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Controlling molecular self-assembly from organic solution evaporation is an important strategy for developing many functional materials and systems. In this work, it is demonstrated that 4-octyloxy-4′-cyanobiphenyl (8OCB) liquid crystals can be patterned into well-oriented stripes with very high micrometer-scale precision using a sandwich system through a dewetting method. The preparation temperature, concentration, and surface energy are combined to control the morphology and orientation of 8OCB microstripe arrays assisted by silicon micropillars. Microstripes prepared below the isotropic temperature were uniform, well-ordered, and showed high electricity. In addition, 8OCB molecules have a strong tendency toward antiparallel alignment, nearly standing up on the substrate with long axes parallel to the microstripe. Also, we point out the mechanism for the self-assembly process of 8OCB on the air–liquid and liquid–solid surface.

A low-profile, broadband dual-polarized magneto-electric (ME) dipole antenna and its array are proposed with filtering characteristics in this letter. The antenna consists of four aperture-coupled driven radiators, a cross-shaped patch, and two pairs of orthogonal feeding networks. Three controllable radiation nulls are introduced to achieve out-of-band suppression by loading cross-shaped patches, extending open-circuit branches, and designing special feeding networks, respectively. The measured −10 dB impedance bandwidth is 45% (3.3 GHz to 5.1 GHz), which covers the entire 5G bands of N77/N78/N79 bands. Meanwhile, the average in-band gain is 8.5 dBi, and the out-of-band suppression level is more than 15 dBi. A wideband filtering antenna array is designed for demonstration. The measured results show that the −10 dB impedance bandwidth is 45% (3.3 GHz to 5.1 GHz), and the average gain is 13 dBi with stable radiation characteristics within the whole band, which is a suitable choice for 5G base station applications.

A dual-broadband aperture-shared base station antenna array using double decoupling techniques is proposed, where L-shaped branches and open ring decoupling surface (ODS) are designed to suppress the scattering effect of low-band radiation. The aperture-shared array antenna consists of a low-band antenna, four high-band antennas, four internal baffles, and a box-shaped reflector. The principle of loading L-shaped branches and the ODS are explained. Moreover, the decoupling effect of combining two decoupling techniques is demonstrated by tested results. The measured results show that the aperture-shared array antenna operates at 1.7 GHz to 2.5 GHz (38%) and 3.1 GHz to 4.1 GHz (28%), while the isolation is more than 30 dB in the high band and more than 25 dB in the low band, achieving a good isolation level. Very stable gain and radiation patterns are achieved, with high cross-polarized discrimination of more than 18 dB at the Z-axis in the whole bands.

Aims/BackgroundThe systemic inflammatory response index (SIRI), an emerging hematological marker of inflammation, has shown promise as a promising biomarker for a variety of inflammatory conditions. This study aims to explore the diagnostic role of SIRI in Bell’s palsy (BP).MethodsFor this retrospective study, 73 people diagnosed with BP between January 2021 and December 2023 were recruited, along with 73 healthy controls who were age- and sex-matched. The SIRI and other blood inflammatory markers, including the systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), were determined for all participants, by enumerating their peripheral blood cell counts. Facial nerve function was assessed upon admission and after one month of treatment using the House-Brackmann Facial Nerve Grading System (H-B). According to this system, patients with an H-B grade of 1–2 are considered recovered, while those with an H-B grade of 3–6 are regarded as not recovered.ResultsThe SIRI (0.94 vs 0.48, p< 0.001), SII (480.3 vs 329.12, p< 0.001), NLR (2.42 vs 1.41, p< 0.001), and PLR (141.05 vs 117.28, p= 0.001) showed a significant increase in the BP group compared to the control group. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed that the area under the curve (AUC) for SIRI was higher than those for SII, NLR, and PLR, respectively. Upon one-month follow-up, significant differences in the values of SIRI, SII, and NLR were observed between the favorable prognosis group and the poor prognosis group (SIRI: 1.07 vs 0.87, p= 0.011; SII: 647.85 vs 422.11, p= 0.005; NLR: 3.31 vs 2.11, p= 0.013). The AUC of ROC curve for SIRI was found to be lower than that of SII but higher than that of NLR.ConclusionThe SIRI has the potential to be an important BP diagnostic and prognostic marker.

The cancer-associated alternative splicing (AS) events generate cancer-related transcripts which are involved in uncontrolled cell proliferation and drug resistance. However, the key AS variants implicated in tamoxifen (TAM) resistance in breast cancer remain elusive. In the current study, we investigated the landscape of AS events in nine pairs of primary and relapse breast tumors from patients receiving TAM-based therapy. We unrevealed a notable association between the inclusion of exon 7.2 in the 5’untranslated region (5’UTR) of ALDOA mRNA and TAM resistance. Mechanistically, the inclusion of ALDOA exon 7.2 enhances the translation efficiency of the transcript, resulting in increased ALDOA protein expression, mTOR pathway activity, and the promotion of TAM resistance in breast cancer cells. Moreover, the inclusion of exon 7.2 in ALDOA mRNA is mediated by MSI1 via direct interaction. In addition, elevated inclusion of ALDOA exon 7.2 or expression of MSI1 is associated with an unfavorable prognosis in patients undergoing endocrine therapy. Notably, treatment with Aldometanib, an ALDOA inhibitor, effectively restrains the growth of TAM-resistant breast cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. The present study unveils the pivotal role of an AS event in ALDOA, under the regulation of MSI1, in driving TAM resistance in breast cancer. Therefore, this study provides a promising therapeutic avenue targeting ALDOA to combat TAM resistance.

Negative-thermal-expansion (NTE) materials violate the common knowledge of “thermal expansion and cold contraction” in solids and embrace various physical mechanisms. In most phonon-driven NTE materials, an open-framework structure is necessary to accommodate the spatially anisotropic phonon excitations of the bridged atoms, but such a structural feature may result in structural instability at a high temperature. Herein, we focus on γ-LiBO2with a closed-framework diamond-like structure and identify its uniaxial NTE behavior over the largest temperature range (100−850 K) among this structural family. As the temperature increases, the synergetic structural modification of the constituent structural groups, i.e., the stretching and bending of the Li−O bonds in floppy [LiO4] and the tension or rotation in the [BO4] group, accounts for NTE along the c-axis. Our study unveils that, apart from the anisotropic phonon excitations of individual atoms, the preferred phonon excitations of structural groups are also able to generate NTE, which would update the understanding of the NTE mechanism and guide the further exploration of phonon-driven NTE materials.

