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Floristic regions reflect the geographic organization of floras and provide essential tools for biological studies. Previous global floristic regions are generally based on floristic endemism, lacking a phylogenetic consideration that captures floristic evolution. Moreover, the contribution of tectonic dynamics and historical and current climate to the division of floristic regions remains unknown. Here, by integrating global distributions and a phylogeny of 12,664 angiosperm genera, we update global floristic regions and explore their temporal changes. Eight floristic realms and 16 nested sub-realms are identified. The previously-defined Holarctic, Neotropical and Australian realms are recognized, but Paleotropical, Antarctic and Cape realms are not. Most realms have formed since Paleogene. Geographic isolation induced by plate tectonics dominates the formation of floristic realms, while current/historical climate has little contribution. Our study demonstrates the necessity of integrating distributions and phylogenies in regionalizing floristic realms and the interplay of macroevolutionary and paleogeographic processes in shaping regional floras., Nature Communications, 14 (1), ISSN:2041-1723

Using a simple dipping method, a novel the magnetically driven hydrophobic polyurethane sponge (MHPS) was synthesized in this work. The isodecyl alcohol with longer carbon chain is grafted onto the sponge surface through substitution reaction and condensation reaction, and Fe3O4 nanoparticles are adhered to the sponge to give it magnetism and make it easy to collect. MHPS were characterized by Fourier transformed infrared, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectrometers. The maximum adsorption capacity for various oils/organic solvents was 24–50 times its own weight. MHPS shows excellent reusability after ten absorption–extrusion-heating cycles. Moreover, it can selectively absorb and continuously remove oil in a wide range of water due to the combination of its high porosity, hydrophobicity and lipophilicity. The magnetism of MHPS makes it easy to collect with magnets. It is believed that MHPS has potential application prospects in oil purification and oil spill removal industry wastewater.

Sparrow search algorithm (SSA) is easy to fall into local convergence and convergence stagnation. In order to solve these problems, this paper introduced Circle chaos map into the original SSA to improve its global search ability at the beginning of iteration. Meanwhile, it introduced T-distribution variation to affect the sparrow population position update rules in different iteration periods. Finally, we constructed the “similarity function” to measure the “dispersion” of the sparrow population, and formulated the search rules of the sparrow population under different “dispersion”. In order to test the specific optimization performance of the proposed algorithm, the test results of 54 test functions are compared with those of 9 other algorithms which are widely used, and then the test results are analyzed using non-parametric tests in statistics. At the same time, this paper introduces this algorithm into three concrete engineering test problems for testing. The results of these tests all prove that the proposed algorithm has stronger global optimization ability and higher convergence precision compared with other algorithms.

Branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) are membrane lipids of certain soil bacteria, and their relative distributions are used as a proxy for air temperature and soil pH. While temperature is recorded by the degree of methylation, soil pH is reflected by the amount of internal cyclization and the relative abundance of 6-methyl isomers. Since the exact producers of brGDGTs remain enigmatic, the mechanisms underlying their empirical relationships with temperature and soil pH, and thus the reliability of brGDGT-based paleorecords, are not well understood, especially in arid regions where mean annual precipitation (MAP) is less than 500 mm. Here, we evaluate the influence of soil pH and aridity on brGDGT distributions in grassland soils along an aridity transect (MAP = 173–415 mm) in Inner Mongolia. While the absolute and fractional abundance of 6-methyl brGDGTs increases with increasing soil pH and aridity, following the trend in the global surface soil calibration dataset, the degree of cyclization does not. This indicates that in arid regions, soil pH reconstructions based on the relative contribution of 6-methyl brGDGTs are likely more reliable than those based on the degree of cyclization. Furthermore, 5- and 6-methyl brGDGTs respond differently to aridity, supporting prior suggestions that the distribution of brGDGTs could be the result of changes in bacterial community composition instead of the direct physiological alteration of molecular structures by the source organisms. Analysis of the bacterial community composition in the same soil transect indicates that the relative abundance of Acidobacteria, the phylum hosting potential brGDGT source-organisms, shows a poor relationship with aridity. Instead, Verrucomicrobia (r2 = 0.70, p < 0.01), and its subclass Spartobacteria (r2 = 0.70, p < 0.01) in particular, show a significant negative correlation with aridity, resembling that of 5-methyl brGDGTs. Similarly, Actinobacteria are positively correlated with aridity (r2 = 0.59, p < 0.01), following the same trend as that of 6-methyl brGDGTs. The ability of certain cultures of Verrucomicrobia and Actinobacteria to produce iso-C15:0 fatty acids that could serve as building blocks for brGDGTs hints that Verrucomicrobia and Actinobacteria could possibly produce brGDGTs in arid soils.

