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Oral processing is a combination of various actions, the detailed description of which has always been the subject of relevant research. By means of imaging technology and sensory evaluation, more knowledge of oral processing have been accumulated. Presently, the advances in sensory technology have added quantitative parameters to the qualitative description of oral processing, which also enriched the specifics of each action. Previous studies have shown that oral processing includes lip closure, dental occlusion, masticatory muscles activity, tongue movement, and swallowing, whose processing contains rich information such as the movement of organ and the intensity of organ contacts. "Quantification" was taken in this review as the basic feature of in situ detection information, the relevant parameters and feasible methods for the quantitative description of each activity was recorded in detail. In addition, basic problems and feasible optimization schemes of the existing in situ detection device are also proposed in the hope of promoting the development of in situ detection device thus providing available information for the description of oral processing.

Microplastics (MP) and Microcystins (MCs) are two co-occurring pollutants in freshwater ecosystems that pose significant risks to aquatic organisms and human health. This study investigates the interactions between MP and MCs and their effects on the metabolic responses of freshwater aquaculture. Asian clams have been used as an indicator of Microplastics pollution in freshwater ecosystems. The present study investigates metabolic responses of Asian clams during Microplastics and Microcystin-LR stress to identify health impacts and elucidate mechanistic effects of external stressors on Asian clams. A liquid chromatography/ mass spectrometry (LC–MS)-based metabolomics approach was used to identify metabolic perturbations and histological section technique were used to assess changes of tissues from different Asian clam treat groups. The results showed significantly pathological changes in the gills and hepatopancreas in experimental clam compared to control (healthy) clam. Metabolomics revealed alterations of many metabolites in hepatopancreas of six Asian clam compare groups, reflecting perturbations in several molecular pathways, including energy metabolism, amino acid metabolism, protein degradation/tissue damage and oxidative stress. Overall, this study emphasizes the importance of understanding the interactions between MP and MCs and the need for proactive measures to safeguard freshwater ecosystems and human health.

In this paper, an estimation model of fuel cell life degradation and lithium battery life degradation is defined based on experimental data. A dynamic programming algorithm based on global optimization is proposed, which takes the total equivalent hydrogen consumption cost of power system and the cost of fuel cell power degradation as the target function, and weights the power degradation term of fuel cell with a penalty coefficient, so that the designed energy management strategy can take into account the economy and durability of the vehicle. Considering that the control strategy based on global optimization is sensitive to operating conditions, i.e. the reduction of hydrogen consumption and fuel cell degradation costs by dynamic programming algorithm is based on operating conditions. Once the input condition of operating conditions is changed, the control strategy will not guarantee the optimum. Therefore, this paper uses the optimal results of dynamic programming algorithm to provide the data set of off-line training. Transformer is applied to make time series prediction, which will help to solve the problem of balancing power distribution considering economy and durability under various conditions. The input characteristics of the transformer network are the current bus demand power, the battery state of charge and the fuel cell power of the previous time, and the output is the fuel cell power predicted at the current time. The results of Transformer model are compared with those of dynamic programming, and they are very close. The Transformer model was trained using standard UDDS and NEDC operating conditions and tested on HWFET. The test shows that the developed Transformer model has good generalization ability for different operating conditions.

Background Increased acid sphingomyelinase (ASMase) activity is associated with insulin resistance and cardiac dysfunction. However, the effects of ASMase on diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) and the molecular mechanism(s) underlying remain to be elucidated. We here investigated whether ASMase caused DCM through NADPH oxidase 4-mediated apoptosis. Methods and results We used pharmacological and genetic approaches coupled with study of murine and cell line samples to reveal the mechanisms initiated by ASMase in diabetic hearts. The protein expression and activity of ASMase were upregulated, meanwhile ceramide accumulation was increased in the myocardium of HFD mice. Inhibition of ASMase with imipramine (20 mg Kg−1 d−1) or siRNA reduced cardiomyocyte apoptosis, fibrosis, and mitigated cardiac hypertrophy and cardiac dysfunction in HFD mice. The similar effects were observed in cardiomyocytes treated with high glucose (HG, 30 mmol L−1) + palmitic acid (PA, 100 μmol L−1) or C16 ceramide (CER, 20 μmol L−1). Interestingly, the cardioprotective effect of ASMase inhibition was not accompanied by reduced ceramide accumulation, indicating a ceramide-independent manner. The mechanism may involve activated NADPH oxidase 4 (NOX4), increased ROS generation and triggered apoptosis. Suppression of NOX4 with apocynin prevented HG + PA and CER incubation induced Nppb and Myh7 pro-hypertrophic gene expression, ROS production and apoptosis in H9c2 cells. Furthermore, cardiomyocyte-specific ASMase knockout (ASMaseMyh6KO) restored HFD-induced cardiac dysfunction, remodeling, and apoptosis, whereas NOX4 protein expression was downregulated. Conclusions These results demonstrated that HFD-mediated activation of cardiomyocyte ASMase could increase NOX4 expression, which may stimulate oxidative stress, apoptosis, and then cause metabolic cardiomyopathy.

Lithium metal, as the most ideal anode material for high energy density batteries, has been researched for several decades. However, the dendrite formation and large volume change during repetitive lithium plating/stripping lead to a serious safety issue and impede the practical application of lithium metal anode. Herein, a nanoporous Ni foam current collector with high surface area and surface flaws is constructed via a facile oxidation–reduction method. The inherent macropore structure of Ni foam can partly accommodate the volume variation during Li plating/stripping. The well-distributed nanopores on the skeleton of Ni foam can effectively reduce the local current density, regulate the uniform lithium nucleation and deposition with homogenous distribution of Li+ flux. Moreover, the surface flaws induce the formation of ring Li structures at initial nucleation/deposition processes and concave Li metal spontaneously formed based on the ring Li structures during cycling, which can direct the even Li plating/stripping. Therefore, highly stable Coulombic efficiency is achieved at 1 mA cm−2 for 200 cycles. The symmetrical cell, based on the nanoporous Ni foam current collector, presents long lifespans of 1200 and 700 h respectively at different current densities of 0.5 and 1 mA cm−2 without short circuit. In addition, the LiFePO4 full cell, with the Li metal anode based on the nanoporous Ni foam current collector, shows excellent cycling performance at 1C for 300 cycles and rate performance.

