| 1. |
- Beal, Jacob, et al.
(author)
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Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
- 2020
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In: Communications Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2399-3642. ; 3:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data.
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| 2. |
- Bao, Nan, et al.
(author)
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Wi-Breath : A WiFi-based Contactless and Real-time Respiration Monitoring Scheme for Remote Healthcare
- 2023
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In: IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics. - : IEEE. - 2168-2194 .- 2168-2208. ; 27:5, s. 2276-2285
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Respiration rate is an important healthcare indicator, and it has become a popular research topic in remote healthcare applications with Internet of Things. Existing respiration monitoring systems have limitations in terms of convenience, comfort, and privacy, etc. This paper presents a contactless and real-time respiration monitoring system, the so-called Wi-Breath, based on off-the-shelf WiFi devices. The system monitors respiration with both the amplitude and phase difference of the WiFi channel state information (CSI), which is sensitive to human body micro movement. The phase information of the CSI signal is considered and both the amplitude and phase difference are used. For better respiration detection accuracy, a signal selection method is proposed to select an appropriate signal from the amplitude and phase difference based on a support vector machine (SVM) algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the Wi-Breath achieves an accuracy of 91.2% for respiration detection, and has a 17.0% reduction in average error in comparison with state-of-the-art counterparts.
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| 3. |
- Du, Mingrun, et al.
(author)
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High pressure and high temperature induced polymerization of C60 solvates : The effect of intercalated aromatic solvents
- 2021
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In: The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1932-7447 .- 1932-7455. ; 125:31, s. 17155-17163
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The polymerization of three typical aromatic solvent-doped fullerene materials with similar hexagonal closest packed (hcp) structures (mesitylene/C60, m-dichlorobenzene/C60 and m-xylene/C60 solvates) is studied under high pressure and high temperature (HPHT, 1.5 GPa, 573 K and 2 GPa, 700 K, respectively). Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopies reveal that the intercalated aromatic solvents play a crucial role in tailoring the extent of polymerization of C60 molecules. In the solvates, the solvents confine formation of covalent bonds between C60 molecules to the 001 direction and the (001) plane of the hcp lattices, leading to the formation of mixed polymeric phases of monomers, dimers, one-dimensional (1D) chainlike oligomers, and two-dimensional (2D) tetragonal phase polymers under suitable HPHT conditions. The type and number of substituent groups of the aromatic solvents are found to have significant influence, determining the amounts and types of polymeric phases formed. Our studies enrich the understanding of the formation mechanisms for controllably fabricating polymeric fullerenes and facilitate targeted design and synthesis of unique fullerene-based carbon materials.
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| 4. |
- Du, Mingrun, et al.
(author)
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New ordered structure of amorphous carbon clusters induced by fullerene-cubane reactions
- 2018
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In: Advanced Materials. - : Wiley-VCH Verlagsgesellschaft. - 0935-9648 .- 1521-4095. ; 30
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- As a new category of solids, crystalline materials constructed with amorphous building blocks expand the structure categorization of solids, for which designing such new structures and understanding the corresponding formation mechanisms are fundamentally important. Unlike previous reports, new amorphous carbon clusters constructed ordered carbon phases are found here by compressing C8H8/C60 cocrystals, in which the highly energetic cubane (C8H8) exhibits unusual roles as to the structure formation and transformations under pressure. The significant role of C8H8 is to stabilize the boundary interactions of the highly compressed or collapsed C60 clusters which preserves their long‐range ordered arrangement up to 45 GPa. With increasing time at high pressure, the gradual random bonding between C8H8 and carbon clusters, due to “energy release” of highly compressed cubane, leads to the loss of the ability of C8H8 to stabilize the carbon cluster arrangement. Thus a transition from short‐range disorder to long‐range disorder (amorphization) occurs in the formed material. The spontaneous bonding reconstruction most likely results in a 3D network in the material, which can create ring cracks on diamond anvils.
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| 5. |
- Shi, Jiajun, et al.
(author)
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Automated Underwater Pipeline Damage Detection using Neural Nets
- 2019
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Pipeline inspection is a very human intensive taskand automation could improve efficiencies significantly. We propose a system that could allow an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), to detect pipeline damage in a stream of images.Our classifiers were based on transfer learning from pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNN). This allows us to achieve good results despite relatively few training examples of damage. We test the approach using data from an actual pipeline inspection.
