Search

To improve the performance of microwave power detection chips and address the challenge of low accuracy in theoretical models, a microwave power detection chip based on a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) fixed beam is proposed in this work. The varying deformations of the beam at different positions is considered, and a load model is established. The nonlinear deformation of the beam is characterized using the deflection equation to improve the accuracy of the theoretical model. On this basis, the chip’s overload power, sensitivity, and microwave characteristics are studied. The measured results indicate that within the range of 8–12 GHz, the measured values of return loss are consistently less than −10 dB, demonstrating good microwave characteristics. The measured result capacitive sensitivity is 14.45 fF/W@10 GHz, and the theoretical result of the load model is 14.55 fF/W, and the error of the two is only 0.69%. Compared with the lumped parameter and the pivotal mechanics model, the load model has improved the accuracy by 91.56% and 43.67%, respectively. Therefore, the load model established in this work has certain reference value for the performance improvement of microwave power detection chips.

Abstract: BaFe12–2xNixZrxO19(x= 0–1) ferrites were successfully synthesized by hydrothermal method based on metal chloride. The synergistic effects of Ni2+–Zr4+ions doping and heat treatment on microstructure and ions distribution to tailoring the magnetic properties were studied. Without calcination the traces of BaCO3appears in all samples where the Fe2O3phase appears at x> 0.6. It exhibits very good hexagonal crystals with doping content x< 0.8, but deviate from hexagonal flakes for x= 1. With low temperature 950°C calcination, the pure phase and the uniform distribution of particle size were obtained. XPS characterization show that the concentrations of non-lattice oxygen decrease, where Fe2+contents slightly increase and then decrease with increasing Ni2+–Zr4+ions. The comprehensive magnetic properties, especially the saturation magnetization, of doped ferrites prepared by hydrothermal method decrease sharply when x> 0.6. The anisotropy field also decreases to the lowest at x= 0.6. By comparing the magnetic properties under heat treatment conditions, the optimum annealing temperature is 1000°C, where the saturation magnetization (Ms) increases up to 59.54 emu/g at x= 0.8. Thus, the as-synthesized Ni2+–Zr4+doping strontium barium hexaferrite will be useful for the applications in security switching, microwave absorption and recording media.

Sparse convolutional neural network (CNN) accelerators face challenges such as low utilization of processing elements (PEs), low data reuse, and high hardware sparse index addressing cost during convolution operations. This brief proposes a new scheduling strategy for feature map sparse vectors and convolution kernel sparse vectors based on the systolic array and row stationary (RS) dataflow to overcome these problems. Our approach employs a design and implementation of a sparse convolution operation module based on systolic array, simulated comprehensively in Vivado using Virtex-7 VX690T version at a clock frequency of 150 MHz with a circuit power consumption of 8.15 W. We utilized the VGG-16 model to test and analyze the sparse convolution operation module. Results indicate an average effective operation utilization rate of PE computing units processed by the VGG-16 convolution layer at 65.34%.

In recent years ample studies have reported that intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin can facilitate social motivation and cognition in healthy and clinical populations. However, it is still unclear how effects are mediated since intranasally administered oxytocin can both directly enter the brain (nose to brain) and increase peripheral vascular concentrations (nose to blood). The relative functional contributions of these routes are not established and have received insufficient attention in the field. The current study used vasoconstrictor pretreatment to prevent intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) from increasing peripheral concentrations and measured effects on both resting-state neural (electroencephalography) and physiological responses (electrocardiogram, electrogastrogram and skin conductance). Results demonstrated that intranasal oxytocin alone produced robust and widespread increases of delta-beta cross-frequency coupling (CFC) from 30 min post-treatment but did not influence peripheral physiological measures. As predicted, vasoconstrictor pretreatment greatly reduced the normal increase in peripheral oxytocin concentrations and, importantly, abolished the majority of intranasal oxytocin effects on delta-beta CFC. Furthermore, time-dependent positive correlations were found between increases in plasma oxytocin concentrations and corresponding increases in delta-beta CFC following oxytocin treatment alone. Our findings suggest a critical role of peripheral vasculature-mediated routes on neural effects of exogenous oxytocin administration with important translational implications for its use as an intervention in psychiatric disorders.