Objective The serum levels of iron, zinc, copper and vitamin D in severe early childhood caries (S-ECC) patients were investigated and analyzed to provide reference for primary prevention and diagnosis of S-ECC children. Methods A total of 184 children were enrolled in the Children Health Department of Xinjiang Medical University Health Management Center from June 2018 to June 2019. They were divided into the caries-free (CF) group (n=89) and S-ECC group (n=95). The contents of iron, zinc, copper and vitamin D were detected. Results The serum iron content of the CF group and S-ECC group was (8.36 ± 0.42) mmol/L and (8.13 ± 0.44) mmol/L, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (t=3.50, P < 0.001); the serum content of zinc was (83.18 ± 7.28) μmol/L and (79.23 ± 6.38) μmol/L, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (t=3.92, P < 0.001); the serum content of 25-hydroxyvitamin D was (86.72 ± 15.83) nmol/L and (77.75 ± 11.38) nmol/L, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (t=4.42, P < 0.001). The serum copper content of CF group and S-ECC group was (20.18 ± 4.84) μmol/L and (19.49 ± 4.62) μmol/L, but the difference was not statistically significant (t=0.97, P=0.33). Conclusion The contents of iron, zinc and vitamin D in the serum of S-ECC patients are low, suggesting that iron, zinc and vitamin D supplementation should be emphasized in the prevention and treatment of S-ECC.

Steric hindrance of methyl on reaction pathway of hydrodesulfurization in presence of quinoline was investigated over a NiMo/Al2O3 catalyst at 4.0 MPa and 320 °C. The results show that steric hindrance of methyl changed the main pathway of HDS while presence of quinoline further exacerbated this transformation. Changes in inhibitory factor curve show that quinoline poisoning on DBT HDS is a relatively mild. When adjacent methyl is present, even at low concentration, the inhibitory factor of quinoline on 4,6-DMDBT HDS is still greater than 85%. At high levels, the inhibitory factor of quinoline on DDS pathway even exceeds 99%. Quinoline poisons HYD pathway of DBT HDS to a stable level in a short time (30 to 60 min). However, after 6 h of reaction, HYD pathway yield of 4,6-DMDBT HDS is still increasing. Quinoline simultaneously poisons HYD and DDS pathways of 4,6-DMDBT HDS to a stable level within 120 min, and then DDS pathway will continue to be poisoned, thereby increasing HYD pathway yield. Regardless of presence of adjacent methyl in sulfur-containing molecules, an increase in quinoline concentration will lead to an increase in HYD/DDS pathway yield ratio. Addition of quinoline inhibits conversion of hydrogenated intermediates to DDS products by poisoning C–S bond dissociation center (such as CUS active site) and leads to formation of deep hydrogenated products.

Objective To investigate the effect of miR-214 on the osteogenic differentiation of dental follicle cells (DFCs). Methods Purified DFCs were cultured in vitro by bidirectional differential passage, with the untransfected DFCs as the control group (DFCs group). The expression of miR-214-3p in DFCs was upregulated and downregulated by transfection of miR-214-3p(miR-214 mimics group) or miR-214-3p inhibitors(miR-214 inhibitor group) into DFCs. The expression levels of miR-214, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), osteonectin (OSN) and runt-related transcription factor-2(RUNX-2) were detected by qRT-PCR after 7 days of osteogenesis induction, the protein expression levels of RUNX-2 and β-catenin were detected by western blot, and the formation of mineralized nodules was observed with alizarin red staining after 14 days of osteogenesis induction. Results Compared with the DFCs group, in the miR-214 mimics group, the expression of miR-214 was upregulated after 7 days of osteogenesis induction. The mRNA expression of ALP, OSN and RUNX-2 in the miR-214 mimics group was lower than that in the DFCs group, but only ALP in the two groups was statistically significant (P > 0.05); the mRNA expression of ALP, OSN and RUNX-2 in the miR-214 inhibitor group was higher than that in the DFCs group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). The protein expression of RUNX-2 and β-catenin in the miR-214 mimics group was lower than that in the miR-214 inhibitor group. The number of calcified nodules in the miR-214 mimics group was significantly less than that in the DFCs group, while that in the miR-214 inhibitor group was significantly higher than that in the DFCs group. Conclusion The upregulation of miR-214 can downregulate the expression of β-catenin, can inhibit the expression of ALP, OSN and RUNX-2 related to osteogenesis, and can inhibit osteogenic differentiation. The downregulation of miR-214 demonstrated the opposite results; miR-214 may downregulate the expression of β-catenin and inhibit the osteogenic differentiation of DFCs.

