E1 reaction-induced synthesis of hydrophilic oxide nanoparticles in non-hydrophilic solvent DOI: 10.1039/C2NR32255B Nanoscale , 2012, 4 , 6284-6288 DOI: 10.1039/C2NR32255B Received 12 Aug 2012, Accepted 03 Sep 2012 First published on the web 06 Sep 2012 Abstract In this paper, tert-amyl alcohol was employed to directly react with metal chlorides to prepare oxide nanoparticles. Some typical metal oxide or hydroxides with different morphologies, such as TiO2 nanoparticles, TiO2 nanorods, FeOOH nanowires, Fe2O3 nanoparticles, SnO2 nanoparticles, can be easily fabricated through such some simple chemical reactions. E1 reaction was found to play the leading role in the synthesis of metal oxides attributed to better stability of tertiary carbocations in tert-amyl alcohol and the strong interaction of metal chlorides with hydroxyl groups that result in the easy dissociation of carbon-oxygen bonds in tert-amyl alcohol. SN1 reaction can also happen in certain reactions due to nucleophilic substitution of chloride ions for hydroxyl groups. As-prepared metal oxides show good compatibility with aqueous system while they were synthesized in non-hydrophilic solvent probably attributed to specific E1 reaction mechanism involving the generation of water, and can be directly incorporated into aqueous soluble polymer, such as PVA, to exhibit many promising applications.
1Photoluminescence of Y2O3:Eu3+ prepared by mimicking wood tissue Wood tissue shows a hierarchical porous structure of unidirectionally oriented cells. Its porous structures range from the millimeter scale, via the micrometer scale to the nanometer scale. Different kinds of wood share different kinds of morphology and arrangement of the cells, such as large vessel cells dominate in hardwoods, while softwoods are composed of tracheidal cells with significantly less variation of pore channel geometry. Then the wood tissue is an interesting template for fabrication of inorganic materials. By mimicking different kinds of wood tissue, inorganic materials with different morphology can be prepared. Firstly, the wood section of Nepal Alder was soaped into the ethanol/H2O mixture (volume ratio 1:2) for 72 h, then the wood section was put into the solution of Y(NO3)3 and Eu(NO3)3 (molar ratio 9:1) for 24 h. Later the pH value of the solution was adjusted to 9 with the NH3·H2O. After 24 h, the wood was washed by distilled water. The wood section was dried at 110℃ for 4 h, and fired at 500℃ for 1 h. The white sample was obtained finally. 2 Carbonaceous structural changes of wood induced by microwave irradiation microwave treatment is particularly suitable for materials with low thermal conductivity, such as wood, because the heat is internal and selective to “sensitizers”, i.e., microwave-absorptive fractions, such as water, O-H, C=O, CO-OH, and methylol groups (Schiffmann 1975). According to Rao et al. (1999), amorphous carbon powder absorbs microwaves of 2.45 GHz rapidly with its temperature rising to 1550 k in just 1 min in a domestic microwave oven operating at 1 kW. The parameters of MWT interact with the material in a complex way and are also influenced by the shape of the chamber and the shape of the specimen itself. The shape of the sample after MWT was similar to that of heat treatment (HT) (Adachi et al. 2010), except for the cross-section having a unique concave shape on both sides. This implies the heterogeneity of heating by MW. As the heating would be affected by the thermal insulation of the sample itself and microwave focusing, the center and sharp edges of the sample are expected to be heated first. This will cause heterogeneous progress of heating. This observation corroborates that microwave degradation is accomplished within 3 min, and the extent of degradation is almost equivalent to that with HT at 360oC. Figure 3h is a thermogram of an HT sample at 6008C, where the pyrolysis of wood is supposed to be complete (Ishihara 1996). This sample does not exhibit the broad 1st peak at around 350oC and shows only the 2nd peak. Because this 2nd peak is shifted to a higher temperature range, which is typical for MWT samples, the MWT degradation (Figure 3c–e) is apparently less advanced than that of HT at 600oC (Figure 3h). Thus, it can be concluded that the MWT sample had degraded to an extent more than at 360oC but less than at 600oC. As shown in Figure 4, the MWT samples had an H content nearly twice that of heat-treated references, but theirO content was less than the reference. This deoxidation-dependent degradation may be characteristic of degradation by microwaves, which probably more sensitively affects polar groups, such as C=O and O-H than nonpolar groups, such as C-H. This explanation is supported by the fact that the prerequisite of an efficient absorption of MW (causing rapid heating) is a high dielectric loss tangent, which is proportional to polarizability (Larhed et al. 2002). A good example is the increased MW sensitivity of epoxy films, which can be modified with functional groups to have a higher dipole moment, i.e., higher specific inductive capacity r (Tanaka and Yamamoto 2007). The plots for MWT samples shifted markedly toward lower H/C and O/C ratios after a period of 1.5 to 3 min, but changed little between 3 and 18 min, similar to DTA results, indicating again that the MW-induced reaction was almost complete after the first 3 min. However, the MWT samples (Figure 9a,b) look more porous than the HT ones (Figure 9c). The porous structure of the MWT samples is readily visible on the EM-spectra. As Miura et al. (2000) found, an MWT wood sample may have specific surface areas around 550–655 m2 g-1. The adsorption potential of MWT-carbonized wood needs further study. 3 Hierarchically Structured Ceramics by High-Precision Nanoparticle Casting of Wood Sample preparation: Never-dried normal wood and compression wood of Norway spruce (Picea abies)was taken as a template. Tangential sections of roughly 10*5*2 mm3 were cut with a saw, and thin tangential sections of 0.15-mm thickness were prepared for SAXS/WAXS using a microtome. 0.5 g of the wood pieces were put in a glass test tube and 7 mL of 100% acetic acid and 30% hydrogen peroxide were added. The tube was then sealed with paraffin film and heated in an oil bath at 60℃ for 25 h. After this maceration treatment, the wood pieces were washed several times with distilled water to remove leached out lignin and hemicelluloses. The specimens were kept moist in order to avoid collapse and warping of the structure due to drying. For preparing the nanoparticles, (Aldrich, 98.5 %), ZrOCl2·8H2O (Riedle-de HaDn, 99.5 %), HCl (Aldrich, 1m) , CH3COOH (Aldrich, 100%), and H2O2 (Aldrich, 30%) were used as received. A Ce0.5Zr0.5O2 nanoparticle sol was prepared as previously reported, but with HCl as a peptizing agent instead of HNO3 to prevent nitration of cellulose fibers during drying (which results in highly exothermic combustion during the calcination step). The macerated wood pieces were transferred to a vial, and acidic sol containing 0.0025 mol of Ce0.5Zr0.5O2 was added. The open vial was kept in an oven at 60℃ for 2 days allowing the complete evaporation of solvent. The pieces were further dried at 1008C for 1 day. The dried pieces were washed with distilled water to remove any excess of deposited Ce0.5Zr0.5O2 material. The washed pieces were again dried at 60℃ for 2 days. The samples obtained after the final drying process were called “impregnated” samples. Finally the impregnated samples were calcined at 500℃ for 24 h in air with a ramp time of 72 h. Alternatively, the impregnated samples were pyrolyzed in a N2 atmosphere at 500℃ for 24 h with a ramp time of 72 h and subsequently calcined in air at 350℃ or at 500℃ for 8 h with a ramp time of 4 h. 5Limitation of XPS for analysis of wood species containing high amounts of lipophilic extractives Wood was ground to fine sawdust and passed through different sieves to obtain a powder of granulometry comprise between 0.2 and 0.5 mm. Sawdust samples were oven-dried at 103℃ for 24 h and stored in closed vials before analysis. 