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The aim of this study was to elucidate the effect of FAM13A on the differentiation of goat intramuscular precursor adipocytes and its mechanism of action. Here, we cloned the CDS region 2094 bp of the goat FAM13A gene, encoding a total of 697 amino acid residues. Functionally, overexpression of FAM13A inhibited the differentiation of goat intramuscular adipocytes with a concomitant reduction in lipid droplets, whereas interference with FAM13A expression promoted the differentiation of goat intramuscular adipocytes. To further investigate the mechanism of FAM13A inhibiting adipocyte differentiation, 104 differentially expressed genes were screened by RNA-seq, including 95 up-regulated genes and 9 down-regulated genes. KEGG analysis found that the RIG-I receptor signaling pathway, NOD receptor signaling pathway and toll-like receptor signaling pathway may affect adipogenesis. We selected the RIG-I receptor signaling pathway enriched with more differential genes as a potential adipocyte differentiation signaling pathway for verification. Convincingly, the RIG-I like receptor signaling pathway inhibitor (HY-P1934A) blocked this pathway to save the phenotype observed in intramuscular adipocyte with FAM13A overexpression. Finally, the upstream miRNA of FAM13A was predicted, and the targeted inhibition of miR-21-5p on the expression of FAM13A gene was confirmed. In this study, it was found that FAM13A inhibited the differentiation of goat intramuscular adipocytes through the RIG-I receptor signaling pathway, and the upstream miRNA of FAM13A (miR-21-5p) promoted the differentiation of goat intramuscular adipocytes. This work extends the genetic regulatory network of IMF deposits and provides theoretical support for improving human health and meat quality from the perspective of IMF deposits.

Abelmoschus manihot L. (HSK) is a rare and endangered species in the wild that grows on the cliffs of deep mountains. As a natural plant, the chemical composition of HSK is relatively complex, which mainly includes flavonoids, organic acids, polysaccharides, and various trace elements with good effects of clearing away heat, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and calming nerves, and inhibiting tumor cells. In this experiment, different developmental stages of HSK flowers were used for optimization of the flavonoid extraction and determining method. The antioxidant activities, flavonoid accumulation pattern, and synthesis regulatory network were analyzed using biochemistry, RNA-seq, and UPLC-MS/MS. The total content of flavonoids, vitexin rhamnoside, hyperoside, and rutin in HSK flowers at T3 stage (flower wilting) was significantly higher than in T2 (full flowering) and T1 (bud) stages. Compared with T1 and T2, the antioxidant capacity of the T3 flower alcohol extract was also the strongest, including the total reducing ability, DPPH clearance, OH clearance, O 2- clearance, and total antioxidant capacity. A total of 156 flavonoids and 47,179 unigenes were detected by UPLC-MS/MS and RNA-Seq, respectively. The candidate genes and key metabolites involved in flavonoid biosynthesis were identified and the regulatory networks were also analyzed in this study. qRT-PCR test further proved that the gene expression level was consistent with the results of RNA sequence data. The relationship between the gene expression and flavonoid accumulation network provides a theoretical basis for the mining and regulation of functional genes related to the flavonoid biosynthesis and metabolism in Abelmoschus manihot L.

In this paper, we focus on the nonsmooth composite optimization problems over networks, which consist of a smooth term and a nonsmooth term. Both equality constraints and box constraints for the decision variables are also considered. Based on the multi-agent networks, the objective problems are split into a series of agents on which the problems can be solved in a decentralized manner. By establishing the Lagrange function of the problems, the first-order optimal condition is obtained in the primal-dual domain. Then, we propose a decentralized algorithm with the proximal operators. The proposed algorithm has uncoordinated stepsizes with respect to agents or edges, where no global parameters are involved. By constructing the compact form of the algorithm with operators, we complete the convergence analysis with the fixed-point theory. With the constrained quadratic programming problem, simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Revealing the evolutional pathway of the nucleation and crystallization of nanostructures at the atomic scale is crucial for understanding the complex growth mechanisms at the early stage of new substances and spices. Real-time discrimination of the atomic mechanism of a nanodroplet transition is still a formidable challenge. Here, taking advantage of the high temporal and spatial resolution of transmission electron microscopy, the detailed growth pathway of Pb nanodroplets at the early stage of nucleation was directly observed by employing electron beams to induce the nucleation, growth, and fusion process of Pb nanodroplets based on PbTiO 3 nanowires. Before the nucleation of Pb nanoparticles, the atoms began to precipitate when they were irradiated by electrons, forming a local crystal structure, and then rapidly and completely crystallized. Small nanodroplets maintain high activity and high density and gradually grow and merge into stable crystals. The whole process was recorded and imaged by HRTEM in real time. The growth of Pb nanodroplets advanced through the classical path and instantaneous droplet coalescence. These results provide an atomic-scale insight on the dynamic process of solid/solid interface, which has implications in thin-film growth and advanced nanomanufacturing.

