this study was to explore the impact of peace dividends on global changes in national productivity. First, this study assessed changes in...     

Correction to: Theoretical modeling and experimental evaluation of a magnetostrictive actuator with radial-nested stacked configuration

Nonlinear Dynamics -     

高压辅助法制备红外非线性AgGaGe5Se12、AgGaGeS4晶体

AgGaGe5 Se12、AgGaGeS4非线性晶体在中远红外激光具有良好的应用前景.合成高纯多晶是制备可器件化单晶元件的关键.但S、Se易挥发、高温下饱和蒸气压高,易导致石英坩埚的爆炸,组分偏离化学计量比.为此,本文采用一种新型的高压辅助法合成出大尺寸高纯的多晶原料,解决了石英坩埚爆炸和组份偏离问题,并在此基础上进行了单晶的生长过程.多晶X射线粉末衍射测试结果与模拟图谱或者标准PDF卡片一致;X射线荧光光谱分析得到各元素百分含量非常接近化学计量比,AgGaGe5 Se12中Ag、Ga、Ge、Se各占7.86;、5.08;、23.80;、63.26;,AgGaGeS4中Ag、Ga、Ge、S各占28.22;、18.24;、19.52;、34.02;;单晶透过率测试得到AgGaGe5 Se12、AgGaGeS4透过率分别为60;、70;,证明此方法制备的AgGaGe5 Se12、AgGaGeS4晶体性能优良,展现了该方法在多晶合成的应用潜力.     

Nickel (II) tetrapyridyl complexes as electrocatalysts and precatalysts for water oxidation

Two nickel complexes, [Ni(tpen)](ClO₄)₂.0.5CH₃COCH₃ ( 1 ) and [Ni(tpbn)](ClO₄)₂ ( 2 ), of tetrapyridyl ligands N,N,N′,N′-tetrakis(2-pyridyl-methyl)-1,2-ethanediamine (tpen) and N,N,N′,N′-tetrakis(2-pyridyl-methyl)-1,4-butanediamine (tpbn) were prepared and their catalysis for water oxidation reaction (WOR) studied. In 0.1 M phosphate buffer solution (PBS) of pH 8.0, complex 1 is a homogeneous molecular catalyst with an overpotential of ~440 mV and a Faradaic efficiency of 89%. At pH ≥ 9.0, complex 1 degraded gradually during the catalytic process and formed NiO_x composite (nickel oxide with general formula Ni_xO_yH_z) active for WOR. In contrast, complex 2 deteriorated under measured conditions (pH 8.0–12.0) and formed NiO_x composite active for WOR. The NiO_x composite derived from 1 in 0.1 M PBS at pH 11.0 showed an activity with an overpotential of ~500 mV, a Tafel slope of ~90 mV/decade and a Faradaic efficiency of 97%. Mechanisms were proposed for water oxidation catalyzed by 1 and 2 . This work revealed that the catalytic activity of the nickel complexes was related to the flexibility of the tetrapyridyl ligands and the adaptability of the coordination sphere of the nickel(II) center.     

Twisted bounded-dilation group C*-algebras as C*-metric algebras

We construct a class of C~*-metric algebras. We prove that for a discrete group Γ with a 2-cocycle σ,the closure of the seminorm ||[M?, ·]|| on Cc(Γ, σ) is a Leibniz Lip-norm on the twisted reduced group C~*-algebra C*r(Γ, σ) for the pointwise multiplication operator M?on ?2(Γ), induced by a proper length function ? on Γ with the property of bounded θ-dilation. Moreover, the compact quantum metric space structures depend only on the cohomology class of 2-cocycles in the Lipschitz isometric sense.     

Demonstration of joule-level chirped pulse amplification based on tiled Ti:sapphire amplifier

A novel tiled Ti:sapphire(Ti:S)amplifier was experimentally demonstrated with>1 J amplified chirped pulse output.Two Ti:S crystals having dimensions of 14 mm×14 mm×25 mm were tiled as the gain medium in a four-pass amplifier.Maximum output energy of 1.18 J was obtained with 2.75 J pump energy.The energy conversion efficiency of the tiled Ti:S amplifier was comparable with a single Ti:S amplifier.The laser pulse having the maximum peak power of 28 TW was obtained after the compressor.Moreover,the influence of the beam gap on the far field was discussed.This novel tiled Ti:S amplifier technique can provide a potential way for 100 PW or EW lasers in the future.     

A quantum circuit design of AES requiring fewer quantum qubits and gate operations

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is one of the most widely used block ciphers nowadays, and has been established as an encryption standard in 2001. Here we design AES-128 and the sample-AES (S-AES) quantum circuits for deciphering. In the quantum circuit of AES-128, we perform an affine transformation for the SubBytes part to solve the problem that the initial state of the output qubits in SubBytes is not the |0>^⊗8 state. After that, we are able to encode the new round sub-key on the qubits encoding the previous round sub-key, and this improvement reduces the number of qubits used by 224 compared with Langenberg et al.’s implementation. For S-AES, a complete quantum circuit is presented with only 48 qubits, which is already within the reach of existing noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers.     

Effect of quality control on the proliferation of the extract from Taraxacum mongolicum Hand.‐Mazz. in Lactobacillus plantarum

In recent years, the fingerprint of high‐performance liquid chromatography has been extensively applied in the identification and quality control of traditional Chinese medicine. It can be a potential protocol for assessing the authenticity, stability and consistency of traditional Chinese medicine and guaranteeing the expected biological activity. In this paper, a method using high‐performance liquid chromatography to identify and control the quality of the extract of Taraxacum mongolicum Hand.‐Mazz. (TME) was established. With this method, the correlation coefficients of the similarity of 10 batches were ≥0.994. The TME displayed a steady proliferative effect in Lactobacillus plantarum. In brief, this study successfully built a reliable, simple and efficient method to control and confirm the quality and the stability of biological activity of the TME.