UV Raman, TG-MS (TPO) and nitrogen physisorption characterization were used to characterize deactivated Mo/HZSM-5 catalysts from coupling reaction of methane CO2 autothermal reforming (MCAR) and methane dehydroaromatization (MDA). The results show that MCAR/MDA maintains the Mo-oxo species throughout the process, reducing the maximum C6H6 yield, but extending the reaction life by at least 4 time. As O/CH4 increases, MCAR/MDA changes from oxygen-deficient to oxygen-rich state. For MCAR/MDA under oxygen-deficient condition, O2 can only delay the accumulation of aromatics. Grown of coke on Brӧnsted acid eventually leads to complete blockage of the micropores of the catalyst. Slowly deposited graphite coke in MCAR/MDA extended the critical time by nearly 4 times. For MCAR/MDA under oxygen-rich condition, a 70% C6H6 selectivity was maintained throughout the process. After 3700 min of operation, the remaining micropore volume and micropore surface of the deactivated catalyst remained above 1/3. The timely removal of graphite coke at the pore mouth by the MCAR/MDA reaction under oxygen-rich conditions can eliminate the limitation of C6H6 diffusion, thereby effectively preventing the acceleration of the coke deposit micropores which cause the MDA reaction to be rapidly deactivated.

This study introduces a wearable soft knee exoskeleton that aids active knee motions during walking. It is mainly driven by vacuum-actuated rotary actuators. In this paper, the overall design of the exoskeleton is introduced. Moreover, the design of the vacuum-actuated rotary actuator is introduced, and the correspondence among the interior air pressure, rotation angle and output force of the actuator under a vacuum condition and during the transition from the vacuum to an equal atmospheric pressure condition were studied. Then, the corresponding relations among the pressure, angle and torque of the actuator were obtained to construct a knee torque model. Furthermore, we introduced in detail the control system of the exoskeleton, including a gait estimation model and knee torque model. The control system analysed knee angle information measured by IMUs and the air pressure of the actuators measured by air pressure sensors. Then, by the calculations performed by both the gait estimation model and knee torque model, the corresponding commands for the aerodynamic switch, pressures and air flow rates were determined. According to the commands, a micro air pump and valves provided quantitatively positive or negative pressure for the actuators to generate gait-consistent auxiliary torques, stretching torques and bending torques that were able to meet the needs of the knee during walking. Finally, a cardiopulmonary exercise test was used to quantitatively evaluate the exoskeleton. The results show that under the same load condition, the metabolic cost of walking is reduced by an average of 6.85% when the exoskeleton is worn.

The tree of life (TOL) is severely threatened by climate and land-cover changes. Preserving the TOL is urgent, but has not been included in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental for biological conservation. However, we know little about the effectiveness of existing PAs in preserving the TOL of plants and how to prioritize PA expansion for better TOL preservation under future climate and land-cover changes. Here, using high-resolution distribution maps of 8732 woody species in China and phylogeny-based Zonation, we find that current PAs perform poorly in preserving the TOL both at the present and in 2070s. The geographical coverage of TOL branches by current PAs is ca 9%, and less than 3% of the identified priority areas for preserving the TOL are currently protected. Interestingly, the geographical coverage of TOL branches by PAs will be improved from 9 to 52–79% by the identified priority areas for PA expansion. Human pressures in the identified priority areas are high, leading to high cost for future PA expansion. We thus suggest that besides nature reserves and national parks, other effective area-based conservation measures should be considered. Our study argues for the inclusion of preserving the TOL in the post-2020 conservation framework, and provides references for decision-makers to preserve the Earth's evolutionary history.

