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Goose astrovirus genotype 2 (GoAstV2), as a contagious pathogen of fatal visceral gout in goslings, has been widely distributed in major goose-producing regions in China since 2017, leading to significant economic losses to the Chinese goose industry. In this study, a novel goose astrovirus (GoAstV-SDHZ) was isolated and identified from laying hens with nephritis for the first time. Phylogenetic analysis of the sequenced genome of ORF2 gene revealed that the GoAstV-SDHZ strain clustered into Group 2 GoAstVs and shared the highest identity with the other representative GoAstV2 in the nucleotide (ORF1a: 97.2–99.7%; ORF1b: 98.4–99.8%; ORF2: 97.2–99.9%) and amino acid sequence (ORF1a: 98.2–100%; ORF1b: 98.8–99.6%; ORF2: 97.4–99.6%). In summary, this study provides the first evidence of the GoAstV2 infection in Chinese laying hens, which raises potential threat to the poultry industry in China.

Ultrasound (US) shear wave elasticity imaging (SWEI) is a mature technique for diagnosing the elasticity of isotropic tissues. However, the elasticity of anisotropic tissues, such as muscle and tendon, cannot be diagnosed correctly using SWEI because the shear wave velocity (SWV) varies with tissue fiber orientations. Recently, SWEI has been studied for measuring the anisotropic properties of muscles by rotating the transducer; however, this is difficult for clinical practice.In this study, a novel dual-direction shear wave imaging (DDSWI) technique was proposed for visualizing the mechanical anisotropy of muscles without rotation. Longitudinal and transverse shear waves were created by a specially designed external vibrator and supersonic pushing beam, respectively; the SWVs were then tracked using ultrafast US imaging. Subsequently, the SWV maps of two directions were obtained at the same scanning cross section, and the mechanical anisotropy was represented as the ratio between them at each pixel.The performance of DDSWI was verified using a standard phantom, and human experiments were performed on the gastrocnemius and biceps brachii. Experimental results of phantom revealed DDSWI exhibited a high precision of0.81% and a low bias of3.88% in SWV measurements. The distribution of anisotropic properties in muscle was visualized with the anisotropic ratios of 1.54 and 2.27 for the gastrocnemius and biceps brachii, respectively.The results highlight the potential of this novel anisotropic imaging in clinical applications because the conditions of musculoskeletal fiber orientation can be easily and accurately evaluated in real time by DDSWI.

In China, drastic losses in the economy have been caused by the Tembusu virus (TMUV), the causative agent of the egg-drop syndrome, to the duck-raising industry. To succeed in preventing and controlling infections, extant techniques must be upgraded to achieve fast detection of viruses. This work is the first attempt to present the development of a recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA)-based clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs)-Cas13a approach for the TMUV infection diagnosis, where the CRISPR-Cas13a system is exploited

The thrombolysis potential of low-boiling-point (−2°C) perfluorocarbon phase-change nanodroplets has previously been demonstrated on aged clots, and we hypothesized that this efficacy would extend to retracted clots. We tested this hypothesis by comparing sonothrombolysis of both unretracted and retracted clots using ND-mediated ultrasound (US+ND) and MB-mediated ultrasound (US+MB), respectively. Assessment data included clot mass reduction, cavitation detection, and cavitation cloud imaging in-vitro. Acoustic parameters included a 7.9 MPa peak negative pressure, 180-cycle bursts with 5 Hz repetition (corresponding duty cycle and time-averaged intensity of 0.09% and 1.87 W/cm(2), respectively), based on prior studies. With these parameters, we observed a significantly reduced efficacy of US+MB in the retracted vs unretracted model (averaged mass reduction rate from 1.83%/min to 0.54%/min). Unlike US+MB, US+ND exhibited less reduction of efficacy in the retracted model (from 2.15%/min to 1.04%/min on average). The cavitation detection results correlate with the sonothrombolysis efficacy results showing that both stable and inertial cavitation generated in a retracted clot by US+ND is higher than US+MB. We observed that ND-mediated cavitation shows a tendency to occur inside a clot, whereas MB-mediated cavitation occurs near the surface of a retracted clot, and this difference is more significant with retracted clots compared to unretracted clots. We conclude that ND-mediated sonothrombolysis outperforms MB-mediated therapy regardless of clot retraction, and this advantage of ND-mediated cavitation is emphasized for retracted clots. The primary mechanisms are hypothesized to be sustained cavitation level and cavitation clouds in the proximity of a retracted clot by ND-mediated ultrasound.