Injuries to the brain result in tunable cell responses paired with stimulus properties, suggesting the existence of intrinsic processes that encode and transmit injury information; however, the molecular mechanism of injury information encoding is unclear. Here, using ATP fluorescent indicators, we identify injury-evoked spatiotemporally selective ATP dynamics, Inflares, in adult mice of both sexes. Inflares are actively released from astrocytes and act as the internal representations of injury. Inflares encode injury intensity and position at their population level through frequency changes and are further decoded by microglia, driving changes in their activation state. Mismatches between Inflares and injury severity lead to microglia dysfunction and worsening of injury outcome. Blocking Inflares in ischemic stroke in mice reduces secondary damage and improves recovery of function. Our results suggest that astrocytic ATP dynamics encode injury information and are sensed by microglia.

This study took a family systems perspective and tested spillover theory to examine the transmission of stress from parents to children during COVID-19. Using a longitudinal design with a 1-year interval, we tested the association between parent perceived stress and perceived child stress, and the sequential mediating effects of poor family functioning and parent–child closeness. The data comprised 134 parents residing in the US who were assessed from the initial first peak of COVID-19 infections in 2020 to 2021, 1 year later. Results indicated that when controlling for covariates, there was a significant association between parent perceived stress and perceived child stress. What is more, poor family functioning and parent–child closeness fully mediated the former link in sequence. These findings highlighted the need for improving family relationship quality when providing interventions that target families suffering in stressful contexts.

Designing high-performance binder-free electrochemical electrodes is crucially important toward supercapacitors. In this paper, a Zn/N-doped porous carbon film coating on flexible carbon nanotubes (ZIF-8@CT-800) derived from the epitaxial Zn-MOF film growth on cotton textile was successfully fabricated via a combination of the liquid-phase epitaxial (LPE) method and calcination treatments. The ZIF-8@CT-800 serves directly as a self-supported electrode for supercapacitors and exhibits a high areal capacitance of 930 mF·cm–2at a current density of 1 mA·cm–2and a good recyclability of 86% after 2000 cycles. The excellent supercapacitor property is ascribed to the unique structural design of ZIF-8@CT-800, which provides appropriate channels for enhanced electronic and ionic transport as well as increased surface area for accessing more electrolyte ions. This work will provide significant guidance for designing MOF-derived porous carbon to construct flexible binder-free electrode materials with high electrochemical performance.

Polypropylene is commonly used as a binder for ceramic injection molding, and rapid cooling is often encountered during processing. However, the crystallization behavior of polypropylene shows a strong dependence on cooling rate due to its semi-crystalline characteristics. Therefore, the influence of cooling rate on the quality of final product cannot be ignored. In this study, the fast differential scanning calorimetry (FSC) test was performed to study the influence of cooling rate on the non-isothermal crystallization behavior and non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of a copolymer polypropylene (PP BC03B). The results show that the crystallization temperatures and crystallinity decrease as the cooling rate increases. In addition, two exothermic peaks occur when cooling rate ranges from 30 to 300 K·s−1, indicating the formation of another crystal phase. Avrami, Ozawa and Mo equations were used to explore the non-isothermal crystallization kinetics, and it can be concluded that the Mo method is suitable for this study.

A new method of repeated upsetting−extrusion (RUE) deformation was presented. The effects of different deformation temperatures on the microstructure and texture of RUE deformed AZ31 magnesium (Mg) alloy were studied using optical microscopy (OM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), and Vickers hardness tester. The results show that the microstructure of the AZ31 Mg alloy is locally refined to 0.8 μm after RUE deformation, and the main refinement mechanism is the continuous dynamic recrystallization (CDRX). As the temperature increases, the texture of basal plane parallel to shearing plane is formed firstly, followed by texture with weaker intensity, and finally and textures. The texture split is caused by the dislocation slip of basal 〈a〉 and pyramidal 〈a〉. The maximum hardness of the AZ31 Mg alloy after RUE deformation is increased by 42.4% compared with that at the initial state, which is mainly due to the fine-grained strengthening and the dislocation strengthening.

Emergence delirium (ED) is delirium that occurs during or immediately after emergence from general anesthesia or sedation. Effective pharmacological treatments for ED are lacking, so preventive measures should be taken to minimize the risk of ED. However, the risk factors for ED in adults are unclear. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we evaluated the evidence for risk factors for ED in adults. The PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, and Embase databases were searched for observational studies reporting the risk factors for ED in adults from inception to July 31, 2023. Twenty observational studies reporting 19,171 participants were included in this meta-analysis. Among the preoperative factors identified as risk factors for ED were age <40 or ≥65 years, male sex, smoking history, substance abuse, cognitive impairment, anxiety, and American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status score III or IV. Intraoperative risk factors for ED were the use of benzodiazepines, inhalational anesthetics, or etomidate, and surgical factors including abdominal surgery, frontal craniotomy (vs. other craniotomy approaches) for cerebral tumors, and the length of surgery. Postoperative risk factors were indwelling urinary catheters, the presence of a tracheal tube in the postanesthetic care unit or intensive care unit, the presence of a nasogastric tube, and pain. Knowledge of these risk factors may guide the implementation of stratified management and timely interventions for patients at high risk of ED. The majority of studies included in this review investigated only hyperactive ED and further research is required to determine risk factors for hypoactive and mixed ED types.

PEDOT:F reacts with the organic groups to induce structural transformation in PEDOT, thereby facilitating coupling with Pb2+for superior defect passivation. Consequently, the perovskite solar cells achieve an efficiency of 24.81% with enhanced stability.