6 Synthesis of Biomorphous Nickel Oxide from a Pinewood Template and Investigation on a Hierarchical Porous Structure In contrast to hardwood, pinewood (a softwood) is more suitable as a template because of a much simpler and a more uniform structure that favors infiltration of precursor solution. Over 90% of cells in softwood run vertically and resemble long, straight tubes, which are tracheids. The tracheids are characterized by prominent bordered pits along their walls through which materials can flow from or into the neighboring cells. In addition, resin canals and rays are present in softwood perpendicular to the tracheids. Materials and Synthesis Pinewood pieces with a dimension of 20 mm*20 mm*10 mm were cut in transverse sections. Extractives such as resins, salts, and glues in the wood were removed using boiling 5% ammonia solution for 6 h before precursor infiltration. Extracted specimens were washed with deionized water and dried at 80℃ for 24 h. The precursor solution for NiO was prepared with 30 mmol Ni(NO3)2 dissolved in a mixture solvent of 10 mL ethanol and 5 mL H2O. A high volume ratio of ethanol could provide enough OH- for the hydrolysis of nitrate. Later, the samples were dipped in the precursor solution at 601C for 72 h in a glass container. New precursor solution was supplemented, as liquid evaporates, to keep the specimens submerged. Finally, the samples were taken out from the solution and air dried at 60℃ for 24 h, calcined at 600℃, 800℃, 1000℃, and 1200℃ for 3 h in the atmosphere and air cooled to room temperature. The weight changes of dry specimens in the preparation process are listed in Table I. After all the steps, the pine specimen showed a weight change of 53 wt%. 7 The implication of chemical extraction treatments on the cell wall nanostructure of softwood A number of cellulose microfibrils surrounded by glucomannan form cellulose fibril aggregates that are embedded in a matrix of xylan and lignin. Extraction treatments on delignified wood samples with NaOH allow a reasonably specific degradation of hemicelluloses. Material Tangential slices of 0.20-0.26 mm thickness were cut with a microtome from never dried spruce earlywood. For each series of extraction treatments, samples from one or two neighbouring slices were used to avoid artefacts resulting from natural heterogeneity. The samples were delignified using an aqueous solution of 0.3% NaClO2 buffered with acetic acid at pH 4.9 for 4 h at 80 ℃. On the delignified samples a successive extraction of hemicelluloses was carried out by a treatment with (A) 6% NaOH, (B) 6 and 8% NaOH and (C) 6, 8 and 10% NaOH at 60 ℃ for 2 h each. The samples were washed in deionised water between and after the treatments. Therefore, during measurements, the degree of swelling was not due to the NaOH concentration but due to the structural changes induced by the treatment. To assess the formation of cellulose II during the extraction, an additional treatment at 60 ℃ and at 90 ℃ was carried out with 10% NaOH for 10 h, additional samples were prepared with the treatment at 90 ℃ for 1, 3.5 and 5.5 h. Alternatively, samples were treated with a 1:1 solution of 30% H2O2 in glacial acetic acid for 25 h at 60 ℃. This treatment has been used as a method to extract single fibers from wood and for biomechanical studies. It removes the middle lamella between the fibers as well as the lignin and xylan in the cell wall. After all treatments the samples were washed with deionised water and stored in a refrigerator at 4–8 ℃. No conversion of cellulose I into cellulose II was observed after delignification and successive treatment with 6 and 8% NaOH. The course of the changes of the SAXS profiles suggests that aggregates form during extraction due to a kind of ‘snowball effect’ initiated by the better accessibility of larger interfibrillar spaces. This interpretation is supported by the uniform fibril structure resulting from H2O2/acetic acid treatment, which differs from the NaOH extraction e.g. by a very thorough matrix removal in just one preparation step. The degradation of glucomannan by NaOH at concentrations of 10% was coinciding with the formation of cellulose II, which confirms the importance of glucomannan for the fibril structure and the close association of cellulose and glucomannan. 8 Bioinspired Design of SrAl2O4:Eu2+ Phosphor In contrast to hardwoods, softwood offers a more uniform cell structure that favors infiltration of precursor solutions. Sections of pine wood (Pinus silvestris) with average dimensions of axial, radial and tangential directions of 3mm*15mm*15mm were dried at 110℃ for 24 h. A mixture of toluene/ethanol 2:1 for 24 h, followed by a second ethanol extraction for 24 h, were applied using a Soxhlet apparatus. After extraction the wood templates were again dried at 110 ℃ and then boiled in distilled water and again dried at 110 ℃. A precursor solution corresponding to the final composition Sr0.97Al2O4:Eu0.03 was prepared by dissolving stoichiometric amounts of (0.047 mol) Al(NO3)3.9H2O, (0.023 mol) Sr(NO3)2 and (6.01*10 -4 mol) Eu(NO3)3.5H2O in a solvent composed of distilled water and ethanol with a volume ratio 1.00:1.62. All chemicals were used as received without further purification. The wood templates were placed in a Schlenk tube equipped with a dropping funnel without pressure equalization containing the precursor nitrate solution. The tube was evacuated with a water-jet vacuum pump and the solution was slowly added from the funnel. The infiltrated wood templates were subsequently immersed in covered beaker with the same solution for 3 days at 60℃. After infiltration, the samples were dried at 60℃for 24 h in air and subsequently pyrolyzed to convert the biopolymers of the wood template into carbon. The pyrolysis was performed in a electrically heated furnace (Heraeus instruments, type K1252) at ambient pressure, which was continuously flushed with nitrogen. From room temperature to 350℃ a ramp of 1 ℃ min -1 was applied and this temperature was held for 1h. The heating rate from 350 ℃ to 800 ℃ was 5 ℃ min -1 with peak temperature held for 1 h. The samples were annealed in air to remove the carbon from the template by oxidation at 1050 ℃ for 3 h. Finally the biomorphous Sr0.97Al2O4:Eu0.03 specimens were sintered under reducing atmosphere (95% N2, 5% H2) in an Al2O3-tube furnace applying a gas flow rate of 1–2 L h -1 and temperatures of 1100℃, 1200 ℃, and 1300 ℃, respectively. All samples were kept at the sintering temperature for 3 h and subsequently left in the tube to cool down to room temperature to avoid reaction with oxygen.
转自： http://cms.mpi.univie.ac.at/wiki/index.php/Bandgap_of_Si_using_different_DFT%2BHF_methods Description: Bandgap of Si using different DFT+HF schemes (PBE, B3LYP, PBE0, HSE06, and HF) INCAR ## Better preconverge with PBE first ## and use the WAVECAR file as inout for the DFT+HF calculation ## Selects the B3LYP hybrid function #LHFCALC = .TRUE. ; GGA = B3 ; AEXX = 0.2 ; AGGAX = 0.72 #AGGAC = 0.81 ; ALDAC = 0.19 #ALGO = D ; TIME = 0.4 ## Selects the PBE0 hybrid function #LHFCALC = .TRUE. ; #ALGO = D ; TIME = 0.4 ## Selects the HSE06 hybrid function #LHFCALC = .TRUE. ; HFSCREEN = 0.2 ; #ALGO = D ; TIME = 0.4 ## Selects HF #LHFCALC = .TRUE. ; AEXX = 1.0 ; ALDAC = 0.0 ; AGGAC = 0 #ALGO = D ; TIME = 0.4 ## Leave this in ISMEAR = 0 SIGMA = 0.01 GGA = PE KPOINTS k-points 0 Gamma 4 4 4 0 0 0 POSCAR System: Si 5.430 0.5 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.0 0.5 1 Cartesian 0 0 0 0.25 0.25 0.25 script to extract eigenvalues and calculate the bandgap grep " 4 " OUTCAR | head -8 | \ awk 'BEGIN{i=1}{a =\$2 ; i=i+1} END{for (j=1;ji;j++) print j,a }' vband.dat grep " 5 " OUTCAR | head -8 | \ awk 'BEGIN{i=1}{a =\$2 ; i=i+1} END{for (j=1;ji;j++) print j,a }' cband.dat README.txt For each HF+DFT method (B3LYP, PBE0, HSE06, and HF) compute the bandgap of Si adopting the following procedure: i) Perform a standard PBE calculation ii) Perform a HF+DFT run (VASP reads in the WAVECAR from run (i) iii) Calculate the value of the bandgap by running the script 'gap': bandgap = min(cband) - max(vband) Download 5_1_Si_Hybrids.tgz
