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• Ring-core fiber with few modes has higher nonlinear power threshold than single-mode fiber, and lower dispersion effect between modes due to annular core structure than multimode fiber. In the sensing application, using the high-order core modes in RCF, can avoid environmental disturbances. In this work, we firstly proposed long-period grating (LPG) inscribed in RCF by CO 2 laser, which can convert fundamental mode to LP 11 mode with high conversion efficiency of 98 %. Moreover, the proposed RCF-LPG can realize vector curvature measurement with sensitivities of − 0.584, 0.879, and − 0.735 dB/m−1 in the bending directions of 0°, 90°, and 180°, respectively, in curvature range of 5–9.466 m−1, as well as vector torsion measurement with sensitivity of − 0.13 nm/(rad/m) and 0.554 dB/(rad/m) with the torsion rate changing from − 6.98 to 6.98 rad/m. The measured influence of temperature can be negligible. The proposed RCF-LPG could not only be used as high-efficiency mode converter in mode division multiplexing systems but also be potential in few-mode fiber based multiparameter sensing fields. With the rapid development of optical fiber sensor in physical measurement, it is of practical significant to realize multi-parameter measurement. In this work, we proposed and demonstrated a multiparameter sensor for curvature, torsion and temperature. The sensor is formed from CO 2 laser-inscribed long-period grating (LPG) in few-mode ring-core fiber (RCF), which can convert fundamental mode to LP 11 mode. One-side inscription enhances asymmetric index modulation in fiber, resulting in directionally sensitive to bend by intensity interrogation. The curvature sensitivities in various bending directions perform linearity in curvature range of 5–9.466 m−1. Curvature sensitivities are related to the bending directions. The intensity sensitivity achieves − 0.584 dB/m−1, 0.879 dB/m−1, and − 0.735 dB/m−1, respectively. And torsion sensitivity from - 6.98 rad/m to 6.98 rad/m displays linearity with −0.554 dB/(rad/m). The measured influence of temperature can be negligible. The proposed RCF-LPG could not only be used as high-efficiency mode converter in mode division multiplexing systems but also be potential in few-mode fiber based multiparameter sensing fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The joint design of the optical system and the downstream algorithm is a challenging and promising task. Due to the demand for balancing the global optima of imaging systems and the computational cost of physical simulation, existing methods cannot achieve efficient joint design of complex systems such as smartphones and drones. In this work, starting from the perspective of the optical design, we characterize the optics with separated aberrations. Additionally, to bridge the hardware and software without gradients, an image simulation system is presented to reproduce the genuine imaging procedure of lenses with large field-of-views. As for aberration correction, we propose a network to perceive and correct the spatially varying aberrations and validate its superiority over state-of-the-art methods. Comprehensive experiments reveal that the preference for correcting separated aberrations in joint design is as follows: longitudinal chromatic aberration, lateral chromatic aberration, spherical aberration, field curvature, and coma, with astigmatism coming last. Drawing from the preference, a 10% reduction in the total track length of the consumer-level mobile phone lens module is accomplished. Moreover, this procedure spares more space for manufacturing deviations, realizing extreme-quality enhancement of computational photography. The optimization paradigm provides innovative insight into the practical joint design of sophisticated optical systems and post-processing algorithms. • Joint Design of the Optical System and the Post-processing Algorithm. • Preference for Correcting Separated Aberrations in Joint Design. • Ray Tracing Based Image Simulation System. • Extreme-quality Enhancement of Computational Photography with the Proposed Aberration Correction Network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • SN attenuates insulitis and relieves pancreatic β-cell death in diabetic mice. • SN activates AMPK and suppresses NLRP3/GSDMD in the pancreatic tissues of diabetic mice. • SN prevents HG exposure-induced pyroptosis in INS-1 cells. • SN alleviates β-cell pyroptosis through AMPK-dependent inhibition of NLRP3/GSDMD activation. Scrophularia ningpoensis Hemsl. (SN) is an herbal medicine used as a functional food in China. SN has traditionally been used to treat diabetes mellitus (DM), but its mechanism of action is not well understood. Our previous study indicated that the aqueous extract of SN can reduce hepatic insulin resistance and correct the irregular shape of pancreatic islets in diabetic mice. This study aims to investigate whether the aqueous extract of SN can regulate