IMPORTANCE: Increased myopic shift was found to be associated with 1 year of overminus spectacle treatment for children with intermittent exotropia (IXT). Persistence of myopic shift after discontinuing overminus spectacles is unknown. OBJECTIVE: To compare refractive error change over 3 years in children with IXT originally treated with overminus vs nonoverminus spectacles. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This study was an 18-month extension of the Trial of Overminus Spectacle Therapy for Intermittent Exotropia cohort, which previously randomized children aged 3 to 10 years with IXT and baseline spherical equivalent refractive error (SER) between −6.00 diopters (D) and 1.00 D to overminus spectacles (−2.50 D for 12 months, −1.25 D for 3 months, and nonoverminus for 3 months) or nonoverminus spectacles. Children were recruited from 56 sites from July 2010 to February 2022. Data were analyzed from February 2022 to January 2024. INTERVENTIONS: After trial completion at 18 months, participants were followed up at 24 and 36 months. Treatment was at investigator discretion from 18 to 36 months. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Change in SER (cycloplegic retinoscopy) from baseline to 36 months. RESULTS: Of 386 children in the Trial of Overminus Spectacle Therapy for Intermittent Exotropia, 223 (57.8%) consented to 18 months of additional follow-up, including 124 of 196 (63.3%) in the overminus treatment group and 99 of 190 (52.1%) in the nonoverminus treatment group. Of 205 children who completed 36-month follow-up, 116 (56.6%) were female, and the mean (SD) age at randomization was 6.2 (2.1) years. Mean (SD) SER change from baseline to 36 months was greater in the overminus group (−0.74 [1.00] D) compared with the nonoverminus group (−0.44 [0.85] D; adjusted difference, −0.36 D; 95% CI, −0.59 to −0.12; P = .003), with 30 of 112 (26.8%) in the overminus group having more than 1 D of myopic shift compared with 14 of 91 (15%) in the nonoverminus group (risk ratio, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.0-3.0). From 12 to 36 months, mean (SD) myopic shift was −0.34 (0.67) D and −0.36 (0.66) D in the overminus and nonoverminus groups, respectively (adjusted difference, −0.001 D; 95% CI, −0.18 to 0.18; P = .99). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: The greater myopic shift observed after 1 year of −2.50-D overminus lens treatment remained at 3 years. Both groups had similar myopic shift during the 2-year period after treatment weaning and cessation. The risk of myopic shift should be discussed with parents when considering overminus lens treatment. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02807350

Sigma-1 receptor (s1R) is an intracellular protein implicated in a spectrum of neurodegenerative conditions, notably Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of brain s1R could provide a powerful tool for better understanding the underlying pathomechanism of s1R in AD. In this study, we successfully developed a 18F-labeled s1R radiotracer [18F]CNY-05 via an innovative ruthenium (Ru)-mediated 18F-deoxyfluorination method. [18F]CNY-05 exhibited preferable brain uptake, high specific binding, and slightly reversible pharmacokinetics within the PET scanning time window. PET imaging of [18F]CNY-05 in nonhuman primates (NHP) indicated brain permeability, metabolic stability, and safety. Moreover, autoradiography and PET studies of [18F]CNY-05 in the AD mouse model found a significantly decreased brain uptake compared to that in wild-type mice. Collectively, we have provided a novel 18F-radiolabeled s1R PET probe, which enables visualizing brain s1R in health and neurological diseases.

With the development of information technology, virtual reality technology has been widely used in many industries. Compared with traditional tourism projects, virtual tourism created by virtual reality technology has many outstanding advantages. This paper presents a panoramic study based on ecotourism. In this paper, in the study of virtual reality technology, firstly, the relevant aspects of panoramic virtual reality are introduced, then a calculation formula is established, and its algorithmic techniques and principles are further studied and analysed through the formula, and then the natural environment and sustainable development are introduced and analysed through the establishment of data maps and other methods. The results of the study show that the integration of panoramic technology and ecotourism creates a favourable living environment for the future.

Background: Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) is commonly used to treat early gastric cancer (EGC). The effects of Helicobacter pylori(HP) infection on ESD and the potential benefits of preoperative eradication of HP remain unclear. The study aims to evaluate the impact of HP infection on bleeding and lesion detection during ESD in patients with EGC. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 634 consecutive patients who underwent ESD for EGC at our center between January 2018 and January 2023. Logistic regression was used to assess the impact of HP infection status on intraoperative bleeding and lesion detection rates. We developed a predictive model based on selected indicators and evaluated its performance using the ROC curve. Results: HP-positive patients experienced a higher rate of intraoperative bleeding (28.8%) compared with HP-negative patients (8.9%) (P&lt; 0.001). HP-positive patients also had longer procedure time (median: 58.5 vs.50.0 min, P&lt; 0.001) and postoperative hospital stays (median: 4.35 vs.4.07 days, P= 0.036). Multivariate analysis identified HP-positive (OR = 4.84), multiple lesions (OR = 1.81), specimen size > 40 mm (OR = 3.67), and submucosal invasion (OR = 2.27) as independent risk factors for intraoperative bleeding. The predictive model achieved an AUC of 0.807 (95%CI 0.761–0.852), with a sensitivity of 72.1% and specificity of 75.9%. Preoperative HP eradication was associated with an increased rate of lesion detection (OR = 2.82). Conclusions: Eradicating HP before ESD in patients with EGC reduces intraoperative bleeding and improves lesion detection. Preoperative HP eradication is therefore recommended in patients with EGC. Graphical abstract:

Feature pyramid representations have been widely adopted in the object detection literature for better handling of variations in scale, which provide abundant information from various spatial levels for classification and localization sub-tasks. We find that inter sub-task feature disentanglement and intra sub-task feature re-fusion are crucial for final prediction performance, but are hard to be achieved simultaneously considering the computational efficiency. We find this issue can be addressed by delicate module design. In this paper, we propose an Efficient Task-specific Feature Re-fusion (ETFR) module to mitigate the dilemma. ETFR disentangles inter sub-task features, reduces the output channels of multi-scale features based on their importance and re-fuses intra sub-task features via concatenation operation. As a plug-and-play module, ETFR can remarkably and consistently improve the well-established and highly-optimized object detection and instance segmentation methods, such as RetinaNet, FCOS, BlendMask and CondInst, with neglectable extra computation cost. Extensive experiments demonstrate that ETFR has good generalization ability on various changeling datasets, including COCO, LVIS and Cityscapes.