确实，我对于新的地方的适应能力很差；适应的时候并不是自己做出了多大的变化，而只是：好吧，我不故意把这个地方想得那么糟糕了。 还真别说，自己就是这么傻。 今天和乔伊聊到周朴同学和我一样的纠结问题：国内国外，生涯困惑。对于生涯的困惑我并没有太感同身受，相反更理解了为什么那么多人少拿钱当faculty. 自我提升，而不是当螺丝钉，其实要有意思的多吧？ 但是国内国外呢？ 漂泊感？我说不，是荒凉感…… 美国人从小生活在一个衣食无忧的环境里，对于他们可能休息放松就是好的。而中国人，哪怕像我们一样不会被生存环境所迫，也生活在一个生活环境颇为竞争性的社会里；所以，这个社会的文化就是竞争性的。我们喜欢快节奏、分胜负或者能学到什么东西的游戏，和美国人的纯粹hang out和钓鱼很不一样。 然后乔伊说，强调差异无益于减小差异……我想，没错，但是差异确实存在。那是不是应该辩证的看，being different is not something so bad? 我们有了身边更新鲜的玩的东西（美国人的），也可以自己创造出我们更适应的东西（中国人喜欢的）；对于后者，我们的创造会更被少数群体珍惜，也让他们焕然一新？ 或者这也可以涉及到事业上：虽然英语没有他们那么好，但是我们会中文——会两种语言？ 要记得敢于竞争，更要善于转化。 PS：突然想到，其实过去大学里面的fun并没有多少是来自于纯粹的娱乐。更多的来自于广播台的奋斗，口译的兼职，Saint Gobain的研究……还有这些的忙里偷闲。一方面有成就感，一方面有多样性。现在长大了，更清楚的知道自己要什么了，所以多样性反而少了。但是我觉得这不重要……针对一个目标的前进中也有多姿多彩的，比如写论文做实验开会已经跨实验室的沟通，科学研究以及工程应用……不是么？：）
Witten by Guangying Luo from SXAU Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Due to the different minds among human beings, arguments appear in too many fields that we live, especially in academic exchange for researchers. As yet, I haven’t forgotten that argument about my research project. Now let me tell you some details about it. Autism is a serious neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired communication, repetitive behaviors and aberrant reciprocal social interactions. While the etiology remains unclear, I proposed that environmental pollution was responsible for disease in our lab meeting. Nobody agree with me but they struck to I had no sufficient evidence. I disagree with it for the following three reasons. First of all, our genes don’t change dramatically over the span of just a few decades. However, one thing that has changed dramatically over the last several decades is human exposure to toxic chemicals and metals in the environment. Hence, I suspected environmental pollution was justified. In addition, epidemiological survey on residential proximity to freeways indicated that the occurrence of autism was directly associated with environmental pollution. Last but not least, our study also proved that environmental pollution is the risk factor for autism in mouse model. This is quite a promising finding. Admittedly, the etiology of autism is still mystery, but the relationship of between environment pollution and autism is indeed a considerable question. So we can’t neglect this cause of autism. In conclusion, nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of my own mind. I insisted on environmental pollution is the risk factor of autism. Of course, if you disagree with me, please give your ideas. I believe where there is academic exchange, there is argument.
俺家小朋友现在高中读书，非常辛苦，压力山大。想着怎么为孩子减轻压力呢？适逢广州珠江数码集团有限公司推出高清互动电视业务“甜果时光”，就是换了一个高清互动电视机顶盒。在点播节目中，我发现了梅丽尔斯特里普主演的电影《妈妈咪呀》，非常好看。里面还有瑞典ABBA合唱团的20来首歌，而且ABBA合唱团两位男乐手还出现在电影中。孩子还到网上寻找《妈妈咪呀》的背景资料。比如，2001年，为减轻“911”恐怖事件给孩子带来的心理压力和阴影，梅丽尔斯特里普专门带孩子及其小伙伴到百老汇观看音乐剧《妈妈咪呀》，孩子非常高兴和快乐，梅丽尔斯特里普见到此状，还第一次专门以“粉丝”的名义写信给剧组，感谢他们给孩子带来的快乐时光。时隔7年，电影摄制组拿着那封信登门来找梅丽尔斯特里普请她主演影片《妈妈咪呀》，梅丽尔斯特里普非常惊讶，连声问：你们确定是我吗。 下面是我在网上找到的英文电影简介（文中 蓝色字体 为影片中演唱的ABBA合唱团的歌曲，非常好听）： On a Greek island called Kalokairi, 20-year-old bride-to-be Sophie Sheridan posts three wedding invitations (" I Have a Dream ") to different men, who set off for the wedding. Sophie's bridesmaids and best friends, Ali and Lisa, arrive before the wedding. Sophie reveals that she found her mother's diary and learned she has three possible fathers: New York-based Irish architect Sam Carmichael, Swedish adventurer and writer Bill Andersson, and British banker Harry Bright. She invited them without telling her mother, believing that after she spends time with them she will know who her father is (" Honey, Honey "). Villa owner Donna Sheridan is ecstatic to reunite with her former bandmates, wisecracking author Rosie and wealthy multiple divorcée Tanya, and reveals her bafflement at her daughter's desire to get married. Donna shows off the villa, rumored to be built on the legendary fountain of Aphrodite , and explains her precarious finances to Rosie and Tanya (" Money, Money, Money "). The three men arrive, and Sophie smuggles them to their room and explains that she, not her mother, sent the invitations. She begs them to hide so Donna will have a surprise at the wedding: seeing the old friends of whom she "so often" favorably speaks. They overhear Donna working (humming " Fernando ") and swear to Sophie they will not reveal her secret. Donna spies them and is dumbfounded to find herself facing former lovers she could never forget (" Mamma Mia "), and is adamant that they leave. She confides in Tanya and Rosie (" Chiquitita ") a secret she has kept from everyone — she is uncertain which of the three men is Sophie's father. Tanya and Rosie rally her spirits by getting Donna to dance with the female staff and islanders (" Dancing Queen "). Sophie finds the men aboard Bill's yacht, and they sail around Kalokairi (" Our Last Summer ") and tell stories of Donna as a carefree girl. Sophie musters up the courage to speak with her fiancé Sky about her ploy, but loses her nerve. Sky and Sophie sing to each other (" Lay All Your Love on Me "), but are interrupted when Sky is snatched for his bachelor party. At Sophie's hen party , Donna, Tanya and Rosie perform as Donna and The Dynamos (" Super Trouper "). Sophie is delighted to see her mother rock out, but becomes nervous when the festivities are interrupted by the arrival of Sam, Bill and Harry. She decides to talk with each of her three prospective dads alone. While her girlfriends dance with the men (" Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) "), Sophie learns from Bill that Donna received the money to invest in her villa from his great aunt Sofia. Sophie guesses she must be Sofia's namesake and Bill is her father. She asks him to give her away and to keep their secret from Donna until the wedding. Sophie's happiness is short-lived as Sam and Harry each tell her they must be her dad and will give her away (" Voulez-Vous "). A shocked Sophie cannot tell them the truth and, overwhelmed by the consequences of her actions, faints. In the morning, Rosie and Tanya reassure Donna they will take care of the men. On Bill's boat, Bill and Harry are about to confide in each other, but are interrupted by Rosie. Donna confronts Sophie in the courtyard, believing Sophie wants the wedding stopped. Sophie says that all she wants is to avoid her mother's mistakes and storms off. An upset Donna is accosted by Sam, concerned about Sophie getting married so young. Donna confronts him and both realize they still have feelings for each other (" SOS "). Down on the beach, Tanya and young Pepper continue their flirtations from the previous night (" Does Your Mother Know "). Sophie confesses to Sky and asks for his help. He reacts angrily to his fiancée's deception and Sophie turns to her mother for support. As Donna helps her daughter dress for the wedding, their rift is healed and Donna reminisces about Sophie's childhood and how quickly she has grown (" Slipping Through My Fingers "). Sophie asks Donna to give her away. As the bridal party walks to the chapel, Sam intercepts Donna and begs her to talk. She reveals the pain she felt over losing him (" The Winner Takes It All "). When Sophie and Donna are walking down the aisle, the band plays the tune of " Knowing Me, Knowing You ". Donna tells Sophie that her father is present but he could be any of the three men, whom Sophie admits to inviting. Sam reveals that although he left to get married, he did not go through with it, and returned only to find Donna with another man. Harry confesses that Donna was the first and last woman he loved. The three men concur that they would be happy to be one-third of a father for Sophie. She tells Sky that they should postpone their wedding and travel the world as they have wanted. Sam proposes to Donna (" I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do "). She accepts and they are married. At the wedding reception, Sam sings to Donna (" When All Is Said and Done "), which prompts Rosie to make a play for Bill (" Take a Chance on Me "). All the couples present proclaim their love (" Mamma Mia " reprise), as their raucous dancing causes the ground to crack and erupt with water from the fountain of Aphrodite. Sophie and Sky bid farewell to Kalokairi and sail away (" I Have a Dream " reprise). During the principal credits, Donna, Tanya and Rosie reprise "Dancing Queen", followed by " Waterloo " with the rest of the cast. Amanda Seyfried sings " Thank You for the Music " over the end credits. 最后是我在网上找到的关于ABBA合唱团的博客（ http://abbamikory.blogs.com/ ），里面有很多照片，其中有梅丽尔斯特里普等电影演员与ABBA合唱团两名女歌手的见面照片，挺有意思的。
