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Synthetic dimensions, wherein dynamics occurs in a set of internal states, have found great success in recent years in exploring topological effects in cold atoms and photonics. However, the phenomena thus far explored have largely been restricted to the non-interacting or weakly interacting regimes. Here, we extend the synthetic dimensions playbook to strongly interacting systems of Rydberg atoms prepared in optical tweezer arrays. We use precise control over driving microwave fields to introduce a tunable U(1) flux in a four-site lattice of coupled Rydberg levels. We find highly coherent dynamics, in good agreement with theory. Single atoms show oscillatory dynamics controllable by the gauge field. Small arrays of interacting atoms exhibit behavior suggestive of the emergence of ergodic and arrested dynamics in the regimes of intermediate and strong interactions, respectively. These demonstrations pave the way for future explorations of strongly interacting dynamics and many-body phases in Rydberg synthetic lattices. Weak and non-interacting systems have been previously explored in synthetic dimensions. Here the authors demonstrate strong atomic interaction in synthetic dimensions using an array of Rydberg atoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: A total of 90,000 capture probes derived from wheat and Thinopyrumelongatum were integrated into one chip, which served as an economical genotype for explorating Thinopyrumspecies and their derivatives. Thinopyrum species play a crucial role as a source of new genetic variations for enhancing wheat traits, including resistance to both abiotic and biotic factors. Accurate identification of exogenous chromosome(s) or chromosome segments or genes is essential following the introduction of alien genetic material into wheat, but this task remains challenging. This study aimed to develop a high-resolution wheat–Thinopyrum elongatum array, named GenoBaits®WheatplusEE, to trace alien genetic information by genotyping using a target sequencing system. This GenoBaits®WheatplusEE array included 90,000 capture probes derived from two species and integrated into one chip, with 10,000 and 80,000 originating from wheat and Th. elongatum, respectively. The capture probes were strategically positioned in genes and evenly distributed across the genome, facilitating the development of a roadmap for identifying each alien gene. The array was applied to the high-throughput identification of the alien chromosomes or segments in Thinopyrum and distantly related species and their derivatives. Our results demonstrated that the GenoBaits®WheatplusEE array could be used for direct identification of the breakpoint of alien segments, determine copy number of alien chromosomes, and reveal variations in wheat chromosomes by a single round of target sequencing of the sample. Additionally, we could efficiently and cost-effectively genotype, supporting the exploration of subgenome composition, phylogenetic relationships, and polymorphisms in essential genes (e.g., Fhb7 gene) among Thinopyrum species and their derivatives. We hope that GenoBaits®WheatplusEE will become a widely adopted tool for exporting wild germplasm for wheat improvement in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated learning (FL) is an emerging distributed machine learning paradigm without revealing private local data for privacy-preserving. However, there are still limitations. On one hand, user' privacy can be deduced from local outputs. On the other hand, privacy, efficiency, and accuracy are hard to fulfill for conflicting goals. To tackle these problems, we propose a novel privacy-preserving FL (HEFL-LDP) algorithm, which integrates semi-homomorphic encryption and local differential privacy. With the reduction of computational and communication burden, HEFL-LDP resists model inversion attacks and membership inference attacks from a server or malicious client. Moreover, a new utility optimization strategy with accuracy-oriented privacy parameter adjustment and model shuffling is proposed to solve the problem of accuracy decline. The security and cost of the algorithm are verified through theoretical analysis and proof. Comprehensive experimental evaluations on the MNIST dataset and CIFAR-10 dataset demonstrate that HEFL-LDP significantly reduces the privacy budget and outperforms existing algorithms in computational cost and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital image noise may be introduced during acquisition, transmission, or processing and affects readability and image processing effectiveness. The accuracy of established image processing techniques, such as segmentation, recognition, and edge detection, is adversely impacted by noise. There exists an extensive body of work which focuses on circumventing such issues through digital image enhancement and noise reduction, but this work is limited by a number of constraints including the application of non-adaptive parameters, potential loss of edge detail information, and (with supervised approaches) a requirement for clean, labeled, training data. This paper, developed on the principle of Noise2Void, presents a new unsupervised learning approach incorporating a pseudo-siamese network. Our method enables image denoising without the need for clean images or paired noise images, instead requiring only noise images. Two independent branches of the network utilize different filling strategies, namely zero filling and adjacent pixel filling. Then, the network employs a loss function to improve the similarity of the results in the two branches. We