Piezoelectric materials possess the capability to interchangeably convert electrical energy into a mechanical response. While current piezoelectric materials exhibit strong properties, known limitations have inhibited further development. This review describes the ability to combine different piezoelectric materials into a composite to create well-rounded properties. The different types of connectivity classes are described as well as important design considerations and theoretical models. The contributions from the active and passive phases are outlined, focusing primarily on ferroelectric ceramics and polymer-based composites. The key advantage of piezoelectric composites is their ability to combine the flexibility of polymers with the high electromechanical coupling and piezoelectric coefficients of ferroelectric ceramics or single crystals appropriate for a variety of applications. Composites are prominent in medical ultrasound imaging and therapy, underwater acoustic sensing, industrial structural health monitoring, energy harvesting, and numerous other emerging applications. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Materials Research, Volume 53 is July 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Nanoelectronics has been one of the most dynamic topics in nanotechnology over recent decades, and the demands in the quantum era associated with nanoelectronics have never been more challenging. It is our great pleasure to introduce the guest editors of this special issue of IEEE Nanotechnology Magazine on nanoelectronics, Prof. Malgorzata Chrzanowska-Jeske, Prof. Stephen M. Goodnick, and Prof. Martin Wybourne, who are experienced nanoelectronics researchers.

As blood clots age, many thrombolytic techniques become less effective. In order to fully evaluate these techniques for potential clinical use, a large animal, aged-clot model is needed. Previous minimally invasive attempts to allow clots to age in an in-vivo large animal model were unsuccessful due to the clot clearance associated with relatively high level of cardiac health of readily available research pigs. Prior models have thus subsequently utilized invasive surgical techniques with the associated morbidity, animal stress, and cost. We propose a method for forming sub-acute venous blood clots in an in-vivo porcine model. The age of the clots can be controlled and varied. By using an intravenous scaffold to anchor the clot to the vessel wall during the aging process, we can show that sub-acute clots can consistently be formed with a minimally invasive, percutaneous approach. The clot formed in this study remained intact for at least one week in all subjects. Therefore, we established a new minimally invasive, large animal aged-clot model for evaluation of thrombolytic techniques.

This research aims to demonstrate a novel vortex ultrasound enabled endovascular thrombolysis method designed for treating cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). This is a topic of significant importance since current treatment modalities for CVST still fail in as many as 20-40% of the cases and the incidence of CVST has increased since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared with conventional anticoagulant or thrombolytic drugs, sonothrombolysis has the potential to remarkably shorten the required treatment time owing to the direct clot targeting with acoustic waves. However, previously reported strategies for sonothrombolysis have not demonstrated clinically meaningful outcomes (e.g., recanalization within 30 minutes) in treating large, completely occluded veins or arteries. In this paper, we demonstrated a new vortex ultrasound technique for endovascular sonothrombolysis utilizing wave-matter interaction-induced shear stress to enhance the lytic rate substantially. Ourin vitroexperiment showed that the lytic rate was increased by at least 64.3 % compared with the nonvortex endovascular ultrasound treatment. A 3.1 g, 7.5 cm long, completely occludedin vitro3D model of acute CVST was fully recanalized within 8 minutes with a record-high lytic rate of 237.5 mg/min for acute bovine clotin vitro. Furthermore, we confirmed that the vortex ultrasound causes no vessel wall damage overex vivobovine veins. This vortex ultrasound thrombolysis technique potentially presents a new life-saving tool for severe CVST cases that cannot be efficaciously treated using existing therapies.