通过对广布的本地种和非本地种性状分析，来看它们在功能上是否相同，或者是否属于本地种。两类物种在存贮器官以及对环境条件的耐受性方面存在很大差异。很有意思的一条是，环境导致性状趋同变化，竞争导致性状趋异变化。所以，往往我们利用环境解释问题不通的时候，就自然而然的拿物种差异说事了——竞争嘛。 Origin matters: widely distributed native and non-native species benefit from different functional traits Sonja Knapp * , Ingolf Küh Keywords: alien species; anthropogenic habitats; archaeophytes; community assembly; functional ecology; neophytes; niches; novel ecosystems; species ranges Abstract Recently, ecologists debated whether distinguishing native from non-native species is sensible or not. One argument is that widespread and less widespread species are functionally different, whether or not they are native. An opposing statement points out ecologically relevant differences between native and non-native species. We studied the functional traits that drive native and non-native vascular plant species frequency in Germany by explaining species grid-cell frequency using traits and their interaction with status. Native and non-native species frequency was equally driven by life span, ploidy type and self-compatibility. Non-native species frequency rose with later flowering cessation date, whereas this relationship was absent for native species. Native and non-native species differed in storage organs and in the number of environmental conditions they tolerate. We infer that environmental filters drive trait convergence of native and non-native species, whereas competition drives trait diver gence. Meanwhile, introduction pathways functionally bias the frequency of non-native species. Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01787.x/abstract;jsessionid=63072A8F71A3A0A2EEBEC0EAA137D6FE.d03t02
美国东部养蜂协会要我写， 回国前赶夜班写了些。 暂时没有时间翻成中文。 An Introduction to Digital Photography 1. Equipment: know your camera I encourage you to "study" the camera by reading reviews ( http://www.dpreviews.com ), seeing sample photos, and then handling it (if possible) before purchasing it. If you already have one, then definitely study the manual and change settings and observe different results. Is it necessary to have a dSLR (digital single reflex lens) camera? Yes, if you are serious with digital photography. dSLR will allow you to switch lenses for different situations, and in most cases you will be shooting using a "macro" (Nikon calls theirs "micro") lens. A macro lens allows you to focus very close to the subject, thus have a larger image on the CCD (charge-coupled device) or CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) -the sensor for the digital camera. A cheap camera body nowadays can be had for $5-6 hundred dollars, a good macro lens will cost about another $4-5 hundred. The advantage for a dSLR vs. a point and shoot (PS) camera is that it is much more responsive -- most PS cameras wait for half a second before taking the photo, while dSLRs usually has a delay of about 60 milliseconds. Table 1 Three cameras that I have used in the past: Olympus D4501 Nikon CP 990 Nikon D70 Pixels 1.3 meg 3.2 meg 6.0 meg Amount paid (time) $599 (Oct 1999) $720 (Apr 2001) $999 (Mar 2004) Shutter delay (sec) 1 0.6 0.06 Recording time 4 sec 4 sec 3 frames/sec Control of exposure auto only P, A, S, M P, A, S, M Sensor size 5.3 x 4 mm 7.144 x 5.358 mm 23.7 x 15.6 mm Currently there are much faster PS cameras in the market, some similar to the D70, due to fact that they use electronic shutters (essentially there is no mechanical door that opens, but rather a charge makes the CCD available to respond to light when it is supposed to "open"). PS camera can also take OK photos if you have enough patience, or if you are lucky. But you probably will have to settle for static bees on flowers and it is difficult to capture a bee in flight, if nearly impossible. My current camera is D700 which has a "full size" (i.e.= the same size of film negatives) sensor. The larger the sensor, the less noise and better color rendition due to less interference among the tiny sensors and also less heat produced. 2. Light/exposure control 2.1 Shutter speed (S) : higher number means faster speed because is presented as inverse number: 100 means 1/100 of a sec, and 500 means 1/500. Higher speed means the shutter is open for a shorter amount of time, thus allowing in less light. Higher speed will freeze motion while lower speed will create motion blur. If used correctly, motion blur can impart a sense of movement and can be good for the photo. Shutter priority mode (i.e. the user picks a shutter speed, and the camera calculates the aperture automatically), is denoted as S in Nikon cameras and Tv in Canon cameras. Wiki has more examples of how various shutter speeds affect photo effects . 2.2 Aperture (A): Aperture size (F) is again a reversed number, so a larger number means a smaller opening of the lens's "pupil", thus allowing less light. For example F22 will let in half of the light compared to the next number, which is F16. F16 takes 50% light of F11, etc. Aperture priority mode (i.e. the user picks a aperture size, and the camera calculates the shutter speed automatically), is denoted as A in Nikon cameras and Av in Canon cameras. For a more technical treatment of F-number, see wiki . 2.3 Flash: Flash can be used to add or replace sun light. This is often required for very closeup macro shots. The reason for this is often you want to have a greater depth of field (to have the bee showing more body parts in focus, not just part of the wings), say F22, and at 1/250, there is not enough sun light to illuminate the subject. A flash, whether an internal one or external one, can serve this purpose. Most of my D70 photos were taken in using the onboard flash, which if used correctly, can create a black background, showing a cleaner subject in the photo. Currently I use two wireless flashes (Nikon's R1C1) which attaches to the front of the lens and I have more control of the aperture in the M mode (manual, which means I control both the shutter and aperture). Example of darkened background using internal flash. A bee on a coneflower. 1/500, F22, onboard flash, Nikkor 60 mm micro, D70, 9/16/2004. 2.4 Depth of field: Larger aperture (smaller F number) will have smaller depth of field and only the area in focus will be clear, while these in front or behind will be out of focus. If used correctly, out of focus areas creates a dream like feeling, called "bokeh" and can be pleasing to the eye. Aperture priority mode (i.e. the user picks an aperture, and the camera calculates the shutter speed automatically), is donated as A in Nikon cameras and Av in Canon cameras. Small aperture shows a bee and parts of a flower totally clear. More academic. A bee on blueberry. 1/500, F22, Nikon D70, 60mm micro + Flash, 5/30/2006. Large aperture (F5.6) shows only parts of bee and flower in focus. More artistic. A Asian honey bee Apis cerana on rhododendron. 1/250, F5.6, Nikon D70, 60mm micro + Flash, 3/27/2006, Taiwan. 2.5 Color : Color is rarely controlled for digital photos because you can do all the adjustments afterwards using Photoshop or other software. White balance can be highly important though if you want to natural colors of the flowers. Most dSLRs have choices of white balance (sunlight, flash, fluorescent light, preset, etc), while most PS cameras do not have it. 2.6 ISO . In the old days you would need to bring at least two types of films, one for the indoor (darker, perhaps ISO400 film) and one for the outdoor photos (brighter, ISO100). Now with digital cameras all you do is to change it via a dial. Lower ISOs always give you a better, less noisy photo. But when there is not enough light and you do not want to use flash (e.g. in a performance), then you dial up the sensitivity to a higher ISO (e.g. 1600). This will yield a more grainy photo but you still captured something. Professional cameras will have usable photos at this high an ISO, but small PS cameras usually lose quality for anything higher than ISO400. For shooting flowers and honey bees, usually you try to shoot at the lowest ISO. 3. JPEG or Raw? Some newer PS cameras now also have the option to shoot "raw" -- which means a pixel by pixel dump of the information to a file, while nearly all dSRLs have this option. Jpeg is a compressed file so you will need to specify "basic, normal or fine" which adjusts for the different degrees of compression. "Fine" will create a larger file with more details, while "basic" will allow you to have more photos on a memory card while sacrificing some details. The main advantage of RAW is that you have the ability to change white balance after the photo is taken, whereas in JPEG, if white balance was set incorrectly, it would be difficult, if not impossible to recreate the original colors during post processing. I now shoot in mostly raw for flowers and bees. Raw also give you as light edge in the dynamic range (the contrast between light and dark areas in a photo). 