Anodic bonding is broadly utilized to realize the structure support and electrical connection in the process of fabrication and packaging of MEMS devices, and the mechanical and electrical characteristics of the bonded interface of structure exhibit a significant impact on the stability and reliability of devices. For the anodic bonding structure, including the gold electrode of micro accelerometers, the elastic/plastic contact model of a gold-silicon rough surface is established based on Hertz contact theory to gain the contact area and force of Gauss surface bonding. The trans-scale finite element model of a silicon-gold glass structure is built in Workbench through the reconstruction of Gauss surface net by the reverse engineering technique. The translation load is added to mimic the process of contact to acquire the contact behaviors through the coupling of mechanical and electrical fields, and then the change law of contact resistance is obtained. Finally, the measurement shows a good agreement between the experimental results, theoretical analysis and simulation, which indicates there is almost no change of resistance when the surface gap is less than 20 nm and the resistance is less than 5Ω, while the resistance changes rapidly after the gap exceeds 20 nm.

Knowledge, beliefs, and practices regarding infectious diseases are key elements that ensure practitioners' health and safety. It is important to carry out such a survey in hotels. This study aims to determine the levels of knowledge, beliefs, and practices regarding infectious diseases among practitioners and their associations with the environmental quality of hotels in Wuhan, China. We surveyed infectious disease knowledge, beliefs, and practices of practitioners in 18 hotels and detected these hotels' environment, including physical factors of temperature, humidity, noise, and the indoor air quality of benzene, toluene, xylene, formaldehyde, CO, CO 2 , the total count of fungi, aerobic plate count, PM 10 , and PM 2.5 . 128 practitioners were included, and 28.9% were male. The questionnaire included knowledge, beliefs, and practices regarding infectious diseases. Our study found moderate levels of knowledge and beliefs, and good health practices. People's beliefs toward COVID-19 were correlated significantly with their knowledge ( p < 0.05). Beliefs and health practices were correlated significantly with environmental quality ( p < 0.05). However, the environmental quality was correlated negatively with the classification of hotels. Conclusively, despite the good health practices of practitioners, the knowledge and beliefs toward infectious diseases need to strengthen. Hotels should emphasize health education in practitioners and the improvement of environmental hygiene. Integrating all three components into a comprehensive environmental promotion program is warranted., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Strap-down inertial navigation systems (INSs) with quartz flexible accelerometers (QFAs) are widely used in many conditions, particularly in aerial vehicles. Temperature is one of the significant issues impacting the performance of INS. The variation and the gradient of temperature are complex under aerial conditions, which severely degrades the navigation performance of INS. Previous work has indicated that parts of navigation errors could be restrained by simple temperature compensation of QFA. However, the temperature hysteresis of the accelerometer is seldom considered in INS. In this paper, the temperature hysteresis mechanism of QFA and the compensation method would be analyzed. Based on the fundamental model, a comprehensive temperature hysteresis model is proposed and the parameters in this model were derived through a temperature cycling test. Furthermore, the comparative experiments in the laboratory were executed to refine the temperature hysteresis model and to verify the effectiveness of the new compensation method. Applying the temperature hysteresis compensation in flight condition, the result shows that the position error (CEP) is restrained from 1.54 nmile/h to 1.29 nmile/h. The proposed temperature hysteresis compensation method improves the performance of INS effectively and feasibly, which could be promoted to other applications of INS in similar temperature changing environment correspondingly.

