Is the List of Incomplete Open Cubes Complete?

Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes is the major project by the twentieth-century conceptual artist Sol LeWitt. In this paper we interpret the enumerative component of the project as embeddings of graphs. This formulation permits use of an algorithm to check the completeness of the list of the structures produced by the artist. Our conclusion is that the artist found the correct number of structures (that is, 122), but that his list contains a mistake in the presentation of a pair of incomplete cubes, a discovery that appears not to have been noted before.     

Properties and applications of β‐glycosidase from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron that specifically hydrolyses isoflavone glycosides

To modify the glycan part of glycosides, the gene encoding β‐glycosidase was cloned from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron VPI‐5482. The cloned gene, bt_1780, was expressed in Escherichia coli MC1061 and the expressed enzyme was purified using Ni‐NTA affinity chromatography. The purified enzyme, BTBG, showed optimal activity at 50 °C and pH 5.5. Interestingly, this enzyme did not have any hydrolysing activity on ordinary β‐linkage–containing substrates such as xylobiose, lactose and cello‐oligosaccharide, but specifically hydrolysed isoflavone glycosides such as daidzin, genistin and glycitin. Compared to a commercial beta glucosidase, BTBG selectively hydrolysed isoflavone glycosides in soybean extract mixture solution. These results suggest that BTBG may be a specialized enzyme for the hydrolysis of glycosides and that the substrate specificity of BTBG is applicable for the bioconversion of isoflavone glycosides in the food industry.     

Semantic word shifts in a scientific domain

Understanding semantic word shifts in scientific domains is essential for facilitating interdisciplinary communication. Using a data set of published papers in the field of information retrieval (IR), this paper studies the semantic shifts of words in IR based on mining per-word topic distribution over time. We propose that semantic word shifts not only occur over time, but also over topics. The shifts are examined from two perspectives, the topic-level and the context-level. According to the over-time word-topic distribution, stable words and unstable words are recognized. The diverging and converging trends in the unstable type reveal characteristics of the topic evolution process. The context-level shifts are further detected by similarities between word vectors. Our work associates semantic word shifts with the evolving of topics, which facilitates a better understanding of semantic word shifts from both topics and contexts.     

Do funded papers attract more usage?

Research funding has been seen as one of the most important resource in the reward system of science. And usage of publications denotes an interesting perspective of user behavior in scientific communication. This study aims to address the relationship between funding and Usage Count, which is a new metrics item established on the platform of Web of Science. Full records of 300,010 articles published in 2013 were downloaded in October 2015, and divided into six disciplines, including information science library science, education educational research, economics, computer science, materials science, and chemistry. Seven indicators were proposed to measure the impact, including Funding rate, Citation per paper, Usage rate, Usage per paper, Citation difference, Usage difference, and Conversion rate. It concluded funding has impact on usage and citation, and funded papers attract more usage, but varying in different disciplines. Usage Count can be used in the extension of citation metrics but with limits. This study originally engages with usage metrics and detected that there is positive correlation between usage and funding.     

A multi-criteria context-sensitive approach for social image collection summarization

Recent increase in the number of digital photos in the content sharing and social networking websites has created an endless demand for techniques to analyze, navigate, and summarize these images. In this paper, we focus on image collection summarization. Earlier methods in image collection summarization consider representativeness and diversity criteria while recent ones also consider other criteria such as image quality, aesthetic or appeal. In this paper, we propose a multi-criteria context-sensitive approach for social image collection summarization. In the proposed method, two different sets of features are combined while each one looks at different criteria for image collection summarization: social attractiveness features and semantic features. The first feature set considers different aspects that make an image appealing such as image quality, aesthetic, and emotion to create attractiveness score for input images while the second one covers semantic content of images and assigns semantic score to them. We use social network infrastructure to identify attractiveness features and domain ontology for extracting ontology features. The final summarization is provided by integrating the attractiveness and semantic features of input images. The experimental results on a collection of human generated summaries on a set of Flickr images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed image collection summarization approach.     

Harmful effects of pyrethroid ester insecticide on the male reproductive system mainly through affecting testicular function and inflammatory markers

Pyrethroid esters are widely used as insecticides worldwide. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the harmful effect of deltamethrin on the male reproductive system through the assessment of reproductive hormones, inflammatory markers, and testicular function. To achieve our aim, eighty male 7-9-week-old, Wistar rats were taken, weighed, and divided into four experimental groups. The first group was kept as a control group, and the other three groups were given deltamethrin orally at different concentrations (0.87, 8.7, and 17.4 mg/kg body weight) for nine weeks. The results indicated that deltamethrin administration associated with a significant decrease in reproductive hormones, especially FSH, LH, and significant elevation in the interleukin 2 (IL2), interleukin 6 (IL6), histamine, and cortisol levels. Also, the significance of inhibition of sperm motility and viability, decreased testis weights, sperm count, and fructose in semen were noted. These findings clarify the harmful effect of deltamethrin on the male reproductive system by producing a significant alteration in reproductive hormones, inflammatory markers as well as testicular function.     

Efficient PL Emission from p-type Porous Silicon: A Comparative Study for Selection of Effective Anodization Parameters

The physical mechanism of highly efficient photoluminescence (PL) emission from p-type silicon is described by a comparative study of the effectiveness of the etching parameters in an electrochemical anodization technique. Two series of porous silicon samples were prepared in a combination of anodization current and time, to maintain the total amount of anodic charge transfer constant. Photoluminescence studies show that irrespective of the amount of charge transfer, the samples prepared with comparatively higher current density show an efficient PL as well as stronger blueshift in the emission energy vis-à-vis the samples prepared for longer durations. An overall decrease in crystallite size, as estimated by Raman spectral analysis, was observed for both series of samples with the progress of charge transfer. Comparative analysis shows a marginal difference in crystallite size for both series of samples in the initial state of charge transfer, whereas major differences arise at higher values. This is explained with the formation of silicon suboxide on the porous surface at higher current density, leading to initiation of side wall reaction, and higher reduction rate in crystallite size as well as strong luminescence due to the carrier quantum confinement effect.