3.1. Example of a honeysuckle that has a yellowish tint due to a wrong setting of white balance. Somehow suing "flash" was not as good as "sunny". 1/250, F25, Nikon D700, 105mm micro, 2 wireless flashes (R1C1), 3/20/2012, MSU Campus. 3.2. This can be corrected if shot in raw mode, by changing it to the correct white balance. This one is in more natural colors. 1/250, F20, Nikon D700, 105mm micro, 2 wireless flashes (R1C1), 3/20/2012,MSU Campus.. 4. Composition: The 1/3 rule It is not always good to put your subject in the center, which can be perceived as boring or conservative. The best way is to set the subject (the focus of your story) at 1/3 off one side, then from the bottom or top. Example of a bee at 1/3 of the frame 5. More examples of photos In the following I use some examples to illustrate some other points in honey bee photography. 5.1. Proximity of lowers and bee hives can help. I have not seen bees work on my peonies in Michigan though, even when there is a bee hive in my backyard though. It might also have something to do with season (what are other competing flowers?). 5.2. Side view of a bee is usually more pleasing than looking at her back straight down. This is a top view of a bee: side view. 5.3. Patience....I waited for the bee to come to this water lily near the shore because my Nikon CP990 had a very small zoom. 1/90, F5, 4/21/2002. 5.4. Luck, we all need it sometime...I got frustrated after trying to take bees in flight due to the 0.6 sec shutter delay. Then I started to shoot randomly and got this one in flight. 1/280, F6.2, 3/26/2002. 5.5. These bees (one anthophoridae and 2 APis dorsata) came after I was shooting this Dellenia flower (Dillenia turbinata, Dilleniaceae). while jogging with my camera at 6 am. 5.6. Sometimes the bee hovers so much that you can capture even using a PS camera. A giant honey bee foraging on Picara spp (Bombacaceae). 1/1000, F2.5, 4/5/2002. 5.7. Cherries blooming a few days back (March 21, 2012). I used back light to make the flowers translucent...for more photos of bees on cherry blossoms, see cherry and bees . 5.8. That same day I saw bees working on magnolia! for more photos see bees on magnolia . Thank you.
RNA酶和核酸配基，单链寡核酸链具有高级三维结构，既能够与蛋白质等特异性结合，也能够作为酶高效催化生物与化学反应。Aptamer与蛋白质结合的强度和特异性均不亚于单克隆抗体，而且SELEX 筛选技术使得Aptamer的筛选非常容易而快速，相对单克隆抗体的制备要简单得多，因此Aptamer在临床诊断及治疗方面具有广泛的应用前景。 Aptamer 适体；核酸识体；适配子 Aptamers are single-stranded oligonucleotides with a length of tens of nucleotides and single stranded DNA aptamers have a very highly ordered tertiary structure,which allows them to form stable and specific complex with different targets such as protein,nucleic acid. 可用于定量检测目标蛋白，其亲和性及专一性与单克隆抗体有一拼，且半衰期较长，不易变性，稳定性也较好。由于其属于核酸，在DNA检测方面的发展也可以运用于此。 下面介绍一下跟aptamer有关的一个比较有趣的东西，叫做Riboswitch。很多aptamer在没有ligand结合的时候是没有稳定的高级结构的，但当ligand存在时就会折叠成紧密的三级结构。于是有人把某种小分子的aptamer插在E.coli mRNA的核糖体结合位点（Ribosome binding site, RBS） 和起始密码子之间，当小分子不存在时，核糖体能顺利读过aptamer区域，翻译蛋白质；但当小分子存在时，apatmer区域紧密折叠。使得核糖体不能顺利读过，抑制了蛋白质的翻译。这是完全人工构造的翻译水平的调控模型。实际上有很多natural的riboswitch的例子，作用机理多种多样，但大多出现在5'UTR，而且都是利用小分子与mRNA上aptamer区域的相互结合改变RNA结构，从而调节翻译或转录中止。Yale的Ronald Breaker就是因为发现了这些自然的riboswitch而扬名利万，最近两年风光无限。我老板有一个rotation project，就是把ATP aptamer（可以区分ATP和ADP/AMP）构造成riboswitch，后面接上报告基因，实时反映细胞内的能荷。但好像还没人愿意做这个项目。我正在酝酿中的一个project也是利用人工riboswitch来对一些蛋白进行engineering，现在还在可行性验证阶段，呵呵。 小型RNA分子因為被發現可控制基因表現，近幾年來受到科學家們的注意。然而另一種RNA能夠偵測一些小分子的量來幫助細胞運作更為順暢，並且可以藉由細胞本身的需要來改變基因的表現與否。 耶魯大學分子學家Ronald Breaker與他的研究團隊發堀出這些具有多項能力的RNA分子--稱之為riboswitch—而這些riboswitch就是指由特定的mRNA結合住所謂的代謝分子 (metabolite)，藉由改變mRNA的形狀來啟動基因的表現與否，而這些代謝分子的產生是經由一些基因藉由感受代謝分子的量多量少來調節的。先前都假定有一個特定的蛋白質來結合住代謝分子並且啟動下游的基因的表現或抑制，而過去Breaker和其他大學的研究學者一樣花了相當大的精神與時間來找尋這個蛋白質，但卻都徒勞無功。然而有一個理由讓他們都找不到的原因就是這個神秘的蛋白質是一個真實的mRNA，而並非是一個蛋白質。 在這次的會議中，Breaker報告一個細菌的riboswitch，並且將發表在Nature上。這個riboswitch可以調節glucosamine的量 (這是一個可以幫助細菌形成細胞壁的物質) ，這個riboswitch也是一個ribozyme，可以利用切開RNA來調控基因的表現，當細胞中glucosamine的量高時，代謝分子會結合住mRNA並誘使mRNA來切斷他自己，但是奇怪的是mRNA切的位置是不會轉譯成蛋白質的區域，然而還是可以破壞基因的表現，Breaker也不知道為什麼。不過Breaker的研究是受到肯定的，而這樣的機關也可以在真菌和植物中發現，Breaker進一步計畫開始找尋動物中這樣的機關存在。
Virent announced it has successfully produced biogasoline from corn stover and pine harvest forest residuals, as a recipient of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) February 2010 grant to the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium (NABC). Virent’s significant milestone supports the NABC’s goal to develop technologies to convert cellulosic biomass feedstocks into hydrocarbon fuels that are sustainable, cost-effective and compatible with existing infrastructure. There are six different process strategies represented in the DOE’s grant program with the NABC, Virent’s being the Catalysis of Lignocellulosic Sugars (CLS). The CLS strategy was completed in collaboration with Catchlight Energy (pine material supplier), Iowa State University (corn stover supplier), with Washington State University performing oxidation and enzymatic hydrolysis treatments necessary to digest cellulose in two samples. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) supplied two additional hydrolysate samples which underwent a dilute sulfuric acid pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis process for its breakdown of the cellulose. Virent then processed the four hydrolysate samples using its patented BioForming™ process. Virent fed each of the four hydrolysates into its Aqueous Phase Reforming (APR) catalyst reactor system, removing most of the oxygen from the biomass sugar mixtures, producing monoxygenates such as alcohols, aldehydes and ketones, plus the reforming products of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The liquids were then fed into Virent’s ZSM-5 catalyst reactor system to produce a high octane biogasoline, which the company has trademarked BioFormate™. Gas chromatography analysis, seen in the figure below with each sample stacked for clarity, shows the strong similarity between Virent’s BioFormate™ and a typical petroleum reformate. Because of this similarity, Virent’s biogasoline is truly “drop-in,” meaning it can be blended at any concentration just as petroleum reformate is used in commercial gasoline today. More detailed technical information about Virent’s work with the NABC can be found at the NABC website. About Virent Virent is in the business of replacing crude oil by applying clever chemistry to create the chemicals and fuels the world demands using a wide range of naturally-occurring, renewable resources. Our patented technology features catalytic chemistry to convert plant-based sugars into a full range of products identical to those made from petroleum, including gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and chemicals for plastics and fibers. Our products are “drop-in” replacements that enable full utilization of existing logistics infrastructure without blending limitations. The development of Virent’s BioForming technology platform is supported through strategic investors including Cargill, Shell and Honda, as well as over 100 employees based in Madison, Wisconsin. The company has received several grants from the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Energy and Agriculture and has been recognized with many honors, including the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer award and the EPA’s Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. Virent’s biogasoline is also being used by with Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 racing team.