Although the emphasis on behaviors of hand-washing and mask-wearing was repeated during the pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), not everyone paid enough attention to this. A descriptive statistic was used to make sense of the status of hand hygiene and mask-wearing among primary school students in Wuhan, China. A binary logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the risk factors affecting the behaviors of hand-washing and mask-wearing. p < 0.05 (two-sides) was considered as significant at statistics. 42.05% of the primary school students showed a good behavior of hand-washing, while 51.60% had a good behavior of mask-wearing. Gender, grade, out-going history, father's occupation, mother's educational background, and the time filling out the survey were significantly associated with hand hygiene, whereas grade, mother's educational background, and residence were associated with mask-wearing. The behaviors of hand-washing and mask-wearing among primary school students were influenced by gender, grade, and other factors, therefore, parents should make efforts of behavior guidance whereas governments should enlarge medium publicity.

The low-temperature cracking performance of asphalt is considered one of the main deteriorations in asphalt pavements. However, there have been few studies on the low-temperature cracking performance of asphalt under heat and light together. Hence, the ductility test, bending beam rheometer (BBR) test, and asphalt composition analysis test are combined to investigate the low-temperature cracking performance under heat and light together based on the climatic conditions of China. The styrene-butadiene-styrene block copolymer (SBS)-modified asphalt binders were prepared with different modifier types and base asphalt in this research. The results show that the low-temperature cracking resistance of asphalt reduces under heat and light together. It is obviously reduced at the early stage, and it becomes worse with the increase of the aging time, temperature, and ultraviolet (UV) intensity. The asphalt composition has a significant impact on its low-temperature cracking performance, and the SBS modifier can improve the low-temperature cracking resistance of asphalt. The rational selection of base asphalt and modifier can improve the low-temperature cracking performance of asphalt. Under heat and light together, whether base asphalt or modified asphalt, the change trends of their ductility and component content are similar. Therefore, to improve the anti-cracking ability of the asphalt pavement, it is suggested to use the ductility of asphalt aged by heat and light together for 15 days as the evaluation index of the low-temperature cracking performance of asphalt, and asphalt should be selected according to the temperature and UV intensity of the asphalt pavement use area.

To investigate the osteoinductive mechanism triggered by hydroxyapatite/β-tricalcium phosphate (HA/β-TCP) biomaterials in mice which keep exercising. Methods: The HA/β-TCP biomaterials were implanted in the muscle of bilateral thighs (non-osseous sites) of eighty Balb/C mice. All animals were then randomly divided into 4 groups ( n = 20). In group 1 (negative control group), the mice were fed routinely. In group 2 (running group), all mice were put on a treadmill which was set to a 60-degree incline. The mice ran 20 min thrice each day. A 5-minute break was included in the routine from day three onwards. In group 3 (weight-bearing group), all mice underwent weight-bearing running. The mice in this group performed the same routine as group 2 while carrying 5 g rubber weights. In group 4 (positive control group), dexamethasone was injected in the implanted sites of the biomaterials from the day of the operation. All mice were injected once per week and received a total of 8 injections. One and eight weeks after surgery, the blood serum was collected to detect inflammatory and immunological factors by ELISA. In addition to this, biomaterial specimens were obtained to observe inflammatory and osteogenic levels via histological staining and to facilitate analysis of the osteogenic mechanism by Western Blot. Results: The inflammation indexes caused by surgery were alleviated through running or weight-bearing running: The tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels were significantly reduced in groups 2 and 3 at week 8. Exercise also enhanced the secretion of interferon-γ (IFN-γ) in mice; this can strengthen their immunity. The new bone tissues were observed in all groups; however, the area percentage of new bone tissues and the number of osteoblasts were highest in the weight-bearing group. Furthermore, the key proteins of wingless/integrated (Wnt) signaling pathway, Wnt1, Wnt3a, and β-catenin, were up-regulated during osteoinduction. This up-regulation activated runt-related transcription factor-2 (Runx2), increased the expression of osteopontin (OPN) and osteocalcin (OCN). Conclusion: Weight-bearing exercise can promote the bone and bone marrow formation through the Wnt signaling pathway: Observations documented here suggest that the proper exercise is beneficial to the recovery of bone damage., Competing Interests: There is no conflict of interest in the submission of this manuscript.

