Fabrication of tungsten oxide photoanode by doctor blade technique and investigation on its photocatalytic operation mechanism

WO₃ is a potential material candidate for construction of photoanode for solar driven water splitting. In this work, μm-thick porous WO₃ photoanode is prepared by depositing a stable ink made of WO₃ nanoparticles and Aristoflex velvet polymer in water using the doctor blade technique, followed by a sintering in air. The nature of WO₃ nanoparticles, its loading mass on F-doped tin oxide electrode as well as sintering temperature are examined in order to optimize the photocatalytic activity of the resultant WO₃ photoanode. The operation of WO₃ photoanode is investigated by varying the light illumination direction and light incident intensity as well as changing the nature of the electrolyte. Dissolved tungsten in electrolyte is quantified by ICP-MS providing insights into the influences of electrolyte nature and operating conditions to the corrosion of WO₃. It is proposed that the H₂O₂ and OH^. radical generated as by-products of the photo-driven water oxidation on the photoanode surface are harmful species that accelerate the dissolution of WO₃.     

Distribution-free uncertainty quantification for kernel methods by gradient perturbations

Machine Learning - We propose a data-driven approach to quantify the uncertainty of models constructed by kernel methods. Our approach minimizes the needed distributional assumptions, hence,...     

基于桥连接的词典学习方法的语义解析

现阶段的语义解析方法大部分都基于组合语义,这类方法的核心就是词典。词典是词汇的集合,词汇定义了自然语言句子中词语到知识库本体中谓词的映射。语义解析一直面临着词典中词汇覆盖度不够的问题。针对此问题,该文在现有工作的基础上,提出了基于桥连接的词典学习方法,该方法能够在训练中自动引入新的词汇并加以学习,为了进一步提高新学习到的词汇的准确度,该文设计了新的词语—二元谓词的特征模板,并使用基于投票机制的核心词典获取方法。该文在两个公开数据集(WebQuestions和Free917)上进行了对比实验,实验结果表明,该文方法能够学习到新的词汇,提高词汇的覆盖度,进而提升语义解析系统的性能,特别是召回率。     

The effect of Na addition on the first hydrogen absorption kinetics of cast hypoeutectic Mg–La alloys

With superior properties of Mg such as high hydrogen storage capacity (7.6 wt% H/MgH₂), low price, and low density, Mg has been widely studied as a promising candidate for solid-state hydrogen storage systems. However, a harsh activation procedure, slow hydrogenation/dehydrogenation process, and a high temperature for dehydrogenation prevent the use of Mg-based metal hydrides for practical applications. For these reasons, Mg-based alloys for hydrogen storage systems are generally alloyed with other elements to improve hydrogen sorption properties. In this article, we have added Na to cast Mg–La alloys and achieved a significant improvement in hydrogen absorption kinetics during the first activation cycle. The role of Na in Mg–La has been discussed based on the findings from microstructural observations, crystallography, and first principles calculations based on density functional theory. From our results in this study, we have found that the Na doped surface of Mg–La alloy systems have a lower adsorption energy for H₂ compared to Na-free surfaces which facilitates adsorption and dissociation of hydrogen molecules leading to improvement of absorption kinetic. The effect of Na on the microstructure of these alloys, such as eutectic refinement and a density of twins is not highly correlated with absorption kinetics.     

An automated treatment planning strategy for highly noncoplanar radiotherapy arc trajectories

Radiation therapy is a technology-driven cancer treatment modality that has experienced significant advances over the last decades, due to multidisciplinary contributions that include engineering and computing. Recent technological developments allow the use of noncoplanar volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT), one of the most recent photon treatment techniques, in clinical practice. In this work, an automated noncoplanar arc trajectory optimization framework designed in two modular phases is presented. First, a noncoplanar beam angle optimization algorithm is used to obtain a set of noncoplanar irradiation directions. Then, anchored in these directions, an optimization strategy is proposed to compute an optimal arc trajectory. The computational experiments considered a pool of twelve difficult head-and-neck tumor cases. It was possible to observe that, for some of these cases, the optimized noncoplanar arc trajectories led to significant treatment planning quality improvements, when compared with coplanar VMAT treatment plans. Although these experiments were done in a research environment treatment planning software (matRad), the conclusions can be of interest for a clinical setting: automated procedures can simplify the current treatment workflow, produce high-quality treatment plans, making better use of human resources and allowing for unbiased comparisons between different treatment techniques.     

The Impact of PbF2-Based Glasses on Radiation Shielding and Mechanical Concepts: An Extensive Theoretical and Monte Carlo Simulation Study

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials - This work aimed to investigate the impact of Lead-fluoride based glasses via theoretical and simulation techniques on mechanical and...     

Evaluation of Intellectual Property Objects in the Nanoindustry Field

Russian Microelectronics - The recently developed nanomaterials and their production technologies as intellectual property objects (IPOs) are considered. The role of the informational-analytical...     

A single-phase algorithm for mining high utility itemsets using compressed tree structures

Mining high utility itemsets (HUIs) from transaction databases considers such factors as the unit profit and quantity of purchased items. Two-phase tree-based algorithms transform a database into compressed tree structures and generate candidate patterns through a recursive pattern-growth procedure. This procedure requires a lot of memory and time to construct conditional pattern trees. To address this issue, this study employs two compressed tree structures, namely, Utility Count Tree and String Utility Tree, to enumerate valid patterns and thus promote fast utility computation. Furthermore, the study presents an algorithm called single-phase utility computation (SPUC) that leverages these two tree structures to mine HUIs in a single phase by incorporating novel pruning strategies. Experiments conducted on both real and synthetic datasets demonstrate the superior performance of SPUC compared with IHUP, UP-Growth, and UP-Growth+ algorithms.     

Calculation and Experimental Determination of the Neutronics Characteristics of the IRT-T Research Reactor

Atomic Energy - The results of calculations and experimental determination of the neutronics characteristics of the IRT-T research reactor are presented. The IRT-T reactor is a pool reactor with...