N/S-doped non-graphitized carbons characterize highly-disordered microstructure enabled by graphene foam as self-support anode in SIBs, showing diverse Na-ion storage behaviors at high-potential region.

With the development of blockchain technology, a variety of mutually independent blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as private and consortium chains, coexist in large numbers. As a linker of the blockchain network, blockchain interoperability will link more blockchain ecosystems, realize the interconnection of the blockchain and enhance the scalability of the blockchain. This paper summarizes typical blockchain interoperability projects. Firstly, it proposes a blockchain interoperability definition and an architecture model. Secondly, it analyzes technical characteristics of blockchain interoperability, and typical blockchain interoperability cases are compared. Finally, the trend of future development of blockchain interoperability technology is summarized and discussed.

Missing wind speed data are mainly caused by harsh weather, wind turbine failures, and data transmission errors, which have adverse effects on the performance of wind power forecasting, power curve modeling, and energy assessment. Inspired by context encoders (CE), this paper proposes an improved context encoder network (ICE) for missing wind speed data reconstruction. An auto-encoder architecture with multiple one-dimensional convolutional layers is established for data generation. During network training, a joint loss function that includes reconstruction loss and adversarial loss is presented to obtain the stable and near-real reconstructed wind speed data. We add an Inception layer to the generator network to automatically select the appropriate convolutional filters and then recalibrate the channel relationship between feature maps via the squeeze-and-excitation network. At last, this paper uses wind speed data collected from an on-shore wind farm to verify the effectiveness of the proposed network. The results show that the mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) of the ICE network in different data missing rates are 0.019–0.021 and 0.021–0.025, respectively. It has the lowest reconstruction errors compared with six typical data reconstruction methods.

Background: Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a leading cause of cancer-related death. However, the prognostic value of the tumor shrinkage rate (TSR) after chemotherapy for SCLC is still unknown. Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of 235 patients with SCLC. The TSR cutoff was determined based on receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis. The associations of TSR with progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were assessed using univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards models. Survival curves were obtained by the Kaplan–Meier method and compared using the log-rank test. Recurrence patterns after first-line treatment were summarized in a pie chart. A nomogram was constructed to validate the predictive role of the TSR in SCLC. Results: The TSR cutoff was identified to be  − 6.6%. Median PFS and OS were longer in the group with a TSR < –6.6% than in the group with a TSR ≥ − 6.6%. PFS and OS were also longer in patients with extensive SCLC when the TSR was < − 6.6% than when it was > − 6.6%. Brain metastasis-free survival was better in the group with a TSR < − 6.6%. There was a significant positive correlation between TSR and PFS. Furthermore, univariate and multivariate regression analyses showed that the TSR, patient age, and previous radiotherapy were independent prognostic factors for OS while TSR and M stage were independent prognostic factors for PFS. Conclusions: The TSR may prove to be a good indicator of OS and PFS in patients receiving chemotherapy-based first-line treatment for SCLC.

The TGF-β1/Smad3-signaling pathway and gender differences were investigated in alcoholic liver fibrosis. Mice were divided into female normal, female model, male normal, and male model groups. Liver injury and fibrosis were assessed using histopathology and serology. Western blotting was performed to analyze the expression of relevant factors. HSC-T6 cells were divided into estradiol + saline, estradiol + ethanol, testosterone + saline, and testosterone + ethanol groups, and similar assessments were conducted in vitro. Compared with the female model group, the male model group exhibited significantly increased GPT, GOT, TNF-α, IL-6, and testosterone levels, fibrosis rate, and TGF-β1, Smad3, and PCNA expression, and significantly decreased estradiol levels and Caspase-3 expression. The apoptosis rate was higher in the estradiol + ethanol group than in the testosterone + ethanol group, although the testosterone + ethanol group exhibited significantly increased TNF-α, IL-6, Collagen-I, α-SMA, TGF-β1, Smad3, and PCNA expression, and significantly decreased Caspase-3 expression. Alcoholic liver fibrosis showed significant gender differences associated with the TGF-β1/Smad3-signaling pathway.