Chitinase, as one of the most important extracellular enzymes in the marine environment, has great ecological and applied values. In this study, two chitinases (Chi1557 and Chi4668) with 97.33% amino acid sequences identity were individually found in Vibrio rotiferianus and Vibrio harveyi . They both were encoding by 561 amino acids, but differed in 15 amino acids and showed different enzymatic properties. The optimal temperature and pH ranges were 45-50 °C and pH 5.0-7.0 for Chi1557, while ~50 °C and pH 3.0-6.0 for Chi4668. K + , Mg 2+ , and EDTA increased the enzymatic activity of Chi4668 significantly, yet these factors were inhibitory to Chi1557. Moreover, Chi1557 degraded colloidal chitin to produce (GlcNAc) 2 and minor GlcNAc, whereas Chi4668 produce (GlcNAc) 2 with minor (GlcNAc) 3 and (GlcNAc) 4 . The K cat/ K m of Chi4668 was ~4.7 times higher than that of Chi1557, indicating that Chi4668 had stronger catalytic activity than Chi1557. Furthermore, site-directed mutagenesis was performed on Chi1557 focusing on seven conserved amino acid residues of family GH18 chitinases. Chi1557 was almost completely inactive after Glu154, Gln219, Tyr221, or Trp312 was individually mutated, retained ~50% activity after Tyr37 was mutated, and increased two times activity after Asp152 was mutated, indicating that these six amino acids were key sites for Chi1557.

Microsoft Kinect, a low-cost motion capture device, has huge potential in applications that require machine vision, such as human-robot interactions, home-based rehabilitation and clinical assessments. The Kinect sensor can track 25 key three-dimensional (3D) "skeleton" joints on the human body at 30 frames per second, and the skeleton data often have acceptable accuracy. However, the skeleton data obtained from the sensor sometimes exhibit a high level of jitter due to noise and estimation error. This jitter is worse when there is occlusion or a subject moves slightly out of the field of view of the sensor for a short period of time. Therefore, this paper proposed a novel approach to simultaneously handle the noise and error in the skeleton data derived from Kinect. Initially, we adopted classification processing to divide the skeleton data into noise data and erroneous data. Furthermore, we used a Kalman filter to smooth the noise data and correct erroneous data. We performed an occlusion experiment to prove the effectiveness of our algorithm. The proposed method outperforms existing techniques, such as the moving mean filter and traditional Kalman filter. The experimental results show an improvement of accuracy of at least 58.7%, 47.5% and 22.5% compared to the original Kinect data, moving mean filter and traditional Kalman filter, respectively. Our method provides a new perspective for Kinect data processing and a solid data foundation for subsequent research that utilizes Kinect., Competing Interests: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

The VIKOR model has been considered a viable tool for many decision-making applications in the past few years, given the advantages of considering the compromise between maximizing the utility of group and minimizing personal regrets. The q-rung interval-valued orthopair fuzzy set (q-RIVOFS) is a generalization of intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) and Pythagorean fuzzy set (PFS) and has emerged to solve more complex and uncertain decision making problems which IFS and PFS cannot handle. In this manuscript, the key innovation is to combine the traditional VIKOR model with q-RIVOFS to develop the q-rung interval-valued orthopair fuzzy VIKOR model. In the new developed model, to express more information, the attribute's values in MAGDM problems are depicted by q-RIVOFNs. First of all, some basic theories and aggregation operators of q-RIVOFNs are simply introduced. Then we develop the origin VIKOR model to q-RIVOFS environment and briefly express the computing steps of this new established model. Thereafter, the effectiveness of the model is verified by an example of supplier selection of medical consumer products and through comparative analysis, the superiority of the new method is further illustrated., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