Low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) has gained considerable attention as a promising noninvasive neuromodulatory technique for human brains. However, the complex morphology of the skull hinders scholars from precisely predicting the acoustic energy transmitted and the region of the brain impacted during the sonication. This is due to the fact that different ultrasound frequencies and skull morphology variations greatly affect wave propagation through the skull.Although the acoustic properties of human skull have been studied for tFUS applications, such as tumor ablation using a multielement phased array, there is no consensus about how to choose a single-element focused ultrasound (FUS) transducer with a suitable frequency for neuromodulation. There are interests in exploring the magnitude and dimension of tFUS beam through human parietal bone for modulating specific brain lobes. Herein, we aim to investigate the wave propagation of tFUS on human skulls to understand and address the concerns above.Both experimental measurements and numerical modeling were conducted to investigate the transmission efficiency and beam pattern of tFUS on five human skulls (C3 and C4 regions) using single-element FUS transducers with six different frequencies (150-1500 kHz). The degassed skull was placed in a water tank, and a calibrated hydrophone was utilized to measure acoustic pressure past it. The cranial computed tomography scan data of each skull were obtained to derive a high-resolution acoustic model (grid point spacing: 0.25 mm) in simulations. Meanwhile, we modified the power-law exponent of acoustic attenuation coefficient to validate numerical modeling and enabled it to be served as a prediction tool, based on the experimental measurements.The transmission efficiency and -6 dB beamwidth were evaluated and compared for various frequencies. An exponential decrease in transmission efficiency and a logarithmic decrease of -6 dB beamwidth with an increase in ultrasound frequency were observed. It is found that a750 kHz ultrasound leads to a relatively lower tFUS transmission efficiency (5%), whereas a350 kHz ultrasound contributes to a relatively broader beamwidth (5 mm). Based on these observations, we further analyzed the dependence of tFUS wave propagation on FUS transducer aperture size.We successfully studied tFUS wave propagation through human skulls at different frequencies experimentally and numerically. The findings have important implications to predict tFUS wave propagation for ultrasound neuromodulation in clinical applications, and guide researchers to develop advanced ultrasound transducers as neural interfaces.

With the rapid advancement of tracking technologies, the applications of tracking systems in ultrasound imaging have expanded across a wide range of fields. In this review article, we discuss the basic tracking principles, system components, performance analyses, as well as the main sources of error for popular tracking technologies that are utilized in ultrasound imaging. In light of the growing demand for object tracking, this article explores both the potential and challenges associated with different tracking technologies applied to various ultrasound imaging applications, including freehand 3D ultrasound imaging, ultrasound image fusion, ultrasound-guided intervention and treatment. Recent development in tracking technology has led to increased accuracy and intuitiveness of ultrasound imaging and navigation with less reliance on operator skills, thereby benefiting the medical diagnosis and treatment. Although commercially available tracking systems are capable of achieving sub-millimeter resolution for positional tracking and sub-degree resolution for orientational tracking, such systems are subject to a number of disadvantages, including high costs and time-consuming calibration procedures. While some emerging tracking technologies are still in the research stage, their potentials have been demonstrated in terms of the compactness, light weight, and easy integration with existing standard or portable ultrasound machines.

Geese play an important role in agricultural economics, with China producing the vast majority of goose meat consumed worldwide annually. The variations in the avian viruses and co-infections result in substantial economic losses to the goose industry in China. To understand the evolutionary characteristics and co-infections of viruses, a broad epidemiological investigation of epizootic viruses of goose was carried out in nine provinces of China during 2018-2021. Here, the results indicated that, among the 1970 clinical samples, 50.81% (1001/1970) were positive for goose astrovirus (GAstV), 18.22% (359/1970) for avian orthoreovirus, 12.74% (251/1970) for goose parvovirus, 11.02% (217/1970) for H9N2 subtype avian influenza virus, 4.01% (79/1970) for Newcastle disease virus, and 2.08% (41/1970) for fowl adenovirus. Among the six viruses, co-infections comprised a large proportion (66.37%) in the field, of which the dual infection was more common. Additionally, phylogenetic analysis of GAstVs indicated that Chinese GAstVs had formed two distinct groups, that is, GAstV-1 and GAstV-2. GAstV-2 sub-genotype II-c had arisen as the dominant genotype in the whole country. Notably, all the H9N2-AIV isolated strains harboured the mammalian adaptation markers I155T, H183N, and Q226L (H3 numbering) in the HA gene, which promotes preferential binding to human-like α2-6-linked sialic acid receptors. And beyond that, we determined that the goose-origin Muscovy Duck Reovirus isolates, showing 51.7%-96% similarities to that of other waterfowl-origin orthoreovirus isolates in sequence homology analysis of the representative part of σC, are a new variant of waterfowl-origin orthoreovirus. These data provide valuable information about the prevalence of infectious diseases in geese on mainland China.