The tree of life (TOL) is severely threatened by climate and land-cover changes. Preserving the TOL is urgent, but has not been included in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental for biological conservation. However, we know little about the effectiveness of existing PAs in preserving the TOL of plants and how to prioritize PA expansion for better TOL preservation under future climate and land-cover changes. Here, using high-resolution distribution maps of 8732 woody species in China and phylogeny-based Zonation, we find that current PAs perform poorly in preserving the TOL both at the present and in 2070s. The geographical coverage of TOL branches by current PAs is ca 9%, and less than 3% of the identified priority areas for preserving the TOL are currently protected. Interestingly, the geographical coverage of TOL branches by PAs will be improved from 9 to 52–79% by the identified priority areas for PA expansion. Human pressures in the identified priority areas are high, leading to high cost for future PA expansion. We thus suggest that besides nature reserves and national parks, other effective area-based conservation measures should be considered. Our study argues for the inclusion of preserving the TOL in the post-2020 conservation framework, and provides references for decision-makers to preserve the Earth's evolutionary history.

The tree of life (TOL) is severely threatened by climate and land-cover changes. Preserving the TOL is urgent, but has not been included in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental for biological conservation. However, we know little about the effectiveness of existing PAs in preserving the TOL of plants and how to prioritize PA expansion for better TOL preservation under future climate and land-cover changes. Here, using high-resolution distribution maps of 8732 woody species in China and phylogeny-based Zonation, we find that current PAs perform poorly in preserving the TOL both at the present and in 2070s. The geographical coverage of TOL branches by current PAs is ca 9%, and less than 3% of the identified priority areas for preserving the TOL are currently protected. Interestingly, the geographical coverage of TOL branches by PAs will be improved from 9 to 52–79% by the identified priority areas for PA expansion. Human pressures in the identified priority areas are high, leading to high cost for future PA expansion. We thus suggest that besides nature reserves and national parks, other effective area-based conservation measures should be considered. Our study argues for the inclusion of preserving the TOL in the post-2020 conservation framework, and provides references for decision-makers to preserve the Earth's evolutionary history.

The tree of life (TOL) is severely threatened by climate and land-cover changes. Preserving the TOL is urgent, but has not been included in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental for biological conservation. However, we know little about the effectiveness of existing PAs in preserving the TOL of plants and how to prioritize PA expansion for better TOL preservation under future climate and land-cover changes. Here, using high-resolution distribution maps of 8732 woody species in China and phylogeny-based Zonation, we find that current PAs perform poorly in preserving the TOL both at the present and in 2070s. The geographical coverage of TOL branches by current PAs is ca 9%, and less than 3% of the identified priority areas for preserving the TOL are currently protected. Interestingly, the geographical coverage of TOL branches by PAs will be improved from 9 to 52–79% by the identified priority areas for PA expansion. Human pressures in the identified priority areas are high, leading to high cost for future PA expansion. We thus suggest that besides nature reserves and national parks, other effective area-based conservation measures should be considered. Our study argues for the inclusion of preserving the TOL in the post-2020 conservation framework, and provides references for decision-makers to preserve the Earth's evolutionary history.

The documentation of biodiversity distribution through species range identification is crucial for macroecology, biogeography, conservation, and restoration. However, for plants, species range maps remain scarce and often inaccurate. We present a novel approach to map species ranges at a global scale, integrating polygon mapping and species distribution modelling (SDM). We develop a polygon mapping algorithm by considering distances and nestedness of occurrences. We further apply an SDM approach considering multiple modelling algorithms, complexity levels, and pseudo-absence selections to map the species at a high spatial resolution and intersect it with the generated polygons. We use this approach to construct range maps for all 1957 species of Fagales and Pinales with data compilated from multiple sources. We construct high-resolution global species richness maps of these important plant clades, and document diversity hotspots for both clades in southern and south-western China, Central America, and Borneo. We validate the approach with two representative genera, Quercus and Pinus, using previously published coarser range maps, and find good agreement. By efficiently producing high-resolution range maps, our mapping approach offers a new tool in the field of macroecology for studying global species distribution patterns and supporting ongoing conservation efforts., Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata, 170 (6), ISSN:0013-8703, ISSN:1570-7458

