Community Development and Renaissance Social Humanism: Some Lessons for Systems Science

Starting from the crisis in our communities—research has indicated it to be widely spread—the author explores the scientific tradition preceding the rise of modernism in order to draw out a more humane way of thinking that may help our contemporary societies. He discerns between two types of Renaissance humanism, one characterised by its cleverness, the other by its compassion and desire to restore dignity to the lives of people struggling to escape the clutches of medievalism. The father of the latter is Erasmus of Rotterdam and we follow the development of his conception of a social humanism as it branches out, through the work of his successors, into every scientific discipline, both natural and human. These disciplines are united by an embracing systemic idea of philosophy that unites the mind with the heart and which Erasmus called “Philosophia Christi”. We examine the two main pillars upon which this philosophy is built, love for our neighbour and education as the only legitimate instrument to change society, and the extraordinary impact it had on science and on communities living in the seventeenth century. We contrast this with the idea of power, the chosen instrument of modernity to transform society, and trace some of its tragic outcomes. We conclude by discussing the incorporation of an Erasmian type of social humanism into systems education and the future development of such programmes.     

Influences of ultrasonic irradiation on the morphology and structure of nanoporous Co nanoparticles during chemical dealloying

The Co-61.8 wt% Al nanoparticles of 45 nm were prepared by hydrogen plasma-metal reaction (HPMR) method. The nanoparticles display core shell structure with Al13Co4 and CoAl core and aluminum oxide shell (about 2 nm). Under ultrasonic irradiation, nanoporous fcc-Co nanoparticles were produced successfully by chemically dealloying the Co-Al nanoparticles at room temperature, whereas, without ultrasonic irradiation CoAl phase could hardly react with sodium hydroxide solution. At 323 K the Co-Al nanoparticles could be dealloyed to fcc-Co and hcp-Co phases even without ultrasonic irradiation. The surface area of the dealloyed nanoparticles under ultrasonic irradiation was larger than that of the dealloyed sample without ultrasonic irradiation at the same temperature. It is believed that the microjet and shock-wave induced by ultrasonic irradiation give rise to particles size reduction, interparticle collision and surface cleaning, and accelerate the dealloying process and the phase transformation.     

Hydroxyl radical electrochemically generated with water as the complete atom source and its environmental application

The most reactive hydroxyl radical （OH） was generated by electrochemical approach with safe water as the complete atom source. The direct evidence for OH formation was obtained by electron spin resonance method. The powerful OH electrochemically generated could effectively degrade organic pollutants and reduce the toxicity of wastewater. Electrochemical disinfection by OH was considerably efficient even without the aid of active chlorine. Bacteria inactivation of 99.99% was achieved for contact time of 30 min and current density of 5 mA·cm^-2, In comparison with active chlorine, OH is rather attractive as a promising environmentally benign disinfectant and opens a new route for microbial inactivation.     

An improved traitor tracing scheme based on bilinear map

T6 et al presented a bilinear-map-based traitor tracing scheme（TSZ scheme） with revocation, but it is a symmetric scheme because it does not provide non-repudiation. In this paper, an improved TSZ scheme was proposed by using oblivious polynomial evaluation （OPE） protocol and service parameters. Under the recondition of general sameness capabilities of both TSZ and improved TSZ scheme, the new scheme adds some advantages such as providing multi-service capability, user＇s non-repudiation and data provider＇s no-framing innocent users. Furthermore, it is also proved to be semantically secure under the decisional bilinear Diffie-Hellman （DBDH problem） assumption.     

New crystal structure of molecular complex 1-piperidine carboxylate-piperidinium-H<Subscript>2</Subscript>O studied by X-ray single crystal diffraction

Piperidine absorbs CO2 and H2O in air to form a molecular complex： piperidium-l-piperidinecarboxylate-H2O. The structure of the complex was characterized by X-ray single crystal diffraction. The crystal structure was determined to be triclinic, space group P1^-with a=0.648 6（8） nm, b=0.809 200） nm, c= 1.357 1（16） nm, a=96.96706）°, β =102.506（15）°,γ=104.202 05）°, Z=2. The complex is stabilized via five hydrogen bonds between the three components, N-O electrostatic interaction and O-O interaction （electron transfer） betweenl-piperidinecarboxylate and H2O. Due to electron transference of carbamate ion, the oxygen atom in water molecule is strongly negatively charged and the O-H bond is considerably shorter than that of the free molecule of water. The formation of the molecular complex is a reversible process and will decompose upon heating. The mechanism of formation and stabilization is further investigated herein.     