Pt-0.15Na/EG-TiO2catalysts obtained by the impregnation method showed better CO oxidation activity as well as resistance to SO2and H2O than the unmodified Pt/EG-TiO2catalysts. The physicochemical properties of the catalysts were characterized by means of ICP-AES, TEM, AC-TEM, CO-TPR, ESR, O2-TPD, in situDRIFTS, XAFS, XRD, BET, SEM and XPS techniques. Meanwhile, the influence of Na doping on improving the CO oxidation activity as well as SO2and H2O resistance of the Pt/EG-TiO2catalysts was investigated in depth. The addition of Na promoted the dispersion of Pt nanoparticles (NPs) in the Pt/EG-TiO2catalysts, which led to the uniform dispersion of Pt on the TiO2support mainly in the form of nanoclusters and single atoms, thus improving the utilization of Pt. Moreover, it also increased the number of active hydroxyl species on the surface of the Pt/EG-TiO2catalysts, which accelerated the formation of COO*, an intermediate product of the CO oxidation reaction process, thereby improving the CO oxidation activity of the Pt/EG-TiO2catalysts. The addition of Na did not change the crystal phase structure and surface morphology of the Pt/EG-TiO2catalysts; it caused the TiO2support to have more active hydroxyl species, which reacted with SO2to form sulfite species. At the same time, the presence of active hydroxyl species inhibited the oxidation of SO2and reduced the production of sulfate species. Pt–Oxand Na in the Pt-0.15Na/EG-TiO2catalysts directly interacted with each other and uniformly dispersed on the EG-TiO2support in the form of Pt–O(OH)x–Na. SO2was preferentially adsorbed on Na, and then SO2combined with Na to generate Na2SO4, which led to the localized sulfation of Na in Pt–O(OH)x–Na, reducing the adsorption of SO2on Pt–O(OH)x–Na. Thus, reduced SO2adsorption on the Pt and TiO2support significantly improved the resistance to SO2and H2O of Pt/EG-TiO2catalysts.

A wideband circularly polarized antenna with novel asymmetric Y-shaped parasitic arms is proposed. The antenna consists of Y-shaped feedlines with vacant-quarter rings, asymmetric Y-shaped parasitic arms, rectangular patches, and a reflector. The circularly polarized radiation is generated by exciting the Y-shaped feedlines with vacant-quarter rings. The impedance matching bandwidth (IBW) and axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) are effectively improved by introducing asymmetric Y-shaped parasitic arms, and four CP modes are introduced in the operating band. The overall dimensions of the proposed antenna are 0.84λ0×0.84λ0×0.27λ0 (λ0 is the wavelength of the center frequency in the free space), with a simple structure. The measured results show that the wide IBW covers 1.2–3.0 GHz (86%), and the ARBW is 1.3–3.2 GHz (84%). Moreover, 79% of the overlap bandwidth (1.32–3.0 GHz) is achieved between IBW and ARBW, and the measured cross-polarization discrimination is more than 18 dBic on the Z-axis. The antenna can be used in wireless communication due to the characteristics of wide impedance bandwidth and axial ratio bandwidth.

In this study, non-embryogenic callus (NEC), embryogenic callus (EC), and somatic embryos (SE) sourced from various culture materials were employed to investigate somatic embryogenesis in Cinnamomum camphora. Utilizing RNA-Seq technology, we conducted transcriptome sequencing and analysis of C. camphoraculture materials to elucidate the genes and metabolic pathways associated with somatic embryogenesis. Correlation analysis among the samples indicated substantial differences between the groups, confirming the representativeness of the three materials utilized. The analysis revealed three distinct databases of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) (SE vs EC, SE vs NEC, EC vs NEC) containing 10,449, 9,561, and 8,867 DEGs, respectively. Clustering analysis of DEGs unveiled significant separation among SE, EC, and NEC from different C. camphoramaterials. Notably, 21 genes were significantly up-regulated in SE and EC compared to NEC, predominantly comprising adversity stress-responsive genes, hormone-responsive genes, and zinc finger proteins. Of particular interest was the expression of the VACUOLAR IRON TRANSPORTER 1(VIT1) gene, which was 78.33 and 3.05 times higher in SE than in NEC and EC, respectively. This suggests a potential crucial regulatory role for Fe2+in C. camphorasomatic embryogenesis. Further analysis of DEGs, in conjunction with Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment, unveiled a close association of C. camphorasomatic embryogenesis with biological processes, transcriptional regulation, responses to salt stress and abscisic acid, cell nucleus activity, and DNA-binding transcription factors. Moreover, KEGG pathway analysis emphasized the significant enrichment of DEGs in plant hormone signal transduction, featuring 187 differential genes, highlighting the pivotal role of hormone signaling in C. camphorasomatic embryogenesis. Most genes related to phytohormone synthesis, signal transduction, transcription factors, and stress responses were up-regulated, thereby promoting somatic embryogenesis in C. camphora. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying somatic embryogenesis in C. camphoraand related species.

A compact broadband circularly polarized antenna with novel tilt fences for global navigation satellite system (GNSS) applications is proposed in this letter. The proposed antenna consists of Y-shaped feedlines with vacant-quarter rings, parasitic patches, ground, and novel tilt fences. Good impedance matching as well as circular polarization (CP) characteristics are achieved with novel tilt fences. New resonance modes and CP modes are introduced at low frequencies through novel tilt fences, which are equivalent to antenna miniaturization. The proposed antenna with four CP modes is fabricated using simple printed circuit board (PCB) technology and has a compact dimension of 0.29λ0×0.29λ0×0.18λ0 (λ0 is the wavelength of the center frequency). Based on the measured results, a wide impedance bandwidth (IBW) and axial-ratio bandwidth (ARBW) are achieved. The −15 dB IBW can cover 1.07–1.98 GHz, and the 3 dB ARBW is 61.5% from 1.07 to 2.02 GHz. In addition, the antenna has a wide overlap bandwidth of 1.07–1.98 GHz (59.7%). This simple and compact CP antenna has good potential in GNSS applications.

In this article, we propose a modified Hecht equation tailored for pixel detectors. Building upon the Shockley-Ramo theorem and the fundamental principles of the classic Hecht equation, our approach incorporates consideration for the nonlinear weighting of the electric field. The improved Hecht equation is designed to accurately model the mobility-lifetime product of carriers in pixel detectors under both low-energy and high-energy photon irradiation. In comparison to conventional methods based on the plane Hecht relation, our approach aligns more closely with the charge collection model of the pixel detector. Notably, it eliminates the restriction that the radiation used for mobility-lifetime product fitting must be deposited solely on the detector surface. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for evaluating detector performance postpackaging and integration. We validated our approach using an $11\times11$ CdZnTe pixel detector, featuring an electrode area of $22\times22$ mm and a thickness of 15 mm. The mobility-lifetime product of electrons and holes was successfully determined under both 59.5- and 661.6-keV photon irradiation. Strikingly, the fitting results from different radioactive sources exhibited high consistency, affirming the reliability of the improved Hecht equation. Finally, we compared the fitting results of the carrier mobility-lifetime product obtained in this study with the results obtained using the traditional Hecht equation and other results obtained in pixel detectors and analyzed the reliability of the results.