pyroptosis in pancreatic β-cells and explore its underlying mechanisms. Db/db mice were orally given an aqueous extract of SN for eight weeks. Subsequently, their pancreatic tissues were collected for histopathological analysis and immunoblotting. Rat insulinoma (INS-1) cells were cultured either alone or with the aqueous extract of SN and evaluated for cell viability, pyroptotic body formation, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activity, the NACHT, LRR, and PYD domain-containing protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome and gasdermin D (GSDMD) activation, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production under high glucose (HG) exposure conditions. The aqueous extract of SN reduced insulitis and pancreatic β-cell death in db/db mice. Increased AMPK phosphorylation and decreased NLRP3 inflammasome and GSDMD activation were observed in pancreatic tissues after administration of the aqueous extract of SN. In vitro , the aqueous extract of SN increased cell viability and AMPK phosphorylation in a concentration-dependent manner. Additionally, the aqueous extract of SN corrected excessive ROS generation, NLRP3 inflammasome and GSDMD activation, and pyroptotic body formation. Inhibition of AMPK negated these beneficial effects of the aqueous extract of SN on INS-1 cells. The study concluded that the aqueous extract of SN alleviates β-cell pyroptosis by inhibiting NLRP3/GSDMD activation in an AMPK-dependent manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biochar (BC) has a strong potential for activating arsenic (As) in soil; thus, the phytoremediation efficiency of As-polluted soils is enhanced with Pteris vittata L. A pot experiment was conducted to investigate the potential of BC to assist in phytoremediation with P. vittata. The effects of BC on physicochemical properties, available As, enzyme activities, and the bacterial community in the rhizosphere soil were investigated, and the biomass, physiology, and As uptake of P. vittata were analyzed. The results indicated that applying BC facilitated available As in the P. vittata rhizosphere soil , and the phytoremediation efficiency percentage increased in the As-polluted soils, such as 3.80% and 8.01% under the 2% and 5% BC treatments compared to the control, respectively. Phytoremediation with P. vittata and BC significantly improved soil organic matter content, available N, P, and K, enzyme activities, and the bacterial community. BC promoted Streptomyces (26.6-54.2%) and Sphingomonas (12.3-30.8%) abundance which regulated the growth and As uptake by P. vittata. Moreover, applying BC increased the biomass, and As uptake by P. vittata. Overall, BC strengthened the phytoremediation of As-polluted soils by improving soil pH, nutrient concentrations, enzyme activities, bacterial community structure, and soil arsenic activation, growth, and absorption by P. vittata. [Display omitted] • Biochar changes the composition of bacterial communities. • As fraction was changed by biochar and thus increasing available As. • Biochar increased the biomass, As uptake and arsenic removal of P. vittata L. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Wenxin Keli (WXKL) alone or combined with Western medicine in treating ventricular premature complexes (VPCs) with heart failure (HF).Methods: We searched five databases to identify relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published before May 2016. Two review authors independently searched and screened the literature, extracted the data as well as assessed the methodological quality of the included studies by using criteria from the Cochrane Handbook, and analyzed via using Review Manager 5.3 software.Results: Eight studies of WXKL were included. The results of the Meta-analysis showed that WXKL was more significant on the frequency of VPCs (MD=-427.08, 95% CI: -526.73∼-327.43, P<0.01), left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) (MD=-4.12, 95% CI: 2.97∼5.27, P<0.01), the total effect of VPCs (RR=0.48, 95% CI: 0.34∼0.69, P<0.01) and 6-min walking test (MD=28.05, 95% CI: 19.56∼36.54, P<0.01). The treatment group presented a significant reduction at left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVED) (MD=-3.94, 95% CI: -6.57∼-1.31, P<0.01) when treatment time was 12 weeks, however, there was no statistical difference at 8 weeks. In addition, the included trials generally showed low methodological quality.Conclusions: Wenxin Keli may be effective and safe for treating VPCs and HF. However, further RCTs of larger scale, multi-center/country, longer follow-up periods, and higher quality are still required to verify the efficacy of Wenxin Keli in ventricular premature beat with heart failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Surface topography can be controlled independently by using ball milling. • The fatigue life is related to the angle of surface texture and fatigue load. • The fatigue life is the lowest when the texture is 