In recent years, the emerging avian orthoreovirus (ARV) strains that led to viral arthritis have attracted much attention from the chicken industry worldwide, due to the significant economic losses suffered. In mid-2020, with the assistance of next-generation sequencing technology, we achieved success in characterizing two divergent avian orthoreovirus (ARV) variants (0543/SDYT) and isolating them from the broiler tendons characterized by arthritis. As suggested by the genome characterization of the 0543/SDYT strains, they belong separately to clusters Ⅰ and Ⅳ. As revealed by sequence comparison, phylogenetic, and recombination analysis, for μA, μB, and σNS genes, considerable genetic divergences were also observed in the two new isolates. However, in the case of λA, λB, μNS, σA, and σB genes, very clear clustering patterns were observed for SDYT and 0543 field strains, respectively. In terms of the μA, μNS, p10, p17 genes of SDYT isolate and μNS, p17, σC, σA genes of 0543 isolate, the lower similarity was observed with NCBI stored sequences, with nt highest identity values below 90 %. In addition, there is an intra-fragmental recombination event in the M1 gene of the SDYT strain. In regard, the multiple segmental recombination and accumulation of point mutations play a role in the newly-emerging ARV strains. Not only did the isolates strain exhibit strong replication ability in vivo, but they also displayed strong arthritogenicity in broilers with low neutralizing maternal antibodies, indicating that maternal antibody treatment may not effectively reduce the oral infection of avian orthoreovirus. These findings suggest that it is necessary to develop a new strategy for enhanced effectiveness in preventing and controlling ARV infection.

We investigated the effects of alternating current poling (ACP) on the piezoelectric and dielectric properties of 3-MHz sliver mode (L13 mm × W0.10-0.25 mm × T0.48 mm) vibrators fashioned from Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.30PbTiO3 (PMN-0.30PT) single crystal (SC) plate manufactured using the continuous-feeding Bridgman (CF-BM) method for cardiac probes. The ACP SC plate (L13 mm × W24 mm × T0.48 mm) exhibited ultrahigh dielectric permittivity ( εsupT/supsub33/sub/εsub0/sub) and piezoelectric coefficient ( dsub33/sub) of 9690 and 2920 pC/N, respectively. After array dicing, the SC slivers with widths of 0.10, 0.15, 0.20, and 0.25 mm were obtained, and their average εsupT/supsub33/sub/εsub0/subvalues decreased from the SC plate εsupT/supsub33/sub/εsub0/subby 45% (5330), 29% (6880), 19% (7840), and 15% (8240), respectively, possibly because of heat and mechanical damage during the dicing. A combination of the ACP and a postdicing direct current poling (ACP-DCP) recovered their εsupT/supsub33/sub/εsub0/subvalues to 6050, 7080, 8140, and 8540, respectively. The sliver mode electromechanical coupling factors ( k'sub33/sub) were confirmed to exceed 93% after the ACP-DCP process, which were more than 4% higher than those of DCP-DCP SC slivers. The measured impedance spectra indicated that the SC slivers with 0.10-0.20 mm in width showed no spurious mode vibration near the fundamental k'sub33/submode. We conclude that the ACP-DCP SC slivers maintained more enhanced piezoelectric and dielectric properties than the DCP-DCP samples. These results will have important implications for the commercial application of ACP technology to medical imaging ultrasound probes.

