Adsorption of 1,10-phenanthroline within a dodecanethiol monolayer: an approach to a switchable electrode surface

A simple method was used to prepare a "switchable" electrode surface by using self-assembled monolayers of dodecanethiol on a gold electrode. The dodecane-modified electrode was electrochemically inactive until the monolayer was soaked in solutions of 1,10-phenanthroline or 2,2'-bipyridine. The electroactive form of the electrode could be reverted back to the nonelectroactive form by rinsing the electrode. Surface IR results showed that both dodecanethiol and 1,10-phenanthroline exist in the mixed monolayer.     

Quantum-Inspired Complex-Valued Language Models for Aspect-Based Sentiment Classification

Aiming at classifying the polarities over aspects, aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) is a fine-grained task of sentiment analysis. The vector representations of current models are generally constrained to real values. Based on mathematical formulations of quantum theory, quantum language models have drawn increasing attention. Words in such models can be projected as physical particles in quantum systems, and naturally represented by representation-rich complex-valued vectors in a Hilbert Space, rather than real-valued ones. In this paper, the Hilbert Space representation for ABSA models is investigated and the complexification of three strong real-valued baselines are constructed. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of complexification and the outperformance of our complex-valued models, illustrating that the complex-valued embedding can carry additional information beyond the real embedding. Especially, a complex-valued RoBERTa model outperforms or approaches the previous state-of-the-art on three standard benchmarking datasets.     

Insights into the Allosteric Effect of SENP1 Q597A Mutation on the Hydrolytic Reaction of SUMO1 via an Integrated Computational Study

Small ubiquitin-related modifier (SUMO)-specific protease 1 (SENP1) is a cysteine protease that catalyzes the cleavage of the C-terminus of SUMO1 for the processing of SUMO precursors and deSUMOylation of target proteins. SENP1 is considered to be a promising target for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and prostate cancer. SENP1 Gln597 is located at the unstructured loop connecting the helices α4 to α5. The Q597A mutation of SENP1 allosterically disrupts the hydrolytic reaction of SUMO1 through an unknown mechanism. Here, extensive multiple replicates of microsecond molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, coupled with principal component analysis, dynamic cross-correlation analysis, community network analysis, and binding free energy calculations, were performed to elucidate the detailed mechanism. Our MD simulations showed that the Q597A mutation induced marked dynamic conformational changes in SENP1, especially in the unstructured loop connecting the helices α4 to α5 which the mutation site occupies. Moreover, the Q597A mutation caused conformational changes to catalytic Cys603 and His533 at the active site, which might impair the catalytic activity of SENP1 in processing SUMO1. Moreover, binding free energy calculations revealed that the Q597A mutation had a minor effect on the binding affinity of SUMO1 to SENP1. Together, these results may broaden our understanding of the allosteric modulation of the SENP1−SUMO1 complex.     

Determination of 241Am in Environmental Samples: A Review

The determination of ²⁴¹Am in the environment is of importance in monitoring its release and assessing its environmental impact and radiological risk. This paper aims to give an overview about the recent developments and the state-of-art analytical methods for ²⁴¹Am determination in environmental samples. Thorough discussions are given in this paper covering a wide range of aspects, including sample pre-treatment and pre-concentration methods, chemical separation techniques, source preparation, radiometric and mass spectrometric measurement techniques, speciation analyses, and tracer applications. The paper focuses on some hyphenated separation methods based on different chromatographic resins, which have been developed to achieve high analytical efficiency and sample throughput for the determination of ²⁴¹Am. The performances of different radiometric and mass spectrometric measurement techniques for ²⁴¹Am are evaluated and compared. Tracer applications of ²⁴¹Am in the environment, including speciation analyses of ²⁴¹Am, and applications in nuclear forensics are also discussed.     

