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The photoelectron image and photoelectron spectrum of NUO2− at 310 nm and optimized geometries for different electronic states.

Background Testa color is an important trait of peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) which is closely related with the nutritional and commercial value. Pink and red are main color of peanut testa. However, the genetic mechanism of testa color regulation in peanut is not fully understood. To elucidate a clear picture of peanut testa regulatory model, samples of pink cultivar (Y9102), red cultivar (ZH12), and two RNA pools (bulk red and bulk pink) constructed from F4 lines of Y9102 x ZH12 were compared through a bulk RNA-seq approach. Results A total of 2992 differential expressed genes (DEGs) were identified among which 317 and 1334 were up-regulated and 225 and 1116 were down-regulated in the bulk red-vs-bulk pink RNA pools and Y9102-vs-ZH12, respectively. KEGG analysis indicates that these genes were divided into significantly enriched metabolic pathways including phenylpropanoid, flavonoid/anthocyanin, isoflavonoid and lignin biosynthetic pathways. Notably, the expression of the anthocyanin upstream regulatory genes PAL, CHS, and CHI was upregulated in pink and red testa peanuts, indicating that their regulation may occur before to the advent of testa pigmentation. However, the differential expression of down-stream regulatory genes including F3H, DFR, and ANS revealed that deepening of testa color not only depends on their gene expression bias, but also linked with FLS inhibition. In addition, the down-regulation of HCT, IFS, HID, 7-IOMT, and I2’H genes provided an alternative mechanism for promoting anthocyanin accumulation via perturbation of lignin and isoflavone pathways. Furthermore, the co-expression module of MYB, bHLH, and WRKY transcription factors also suggested a fascinating transcriptional activation complex, where MYB-bHLH could utilize WRKY as a co-option during the testa color regulation by augmenting anthocyanin biosynthesis in peanut. Conclusions These findings reveal candidate functional genes and potential strategies for the manipulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis to improve peanut varieties with desirable testa color.

Objectives Patients suffering from colon cancer with diabetes (CRC-Diabetes) are more likely to metastasis and relapse when compare with colon cancer (CRC). However, there is a lack of a prognostic model and efficient treatment for CRC-Diabetes. Based on these clinical requirements, this study built a prognosis model for CRC-Diabetes and analyzed whether quercetin could be used for CRC-Diabetes treatment through network pharmacology, Molecular dynamics simulation and bioinformatics . Methods Firstly, the differentially expressed genes (DEG) in colon cancer and the related genes in diabetes were screened, and the intersection genes of the two gene clusters were used to construct the prognosis model. Then the potential prognostic markers were screened by univariate Cox proportional hazards regression and lasso regression. Furthermore, multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression was used to construct the prognosis model of CRC-Diabetes. Consequently, quercetin related target genes were screened. The intersection of quercetin target genes with CRC-Diabetes genes was used to find the potential target for quercetin in the treatment of CRC-Diabetes. Molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation were used to screen reliable targets for quercetin in treatment of CRC-Diabetes. Results There are 1008 intersection genes between colon cancer and diabetes. The constructed multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression model based on the above genes shows that the ROC values of 1, 3 and 5 years are 0.787, 0.793 and 0.85 respectively. There are 101 intersection genes in quercetin and CRC-Diabetes. Through molecular docking, seven proteins (HMOX1, ACE, MYC, MMP9, PLAU, MMP3, MMP1) were selected as potential targets of quercetin. We conducted molecular dynamics simulation of quercetin and the above proteins respectively, and found that the binding structure of quercetin with MMP9 and PLAU was relatively stable, which can be considered as a reliable target for quercetin treatment of CRC-Diabetes. Conclusions Based on TCGA, TTD, Drugbank and other databases, a prediction model that can effectively predict the prognosis of colon cancer patients with diabetes was constructed. Quercetin can treat colon cancer patients with diabetes by influencing PLAU and its downstream pathways.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects approximately 10% of the global population. Muscle atrophy occurs in patients with almost all types of CKD, and the gut microbiome is closely related to protein consumption during chronic renal failure (CRF). This study investigated the effects of Bacteroides plebeius on protein energy consumption in rats with CKD, and our results suggest that Bacteroides plebeius may combat muscle atrophy through the Mystn/ActRIIB/SMAD2 pathway. A total of 5/6 Nx rats were used as a model of muscle wasting in CKD. The rats with muscle wasting were administered Bacteroides plebeius (2 × 10

A new process to crystallize amorphous silicon without melting and the generation of excessive heating of nearby components is presented. We propose the addition of a molybdenum layer to improve the quality of the laser-induced crystallization over that achieved by direct irradiation of silicon alone. The advantages are that it allows the control of crystallite size by varying the applied fluence of a near-infrared femtosecond laser. It offers two fluence regimes for nanocrystallization and polycrystallization with small and large crystallite sizes, respectively. The high repetition rate of the compact femtosecond laser source enables high-quality crystallization over large areas. In this proposed method, a multilayer structure is irradiated with a single femtosecond laser pulse. The multilayer structure includes a substrate, a target amorphous Si layer coated with an additional molybdenum thin film. The Si layer is crystallized by irradiating the Mo layer at different fluence regimes. The transfer of energy from the irradiated Mo layer to the Si film causes the crystallization of amorphous Si at low temperatures (∼700 K). Numerical simulations were carried out to estimate the electron and lattice temperatures for different fluence regimes using a two-temperature model. The roles of direct phonon transport and inelastic electron scattering at the Mo-Si interface were considered in the transfer of energy from the Mo to the Si film. The simulations confirm the experimental evidence that amorphous Si was crystallized in an all-solid-state process at temperatures lower than the melting point of Si, which is consistent with the results from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Raman. The formation of crystallized Si with controlled crystallite size after laser treatment can lead to longer mean free paths for carriers and increased electrical conductivity.

Narrow-band-gap III-V semiconductor nanowires (NWs) with a suitable band structure and strong light-trapping ability are ideal for high-efficiency low-cost solar water-splitting systems. However, due to their nanoscale dimension, they suffer more severe corrosion by the electrolyte solution than the thin-film counterparts. Thus, short-term durability is the major obstacle for using these NWs for practical water-splitting applications. Here, we demonstrated for the first time that a thin layer (∼7 nm thick) of compact TiO2 deposited by atomic layer deposition can provide robust protection to III-V NWs. The protected GaAs NWs maintain 91.4% of its photoluminescence intensity after 14 months of storage in ambient atmosphere, which suggests the TiO2 layer is pinhole-free. Working as a photocathode for water splitting, they exhibited a 45% larger photocurrent density compared with unprotected counterparts and a high Faraday efficiency of 91% and can also maintain a record-long highly stable performance among narrow-band-gap III-V NW photoelectrodes; after 67 h photoelectrochemical stability test reaction in a strong acid electrolyte solution (pH = 1), they show no apparent indication of corrosion, which is in stark contrast to the unprotected NWs that fully failed after 35 h. These findings provide an effective way to enhance both stability and performance of III-V NW-based photoelectrodes, which are highly important for practical applications in solar-energy-based water-splitting systems.

In heat-denatured peanut meal (HDPM), proteins are denatured and polysaccharides are degraded and browned. It can only be used as feed or fertilizer, and not using it as such is a waste of resources. To achieve high-value HDPM use, solid-state fermentation by Aspergillus oryzae and Saccharomyces cerevisiae was investigated. Conditions were optimized by response surface methodology and high-value antioxidant peptides (APs), nonstarch polysaccharides (NSPs), and fermentation products of heat-denatured peanut meal (FHDPM) were obtained. Optimal culture conditions were strain ratio 6:5, inoculation volume 2 mL, and fermentation for 42 h at 35 °C. Under optimal conditions, the theoretical soluble nitrogen concentration, 1,1-Diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging rate, hydroxyl free radical scavenging rate, and NSP yield reached 44.78 mg/mL, 62.44%, 94.95%, and 3.73%, respectively; however, their experimental values were 46.80 ± 1.23 mg/mL, 72.18 ± 0.78%, 96.79 ± 0.55%, and 4.42 ± 0.21%, respectively. NSPs, Aps, and FHDPM exhibited four higher classes and eight types of antioxidant activities. Moreover, levels of amino acids and trace elements, and physicochemical properties including emulsion activity index, emulsion stability index, foam capacity, foam stability, water holding capacity, and oil absorption capacity were enhanced by fermentation. The results indicate that APs and NSPs could serve as promising natural antioxidants in the food industry, and FHDPM could be used as a new type of high-value nutritional product in the feed industry. The findings provide new insight for comprehensive processing and utilization of HDPM.

Soft actuators designed from stimuli-responsive polymers often possess a certain amount of bionic functionality because of their versatile deformation. Liquid-crystalline polymers (LCPs) and their composites are among the most fascinating materials for soft actuators due to their great advantages of flexible structure design and easy regulation. In this Spotlight on Applications, we mainly focus on our group's latest research progress in soft actuators based on LCPs and their composites. Some representative research findings from other groups are also included for a better understanding of this research field. Above all, the essential principles for the responsive behavior and reconfigurable performance of the soft actuators are discussed, from the perspective of material morphology and structure design. Further on, we analyze recent work on how to precisely regulate the responsive modes and quantify the operating parameters of soft actuators. Finally, some application examples are given to demonstrate well-designed soft actuators with different functions under varied working environments, which is expected to provide inspiration for future research in developing more intelligent and multifunctional integrated soft actuators.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is the leading cause of end-stage renal disease, so there is an urgent need to suppress its development at early stage. Shenkang pills (SKP) are a hospital prescription selected and optimized from effective traditional Chinese medicinal formulas for clinical treatment of DN. In the present study, liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight-mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS) and total contents qualification were applied to generate a quality control standard of SKP. For verifying the therapeutic effects of SKP, db/db mice were administered intragastrically with SKP at a human-equivalent dose (1.82 g/kg) for 4 weeks. Moreover, the underlying mechanism of SKP were analyzed by the renal RNA sequencing and network pharmacology. LC-Q-TOF-MS identified 46 compounds in SKP. The total polysaccharide and organic acid content in SKP were 4.60 and 0.11 mg/ml, respectively, while the total flavonoid, saponin, and protein content were 0.25, 0.31, and 0.42 mg/ml, respectively. Treatment of SKP significantly reduced fasting blood glucose, improved renal function, and ameliorated glomerulosclerosis and focal foot processes effacement in db/db mice. In addition, SKP protected podocytes from injury by increasing nephrin and podocin expression. Furthermore, transcriptome analyses revealed that 430 and 288 genes were up and down-regulated in mice treated with SKP, relative to untreated controls. Gene ontology enrichment analysis revealed that the differentially expressed genes mainly involved in modulation of cell division and chromosome segregation. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis and network pharmacology analysis indicated that aurora kinase B (AURKB), Rac GTPase activating protein 1 (RacGAP1) and SHC binding, and spindle associated 1 (shcbp1) might be the core targets of SKP. This protein and Ras homolog family member A (RhoA) were found overexpression in db/db mice, but significantly decreased with SKP treatment. We conclude that SKP can effectively treat early-stage DN and improve renal podocyte dysfunction. The mechanism may involve down-regulation of the AURKB/RacGAP1/RhoA pathway.

Skeletal muscle atrophy is a common and serious complication of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Oxidative stress and autophagy are the primary molecular mechanisms involved in muscle atrophy. Calycosin, a major component of Radix astragali, exerts anti‐inflammatory, anti‐oxidative stress and anti‐autophagy effects. We investigated the effects and mechanisms of calycosin on skeletal muscle atrophy in vivo and in vitro. 5/6 nephrectomy (5/6 Nx) rats were used as a model of CKD. We evaluated bodyweight and levels of serum creatinine (SCr), blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and serum albumin (Alb). H&E staining, cell apoptosis, oxidative stress biomarkers, autophagosome and LC3A/B levels were performed and evaluated in skeletal muscle of CKD rat. Calycosin treatment improved bodyweight and renal function, alleviated muscle atrophy (decreased the levels of MuRF1 and MAFbx), increased superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH‐Px) activity and reduced malondialdehyde (MDA) levels in skeletal muscle of CKD rats. Importantly, calycosin reduced autophagosome formation, down‐regulated the expression of LC3A/B and ATG7 through inhibition of AMPK and FOXO3a, and increased SKP2, which resulted in decreased expression of CARM1, H3R17me2a. Similar results were observed in C2C12 cells treated with TNF‐α and calycosin. Our findings showed that calycosin inhibited oxidative stress and autophagy in CKD induced skeletal muscle atrophy and in TNF‐α‐induced C2C12 myotube atrophy, partially by regulating the AMPK/SKP2/CARM1 signalling pathway.

Inverted perovskite solar cells (p-i-n PSCs) have been fascinated due to rapid progress of performance in recent years. PEDOT:PSS is commonly used hole transport material (HTM) in p-i-n PSCs having hygroscopic and acidic nature that leads towards poor performance of device. Therefore, it is necessary to replace PEDOT:PSS with stable HTM. In this paper, theoretical study is carried out to investigate physical parameters that can affect the performance of p-i-n PSCs with copper iodide (CuI) as HTM. These parameters include the effect of doping density of electron transport material (ETM), absorber and HTM as well as defect density and thickness of absorber on the performance of p-i-n PSCs. Hole mobility and thickness of HTM are also investigated. It is found that performance of p-i-n PSCs is strongly dependent on defect density and thickness of absorber. Upon final optimization, device attains PCE of more than 21% which is encouraging.

The fabrication of low-cost and mechanically robust flexible electronic patterns has increasingly gained attention due to their growing applications in flexible displays, touch screen panels, medical devices, and solar cells. Such applications require cost-effective deposition of metals in a well-controlled manner potentially using nanoparticles (NPs). The presence of solvent and precursors in NP based inks impacts the electrical conductivity of the printed pattern and a post-processing heating step is typically performed to restore the electrical properties and structure of the material. We report printing with picolitre droplet volumes of silver (Ag) NPs on flexible substrates using an acoustic microdroplet dispenser. The low-cost, controlled deposition of Ag ink is performed at room temperature on photopaper, polyimide and clear polyimide substrates. A localized, ultrashort pulsed laser with minimal heat affected zone is employed to sinter printed Ag patterns. For comparison, oven sintering is performed, and the results are analysed with scanning electron microscopy, four-point probe and Hall measurements. The femtosecond laser sintering revealed highly organized, connected nanostructure that is not achievable with oven heating. A significant decrease in sheet resistance, up to 93% in Ag NPs on clear polyimide confirms the laser sintering improves the connectivity of the printed film and as a result, the electrical properties are enhanced. The surface morphology attained by the laser sintering process is interpreted to be due to a joining of NPs as a result of a solid-state diffusion process in the near surface region of NPs.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects approximately 10% of the global population. The abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila (AKK) is significantly reduced in CKD patients.This study investigated the effects of AKK bacteria on kidney damage and the renal interstitium in rats with CKD.CKD model 5/6 nephrectomy rats were used. CKD rats were supplemented with AKK (2 × 10AKK administration significantly suppressed epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), and high-throughput 16S rRNA pyrosequencing showed that AKK supplementation restored the disordered intestinal microecology in CKD rats. AKK also enhanced the intestinal mucosal barrier function. AKK may regulate the intestinal microecology and reduce renal interstitial fibrosis by enhancing the abundance of probiotics and reducing damage to the intestinal mucosal barrier.The results suggest that AKK administration could be a novel therapeutic strategy for treating renal fibrosis and CKD.

Di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP) is commonly used plasticizers in agricultural plastic films, and is a priority pollutant due to its toxicity to human health. A newly isolated strain J2, which used DBP as its sole carbon source, was screened from peanut filed soil by continuous enrichment cultivation. Based on morphological, physiological characteristics and 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis (GenBank accession No. OK598965), it was identified as Priestia sp. J2. The research results revealed the optimal conditions for DBP degradation as 35 oC and pH 8.0. The strain could effectively degrade 97.6% DBP within 5 days. Substrate tests showed that strain J2 could utilize shorter side-chained PAEs, but could not utilize long-chained PAEs. The whole genome comprises a complete chromosome of 5,067,299 bp and four plasmids of 147,924 bp, 75,940 bp, 11,604 bp, 11,333 bp (GenBank accession No. CP086208-CP086212). This genome harbors 5,585 predicted protein-encoding genes, 130 tRNA genes, and 42 rRNA genes. Gene annotation analyses showed a DBP-degrading gene contained an open reading frame of 930 bp, and the enzyme was named Est-J2-1. The amino acid sequence of the Est-J2-1 exhibited no significant homology with those of reported DBP-degrading enzymes, suggesting the enzyme is a novel enzyme. The gene of Est-J2-1 was found to be located on the chromosome. This study provided strain resource for DBP removal from farmland and other environments.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is the leading cause of end-stage renal disease, so there is an urgent need to suppress its development at early stage. Shenkang pills (SKP) are a hospital prescription selected and optimized from effective traditional Chinese medicinal formulas for clinical treatment of DN. In the present study, liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight-mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS) and total contents qualification were applied to generate a quality control standard of SKP. For verifying the therapeutic effects of SKP, db/db mice were administered intragastrically with SKP at a human-equivalent dose (1.82 g/kg) for 4 weeks. Moreover, the underlying mechanism of SKP were analyzed by the renal RNA sequencing and network pharmacology. LC-Q-TOF-MS identified 46 compounds in SKP. The total polysaccharide and organic acid content in SKP were 4.60 and 0.11 mg/ml, respectively, while the total flavonoid, saponin, and protein content were 0.25, 0.31, and 0.42 mg/ml, respectively. Treatment of SKP significantly reduced fasting blood glucose, improved renal function, and ameliorated glomerulosclerosis and focal foot processes effacement in db/db mice. In addition, SKP protected podocytes from injury by increasing nephrin and podocin expression. Furthermore, transcriptome analyses revealed that 430 and 288 genes were up and down-regulated in mice treated with SKP, relative to untreated controls. Gene ontology enrichment analysis revealed that the differentially expressed genes mainly involved in modulation of cell division and chromosome segregation. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis and network pharmacology analysis indicated that aurora kinase B (AURKB), Rac GTPase activating protein 1 (RacGAP1) and SHC binding, and spindle associated 1 (shcbp1) might be the core targets of SKP. This protein and Ras homolog family member A (RhoA) were found overexpression in db/db mice, but significantly decreased with SKP treatment. We conclude that SKP can effectively treat early-stage DN and improve renal podocyte dysfunction. The mechanism may involve down-regulation of the AURKB/RacGAP1/RhoA pathway.

It is always a challenge how to overcome speckle noise interference in the phase reconstruction for coherent digital holography (CDH) and its application, as this issue has not been solved well so far. In this paper, we are proposing an enhanced anti-speckle deep neural unwrapping network (E-ASDNUN) approach to achieve high quality of absolute phase reconstruction for CDH. The method designs a special network-based noise filter and embeds it into a deep neural unwrapping network to enhance anti-noise capacity in the image feature recognition and extraction process. The numerical simulation and experimental test on the phase unwrapping reconstruction and the image quality evaluation under the noise circumstances show that the E-ASDNUN approach is very effective against the speckle noise in realizing the high quality of absolute phase reconstruction. Meanwhile, it also demonstrates much better robustness than the typical U-net neural network and the traditional phase unwrapping algorithms in reconstructing high wrapping densities and high noise levels of phase images. The E-ASDNUN approach is also examined and confirmed by measuring the same phase object using a commercial white light interferometry as a reference. The result is perfectly consistent with that obtained by the E-ASDNUN approach.

Narrow-band-gap III–V semiconductor nanowires (NWs) with a suitable band structure and strong light-trapping ability are ideal for high-efficiency low-cost solar water-splitting systems. However, due to their nanoscale dimension, they suffer more severe corrosion by the electrolyte solution than the thin-film counterparts. Thus, short-term durability is the major obstacle for using these NWs for practical water-splitting applications. Here, we demonstrated for the first time that a thin layer (∼7 nm thick) of compact TiO2 deposited by atomic layer deposition can provide robust protection to III–V NWs. The protected GaAs NWs maintain 91.4% of its photoluminescence intensity after 14 months of storage in ambient atmosphere, which suggests the TiO2 layer is pinhole-free. Working as a photocathode for water splitting, they exhibited a 45% larger photocurrent density compared with unprotected counterparts and a high Faraday efficiency of 91% and can also maintain a record-long highly stable performance among narrow-band-gap III–V NW photoelectrodes; after 67 h photoelectrochemical stability test reaction in a strong acid electrolyte solution (pH = 1), they show no apparent indication of corrosion, which is in stark contrast to the unprotected NWs that fully failed after 35 h. These findings provide an effective way to enhance both stability and performance of III–V NW-based photoelectrodes, which are highly important for practical applications in solar-energy-based water-splitting systems.

Traditional seawater-source heat pump (SWHP) needs to set water intake and titanium plate heat exchanger which result in high initial investment and large work quantity. A new type of SWHP was recommended, which use capillaries made by PPR (polypropylene random) submerged in seawater as the front-end heat exchanger. Glycol antifreeze solution was injected into the capillaries used as circulating medium. Capillaries were used as heat exchanger between seawater outside and glycol antifreeze solution inside. This method can greatly reduce the initial investment and improve COP of the SWHP system. This paper discusses the feasibility of capillaries used as the front-end heat exchanger of SWHP. An experimental platform was designed and constructed to measure the heat transfer coefficient of capillaries, and collect the operating data to calculate COP of SWHP in winter and summer. The experiment results show that, the average COP of the SWHP system is 3.17 in winter and 3.3 in summer. When the velocity of glycol in capillary tube is 0.15 m/s, the measured value of capillary heat transfer coefficient k is 161.01 W/(m2·°C). The efficiency of capillary heat exchanger was greater than 96.4%, which shows that it is feasible to use capillaries as the front-end heat exchanger of SWHP.

This work reports the novelty of using eco-friendly and cost-effective non-vacuum Electrostatic Spray-Assisted Vapour Deposited Cu(In,Ga)SSe (CIGS) thin films as photocathodes, combined with the earth abundant cobalt sulfide (Co-S) as a catalyst to accelerate the kinetics of photogenerated electron transfer and hydrogen generation for photoelectrochemical water splitting. CdS and ZnO layers were subsequently deposited on top of the selenised CIGS films to increase the charge separation and lower the charge recombination for the photocathodes. In order to improve the lifetime and scalability of the CIGS photocathode and the other cell components, a photoelectrochemical test was conducted in a neutral electrolyte of 0.5 M Na2SO4 under simulated sunlight (AM 1.5G). Both the photocurrent densities and the onset potentials of the photocathodes were significantly improved by the electrodeposition of the low cost and earth-abundant Co-S catalyst, with a photocurrent density as high as 19.1 mA cm-2 at -0.34 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), comparable with and even higher than that of the control photocathode using rare and precious Pt as a catalyst.

In this paper, we will study the uniform $L^1$ stability of the inelastic Boltzmann equation. More precisely, according to the existence result on the inelastic Boltzmann equation with external force near vacuum, we obtain the uniform $L^1$ stability estimates of mild solution for the hard potentials under the assumptions on the characteristic generated by force term which can be arbitrarily large. The proof is based on the exponentially decay estimate and Lu's trick in [ 10 ].

To realize the bidirectional cognitive computing supported by cloud technology, the cloud model is taken as a bidirectional cognitive computing model based on probability and statistics, a bidirectional cognitive calculation method is constructed, and the bidirectional cognitive conversion between concept connotation and extension is studied. In view of the defects in the existing backward cloud conversion algorithm, two stable multistep backward cloud conversion algorithms are proposed, which lays the foundation for the realization of a stable bidirectional cognitive calculation process. A bidirectional cognitive computing model is proposed, which combines the characteristics of human cognition and the bidirectional cognitive conversion algorithm to simulate bidirectional cognitive computing process based on concept by means of calculation. Moreover, the application of bidirectional cognitive transform algorithm in image segmentation is studied combined with the characteristics of human image cognition. It is also compared with the classical algorithm and methods based on cloud model. The results show that the proposed method has lower mean error and is obviously better than other algorithms, which fully proves the effectiveness of the method.

We propose a tunable repetition rate multiplier for optical phase code sequences consisting of a temporal grating and a temporal 4-F system. The temporal 4-F imaging preserves the input code words at the output, while the temporal grating multiplies the code rate by an integer being programed via an arbitrary wave generator. A lower bound and an upper bound are, respectively, set for aperture width of involved active elements and dispersion deviation of involved dispersion elements to control output phase distortion. By numerical simulation, an 8-period-long input sequence of individual phase Barker code with 10 ns code chip width and 2-rad peak phase is multiplied from 4 to 16 MHz corresponding to multiplication factor tuned from one to four. The expected phase preserving feature and tunable capacity are validated. Degradations including leaked ripples and envelop fluctuation are successfully controlled by the aperture-width bound and the dispersion-deviation bound, respectively. The proposed multiplier provides a promising potential for multifunctional photonic-aided continuous-wave radars with enhanced agility and adaptability.

Houttuynia cordata Thunb. ("Yu-Xing-Cao"), a traditional Chinese medicinal herb, has long been used to treat various diseases. However, detailed information regarding the chemical constituents of H. cordata aqueous extract is lacking, and the molecular basis of its beneficial effects on muscle is unknown. To investigate these points, in this study, we used ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole-time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF-MS) in positive and negative ion modes to profile and identify the major constituents of H. cordata water extract. A total of 63 peaks were identified based on mass and fragmentation characteristics, including 29 organic acids and their glycosides, 17 flavonoids, 7 volatiles, 4 pyrimidine and purine derivatives, 2 alkaloids, 2 amino acids, 1 isovanillin, and 1 coumarin. The total flavonoid and polyphenol contents of the extract were 4.77 and 139.15 mg/mL, respectively, by ultraviolet spectrophotometry. The cytoprotective activity of H. cordata aqueous extract was evaluated using C2C12 cells treated with tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α to induce oxidative challenge. The TNF-α induced decrease in cell viability was reversed by treatment for 48 h with the extract; moreover, superoxide dismutase activity was increased while reactive oxygen species level was decreased. These results provide molecular-level evidence for the antioxidant effect of H. cordata extract and highlight its therapeutic potential for the treatment of muscle injury or diseases caused by oxidative stress.

Pentacene is a well-known conjugated organic molecule with high mobility and a sensitive photo response. It is widely used in electronic devices, such as in organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs), organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), photodetectors, and smart sensors. With the development of flexible and wearable electronics, the deposition of good-quality pentacene films in large-scale organic electronics at the industrial level has drawn more research attention. Several methods are used to deposit pentacene thin films. The thermal evaporation technique is the most frequently used method for depositing thin films, as it has low contamination rates and a well-controlled deposition rate. Solution-processable methods such as spin coating, dip coating, and inkjet printing have also been widely studied because they enable large-scale deposition and low-cost fabrication of devices. This review summarizes the deposition principles and control parameters of each deposition method for pentacene and its derivatives. Each method is discussed in terms of experimentation and theory. Based on film quality and device performance, the review also provides a comparison of each method to provide recommendations for specific device applications.

Metal-halide perovskite materials have begun to attract much attention recently for their potential use in radiation detection applications. This interest is mainly due to their favourable semi-conductive properties, high electron density, ease of manufacture and relatively low cost compared to popular detector materials. In this paper we investigate inorganic caesium lead bromide (CsPbBr3). Polycrystalline powder samples were produced by solution growth and simple ‘sandwich’ devices were fabricated. The powder was manually ground and then pressed to form pellets of a few mm thickness. Gold planar electrodes were deposited on the top and bottom perovskite surfaces by evaporation and were connected to an external circuit. We have made comparative measurements of the photoluminescence (PL), dark current and temporal radiation response. The PL measurements showed stable emissions centred at 525 nm for CsPbBr 3 ’ which is typical of these materials and within a useful range for this application. A CsPbBr3 device was exposed to X-rays and demonstrates a good increase in photocurrent over the dark current under both positive and negative bias with a sensitivity of 33.8 µCGy−1 air cm−2and the temporal response was determined to be ~40 ms by measuring the photocurrent decay after X-ray illumination.

Treatment planning plays an important role in the process of radiotherapy (RT). The quality of the treatment plan directly and significantly affects patient treatment outcomes. In the past decades, technological advances in computer and software have promoted the development of RT treatment planning systems with sophisticated dose calculation and optimization algorithms. Treatment planners now have greater flexibility in designing highly complex RT treatment plans in order to mitigate the damage to healthy tissues better while maximizing radiation dose to tumor targets. Nevertheless, treatment planning is still largely a time-inefficient and labor-intensive process in current clinical practice. Artificial intelligence, including machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL), has been recently used to automate RT treatment planning and has gained enormous attention in the RT community due to its great promises in improving treatment planning quality and efficiency. In this article, we reviewed the historical advancement, strengths, and weaknesses of various DL-based automated RT treatment planning techniques. We have also discussed the challenges, issues, and potential research directions of DL-based automated RT treatment planning techniques.

Machine learning has been widely applied in numerical weather prediction, but the incorporation of new observational sites into models trained on stations with long historical records remains a cha...

Objective: The aim of the study was to compare the efficiency and clinical outcomes of Moses contact mode (MCM) and regular dusting mode (RDM) during flexible ureteroscopic lithotripsy (FURL) for treatment of renal calculus. Methods: This retrospective analysis examined 216 patients with renal calculus who underwent FURL with MCM or RDM between March 2015 and January 2020. Stone characteristics, including size, volume, and density, were collected. Laser parameters, including laser type, laser working time, laser pause time, and foot-pedal use, were automatically recorded by the lithotripter work panel. The percentages of laser working time and laser pause time, stone fragmentation efficiency (SFE; volume/laser working time), postoperative complications, including fever and acute renal failure (ARF), stone-free rate (SFR), and the need for auxiliary procedures were determined. Results: There were no significant differences in preoperative demographic and stone characteristics between the MCM group and the RDM group. The MCM group had a shorter laser working time (4.99 ± 1.06 vs. 5.94 ± 0.96 min, p < 0.001) and a greater SFE (137.86 [163.78–114.38] versus 114.94 [132.06–101.34] mm3/min, p < 0.001), which shortened the overall operative time (18.39 ± 5.13 vs. 21.17 ± 6.78 min, p = 0.001). There were no differences in postoperative complications, including fever and ARF, SFR (86.8 vs. 85.3%, p = 0.743), and auxiliary procedures between the 2 groups. Conclusions: Using Moses laser technology with FURL significantly reduced laser working time and increased SFE, which shortened overall operative time. Urologists should consider this new instrument for the clinical management of renal calculus.

With more demand for Sabin inactivated poliovirus vaccines (sIPVs) to support the global polio eradication effort worldwide, data regarding the potency characteristics of sIPV after exposure to freezing temperatures are urgently required. In the present study, the sIPVs were stored at −20°C for 24 h, 1 week, and 2 weeks in the freezer or in a vaccine carrier for 1 or 3 freeze-thaw cycle to evaluate the effect mediated by freezing temperatures that may be encountered during routine storage and transfer. The in vitro potency was then determined by a D-antigen enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and the in vivo potency was evaluated in Wistar rats. In the in vitro study for freezer storage groups, the D-antigen contents for all three types decreased and were lower than the release specifications after storing at −20°C for 2 weeks. After storing at −20°C for 1 week, the D-antigen contents for types I and III in combined group of a total of 45 vials, and for type II in the specific lot groups containing 15 vials decreased, but were within the release specifications. Moreover, no significant change in in vivo potency was observed. For vaccine carrier transfer groups, the D-antigen contents did not decrease after 1 freeze-thaw cycle; in contrast, it decreased, but no significant in vivo potency loss was observed after 3 freeze-thaw cycles. These results suggest that it may be possible to retain sufficient sIPV potency after short periods of freezing or freeze-thawing during transport.

This paper proposed a new generation PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) based on artificial intelligent visualization. It is developed from our GRIDPACS (patent number: US8805890), which combined with IHE XDS-I profile, to implement images communication, storage and display. It also uses 3D anatomical visualization model to extract multi-source data from PACS/RIS/HIS/EMR, to express patient disease location, size and severity, which was introduced as Visual Patent (VP) at previous SPIE Medical Imaging (SPIE MI 2018). It can integrate the training model of AI Imaging Diagnosis, to mark the focus and display the disease trends. The system not only has the original PACS functions, but also realizes the man-machine interaction (images and electronic medical record information between radiologist and patient) in a personalized, fast, comprehensive, quantitative and easy-to-understand way. It can be used in various medical institutions, image diagnostic centers, and imaging cloud, to support the healthy development of imaging technology in China.

Flexible devices are garnering substantial interest owing to their potential for wearable and portable applications. Here, flexible and self-powered photodetector arrays based on all-inorganic perovskite quantum dots (QDs) are reported. CsBr/KBr-mediated CsPbBr

With the advent of the era of big data, the deep integration of the Internet and healthcare makes medical data exponential growth. How to ensure data security is particularly important. However, the traditional encryption speed is no longer applicable to massive information processing. Based on Hadoop open source project, this paper designs and studies distributed RSA encryption algorithm based on distributed file system and programming model. In the beginning of this paper, a design scheme of distributed encryption algorithm based on platform is proposed, the distribution of distributed algorithm is determined, module partition and process control are carried out to the whole, and the distributed encryption function of the single computer encryption system is realized. Finally, through the large-scale distributed cluster built in the laboratory, the distributed encryption algorithm is tested by function test, extensibility test and efficiency test. It is proved that the distributed encryption algorithm can optimize the operation speed and can be applied to the processing of massive data.

With the rapid development of information technology, especially network technology, people’s ability to collect, store and transmit data are increasing. The data have exploded in an explosive manner. In sharp contrast, the ability to make valuable data for decision making is very poor. In this paper, data mining is the most basic problem. In order to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional clustering algorithm for k-means clustering, it is difficult to determine the initial clustering center and the k-means algorithm is improved. When determining the initial K-, the convergence factor is improved and the global optimum is achieved, so as to realize the determination of clustering center. By using improved k-means algorithm to approximate the criminal data, the validity of this method is verified.

We propose a feasible temporal filtering (or spectrum weighting) system to implement optical differentiation with arbitrarily-tunable order. Differentiation order is tuned by programming the temporal weighting mask (TWM) as power function of different exponents, not limited by the structure of the system. Assembly of the system is feasible, since the active parts are implemented by electro-optic elements and some key elements are reused between sub-systems involved in the scheme. Tuning of the system is simple, since electronically pre-stored TWMs are easy to switch among each other. The order-tunable functionality is verified by numerically testing the differentiation cases of normalized input pulse duration ranging from 0.1 to 0.4, and of differentiation order tuned from 1 to 10. Good accuracy is achieved, and measured by root mean square error lower than 0.1. Feasibilities of the system are also verified in terms of accuracy maintaining and distortion avoiding. Compared with existing methods, apart from the arbitrary order-tunable capacity and good accuracy, our proposed optical differentiator also possesses properties of good compactness and constant complexity. The proposed differentiator has unique applications on multi-peak waveform generation for optical communications and photonics-aided Radars with enhanced agility and feasibility.

Digital PCR generally includes two parts. That is, the PCR amplification and fluorescence signal analysis. In the PCR amplification stage. Using digital PCR to dilute samples onto a single molecule level, the average to dozens to tens of thousands of units in chemical reaction, make each reaction unit of target molecules is 0 or 1, makes the target molecules positive signal detection. One of them will use the upper software control laboratory PCR instrument operation, instrument of the data acquisition, as well as to the scientific analysis and processing the data collected, is advantageous for the quantitative analysis of the gene and detection. The software to control one PCR instrument operation and work. In addition this instrument will collect data uploaded to PC through USB interface, through analysis and deal with the PC software. Finally experimental conclusions.

In this paper, we evaluate the developer’s efficiency by an improved DEA model. It is a combination of traditional C2R model and fuzzy mathematics, which forms a new fuzzy DEA model. The model overcomes the strong objective factors that in the traditional DEA model and not support fuzzy input and output. It is conducive to improve the efficiency of the developer, which is very important for decision of makers.