Goose astrovirus (GAstV) characterized by articular and visceral gout, is an emerging pathogen with a wide distribution on mainland China, leading to serious economic losses in the goose-raising industry. Because vaccines to prevent GAstV infections are not available currently, early diagnosis is critical when treating symptomatic geese and in preventing GAstV transmission. In this context, a highly sensitive indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ic-ELISA) based on a monoclonal antibody (mAb) to detect GAstV-specific antibodies from geese was developed, and the detections were optimized. A series of experiments proved that the ic-ELISA shows excellent diagnostic performance and discriminatory power with high sensitivity and specificity. The ic-ELISA for GAstV detection was applied on 67 field serum samples, and comparing the detection results with the virus neutralization test verified the accuracy of the ic-ELISA. The correlation coefficient between the ic-ELISA and the virus neutralization test was 80%, demonstrating the proposed ic-ELISA method could be a useful and effective tool for the diagnostic, serological epidemiological investigation and immune monitoring of the GAstV in goose-producing regions.

Reliable vibration sensing is essential to the immediate detection of unusual vibrations, ensuring the safety of nuclear power plant structures. For nuclear power plant applications, the sensor element must endure the harsh environment while retaining reliable performance. Aluminum nitride (AlN) single crystal is considered a promising candidate for the sensing unit due to its robustness to high temperature (HT) and irradiation conditions. However, there are few efforts in developing industrial accelerometers using AlN bulk-machined materials. This article aims to develop a shear-type accelerometer with AlN single crystal plates. The accelerometer's design is based on the numerical simulation results, followed by the fabrication of the sensor and the extensive validation under HT (∼1000 °C). The sensitivity of the accelerometer was about 9.2 pC/g. The prototype sensor showed stable performance at varying temperatures from room temperature to 1000 °C. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the accelerometer was successfully sustained for 10 h under HT exposure of 1000 °C, and no obvious mechanical damage was detected after the test. After gamma irradiation for 1 month, the sensor performed stably, without any significant change in sensitivity. The developed AlN accelerometer can be a promising option to monitor the structural integrity of nuclear power plant structures.

Smartphones today have attracted a continuous trend of pursuing narrow-bezel and full-screen displays. To allow for a more user-friendly front side fingerprint recognition in full-screen displays, it is crucial to develop an under-display type of fingerprint sensor. Among fingerprint sensing techniques, ultrasonic fingerprint sensing has been proved to be able to provide more distinctive features and give a high resistance to spoof attacks. However, until now no study about under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensing has been reported. In this article, for the first time, multilayer under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor structure using various active materials/structures were theoretically designed and compared. Based on the theoretical analysis results, a lead zirconate titanate (PZT)-5A-based multilayer under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor with a resonant frequency of 20 MHz, and a −6-dB fractional bandwidth of more than 70% was fabricated to meet the requirements of resolution and sensitivity for the under-display ultrasonic fingerprint imaging applications. The prototyped sensor was characterized, and the fingerprint recognition capability was tested using a custom-made fingerprint-mimicking phantom. The phantom images were acquired based on the pulse-echo imaging method. With the 1 μJ impulse driving signal, the sensor was manipulated to image a 2.0 mm × 1.0 mm section of fingerprint-mimicking phantom by mechanical scanning, obtaining an electronic image with 500 × 500 DPI. The fingerprint-mimicking phantom imaging results suggest that the 20 MHz broadband PZT-based multilayer structure holds great potential for under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor applications.