The voltammetric electrochemical sensing method combined with biosensors and multi-sensor systems can quickly, accurately, and reliably analyze the concentration of the main analyte and the overall characteristics of complex samples. Simultaneously, the high-dimensional voltammogram contains the rich electrochemical features of the detected substances. Chemometric methods are important tools for mining valuable information from voltammetric data. Chemometrics can aid voltammetric biosensor calibration and multi-element detection in complex matrix conditions. This review introduces the voltammetric analysis techniques commonly used in the research of voltammetric biosensor and electronic tongues. Then, the research on optimizing voltammetric biosensor results using classical chemometrics is summarized. At the same time, the incorporation of machine learning and deep learning has brought new opportunities to further improve the detection performance of biosensors in complex samples. Finally, smartphones connected with miniaturized voltammetric biosensors and chemometric methods provide a high-quality portable analysis platform that shows great potential in point-of-care testing.

Background: Mesalazine is the first-line inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) treatment. However, it can cause fatal cardiotoxicity. We aimed to analyze the clinical characteristics of mesalazine-induced cardiotoxicity and provide evidence for clinical diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.Methods: We collected Chinese and English literature on mesalazine-induced cardiotoxicity from 1970 to 2021 for retrospective analysis.Results: A total of 52 patients (40 males and 12 females) were included, with a median age of 24.5 years (range 9–62) and a median onset time of 14 days (range 2–2880). Cardiotoxicity manifested as myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac pericarditis. The main clinical manifestations are chest pain (82.7%), fever (46.2%), and respiratory symptoms such as dyspnea and cough (40.4%). The levels of troponin T, creatine kinase, C-reactive protein, leukocyte count, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and other biochemical markers were significantly increased. Cardiac imaging often suggests myocardial infarction, pericardial effusion, myocardial necrosis, and other symptoms of cardiac injury. It is essential to discontinue mesalamine immediately in patients with cardiotoxicity. Although corticosteroids are a standard treatment option, the benefits remain to be determined. Re-challenge of mesalamine should be carefully considered as cardiotoxic symptoms may reoccur.Conclusion: Mesalazine may cause cardiotoxicity in patients with inflammatory bowel disease, which should be comprehensively diagnosed based on clinical manifestations, biochemical indicators, and cardiac function imaging examinations. Mesalazine should be immediately discontinued, and corticosteroids may be an effective treatment for cardiotoxicity.

Bifurcated granular flow in a 2D channel with two lateral exits is numerically investigated by the discrete element method. Under the fixed inflow rate condition, the outflow rate is equal to the inflow rate in the dilute flow state and rapidly declines when dilute-to-dense flow transition (DDFT) occurs. The flow rate and the transition can be controlled by adjusting the sizes of the two exits. These observations can be explained by the relationship between the flow rate and the packing density in the bottleneck region under the fixed grain condition. Beverloo's formula is valid to describe the dependence of the dense flow rate on the exit size for bifurcated and non-bifurcated granular flows. The packing density in the bottleneck region plays a crucial role on the flow state. In specific, DDFT occurs at 0.6, and the dense flow terminates at 0.79.

While media audiovisual programs have brought great convenience to people's study, work and life, there are also a lot of bad information flooding them. This research mainly discusses the design of media audio-visual program monitoring system based on network topology. The system mainly monitors audiovisual programs through the network topology scanning module. For security reasons, the system network structure is divided into two parts: internal network and external network. The supervisory system is located in the internal network and is physically separated from the external network. In the initial scanning process, first obtain the starting device information in the configuration file, which is the routing device by default, read the relevant information in the MIB through the SNMP agent, and analyze the neighboring routing device and its downstream switching devices and hosts. Information and other topological information, and transmit the topological information to the data organization and distribution module. In order to avoid a large load on the network operation of the target autonomous domain, it is recommended to scan a larger network once an hour, or you can make your own decision based on the actual situation. In order to be able to quickly and accurately discover the changes in scanned data, the system uses MD5 verification to generate a "fingerprint" for each record to identify the data. Through this algorithm, the amount of information in the database is effectively reduced, and the efficiency of retrieval is improved, and the system is optimized. In order to reduce the misjudgment of legal shadow marks in shadow marks, after verifying 10,000 sets of sample shadow mark images and adjusting the contrast recognition threshold, the missed judgement rate can be less than 2%. The system designed in this research meets the needs of program supervision.

Gallium (Ga) electrodes have been used as anodes in Li-ion batteries, due to their low-melting-point and self-healing properties. However, the use of Ga without a binder or a conductive agent together as the anode material is rare. In this study, AlCl3 was added as an additive to the electrolyte formed by [EMIm]Cl and GaCl3. The obtained binder-free Ga particles were used as the anode of the Li-ion battery; the initial specific capacity was 528.2 mA h g−1 and the initial coulombic efficiency was 97.8%. After 100 cycles, the specific capacity of discharge was 441.6 mA h g−1 at 0.1C. Ga particles obtained from ionic liquids can be used to improve the cycling stability of anodes in lithium-ion batteries.

The lane-changing decision-making process is challenging but critical to ensure safe and smooth maneuvers for autonomous vehicles (AVs). Conventional Gipps-type algorithms lack the flexibility for practical use under a mixed autonomous vehicle and human-driven vehicle (AV-HV) environment. Algorithms based on utility ignore the reactions of surrounding vehicles to the lane-changing vehicle. Game theory is a good way to solve the shortcomings of current algorithms, but most models based on game theory simplify the game with surrounding vehicles to the game with the following vehicle in the target lane, which means that the lane-changing decision under a mixed environment is not realized. This paper proposes a lane-changing decision-making model which is suitable for an AV to change lanes under a mixed environment based on a multi-player dynamic game theory. The overtaking expectation parameter (OEP) is introduced to estimate the utility of the following vehicle, OEP can be calculated by the proposed non-lane-based full velocity difference model with the consideration of lateral move and aggressiveness. This paper further proposes a hybrid splitting method algorithm to obtain the Nash equilibrium solution in the multi-player game to obtain the optimal strategy of lane-changing decision for AVs. An adaptive cruise control simulation environment is developed with MATLAB’s Simulink toolbox using Next Generation Simulation (NGSIM) data as the background traffic flow. The classic bicycle model is used in the control of involved HVs. Simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed multi-player dynamic game-based algorithm for lane-changing decision making by AVs under a mixed AV-HV environment.

The density and pore diameter of aluminum (Al) films have an important influence on the resultant film applications, especially in the field which require extremely high-density, uniform Al films. In this study, Al was electrodeposited from 1-ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium chloride ([EMIm]Cl) ionic liquid onto a Ni substrate using AlCl3 as the Al source. The results show that the concentration of the electrolyte was the crucial factor governing the microstructure of the electrodeposited continuous and dendrite-free Al film. The obtained continuous, dendrite-free Al film was used as the anode of a Li-ion battery. The obtained Al films delivered a first specific capacity reaching 1492 mAh g−1 in the Li-ion battery and effectively improved the corrosion resistance of the Ni substrate.

The high instantaneous luminosity of the CERN Large Hadron Collider leads to multiple proton–proton interactions in the same or nearby bunch crossings (pileup). Advanced pileup mitigation algorithms are designed to remove this noise from pileup particles and improve the performance of crucial physics observables. This study implements a semi-supervised graph neural network for particle-level pileup noise removal, by identifying individual particles produced from pileup. The graph neural network is firstly trained on charged particles with known labels, which can be obtained from detector measurements on data or simulation, and then inferred on neutral particles for which such labels are missing. This semi-supervised approach does not depend on the neutral particle pileup label information from simulation, and thus allows us to perform training directly on experimental data. The performance of this approach is found to be consistently better than widely-used domain algorithms and comparable to the fully-supervised training using simulation truth information. The study serves as the first attempt at applying semi-supervised learning techniques to pileup mitigation, and opens up a new direction of fully data-driven machine learning pileup mitigation studies.

Glioma is a malignant tumor of the central nervous system with complex pathogenesis, difficult operation, and a high postoperative recurrence rate. At present, there is still a lack of effective treatment. Long non-coding RNA DDX11 antisense RNA 1 (DDX11-AS1) has been shown to promote tumor development, such as hepatocellular carcinoma, esophageal cancer, etc. However, its molecular mechanism in glioma is poorly understood. In this study, we found that the expression of DDX11-AS1 was elevated in glioma tissues, and patients with high expression of DDX11-AS1 had poor prognosis. DDX11-AS1 was a potential prognostic marker. Functionally, DDX11-AS1 promoted glioma cell proliferation and migration. Mechanistically, DDX11-AS1 interacted with RNA-binding protein heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein C (HNRNPC) to promote Wnt/β-catenin and AKT pathways and the epithelial-mesenchymal transition process. In summary, our study manifests that the DDX11-AS1/HNRNPC axis may play a vital part in the occurrence and development of glioma, which provides new ideas and therapeutic targets for the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of glioma.

Semantic segmentation of mitochondria from electron microscopy (EM) images is an essential step to obtain reliable morphological statistics about mitochondria. However, automatically delineating plenty of mitochondria of varied shapes from complex backgrounds with sufficient accuracy is challenging. To address these challenges, we develop a hierarchical encoder-decoder network (HED-Net), which has a three-level nested U-shape architecture to capture rich contextual information. Given the irregular shape of mitochondria, we introduce a novel soft label-decomposition strategy to exploit shape knowledge in manual labels. Rather than simply using the ground truth label maps as the unique supervision in the model training, we introduce additional subcategory-aware supervision by softly decomposing each manual label map into two complementary label maps according to mitochondria's ovality. The three label maps are integrated with our HED-Net to supervise the model training. While the original label map guides the network to segment all the mitochondria of varied shapes, the auxiliary label maps guide the network to segment subcategories of mitochondria of circular shape and elliptic shape, respectively, which are much more manageable tasks. Extensive experiments on two public benchmarks show that our HED-Net performs favorably against state-of-the-art methods.

Nanoscale microstructure designing is playing an important role in improving the performance of electrode materials of an electrochemical battery. The Sn based anode is among the very high-capacity but less-stable materials, and has been used mostly for anode of the Li-ion battery with unsatisfactory performance. In this work, we design a new type of 3D porous graphene and nano-Sn composite (Sn/Void@G) by simple one-step annealing of graphene oxide, polystyrene spheres and stannic chloride for both high performance Li- and Na-ion battery anodes. More importantly, the 3D porous graphene formed tunable micro-nano void as a highly efficient “bumper” to accommodate the large volume expansion of nano-Sn particles. As results, the discharge specific capacity of the Sn/Void@G, anode still remains 45.3% while the charge-discharge current is increased 50 times, and the capacity is more than 400 mAh g−1 after 500 cycles at 5C rate. For Na storage, the integrated anodes deliver the Na storage capacity of 786.1 mAh/g at 0.1C rate and the capacity of more than 340 mAh/g after 800 cycles at 2C rate. The present result on Li and Na ion battery may pave the way to next generation high power and energy density batteries.

In this study, we have, for the first time, demonstrated the beneficial effects of transcranial magneto-acoustic stimulation (TMAS), a technique based on focused ultrasound stimulation within static magnetic field, on the learning and memory abilities and neuroplasticity of the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) mouse model of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Our results showed that chronic TMAS treatment (2 weeks) improved the outcome of Morris water maze, long-term potentiation (LTP), and dendritic spine densities in the dentate gyrus (DG) region of the hippocampus of PD model mice. To further investigate into the underlying mechanisms of these beneficial effects by TMAS, we quantified the proteins in the hippocampus that regulated neuroplasticity. Results showed that the level of postsynaptic density protein 95 was elevated in the brain of TMAS-treated PD model mice while the level of synaptophysin (SYP) did not show any change. We further quantified proteins that mediated neuroplasticity mechanisms, such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and other important proteins that mediated neuroplasticity. Results showed that TMAS treatment elevated the levels of BDNF, cAMP response element–binding protein (CREB), and protein kinase B (p-Akt) in the PD model mouse hippocampus, but not in the non-PD mouse hippocampus. These results suggest that the beneficial effects on the neuroplasticity of PD model mice treated with TMAS could possibly be conducted through postsynaptic regulations and mediated by BDNF. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s13311-019-00732-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Crushing rate and impurity rate are important quality indicators of mechanically harvested soybeans. Intelligent quality detection of mechanically harvested soybeans based on machine vision is of great significance to evaluate soybean quality accurately and rapidly. This study proposes an improved U-Net method for identifying intact soybean grains, crushing soybean grains, and impurities. Based on the accurate identification of soybean components and using the quantitative model of soybean crushing rate and impurity rate, the quality of soybean samples can be detected in real-time. To this end, a soybean quality inspection system is designed to realize the dynamic collection and detection of soybean samples. The test results show that the comprehensive evaluation index values of the improved U-Net segmentation algorithm in identifying intact soybean grains, crushing soybean grains, and impurities are 93.04%, 89.40%, and 96.49%, respectively. Compared with the traditional U-Net model, the performance of the indicators is improved by 3.23%, 0.17% and 0.72%, respectively. Compared with manual detection, the maximum absolute error of the crushing rate detection of the soybean quality detection system is 0.57%, and the maximum absolute error of the impurity rate detection is 0.69%. The proposed soybean quality inspection system can be used as an effective tool for real-time online inspection of soybean quality.

Background: Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are increasingly being regarded as regulators of glioma development. Notably, some studies report that GNG12-AS1 plays important functions and molecular mechanism in breast cancer, but there are no existing studies in glioma. Objective: To analyze the biological functions and potential mechanisms of GNG12-AS1 in glioma. Methods: We detected the expression of GNG12-AS1 in glioma tissues through analyzing TCGA data as well as our clinical samples. We then evaluated cell proliferation through MTT assay and colony formation and cell migration by transwell assay, wound healing assay and single cell tracking assay. After, we analyzed the effects of the AKT/GSK-3β/β-catenin through Western blotting and utilized the β-catenin agonist SKL2001 for the rescue experiment. Results: GNG12-AS1 was highly expressed in glioma tissues. The silence of GNG12-AS1 inhibited the proliferation, migration and epithelial–mesenchymal transition of glioma cells, and reduced the activity of the AKT/GSK-3β/β-catenin pathway. Notably, SKL2001 could reverse cell migration as well as β-catenin expression in glioma cells with lower GNG12-AS1 expression. Conclusions: GNG12-AS1 regulates proliferation and migration of glioma cells through the AKT/GSK-3β/β-catenin signaling and can perhaps be a new target for the treatment of glioma.

We present a novel resizing module for neural networks: shape adaptor, a drop-in enhancement built on top of traditional resizing layers, such as pooling, bilinear sampling, and strided convolution. Whilst traditional resizing layers have fixed and deterministic reshaping factors, our module allows for a learnable reshaping factor. Our implementation enables shape adaptors to be trained end-to-end without any additional supervision, through which network architectures can be optimised for each individual task, in a fully automated way. We performed experiments across seven image classification datasets, and results show that by simply using a set of our shape adaptors instead of the original resizing layers, performance increases consistently over human-designed networks, across all datasets. Additionally, we show the effectiveness of shape adaptors on two other applications: network compression and transfer learning. The source code is available at: https://github.com/lorenmt/shape-adaptor., Published at ECCV 2020

Histidine phosphorylation (pHis) was first reported in 1962. There are few studies on pHis because of the thermal and acidic instability of pHis and the lack of specific methods to detect it. pHis has two isomers of 1-phosphate histidine (1-pHis) and 3-phosphate histidine (3-pHis). pHis antibodies have been developed recently and have promoted research in this field. In this study, we established a CCl

Germanium (Ge) is an important semiconductor material in optoelectronic devices and is being researched in energy storage fields. Ge nanostructure materials with different morphologies may lead to distinctly different application performances. In this work, Ge nanorod architectures were successfully template-free electrodeposited on ITO substrate from the ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) imide ([Emim]Tf2N) containing dissolved GeCl4 with the assistance of UV light. The UV irradiation influences the conformation of imidazolium rings of [Emim]+ adsorbed during the deposition process. A solution template has been formed on the surface of the electrode which inhibited the lateral growth of Ge nuclei and promoted the growth of Ge nanorod structures. Consequently, the coral-like Ge nanorod bundles (NRBs) has been obtained. This method provides attractive prospects for the other semiconductor nanorod structures.