The enhancement of pool boiling heat transfer using porous media has been extensively studied. Although the two-phase distribution and evolution in porous media are crucial to the heat transfer performance, including the critical heat flux (CHF) and heat transfer coefficient (HTC), direct observation of the two-phase flow inside the media is limited owing to the blockage of the direct view from the porous structures. In this study, pool boiling visualization experiments were conducted on porous samples with different throat widths in deionized water. The results showed that the HTC increased with the throat width. Additionally, the growth-contraction cycle of the vapor region and the formation and drying of the wall liquid film inside the porous media were investigated. The vapor region, including the maximum and minimum areas in the boiling cycle, was quantitatively described. Furthermore, the relationship between the minimum gas-phase area and HTC peak was identified. A one-dimensional transient model was developed considering solid skeleton heat conduction, liquid film evaporation, and vapor region growth to quantitatively study the influence of heat flux on the internal two-phase flow. The model successfully captured the maximum gas-phase area, duration of boiling cycles, and HTC trends at specific heat fluxes. The results of this quantitative study provide insights into the internal two-phase distribution and evolution induced by pool boiling.

In this letter, a broadband filtering antenna array is proposed with two controllable radiation nulls. A square metal parasitic ring is designed to introduce the radiation null. Both a new resonant mode and a radiation null are introduced by slitting the end of the dipole arm and extending it inward. Four metallic reflector walls also significantly improve the out-of-band suppression level. To demonstrate the mechanism, the proposed antenna is fabricated. It has a wide 55% (2.9–5.1 GHz) impedance bandwidth. The out-of-band gain suppression is greater than 16 dBi. A four elements filtering antenna array is developed and fabricated for sub-6 GHz applications. The measured results show that the antenna array can achieve a wide bandwidth of 55% (2.9–5.1 GHz) with an average gain of 11.3 dBi, which satisfies the modern 5G base station applications.

At present, non-pillar entry protection in longwall mining is mainly achieved through either the gob-side entry retaining (GER) procedure or the gob-side entry driving (GED) procedure. The GER procedure leads to difficulties in maintaining the roadway in mining both the previous and current panels. A narrow coal pillar about 5–7 m must be left in the GED procedure; therefore, it causes permanent loss of some coal. The gob-side pre-backfill driving (GPD) procedure effectively removes the wasting of coal resources that exists in the GED procedure and finds an alternative way to handle the roadway maintenance problem that exists in the GER procedure. The FLAC3Dsoftware was used to numerically investigate the stress and deformation distributions and failure of the rock mass surrounding the previous and current panel roadways during each stage of the GPD procedure which requires "twice excavation and mining". The results show that the stress distribution is slightly asymmetric around the previous panel roadway after the “primary excavation”. The stronger and stiffer backfill compared to the coal turned out to be the main bearing body of the previous panel roadway during the "primary mining". The highest vertical stresses of 32.6 and 23.1 MPa, compared to the in-situ stress of 10.5 MPa, appeared in the backfill wall and coal seam, respectively. After the "primary mining", the peak vertical stress under the coal seam at the floor level was slightly higher (18.1 MPa) than that under the backfill (17.8 MPa). After the "secondary excavation", the peak vertical stress under the coal seam at the floor level was slightly lower (18.7 MPa) than that under the backfill (19.8 MPa); the maximum floor heave and maximum roof sag of the current panel roadway were 252.9 and 322.1 mm, respectively. During the "secondary mining", the stress distribution in the rock mass surrounding the current panel roadway was mainly affected by the superposition of the front abutment pressure from the current panel and the side abutment pressure from the previous panel. The floor heave of the current panel roadway reached a maximum of 321.8 mm at 5 m ahead of the working face; the roof sag increased to 828.4 mm at the working face. The peak abutment pressure appeared alternately in the backfill and the coal seam during the whole procedure of "twice excavation and mining" of the GPD procedure. The backfill provided strong bearing capacity during all stages of the GPD procedure and exhibited reliable support for the roadway. The results provide scientific insight for engineering practice of the GPD procedure.

A high-gain, broadband dual-polarized antenna based on metasurface (MS) is proposed. The MS consists of a 6 × 6 array of complementary units. The top of the designed unit is a cross-shaped unit, and the bottom is a square patch unit. The square patches MS provide sufficient phase compensation at high frequencies, which can enhance gain by focusing electromagnetic waves at high frequencies. The function of the cross-shaped MS is to improve impedance matching and broaden bandwidth. By combining the advantages of two types of MSs, broadband and high-gain are achieved. The measured results indicate that the gain is above 10 dBi in the range of 2.4–4 GHz. The antenna has a 10 dB return loss of 82.4% (1.75–4.2 GHz) and an isolation exceeding 30 dB. Additionally, the antenna maintains stable radiation patterns within the entire operating frequency range.

Film capacitors for ac filtering play a crucial role in various industrial applications, such as wind power and traction systems. However, current research lacks studies on the aging and failure analyses of high-power ac film capacitors subjected to realistic stresses. This article addresses this gap by presenting degradation testing and failure analysis of metallized film capacitors employed in megawatt (MW) power converters for ac filtering purposes. First, accelerated aging tests are performed on ac filter capacitors based on realistic stresses for more than 3500 h. Testing results on electrothermal parameters are recorded, and derivative models of parameter aging are obtained. The analysis reveals that electrochemical corrosion is the primary aging factor, with negligible capacitance reduction until catastrophic failure occurs. Further investigation, including temperature rise results and microstructure evaluation, indicates that the melting of the dielectric film is a crucial precursor to catastrophic failure. Finally, the possible degradation and failure mechanisms for this type of ac filtering capacitors are summarized. The observations provide a new perspective on the possible failure mechanisms and condition monitoring of film capacitors in ac filtering applications.