A brand-new environmental-friendly magnetic cellulosic adsorbent MnFe2O4@Cel-g-p(AA-DMC) was synthesized by natural cellulose and easy-recovered magnetic particles MnFe2O4. Magnetic cellulose composites were characterized by SEM, TEM, XPS, XRD, BET, VSM, TGA and FTIR. The MnFe2O4NPs could activate the peroxymonosulfate (PMS) to produce various reactive oxygen species (ROS). Accordingly, magnetic cellulose composites can synergistic adsorption degradation of dyes from organic wastewater. The Congo red (CR) removal efficiency by MnFe2O4@Cel-g-p(AA-DMC) via PMS activated by MnFe2O4 reached a maximum of 96.9% and only 9% reduction after four adsorption-desorption cycles, indicating the stability and recoverability of adsorbent. It is worth noting that adsorbents can be quickly recovered from aqueous solution by external magnet owing to superior saturation magnetization (35.44 emu·g-1). A possible degradation mechanism of CR on the MnFe2O4@Cel-g-p(AA-DMC) composite was proposed. The results suggest that adsorbent display strong potential for the removal of CR dyes from organic wastewater.

The rapid progress of photorealistic synthesis techniques has reached a critical point where the boundary between real and manipulated images starts to blur. Recently, a mega-scale deep face forgery dataset, ForgeryNet which comprised of 2.9 million images and 221,247 videos has been released. It is by far the largest publicly available in terms of data-scale, manipulations (7 image-level approaches, 8 video-level approaches), perturbations (36 independent and more mixed perturbations), and annotations (6.3 million classification labels, 2.9 million manipulated area annotations, and 221,247 temporal forgery segment labels). This paper reports methods and results in the ForgeryNet - Face Forgery Analysis Challenge 2021, which employs the ForgeryNet benchmark. The model evaluation is conducted offline on the private test set. A total of 186 participants registered for the competition, and 11 teams made valid submissions. We will analyze the top-ranked solutions and present some discussion on future work directions., Comment: Technical report. Challenge website: https://competitions.codalab.org/competitions/33386

WebFG 2020 is an international challenge hosted by Nanjing University of Science and Technology, University of Edinburgh, Nanjing University, The University of Adelaide, Waseda University, etc. This challenge mainly pays attention to the webly-supervised fine-grained recognition problem. In the literature, existing deep learning methods highly rely on large-scale and high-quality labeled training data, which poses a limitation to their practicability and scalability in real world applications. In particular, for fine-grained recognition, a visual task that requires professional knowledge for labeling, the cost of acquiring labeled training data is quite high. It causes extreme difficulties to obtain a large amount of high-quality training data. Therefore, utilizing free web data to train fine-grained recognition models has attracted increasing attentions from researchers in the fine-grained community. This challenge expects participants to develop webly-supervised fine-grained recognition methods, which leverages web images in training fine-grained recognition models to ease the extreme dependence of deep learning methods on large-scale manually labeled datasets and to enhance their practicability and scalability. In this technical report, we have pulled together the top WebFG 2020 solutions of total 54 competing teams, and discuss what methods worked best across the set of winning teams, and what surprisingly did not help., This is a technical report of the WebFG 2020 challenge (https://sites.google.com/view/webfg2020) associated with ACCV 2020