This article explores a sampling-based event-triggered iterative learning control (SETILC) method for achieving precise control in nonlinear hyperbolic distributed parameter systems. Firstly, by designing a Lyapunov function regarding the system output error, reasonable triggering conditions are derived to selectively update the system control input. Subsequently, a sampling-based event-triggered iterative learning control algorithm is proposed to further enhance the control performance of the system while avoiding the occurrence of Zeno phenomena. A condition sufficient for ensuring the convergence of the system's tracking error to zero is presented, and its convergence is proven. Finally, the proposed method's effectiveness is verified through numerical simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inhibitory control represents a core executive function that critically facilitates adaptive behavior and survival in an ever-changing environment. Non-invasive transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) has been hypothesized to improve behavioral inhibition performance, however the neurocomputational mechanism of taVNS-induced neuroenhancement remains elusive.

ABSTRACTGastric cancer (GC) is one of the most common malignant tumors globally. About 20–30% of patients with gastric cancer show peritoneal implantation metastasis at the first diagnosis. Peritoneal metastasis is responsible for 70% of deaths of patients with advanced gastric cancer. Although there are many ways to treat advanced gastric cancer, the prognosis of patients with recurrence is unsatisfactory. An auxiliary treatment with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC), is an internationally recognized recommended treatment for advanced gastric cancer. A series of clinical trials have shown that HIPEC significantly improves the overall survival of patients with cancer. Compared with the cytoreductive surgery (CRS) alone, HIPEC combined with CRS markedly reduced the rate of peritoneal metastasis in patients with ovarian cancer and colorectal cancer. It has been demonstrated that HIPEC alters transcription of many genes by affecting non-coding RNAs, which may contribute to the suppressive effect of HIPEC on the synthesis of nucleic acids and proteins in cancer cells. This paper reviews the recent advances in understanding the role of non-coding RNAs in tumor invasion and metastasis of advanced gastric cancer. We also consider changes in noncoding RNA levels and other molecules in advanced gastric cancer cases treated with HIPEC. We hope that our review will provide a reference for future research on molecular epidemiology and etiology of advanced gastric cancer and promote precise treatment of this malignancy using HIPEC.

A series of new β-carboline derivatives containing an imidazolium moiety were designed and synthesized viathe reaction of β-carboline-1-carboxaldehydes, acetyl chloride, primary amine, and formaldehyde. The antitumor activity of the synthesized compounds was examined against lung carcinoma (A549), gastric carcinoma (BGC-823), murine colon carcinoma (CT-26), liver carcinoma (Bel-7402) and breast carcinoma (MCF-7) cells. The results indicated that most compounds exhibited significant antiproliferative activity, in some cases greater than that of cisplatin, and compound 3zwas found to be the most potent antiproliferative agent against A549, BGC823, CT-26, Bel-7402 and MCF-7 cell lines with an IC50value of 2.7 ± 0.4, 2.7 ± 0.6, 2.4 ± 0.2, 3.2 ± 0.2, and 5.6 ± 0.3 μM, respectively. Combined with favorable in vitropotency, the antitumor efficacies of the selected compounds in mice were also evaluated. Compound 3zexhibited potent antitumor activity with a tumor inhibition rate of 48.6% in sarcoma 180 models. Preliminary investigations on the mechanisms of action revealed that compound 3zcould dramatically inhibit EA.hy926 cell tube formation in a dose-dependent manner. Further investigation of the preliminary mechanism of action demonstrated that compound 3zhad obvious angiogenesis inhibitory effects in the chicken chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay. The results of the docking study showed a good fitting of the new compounds 3oand 3zto the active site of VEGFR-2 with a docking score energy of −11.31 kcal per mole and −11.26 kcal per mole, respectively.