A Ka-band 4TX/4RX dual-stream joint radar-communication phased-array transceiver is presented for the emerging radar-communication integrated wireless system. Different from the existing joint radar-communication transceiver with separated downconversion path and analog baseband, the proposed joint radar-communication transceiver features completely reused hardware components. In addition, various circuit design challenges in the joint radar-communication transceiver are addressed. In order to enhance the signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) in low input power region for the communication mode and effectively reduce the chip area, a current-flopping bidirectional active mixer is proposed. A variable-transmission-line-based phase shifter (TL-PS) with tiling structure is introduced to achieve wideband phase shifting with flat group delay and in-band loss fluctuation. A pseudo-stacked power amplifier (PA) is introduced to provide both high linearity and high saturated output power for the joint radar-communication transceiver. A 4TX/4RX dual-stream joint transceiver is designed and fabricated in a standard 65-nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process with the chip area of 16.2 mm2. The measured results show that the TRX covers 28.7–36.2 GHz with the peak gain of 22.2/34.7 dB for TX/RX. The measured TX peak saturated output power is 19.9 dBm and the OP $_{\mathrm {1 dB}}$ is 17.4 dBm. The measured RX minimum noise figure (NF) is 4.8 dB and the IP $_{\mathrm {1 dB}}$ is $>-31.5$ dBm. In addition, the analog baseband offers a 3.5-GHz bandwidth for the wideband radar signal. System measurement indicates that the proposed transceiver supports real-time centimeter-level 2-D imaging and 400-Msym/s 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) over-the-air (OTA) wireless link.

Compact and integrated wavelength demultiplexers are key components of photonic integrated circuits for on-chip communications. The inverse design method has shown excellent performance in achieving compact footprint, but is still hindered by large channel spacing and small channel numbers for wavelength demultiplexer. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a compact and low-crosstalk coarse wavelength division demultiplexer. The proposed device is composed of an inverse-designed meta-structure with the wavelength splitting function and cascaded photonic crystal filters with the crosstalk reduction function. The wavelength demultiplexer has six-channels with a 20-nm spacing in the C-band and a compact total footprint of 27 × 12 μm2. The experimental results show that the measured peak insertion loss is 6 dB and the crosstalk is below −20 dB for all output channels. The simulation results also indicate that the device has a good fabrication tolerance. This will significantly improve the integration density for on-chip wavelength division multiplexing systems.

This article reports a photonic-assisted instantaneous frequency measurement system based on a multi-group asymmetrical Mach-Zehnder interferometer structure, applicable in contemporary electronic countermeasure. Additionally, we introduce a novel method to obtain measurement results based on probability theory. Employing this method allows for a broader measurement range compared to traditional approaches utilizing amplify compare function without a deterioration in accuracy. Sufficient and systematic experimental results show that the measurement range can be at least 30 GHz and the mean error is 0.102 GHz using our proposed system and method. Moreover, we propose an optimization algorithm based on our method. By using this algorithm, we can adjust measurement range for proposed system with minimal asymmetrical MZI structures, ensuring no compromise in accuracy. In addition, the system is easy to realize hybrid integration or even monolithic integration due to the use of microwave photonics technology.

An efficient algorithm is presented for accurately calculating electromagnetic (EM) scattering from multiple impedance boundary condition (IBC) targets, and individual unit in the group is dealt with separately based on the combined self-dual IE (C-SDIE). To rapidly analyze multiple targets with IBC, the translation matrix concept of the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) is applied to calculate the EM coupling between targets. One advantage of this approach is its capability of reusing data structures for identical targets. In addition, it facilitates generating an initial solution (IS) that is close to the exact solution for group targets based on a single target. Moreover, the fast far-field approximation (FAFFA) is used to further improve computational efficiency. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method has promising numerical performance in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and capability.

Recent studies have shown that the epigenetic protein histone deacetylase 11 (HDAC11) is highly expressed in the brain and critically modulates neuroimmune functions, making it a potential therapeutic target for neurological disorders. Herein, we report the development of PB94, which is a novel HDAC11 inhibitor. PB94 exhibited potency and selectivity against HDAC11 with IC50= 108 nM and >40-fold selectivity over other HDAC isoforms. Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic evaluation indicated that PB94 possesses promising drug-like properties. Additionally, PB94 was radiolabeled with carbon-11 as [11C]PB94 for positron emission tomography (PET), which revealed significant brain uptake and metabolic properties suitable for drug development in live animals. Furthermore, we demonstrated that neuropathic pain was associated with brain upregulation of HDAC11 and that pharmacological inhibition of HDAC11 by PB94 ameliorated neuropathic pain in a mouse model. Collectively, our findings support further development of PB94 as a selective HDAC11 inhibitor for neurological indications, including pain.

Polyacrylamide hydrogels make up a category of widely used oilfield water-plugging agents. However, their poor mechanical properties and insufficient heat resistance severely limit their applications. In this work, a novel strategy for the construction of tough and heat-resistant polyacrylamide hydrogels using vinylated modified polylysine (PLL) as a multifunctional cross-linker (named APLL) is proposed. The multifunctionality of APLL leads to a three-dimensional network of hydrogels containing a uniform network structure that distributes stress and a dynamic cross-linked structure that dissipates energy. Meanwhile, APLL retains the thermal stabilization properties of PLL, and its use as a cross-linking site in the polymer network can effectively improve the heat resistance of hydrogels. As a result, hydrogels exhibit ultrastretchability to 3295%, excellent notch-insensitivity (75% prefabricated notched samples still have a fracture energy of 15,728 J/m2), and good heat resistance (better aging performance than N, N-methylene bis-acrylamide cross-linked hydrogels at 130 °C). In addition, the saline suspension composed of preformed gel particles of APLL cross-linked hydrogels can age at 80 °C for more than 10 days and effectively seal the pores with a sealing rate of 95% in percolation experiments. Such mechanical properties, notch insensitivity, and heat resistance enable the APLL cross-linked hydrogels to serve as a potential temporary water-plugging agent for heterogeneous reservoirs of the oilfield.

Recent studies indicate that hierarchical Vision Transformer (ViT) with a macro architecture of interleaved non-overlapped window-based self-attention & shifted-window operation can achieve state-of-the-art performance in various visual recognition tasks, and challenges the ubiquitous convolutional neural networks (CNNs) using densely slid kernels. In most recently proposed hierarchical ViTs, self-attention is the de-facto standard for spatial information aggregation. In this paper, we question whether self-attention is the only choice for hierarchical ViT to attain strong performance, and study the effects of different kinds of cross-window communication methods. To this end, we replace self-attention layers with embarrassingly simple linear mapping layers, and the resulting proof-of-concept architecture termed TransLinear can achieve very strong performance in ImageNet-$\text{1}\,k$1k image recognition. Moreover, we find that TransLinear is able to leverage the ImageNet pre-trained weights and demonstrates competitive transfer learning properties on downstream dense prediction tasks such as object detection and instance segmentation. We also experiment with other alternatives to self-attention for content aggregation inside each non-overlapped window under different cross-window communication approaches. Our results reveal that the macro architecture, other than specific aggregation layers or cross-window communication mechanisms, is more responsible for hierarchical ViT's strong performance and is the real challenger to the ubiquitous CNN's dense sliding window paradigm.

Swarm targets consisting of multiple aircraft, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have become an emerging tool in modern applications due to their agility and vast coverage. Because of the complicated coupling and shading effects among different units, accurate, flexible, and computationally efficient scattering analysis for this novel target remains challenging. To overcome this difficulty, in this work, a so-called plane wave expansion (PWE) algorithm is proposed. Unlike the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA), which treats swarm targets as a single entity, PWE deals with individual units separately, allowing for the reuse of data structures for identical targets. The low computational complexity and the effectiveness of the proposed method are achieved by combining three calculation strategies: 1) evaluating the coupling effects between two close units using a rigorous fast PWE technique and ignoring those of well-separated units; 2) determining the threshold defining “well-separated” through an adaptive procedure so that the overall accuracy is controllable; and 3) quickly estimating the initial solution (IS) to accelerate convergence. Extensive numerical simulations, including one with up to 56 electrically large UAVs, are carried out to demonstrate the accuracy, effectiveness, and robustness of the proposed method.

Obesity contributes to the progression of various chronic diseases, and shortens life expectancy. With abundant mitochondria, brown adipose tissue (BAT) dissipates energy through heat to limit weight gain and metabolic dysfunction in obesity. Our previous studies have shown that aurantio-obtusin (AO), a bioactive ingredient in Chinese traditional medicine Cassiae semensignificantly improves hepatic lipid metabolism in a steatotic mouse model. In the current study we investigated the effects of AO on lipid metabolism in the BAT of diet-induced obesity mice and in oleic acid and palmitic acid (OAPA)-stimulated primary mature BAT adipocytes. Obese mice were established by feeding a HFHS diet for 4 weeks, and then administered AO (10 mg/kg, i.g.) for another 4 weeks. We showed that AO administration significantly increased the weight of BAT and accelerated energy expenditure to protect the weight increase in the obese mice. Using RNA sequencing and molecular biology analysis we found that AO significantly enhanced mitochondrial metabolism and UCP1 expression by activating PPARα both in vivo and in vitro in the primary BAT adipocytes. Interestingly, AO administration did not improve metabolic dysfunction in the liver and white adipose tissue of obese mice after interscapular BAT excision. We demonstrated that low temperature, a trigger of BAT thermogenesis, was not a decisive factor for AO to stimulate the growth and activation of BATs. This study uncovers a regulatory network of AO in activating BAT-dependent lipid consumption and brings up a new avenue for the pharmaceutical intervention in obesity and related comorbidities.

IMPORTANCE: Controlling myopia progression is of interest worldwide. Low-dose atropine eye drops have slowed progression in children in East Asia. OBJECTIVE: To compare atropine, 0.01%, eye drops with placebo for slowing myopia progression in US children. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This was a randomized placebo-controlled, double-masked, clinical trial conducted from June 2018 to September 2022. Children aged 5 to 12 years were recruited from 12 community- and institution-based practices in the US. Participating children had low to moderate bilateral myopia (−1.00 diopters [D] to −6.00 D spherical equivalent refractive error [SER]). INTERVENTION: Eligible children were randomly assigned 2:1 to 1 eye drop of atropine, 0.01%, nightly or 1 drop of placebo. Treatment was for 24 months followed by 6 months of observation. MAIN OUTCOME AND MEASURES: Automated cycloplegic refraction was performed by masked examiners. The primary outcome was change in SER (mean of both eyes) from baseline to 24 months (receiving treatment); other outcomes included change in SER from baseline to 30 months (not receiving treatment) and change in axial length at both time points. Differences were calculated as atropine minus placebo. RESULTS: A total of 187 children (mean [SD] age, 10.1 [1.8] years; age range, 5.1-12.9 years; 101 female [54%]; 34 Black [18%], 20 East Asian [11%], 30 Hispanic or Latino [16%], 11 multiracial [6%], 6 West/South Asian [3%], 86 White [46%]) were included in the study. A total of 125 children (67%) received atropine, 0.01%, and 62 children (33%) received placebo. Follow-up was completed at 24 months by 119 of 125 children (95%) in the atropine group and 58 of 62 children (94%) in the placebo group. At 30 months, follow-up was completed by 118 of 125 children (94%) in the atropine group and 57 of 62 children (92%) in the placebo group. At the 24-month primary outcome visit, the adjusted mean (95% CI) change in SER from baseline was −0.82 (−0.96 to −0.68) D and −0.80 (−0.98 to −0.62) D in the atropine and placebo groups, respectively (adjusted difference = −0.02 D; 95% CI, −0.19 to +0.15 D; P = .83). At 30 months (6 months not receiving treatment), the adjusted difference in mean SER change from baseline was −0.04 D (95% CI, −0.25 to +0.17 D). Adjusted mean (95% CI) changes in axial length from baseline to 24 months were 0.44 (0.39-0.50) mm and 0.45 (0.37-0.52) mm in the atropine and placebo groups, respectively (adjusted difference = −0.002 mm; 95% CI, −0.106 to 0.102 mm). Adjusted difference in mean axial elongation from baseline to 30 months was +0.009 mm (95% CI, −0.115 to 0.134 mm). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this randomized clinical trial of school-aged children in the US with low to moderate myopia, atropine, 0.01%, eye drops administered nightly when compared with placebo did not slow myopia progression or axial elongation. These results do not support use of atropine, 0.01%, eye drops to slow myopia progression or axial elongation in US children. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03334253

A wideband dual-polarized MIMO antenna array having small size and stable radiation performance for base-station applications is introduced. The antenna element, which is formed by four folded dipole antennas arranged in a small square aperture, is introduced to obtain excellent impedance matching and steady radiation pattern within a broad bandwidth of 36.7% (0.69–1 GHz) with low profile. Based on the high-performance element, a compact broadband dual-polarized MIMO array for mobile communications is then designed. To stabilize the radiation pattern of the MIMO array, a new method of element-shared scheme and 90° phase compensation is introduced to design the MIMO array to obtain stable half power beamwidth (HPBW) of around 64° for desired 120° sector coverage of cellular mobile communications. A special feed network with good performance is designed to excite the MIMO array. The MIMO array introduces a broad bandwidth of 43.7% (0.68–1.06 GHz) for reflection coefficient $&lt; -15$ dB, as well as good isolation of more than 25 dB between all the ports. Steady radiation pattern with an HPBW of 64 ± 7° and low sidelobe level of below −15 dB is observed, which is desirable for modern mobile communications.