Sodium-ion hybrid supercapacitors have received great attracts for next-generation energy storage applications due to their high energy and power densities, as well as the abundant sodium resource. However, electrodes based on transition-metal oxides often suffer from low reversible capacity and sluggish redox kinetics, which seriously constrains the rate and cycling performance of the devices. Herein, a facile two-step hydrolysis synthesis is used to prepare uniform sandwich-like mesoporous Nb2O5/graphene/mesoporous Nb2O5 (G@mNb2O5) nanosheets as sodium storage materials. The mesoporous Nb2O5 layers on graphene are constructed by several nanometer-sized Nb2O5 particles. In virtue of the structural features, the G@mNb2O5 nanosheets electrode demonstrates high-rate capacity (293 and 125 mA h g−1at 50 and 2000 mA g−1, respectively) and stable cycling performance due to the rapid redox kinetics, including significantly increased surface pseudocapacitive contribution, improved sodium-ion diffusion coefficient, and short characteristic relaxation process. By employing activated carbon as cathode, a full sodium-ion hybrid device successfully demonstrates a high energy density of 56.1 Wh kg−1 at 120 W kg−1, and 9.7 Wh kg−1 at 7200 W kg−1, as well as a stable capacitance retention of ∼ 89% at 1 A g−1. The availability of capacitive Na-ion storage system presented here is attractive for cost-effective energy storage applications.

In this work, a novel pyrrolic nitrogen-doped carbon sandwiched monolayer MoS2 hybrid was prepared. This sandwiched hybrid vertically anchors on graphene oxide as anode materials for sodium-ion batteries. Such electrode was fabricated by facile ionic liquid-assisted reflux and annealing methods. Owing to rational structure and enhancement from pyrrolic nitrogen dopant, this unique MoS2/C-graphene hybrid exhibits reversible specific capacity of 486 mAh g−1 after 1000 cycles with a low average fading capacity of 0.15 mAh g−1 (fading cyclic rate of ca. 0.03% per cycle). A capacity of 330 mAh g−1 is remained at the current densities of 10.0 A g−1. The proposed strategy provides a convenient way to create new pyrrolic nitrogen-doped hybrids for energy field and other related applications.

Functional imaging method of biological electrical characteristics based on magneto-acoustic effect gives valuable information of tissue in early tumor diagnosis. Common exciting and measuring method is to use single pulse. The imaging quality and the imaging speed are limited by the signal to noise ratio (SNR). In this study, we propose a processing method based on coded excitation and pulse compression to improve SNR of magneto-acoustic imaging. Barker code is widely used in ultrasonic signal processing, which can effectively improve the signal to noise ratio. It is introduced to increase SNR of the magneto-acoustic signal. Simulations on magneto-acoustic signal and pulse compressed signal under Barker coded excitation with a group of bit lengths are computed. Experiments on sample made of pork and graphite slices are done to validate the proposed coded excitation method. The pork sample is imaged to validate this method. SNR is investigated using Barker codes with different bits. The results showed, the SNR of magneto-acoustic signal is improved by the coded excitation. When 13 bit Barker code mode is adopted as the exciting signal, SNR improved by 21.5 dB. For a similar SNR improvement, the processing time of coded excitation method can be shortened by 95.8% compare with single pulse excitation method. In a conclusion, the coded excitation method is effective to improve the magneto-acoustic signal SNR and imaging quality. It also improves the magneto-acoustic imaging speed.

Smart electrochromic windows integrated with electrochemical energy storage capacity are receiving increasing interest for green buildings. However, the fabrication of bifunctional devices that demonstrate high-rate capability with stable and desirable optical modulation still remains a great challenge. Herein, a facile sacrificial template-accelerated hydrolysis approach is presented to prepare a designed lithium-ion insertion-type material layer on a fluorine-doped tin oxide substrate, with TiO2 mesoporous nanotube array (MNTA) film as an example, with rapid Li-ion insertion kinetics and without sacrificing window transparency, to meet requirements. A bifunctional device is assembled to exhibit the optical-electrochemical superiority of MNTA nanostructures. The as-assembled bifunctional smart window exhibits strong electrochromic contrast and high-rate capability in the fast galvanostatic charge/discharge process. For instance, at 1 A g−1, it completes the charge or discharge process within only 232 s and delivers a high, reversible and stable specific capacity of 60 mA h g−1, accompanying obvious transmittance modulation in the visible spectrum, with a typical value of ca. 30.4% at 700 nm, and strong color changes between deep blue and transparency.

A reversible, persistent electrochromic change in color or optical parameter controlled by a temporarily applied electrical voltage is attractive because of its enormous display and energy-related applications. Due to the electrochemical and structural advantages, electrodes based on self-supported one-dimensional (1D) nanostructured materials have become increasingly important, and their impacts are particularly significant when considering the ease of assembly of electrochromic devices. This review describes recent advances in the development of self-supported 1D nanostructured materials as electrodes for enhanced electrochromism. Current strategies for the design and morphology control of self-supported electrodes fabricated using templates, anodization, vapor deposition, and solution techniques are outlined along with demonstrating the influences of nanostructures and components on the electrochemical redox kinetics and electrochromic performance. The applications of self-supported 1D nanomaterials in the emerging bifunctional devices are further illustrated.

