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Electronic skin that imitates the characteristics and functions of human skin to sense various external signals and records them as different electrical signals has received extensive attention, and much effort has been made on electronic skin for potential medicine application. However, it still needs a long way to achieve practical applications for electronic skin as consumer electronics, the recent progress of electronic skin is reviewed. First, the crucial characteristics in practical electronic skin are analyzed. Subsequently, the technical supports that need to obtain practical electronic skin are also discussed, and electronic skin in terms of short-term application, medium-term application and long-term application are introduced. Finally, suggestions for future development directions in this fascinating field are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Severe invasive aspergillosis infection occurs when human immune function is impaired. The interaction between Aspergillus fumigatus (A. fumigatus) conidia and type II lung epithelial cells serves an important role in disease progression. The present study compared the proteomes of A549 human lung epithelial cells with and without A. fumigatus infection. Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and protein interaction analyses were performed, and differential protein expression was verified by western blotting and reverse transcription‑quantitative PCR (RT‑qPCR ). In addition, the RNA interference method, an internalization assay and ELISA were performed. Isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification analysis detected a total of 1,582 proteins, from which 111 proteins with differential expression were obtained (fold change >1.5 or <0.75). Among them, 18 proteins were upregulated and 93 proteins were downregulated in A549 cells challenged with A. fumigatus. GO and KEGG analyses revealed that the altered proteins were mainly involved in biological functions, such as cell metabolism, synthesis, the cellular stress response, metabolic pathways and pyruvate metabolism. N‑myc downstream‑regulated gene 1 (NDR G1) expression was upregulated 1.88‑fold, while CD 44 expression was downregulated 0.47‑fold following A. fumigatus infection. The expression levels of specific proteins were verified by western blotting and RT‑qPCR. The internalization efficiency was affected by NDRG1 gene silencing. The secretion of IL‑ 6 and IL‑8 was affected when CD 44 was inhibited. These results indicated that A. fumigatus affects lung epithelial cell metabolism and biological synthetic functions. A number of novel molecules, including NDR G1 and CD 44, were found to be related to A. fumigatus infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the results of rate-controlled mercury-injection experiments, the microscopic pore-throat structure characteristics of tight sandstone in Sha-1 Section and tight limestone in Da'anzhai Section of Sichuan Basin were quantitatively characterized. The results show that the pore radius distribution characteristics of tight oil reservoirs are similar. The main distribution is between 100~190 µm, and the average pore radius is 160 µm. While the distribution of the throat radius of tight sandstone and limestone is quite different, the distribution of the throat of sandstone samples is relatively concentrated, and the distribution of the throat of limestone samples is relatively sparse. There is a good positive correlation between the average throat radius and permeability, but the correlation between fractal dimension and permeability is not obvious. This indicates that the permeability is mainly affected by the radius of the throat. The pore-throat ratio in tight oil reservoirs is relatively large, and the resistance to seepage is greater during development. Therefore, during the development of tight oil, measures should be taken to increase the radius of the throat, reduce the ratio of pore radius to pore-throat radius, and improve the seepage capacity of the reservoir, thereby improving the development of tight oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanning method is the most accurate method to construct digital core, which can reflect the microscopic pore structure of real cores; therefore, it is widely used and researched by experts and scholars all over the world. However, there are few reports about how to select the CT scan core samples at present, and the current practice is to make CT scan samples by visually observing rocks or core columns to select a region that is considered representative or interesting, which can lead to a large difference between the selected sample and the whole rock and a digital core that cannot represent the real rock as a whole. In order to construct the digital cores that can reflect the whole rock structure and reservoir properties, combining with fractal theory, a scientific and reasonable method was proposed to select representative rock samples for digital core modeling. First of all, a core column is scanned by X-ray CT at a certain resolution and CT gray scale images are obtained and stored in the order of scan. Secondly, the fractal dimension (FD) of each image is calculated by box-counting method, and the calculated porosity of each image is achieved by the existing formula. Then, according to the size of the digital core to be constructed, the CT gray scale images are grouped, and the average FD and the average porosity of each combination are calculated by the derived equations. Finally, based on the proposed criteria the best image combination is selected and the preferred sample is determined accordingly. At the same time, a facile experiment was conducted to test the effectiveness of this method. The experimental results show that there are some errors between the subjectively selected cores and the long core in terms of permeability and porosity, and the petrophysical parameters of the core selected by the proposed method are close to those of the long core; as a consequence, the validity of this method was verified and it is feasible and practical to select the representative rock samples for digital core modeling by this method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed a new method to determine the absolute amount of adsorption. This method relies on the excess adsorption isotherm and density profile in the pore of one material. The simplified local density (SLD) model was introduced to compute the density profile and simplify the complex calculation of obtaining the absolute amount of adsorption. The SLD can accurately simulate the adsorption of supercritical methane on shale. The corresponding application of our method on the adsorption of methane on shale and AX-21 activated carbon was introduced. The absolute isotherms of adsorption calculated with our method were reasonable when compared to results using other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract.  This paper is concerned with the coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with harmonic potentials which describe the Bose-Einstein condensate under the magnetic trap. Two types of the invariant evolution flows are obtained, then a sharp criterion of global existence and blowing up of solutions for the equations is given in terms of the Hamiltonian invariants. Furthermore, we would answer: How small are the initial data such that the global solutions of the system exist? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the supercritical nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a harmonic potential which describes the attractive Bose-Einstein condensate under a magnetic trap. We establish two types of new invariant evolution flows. Then, in terms of the Hamiltonian invariants, we derive a new sharp energy criterion for global existence and blowing up of solutions of the equation, which can be precisely computed in the Bose-Einstein condensate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the damped nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Through analyzing the characteristics of the equation and the effect of the damping on the global existence, we construct a variational problem. Then combining the variational problem, we establish a crucial invariant evolution flow to derive an explicit and computed criterion to answer: how small are the initial data such that the solutions of the system globally exist? Moreover, the small initial data criterion can be applied in the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with any positive damped parameter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]