Microbial carbon has recently been highlighted to play a key role in the formation and persistence of soil organic carbon, bearing significant implications for regulating ecosystem carbon stocks under global changes. However, microbial carbon distribution and the link between biomass and necromass components are poorly understood in natural soils, especially at depth. Here, we employ various microbial biomarkers, including phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs), amino sugars and glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs), to investigate the spatial distribution patterns of microbial biomass and necromass components in the top- (0–10 cm) versus subsoils (30–50 cm) across Chinese temperate grasslands along an aridity gradient. We find that bacterial necromass components are better preserved relative to bacterial biomass in the sub- than topsoil, possibly due to a stronger association of microbial necromass with calcium and/or lower nitrogen competition between plants and microbes at depth in these neutral-to-alkaline soils. As a result, there is a stronger link between bacterial necromass components (especially for core lipid branched GDGTs and muramic acid) and their producers (reflected by intact polar lipid-derived branched GDGTs) in the sub- than topsoil, while such a trend is not observed for fungi- or archaea-derived components. Furthermore, using linear mixed effect model analyses, we find that aridity index best explains the concentration variance of most microbial biomarkers in the topsoil, whereas edaphic properties (i.e., pH and macronutrients) also contribute significantly to their variance in the subsoil. These findings highlight different links between microbial necromass and biomass components and distinct preservation mechanisms for microbial carbon at different soil depths, which is crucial for improved understanding of microbial carbon sequestration potentials at different depths in a changing environment.

The 3-replica redundancy strategy is widely used to solve the problem of data reliability in large-scale distributed storage systems. However, its storage capacity utilization is only 33%. In this paper, a data placement algorithm based on fault-tolerant domain (FTD) is proposed. Owing to the fine-grained design of the FTD, the data reliability of systems using two replicas is comparable to that of current mainstream systems using three replicas, and the capacity utilization is increased to 50%. Moreover, the proposed FTD provides a new concept for the design of distributed storage systems. Distributed storage systems can take FTDs as the units for data placement, data migration, data repair and so on. In addition, fault detection can be performed independently and concurrently within the FTDs.

Visual tracking is typically solved as a discriminative learning problem that usually requires high-quality samples for online model adaptation. It is a critical and challenging problem to evaluate the training samples collected from previous predictions and employ sample selection by their quality to train the model. To tackle the above problem, we propose a joint discriminative learning scheme with the progressive multi-stage optimization policy of sample selection for robust visual tracking. The proposed scheme presents a novel time-weighted and detection-guided self-paced learning strategy for easy-to-hard sample selection, which is capable of tolerating relatively large intra-class variations while maintaining inter-class separability. Such a self-paced learning strategy is jointly optimized in conjunction with the discriminative tracking process, resulting in robust tracking results. Experiments on the benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed learning framework., accepted to IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics

The evolution of the energy difference between the neutron states $1i_{13/2}$ and $1h_{9/2}$ in the $N=82$ isotones and that between the proton states $1h_{11/2}$ and $1g_{7/2}$ in the $Z = 50$ isotopes are investigated within the framework of the relativistic Hartree-Fock theory, using the density-dependent effective interactions PKA1 and PKO$i$ ($i = 1 $, $ 2 $, $ 3 $). By identifying the contributions of the tensor force, which is naturally induced via the Fock terms, we find that the tensor force plays crucial roles in the evolution of the shell structure. The strength of the tensor force is also explored. It is found that moderately increasing the coupling strength of pion-nucleon coupling, i.e., $f_{\pi}$, will significantly improve the description of the shell-structure evolution. In particular, reducing the density dependence of $f_{\pi}$ is shown to be more preferable, in comparison to enlarging $f_{\pi}$ with a factor. This is in consistence with the idea of "tensor renormalization persistency" and provides valuable guidance for the development of nuclear energy density functional in the relativistic framework., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables

An experimental study on the bond behavior of steel bar in air-entrained recycled coarse aggregate concrete (RCAC) in fresh water and sea water under the action of fast freeze-thaw (F-T) cycles was carried out. A total of 63 center pull-out specimens, including 9 unfreezed specimens and 54 freezed specimens which suffered from 25, 50 or 75 cycles of fast F-T according to standard GB/T 50082-2009, were constructed and tested to investigate the effect of the following parameters: (a) number of fast F-T cycles, (b) solution, (c) diameter of steel bar on the bond behavior of steel bar in air-entrained RCAC. The experimental results were compared with bond behavior of steel bar in RCAC conducted by the author. By comparison, the bond behavior is found to be improved greatly through mixed air-entraining agent into RCAC. A calculation expression of bond strength of steel bar in air-entrained RCAC considering number of fast F-T cycles is proposed based on the experimental results obtained in this paper.