also modify the Efficient Channel Attention module to extract more diverse features and improve performance on the basis of global average pooling. Experimental results show that compared with traditional methods, the pseudo-siamese network has a greater improvement on the ADNI dataset in terms of quantitative and qualitative evaluation. Our method therefore has practical utility in cases where clean images are difficult to obtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) systems is a promising strategy for improving the safety of lithium batteries. However, the practical implementation of these systems is often hindered by their limited ionic conductivity at ambient temperatures and poor interfacial contact with the electrodes. To address these issues, a novel pyridine-based organic ionic plastic crystal (OIPC) was synthesized and combined with poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVH) and lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide (LiFSI) to create a porous SPE, which was named SPE-Pyr1FSI/PVH (80:20). The SPE possessed desirable characteristics such as remarkable mechanical properties, nonflammability, high ionic conductivity (1.18 mS cm−1 at 25 °C), and a large electrochemical window (5.85 V vs. Li+/Li). Moreover, solid-state Li/LiFePO4 cells based on this SPE exhibited excellent rate capability, as well as cycling performance at ambient temperature. Specifically, the discharge capacity of the cells remained at 134.0 mAh g −1 at 1.0 C current density over 500 cycles. This study provides new insights into the design of ambient temperature solid-state electrolytes for lithium batteries and highlights the efficacy of OIPC in enhancing the performance of SPEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new indicator—pollution control and carbon reduction performance (PCCR) by non-radical directional distance function. We provide a solution method of DEA to measure PCCR in Chinese cities from 2006 to 2019 and study the driving factors of PCCR from both internal and external perspectives. The results are as follows. (1) PCCR has shown a stable period before 2015 and an upward period after 2015. The performance is the highest in the east, followed by the middle, and the west. Cities above sub-provincial level are generally more efficient than ordinary cities. (2) Technology-driven and efficiency-driven are key factors for improving PCCR. The importance of carbon reduction-driven is greater than that of pollution control-driven for improving PCCR. (3) Environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is verified as there is a "U" relationship between economic development and PCCR. Industrial structure, urbanization, and fiscal expenditure promote PCCR, while foreign direct investment and human capital have no significant effect on improving PCCR. Economic growth pressure inhibits the improvement of PCCR. (4) Energy productivity, renewable energy technology, and low-carbonization of energy structure promote PCCRP, PCCRC, and PCCR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic performance, a globally understood metric, is utilized worldwide across disparate teaching and learning environments and is regarded as a quantifiable indicator of learning gain. The ability to reliably estimate student's academic performance is important and can assist academic staff to improve the provision of support. However, it is recognized that academic performance estimation is non-trivial and affected by multiple factors, including a student's engagement with learning activities and their social, geographic, and demographic characteristics. This paper investigates the opportunity to develop reliable models for predicting student performance using Artificial Intelligence. Specifically, we propose two-step academic performance prediction using feature weighted support vector machine and artificial neural network (ANN) learning. A feature weighted SVM, where the importance of different features to the outcome is calculated using information gain ratios, is employed to perform coarse-grained binary classification (pass, P 1 , or fail, P 0 ). Subsequently, detailed score levels are divided from D to A+, and ANN learning is employed for fine-grained, multi-class training of the P 1 and P 0 classes separately. The experiments and our subsequent ablation study, which are conducted on the student datasets from two Portuguese secondary schools, have proved the effectiveness of this hybridized method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the Numb-associated kinase family of serine/threonine kinases play an essential role in many cellular processes, such as endocytosis, autophagy, dendrite morphogenesis, osteoblast differentiation, and the regulation of the Notch pathway. Numb-associated kinases have been relevant to diverse diseases, including neuropathic pain, Parkinson's disease, and prostate cancer. Therefore, they are considered potential therapeutic targets. In addition, it is reported that Numb-associated kinases have been involved in the life cycle of multiple viruses such as hepatitis C virus (HCV), Ebola virus (EBOV), and dengue virus (DENV). Recently, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) continues to threaten global health. Studies show that Numb-associated kinases are implicated in the infection of SARS-CoV-2 which can be suppressed by Numb-associated kinases inhibitors. Thus, Numb-associated kinases are proposed as potential host targets for broad-spectrum antiviral strategies. We will focus on the recent advances in Numb-associated kinases-related cellular functions and their potential as host targets