Low-latency and low-overhead encoder ASIC in the ATLAS LAr calorimeter trigger upgrade

In this article, an encoder Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) for high-speed serial data transmission is presented. The ASIC implements a low-latency and low-overhead line code and is fabricated with a commercial 0.25-µm Silicon-on-Sapphire CMOS technology. The ASIC operates at 640 MHz with a latency of no greater than 6.25 ns and the overhead of 14.3%. The encoder will be integrated with a serialiser and will be used in the A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS Liquid Argon (LAr) calorimeter Phase-I trigger upgrade.     

Fermi-Level Pinning in Nanocrystal Memories

The nanocrystal (NC) work-function engineering, which plays an important role on the NC memory characteristics such as memory window and retention time, were long regarded as a matter of choice on NC materials. In this letter, we report opposite polarities of charge storage in Au NC memories with different control oxides. The effective NC work function is found to be not only a bulk property of the NC, but also governed by the interface with surrounding dielectric, as a result of the Fermi-level pinning. By replacing Au NCs with C₆₀ molecules, we also show the pinning effect generally exists at quantum-dot-based devices with high density of interface states. This fundamental interface property should be taken into account in the selection of NC and dielectric materials for the NC memory optimization     

Dynamic Variation of Amino Acid Contents and Identification of Sterols in Xinyang Mao Jian Green Tea

As important biomolecules in Camellia sinensis L., amino acids (AAs) are considered to contribute to the overall green tea sensory quality and undergo dynamic changes during growth. However, limited by analytical capacity, detailed AAs composition in different growth stages remains unclear. To address this question, we analyzed the dynamic changes of 23 AAs during leaf growth in Xinyang Mao Jian (XYMJ) green tea. Using amino acid analyzer, we demonstrated that most AAs are abundant on Pure Brightness Day and Grain Rain Day. After Grain Rain, 23 AAs decreased significantly. Further analysis shows that theanine has a high level on the day before Spring Equinox and Grain Rain, accounting for 44–61% of the total free AAs content in tea leaves. Glu, Pro, and Asp are the second most abundant AAs. Additionally, spinasterol and 22,23-dihydrospinasterol are first purified and identified in ethanol extract of XYMJ by silica gel column chromatography method. This study reveals the relationship between plucking days and the dynamic changes of AAs during the growth stage and proves the rationality of the traditional plucking days of XYMJ green tea.     

High-performance potassium poly(heptazine imide) films for photoelectrochemical water splitting

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is an appealing approach by which to convert solar energy into hydrogen fuel. Polymeric semiconductors have recently attracted intense interest of many scientists for PEC water splitting. The crystallinity of polymer films is regarded as the main factor that determines the conversion efficiency. Herein, potassium poly(heptazine) imide (K-PHI) films with improved crystallinity were in situ prepared on a conductive substrate as a photoanode for solar-driven water splitting. A remarkable photocurrent density of ca. 0.80 mA cm⁻² was achieved under air mass 1.5 global illumination without the use of any sacrificial agent, a performance that is ca. 20 times higher than that of the photoanode in an amorphous state, and higher than those of other related polymeric photoanodes. The boosted performance can be attributed to improved charge transfer, which has been investigated using steady state and operando approaches. This work elucidates the pivotal importance of the crystallinity of conjugated polymer semiconductors for PEC water splitting and other advanced photocatalytic applications.

Potassium poly(heptazine imide) photoanode is synthesized, and owing to the improved crystallinity, it has presented a remarkable performance for solar-driven water splitting.     

Decode‐and‐forward with full‐duplex relaying

This paper addresses the full‐duplex relaying. Some expressions for outage and average capacity of a two‐hop cooperative system with a full‐duplex relay are derived under an independent but not identically distributed Rayleigh fading environment. Using these expressions, we provide the performance analysis without Monte Carlo simulations. The impact of interference between the relay output and input is investigated. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

VoIP电话的安全问题及防护措施

VoIP电话是综合了传统电信技术与计算机网络技术的一种新型应用。VoIP电话在传输时将信号压缩后封装成IP包，在IP网络上传输，这种传输方式存在着各种安全隐患。讨论了VoIP电话多种可能存在的安全问题，并就这些安全问题作了详细的分析，同时提出了防护措施，以最大限度地保障VoIP电话的安全。