It has been demonstrated that skeletal muscle adaptions, including muscle fibers transition, angiogenesis, and mitochondrial biogenesis are involved in the regular exercise-induced improvement of endurance capacity and metabolic status. Herein, we investigated the effects of pterostilbene (PST) supplementation on skeletal muscle adaptations to exercise training in rats. Six-week-old male Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into a sedentary control group (Sed), an exercise training group (Ex), and exercise training combined with 50 mg/kg PST (Ex + PST) treatment group. After 4 weeks of intervention, an exhaustive running test was performed, and muscle fiber type transformation, angiogenesis, and mitochondrial content in the soleus muscle were measured. Additionally, the effects of PST on muscle fiber transformation, paracrine regulation of angiogenesis, and mitochondrial function were tested in vitro using C2C12 myotubes. In vivo study showed that exercise training resulted in significant increases in time-to-exhaustion, the proportion of slow-twitch fibers, muscular angiogenesis, and mitochondrial biogenesis in rats, and these effects induced by exercise training could be augmented by PST supplementation. Moreover, the in vitro study showed that PST treatment remarkably promoted slow-twitch fibers formation, angiogenic factor expression, and mitochondrial function in C2C12 myotubes. Collectively, our results suggest that PST promotes skeletal muscle adaptations to exercise training thereby enhancing the endurance capacity.

Grape seed extract (GSE) displays strong antioxidant activity, but its instability creates barriers to its applications. Herein, three HP-β-CD/GSE inclusion complexes with host-guest ratios of 1:0.5, 1:1, and 1:2 were successfully prepared by co-precipitation method to improve stability. Successful embedding of GSE in the HP-β-CD cavity was confirmed by fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses. The Autodock Tools 1.5.6 was used to simulate the three-dimensional supramolecular structure of the inclusion complex of 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin and grape seed extract (HP-β-CD/GSE) by molecular docking. The MALDI-TOF-MS technology and chemical database Pubchem, and structural database PDB were combined to reconstitute the three-dimensional structure of target protein. The binding mode of the HP-β-CD/GSE inclusion complex to target protein was studied at the molecular level, and the antioxidant ability of the resulting HP-β-CD/GSE inclusion complexes was investigated by measuring 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging. The effects of HP-β-CD/GSE on myofibrillar protein from lamb tripe were also investigated under oxidative conditions. The positions and interactions of the binding sites of HP-β-CD/GSE inclusion complexes and target protein receptors were simulated by molecular docking. The results showed that HP-β-CD/GSE inclusion complexes were successfully prepared, optimally at a molar ratio of 1:2. At low (5 μmol/g) to medium (105 μmol/g) concentrations, HP-β-CD/GSE inclusion complexes decreased the carbonyl content, hydrophobicity, and protein aggregation of myofibrillar protein from lamb tripe, and increased the sulphydryl content. Furthermore, high concentration (155 μmol/g) of HP-β-CD/GSE inclusion complexes promoted protein oxidation.

In this paper, a novel in-line modal interferometer for refractive index (RI) sensing is proposed and experimentally fabricated by cascading single-taper and multimode-double- cladding-multimode (MDM) fiber structure. Owing to evanescent field in taper area, the ultra-sensitive and linear intensity-responses to the varied surrounding RI are gained in both single- and double-pass structures. Moreover, the crosstalk from temperature can be effectively discriminated and compensated by means of the RI-free nature of MDM. The experimental results show that the RI sensitivities in single- and double-pass structures, respectively, reach 516.02 and 965.46 dB/RIU (RIU: refractive index unit), both with the slight wavelength shift (~0.2 nm). The temperature responses with respect to wavelength and intensity are 68.9 pm°C -1 /0.103 dB°C -1 (single-pass structure) and 103 pm°C -1 /0.082 dB·°C -1 (double-pass structure). So the calculated cross-sensitivity of intensity is constrained within 8.49 × 10 -5 RIU/°C. In addition, our sensor presents high measurement-stability (~0.99) and low repeatability error (<4.8‱). On account of the ~620 μm size of taper, this compact sensor is cost-efficient, easy to fabricate, and very promising for the applications of biochemistry and biomedicine.

