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We utilized a CO2 laser to carve long-period fiber gratings (LPFGs) on polarization-maintaining fibers (PMFs) along the fast and slow axes. Based on the spectra of LPFGs written along two different directions, we found that when LPFG was written along the fast axis, the spectrum had lower insertion loss and fewer side lobes. We investigated the temperature and twist characteristics of the embedded structure of the LPFG and Sagnac loop and ultimately obtained a temperature sensitivity of −0.295 nm/°C and a twist sensitivity of 0.87 nm/(rad/m) for the LPFG. Compared to the single LPFG, the embedded structure of the LPFG and Sagnac loop demonstrates a significant improvement in temperature and twist sensitivities. Additionally, it also possesses the capability to discern the direction of the twist. The embedded structure displays numerous advantages, including easy fabrication, low cost, good robustness, a wide range, and high sensitivity. These features make it highly suitable for applications in structural health monitoring and other related fields.

Optical fiber Fabry-Pérot (FP) interferometer sensors have long been the focus of researchers in sensing applications because of their simple light path, low cost, compact size and convenient manufacturing methods. A miniature and highly sensitive optic fiber temperature sensor using an ultraviolet glue-filled FP cavity in a hollow capillary fiber is proposed. The sensor is fabricated by fusion splicing a single-mode fiber with a hollow capillary fiber, which is filled with ultraviolet glue to form a FP cavity. The sensor has a good linear response in the temperature testing and high-temperature sensitivity, which can be increased with the length of the FP cavity. The experimental results show that the temperature sensitivity reaches 1.174 nm/°C with a high linear response in the range of 30–60 °C. In addition, this sensor is insensitive to pressure and can be highly suitable for real-time water temperature monitoring for ocean research. The proposed ultraviolet glue-filled structure has the advantages of easy fabrication, high-temperature sensitivity, low cost and an arbitrary length of capillary, which has broad application prospects for marine survey technology, biological diagnostics and environmental monitoring.

Abstract Background Wnt signaling is a critical determinant for the maintenance and differentiation of stem/progenitor cells, including trophoblast stem cells during placental development. Hyperactivation of Wnt signaling has been shown to be associated with human trophoblast diseases. However, little is known about the impact and underlying mechanisms of excessive Wnt signaling during placental trophoblast development. Results In the present work, we observed that two inhibitors of Wnt signaling, secreted frizzled-related proteins 1 and 5 (Sfrp1 and Sfrp5), are highly expressed in the extraembryonic trophoblast suggesting possible roles in early placental development. Sfrp1 and Sfrp5 double knockout mice exhibited disturbed trophoblast differentiation in the placental ectoplacental cone (EPC), which contains the precursors of trophoblast giant cells (TGCs) and spongiotrophoblast cells. In addition, we employed mouse models expressing a truncated β-catenin with exon 3 deletion globally and trophoblast-specifically, as well as trophoblast stem cell lines, and unraveled that hyperactivation of canonical Wnt pathway exhausted the trophoblast precursor cells in the EPC, resulting in the overabundance of giant cells at the expense of spongiotrophoblast cells. Further examination uncovered that hyperactivation of canonical Wnt pathway disturbed trophoblast differentiation in the EPC via repressing Ascl2 expression. Conclusions Our investigations provide new insights that the homeostasis of canonical Wnt-β-catenin signaling is essential for EPC trophoblast differentiation during placental development, which is of high clinical relevance, since aberrant Wnt signaling is often associated with trophoblast-related diseases.

Optical fiber Fabry–Perot sensors have long been the focus of researchers in sensing applications because of their unique advantages, including highly effective, simple light path, low cost, compact size, and easy fabrication. Microcantilever-based devices have been extensively explored in chemical and biological fields while the interrogation methods are still a challenge. The optical fiber probe microcantilever sensor is constructed with a microcantilever beam on an optical fiber, which opens the door for highly sensitive, as well as convenient readout. In this review, we summarize a wide variety of optical fiber probe microcantilever sensors based on Fabry–Perot interferometer. The operation principle of the optical fiber probe microcantilever sensor is introduced. The fabrication methods, materials, and sensing applications of an optical fiber probe microcantilever sensor with different structures are discussed in detail. The performances of different kinds of fiber probe microcantilever sensors are compared. We also prospect the possible development direction of optical fiber microcantilever sensors.

In this paper, a fiber probe high-temperature sensor based on the Michelson Interferometer (MI) is proposed and experimentally verified. We used a fiber splicing machine to fabricate a taper of the single-mode fiber (SMF) end. The high order modes were excited at the taper, so that different modes were transmitted forward in the fiber and reflected by the end face of the fiber and then recoupled back to the fiber core to form MI. For comparison, we also coated a thin gold film on the fiber end to improve the reflectivity, and the reflection intensity was improved by 16 dB. The experimental results showed that the temperature sensitivity at 1506 nm was 80 pm/°C (100 °C~450 °C) and 109 pm/°C (450 °C~900 °C). The repeated heating and cooling processes showed that the MI structure had good stability at a temperature up to 900 °C. This fiber probe sensor has the advantages of a small size, simple structure, easy manufacturing, good stability, and broad application prospects in industrial and other environments.