Using chemical co-precipitation method to make a magnetic magnetite, dithiocarbamate-multifunctional embedded in the carboxyl group to synthesize a novel nanocomposite Fe3O4@SiO2-DTPA-DTC for adsorption the Co2+ from aqueous solution. The Fe3O4@SiO2-DTPA-DTC composites were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, FT-IR, XPS, TGA and VSM in this study. From the adsorption study, removal efficiency of Co2+ on Fe3O4@SiO2-DTPA-DTC is up to 98%. The adsorption reached equilibrium within 5 min. The optimum pH was recorded to be 6.0. The adsorption process fitted with Freundlich isotherm model and adsorption mechanism is chemical adsorption. After five-cycle adsorption test, the nanocomposites maintain high removal efficiency. The results showed that the Fe3O4@SiO2-DTPA-DTC can be considered as a promising adsorbent to adsorption the Co2+ from aqueous solution.

This study presents a novel texture descriptor for curve matching, called ternary contextualised histogram pattern (TCHP), which is based on the intensity order histogram and local ternary homogeneity patterns. Local ternary homogeneity patterns are firstly adopted to represent the texture features of the curve's neighbourhood, which ensures the robustness and distinctiveness of the descriptor. The proposed TCHP is constructed by three steps: firstly, the curve support region without assigning a dominant orientation is determined and then partitioned into several ordinal bins according to the intensity permutation; then, ternary contextualised histogram (TCH) feature of each point is generated by computing the statistics of the predefined ternary homogeneity patterns; finally, TCHP is achieved by accumulating the TCHs of points in each order bin. Experiments show TCHP can effectively characterise the texture features of the curve's neighbourhood and performs robust to image rotation, viewpoint change and illumination change.

A gesture recognition based Human-Computer Interaction control system is developed via LabVIEW in this paper. Furthermore, to solve the existing problems of lower precision and poor real-time ability in gesture recognition algorithm, an improved PSO-SVM classification algorithm of hand-gesture recognition is proposed. Firstly, the gesture sample data is collected by using five bending sensor of data glove, then, in order to improve the recognized precision, the data collected is preprocessed and the optimize the SVM kernel parameter value is found by using the improved PSO algorithm. Finally, the recognized hand-gesture is divided into numbered 1–11 control status values, and sent to the sample robot controller by wireless transmission module and achieving the realization of sampling robot motion control. The simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of designed method on

This paper performs a comprehensive and comparative evaluation of the state of the art local features for the task of image based 3D reconstruction. The evaluated local features cover the recently developed ones by using powerful machine learning techniques and the elaborately designed handcrafted features. To obtain a comprehensive evaluation, we choose to include both float type features and binary ones. Meanwhile, two kinds of datasets have been used in this evaluation. One is a dataset of many different scene types with groundtruth 3D points, containing images of different scenes captured at fixed positions, for quantitative performance evaluation of different local features in the controlled image capturing situations. The other dataset contains Internet scale image sets of several landmarks with a lot of unrelated images, which is used for qualitative performance evaluation of different local features in the free image collection situations. Our experimental results show that binary features are competent to reconstruct scenes from controlled image sequences with only a fraction of processing time compared to use float type features. However, for the case of large scale image set with many distracting images, float type features show a clear advantage over binary ones.

The inductance gradient is one of the most important indexes to evaluate the performance of the electromagnetic railgun. It has important theoretical and practical value to research the inductance gradient and its influencing parameters. According to the Biot-Savat's law and the principle of virtual work, the expression of the inductance gradient considered the skin effect of current has been given, and by using Monte-Carlo algorithm the numerical solution has been calculated. In order to verify the correctness and accuracy of the model, the finite element simulation software is used to compare with the numerical solution. Based on the model, the influencing parameters of inductance gradient has been analyzed, and the variation of the inductance gradient has been summarized. The results show that, the inductance gradient decrease with the separation distance between the inside and outside rail, decrease with the height and width of the rail, increase with the displacement of the armature then tend to constant. The research can provide a reference for the design of series-connected augmented railgun.

A new type of air-driven multi-fingered dexterous hand, named ZJUT Hand, is proposed. ZJUT Hand has good passive flexibility and can make up for the deficiency of existing dexterous hands in some ways. A new method for grasping model identification based ANFIS is proposed. Simulation experimental results show that the method can easily establish the model of the target objects, and has very good recognition accuracy and convergence. Equivalent rules of target objects are presented and greatly improve the efficiency of identification. A general grasp planning program of multi-fingered dexterous hand is proposed. Finally, the grasp planning experiments for ZJUT Hand is completed. Experimental results show that ZJUT Hand is able to construct the models of two typical target objects.