The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. —Apple's "Think Different" commercial, 1977. The musician Bono,who later became a friend of Jobs, often discussed with him(Jobs) why those immersed in the rock-drugs-rebel counterculture of the Bay Area ended up helping to create the personal computer industry. "The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently ," he said. " The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Gemany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence." ----- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, p.58
笔者注：这篇访谈是John Brockman对明斯基的一个采访，明斯基是MIT教授，也是人工智能领域的大牛，看看他说点什么还是有意思的，闲话少说，上文！ 还是简单说两句为好，这个访谈反映了明斯基对于人类意识的一些看法。之所以出现对于意识解释的混乱现象，是因为大脑内部太复杂，可能有40-50种运作机制，而这些都是我们目前还没有办法清楚了解与解决的。他也否定了经验的主观特性。经验感觉是否可以还原？这是哲学家们感兴趣的话题，物理主义的解释是不能令人满意的。一百年前如此，今天也如此。即便意识是一个大手提箱，也不能什么都装啊？ CONSCIOUSNESS IS A BIG SUITCASE A Talk with Marvin Minsky MINSKY: My goal is making machines that can think-by understanding how people think. One reason why we find this hard to do is because our old ideas about psychology are mostly wrong. Most words we use to describe our minds (like "consciousness", "learning", or "memory") are suitcase-like jumbles of different ideas. Those old ideas were formed long ago, before 'computer science' appeared. It was not until the 1950s that we began to develop better ways to help think about complex processes. Computer science is not really about computers at all, but about ways to describe processes. As soon as those computers appeared, this became an urgent need. Soon after that we recognized that this was also what we'd need to describe the processes that might be involved in human thinking, reasoning, memory, and pattern recognition, etc. JB: You say 1950, but wouldn't this be preceded by the ideas floating around the Macy Conferences in the '40s? MINSKY: Yes, indeed. Those new ideas were already starting to grow before computers created a more urgent need. Before programming languages, mathematicians such as Emil Post, Kurt G鱠el, Alonzo Church, and Alan Turing already had many related ideas. In the 1940s these ideas began to spread, and the Macy Conference publications were the first to reach more of the technical public. In the same period, there were similar movements in psychology, as Sigmund Freud, Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen, and Jean Piaget also tried to imagine advanced architectures for 'mental computation.' In the same period, in neurology, there were my own early mentors-Nicholas Rashevsky, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, Norbert Wiener, and their followers-and all those new ideas began to coalesce under the name 'cybernetics.' Unfortunately, that new domain was mainly dominated by continuous mathematics and feedback theory. This made cybernetics slow to evolve more symbolic computational viewpoints, and the new field of Artificial Intelligence headed off to develop distinctly different kinds of psychological models. JB: Gregory Bateson once said to me that the cybernetic idea was the most important idea since Jesus Christ. MINSKY: Well, surely it was extremely important in an evolutionary way. Cybernetics developed many ideas that were powerful enough to challenge the religious and vitalistic traditions that had for so long protected us from changing how we viewed ourselves. These changes were so radical as to undermine cybernetics itself. So much so that the next generation of computational pioneers-the ones who aimed more purposefully toward Artificial Intelligence-set much of cybernetics aside. Let's get back to those suitcase-words (like intuition or consciousness) that all of us use to encapsulate our jumbled ideas about our minds. We use those words as suitcases in which to contain all sorts of mysteries that we can't yet explain. This in turn leads us to regard these as though they were "things" with no structures to analyze. I think this is what leads so many of us to the dogma of dualism-the idea that 'subjective' matters lie in a realm that experimental science can never reach. Many philosophers, even today, hold the strange idea that there could be a machine that works and behaves just like a brain, yet does not experience consciousness. If that were the case, then this would imply that subjective feelings do not result from the processes that occur inside brains. Therefore (so the argument goes) a feeling must be a nonphysical thing that has no causes or consequences. Surely, no such thing could ever be explained! The first thing wrong with this "argument" is that it starts by assuming what it's trying to prove. Could there actually exist a machine that is physically just like a person, but has none of that person's feelings? "Surely so," some philosophers say. "Given that feelings cannot not be physically detected, then it is 'logically possible' that some people have none." I regret to say that almost every student confronted with this can find no good reason to dissent. "Yes," they agree. "Obviously that is logically possible. Although it seems implausible, there's no way that it could be disproved." The next thing wrong is the unsupported assumption that this is even "logically possible." To be sure of that, you'd need to have proved that no sound materialistic theory could correctly explain how a brain could produce the processes that we call "subjective experience." But again, that's just what we were trying to prove. What do those philosophers say when confronted by this argument? They usually answer with statements like this: "I just can't imagine how any theory could do that." That fallacy deserves a name-something like "incompetentium". Another reason often claimed to show that consciousness can't be explained is that the sense of experience is 'irreducible.' "Experience is all or none. You either have it or you don't-and there can't be anything in between. It's an elemental attribute of mind-so it has no structure to analyze." There are two quite different reasons why "something" might seem hard to explain. One is that it appears to be elementary and irreducible-as seemed Gravity before Einstein found his new way to look at it. The opposite case is when the 'thing' is so much more complicated than you imagine it is, that you just don't see any way to begin to describe it. This, I maintain, is why consciousness seems so mysterious. It is not that there's one basic and inexplicable essence there. Instead, it's precisely the opposite. Consciousness, instead, is an enormous suitcase that contains perhaps 40 or 50 different mechanisms that are involved in a huge network of intricate interactions. The brain, after all, is built by processes that involve the activities of several tens of thousands of genes. A human brain contains several hundred different sub-organs, each of which does somewhat different things. To assert that any function of such a large system is irreducible seems irresponsible-until you're in a position to claim that you understand that system. We certainly don't understand it all now. We probably need several hundred new ideas-and we can't learn much from those who give up. We'd do better to get back to work. Why do so many philosophers insist that "subjective experience is irreducible"? Because, I suppose, like you and me, they can look at an object and "instantly know" what it is. When I look at you, I sense no intervening processes. I seem to "see" you instantly. The same for almost every word you say: I instantly seem to know what it means. When I touch your hand, you "feel it directly." It all seems so basic and immediate that there seems no room for analysis. The feelings of being seem so direct that there seems to be nothing to be explained. I think this is what leads those philosophers to believe that the connections between seeing and feeling must be inexplicable. Of course we know from neurology that there are dozens of processes that intervene between the retinal image and the structures that our brains then build to represent what we think we see. That idea of a separate world for 'subjective experience' is just an excuse for the shameful fact that we don't have adequate theories of how our brains work. This is partly because those brains have evolved without developing good representations of those processes. Indeed, there probably are good evolutionary reasons why we did not evolve machinery for accurate "insights" about ourselves. Our most powerful ways to solve problems involve highly serial processes-and if these had evolved to depend on correct representations of how they, themselves work, our ancestors would have thought too slowly to survive. 说明：文中图片就是明斯基（2008）的照片，来自网络，没有任何商业目的，仅供欣赏，特此致谢！
