Electrocatalytic Reduction of CO2 to Ethylene by Molecular Cu‐Complex Immobilized on Graphitized Mesoporous Carbon

The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to hydrocarbons is a challenging task because of the issues in controlling the efficiency and selectivity of the products. Among the various transition metals, copper has attracted attention as it yields more reduced and C2 products even while using mononuclear copper center as catalysts. In addition, it is found that reversible formation of copper nanoparticle acts as the real catalytically active site for the conversion of CO₂ to reduced products. Here, it is demonstrated that the dinuclear molecular copper complex immobilized over graphitized mesoporous carbon can act as catalysts for the conversion of CO₂ to hydrocarbons (methane and ethylene) up to 60%. Interestingly, high selectivity toward C2 product (40% faradaic efficiency) is achieved by a molecular complex based hybrid material from CO₂ in 0.1 m KCl. In addition, the role of local pH, porous structure, and carbon support in limiting the mass transport to achieve the highly reduced products is demonstrated. Although the spectroscopic analysis of the catalysts exhibits molecular nature of the complex after 2 h bulk electrolysis, morphological study reveals that the newly generated copper cluster is the real active site during the catalytic reactions.     

A Novel Beam Search to Improve Neural Machine Translation for English-Chinese

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is an end-to-end learning approach for automated translation, overcoming the weaknesses of conventional phrase-based translation systems. Although NMT based systems have gained their popularity in commercial translation applications, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Being the most popular search algorithm in NMT, beam search is vital to the translation result. However, traditional beam search can produce duplicate or missing translation due to its target sequence selection strategy. Aiming to alleviate this problem, this paper proposed neural machine translation improvements based on a novel beam search evaluation function. And we use reinforcement learning to train a translation evaluation system to select better candidate words for generating translations. In the experiments, we conducted extensive experiments to evaluate our methods. CASIA corpus and the 1,000,000 pairs of bilingual corpora of NiuTrans are used in our experiments. The experiment results prove that the proposed methods can effectively improve the English to Chinese translation quality.     

Algorithmic Fairness in Mortgage Lending: from Absolute Conditions to Relational Trade-offs

Minds and Machines - To address the rising concern that algorithmic decision-making may reinforce discriminatory biases, researchers have proposed many notions of fairness and corresponding...     

The effect of optimized carbon source on the synthesis and composition of exopolysaccharides produced by Lactobacillus paracasei

This study aimed to predict the optimal carbon source for higher production of exopolysaccharides (EPS) by Lactobacillus paracasei TD 062, and to evaluate the effect of this carbon source on the production and monosaccharide composition of EPS. We evaluated the EPS production capacity of 20 strains of L. paracasei under the same conditions. We further investigated L. paracasei TD 062, which showed the highest EPS-producing activity (0.609 g/L), by examining the associated biosynthesis pathways for EPS. Genomics revealed that fructose, mannose, trehalose, glucose, galactose, and lactose were carbon sources that L. paracasei TD 062 could use to produce EPS. We identified an EPS synthesis gene cluster that could participate in transport, export, and sugar chain synthesis, and generate 6 sugar nucleotides. Experimental results showed that the sugar content of the EPS produced using fermentation with the optimized carbon source (fructose, mannose, trehalose, glucose, galactose, and lactose) increased by 115%. Furthermore, use of the optimized carbon source changed the monosaccharide content of the associated EPS. The results of enzyme activity measurements showed significant increases in the activity of 2 key enzymes involved in the glycoside synthesis pathway. Our study revealed that optimizing the carbon source provided for fermentation not only increased the production of EPS, but also affected the composition of the monosaccharides by increasing enzyme activity in the underlying synthesis pathways, suggesting an important role for carbon source in the production of EPS by L. paracasei TD 062.     

Single-Crystalline TiO2(B) Nanobelts with Unusual Large Exposed {100} Facets and Enhanced Li-Storage Capacity

The {100} facet of single-crystalline TiO₂(B) is an ideal platform for inserting Li ions, but it is hard to be obtained due to its high surface energy. Here, the single-crystalline TiO₂(B) nanobelts from H₂Ti₃O₇ with nearly 70% {100} facets exposed are synthesized, which significantly enhances Li-storage capacity. The first-principle calculations demonstrate an ab in-plane 2D diffusion through the exposed {100} facets. As a consequence, the nanobelts can significantly accommodate Li ions in LiTiO₂ formula with specific capacity up to 335 mAh g⁻¹, which is in good agreement with the electrochemical characterizations. Coating with conductive and protective poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate), the cut-off discharge voltage is as low as 0.5 V, leading to a capacity of 160.7 mAh g⁻¹ after 1500 cycles with a retention rate of 66% at 1C. This work provides a practical strategy to increase the Li-ion capacity and cycle stability by tailoring the crystal orientation and nanostructures.     

Chromophore-Free Sealing and Repair of Soft Tissues Using Mid-Infrared Light-Activated Biosealants

Poor strength, infection, leakage, long procedure times, and inflammation limit the efficacy of common tissue sealing devices in surgeries and trauma. Light-activated sealing is attractive for tissue sealing and repair, and can be facilitated by the generation of local heat following absorption of nonionizing laser energy by chromophores. Here, the inherent ability of biomaterials is exploited to absorb nonionizing, mid-infrared (midIR) light in order to engender rapid photothermal sealing and repair of soft tissue wounds. In this approach, the biomaterial simultaneously acts as a photothermal convertor as well as a biosealant, which dispenses the need for exogeneous light-absorbing nanoparticles or dyes. Biomechanical recovery, mathematical modeling, histopathology analyses, tissue strain mapping using digital imaging correlation, and visualization of the biosealant-tissue interface using hyperspectral imaging indicate superior performance of midIR sealing in live mice compared to conventional sutures and glue. The midIR-biosealant approach demonstrates rapid sealing of soft tissues, improves cosmesis, lowers potential for scarring, obviates safety concerns because of the nonionizing light used, and allows adoption of a wide diversity of biomaterials. Taken together, the studies demonstrate a novel advance both in biomaterials for surgical sealing along with the use of nonionizing midIR light, with high potential for clinical translation.     

A dynamic SVR–ARMA model with improved fruit fly algorithm for the nonlinear fiber stretching process

Natural Computing - The fiber stretching process plays the key role in the process of fiber production and its effects is measured by the stretching ratio. The stretching ratio is determined by the...