Four-dimensional computed tomography (4D-CT) has been widely used in radiation therapy to assess patient-specific breathing motion for determining individual safety margins. However, it has two major drawbacks: low soft-tissue contrast and an excessive imaging dose to the patient. This research aimed to develop a clinically feasible four-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging (4D-MRI) technique to overcome these limitations.The proposed 4D-MRI technique was achieved by continuously acquiring axial images throughout the breathing cycle using fast 2D cine-MR imaging, and then retrospectively sorting the images by respiratory phase. The key component of the technique was the use of body area (BA) of the axial MR images as an internal respiratory surrogate to extract the breathing signal. The validation of the BA surrogate was performed using 4D-CT images of 12 cancer patients by comparing the respiratory phases determined using the BA method to those determined clinically using the Real-time position management (RPM) system. The feasibility of the 4D-MRI technique was tested on a dynamic motion phantom, the 4D extended Cardiac Torso (XCAT) digital phantom, and two healthy human subjects.Respiratory phases determined from the BA matched closely to those determined from the RPM: mean (± SD) difference in phase: -3.9% (± 6.4%); mean (± SD) absolute difference in phase: 10.40% (± 3.3%); mean (± SD) correlation coefficient: 0.93 (± 0.04). In the motion phantom study, 4D-MRI clearly showed the sinusoidal motion of the phantom; image artifacts observed were minimal to none. Motion trajectories measured from 4D-MRI and 2D cine-MRI (used as a reference) matched excellently: the mean (± SD) absolute difference in motion amplitude: -0.3 (± 0.5) mm. In the 4D-XCAT phantom study, the simulated "4D-MRI" images showed good consistency with the original 4D-XCAT phantom images. The motion trajectory of the hypothesized "tumor" matched excellently between the two, with a mean (± SD) absolute difference in motion amplitude of 0.5 (± 0.4) mm. 4D-MRI was able to reveal the respiratory motion of internal organs in both human subjects; superior-inferior (SI) maximum motion of the left kidney of Subject #1 and the diaphragm of Subject #2 measured from 4D-MRI was 0.88 and 1.32 cm, respectively.Preliminary results of our study demonstrated the feasibility of a novel retrospective 4D-MRI technique that uses body area as a respiratory surrogate.

This paper deals with the analysis of deformation tendencies in the drawing of plate with a hole and offers a corresponding technological procedure as well as the equations for quantitative calculation. Also, a computer block-diagram is provided that is consistent with various lubrication conditions used in production. By means of running the software concerned and from the results of experimental research, it is established that the technological procedure and the equations presented in this paper can solve various problems in the drawing of a plate with a hole, both in production and in the procedures of product design. The software is suitable for all materials used for drawing.

This paper deals with the analysis of deformation tendencies on drawing plate with hole and offers a corresponding technological procedure as well as the quantitative calculation formulas. Also, a computer block diagram has been provided in accordance with various lubrication conditions in production. Through running the software concerned and experimental research, it is proved that the technological procedure and formulas presented in this paper may solve various problems for drawing the plate with hole both in production and in products design procedure. This software is suitable for any drawing materials.

This paper deals with the theoretical analysis of the deformation tendency in the drawing of a sheet with a hole in a combined forming process. A mathematical model for calculating the condition of no deformation of the hole in the drawing of a sheet with a hole has been obtained and experimental research has been undertaken. The results obtained in the paper may provide significant information for practical production. In the production of a drawn component with a bottom hole, where the accuracy of the latter has to be ensured, the most common method is to form a recessed part first, then punch the hole. To date, the authors cannot find any papers that indicate definitely whether the diameter of the hole may influence the deformation of the workpiece and thus change its own value. Obviously, if the hole diameter is unchanged during drawing, the hole may be punched before drawing: it is much easier to punch a hole on a sheet blank than on a recessed part. Moreover, the existence of the hole makes it more convenient to position the blank. Hence, it is absolutely significant to study quantitatively the deformation tendency of the hole during drawing.