Publications

ABSTRACT The traditional preparation methods for nitrocellulose (NC) emulsions have several drawbacks, such as high emulsifier content, complicated preparation processes, and the requirement for high‐energy‐consuming emulsification equipment. To address these issues, in this paper, we successfully synthesized an emulsifier‐free NC film‐forming coating using a simple, low‐energy solvent‐displacement method for the first time. Two kinds of plasticizers, epoxidized soybean oil (ESO) and dibutyl phthalate (DBP), were incorporated into the preparation process of NC. It was found that an NC‐based aqueous coating system with superior film‐forming properties could be obtained when the DBP and ESO contents reached 70% and 100% of the NC mass fraction in the system, respectively. The micromorphology, chemical structure, thermal properties, and water vapor sorption behavior of the nanocomposites were systematically investigated by field scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier‐transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer, differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetric analysis, and dynamic vapor sorption technology. The results demonstrated that the obtained films exhibited stable thermal decomposition, a dense and uniform structure, and low hygroscopicity (their EMC values at 90% RH were all below 1%). The accelerated aging test revealed that under the thermal shock of 50°C, the film prepared with ESO assistance showed excellent aging resistance, with its chemical structure and mass remaining essentially unchanged. In contrast, the film prepared with DBP assistance exhibited a mass decrease in the early aging stage. In addition, based on the emulsion film‐forming principle, the drying kinetics of the coating system were investigated in detail, and the influences of temperature on the drying process were investigated. We believe that this study offers valuable references for the development of eco‐friendly cellulose‐based aqueous coatings for food packaging and other applications.

Structural integration is increasing among medical groups, but whether these changes yield care that is more integrated remains unclear. We explored the relationships between structural integration characteristics of 144 medical groups and perceptions of integrated care among their patients. Patients' perceptions were measured by a validated national survey of 3,067 Medicare beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions across six domains that reflect knowledge and support of, and communication with, the patient. Medical groups' structural characteristics were taken from the National Study of Physician Organizations and included practice size, specialty mix, technological capabilities, and care management processes. Patients' survey responses were most favorable for the domain of test result communication and least favorable for the domain of provider support for medication and home health management. Medical groups' characteristics were not consistently associated with patients' perceptions of integrated care. However, compared to patients of primary care groups, patients of multispecialty groups had strong favorable perceptions of medical group staff knowledge of patients' medical histories. Opportunities exist to improve patient care, but structural integration of medical groups might not be sufficient for delivering care that patients perceive as integrated.

State-of-the-art approaches to ObjectGoal navigation rely on reinforcement learning and typically require significant computational resources and time for learning. We propose Potential functions for ObjectGoal Navigation with Interaction-free learning (PONI), a modular approach that disentangles the skills of `where to look?' for an object and `how to navigate to (x, y)?'. Our key insight is that `where to look?' can be treated purely as a perception problem, and learned without environment interactions. To address this, we propose a network that predicts two complementary potential functions conditioned on a semantic map and uses them to decide where to look for an unseen object. We train the potential function network using supervised learning on a passive dataset of top-down semantic maps, and integrate it into a modular framework to perform ObjectGoal navigation. Experiments on Gibson and Matterport3D demonstrate that our method achieves the state-of-the-art for ObjectGoal navigation while incurring up to 1,600x less computational cost for training. Code and pre-trained models are available: https://vision.cs.utexas.edu/projects/poni/

<p>Supplementary Figure Legends</p>

The traditional goal of computer vision, to reconstruct, or recover properties of, the scene has recently been challenged by advocates of a new purposive approach in which the vision problem is defined in terms of the goals of an active agent. In the starkest light the debate can be characterized as one about the role of explicit representations. The extreme traditionalists strive for a detailed representation of the 3D world while the other extreme adopts a strict behaviorist stance which eschews representations in favor of "direct sensing." This panel will explore the roles of action, representation, and purpose in computer vision and, in doing so, will hopefully discover areas of agreement. 1 Panel Summary What should be the goal of computer vision? The traditional view (as exemplified by the work of Marr [1982]) poses the problem as: The description of the three dimensional world in terms of the surfaces and objects present and their physical properties and spatial relationships....

Abstract We present the first results from the ongoing, intensive, multiwavelength monitoring program of the luminous Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk 817. While this active galactic nucleus was, in part, selected for its historically unobscured nature, we discovered that the X-ray spectrum is highly absorbed, and there are new blueshifted, broad, and narrow UV absorption lines, which suggest that a dust-free, ionized obscurer located at the inner broad-line region partially covers the central source. Despite the obscuration, we measure UV and optical continuum reverberation lags consistent with a centrally illuminated Shakura–Sunyaev thin accretion disk, and measure reverberation lags associated with the optical broad-line region, as expected. However, in the first 55 days of the campaign, when the obscuration was becoming most extreme, we observe a de-coupling of the UV continuum and the UV broad emission-line variability. The correlation recovered in the next 42 days of the campaign, as Mrk 817 entered a less obscured state. The short C iv and Ly α lags suggest that the accretion disk extends beyond the UV broad-line region.

An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.

An entry from the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database, the world’s repository for inorganic crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the joint CCDC and FIZ Karlsruhe Access Structures service and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures.