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Concessions—defined as the urban elements built by Western powers while 'occupying' various parts of the Chinese territory—have recently been granted heritage status by the Chinese national and local authorities. However, in many respects, they are 'dissonant' heritage sites since they are the result of the several-decade-long 'colonial' presence in Tianjin of nine foreign powers. The aim of this study is to understand how former international concessions are featured in museums and interpretation centres in present-day Tianjin. Using an approach that draws on dissonant heritage; literature on postcolonial museums, nostalgia and forgetting mechanisms; and the relationship between museographic narratives and patriotism, this article analyses a corpus of eight museums located in three former international concessions (Marshal Zhang's Mansion, the Former Residence of Ma Zhanshan, the Museum of Modern History of Tianjin, the Five Avenues History Museum, the Museum of the Department Store Quan Ye Chang, Zhang House, the Astor Hotel Museum, the Tianjin Planning Exhibition Hall and the Tianjin Museum). The analysis is based on a common observation grid and semidirect interviews conducted with museum staff. The article captures and examines the main narratives from three perspectives: 1) revisiting the concession period as evidence of the beginning of modernity in China, which was a time in which celebrity life stories and the emergence of modern urban elements were praised; 2) considering the concessions as a dreamlike past of 'others' and 'elsewheres' belonging to a 'foreign land' and a context far removed from contemporary life in China, which favours the thematisation and leisure of Western architecture; and 3) selecting and targeting narratives focused on the heroes of the Republic of China (1912–1949) and the People's Republic of China. This paper highlights and further develops how former Western concessions are imbued with a sense of both nostalgia and patriotism and sets out to gain a deeper understanding of the tension between these two attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wheat is one of the most important staple foods in the world. Genetic characterization of wheat agronomically important traits is crucial for yield improvement through molecular breeding. In this study, a recombinant inbred line (RIL) population was developed by crossing a local adapted high yield variety Jimai 22 (JM22) with an external variety Cunmai no.1 (CM1). A high-density genetic map containing 7,359 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers was constructed. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping identified 61 QTL for eight yield-related traits under six environments (years). Among them, 17 QTL affecting spike number per plant, grain number per spike and thousand grain weight showed high predictability for theoretical yield per plant (TYP), of which, 12 QTL alleles positively contributed to TYP. Nine promising candidate genes for seven of the 12 QTL were identified including three known wheat genes and six rice orthologs. Four elite lines with TYP increased by 5.6%—15.2% were identified through genotype selection which carried 7—9 favorable alleles from JM22 and 2—3 favorable alleles from CM1 of the 12 QTL. Moreover, the linked SNPs of the 12 QTL were converted to high-throughput kompetitive allele-specific PCR (KASP) markers and validated in the population. The mapped QTL, identified promising candidate genes, developed elite lines and KASP markers are highly valuable in future genotype selection to improve wheat yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psoriasis and insomnia have co-morbidities, however, their common genetic basis is still unclear. We analyzed psoriasis and insomnia with summary statistics from genome-wide association studies. We first quantified overall genetic correlations, then ascertained multiple effector loci and expression-trait associations, and lastly, we analyzed the causal effects between psoriasis and insomnia. A prevalent genetic link between psoriasis and insomnia was found, four pleiotropic loci affecting psoriasis and insomnia were identified, and 154 genes were shared, indicating a genetic link between psoriasis and insomnia. Yet, there is no causal relationship between psoriasis and insomnia by two-sample Mendelian randomization. We discovered a genetic connection between insomnia and psoriasis driven by biological pleiotropy and unrelated to causation. Cross-trait analysis indicates a common genetic basis for psoriasis and insomnia. The results of this study highlight the importance of sleep management in the pathogenesis of psoriasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The photochemical and photophysical properties of near-infrared (NIR) dyes are significantly influenced by their aggregation state and mesoscopic morphology. However, beyond chemical synthesis, the regulation mechanisms for the properties of NIR dyes, particularly with respect to photothermal properties of the aggregates, are not yet fully understood. Here, we investigate the photothermal behaviors of croconaine-based (CroA) NIR dyes containing dipeptide or amino acids moieties. The introduction of hydrogen bonding promotes π–π stacking of croconaine center, which can efficiently regulate aggregation states and assembly structures in isopropanol. Under laser irradiation, CroA aggregates undergo aggregation-dissociation transition, the in-situ monomer generation process regulates two parameters of photothermal performance: heating rates and plateau photothermal temperatures. This study reveals the regulation effect of non-covalent bonding interactions on CroA aggregates, highlighting supramolecular assembly strategy not only facilitates to construct of photothermal nanomaterials with well-defined structures, but also provides an alternative and effective method for regulating photothermal performance of NIR dyes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many time series data mining algorithms work by reasoning about the relationships the conserved shapes of subsequences. To facilitate this, the Matrix Profile is a data structure that annotates a time series by recording each subsequence's Euclidean distance to its nearest neighbor. In recent years, the community has shown that using the Matrix Profile it is possible to discover many useful properties of a time series, including repeated behaviors (motifs), anomalies, evolving patterns, regimes, etc. However, the Matrix Profile is limited to representing the relationship between the subsequence's shapes. It is understood that, for some domains, useful information is conserved not in the subsequence's shapes, but in the subsequence's features. In recent years, a new set of features for time series called catch22 has revolutionized feature-based mining of time series. Combining these two ideas seems to offer many possibilities for novel data mining applications; however, there are two difficulties in attempting this. A direct application of the Matrix Profile with the catch22 features would be prohibitively slow. Less obviously, as we will demonstrate, in almost all domains, using all twenty-two of the catch22 features produces poor results, and we must somehow select the subset appropriate for the domain. In this work, we introduce novel algorithms to solve both problems and demonstrate that, for most domains, the proposed C22MP is a state-of-the-art anomaly detector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Script identification is an essential preliminary step in multilingual OCR systems. This paper focuses primarily on tackling the challenging problem of script identification in scene text images, which are usually characterized by low image quality, diverse text styles, and complex backgrounds. Furthermore, script identification becomes a fine-grained classification problem when some scripts share common characters. To address this issue, we propose a novel end-to-end CNN comprising two streams for extracting distinct types of features, namely, visual features and spatial features. In the visual stream, we introduce an enhanced Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) channel attention mechanism to emphasize valuable features and suppress irrelevant ones. The enhanced SE is composed of squeeze and excitation steps. The squeeze step employs adaptive average pooling for information aggregation. Two 1x1 convolutional layers are used to derive channel weights in the excitation step. In the spatial stream, we perform efficient analysis of the spatial dependencies within the text lines based on LSTM. Finally, we propose an adaptive fusion approach that combines probability vectors from the two streams. Instead of being fixed, the weight assigned to each probability vector is learned during network training. To validate our proposed method, we conduct extensive tests on four publicly available datasets, viz. MLe2e, RRC-MLT2017, SIW-13, and CVSI-2015. Our proposed method achieves accuracies of 97.66 % , 90.24 % , 96.66 % , and 98.44 % on these four datasets, respectively, which compare favorably with state-of-the-art methods. The two streams have demonstrated complementarity. Moreover, ablation experiments have been conducted to verify the effectiveness of each component in the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friction stir welding of 7075 aluminum alloy plate with a thickness of 10 mm was carried out with a self-designed stirring tool, and after welding, an irregular transitional zone between the tool shoulder zone and the nugget zone, known as the turbulent zone, was discovered on the advancing side of the weld. The formation mechanism of the turbulent zone was analyzed by observing the transverse and longitudinal sections of the joint cross section. The grain size, the degree of dynamic recrystallization, the misorientation angle distribution in the turbulent region were evaluated by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). The grain size in the turbulent zone is large with an average grain size of 2.98 μm. The proportion of substructure is as high as 75.1 %, which makes the hardness value higher than that of other areas of the weld. In addition, layered tensile mechanical test results show that the tensile strength of the turbulent zone layer (342 MPa) is comparable to that of the central layer of the weld nugget zone (345 MPa). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperature fluctuations are inevitable and have an important impact on the survival of fish during transportation. Therefore, the effect of temperature fluctuation (15 ± 1 °C, 15 ± 2 °C, 15 ± 3 °C) on the muscle quality, physiological, and immune function of hybrid pearl gentian grouper before waterless keeping alive, during keeping alive (0 h, 3 h, 6 h, 9 h, 12 h), and after revival for 12 h was investigated. The plasma glucose concentration of grouper gradually decreased to 0.645 ± 0.007 mg/mL, 0.657 ± 0.006 mg/mL, and 0.677 ± 0.004 mg/mL after keeping alive for 12 h under different temperature fluctuations of 15 ± 1 °C, 15 ± 2 °C, and 15 ± 3 °C, respectively. The cortisol concentration and lysozyme activity of pearl gentian grouper significantly increased (P < 0.05) during the keeping alive period. The results suggested that fish bodies would produce acute stress response, strengthen immune defense ability, and quickly consume a lot of energy to adapt to the low-temperature anhydrous environment. In all treatment groups, the activities of plasma alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and the content of creatinine gradually increased with the prolongation of the survival time. The hardness and springiness of muscle decreased from 5965.99 ± 20.15 and 0.90 ± 0.00 to 3490.69 ± 27.59 and 0.42 ± 0.01, respectively. In the meanwhile, the change of glycogen and lactic acid content was opposite, indicating that temperature fluctuation harmed the liver, kidney function, and muscle quality. In the later stage of keeping alive, the superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities decreased, especially in the temperature fluctuation group of ±3 °C (125.99 ± 5.48 U/mgprot, 44.21 ± 0.63 U/mgprot), leading to an imbalance of fish immunity. In summary, higher temperature fluctuation would influence the physiological function and immune defense ability and decrease the quality of pearl gentian grouper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perovskite bandgap tuning without quality loss makes perovskites unique among solar absorbers, offering promising avenues for tandem solar cells1,2. However, minimizing the voltage loss when their bandgap is increased to above 1.90 eV for triple-junction tandem use is challenging3–5. Here we present a previously unknown pseudohalide, cyanate (OCN−), with a comparable effective ionic radius (1.97 Å) to bromide (1.95 Å) as a bromide substitute. Electron microscopy and X-ray scattering confirm OCN incorporation into the perovskite lattice. This contributes to notable lattice distortion, ranging from 90.5° to 96.6°, a uniform iodide–bromide distribution and consistent microstrain. Owing to these effects, OCN-based perovskite exhibits enhanced defect formation energy and substantially decreased non-radiative recombination. We achieved an inverted perovskite (1.93 eV) single-junction device with an open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 1.422 V, a VOC × FF (fill factor) product exceeding 80% of the Shockley–Queisser limit and stable performance under maximum power point tracking, culminating in a 27.62% efficiency (27.10% certified efficiency) perovskite–perovskite–silicon triple-junction solar cell with 1 cm2 aperture area.Triple-junction solar cells with cyanate in ultrawide-bandgap perovskites exhibit enhanced defect formation energy and substantially decreased non-radiative recombination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most common neurodegenerative illnesses is Parkinson's disease (PD). Rotigotine (RTG) is a dopamine agonist that exerts anti-Parkinsonian effects through dopamine receptor agonism to improve motor symptoms and overall performance in PD patients. In this study, an in situ liquid crystal gel called rotigotine-gel (RTG-gel) was developed using soya phosphatidyl choline (SPC) and glycerol dioleate (GDO) to provide long-acting slow-release benefits of rotigotine while minimizing side effects. This study prepared the RTG-gel precursor solution using SPC, GDO, and ethanol (in the ratio of 54:36:10, w/w/w). The internal structures of the gel were confirmed by crossed-polarized light microscopy (PLM), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The rheological properties of the RTG-gel precursor solution indicate a favorable combination of low viscosity and excellent flowability. The gel that produced during water absorption was also highly viscous and structurally stable, which helped to maintain the drug delayed release at the injection site. In vitro release assays showed that the in vitro release of RTG-gel followed Ritger-Peppas. The RTG-gel precursor solution was administered by subcutaneous injection, and the results of in vivo pharmacokinetic tests in SD rats showed that the plasma elimination half-life (t1/2) was 59.28 ± 16.08 h; the time to peak blood concentration (Tmax) was 12.00 ± 10.32 h, and the peak concentration (Cmax) was 29.9 ± 10.10 ng/mL. The blood concentration remained above 0.1 ng/mL for 20 days after administration and was still detectable after 31 days of administration, and the bioavailability of RTG can reach 72.59%. The results of in vitro solvent exchange tests showed that the RTG-gel precursor solution undergoes rapid exchange upon contact with PBS, and the diffusion of ethanol can reach 48.1% within 60 min and 80% within 8 h. The results of cytotoxicity test showed 89.27 ± 4.32% cell survival after administration of the drug using RTG-gel. The results of tissue extraction at the administration site showed that healing of the injection site without redness and hemorrhage could be observed after 14 days of injection. The results of tissue section of the administered site showed that the inflammatory cells decreased and granulation tissue appeared after 14 days of administration, and there was basically no inflammatory cell infiltration after 35 days of administration, and the inflammatory reaction was basically eliminated. It shows that RTG-gel has some irritation to the injection site, but it can be recovered by itself in the later stage, and it has good biocompatibility. In summary, RTG-gel might be a potential RTG extended-release formulation for treating PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese calligraphy is an invaluable legacy of Chinese culture, since it bears great artistic and aesthetic value. In this paper, we aim at the problem of Chinese calligraphy style classification, which is an important branch of Chinese calligraphy study. Chinese calligraphy style classification remains a challenging task due to its dramatic intra-class difference and tiny inter-class difference. Therefore, we propose a novel CNN embedded with feature fusion and feature decomposition modules to solve this problem. We first fuse the features of several images from the same category to augment their potential style-related features. Then we feed the fused feature to an attention module to decompose it to two components, viz. style-related feature and style-unrelated feature. We further apply two types of loss function to jointly supervise our network. On the one hand, we feed the style-related feature to a style classifier which is supervised by cross-entropy loss. On the other hand, we construct a correlation loss based on the Pearson correlation coefficient to make the two decomposed features as orthogonal as possible. By optimizing these two types of loss simultaneously, our proposed network has obtained the accuracies of 98.63 % and 94.35 % respectively on two datasets. Besides, substantial experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the feature fusion and decomposition modules. The proposed approach compares favorably with state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To evaluate the safety of the bulb tubular turbine, the dynamic hydraulic characteristics of a hydropower station system during the load rejection process are studied through numerical simulations and a prototype test. In the developed model, a dynamic grid technology (DGT) controls the closure of the guide vane and the blade, whilst the moment balance equation and the user-defined function (UDF) provide the runner's rotation speed. The 3-D transient simulation method can well predict the rotation speed and mass flow curves in the state of load rejection. The simulation outcomes of the system performance are basically consistent with the measurement data of the prototype. As observed, the runner is subjected to the reversely increased torque and axial force, the system is in a braking phase, and the maximum speed peaks at 144.6% of the rated speed. Moreover, the internal flow of the runner is greatly affected by the closure of the guide vane, and the draft tube forms an eccentric spiral vortex rope. It breaks downstream, aggravating the instability of the draft tube. Overall, the transient characteristics span for the first five seconds, demonstrating the importance of establishing an efficient governing controller. The obtained results are useful for designing the turbine's flow channel with a double regulating function and comprehending the turbine's transient characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ferroelectric tunnel junctions are promising towards high-reliability and low-power non-volatile memories and computing devices. Yet it is challenging to maintain a high tunnelling electroresistance when the ferroelectric layer is thinned down towards atomic scale because of the ferroelectric structural instability and large depolarization field. Here we report ferroelectric tunnel junctions based on samarium-substituted layered bismuth oxide, which can maintain tunnelling electroresistance of 7 × 105 with the samarium-substituted bismuth oxide film down to one nanometer, three orders of magnitude higher than previous reports with such thickness, owing to efficient barrier modulation by the large ferroelectric polarization. These ferroelectric tunnel junctions demonstrate up to 32 resistance states without any write-verify technique, high endurance (over 5 × 109), high linearity of conductance modulation, and long retention time (10 years). Furthermore, tunnelling electroresistance over 109 is achieved in ferroelectric tunnel junctions with 4.6-nanometer samarium-substituted bismuth oxide layer, which is higher than commercial flash memories. The results show high potential towards multi-level and reliable non-volatile memories. The authors report ferroelectric tunnel junctions based on samarium-substituted layered bismuth oxide, which show tunnelling electroresistance of 7 × 105 and high endurance over 5 billion cycles, even when the film is down to one nanometer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-atom catalysts show excellent catalytic performance because of their coordination environments and electronic configurations. However, controllable regulation of single-atom permutations still faces challenges. Herein, we demonstrate that a polarization electric field regulates single atom permutations and forms periodic one-dimensional Au single-atom arrays on ferroelectric Bi4Ti3O12 nanosheets. The Au single-atom arrays greatly lower the Gibbs free energy for CO2 conversion via Au-O=C=O-Au dual-site adsorption compared to that for Au-O=C=O single-site adsorption on Au isolated single atoms. Additionally, the Au single-atom arrays suppress the depolarization of Bi4Ti3O12, so it maintains a stronger driving force for separation and transfer of photogenerated charges. Thus, Bi4Ti3O12 with Au single-atom arrays exhibit an efficient CO production rate of 34.15 µmol·g−1·h−1, ∼18 times higher than that of pristine Bi4Ti3O12. More importantly, the polarization electric field proves to be a general tactic for the syntheses of one-dimensional Pt, Ag, Fe, Co and Ni single-atom arrays on the Bi4Ti3O12 surface. The authors report a study preparing single atom (M = Pt, Ag, Fe, Co, and Ni) arrays on Au/Bi4Ti3O12 nanosheets using electric field polarization techniques. Photocatalytic CO2 reduction is shown to proceed effectively over Au/Bi4Ti3O12. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiovascular disorders are commonly prevalent in cancer patients, yet the mechanistic link between them remains poorly understood. Because neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) have implications not just in cardiovascular diseases (CVD), but also in breast cancer (BC), it was hypothesized to contribute to CVD in the context of oncogenesis. We established a mouse model using nude mice to simulate liver metastasis of triple-negative BC (TNBC) through the injection of MDA-MB-231 cells. Multiple imaging and analysis techniques were employed to assess the cardiac function and structure, including echocardiography, HE staining, Masson staining, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). MDA-MB-231 cells underwent treatment with a CaSR inhibitor, CaSR agonist, and NF-κB channel blocker. The phosphorylation of NF-κB channel protein p65 and the expression and secretion of IL-8 were assessed using qRT-PCR, Western Blot, and ELISA, respectively. In addition, MDA-MB-231 cells were co-cultured with polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN) under varying conditions. The co-localization of PMN extracellular myeloperoxidase (MPO) and DNA were observed by cellular immunofluorescence staining to identify the formation of NETs. Then, the cardiomyocytes were co-cultured with the above medium that contains NETs or not, respectively; the effects of NETs on cardiomyocytes apoptosis were perceived by flow cytometry. The ultrastructural changes of myocardial cells were perceived by TEM, and ELISA detected the levels of myocardial enzyme (LDH, MDA and SOD). Overall, according to our research, CaSR has been found to have a regulatory role in IL-8 secretion in MDA-MB-231 cells, as well as in the formation of NETs by PMN cells. These findings suggest CaSR-mediated stimulation in PMN can lead to increased NETs formation and subsequently to cytotoxicity in cardiomyocytes, which potentially via activation of the NF-κB signaling cascade of BC cell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endothelial cells (ECs) and bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) play crucial roles in supporting hematopoiesis and hematopoietic regeneration. However, whether ECs are a source of BMSCs remains unclear. Here, we evaluate the contribution of endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition to BMSC generation in postnatal mice. Single-cell RNA sequencing identifies ECs expressing BMSC markers Prrx1 and Lepr; however, this could not be validated using Prrx1-Cre and Lepr-Cre transgenic mice. Additionally, only a minority of BMSCs are marked by EC lineage tracing models using Cdh5-rtTA-tetO-Cre or Tek-CreERT2. Moreover, Cdh5+ BMSCs and Tek+ BMSCs show distinct spatial distributions and characteristic mesenchymal markers, suggestive of their origination from different progenitors rather than CDH5+ TEK+ ECs. Furthermore, myeloablation induced by 5-fluorouracil treatment does not increase Cdh5+ BMSCs. Our findings indicate that ECs hardly convert to BMSCs during homeostasis and myeloablation-induced hematopoietic regeneration, highlighting the importance of using appropriate genetic models and conducting careful data interpretation in studies concerning endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition. Endothelial cells (ECs) and bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) support hematopoiesis and hematopoietic regeneration. Whether ECs are a source of BMSCs remains unclear. Here, using lineage tracing models the authors show that ECs are not a source of BMSCs during homeostasis and regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent systems and human-machine interactions have consistently provided convenience in both work and daily life. Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) can assist humans in artistic creation by generating painting images based on textual descriptions. However, the quality of generated painting images depends heavily on well-designed prompts, which are labor-intensive and time-consuming in painting creation. Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have shown impressive performance in linguistic tasks such as question answering and logical inference, demonstrating strong linguistic intelligence. This paper proposes an assistant painting creation approach to provide precise content control for painting generation by combining LLMs with text-to-image generative models and evaluates the performance of the proposed approach on painting content generation and painting element arrangement. The experimental results show that our approach can provide clear guidance on rich painting content and reasonable arrangements of painting elements, demonstrating its ability of text-based painting scene imagination. In painting generation tasks, LLMs like ChatGPT can help the text-to-image models with precise control over the painting content and improve the overall painting results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mitochondrial RNA splicing 2 (Mrs2), a eukaryotic CorA ortholog, enables Mg2+ to permeate the inner mitochondrial membrane and plays an important role in mitochondrial metabolic function. However, the mechanism by which Mrs2 permeates Mg2+ remains unclear. Here, we report four cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) reconstructions of Homo sapiens Mrs2 (hMrs2) under various conditions. All of these hMrs2 structures form symmetrical pentamers with very similar pentamer and protomer conformations. A special structural feature of Cl−-bound R-ring, which consists of five Arg332 residues, was found in the hMrs2 structure. Molecular dynamics simulations and mitochondrial Mg2+ uptake assays show that the R-ring may function as a charge repulsion barrier, and Cl− may function as a ferry to jointly gate Mg2+ permeation in hMrs2. In addition, the membrane potential is likely to be the driving force for Mg2+ permeation. Our results provide insights into the channel assembly and Mg2+ permeation of hMrs2. Mrs2 is a mitochondrial Mg2+ channel that is essential for metabolic function. Here, the authors present cryo-EM structures of human Mrs2 revealing symmetrical pentameric assembly and how Mrs2 permeates Mg2+. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The SWI/SNF ATP-dependent chromatin remodeler is a master regulator of the epigenome, controlling pluripotency and differentiation. Towards the C-terminus of the catalytic subunit of SWI/SNF is a motif called the AT-hook that is evolutionary conserved. The AT-hook is present in many chromatin modifiers and generally thought to help anchor them to DNA. We observe however that the AT-hook regulates the intrinsic DNA-stimulated ATPase activity aside from promoting SWI/SNF recruitment to DNA or nucleosomes by increasing the reaction velocity a factor of 13 with no accompanying change in substrate affinity (KM). The changes in ATP hydrolysis causes an equivalent change in nucleosome movement, confirming they are tightly coupled. The catalytic subunit's AT-hook is required in vivo for SWI/SNF remodeling activity in yeast and mouse embryonic stem cells. The AT-hook in SWI/SNF is required for transcription regulation and activation of stage-specific enhancers critical in cell lineage priming. Similarly, growth assays suggest the AT-hook is required in yeast SWI/SNF for activation of genes involved in amino acid biosynthesis and metabolizing ethanol. Our findings highlight the importance of studying SWI/SNF attenuation versus eliminating the catalytic subunit or completely shutting down its enzymatic activity. This study demonstrates that an evolutionary conserved, autoregulatory 'AT-hook' domain of SWI/SNF regulates gene transcription and enhancer activation by modulating SWI/SNF intrinsic catalytic activity and is critical for cell lineage priming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time series anomaly detection is one of the most active areas of research in data mining, with dozens of new approaches been suggested each year. In spite of all these creative solutions proposed for this problem, recent empirical evidence suggests that the time series discord, a relatively simple twenty-year old distance-based technique, remains among the state-of-art techniques. While there are many algorithms for computing the time series discords, they all have limitations. First, they are limited to the batch case, whereas the online case is more actionable. Second, these algorithms exhibit poor scalability beyond tens of thousands of datapoints. In this work we introduce DAMP, a novel algorithm that addresses both these issues. DAMP computes exact left-discords on fast arriving streams, at up to 300,000 Hz using a commodity desktop. This allows us to find time series discords in datasets with trillions of datapoints for the first time. We will demonstrate the utility of our algorithm with the most ambitious set of time series anomaly detection experiments ever conducted. We will further show that our speedup improvements can be applied in the multidimensional case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognized that combining alginate with graphene oxide (GO) is an effective method in improving the properties of alginate fiber. However, how the lateral size of GO influences the properties of the composite fiber is still unclear. In this work, GO was separated into four kinds of different lateral sizes with the assistance of centrifugation and high-power ultrasound. The tensile strength of calcium alginate/graphene oxide (CaAlg/GO) composite fiber increased with the lateral size of GO. Surprisingly, the combination of large and small GO performed the superior reinforcement effect. The tensile strength and Young's modulus increased from 407.66 MPa and 13.87 GPa to 556.97 MPa and 20.57 GPa, respectively. In addition, the water absorption ability of CaAlg/GO composite fiber reduced with the decreasing of the lateral size of GO. With significantly improved mechanical properties and fine biocompatibility, the CaAlg/GO composite fibers may have potential applications in the biotechnological, biomedical, and tissue engineering areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ofloxacin (OFLX) and norfloxacin (NFLX) are typical quinolone antibacterials used in medicine, aquaculture, and animal husbandry in China. The abusive use of antibiotics has led to the presence of OFLX and NFLX in surface water and groundwater. Due to similarities in the molecular structure of OFLX and NFLX, their simultaneous detection has been challenging. In this study, a simple and highly sensitive electrochemical sensor for the simultaneous detection of OFLX and NFLX was developed using a graphene modified glassy carbon electrode (ERGO/GCE), which was prepared by the electrochemical reduction method. With electrochemical reduction, oxygen-containing groups in graphene oxide (GO) were deoxidized to electrochemically reduced graphene oxide (ERGO) and can effectively separate the overlapping oxidation peaks of OFLX and NFLX with a 136 mV peak potential difference. The mechanism of these oxidation processes was analyzed by comparing the Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) of OFLX and NFLX electrochemical response on prepared modified electrodes. The limitations of this electrochemical method in terms of simultaneous detection are as follows: 1.25 μM for OFLX and 2.44 μM for NFLX. This detection method was also applied in medicine and aquaculture wastewater with satisfactory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, nano-Co3O4/C composite catalyst was successfully synthesized by calcination of cobalt alginate (CA) film, which was prepared by ion exchange method. The morphology and structure of the films and calcined samples were characterized. It was found that the thickness of the film produced by Co2+ substituted Na+ was 20 μm, and the surface and side of the film were smooth and uniform. After the calcination of CA film at 400 °C, Co3O4 nanoparticles grown in situ were loaded onto the carbonized alginate skeleton. The results of the thermal analysis showed that the higher the content of catalyst, the more obvious the catalytic effect on AP. Compared with pure AP, the exothermic peak temperature with 3 wt% nano-Co3O4/C composite catalysts decreased by 103.1 °C, demonstrating the catalytic effect on the nano-Co3O4/C. The nanocomposite catalyst could be synthesized quickly and in large quantities in this way, which had certain theoretical and practical value for improving the combustion behavior of AP-based composite solid propellants. Based on inspiring by biomaterial, we have designed and prepared a nano-Co3O4/C composite catalyst by a facile ionic crosslinking solidification method, which effectively enhanced the thermal decomposition of the ammonium perchlorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performances of rechargeable batteries are strongly affected by the operating environmental temperature. In particular, low temperatures (e.g., ≤0 °C) are detrimental to efficient cell cycling. To circumvent this issue, we propose a few-layer Bi2Se3 (a topological insulator) as cathode material for Zn metal batteries. When the few-layer Bi2Se3 is used in combination with an anti-freeze hydrogel electrolyte, the capacity delivered by the cell at −20 °C and 1 A g−1 is 1.3 larger than the capacity at 25 °C for the same specific current. Also, at 0 °C the Zn | |few-layer Bi2Se3 cell shows capacity retention of 94.6% after 2000 cycles at 1 A g−1. This behaviour is related to the fact that the Zn-ion uptake in the few-layer Bi2Se3 is higher at low temperatures, e.g., almost four Zn2+ at 25 °C and six Zn2+ at −20 °C. We demonstrate that the unusual performance improvements at low temperatures are only achievable with the few-layer Bi2Se3 rather than bulk Bi2Se3. We also show that the favourable low-temperature conductivity and ion diffusion capability of few-layer Bi2Se3 are linked with the presence of topological surface states and weaker lattice vibrations, respectively. The performances of rechargeable batteries are detrimentally affected by low temperatures (e.g., < 0 °C). Here, the authors report a few-layer Bi2Se3 material capable of improving battery cycling performances when operational temperatures are shifted from +25 °C to −20 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel method based on relaxed regression and transfer subspace learning for cross-resolution image classification is presented. Firstly, a transfer subspace learning based on the double relaxed regression (TSL_DRR) method is adopted to learn a discriminative model and simultaneously avoid over-fitting in a regression-based classification task. Secondly, the matching efficiency between low-resolution face and high-resolution face is not ideal, so a so-called transfer subspace learning (TSL) technique is introduced to the proposed method to ensure that the domain data can be better matched by projecting different resolution face images onto the common subspace. Lastly, the global data structure and local data structure can be reliably retained by applying the low-rank and sparse constraint matrices, which also reduces the noise to an extent. Extensive experiments on various real image data sets indicate that the proposed method is effective in 4.2 accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selenium (Se) element is a promising light-harvesting material for solar cells because of the large absorption coefficient and prominent photoconductivity. However, the efficiency of Se solar cells has been stagnated for a long time owing to the suboptimal bandgap (> 1.8 eV) and the lack of a proper electron transport layer. In this work, we tune the bandgap of the absorber to the optimal value of Shockley–Queisser limit (1.36 eV) by alloying 30% Te with 70% Se. Simultaneously, ZnO electron transport layer is selected because of the