The United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health presented a report to the UN that unequivocally tells governments they must remove laws that criminalize abortion. This is not the first time a branch of the UN has recommended reforming restrictive abortion laws to protect women’s human rights but it will be the first time that governments at the UN will be told loud and clear that these laws are an abuse of State power and there are no excuses for their continued existence. This report has the potential to change the way we talk about abortion at the UN, in our parliaments and in our health, human rights, feminist, legal and development organizations because, finally, the right questions are being asked in the UN human rights system. How are criminal laws used as a tool of the State to infringe upon women and girls’ autonomy, dignity, self-determination and decision-making? How do laws and policies related to sexual and reproductive health and rights perpetuate gender inequality and disempower women and girls? Why are criminal laws applied to a health service when the evidence plainly demonstrates only harmful consequences for doing so? What are the impacts of the criminalization of abortion on women’s and girls’ human rights? By asking these questions, the Special Rapporteur succeeds in shifting the focus away from women having to explaining why they should be allowed to have abortions in particular circumstances, over to its rightful place of scrutinizing governments for violating women’s and girls’ human rights through the maintenance of these laws and policies. The Special Rapporteur analyzes the recommendations and evidence from several different human rights bodies to answer these questions. He logically concludes that laws and policies that criminalize and restrict access to sexual and reproductive health information, supplies and services, including abortion, are unsupportable in international law and must be immediately eliminated. This is not a new analysis for anyone affected by these criminal laws or for anyone working to improve access to abortion care, however, coming from an independent expert mandated by the UN to investigate human rights abuses, it provides an opportunity to change the discourse on abortion in forums where policy and legal decisions are made. In order to bring about this fundamental change in the way we understand the function of abortion laws, advocates from health, human rights, legal, development, equality and feminist organizations need to work together to pool their expertise to demand accountability from Governments on this issue. This can happen in national, regional and international courts, parliaments, the UN human rights bodies, national human rights institutions and any other venue that challenges the exercise of Government control over its citizens. The criminalization of abortion must be considered suspect and antithetical to human rights as we now consider the death penalty or torture to be but it will take our collective knowledge, experience, energy and expertise to get to the stage where Governments are consistently called to account for their role in violating women’s and girls’ rights to health. So, start talking to your local women’s organizations, human rights organizations, health care providers, public representatives, public interest law firms and your Government’s development agency and health and foreign affairs ministries about this report and how you can use it to stop your Government from violating women’s and girls’ rights. Source : RH Reality Check, Meghan Doherty, 25 October 2011 来源： http://www.ippf.org/en/News/Intl+news/The+Criminalization+of+Abortion+is+an+Abuse+of+State+Power.htm
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
It was the most advanced consumer product of the century. The industry started with its innovators located in different cities over a wide region. But within 20 years it would be concentrated in a single entrepreneurial startup cluster. At first it was a craft business, then it was driven by relentless technology innovation and then a price war as economies of scale drove efficiencies in production. When the market was finally saturated the industry reinvented itself again – one company discovered how to turn commodity products into “needs.” They opened retail outlets across the country and figured out how to convince consumers to flock to buy the newest “gotta have it” version and abandon the perfectly functional last year’s model. No, it’s not Apple and the iPhone. It was General Motors and the auto industry. In the beginning At the beginning of the 20 th century the auto industry was still a small hand-crafted manufacturing business. Cars were assembled from outsourced components by crews of skilled mechanics and unskilled helpers. They were sold at high prices and profits through nonexclusive distributors for cash on delivery. But by 1901, Ransom Olds invented the basic concept of the assembly line and in the next decade was quickly followed by other innovators who opened large scale manufacturing plants in Detroit – Henry Packard, Henry Leland’s Cadillac, and Henry Ford with the Model A. The Detroit area quickly became the place to be if you were making cars, parts for cars, or were a skilled machinist. By 1913 Ford’s first conveyor belt-driven moving assembly line and standardized interchangeable parts forever cemented Detroit as the home of 20 th century auto manufacturing. Feature wars The automobile industry was founded and run by technologists: Henry Ford, James Packard, Charles Kettering, Henry Leland, the Dodge Brothers, Ransom Olds. The first twenty-five years of the century were a blur of technology innovation – moving assembly line, steel bodies, quick dry paint, electric starters, etc. These men built a product that solved a problem – private transportation first for the elite, and then (Ford’s inspiration) – transportation for the masses. Market saturation Ford tried to escape the never-ending technology feature wars by becoming the low cost manufacturer. Fords River Rouge manufacturing complex – 93 buildings in a 1 by 1.5 mile manufacturing complex, with 100,000 workers – vertically integrated and optimized mass production. By 1923, through a series of continuous process improvements, Ford had used the cost advantages of economies of scale to drive down the price of the Model T automobile to $290 . When the 1920’s began there were close to a 100 car manufacturers, but the relentless drive for low cost production forced most of them out of business as they lacked capital to scale. For a brief moment, half the cars in the world were now Fords. To make matters worse, the long service life of Ford and GM cars (8 years for Fords Model T, 6 years for everyone else) retarded sales of new cars. In 20 years, U.S. car ownership had risen from 0 to 80% of American families – the market was approaching saturation. Now cars would have to be sold almost entirely to people who already owned a car. The crazy entrepreneur After success as a leading manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages, Billy Durant was one of the few who saw the writing on the wall and got into the car business. Although he wasn’t a technologist, he was an entrepreneur with a great eye for acquiring car companies run by technologists. His keen insight was that several carmakers combined under one company umbrella would have more growth potential than one brand on its own. Like most founders, he was great at searching for a business model but terrible at in large company execution. When his board fired him, Durant bought a competing company called Chevrolet, built it larger than his last company, and used Chevy stock to buy out his old company – General Motors – and threw out the board. Yet a few years later under his brilliant but reckless leadership GM was again on the brink of financial disaster and his new board fired him. (Durant would die penniless managing a bowling alley.) Durant’s ultimate replacement – an accountant named Alfred P. Sloan – would turn GM into the leading and most admired company in the U.S. Relentless Over the next decade Sloan would implement a series of innovations which would last for over half a century. And catapult General Motors from the number 2 car company (with a ¼ of Ford’s sales) into the market leader for the next 100 years. Here’s what he did: Distributed Accounting Unlike Ford, GM was originally a collection of separate companies. Distributed Accounting turned those fiefdoms into product divisions each of which, could be focused like Ford’s mass-produced lines. But Sloan went further. He figured out how to centralize financial oversight of decentralized product lines. His CFO created standardized division sales reports and flexible accounting, and allocated resources and bonuses to the GM divisions by a uniform set of rules. It allowed GM to be ruthlessly efficient internally as well with its dealers and suppliers. It got the division general managers to fall in line with corporate goals but allowed them to run their divisions freely. GM became the prototype of the modern multidivisional company. Car Financing. Realizing that Ford would only accept cash for car purchases, in 1919 GM formed GMAC to provide new car buyers a way to finance their purchases through debt. Consumer research . Every since his days at Hyatt Roller Bearing, Sloan, and by extension GM, was relentless about getting out of the building – they had an entire department that studied consumers, dealers, suppliers . More importantly, Sloan led by example. He visited dealers and suppliers, listened to customers and was tied tightly to his head of RD Charles Kettering. All this would have made General Motors a well-run and well-managed company. But what they did next would make them the dominant company in the U.S. and eventually put tail-fins on the iPhone. 原文见 http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2011/10/18/how-the-iphone-got-tail-fins-part-1-of-2/