We conducted a retrospective analysis of norovirus outbreaks reported to the National Public Health Emergency Event Surveillance System (PHEESS) in China from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2017. We reviewed all acute gastroenteritis outbreaks ( n = 692) submitted to PHEESS to identify the frequency, seasonality, geographic distribution, setting, and transmission mode of outbreaks due to norovirus. A total of 616 norovirus outbreaks resulting in 30,848 cases were reported. Among these outbreaks, 571 (93%) occurred in school settings including 239 (39%) in primary schools, 136 (22%) in childcare facilities, and 121 (20%) in secondary schools. The majority of outbreaks (63%) were due to person-to-person transmission, followed by multiple modes of transmission (11%), foodborne (5%) and waterborne (3%) transmission. These findings highlight the importance of improving hand hygiene and environmental disinfection in high-risk settings. Developing a standard and quantitative outbreak reporting structure could improve the usefulness of PHEESS for monitoring norovirus outbreaks.

Modern studies have shown that pollen has a certain role in the treatment of prostate-related diseases. In the present study, pollen polysaccharides from Chinese wolfberry (WPPs) were extracted by hot-water extraction and ethanol precipitation, further purified by chromatography on a DEAE-cellulose column and Sephadex G-100 column. Homogeneous polysaccharide CF1 of WPPS was obtained, the molecular weight of which was estimated to be 1540.10 ± 48.78 kDa by HPGPC-ELSD. HPLC with PMP derivatization analysis indicated that the monosaccharide compositions of CF1 were mannose, glucuronic acid, galacturonic acid, xylose, galactose, arabinose, and trehalose, in a molar ratio of 0.68:0.59:0.27:0.24:0.22:0.67:0.08. The antitumor effects of CF1 upon MTT, Tunel assay and flow cytometry assay were investigated in vitro. The results showed that CF1 exhibited a dose-dependent antiproliferative effect, with an IC50 value of 374.11 μg/mL against DU145 prostate cancer cells. Tunel assay and flow cytometry assay showed that the antitumor activity of CF1 was related to apoptosis in vitro. The present study suggested that the CF1 of WPPs might be a potential source of antitumor functional food or agent.

In the strap-down inertial navigation system (SINS), the initial attitude matrix is acquired through alignment. Though there were multiple valid methods, alignment time and accuracy are still core issues, especially regarding the condition of the motion carrier. Inspired by the idea of constructing nonlinear vectors by velocity in a different coordinate frame, this paper proposes an innovative alignment method for a vehicle-mounted SINS in motion. In this method, the core issue of acquiring the attitude matrix is to calculate the matrix between the inertial frame and the initial body frame, which can be constructed through the nonlinear velocity vectors' information from the GPS and the odometer at different moments, which denominate the multi-vector attitude determination. The possibility of collinearity can easily be avoided by a turning movement. The characteristic of propagation of error is analyzed in detail, based on which an improved method is put forward to depress the effect of random noise. Compared with the existing alignment methods, this method does not use the measurement information of accelerometers. In order to demonstrate its performance, the method is compared with the two-position alignment method and the traditional two-stage alignment method. Simulation and vehicle-based experiment results show that the proposed alignment method can establish an attitude reference in 100 s with an azimuth error of less than 0.06°, and that the accuracy does not have a strong correlation with the accelerometer., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

During recent years, convolutional neural network (CNN)-based methods have been widely applied to hyperspectral image (HSI) classification by mostly mining the spectral variabilities. However, the spatial consistency in HSI is rarely discussed except as an extra convolutional channel. Very recently, the development of pixel pair features (PPF) for HSI classification offers a new way of incorporating spatial information. In this paper, we first propose an improved PPF-style feature, the spatial pixel pair feature (SPPF), that better exploits both the spatial/contextual information and spectral information. On top of the new SPPF, we further propose a flexible multi-stream CNN-based classification framework that is compatible with multiple in-stream sub-network designs. The proposed SPPF is different from the original PPF in its paring pixel selection strategy: only pixels immediately adjacent to the central one are eligible, therefore imposing stronger spatial regularization. Additionally, with off-the-shelf classification sub-network designs, the proposed multi-stream, late-fusion CNN-based framework outperforms competing ones without requiring extensive network configuration tuning. Experimental results on three publicly available datasets demonstrate the performance of the proposed SPPF-based HSI classification framework., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; nor in the decision to publish the results.

