Sunday, February 27, 2022

030522 為你養一頭牛:芻料燕麥的遺傳研究

Title:
 為你養一頭牛:芻料燕麥的遺傳研究

Speaker:
 黃敬廷 (Ching-Ting Huang), PhD student, University of Georgia

Time:
 03/05 (Sat.) 4:00 pm PST, 5:00 pm MST, 6:00 pm CST, 7:00 pm EST
 03/06 (Sun.) 01:00 am CET, 08:00 am Taiwan
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Keywords:
  genetics, plant science, molecular biology, bioinformatics, 燕麥; 全基因體關連性分析; 種子活力

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Abstract:
  種子活力對作物萌芽、產量、品質都有重要影響。優良的種子活力有助提高芻料作物與雜草的競爭優勢、降低田間管理的成本。燕麥(Avena sativa L.)是重要的芻料作物之一,本研究以650個優良燕麥品系及378個燕麥地方品系為材料,以影像分析調查種子活力相關性狀,並藉由全基因體關聯性分析(genome-wide association study)探討其遺傳結構。結果發現大部分的性狀有相當大的變異,且近似常態分布。分析發現42與17個分子標誌分別與根及芽的相關性狀有顯著關聯性。其中4個標誌位在已知的基因序列中。相關的基因功能與木膠的生合成及植物的苗期生長有關,值得進一步研究。

Monday, February 14, 2022

021922 A Novel Energy-efficient Process of Converting CO2 to Dimethyl Ether with Techno-economic and Environmental Evaluation

Title:
 021922 A Novel Energy-efficient Process of Converting CO2 to Dimethyl Ether with Techno-economic and Environmental Evaluation 

Speaker:
 吳采薇(Tsai-Wei Wu), PhD student, National Taiwan University

Time:
 02/19  (Sat.) 7:00 pm PST, 8:00 pm MST, 9:00 pm CST, 10:00 pm EST
 02/20 (Sun.)4:00 am CET, 11:00 am Taiwan
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Keywords:
chemical engineering, process systems engineering, Dimethyl Ether, CO2 Utilization, PTL, Alternative Fuel, Process Intensification




Abstract:
This work aims at discovering the potential of CO2 reduction by implementing techniques of process intensification in the production processes of green alternative fuel, dimethyl ether (DME), from CO2 and renewable hydrogen (H2) with both one-step and two-step configurations. A novel intensified process using the two-step configuration (named as TSHI), which converts CO2 to methanol followed by the dehydration of methanol to DME, is proposed in this study. Developed based on the validated thermodynamic representation and the reaction kinetics expression, TSHI shows the greatest potential of CO2 reduction – 1.704 ton CO2 / ton DME – among the five discussed process scenarios. Though TSHI exhibits high capability of reducing CO2 amount in the atmosphere, the result of techno-economic analysis showed that there are still rooms for further improvements to produce green alternative fuel cost-effectively.

Monday, February 7, 2022

021222 Persuasion, Strategic News Sharing, and Cascades on Social Networks

Title:
Persuasion, Strategic News Sharing, and Cascades on Social Networks

Speaker:
許晉嘉 (Chin-Chia Hsu), PhD candidate, MIT IDSS

Time:
02/12 (Sat.) 11 am PST, 12 pm MST, 1 pm CST, 2 pm EST, 8 pm CET
02/13 (Sun.) 3 am Taiwan
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Keywords:
Economics, Game Theory, Network Economics, Information Economics, Persuasion, Strategic News Sharing, Spread of Information, Social Networks


Abstract:
We develop a game-theoretic model of sharing decisions among online users of a Twitter-like social network. Each agent has a subjective prior on an unobservable real-valued state. When receiving news, agents make a decision as to whether they should share the news with their followers based on how persuasive the news may be in moving their followers’ opinions closer to theirs, assuming a nominal cost for sharing. We characterize the dynamics of spread as an endogenous Susceptible-Infected (SI) epidemic process and derive agents’ sharing decisions and the size of the cascade spread at the equilibrium of the corresponding game. We show that low credibility news can result in a larger cascade than credible news when the network is highly connected. We further show that increased polarization in prior beliefs in the population prompts more sharing of lower credibility news, resulting in larger cascade size. Finally, we fully characterize the relationship between cascade size, network connectivity, and news credibility in terms of polarization and diversity of prior beliefs. Our results provide a theoretical foundation for recent empirical observations demonstrating faster and wider spread of low-credibility and false information on social networks. This is a joint work with Amir Ajorlou and my advisor Ali Jadbabaie.