Huygens metasurface (HMS) provides a flexible way to tailor the phases of fields without incurring reflection. Recently, HMS has been used in antenna scenes to convert the incident field into directional radiation. However, most design processes of the HMS antennas are based on the generalized sheet transition condition, which is usually augmented with extra operations for ensuring passivity and losslessness. Here, we propose a simple and comprehensive strategy to design and optimize the HMS antenna. The strategy builds an equivalent model of the HMS antenna and deals with the designs from the perspective of phase optimization, which is simple and straightforward. A fast and efficient algorithm is presented to solve the optimization problem under the framework of alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). The phases obtained by this strategy are naturally compatible with the passive and lossless conditions and can be directly implemented by metasurfaces. Furthermore, the strategy imposes constraints on the phase difference of adjacent meta-atoms, thus reducing the performance deterioration caused by aperiodic boundary conditions. The feasibility and superiority of the strategy are verified by full-wave simulation results and experimental measurements of exemplary designs.

An asynchronous updating Boolean network is employed to simulate and analyze the gene expression of a particular tissue or species, revealing the life activity process from a system perspective to reveal the disease mechanism and treat the disease. Therefore, to ensure the safe transmission of the asynchronous updating Boolean network in the network, we designed an asynchronous updating Boolean network encryption algorithm based on chaos (ABNEA). First, a novel 2D chaotic system (2D-FPSM) is designed. This system has better performance than the classical 2D chaotic system. It is very suitable for cryptographic systems to generate key streams. Second, an encoding rule is designed to convert the asynchronous updating Boolean network to a Boolean matrix and propagate it on the network as an image. The receiver and sender jointly save the encoding rule. Last, to protect the safe propagation of the Boolean network matrix on the network, the method of synchronous scrambling-diffusion is adapted to encrypt the Boolean network matrix based on the 2D-FPSM. Simulation experiments and security analysis show that the average correlation of adjacent pixels of ciphertext are 0.0010, -0.0010, -0.0020, and the average information entropy is 7.9984. The ABNEA can complete the encryption tasks of asynchronously updating Boolean networks and exhibits good security characteristics.

Transition metal single-atom catalysts have attracted considerable attention for their applicability in electrocatalytic oxygen reduction reactions (ORR), but it is still very challenging to regulate the interaction between the active sites and oxygen-containing intermediates. In this study, atomically dispersed Co-N5sites integrated with defective N-doped carbon (Co-N5/DHC) were developed using a facile templating approach, followed by NH3treatment. NH3can simultaneously etch inactive amorphous substrates on the surfaces of metal sites and construct intrinsic carbon defects, thereby increasing the number of both metal and metal-free active sites. By bridging the intrinsic carbon defects and metal sites, the optimized Co-N5/DHC catalyst exhibited significantly improved electrocatalytic ORR performance compared to the pristine Co-Nx/HC sample (cobalt-nitrogen sites anchored on heteroatom-doped carbon). Density functional calculations revealed that the strong interaction between the Co-N5sites and carbon defects modified the electronic localization, thus optimizing the binding energy with oxygen-containing intermediates and resulting in significantly improved ORR catalytic activity with a half-wave potential of 0.877 V. In addition, a zinc-air battery assembled with the Co-N5/DHC as the cathode achieves a maximum power density of 160.7 mW cm−2and affords a specific capacity of 766.2 mA h gZn−1.

Recent developments within the field of medium voltage wide-bandgap semiconductor devices are drawing attention from both researchers and industries due to the demanding requirements for more efficient high-power energy conversion. The rapid development has entailed an increased awareness of the negative impact of the increased rate of change in voltage, dv/dt, and its derived issues caused by the inevitable parasitic capacitive couplings. This article is dedicated to present an overview of the parasitic capacitive couplings in high-power medium voltage power electronic converter systems, using an example reference system enabled by medium voltage SiC mosfets. The definitions of capacitive couplings are presented and the impacts raised by parasitic capacitive couplings are reviewed. In addition, the similarities of different capacitive couplings introduced by components in practical medium voltage systems are presented and summarized. Lastly, the challenges and future work with respect to parasitic capacitive couplings in medium voltage power electronics converter systems are shared from the authors' perspective.

Cluster ensemble (CE) integrates multiple clustering solutions to effectively improve the accuracy and robustness of unsupervised clustering. To reduce the impacts of low-quality solutions, existing CE methods often design heuristic criteria to appraise these clustering solutions and allocate weights for them. However, such heuristic-based weighting methods rely on human experience and lack knowledge of the relation between weights and data characteristics, failing to adaptively adjust weights for various datasets. To address this, we propose Meta -learning-based W eighted C luster E nsemble (MetaWCE), which learns the weights-data relation automatically and sets adaptive CE weights. Specifically, metadata is employed to describe data characteristics at a dataset level. To bridge metadata and weights, a meta-learning strategy is introduced to simulate the weighting process to ensure that relation between weights and metadata can be learned to directly optimize the ensemble performance in an end-to-end manner. Experiments on three datasets indicate that MetaWCE significantly improves ensemble performance and achieves obvious improvements over strong baseline methods. • First meta-learning-based weighted cluster ensemble method. • Considers data characteristics to improve cluster ensemble performance. • Learns a domain-general metric space to extract clustering-friendly features. • Introduces a two-level meta weighting model to adaptively predict weights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of defect states that exist at the interface between a perovskite film and an electron transport layer (ETL) are detrimental to the efficiency and the stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). It is still a challenge to simultaneously passivate the defects on both sides by a stable and low-cost ion compound. Herein, we demonstrate a simple and effective versatile strategy by introducing hydrochloric acid into SnO2precursor solution to passivate the defects in both SnO2and perovskite layers and simultaneously reduce the interface energy barrier, ultimately achieving a high-performance and hysteresis-free PSCs. Hydrogen ions can neutralize −OH groups on the SnO2surface, whereas the Cl–can not only combine with Sn4+in ETL but also suppress the Pb–I antisite defects formed at the buried interface. The reduced nonradiative recombination and the favorable energy level alignment result in a significantly increased efficiency from 20.71 to 22.06% of PSCs due to the enhancement of open-circuit voltage. In addition, the stability of the device can also be improved. This work presents a facile and promising approach for the development of highly efficient PSCs.