ABSTRACTSatellite-based measurements are of crucial importance for the accurate global-scale estimation of precipitation at fine spatiotemporal resolutions. Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) (IMERG) represents a milestone in precipitation monitoring and integrates observations from multiple satellites with analysis of ground-based gauge monitoring. Within the context of the potential drawbacks of gauge-based calibration of IMERG, this study aimed to anchor the IMERG Late-Run product before calibration by the use of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC) daily precipitation data to provide near-real-time estimates of precipitation over the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration using the Daily Spatio-Temporal Disaggregation Calibration Algorithm (DSTDCA). The results demonstrated that IMERG calibrated version had significantly decreased systematic bias and random errors compared to those based on IMERG Late-Run product and IMERG Final-Run product, with bias values of 4.16%, 49.52% and 14.67%, respectively, in summer from 2016 to 2019. This investigation shows the great potential of DSTDCA for improving the quality of near-real-time satellite-based precipitation products.

Human milk (HM) is the primary source of nutrients and bioactive components that supports the growth and development of infants. However, the proteins present in human milk may change depending on the period of lactation. In this light, the objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of lactation period on HM utilizing a data-independent acquisition (DIA) approach to identify the differences in HM whey protein proteomes. As part of the study, whey proteins of January, February, and June in human milk were studied. The results identified a total of 1563 proteins in HM whey proteins of which 114 groups were subunits of differentially expressed proteins as revealed by cluster analysis. Protein expression was observed to be affected by the period of lactation with expression levels of plasminogen, thrombospondin-1, and tenascin higher during January, keratin, type I cytoskeletal 9 highest in February, and transcobalamin-1 highest in June. The results of this study contribute to expand our understanding of the human whey proteome but also provide strong evidence for the nutritional difference of HM during different lactation periods.

Interoception represents perception of the internal bodily state which is closely associated with social/emotional processing and physical health in humans. Understanding the mechanism underlying interoceptive processing, particularly its modulation, is thus of great importance. Given overlap between oxytocinergic pathways and interoceptive signaling substrates in both peripheral visceral organs and the brain, intranasal oxytocin administration is a promising approach for modulating interoceptive processing.

Global inland surface water bodies such as lakes and reservoirs, important components of the hydrosphere and ecosphere, are increasingly affected by climate change. Generating bathymetric volume-area-height (BVAH) curves for global inland surface water bodies can enhance our understanding of their topography and climate impacts. However, accurately quantifying the topographic patterns of these water bodies remains challenging due to the difficulties in collecting comprehensive bathymetric data. Therefore, we collected and processed over 2000 bathymetric maps of global water bodies from over 50 different data sources and then developed the BVAH model. Finally, the BVAH hydrological curves of 16671 global inland surface water bodies (larger than 10 km2) were generated. The results include but are not limited to (1) For most targeted water bodies, area (A) and volume (V) exhibit significant power function relationships with surface heights (H), with optimal power values quantified as 1.42 for Aand 2.42 for V. (2) The BVAH model outperforms GLOBathy in estimating area and volume changes, achieving higher correlation coefficients (CC) of approximately 0.962 for the area and 0.991 for volume, and demonstrating lower percentages of root mean squared errors (PRMSE) around 10.9% for the area and 4.8% for volume. (3) In the case study of the Tibetan Plateau and various large global reservoirs, the BVAH curve database can capture dynamic volume changes. As a unified simulation of the bathymetric topographical patterns, our bathymetric dataset and corresponding BVAH curve database have great potential to contribute to effective water resource management and ecological conservation efforts worldwide.