While fingerprint technology has been widely used in mobile devices for user identification, the existing fingerprint sensors can only capture 2D images of the fingerprint and are thus vulnerable to spoofing attacks using 2D replicas of fingerprint. Ultrasonic fingerprint recognition via imaging the structures beneath the human skin can be a promising approach for preventing spoofing attacks on fingerprint-based identification devices. In this study, under-display ultrasonic fingerprint recognition (UDUFR) was investigated for the first time via imaging a finger vessel underneath the fingerprint. A 40 MHz ultrasonic fingerprint sensor composed of PZT-5H piezoelectric active material was firstly developed, which demonstrated broad bandwidth (73.9%) and high loop sensitivity (−27.5 dB) for UDUFR applications. UDUFR experiments were performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique using a two-layer polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) phantom which consists of a dummy fingerprint in the surface layer and a finger vessel mimicker in the inner layer. Electronic images of the fingerprint and finger vessel with a resolution of $500\times500$ DPI were successfully obtained. The results reported in this study open up new avenues for the next generation of robust and secure UDUFR technology.

Continuous blood pressure monitoring in everyday life is important and necessary to detect and control high blood pressure in advance. While the existing blood pressure monitoring techniques are well suited for applications in current clinical settings, they are inadequate for next-generation wearable long-term monitoring of blood pressure on a daily basis. In this study, a flexible piezo-composite ultrasonic sensor was reported, for the first time, for continuous blood pressure measurement through ultrasonic motion tracking of blood vessel wall. A flexible piezo-composite ultrasonic sensor was designed and fabricated with a layer of PZT-5A/ polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) anisotropic 1–3 composite and silver nanowire based stretchable electrodes. The material properties and dimensions of the sensor were determined according to the volume fraction of PZT-5A and the material properties of PZT-5A and PDMS. The experimental results illustrated that the flexible sensor possessed adequate bandwidth and sensitivity for blood pressure monitoring. Continuous blood pressure measurement was successfully conducted with the ulnar artery on a volunteer’s right arm. Compared with the measurement results using a clinical ultrasound probe and a commercial upper arm blood monitor, the results obtained in this study demonstrated the capability of the proposed flexible sensor to continuously monitor blood pressure waveforms during cardiac cycles. The flexible sensor provides a promising solution for noninvasive, nonocclusive and calibration-free blood pressure monitoring. It has great potential to be integrated into a wearable ultrasonic healthcare sensing system for blood pressure and flow monitoring.

There is uncertainty about deep vein thrombosis standard treatment as thrombus stiffness alters each case. Here, we investigated thrombus' stiffness of different compositions and ages using shear wave elastography (SWE). We then studied the effectiveness of ultrasound-thrombolysis on different thrombus compositions.Shear waves generated through mechanical shaker and traveled along thrombus of different hematocrit (HCT) levels, whereas 18-MHz ultrasound array used to detect wave propagation. Thrombus' stiffness was identified by the shear wave speed (SWS). In thrombolysis, a 3.2 MHz focused transducer was applied to different thrombus compositions using different powers. The thrombolysis rate was defined as the percentage of weight loss.The estimated average SWS of 20%, 40%, and 60% HCT thrombus were 0.75 m/s, 0.44 m/s, and 0.32 m/s, respectively. For Thrombolysis, the percentage weight loss at 8 MPa Negative pressure for the same HCT groups were 23.1%, 35.29%, and 39.66% respectively.SWS is inversely related to HCT level and positively related to thrombus age. High HCT thrombus had higher weight loss compared to low HCT. However, the difference between 20% and 40% HCT was more significant than between 40% and 60% HCT in both studies. Our results suggest that thrombus with higher SWS require more power to achieve the same thrombolysis rate as thrombus with lower SWS.Characterizing thrombus elastic property undergoing thrombolysis enables evaluation of ultrasound efficacy for fractionating thrombus and reveals the appropriate ultrasound parameters selection to achieve a certain thrombolysis rate in the case of a specific thrombus stiffness.

With the great success on verifying its effectiveness on relaxor-PbTiO3 (PT) single crystals (SCs), alternating current poling (ACP) has been taking a center as a new domain engineering method in the last few years. Compared with the conventional direct current poling (DCP), ACP enables enhanced piezoelectric and dielectric properties. In this article, research progress in ACP and perspectives are introduced. Initially, optimized conditions of ACP for relaxor-PT SCs and unsolved issues on polycrystalline ceramics and spurious modes are reviewed. Second, the ferroelectric domain size dependence of piezoelectricity associated with ACP is discussed. We hypothesize that a tradeoff between domain and domain wall contributions exists for high piezoelectricity, suggesting an optimum 109° domain wall size, which is presumably dependent on compositions, crystallographic symmetries, and domain configurations. Finally, crystals synthesized by a solid-state crystal growth (SSCG) method are briefly introduced due to their unprecedented piezoelectricity obtained by ACP ( dsub33/sub ∼ 5500 pC/N). We hope that this work helps to grasp the current status of ACP and to guide future tasks to be studied.

