Decomposition characteristics of SF6/N2 gas mixture with local overheating

In recent years, Chinese power enterprises have adopted SF6/N2 to replace SF6 gas in transmission electrical equipment. In this paper, an experimental platform was set up to simulate the local overheating fault of gas insulated electrical equipment. The relationship between the decomposition products of SF6/N2 gas and temperature, experimental time, gas pressure and SF6 content was studied. The results showed that the main products of SF6/N2 gas decomposition were SO2, SO2F2, N2O, C2F6, COS, CS2 and CF4. The content of SO2 increased nonlinearly with the increase of temperature, experimental time, gas pressure and SF6 content. However, the contents of SO2F2, N2O, C2F6, COS, CS2 and CF4 decreased first and remained unchanged with the increase of gas pressure, and increased with the increase of temperature, experimental time and SF6 content. And C element in metal also affected the type and quantity of gas products.

Rapid structural analysis of minute quantities of organic solids by exhausting 1H polarization in solid-state NMR spectroscopy at fast MAS

Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a powerful and indispensable tool for structural and dynamic studies of various challenging systems. Nevertheless, it often suffers from significant limitations due to the inherent low signal sensitivity when low- nuclei are involved. Herein, we report an efficient solid-state NMR approach for rapid and efficient structural analysis of minute amounts of organic solids. By encoding staggered chemical shift evolution in the indirect dimension and staggered acquisition in 1H dimension, a proton-detected homonuclear 1H/1H and heteronuclear 13C/1H chemical shift correlation (HETCOR) spectrum can be obtained simultaneously in a single experiment at fast magic-angle-spinning (MAS) conditions with barely increasing experimental time, compared to conventional proton-detected HETCOR experiment. We establish that abundant 1H polarization can be efficiently manipulated and fully utilized in proton-detected solid-state NMR spectroscopy for extraction of more critical structural information and thus reduction of total experimental time.

Reconstructing Reliable Powder Patterns from Spikelets (Q)CPMG NMR Spectra: Simplification of UWNMR Crystallography Analysis

Spikelets NMR spectra are very popular as they enable the shortening of experimental time and give the possibility to obtain required NMR parameters for nuclei with ultrawide NMR patterns. Unfortunately, these resulted ssNMR spectra cannot be fitted directly in common software. For this reason, we developed UWNMRSpectralShape (USS) software which transforms spikelets NMR patterns into single continuous lines. Subsequently, these reconstructed spectral envelopes of the (Q)CPMG spikelets patterns can be loaded into common NMR software and automatically fitted, independently of experimental settings. This allows the quadrupole and chemical shift parameters to be accurately determined. Moreover, it makes fitting of spikelets NMR spectra exact, fast and straightforward.

Effects of Dietary Supplementation of Lactobacillus delbrueckii on Gut Microbiome and Intestinal Morphology in Weaned Piglets

Lactobacillus delbrueckii is a Gram-positive bacterium mostly used in the dairy industry for yogurt and cheese. The present study was designed to evaluate the effects of Lactobacillus delbrueckii on serum biochemical parameters, intestinal morphology, and performance by supplementing at a dietary level of 0.1% in diets for weaned piglets. Eighty healthy weaned piglets (initial body weight: 7.56 ± 0.2 kg) were randomly divided into two feeding groups with four replicates in each group (n = 10 animals per replicate); piglets were fed with basal diet (CON) or basal diet containing 0.1% Lactobacillus delbrueckii (LAC). The results showed that dietary supplementation of Lactobacillus delbrueckii improved growth performance and increased serum HDL and insulin levels in piglets on the 28th day of the experimental time (p < 0.05). The gut microbe analysis revealed that Lactobacillus delbrueckii significantly decreased the relative abundance of the phyla Bacteroidetes, but increased the relative abundance of the phyla Firmicutes. The Lactobacillus delbrueckii also significantly increased the relative abundance of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus at the genus level of the bacterial community in the ileum, but decreased the relative abundance of unclassified Clostridiales. Moreover, Lactobacillus delbrueckii improved mucosal morphology by obtaining higher intestinal villus height (p < 0.05), significantly increasing the concentrations of butyrate, isobutyric acid, and isovaleric acid in colonic chyme of piglets, but decreasing the intestinal pH at the duodenum and ileum on the 28th day of the experimental time. In conclusion, dietary supplementation of Lactobacillus delbrueckii in the diet of weaned piglets can improve intestinal morphology and modulate the microbiota community to promote growth performance.