The Jones pupil is a full description of imaging properties of projection lenses in optical lithography. The decomposition of the Jones pupil into components with clear physical meanings was studied previously; however, the decomposition method has not been studied systematically. To generalize the existing decomposition method, this work is aimed at finding all the decomposition methods and analyzing the lithographic imaging impacts. In this work, six decomposition methods are proposed, and the lithographic imaging impacts of the Jones components are studied and compared for all the decomposition methods. The results demonstrate that, although the decomposition methods are different, their lithographic impacts are identical. To be specific, apodization has a dominant impact on the critical dimension with a magnitude of 1.3 nm, and the impact of diattenuation is 0.3 nm. In contrast, the impacts of the other Jones components of aberration, birefringence, rotator, and ellipticity are negligible. This work gives a complete understanding of the imaging impacts of the Jones pupil.

Water acts as the solvent for natural biotic and abiotic processes and in many technological contexts. The availability of water to participate in chemical and physical processes is captured by thermodynamic variables which track the energetic state of water such as water activity and water potential. Our understanding of the energetic state of water in relevant processes is limited by a lack of sensors capable of providing accurate and reliable ex situand in situmeasurements of water activity. To address this technology gap, we present applications of a microtensiometer (μTM): a biomimetic microelectromechanical system (MEMS) sensor capable of measuring water activity in liquid, vapor, and semisolid (e.g., hydrogels, cheese) phases. We developed packaging, measurement systems, and methodology to enable us to make water activity measurements previously inaccessible to tensiometry. We present measurements in two contexts: (1) a small benchtop unit for ex situmeasurements and (2) a probe format for in situmeasurements. We demonstrate that the μTM can accurately measure water activity in a diversity of complex samples and agrees with chilled mirror hygrometry, an industry standard for water activity measurement.

We investigate the filling and emptying of extreme ink-bottle porous media—micrometer-scale pores connected by nanometer-scale pores—when changing the pressure of the external vapor, in a case where the pore liquid contains solutes. These phenomena are relevant in diverse contexts, such as the weathering of building materials and artwork, aerosol formation in the atmosphere, and the hydration of soils and plants. Using model systems made of vein-shaped microcavities interconnected by a mesoporous matrix, we show experimentally that the presence of a nonvolatile solute shifts the condensation and evaporation transitions and in a way that is consistent with a modified Kelvin–Laplace equation that takes into account the osmotic pressure of the solution. Emptying occurs far below saturation, when the Kelvin stress, mediated by the large curvature of the liquid–vapor interfaces in the nanopores, is negative enough to induce spontaneous bubble nucleation in the microveins. Filling, on the other hand, occurs close to equilibrium (i.e., at saturation, psatfor pure water and ps< psatfor a solution), driven by the weak capillary pressure of the liquid–vapor interface in the microveins. Interestingly, solutes allow the system to reach situations where the vapor is supersaturatedwith respect to the solution (ps< p< psat). We show that in that latter situation, a condensation layer covers the outer surface of the porous system, preventing the generation of Kelvin stresses but inducing osmotic stresses and flows that are vapor pressure-dependent. The timescales and dynamics reflect these different driving forces: emptying proceeds through discrete, stochastic nucleation events with very fast, unsteady bubble growth associated with a poroelastic relaxation process, while filling occurs collectively in all veins of the sample through a slower steady-state process driven by a combination of osmosis and capillarity. The dynamics can however be rendered symmetrical between filling and emptying if bubbles pre-exist during emptying, a case that we explore using cycling of the vapor pressure around equilibrium.

The interaction of SDF-1α (also known as CXCL12) with the CXCR4 receptor plays a critical role in the retention of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in bone marrow. The viral macrophage inflammatory protein-II (vMIP-II), a human herpesvirus-8 (HHV-8)-encoded viral chemokine, can bind the CXCR4 receptor and inhibit endogenous ligand-induced calcium responses and cell migration. Previously, we used the bivalent ligand approach to link synthetically two unnatural D-amino acid peptides derived from the N-terminus of vMIP-II (DV1 and DV3, respectively) to generate a dimeric peptide, DV1-K-(DV3) (also named HC4319), which shows very high affinity for CXCR4. Here, we studied the biological effects of this dimeric peptide, HC4319, and its monomeric counterpart, DV1, on SDF-1α-induced signaling in CXCR4- or CXCR7-transfected Chinese hamster ovary cells and mobilization of hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) in C3H/HeJ mice using an HPC assay. HC4319 and DV1 inhibited significantly the phosphorylation of Akt and Erk, known to be downstream signaling events of CXCR4. This in vivostudy in C3H/HeJ mice showed that HC4319 and DV-1 strongly induced rapid mobilization of granulocyte–macrophage colony-forming units (CFUs), erythrocyte burst-forming units, and granulocyte–erythrocyte–monocyte–megakaryocyte CFUs from the bone marrow to the blood. These results provide the first reported experimental evidence that bivalent and D-amino acid peptides derived from the N-terminus of vMIP-II are potent mobilizers of HPCs in C3H/HeJ mice and support the further development of such agents for clinical application.

Asphalt foaming process, as one of the major warm mix asphalt (WMA) technologies, can significantly increase the volume of asphalt binder with large surface area in the unit volume and thus generate a strong coating with high shear strength of the mix and improved workability. It allows lower production and construction temperatures and less greenhouse gas and other emissions. Foamed asphalt has generally been achieved by introducing water as a foaming agent into hot asphalt flow before mixing with aggregate at a certain temperature. The water will evaporate and make the asphalt’s volume expanded and its viscosity reduced. However, both the formation and decay of the foamed asphalt binder is a highly thermodynamic process, which makes the characterisation of the foamed asphalt binder extremely difficult. A high fidelity model to simulate the foaming process will provide a powerful tool to conduct virtual experiments of WMA production and optimise the asphalt foaming process and WMA design. To this end, a numerical model using the smooth particle hydrodynamics is developed to simulate the asphalt foaming processes. A self-developed nozzle-based foamer was used to generate foamed asphalt binder at different water contents. Three primary parameters, expansion ratio, half-life and foam index that are widely applied to evaluate the foaming characteristics of foamed asphalt, have been studied. It was found that simulation results agree well with the experiments. Parametric studies were further conducted by using the numerical model to evaluate the effects of environmental controlling parameters on the foaming characteristics of the foamed asphalt binder.

The growth plate (GP) comprising sequentially differentiated cell layers is a critical structure for bone elongation and regeneration. Although several key regulators in GP development have been identified using genetic perturbation, systematic understanding is still limited. Here, we used single-cell RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) to determine the gene expression profiles of 217 single cells from GPs and developed a bioinformatics pipeline named Sinova to de novo reconstruct physiological GP development in both temporal and spatial high resolution. Our unsupervised model not only confirmed prior knowledge, but also enabled the systematic discovery of genes, potential signal pathways, and surface markers CD9/CD200 to precisely depict development. Sinova further identified the effective combination of transcriptional factors (TFs) that regulates GP maturation, and the result was validated using an in vitro EGFP-Col10a screening system. Our case systematically reconstructed molecular cascades in GP development through single-cell profiling, and the bioinformatics pipeline is applicable to other developmental processes.

DNA digital storage provides an alternative for information storage with high density and long-term stability. Here, we report the de novodesign and synthesis of an artificial chromosome that encodes two pictures and a video clip. The encoding paradigm utilizing the superposition of sparsified error correction codewords and pseudo-random sequences tolerates base insertions/deletions and is well suited to error-prone nanopore sequencing for data retrieval. The entire 254 kb sequence was 95.27% occupied by encoded data. The Transformation-Associated Recombination method was used in the construction of this chromosome from DNA fragments and necessary autonomous replication sequences. The stability was demonstrated by transmitting the data-carrying chromosome to the 100th generation. This study demonstrates a data storage method using encoded artificial chromosomes via in vivoassembly for write-once and stable replication for multiple retrievals, similar to a compact disc, with potential in economically massive data distribution.A 254 kb artificial chromosome, storing two pictures and one video clip encoded with low-density parity-check codes and pseudo-random sequences, was manufactured and transmitted from generation to generation stably. The digital information residing in the chromosome was fast retrieved, tolerating base insertions and deletions in nanopore readout.