Vision-based mobile robot navigation is a vibrant area of research with numerous algorithms having been developed, the vast majority of which either belong to the scene-oriented simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) or fall into the category of robot-oriented lane-detection/trajectory tracking. These methods suffer from high computational cost and require stringent labelling and calibration efforts. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a lightweight robot navigation framework based purely on uncalibrated spherical images. To simplify the orientation estimation, path prediction and improve computational efficiency, the navigation problem is decomposed into a series of classification tasks. To mitigate the adverse effects of insufficient negative samples in the "navigation via classification" task, we introduce the spherical camera for scene capturing, which enables 360° fisheye panorama as training samples and generation of sufficient positive and negative heading directions. The classification is implemented as an end-to-end Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), trained on our proposed Spherical-Navi image dataset, whose category labels can be efficiently collected. This CNN is capable of predicting potential path directions with high confidence levels based on a single, uncalibrated spherical image. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms competing ones in realistic applications., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

Diseases caused by southern rice black-streaked dwarf virus (SRBSDV) and rice ragged stunt virus (RRSV) considerably decrease grain yield. Therefore, determining rice cultivars with high resistance to SRBSDV and RRSV is necessary. In this study, rice cultivars with high resistance to SRBSDV and RRSV were evaluated through field trials in Shidian and Mangshi county, Yunnan province, China. SYBR Green I-based quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis was used to quantitatively detect virus gene expression levels in different rice varieties. The following parameters were applied to evaluate rice resistance: acre yield (A.Y.), incidence of infected plants (I.I.P.), virus load (V.L.), disease index (D.I.), and insect quantity (I.Q.) per 100 clusters. Zhongzheyou1 (Z1) and Liangyou2186 (L2186) were considered the most suitable varieties with integrated higher A.Y., lower I.I.P., V.L., D.I. and I.Q., Features: In order to investigate the mechanism of rice resistance, comparative label-free shotgun liquid chromatography tandem-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) proteomic approaches were applied to comprehensively describe the proteomics of rice varieties' SRBSDV tolerance. Systemic acquired resistance (SAR)-related proteins in Z1 and L2186 may result in the superior resistance of these varieties compared with Fengyouxiangzhan (FYXZ).

Microwave imaging based on inverse scattering problem has been attracting many interests in the microwave society. Among some major technical challenges, the ill-posed, multi-dimensional inversion algorithm and the complicated measurement setup are critical ones that prevent it from practical applications. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the performance of the subspace-based optimization method (SOM) for two-dimensional objects when it was applied to a setup designed for oblique incidence. Analytical, simulation, and experimental results show that, for 2D objects, neglecting the cross-polarization scattering will not cause a notable loss of information. Our method can be potentially used in practical imaging applications for 2D-like objects, such as human limbs.

Heavy occlusions in cluttered scenes impose significant challenges to many computer vision applications. Recent light field imaging systems provide new see-through capabilities through synthetic aperture imaging (SAI) to overcome the occlusion problem. Existing synthetic aperture imaging methods, however, emulate focusing at a specific depth layer, but are incapable of producing an all-in-focus see-through image. Alternative in-painting algorithms can generate visually-plausible results, but cannot guarantee the correctness of the results. In this paper, we present a novel depth-free all-in-focus SAI technique based on light field visibility analysis. Specifically, we partition the scene into multiple visibility layers to directly deal with layer-wise occlusion and apply an optimization framework to propagate the visibility information between multiple layers. On each layer, visibility and optimal focus depth estimation is formulated as a multiple-label energy minimization problem. The layer-wise energy integrates all of the visibility masks from its previous layers, multi-view intensity consistency and depth smoothness constraint together. We compare our method with state-of-the-art solutions, and extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our approach.

Incorporation of active devices/media such as transistors for microwave and gain media for optics may be very attractive for enabling desired low loss and broadband metamaterials. Such metamaterials can even have gain which may very well lead to new and exciting physical phenomena. We investigate microwave composite right/left-handed transmission lines (CRLH-TL) incorporating ideal gain devices such as constant negative resistance. With realistic lumped element values, we have shown that the negative phase constant of this kind of transmission lines is maintained (i.e., left-handedness kept) while gain can be obtained (negative attenuation constant of transmission line) simultaneously. Possible implementation and challenging issues of the proposed active CRLH-TL are also discussed.