45 degrees to the fatigue load. Material property and surface integrity are key parameters that influence the fatigue properties of metallic material, especially residual stress, microstructure, and surface topography. Multiple surface integrity parameters may change simultaneously during the process of surface formation, which makes it difficult to analyze the evolution rule of the individual parameter. In this paper, the influence of surface topography and texture on tensile fatigue properties of ZK61M magnesium alloy was studied. The ball-end milling method was applied to produce workpiece surfaces with three different morphologies and texture directions but ensuring the consistent residual stress, microstructure, and surface roughness in these three cases. The results showed that the fatigue life (14.5 × 104 cycles) of workpiece with surface texture direction parallel to the fatigue loading direction was even larger than the fatigue life (8.8 × 104 cycles) of the samples after polishing, and the fatigue life (3.2 × 104 cycles) of workpiece was the lowest when the angle of the surface texture was 45 degrees obliqued to the fatigue loading direction, which is about 64% lower than the samples after polishing. The surface texture direction can be controlled independently by this method, which provides a new consideration factor for evaluating the influence of surface topography on fatigue life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The effects of IWLF on soil erodibility were quantified by multi-indicators. • Different trends were detected in eight erodibility indicators with IWLF. • CSEI increased with IWLF, reflected by variation in elevation. • Soil texture, BD, OM and RD had direct impacts on CSEI. The near soil surface characteristics of plant communities probably change considerably with seasonal water-level fluctuations, thus induced corresponding variations in soil erodibility indicators. This study was conducted to investigate the variations in soil erodibility indicators triggered by varying inundation intensity or temporal water-level fluctuations in the Three Gorges Reservoir area. Two non-inundation sites (as the control) and six sites with different water-level fluctuation intensities were selected to measure or calculate eight soil erodibility indicators and then to determine a comprehensive soil erodibility index (CSEI). The erodibility indicators included K factor, slaking rate (SR), mean weighted diameter of aggregates (MWD), mean number of waterdrop impacts (MND), structural stability index (SSI), saturated conductivity (K s), cohesion (Coh), and penetration resistance (PR). The variation in each soil erodibility indicator could be explained by the changes in near soil surface characteristics of plant community. The results indicated that the MWD, MND, SR, Coh , SSI, and K s decreased gradually with the intensity of water level fluctuations (IWLFs), while the reverse was found for PR. K factor firstly increased and then decreased with the IWLFs. The CSEI increased with IWLFs, which was closely related to elevation. Compared with the control, CSEI increased by 123.3%, 132.9%, 93.9%, 84.8%, 48.7%, and 55.2% for water levels of 150, 155, 160, 165, 170 and 175 m, respectively. The changes in near soil surface characteristics of the plant community directly led to differences in soil erodibility indicators. Significant positive correlations were detected between soil erodibility indices, and bulk density and sand content, while significant negative correlations were found between root mass density, silt, clay, and organic matter contents. CSEI increased linearly with inundation time and duration. The results are helpful for understanding the mechanism of seasonal fluctuations in soil erodibility for land frequently inundated by water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monocular depth estimation is an important computer vision task widely explored in fields such as autonomous driving, robotics, and more. Recently, deep optics approaches that optimize diffractive optical elements (DOEs) with differentiable frameworks have improved depth estimation performance. However, they only consider on-axis point spread functions (PSFs) and are highly dependent on system calibration. We propose a precise end-to-end paradigm combining ray tracing and angular spectrum diffraction. With this approach, we jointly trained a DOE and a reconstruction network for depth estimation and image restoration. Compared with conventional deep optics approaches, we accurately simulate both on-axis and off-axis PSFs, eliminating the need for calibration. We have validated the high similarity between captured PSFs and simulated ones at 19.4 ∘ field-of-view (FOV). Our optimized phase mask and network achieve state-of-the-art performance among semantic-based monocular depth estimation and existing deep optics methods. During real-world experiments, our prototype camera shows depth distributions similar to