Erratum to: <Emphasis Type="Italic">In vitro</Emphasis> induction of mouse meningeal-derived iPS cells into neural-like cells

The authors report that incorrect figures were included as Figures 4 and 5 in the original publication of this paper. This error occurred during the figure editing process of the publishing company. This information should have been presented as follows:     

Serine/threonine protein phosphatases in DNA damage response

DNA damage response (DDR) is among the most important of the mechanisms that maintain genome stability which, when destabilized, predisposes organs to cancer. Reversible phosphorylation mediated by protein kinases and protein phosphatases regulates most, if not all, cellular activities, including DDR. Protein kinase inhibitors have become the main focus of targeted therapy and anticancer drug development. However, our limited knowledge of protein phosphatase function is compromising our capacity to develop therapeutic agents against phosphatases. In this review, we summarize the roles of serine/threonine protein phosphatases involved in DDR and propose that in situ dephosphorylation of phosphoproteins by protein phosphatases, instead of proteasome-mediated degradation of phosphoproteins, is mainly employed by cells.     

Aero-optical wavefront measurement technique based on BOS and its applications

A collimated light beam will be refracted if it propagates through a flow-field with index-of-refraction variations,and its wavefront will be distorted.If we measure the deflection angle of the light beam,the gradient of the wavefront can be obtained using the Malus law,and the wavefront aberration can be computed with a reconstruction algorithm.Two characteristics of background oriented schlieren(BOS) are conducive to wavefront aberration measurement:BOS can be used to measure the deflection angle of a light beam by measuring the displacement field between the reference image and the experiment image.Moreover,in a BOS system of Schlieren mode,only the ray perpendicular to the background image can be captured with a camera.This is helpful to measure wavefront aberrations that occur after a planar wavefront has passed through the flow-field.Based on these characteristics of BOS of Schlieren mode,a new wavefront measurement technique,which is called the BOS-based wavefront technique(BOS-WT),is proposed in this paper.It works by constructing the relationship between the displacement of the background image and the aero-optical wavefront gradient and uses the Southwell wavefront reconstruction algorithm.A BOS-WT system was assembled,and its temporal resolution was found to be 6 ns,and its temporal-correlation resolution reached 0.2 μs.A BOS-WT can measure the time-correlation transient wavefront quantitatively.It is simple and easy to operate.In this paper,we also present a study of the aero-optical performance of supersonic mixing layer based on our BOS-WT transient wavefronts at an interval of 5 μs.The results showed the wavefront was transient and distorted after it had passed through the mixing layer.Through the analysis of the data at the 5 μs interval,the temporal evolution of wavefront can be obtained.     

Parametric effects on the combustion flow field of a typical strut-based scramjet combustor

The flame-holding mechanism in hypersonic propulsion technology is the most important factor in prolonging the duration time of hypersonic vehicles.The two-dimensional coupled implicit Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations,the shear-stress transport k-ω turbulence model and the finite-rate/eddy-dissipation reaction models were used to simulate the combustion flow field of a typical strut-based scramjet combustor.We investigated the effects of the hydrogen-air reaction mechanism and fuel injection temperature and pressure on the parametric distributions in the combustor.The numerical results show qualitative agreement with the experimental data.The hydrogen-air reaction mechanism makes only a slight difference in parametric distributions along the walls of the combustor,and the expansion waves and shock waves exist in the combustor simultaneously.Furthermore,the expansion wave is formed ahead of the shock wave.A transition occurs from the shock wave to the normal shock wave when the injection pressure or temperature increases,and the reaction zone becomes broader.When the injection pressure and temperature both increase,the waves are pushed out of the combustor with subsonic flows.When the waves are generated ahead of the strut,the separation zone is formed in double near the walls of the combustor because of the interaction of the shock wave and the boundary layer.The separation zone becomes smaller and disappears with the disappearance of the shock wave.Because of the horizontal fuel injection,the vorticity is generated near the base face of the strut,and this region is the main origin for turbulent combustion.     

Entransy dissipation minimization for optimization of heat exchanger design

In this paper,by taking the water-water balanced counterflow heat exchanger as an example,the entransy dissipation theory is applied to optimizing the design of heat exchangers.Under certain conditions,the optimal duct aspect ratio is determined analytically.When the heat transfer area or the duct volume is fixed,analytical expressions of the optimal mass velocity and the minimal entransy dissipation rate are obtained.These results show that to reduce the irreversible dissipation in heat exchangers,the heat exchange area should be enlarged as much as possible,while the mass velocity should be reduced as low as possible.