Stretchable electrochromic devices (SECDs) have steadily attracted widespread attention in wearable devices. However, the delamination of device architectures (electrochromic layer, conductive layer and substrate) and poor chemical stability of conductive layer (silver nanowires (AgNWs)) are the key issues to be resolved to ensure the practical applications of flexible electrochromic devices. Herein, we designed a flexible and stretchable WO3@AgNW-PrePDMS (Pre-cured Polydimethylsiloxane) electrode, through integrated and embedded design, to build a high-performance electrochromic device. The integration of electrochromic layer and conductive layer in the electrode is fabricated via a WO3@AgNW core–shell structure. And embed the core–shell structure into the flexible substrate PDMS to form WO3@AgNW-PrePDMS electrode. This electrode architecture can prevent the delamination of the stretchable electrode during bending tests. Moreover, WO3 as a shell structure protects the conductive material AgNW to prevent its oxidation and improve the stability of the conductive substrate. The WO3@AgNW-PrePDMS electrode displays outstanding electrochemical stabilities and excellent bi-functionalities (flexible conductive film and electrochromic electrode): high conductivity (12 Ω/sq) as flexible transparent conductive film and wide optical modulation range (ΔT = 72% at 550 nm) as electrochromic electrode. The stretchable WO3@AgNW-PrePDMS electrode can still maintain stable electrical conductivity (ΔR/R≈8.3% and 14%) and electrochromic performance (90% and 92% retention) after 20,000 bending cycles and stretching to 70%, indicating the excellent mechanical flexibility. The WO3@AgNW core–shell nanowire network electrodes with embedded structures can be a strong candidate for wearable electrochemical energy devices in the future.

Heterogeneous interfaces interaction and multiscale nanostructures in two-dimensional (2D) materials hybrids are critically significant for realizing rate capability and long-life cycling performance. However, to strike a balance between minimizing the carbon content and maximizing the heterogeneous interfaces remains a critical challenge in nanoarchitectures for hybrid few-layers MoS2 with various carbonaceous materials. Here we present the ordered macroporous few-layered MoS2/C hybrid nanoarchitectures via a facile scalable in situ hybridization and spatial confinement strategies. Such hybrid strategies can maximize the MoS2 loading and restriction of MoS2 to a ultrasmall reaction. The optimized as-prepared hierarchical MoS2/C hybrids exhibit an initial capacity up to 631.2 mAh g−1 with a high first columbic efficiency of 81.16% for sodium-ion batteries (BILs) at 200 mA g−1. And, the electrodes display a high reversible capacity of 330.4 mAh g−1 with a long cycle life, superior cycling stability and excellent high-rate performance demonstrated rational designed hybrid architecture using as the electrodes in SIBs. This strategy could be proven to be an effective method for stabilizing the cyclability and improving in rechargeable rate performance for SIBs.

The high specific capacity and cycle stability of Li-ion alloy anode materials have been the focus of researchers. However, the alloy anode materials are easy to be broken and cracked after cycling. In this study, we have co-electrodeposited Al-Ga composite from ionic liquid, and the obtained composite has a higher specific capacity and the longer cycling life than single Ga/Al electrode. Initial discharge capacity is 1554.7 mAh/g, and Coulombic efficiency is 82.6% at 0.1 A/g. Co-electrodeposited Al-Ga composite from ionic liquid provides a new way to solve the electrode materials that are easily fractured and cracked after cycling, and improves cycle stability and high capacity to a certain extent.

Due to the low efficiency and high pollution of conventional internal combustion engine vehicles, the fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles are expected to play a key role in the future of clean energy transportation attributed to the long driving range, short hydrogen refueling time and environmental advantages. The development of energy management strategies has an important impact on the economy and durability, but most strategies ignore the aging of fuel cells and the corresponding impact on hydrogen consumption. In this paper, a rule-based fuzzy control strategy is proposed based on the constructed data-driven online estimation model of fuel cell health. Then, a genetic algorithm is used to optimize this fuzzy controller, where the objective function is designed to consider both the economy and durability by combining the hydrogen consumption cost and the degradation cost characterized by the fuel cell health status. Considering that the rule-based strategy is more sensitive to operating conditions, this paper uses an artificial neural network for predictive control. The results are compared with those obtained from the genetic algorithm optimized fuzzy controller and are found to be very similar, where the prediction accuracy is assessed using MAPE, RMSE and 10-fold cross-validation. Experiments show that the developed strategy has a good generalization capability for variable driving cycles.

Flexible transparent conductive films (FTCFs) have attracted tremendous concern because it is a key component of next generation electronics and optoelectronic devices. Silver nanowires (AgNWs) random networks have become the most promising candidates for FTCFs, with high transmittance, low sheet resistance, and excellent mechanical flexibility. However, there are many barriers to the application of FTCFs based on AgNWs, such as easy oxidization and weak adhesion to the substrates. Here, we developed a facile approach to fabricate AgNW-C core–shell nanowires derived from the carbonization of glucose by a one-pot solvothermal method. A uniform amorphous carbon shell coating improves the chemical stability of AgNWs and the hydroxyls on the surface of the nanowires enhance the adhesion to the substrate. The AgNW-C/poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) transparent conductive film shows excellent robustness when subjected to bending (ΔR/R0 ≈ 2.8% after bending 2000 times). Besides, the conductivity of AgNW-C/PET film remains relatively stable after 100 peeling-off cycles by a 3 M tape test. A flexible electrochromic device (FCD) has also been constructed based on the AgNW-C/PET film, which shows promising stability and mechanical flexibility due to the remarkable electrochemical stability and mechanical strength of the AgNW-C/PET films. The results present the significant potential applications of the flexible transparent device based on AgNW-C/PET film for many fields in the future.