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| 6. |
- Zhang, Xiangwei, et al.
(author)
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The prognostic value of tumor length to resectable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma : a retrospective study
- 2017
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In: PeerJ. - : PeerJ. - 2167-8359. ; 5
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: The current TNM classification system does not consider tumor length for patients with esophageal carcinoma (EC). This study explored the effect of tumor length, in addition to tumor depth and lymph node involvement, on survival in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).Methods: A total of 498 ESCC patients who underwent surgical resection as the primary treatment were selected in the retrospective study. Pathological details were collected, which included tumor type, TNM stage, differentiation. Other collected information were: the types of esophageal resection, ABO blood group, family history and demographic and lifestyle factors. A time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and a regression tree for survival were used to identify the cut-off point of tumor length, which was 3 cm. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to identify the prognostic factors to ESCC.Results & Discussion: The 1-, 3-, 5-year overall survival rates were found to be 82.5%, 55.6%, and 35.1%, respectively. Patients who had larger tumor length (>3 cm) had a higher risk for death than the rest patients. From the univariate Cox proportional hazards regression model, the overall survival rate was significantly influenced by the depth of the tumor and lymph node involvement (either as dummy or continuous variables), Sex, and tumor length. Using these four variables in the multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression model, we found that the overall survival was significantly influenced by all variables except Sex. Therefore, in addition to the depth of the tumor and lymph node involvement (as either dummy or continuous variables), the tumor length is also an independent prognostic factor for ESCC. The overall survival rate was higher in a group with smaller tumor length (≤3 cm) than those patients with larger tumor length (>3 cm), no matter what the tumor stage was.Conclusion: The tumor length was found to be an important prognostic factor for ESCC patients without receiving neoadjuvant therapy. The modification of EC staging system may consider tumor length to better predict ESCC survival and identify higher risk patients for postoperative therapy.
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| 7. |
- Zhang, Ying, et al.
(author)
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Capture of novel sp3 hybridized Z-BN by compressing boron nitride nanotubes with small diameter
- 2022
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In: Diamond and related materials. - : Elsevier. - 0925-9635 .- 1879-0062. ; 130
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Experimental synthesis of new sp3 hybridized carbon/boron nitride structures remains challenging despite that numerous sp3 structures have been proposed in theory. Here, we showed that compressed multi-walled boron nitride nanotubes (MWBNNTs) and boron nitride peapods (C60@BNNTs) with small diameters could transform into a new sp3 hybridized boron nitride allotrope (Z-BN). This strategy is considered from the topological transition point of view in boron nitride nanotubes upon compression. Due to the increased curvature in compressed small-diameter MWBNNTs, the uncommon 4- and 8-membered rings in Z-BN could be more favorably formed. And the irreversible tube collapse is proved to be a critical factor for the capture of the formed Z-BN, because of the competition between the resilience of tube before collapse and the stress limitation for the lattice stabilization of Z-BN upon decompression. In this case, Z-BN starts to form above 19.0 GPa, which is fully reversible below 45 GPa and finally becomes quenchable at 93.5 GPa. This collapse-induced capture of the high-pressure phase could also be extended to other tubular materials for quenching novel sp3 structures.
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| 8. |
- Zhang, Ying, et al.
(author)
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Negative Volume Compressibility in Sc3N@C-80-Cubane Cocrystal with Charge Transfer
- 2020
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In: Journal of the American Chemical Society. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0002-7863 .- 1520-5126. ; 142:16, s. 7584-7590
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- According to the laws of thermodynamics, materials normally exhibit contraction or expansion along the directions of the applied pressure or tension. Here, we show that a man-made cocrystal of a metallofullerene and highly energetic cubane, with strained sp(3) bonding, may exhibit an anomalous negative volume compressibility. In this cocrystal, the freely rotating fullerene Sc3N@C-80 acts as a structural building block while static cubane molecules fill the lattice interstitial sites. Under high pressure, Sc3N@C-80 keeps stable and preserves the crystalline framework of the materials, while the cubane undergoes a progressive configurational transformation above 6.5 GPa, probably promoted by charge transfer from fullerene to cubane. A further configurational change of the cubane into a low-density configuration at higher pressure results in an anomalous pressure-driven lattice expansion of the cocrystal (similar to 1.8% volume expansion). Such unusual negative compressibility has previously only been predicted by theory and suggested to appear in mechanical metamaterials.
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