for viral infections in this review. Questions that remained unknown on the cellular functions of Numb-associated kinases will also be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The denoising of brain magnetic resonance images could be important for the medical image analysis. Many algorithms have been proposed for this task, especially the deep learning ones which show great success compared with the classical image processing algorithms. Though satisfied results it achieve, they may fail to consider the contextual and attentive features during the feature learning process, and those ones could provide essential and complementary information for the feature encoding, and the poor learning of them could hinder the model to achieve a better performance. To address this challenge, in this paper, we propose a multi-dilated block (MDB) which aims to extract more contextual and attentive features during the feature extraction stage. The whole network is based on DnCNN, and the MDB is placed in the middle stage of the network to learn the contextual and attentive representations. Moreover, for improving the similarity between the noisy image and the denoised one from feature-level, we propose a perceptual loss which is able to further boost the performance of the MDB network. To validate the effectiveness of our proposed method, we conduct extensive experiments on the brain magnetic resonance images to compare the peak signal to noise ratio and structural similarity index, and the final experimental results demonstrate that our propose method could predict a higher resolution image compared with other ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humic acids (HAs) widely exist in water environment, and has an important impact on the adsorption of pollutants. Herein, HAs (both dissolved and coated) was employed to assess the effect on the removal of the organic contaminant tetracycline (TC) by K2CO3 modified magnetic biochar (KMBC). Results showed that low concentration of dissolved HAs promoted TC removal, likely due to a bridging effect, while higher concentration of dissolved HAs inhibited TC adsorption because of the competition of adsorption sites on KMBC. By characterization analysis, coated HAs changed the surface and pore characteristics of KMBC, which suppressed the TC removal. In a sequential adsorption experiment involving dissolved HAs and TC, the addition of HAs at the end of the experiment led to the formation of HAs-TC ligands with free TC, which improved the adsorption capacity of TC. TC adsorption by KMBC in the presence of dissolved HAs and coated HAs showed a downward trend with increasing pH from 5.0 to 10.0. The TC adsorption process was favorable and endothermic, and could be better simulated by pseudo-second-order kinetics and Freundlich isotherm model. Hydrogen bonds and π–π interactions were hypothesized to be the underlying influencing mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salmonella and Escherichia coli are important foodborne pathogens, forming bacterial biofilms that contribute to their virulence, antimicrobial resistance, and survival on surfaces. Broad lytic phages are promising alternatives to conventional technologies for pathogen biocontrol and reducing biofilms. Herein, we isolated and characterized a novel polyvalent phage STP55 that not only lyse some serotypes of Salmonella, but also some E. coli strains. It had a wide range of pH (4–12) and thermal (30–60 °C) tolerances. The latent time was determined to be 10 min in the one-step growth experiment. Morphological observations by transmission electron microscopy and phylogenetic analysis using terminase gene classified STP55 to family Ackermannviridae in the order Caudovirales, with a complex tail structure. The genome was found to comprise 157,708 bp double-stranded DNA, with 44.57% GC content, 207 predicted ORFs and with no genes associated with antibiotic resistance, toxins, lysogeny, and virulence factors. Particularly, phage STP55 was able to inhibit single- and dual-species biofilms formation by S. Typhimurium ATCC 14028 and E. coli O157: H7, with a reduction percentage of 51.0%, 47.8% and 52.8%, respectively. Moreover, more than 65.0%, 72.9% and 46.2% of an established, single- and dual-species biofilms by S. Typhimurium ATCC 14028 and E. coli O157: H7 were removed after 8 h exposure to the phage STP55, respectively. The elimination effect of STP55 on dual-species biofilm formed on lettuce was further observed by SEM. Overall, our results demonstrated that STP55 is a promising antimicrobial against Salmonella and E. coli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the bending performance of post-fire lightweight polyethylene metal sandwich panels with different aspect ratios and span conditions using actual fires and post-fire three-point bending tests. The damage patterns and buckling behavior of sandwich panels after an actual fire are discussed. The effects of lamination with dimensional ratios (vertically and horizontally laminated) and span (single and double-span) on parameters, such as fire spread behavior, buckling behavior, load–deflection, bending modulus degradation efficiency, and residual bending stiffness were investigated. The results showed that the double-span fixation mode formed a double-peaked flame, becoming more evident as the aspect ratio decreased. The double-span helped suppress the upward propagation of the flame and reduced the degradation of the bending modulus. The bending stiffness was 10–20% higher than that of the single-span sandwich panels. In addition, the maximum service limit deflection of post-fire sandwich panels