Midblock crossing is very common in the high populated urban cities, especially in Southeastern Asia. To regulate unauthorized midblock crossing, Midblock Zebra Crosswalk (MZC) is applied to promote yielding behavior of drivers to pedestrians. It is necessary to set up a clear guidance for constructing MZC to help regulate the unlawful crossing, as well as analyzing the performance of existing MZCs. In this paper, a Fuzzy Cellular Automata (FCA) model is developed to analyze the safety and efficiency impact of pedestrian–vehicle interactions at non signalized MZCs, which explicitly explores the decision making process of individual drivers. In the proposed model, membership functions of conflict area gap and velocity of pedestrian in the fuzzy inference system are calibrated with field survey, in order to reason the output of each driver’s filtering decision in front of the crosswalk. Furthermore, by employing safety and efficiency indicators, including Time Difference to Collision (TDTC) and Deceleration Occurrences caused by Conflicts (DOC), the FCA model is capable of evaluating safety and efficiency impact of pedestrian–vehicle conflicts under different proportions of obedient drivers and traffic flows. Finally, we deduce the minimum pedestrian flow for constructing MZC in the midblock from the FCA model and national guideline of setting traffic lights in China.

Graphene has been extensively investigated as anode material for Li and Na ion batteries due to its excellent physical and chemical performance. Herein, we report a new member of ‘graphene family’, a reduced graphene nanowire on three-dimensional graphene foam (3DGNW). The novel graphene nanowires were synthesized via a template strategy involving reduction and assembly process of nanosized graphene oxides (nGO), pyrolysis of polystyrene spheres (PS) template and catalytic reaction between GO and PS decomposition products. When evaluated as anodes material for Li and Na ion batteries, the 3DGNW exhibits relatively low discharge-voltage plateau, excellent reversible capacity, rate capability, and durable tolerance. For anode of Na ion batteries, a reversible capacity of more than 301 mAh g −1 without capacity fading after 1000 cycles at rate of 1 C were achieved. Even at rate of 20 C, a high reversible capacity of 200 mAh g −1 can be retained. The superior electrochemical performance is ascribed to hierarchical multidimensional graphene architecture, high graphene crystallinity, expansile graphene interlayer distance, and extensively lateral exposed edges/pores, which can promote the electron and ion transport. The realization of assembling reduced graphene sheets to graphene nanowire offers new opportunities for energy storage application of graphene based assembly in future.

BACKGROUND Ischemia-reperfusion injury of whole brain involves a complicated pathophysiology mechanism. Dexmedetomidine (Dex) has been shown to have neuro protective functions. This study observed the effect of Dex on serum S100B and cerebral intracellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) in a rat model of cerebral ischemia-reperfusion. MATERIAL AND METHODS Healthy Sprague Dawley (SD) rats (males, 7 weeks old) were randomly divided into sham, model, and Dex groups (n=20 each). A cerebral ischemia-reperfusion model was prepared by clipping of the bilateral common carotid artery combined with hypotension. Dex (9 μg/kg) was infused intravenously immediately after reperfusion in the Dex group, while the other two groups received an equal volume of saline. Neural defect score (NDS) was measured at 6 hours, 24 hours, and 72 hours after surgery, with pathological observation of brain tissues. ELISA was then used to test serum S100B protein level. Malondialdehyde (MDA) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) were assayed by spectrometry. Nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB) and ICAM-1 levels were determined by real-time (RT)-PCR. RESULTS Model rats had significant injury in the hippocampal CA1 region as shown by elevated NDS, S100B, and MDA levels, higher NF-κB and ICAM-1 mRNA expression, and lower SOD levels (p

Thickness- and morphology-controlled vanadium pentoxide/polyaniline (V 2 O 5 /PANI) core/shell hybrid nanofibers are fabricated by electropolymerization of PANI on V 2 O 5 nanofibers for enhanced energy storage. By simply adjusting the electrodeposition time, the thickness of the PANI shells can be controlled from 5 nm to 47 nm, and the morphology can be changed from coaxial to branched. The influence of shell thickness on the improved Li-ion storage performance of the V 2 O 5 /PANI core/shell nanofibers is systematically investigated, and this enhancement of charge capability and cycling stability strongly varies with the shell thickness. Thickness-dependent synergistic electron transport, Li-ion diffusion distances, and shell mechanical strength mechanisms are also proposed. These results provide meaningful references for developing new functional core/shell materials and high-performance energy storage composite materials.

We report a facile one-step route to synthesize a free-standing Ca2Ge7O16 nanorod anode for the first time. The Ca2Ge7O16 nanorod arrays are uniformly grown on the surface of three-dimensional copper foam used as the conductive current collector. The Ca2Ge7O16 nanorod is used as a binder-free anode for lithium-ion batteries, which exhibits excellent cycle performance (134.6% retention of its 1st cycle reversible capacity after 450 cycles) and superior rate capability (350 mA h g− 1 at 5 A g− 1, the good cycling stability at 20 A g− 1). Even at higher current density of 0.5 A g− 1 after 10 cycles activation at 0.2 A g− 1, the nanorod electrodes can deliver a reversibility capacity as high as 1001.2 mA h g− 1. Furthermore, a binder free full cell is fabricated, which shows excellent cycle performance with 91% retention of its 1st cycle capacity after 200 cycles. The superior cycling performance is attributed to shortened Li+ transport length, enough buffering space, electrical conductivity of the Cu foam and the unique 1 D nanorod arrays structure.