the Intel D455 infrared structured light camera. • We propose a calibration-free deep optics model that jointly optimizes the DOE and the depth estimation network. • The precise simulation for on-axis and off-axis PSFs of hybrid optical systems is integrated in an end-to-end formulation. • Our framework achieves state-of-the-art performance in monocular depth estimation. • We build a DOE camera prototype with a FOV up to 20 degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies have typically investigated only the association between single pollutants and health outcomes. However, in the real world, people are exposed to multiple air pollutants simultaneously. The effect of air pollutants on emergency department (ED) visits has not been previously studied in the Sichuan Basin, which is one of the most polluted areas. We collected nonaccidental, respiratory and cardiovascular daily ED visits and daily concentrations of PM 2.5 , PM c , CO, SO 2 , NO 2 and O 3 in Chengdu, China, from 2014 to 2016. A weighted variable for the combination of multiple air pollutants was constructed to assess the joint adverse health effects. Each air pollutant was assigned a health-related weight, which indicated the pollutant's relative contribution to the joint effect. The effects on specific subpopulations (males and females; 15–65 years old and >65 years old) were also examined. With an increase of 10 μg/m3 of the combined multiple air pollutants, the daily ED visits for nonaccidental, respiratory and cardiovascular causes increased by 0.96% (95% CI: 0.51%–1.39%), 1.19% (95% CI: 0.53%, 1.85%) and 4.36% (95% CI: 1.06%, 7.76%) at lag 1, respectively. Males presented more pronounced effects, except for cardiovascular disease, than females. Elderly individuals were found to be more sensitive than young individuals. For nonaccidental and respiratory diseases, the contributions of particulate matter (PM) were dominant among the air pollutants, whereas cardiovascular disease was mainly affected by gaseous air pollutants. The combination of multiple air pollutants was significantly associated with ED visits in the Sichuan Basin, China. The joint effect of the combination of multiple air pollutants was highest for cardiovascular disease at lag 1. The relative contributions of individual pollutants varied by disease and subpopulation. These findings suggest that under different pollution scenarios, preventive strategies should target those with different diseases and different subpopulations. Image 1 • The joint effects on emergency department visits were significant. • The contributions of pollutants varied by disease and subpopulation. • Particulate matter had dominant effect on nonaccidental and respiratory diseases. • Gaseous pollutants had important effect on cardiovascular disease. The joint effect of multiple air pollutants on ED visits was highest for cardiovascular disease at lag 1, and the contributions of pollutants varied by disease and subpopulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Cefquinome sulfate cationic proliposomes (CSCPs) were prepared by solid-dispersion method combined with effervescent hydration. • CSCP were used to form Cefquinome sulfate cationic proliposomes (CSCLs) by adding 5% sodium bicarbonate solution solvent. • The eradication effect of Cefquinome sulfate (CS) on bacterial biofilm (BBF) was relatively weak during 8 h–24 h. • However, the CSCL eradication effect on BBF was about twice that of CS. • The clearance rate reached 81.30% with 2.5×MIC in 24 h. Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) has the propensity to form biofilms, which eventually cause antibiotic resistance and treatment failure. Cefquinome sulfate (CS) is an animal-specific antibacterial agent for S. aureus infection. In this work, CS cationic proliposomes (CSCPs) were prepared by solid-dispersion method combined with effervescent hydration to eradicate bacterial biofilm and improve the antibacterial effect of the drug. CSCPs were readily dispersed in water, thereby forming CS cationic liposomes (CSCLs) as a white, uniform suspension. The CSCLs had an encapsulation efficiency (EE) of 63.21%, a drug loading of 4.04%, an average particle size of 201.5 nm, and a positive zeta-potential of 65.29 mV. In vitro release studies showed that CSCLs had good sustained-release behavior. The CS and CSCL minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of S. aureus type culture strain were 1 and 0.48 g/mL, respectively. The eradication effect of CS on bacterial biofilm (BBF) was relatively weak during culture in drug-containing medium for 8 h–24 h. However, the CSCL eradication effect on BBF increased gradually, and the clearance rate of CSCLs on BBF was about twice that of CS. The clearance rate reached 81.30% with 2.5 × MIC in 24 h. All these results indicated that CSCLs can significantly improve the eradication effect of cefquinome on biofilm to inhibit bacterial growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]