Measuring Designers’ Empathic Understanding of Users by a Quick Empathic Accuracy (QEA)

Empathy is an essential ability for designers to step into users’ shoes and potentially discover their latent needs. However, although empathy helps designers to better understand users, the degree to which designers can actually understand them remains unclear. Consequently, it is essential to measure the accuracy of designers’ empathic understanding. In our previous work, we have adopted an experimental procedure from psychology to quantify designers’ empathic accuracy. However, the measure as such is time-consuming. Therefore, we attempted to shorten the experimental time while retaining the validity of the measure. This paper reports on the process of shortening the measure and compares the original instrument with the shortened one. The data collected from the shortened instrument shows excellent internal consistency and between subject variance and is able to produce similar results to the original longer measure.

ANALYSIS OF MOTOR BEHAVIOR AND NEUROPLASTICITY IN AN EXPERIMENTAL MODEL OF HEMIPLEGIA TREATED WITH TRANSCRANIAL THERAPY

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death worldwide; its severity is associated with high death rates and motor, cognitive, and sensory . Several interventions have been proposed in recent years to prevent and primarily treat stroke. LED stands out as one of these interventions; it indicates promising results because it stimulates cellular metabolism, increasing the cellular regenerative potential, and promoting . Thus, the present study evaluated the effects of 630 nm LED in animals submitted to ischemic stroke by analyzing and motor behavior. This was an experimental study with a controlled qualitative and quantitative intervention, with a sample of 30 male Wistar Rattus divided into two groups: a control group and treated group, consisting of 15 animals each. The experimental time points were 3, 7, and 21 days of treatment. All animals were submitted to surgery for the implantation of an electrode and subsequent electrolytic lesion. The quantitative results in the three experimental time points indicate treatment superiority using the 630 nm LED compared to the control group. The findings also showed increased tissue in the treated group at 3, 7, and 21 days of treatment when compared to the control group. Hence, the results suggest that the 630 nm LED guided treatment in the experimental time points of 3, 7, and 21 days was superior to those in the control group, showing animals with increased motor response according to the apprehension test, and improved according to the evaluation.

Why AlphaFold is Not Like AlphaGo

AlphaFold2 is the second major iteration of a protein structure predictor by Google-owned DeepMind Lab. DeepMind is famous for creating AlphaGo Zero, the first game-playing system to transcend the rules taught by human trainers. When AlphaFold2 made a significant leap in protein prediction accuracy in the fourteenth annual CASP competition, even reserved publications like Nature were noticeably breathless in their praise of the results. It was not just the impressive and well-proven leap in prediction accuracy that made AlphaFold2 notable, but also its association with the DeepMind brand and implicitly with the beyond-human learning successes of AlphaGo Zero. But is this latter component of its notoriety and acclaim justified? That is, beyond superficial name similarities, is the design of AlphaFold2 sufficiently like that of AlphaGo Zero to enable a similar leap ahead of human knowledge and expertise? An analysis of the underlying designs says no. In contrast to the fully virtualized, faster-than-human learning speeds of AlphaGo Zero, the learning speed of AlphaFold2 remains firmly attached to and limited by human experimental time. AlphFold2 thus is inherently incapable of the trans-human leaps in learning speed demonstrated by AlphaGo Zero.

Development of TMS Trigger System for Suppressing MEP Fluctuation Using EEG Coherence Analysis: Algorithm Development and Validation Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), when applied over the primary motor cortex (M1) elicits a motor evoked potential (MEP) in electromyograms measured from peripheral muscles. MEP amplitude has often been observed to fluctuate trial by trial, even with a constant stimulus. Many factors cause MEP fluctuations in TMS. One of the primary factors is the weak stationarity and instability of cortical activity in the brain, from which we assumed MEP fluctuations originated. We hypothesized that MEP fluctuations must be suppressed if TMS is delivered to M1 at the time when several electroencephalogram (EEG) channels measured on the scalp have high similarity in the frequency domain. OBJECTIVE We developed a TMS triggering system for suppressing MEP fluctuations using EEG coherence analysis, which was performed to detect the EEG signal similarity between the two channels in the frequency domain. METHODS Seven healthy adults participated in the experiment to confirm whether the TMS trigger system works adequately, and the mean amplitude and coefficient of variation of the MEP were recorded and compared with the values in the control task. We also determined the experimental time under each condition and verified whether it was within the predicted time. RESULTS The coefficient of variation (CV) of MEP amplitude decreased in five out of seven subjects, and significant differences (P=.02) were confirmed in two of the subjects by performing an F-test. The CV of the experimental time required for each stimulus with threshold modification was less than that without threshold modification, and a significant difference (P<.001) was confirmed by performing an F-test. CONCLUSIONS We consequently found that MEP could be suppressed using the system developed in this study and that the TMS trigger system could also stabilize the experimental time by changing the triggering threshold automatically.