Background: Poultry production in China has been experiencing a high incidence of broiler arthritis /tenosynovitis caused by avian orthoreovirus (ARV) since 2013. In the spring of 2020 severe arthritis cases from broiler flocks were identified in large-scale commercial poultry company in Anhui Province, China. Methods: Diseased organ from dead birds were sent for diagnosis to our laboratory. ARV, including seven broiler-isolates and two breeder-isolates, was successfully harvested and sequenced. Results: Interestingly, the genotypes of ARVs isolated from infected chickens were inconsistent between different flocks or even between different houses on the same flocks. Subsequently, a total of 89.66 per cent sera samples collected from apparently healthy adult broiler flocks unvaccinated against ARV tested positive for ARV antibodies, suggesting that low and high virulence reovirus strains may be co-circulating in the farm. To this end, we collected unhatched embryos from breeders (parental generation) for pathogen tracing, the two harvested ARV breeder-isolates indicated that the factor of vertical transmission from breeders to progeny should not be underestimated for the prevalence of ARV within broiler flocks. Conclusion: The findings have implications for evidenced-based formulation of prevention and control strategies.

The overpoling effect of alternating current poling (ACP) was studied on [001]-orientated rhombohedral Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.26PbTiO3 (PMN-0.26PT) single crystals. Our experimental results showed that the property enhancement from the ACP was remarkable only when the poling cycle number (NL) was kept low. When ACP was continued after the saturation, dielectric and piezoelectric properties gradually dropped down to traditional direct current poled levels or even lower. Such a decrease in material properties caused by the large NL during ACP was defined as the “overpoling effect of ACP” in this study. The following lattice symmetry and domain structure characterization studies were performed through x-ray diffraction (XRD) and piezoelectric force microscopy (PFM) to find the origin of the overpoling effect. The XRD measurements combined with temperature dependence of dielectric properties demonstrated that the field-induced phase transition continued when the samples became overpoled. Further PFM measurements illustrated that the domain density of the overpoled ACP sample was significantly lower than that of the normal one, while the “2R” domain configuration was maintained through the ACP process. In addition, the hysteresis loop characterization indicated large decreases in the coercive fields. The discovered overpoling effect of ACP could help us understand the mechanisms of ACP and optimize the ACP process.

In November 2017, a severe infectious disease that devastated the major goose-producing regions in China was found to be caused by a novel goose astrovirus (N-AstV). The objective of this study was to develop a quantitative loop-mediated isothermal amplification (qLAMP) assay for the rapid diagnosis of N-AstV characterized with gout, hemorrhage, and swellings of the kidneys. A set of 4 specific primers, 2 inner and 2 outer primers, targeting the ORF1a gene of N-AstV were designed for the assay which could be completed within 60 min at 65°C in a water bath or on a real-time PCR instrument for quantitative analysis. The qLAMP assay showed a high sensitivity with a detection limit of 1 × 101 copies of the target DNA/μL. There were no cross-reactions with other viruses, and the reproducibility of the assay was confirmed in intrasensitivity and intersensitivity assay tests with variability ranging from 0.61 to 2.21%. The results indicated that the qLAMP assay for N-AstV was a simple, accurate, rapid, sensitive, and specific, especially useful for field detection.