Both BRCA1 and BRCA2 germ-line mutations are associated with early ovarian cancer, but new observational data suggest that each might require different treatment strategies, according to a report published in the October12 issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that women with high-grade ovarian cancer live longer and respond better to platinum-based chemotherapy when their tumors have BRCA2 genetic mutations than when they have wild-type BRCA. The same does not hold true for BRCA1 mutations. The analysis looked at 316 cases of high-grade serous ovarian cancer; 29 tumors had BRCA2 mutations and 37 had BRCA1 mutations. This suggests that stratification according to BRCA status will become more important in ovarian cancer clinical trials, senior author Wei Zhang, PhD, from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, told Medscape Medical News. The findings also suggest that combining drugs that damage DNA (such as platinum) with newer drugs that block DNA repair might be particularly effective in these cancers, said Dr. Zhang. However, an expert not involved with the study questioned the findings because of the small number of patients with BRCA mutations. "It is fundamentally unsound to evaluate clinical epidemiology with sample sizes of 35 and 27 (BRCA1 and BRCA2) — or 37 and 29, depending on whether one looks at abstract or table — and draw firm conclusions. The power is low," said Paul Pharoah, MD, senior clinical research fellow at Cambridge Cancer Center in the United Kingdom, in an email. He reviewed the study for Medscape Medical News. The study is also partly in error, said Dr. Pharoah, who has conducted a similar study in these patients but with much a larger sample size. "I know from our dataset (over 10 times the sample size) that both BRCA1 and BRCA2 are associated with improved survival . This was statistically robust. So Yang's conclusion is partly wrong," he said, referring to study lead author Da Yang, PhD, who is also from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Lack of Statistical Significance With Overall Survival Differences According to the authors, BRCA2 and BRCA1 are both tumor-suppressing genes that affect DNA repair, but in different ways. BRCA2 mutations change the RAD51 protein, which is required for the repair of double-strand DNA breaks by homologous recombination. Without RAD51, the tumor cell cannot repair DNA damaged by antitumor treatment. In contrast, BRCA1 is involved in multiple functions (including DNA damage response and checkpoint control). A mutant BRCA1 can cause failure in a function and set the cell up for tumorigenesis without making it more vulnerable to drugs such as cisplatin. "Uncovering the separate potential effects of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations takes us a step toward a more personalized approach to treating ovarian cancer, and perhaps other cancers," Dr. Zhang said in a press statement. "This paper suggests that those 2 genes, and the many others involved in DNA repair, are prime targets for further research." This teasing apart of BRCA1 and BRCA2 roles in ovarian cancer is possible because of The Cancer Genome Atlas project (TCGA). TCGA reported more than 400 high-grade serous ovarian cancer cases in which an exhaustive analysis of each tumor's genome and comprehensive clinical data on each patient were combined. "TCGA gave us enough analytical power to differentiate between BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and to conduct a survival analysis," said Dr. Yang. The outcome measures in the study were overall survival, progression-free survival, and chemotherapy response. The analysis showed 5-year survival of 61% with BRCA2 mutations and 25% with wild-type BRCA. Three-year progression-free survival was 44% with BRCA2 mutations and 16% with wild-type BRCA2. Overall survival was not significantly different between BRCA2 and BRCA1 mutations (P= .17), but the progression-free survival difference was (P=.05). BRCA1 mutations did not affect either overall survival or progression-free survival. The response rate to platinum chemotherapy was 100% in patients with BRCA2 mutations, 82% in those with wild-type BRCA2, and 80% in those with BRCA1 mutations. Response duration was 18 months with BRCA2 mutations, 11.7 months with wild-type BRCA2, and 12.5 months for BRCA1 mutations. In an accompanying editorial, VictorR. Grann, MD, MPH, and RamonE. Parsons, MD, PhD, from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, write that the study "provides a major advance in the understanding of the use of new treatments for ovarian cancer among patients with BRCA mutations by demonstrating a difference in the response among patients with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations diagnosed with ovarian cancer." They and the study authors all say that the next step is to enroll these patients in randomized clinical trials to test whether BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers respond differently to treatment. However, Dr. Pharoah's research represents a challenge to this opinion. He and his group have investigated BRCA mutations and clinical outcomes using the same TCGA data plus additional cases collected worldwide — producing a much larger dataset of more than 1100 BRCA1 mutation carriers, 300 BRCA2 mutation carriers, and 2000 noncarriers. They reported their data at the 2011 meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. That study has been submitted for publication. Dr. Pharoah also emphasized the fact that the overall survival differences between the 2 mutation types in the study by Dr. Yang and colleagues was not statistically significant. "There is no significant difference between BRCA1 and BRCA2 (which is not highlighted in the abstract or press release). Thus, it is not a sound conclusion that BRCA2 but not BRCA1 is associated with improved survival. This apparent contradiction is all a problem with sample size and an overestimation of statistical significance. With just 35 BRCA1 cases, the power to detect a difference with noncarriers is limited, so the conclusion is not sound." Dr. Pharoah added that "even where a result is statistically significant, it is more likely to be wrong when the sample size is small than when it is large — a fact that is very rarely appreciated." The authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships. JAMA. 2011;306:1557-1565, 1597-1598. 来源 ： http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751334
GRE issue writing 主要强调的是要有批判精神，而且要能自圆其说。我想这是对中国学生最大的考验。虽然我也会批判，不过很多是抱怨的意见，难以自圆其说。以后要增加知识的广度，让别人对自己的观点信服。下面开始我的第一篇作文吧。 英文写作不仅是难在语言，我想还是难在思维，特别是中国学生的思维习惯。我觉得自己应该从模仿开始吧！ 一教育类 1. A nation should require all its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college rather than allow schools in different parts of the nation to determine which academic courses to offer." 【5】一个国家应该要求所有的学生在进入大学之前都学习由国家统一制定的课程，而不是允许由国家不同地区的学校去决定课程的安排。 国家统一和地区单独安排课程 刚拿到这题真不知怎么写呀，列个提纲吧。 第一、首先我大致同意这个观点，因为一般来说大学之前的教育属于基础教育，这是打基础的阶段，如果都采用统一的教材和课程，有利于学校的教育和管理，也能更好地保证教育的公平公正，让各地的教育水平不会相差很大。然而，这个观点也有不足之处，那就是太过于绝对，因为论题中提到了所有学生，我认为不是很合理。因为正如中国一句古话，应该因地制宜、因材施教，这样做会更有利选拔优秀学生。 第二、我同意部分观点，因为毕竟教育是关系到国家的未来，民族的希望。实施统一的全民教育可以有效的提高国民的文化水平。这种效果在短时期内很有效，例如中国在改革开放以后实行的九年制义务教育，很快的扫除了大量的文盲，有很大的长远价值。可是论题中说道要所有的学生都应该由国家统一制定，这样做未免有些过于绝对，因为一个国家的各个地方教育文化科技经济水平参差不齐，因此学生并不总是能够得到相同的教育，从而学生的能力也就会大不相同。如果采用这种一刀切的模式，肯定会不利于学生的学习。比如说中国的很多偏远落后的地方教育本来就很落后，跟大城市相比，那些农村的孩子就输在了起跑线上。还有比如各个地方的风俗习惯各不一样，因而教育教育部门要考虑这些。教材的选定也要慎重考虑。 第三、论题中这样说可能很大程度上会有利于大学生统一入学考试，便于教育部门统一出考题，统一划定录取的分数。这样做从长远来看不利于国家的教育科技进步。历史上这样做就曾扼杀了很多优秀的人才，甚至不能进入大学学习。比如爱因斯坦吧。爱因斯坦从小就是个很爱思考，思想独特的孩子。他当年报考苏黎世工业大学，虽然考试分数不是很突出，但是有一位教授看到了爱因斯坦的考卷，说道：“你是个聪明的孩子，就是不喜欢表现自己”。淡然爱因斯坦后来幸运的进入了大学学习。这里不要说像论题所说的对不同地区的学校应该采用不同的教材，而是应该说，如果教育条件允许，我们应该让不同的孩子阅读不同的教材，发觉他们的兴趣。特别对那些天赋异禀的孩子，更应该让他们追随个性自由发展！ 最后、总的来说论题中的观点有一定的合理性，不过我们应该对于不同的情况加以区别，真正的教育是开发人的潜能。从长远的看，只有做到因材施教才能有利于教育的发展，民族的进步。只有从小尊重孩子的个性发展，这样他们进了大学以后才能激发更大的学习兴趣。 好了，废话完了! 哈哈，还挺能扯淡的，要写好issue writing，就要学会扯淡，最好是扯得不着边际，最后还能让阅卷老师觉得你说的有道理，给你高分。思路有了，该用英文了，循序渐进，暂且搁笔，下次接着用英文扯淡！ Should a country require all its students study the same curriculum before they enter college rather than allow schools in different parts of the nation to take different academic courses?The speaker support the fomer.for the simple reason that central curriculum is more economical than provincial curriculum,and that it provides wider view than provincial curriculum.I concede that it is convenient for the education department to hold standardized test if all the students in a country study the same curriculum.But in the long run,it would not be good for a country to improve its educational level. Admittedly,central curriculum can save more money than provicial curriculum.For making an entire course ,a lot of money and time are spent.Also,experts related to education participate in this process.In central curriculum,only one making procedure goes throngh.In addition ,for preparing a class of the curriculum,teachers can share many parts of the curriculum and can get some help from other teacher with professional knowledge.However,if provincial curriculum is made respectively,a large amount of economic losses are produced.Additionly,by taking the same courses based on the same backgrouond before they go to college,the students can get a comprehensive idea of a subject,so they would lay a firm foudation,which would be better for further study. However,as whole country ,there will definitely be
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