A novel and simple sensor based on fiber-optic modal interferometer fabricated by a segment of low elliptical hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber for simultaneous temperature and twist measurements is demonstrated. Meanwhile the sensor can also measure the twist angle and determine the twist direction simultaneously. The mode distribution of EHC-PBGF is demonstrated both in theory and experiments. There is an obvious difference of two transmission dips on the temperature and twist. The twist sensitivities of Dip 1 and Dip 2 are obtained to be −31.95 and −585.8 pm/(rad/m), respectively. The temperature sensitivities are 12.99 pm/°C for Dip 1 and 5.09 pm/°C for Dip 2, respectively. Two parameters of twist and temperature can be distinguished and measured simultaneously by using a sensing matrix. Meanwhile the structure is found to be weakly sensitive to the axial strain. It has the advantage of avoiding the crosstalk of strain in the applications.

This research article presents a data-driven approach for detecting bursts in water distribution networks (WDNs). The framework uses spatiotemporal information from monitoring pressure and unsupervised learning model. This approach employs three stages: (1) benchmark dataset acquisition, (2) spatiotemporal information analysis, and (3) burst detection model construction. First, the benchmark datasets were the normal dataset initially obtained by the clustering algorithm. Second, spatiotemporal information features are extracted from multimoment time windows from multiple sensors, including the distance and shape features. Third, burst detection was performed based on the isolation forest technique. A WDN is used to evaluate the performance of the method. Results show that the method can effectively detect the burst. HIGHLIGHTS Burst detection method based on the unlabeled monitoring data.; Multiple consecutive moments of data.; Spatial data information for multiple meters.; Two dimensions of data features.; The burst detection method trained with monitoring data.;

The detection of leaks in water distribution systems (WDS) has always been a major concern for urban water supply companies. However, the performance of traditional leak detection classifiers highly depends on the effectiveness of handcrafted features. An alternative method is to use a convolutional neural network (CNN) to process raw signals directly to obtain deep representations that may ignore prior information about the leakage. The study proposes a novel approach to leak detection in WDS using ground acoustic signals, and demonstrates the effectiveness of combining handcrafted features and deep representations using a pseudo-siamese convolutional neural network (PCNN) model. Mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCCs) are selected as additional handcrafted features to traditional time- and frequency-domain (TFD) features. Based on the results of the model performance evaluation, the optimized PCNN model performs better than other methods, with an accuracy of 99.70%. A quantitative analysis of the PCNN demonstrates the effectiveness of handcrafted features and deep representations. Model visualization and interpretation analysis show that feature fusion occurs in the feedforward of the PCNN, hence improving the model’s performance. The present work can effectively support the development of novel intelligent leak detection equipment for WDS.

We demonstrate a passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) by using the smallest single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with a diameter of 0.3 nm as the saturable absorber. These ultrasmall SWNTs are fabricated in the elliptical nanochannels of a ZnAPO4-11 (AEL) single crystal. By placing an AEL crystal into an EDFL cavity pumped by a 980 nm laser diode, stable passive mode-locking is achieved for a threshold pump power of 280 mW, and 73 ps pulses at 1563.2 nm with a repetition rate of 26.79 MHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate a saturable absorber (SA) based on cladding-filled graphene in a specially designed and manufactured photonic crystal fiber (PCF) for the first time. The saturation absorption property is achieved through the evanescent coupling between the guided light and the cladding-filled graphene layers. To boost the mutual interaction, the PCF is designed to contain five large air holes in the cladding and small-core region. Employing this graphene-PCF SA device, we construct an erbium-doped all-fiber laser oscillator and achieve mode-locked operation. This device can pave the way for high power and all-fiber applications of photonics with graphene with some unique advantages, such as single-mode operation, nonlinearity enhancement, high-power tolerance, environmental robustness, all-fiber configuration, and easy fabrication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long period fiber grating (LPFG) upon all-solid photonic bandgap fiber with a bandgap at 1.068 to 1.180 µm is fabricated by high-frequency CO2 laser pulse irradiation. The resonance wavelength is 1335.76 nm with a modulation depth of 15 dB and a 3-dB bandwidth of 2.6 nm. Bending response of the LPFG is dependent on the axial orientations and the input polarization states. The maximum bending sensitivity is achieved at 52 nm/m. The temperature response is weakly dependent on the polarization state, and is achieved around 20.47 pm/°C at a 0-deg polarization azimuth. The bending measurement error resulting from temperature can be negligible within the range of 0.4 to 0.82 m-1. It is be beneficial to avoiding cross-sensitivity of temperature in bending measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Femtosecond laser pulses with ultrashort time duration and ultrahigh peak power can cause the refractive index change in transparent materials and micron scale machining precision. Long period fiber gratings (LPFGs) with different periods and different grating lengths in the standard single mode fiber were fabricated, using laser direct writing method, by femtosecond laser pulses with pulse width of 200 fs at a center wavelength of 800 nm in air. The transmission spectra were studied in the range of 1510 nm to 1610 nm. Two LPFGs with period of 400 μm, and 550 μm, respectively fabricated with same irradiation power of 275 mW, were shown. The loss peak of 1552 nm, the transmission loss of 16 dB and the FWHM of 20 nm were obtained when the period of LPFG was 400 μm, while the loss peak of 1588 nm, the transmission loss of 20 dB and the FWHM of 25 nm were achieved when the period of LPFG was 550 μm. According to the theory of mode field coupling for long period grating, it was indicated that the modulation of refractive index Δn was in the level of 10-2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A diode-end-pumped simultaneously Q-switched and mode-locked (QML) YVO4/Nd:YVO4/YVO4 self-Raman second-Stokes laser was demonstrated for the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge. The shortest mode-locked pulse width of the laser at 1313.4 nm was found to be ~5.7 ps. The maximum average output power, highest pulse energy and highest peak power were found to be 1.33 W, 14.63 μJ and 2.44 MW, respectively. The experimental results confirm that a nonlinear Raman process can greatly compress the QML Stokes pulse width. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]