with different spans was also derived based on the normal limit of use standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) technology, IoV applications have been developed from their infant stage to intermediate stage, i.e. from primarily providing entertainment and navigation services to travel guidance and energy saving driving. As the communication technology determines the overall performance of IoV, we first elaborate the architecture of IoV and algorithms of communication schedule. To improve the efficiency and accuracy of information reception and processing, we then propose a new dynamic priority strategy towards key data. The strategy includes a framework of five parts which are the application layer, libraries, the scheduling layer, operation system and hardware. The five parts above have completed the processes of data sending, data transmission and data receiving. In terms of data transmission, a new formula for updating the priorities of data has been put forward along with a procedure for taking feedback into account. A series of experiments have been conducted to validate the performance of the newly proposed strategy. The results have showed that the priority strategy and the updating formula for the priorities are effective in IoV environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning (ML) techniques have become ubiquitous and indispensable for solving intricate problems in most disciplines. To determine the extent of funding for clinical research projects applying ML techniques by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2017, we searched the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results (RePORTER) system using relevant keywords. We identified 535 projects, which together received a total of $264 million, accounting for 2% of the NIH extramural budget for clinical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strong interaction between terahertz (THz) radiation and biological systems has motivated the development of several biomedical technologies, including imaging and spectroscopy applications with promising potential for improved disease diagnosis. This interaction mechanism also implies that external excitation with intense pulses of THz energy could couple to important biological structures and induce significant downstream phenotypic effects. In this study, we expose human skin tissue models to a prolonged train of high-intensity THz pulses and measure the resulting global differential gene expression. From these data, signal pathway perturbation analysis identified pathways that are predicted to be significantly dysregulated, including the cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction and glioma pathways, and further identified the gene-level mechanisms predominantly responsible. These results indicate that induction of an inflammatory-like response and suppression of division/differentiation in cancer are possible. These effects could be further explored and characterized in different types of normal and cancerous tissues to determine potential novel clinical applicability of intense THz pulses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musty and earthy odors dramatically influence the esthetic quality and consumer acceptability of drinking water. This study was conducted to obtain a sensitive method for simultaneous analysis of seven odors, including geosmin (GSM), 2-methylisoborneol (2-MIB), 2-isopropyl-3-methoxy pyrazine (IPMP), dimethyl trisulfide (DMTS), 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (2,4,6-TCA), β-cyclocitral, and β-ionone, in water by applying headspace solid phase micro-extraction coupled to gas chromatography with mass spectrometry. Moreover, the proposed method was applied to obtain preliminary understanding of the levels of these odorants in purified water among various brands in the world, and to try to find out the potential causes when the odorants appeared in purified water. The target compounds could be separated and analyzed effectively within 23 min, and the GSM and DMTS could be detected in all brands of chosen countries, while the IPMP, β-ionone and 2,4,6-TCA cannot be observed in the above brands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Estimation of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) with equilibrium 99MTc-HSA equilibrium radionuclide angiography (MUGA) is frequently used for assessing cardiac function. The purpose of this study was to compare intra- and interobserver variation between three different gamma cameras. Materials and Methods: Eighty-two patients, scanned in the same sequential order on the three cameras. Each acquisition was analyzed twice by two technologists. Inter- and intraobserver variations were calculated as the coefficient of variation and the 95% confidence interval for limits of agreement between each sequence of analyses for each of the three cameras. Results: The lowest intraobserver variations in LVEF for the two NaI-detector cameras were 3.1% (−4.0% to 3.5%) for the planar and 3.4% (−4.2% to 4.5%) for SPECT ( P ≤ 0.001-0.019), the highest result for the CZT SPECT camera was 2.6% (−2.9% to 3.1%). Similarly, interobserver variation was 4.8% (−4.8% to 6.4%) and 4.9% (−5.4% to 7.5%), respectively, for each of the NaI-detector cameras and 3.3% (−3.4% to 4.3%) for the CZT SPECT camera ( P ≤ 0.001-0.008). Discussion: The CZT detector camera was superior to both NaI detector cameras regarding intra- and interobserver variation. The CZT SPECT camera may identify changes in LVEF with greater certainty than its NaI detector-equipped counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]