We propose a novel multi-task learning architecture, which allows learning of task-specific feature-level attention. Our design, the Multi-Task Attention Network (MTAN), consists of a single shared network containing a global feature pool, together with a soft-attention module for each task. These modules allow for learning of task-specific features from the global features, whilst simultaneously allowing for features to be shared across different tasks. The architecture can be trained end-to-end and can be built upon any feed-forward neural network, is simple to implement, and is parameter efficient. We evaluate our approach on a variety of datasets, across both image-to-image predictions and image classification tasks. We show that our architecture is state-of-the-art in multi-task learning compared to existing methods, and is also less sensitive to various weighting schemes in the multi-task loss function. Code is available at https://github.com/lorenmt/mtan., Comment: Accepted at Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2019

Mobile short video-based product sales sharing sites like YouTube and Tudor have many established user content for creating and distributing shares. The increasing number of mobile devices for product sales leads to the upcoming new 5G technology roadmap for embedded systems and 5G network connectivity. As these are the main sources of 5G information and online activities for consumers, mobile phone short films are rapidly being replaced by embedded systems. As the demand for more embedded system devices and applications continues to grow, supported bandwidth is also essential to meet this growing connection demand. The existing system does not allocate the product sales data upload bandwidth size. The system proposed here focuses on user upload bandwidth allocation, one of the basic resources of a short video sharing system with product details. Its allocation upload bandwidth Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) algorithm is proposed in a centralized or decentralized way and evaluated for balancing widely used strategies (equal allocation) and a mobile short video. Embedded systems are responsible for running professional product sales and control applications consistently and predictably. Development while using the microprocessor is also important. It increases the need to process product sales to handle the bandwidth, latency requirements, product sales data and data generated from multiple connected devices. It's a big challenge for the industry to data and data capabilities.

Flower-like CoMoO 4 /MnO 2 heterostructures have been prepared directly on Ni foam with outstanding pseudocapacitive performance. The heterostructure electrode yields a high capacitance and superior cycling stability performance. Furthermore, the as-fabricated asymmetric supercapacitor device based on CoMoO 4 /MnO 2 positive electrode and activated carbon (AC) negative electrode can operate within a maximum potential of 1.6 V delivering both high energy density and power density, which are better than that of the CoMoO 4 //AC, MnO 2 //AC, and AC//AC bared density. In addition, the CoMoO 4 /MnO 2 //AC asymmetric supercapacitor device demonstrates highly stable cyclic performance with outstanding and robust flexibility. These encouraging results show great potential in developing energy storage devices by building heterostructure nanomaterials.

We report a facile one-step route to synthesize a Ca2Ge7O16 nanosheet (NS)/carbon nanotube (CNT) anode for the first time. The Ca2Ge7O16 NS/CNT composites are uniformly grown on the surface of three-dimensional Ni foam used as the conductive current collector. The Ca2Ge7O16 NS/CNT composite is used as a binder-free anode for lithium-ion batteries, which delivers a reversible capacity of 998.5 mA h g−1 at a current rate of 0.5 A g−1 and exhibits excellent cycle performance (87% retention of its 2nd cycle reversible capacity after 1000 cycles). Furthermore, a binder free full cell is fabricated, which shows excellent cycle performance with 96% retention of its 10th cycle capacity after 100 cycles. The superior cycling performance is attributed to the synergetic effect of small diffusion lengths in NS, sufficient void space to buffer the volume expansion, the CNT for charge transport and a continuous 3D electronic path of the Ni foam.

Vanadium oxide (V2O5), as a potential positive electrode for sodium ion batteries (SIBs), has attracted considerable attention from researchers. Herein, amorphous and crystalline V2O5 cathodes on a graphite paper without a binder and conductive additives have been synthesized via facile anodic electrochemical deposition following different heat treatments. Both the amorphous V2O5 (a-V2O5) cathode and crystalline V2O5 (c-V2O5) cathode show good rate cycling performance and long cycling life. After five rate cycles, the reversible capacities of both the cathodes were almost unchanged at different current densities from 40 to 5120 mA g-1. Long cycling tests with 10 000 cycles were carried out and the two cathodes exhibit excellent cycling stability. The c-V2O5 cathode retains a high specific capacity of 54 mA h g-1 after 10 000 cycles at 2560 mA g-1 and can be charged within 80 s. Interestingly, the a-V2O5 cathode possesses higher reversible capacities than the c-V2O5 cathode at low current densities, whereas it is inversed at high current densities. The c-V2O5 cathode shows faster capacity recovery from 5120 to 40 mA g-1 than the a-V2O5 cathode. When discharged at 80 mA g-1 (long discharge time of 140 min) and charged at 640 mA g-1 (short charge time of 17 min), the a-V2O5 cathode shows a higher discharge capacity than its c-V2O5 counterpart. The different electrochemical performance of a-V2O5 and c-V2O5 cathodes during various electrochemical processes can provide a rational selection of amorphous or crystalline V2O5 cathode materials for SIBs in their practical applications to meet the variable requirements.

The reversible capacity of commercial graphite anodes for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is in the range of 340–360 mA h g−1, which is lower than the theoretical value (372 mA h g−1). Pure graphene anodes with high reversible capacity (>372 mA h g−1) are still not used for industrial production due to their high discharge-voltage plateau, low initial coulombic efficiency, low tap density, etc. Herein, we synthesized new carbon anodes using large-size nitrogen-doped graphene-coated commercial graphite anodes (named LGAs) in which the commercial graphite was wrapped by a number (

A reasonably designed anode of hierarchically porous crystalline manganese dioxide on nickel foam has been successfully synthesized by facile anodic electrochemical deposition in combination with heat treatment. The three dimensional structure avoids the application of binder and conductive additives. The Ni foam provides a highly electronically conductive network in conjunction with a large surface area to support well contacted MnO2 nanoparticles and effectively increases the mechanical strength of the MnO2 anode as well as suppresses the aggregation of MnO2 nanoparticles during discharge/charge processes. The hierarchical pores composed of a large amount of macropores and mesopores can not only accommodate the volume change of MnO2 nanoparticles during Li ion insertion/extraction, but also accelerate the penetration of electrolyte and promise fast transport and intercalation kinetics of Li ions. The crystalline MnO2 anode exhibits a higher electrochemical performance than the amorphous one. As a result, the hierarchically porous crystalline MnO2 anode shows a long cycling life of 778.0 mA h g−1 after 200 cycles at a current density of 0.4 A g−1 and high-rate capability of up to 82% capacity retention even after the current density increases 20 times from 0.1 to 2.0 A g−1.