We present enhanced cavitation erosion of blood clots exposed to low-boiling-point (−2°C) perfluorocarbon phase-change nanodroplets and pulsed ultrasound, as well as microbubbles with the same formulation under the same conditions. Given prior success with microbubbles as a sonothrombolysis agent, we considered that perfluorocarbon phase-change nanodroplets could enhance clot disruption further beyond that achieved with microbubbles. It has been hypothesized that owing to their small size and ability to penetrate into a clot, nanodroplets could enhance cavitation inside a blood clot and increase sonothrombolysis efficacy. The thrombolytic effects of lipid-shell-decafluorobutane nanodroplets were evaluated and compared with those of microbubbles with the same formulation, in an aged bovine blood clot flow model. Seven different pulsing schemes, with an acoustic intensity (I(SPTA)) range of 0.021–34.8 W/cm(2) were applied in three different therapy scenarios: ultrasound only, ultrasound with microbubbles and ultrasound with nanodroplets (n = 5). Data indicated that pulsing schemes with 0.35 W/cm(2) and 5.22 W/cm(2) produced a significant difference (p < 0.05) in nanodroplet sonothrombolysis performance compared with compositionally identical microbubbles. With these excitation conditions, nanodroplet-mediated treatment achieved a 140% average thrombolysis rate over the microbubble-mediated case. We observed distinctive internal erosion in the middle of bovine clot samples from nanodroplet-mediated ultrasound, whereas the microbubble-mediated case generated surface erosion. This erosion pattern was supported by ultrasound imaging during sonothrombolysis, which revealed that nanodroplets generated cavitation clouds throughout a clot, whereas microbubble cavitation formed larger cavitation clouds only outside a clot sample.

The use of fingerprint for biometric identification is one of the most prevalent authentication methods applied today in smartphones. In the course of pursuing narrow-bezel and full-screen display, the under-display fingerprint sensor is considered to be a user-friendly and practical solution for newer models of smartphone. While under-display optical fingerprint sensor has been commercially available in various smartphones, it demonstrates limitations such as sensitivity to humidity and contaminations including oil and water as well as easy to spoof. Ultrasonic fingerprint sensing has been proved to be able to overcome these limitations. In this study, P(VDF-TrFE) piezoelectric polymer-based transducer was reported, for the first time, for under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensing applications. In specific, a 40 MHz ultrasonic transducer using a layer of $10~\mu \text{m}$ thick P(VDF-TrFE) thin-film was designed, fabricated, and characterized. The under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensing capability of the prototyped transducer was experimentally validated using phantoms of real fingerprint. Electronic images of fingerprint with resolution of $500\times500$ DPI were obtained through under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensing tests. The lateral resolution of the transducer was calculated to be $\sim ~70~\mu \text{m}$ . The results of this study illustrate promising advances in under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensing applications.

This article aims to develop a semi-noncontact stress-sensing system using a laser-generated ultrasound (LGU) wave assisted by candle soot nanoparticle (CSNP) composite. While the acoustoelastic effect is commonly targeted to measure the stress level, efforts to combine it with the LGU wave signal have been lacking due to weak signal intensity. In this study, the CSNP-based transducer is designed to potentiate the photoacoustic energy conversion. To demonstrate the wave propagation with the designed parameters, a numerical simulation was first conducted. The experimental results showed that a laser intensity of 6.5 mJ/cm2 was enough to generate the subsurface longitudinal (SSL) wave from the CSNP composite transducer. The normal beam projection is the most effective wave-generation method, exhibiting the highest signal magnitude compared with inclined projection cases. Finally, the laser-assisted stress-sensing system was assessed by increasing the internal pressure of an air tank. The sensitivity of the developed sensor system was estimated to be 0.296 ns/MPa, showing a correlation of 0.983 with the theoretical prediction. The proposed sensing system can be used to monitor the structural integrity of nuclear power plants.

In this article, a flexible piezo-composite transducer composed of the active piezoelectric material (PZT-5H) and passive polymer matrix [polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)] is developed to achieve excellent flexibility, sensitivity, and bandwidth for biomedical and industrial applications. The flexible electrodes [silver nanowires (AgNWs) mixed with PDMS] are deposited on the transducers using a spray coating method, providing a sufficient conductivity of an electrode through repeated bending tests. The flexible 1–3 composite transducer exhibits robust mechanical flexibility (curved radius