proper band alignment, and the mild reaction at ZnO/Se0.7Te0.3 interface guarantees a good-quality heterojunction. Finally, a superior efficiency of 1.85% is achieved on ZnO/Se0.7Te0.3 solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanosized palladium (Pd)-based catalysts are widely used in the direct hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) synthesis from H2 and O2, while its selectivity and yield remain inferior because of the O-O bond cleavage from both the reactant O2 and the produced H2O2, which is assumed to have originated from various O2 adsorption configurations on the Pd nanoparticles. Herein, single Pd atom catalyst with high activity and selectivity is reported. Density functional theory calculations certify that the O-O bond breaking is significantly inhibited on the single Pd atom and the O2 is easier to be activated to form *OOH, which is a key intermediate for H2O2 synthesis; in addition, H2O2 degradation is shut down. Here, we show single Pd atom catalyst displays a remarkable H2O2 yield of 115 mol/gPd/h and H2O2 selectivity higher than 99%; while the concentration of H2O2 reaches 1.07 wt.% in a batch. Nanosized Pd-based catalysts are widely used in the direct hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) synthesis from H2 and O2, while the selectivity and yield of H2O2 remain inferior. Here, a remarkable H2O2 yield of 115 mol/gPd/h and H2O2 selectivity higher than 99% are reported using a Pd single-atom catalyst for the direct synthesis of H2O2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miniaturized spectrometers are of considerable interest for their portability. Most designs to date employ a photodetector array with distinct spectral responses or require elaborated integration of micro & nano optic modules, typically with a centimeter-scale footprint. Here, we report a design of a micron-sized near-infrared ultra-miniaturized spectrometer based on two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructure (2D-vdWH). By introducing heavy metal atoms with delocalized electronic orbitals between 2D-vdWHs, we greatly enhance the interlayer coupling and realize electrically tunable infrared photoresponse (1.15 to 1.47 μm). Combining the gate-tunable photoresponse and regression algorithm, we achieve spectral reconstruction and spectral imaging in a device with an active footprint < 10 μm. Considering the ultra-small footprint and simple fabrication process, the 2D-vdWHs with designable bandgap energy and enhanced photoresponse offer an attractive solution for on-chip infrared spectroscopy. Miniaturized infrared spectrometers are required for imaging and remote sensing applications, but they are usually characterized by a cm-scale footprint. Here, the authors report the realization of near-infrared spectrometers based on Au-atom-intercalated ReS2/WSe2 heterostructures with an active footprint < 10 μm and electrically tunable photoresponse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cell-wall invertases (CWINVs), responsible for the hydrolysis of sucrose into glucose and fructose, play important roles in plant development. Maize (Zea mays L.) ear-related traits were suggested to be important components of kernel yield. However, the association and nucleotide polymorphisms of maize CWINV genes with ear-related traits remain largely unclear. Herein, the maize ZmCWINV3 gene was re-sequenced in 301 inbred lines, 71 landraces and 31 teosintes to mine excellent variations associated with ear-related traits. A total of 594 variants, including 498 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 96 insertions and deletions (InDels), were identified in maize ZmCWINV3 locus. Five polymorphism sites in ZmCWINV3 were found to be significantly associated with six ear-related traits. Among them, a non-synonymous mutation SNP3694 was found to be significantly associated with ear weight (EW), ear grain weight (EGW), ear length (EL) and kernel length (KL). Further evidence revealed that the excellent allele T of SNP3694 was not exist in teosintes, while its frequencies raised to 9.86% and 69.44% in landraces and inbred lines, respectively. These observations suggested that the excellent allelic variations in ZmCWINV3 might possess potential application values in the genetic improvement of ear-related traits in maize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) have been shown to protect against abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) progression. Statins have immunomodulatory properties, and their effect on AAA partly depends on immune-related mechanisms. In this study, we aimed to explore whether there is an association between statins and Tregs in AAA progression. Sixty ApoE−/− mice were randomly divided into four groups (n = 15 per group): A, saline group; B, control group; C, simvastatin group (intragastric administration of simvastatin); and D, PC61 group (simvastatin combined with an intraperitoneal injection of 100 μg CD25-depleting antibody PC61). After 2 weeks of simvastatin treatment, the mice received a continuous subcutaneous infusion of angiotensin II (Ang II; B, C, and D groups) or saline (A group) for 28 days. Simvastatin therapy for 6 weeks significantly decreased the incidence and severity of AAA and inhibited the apoptosis of smooth muscle cells and generation of reactive oxygen species, which was partly abolished after the injection of PC61 antibody. Importantly, simvastatin increased the number of Tregs and the levels of Treg-associated cytokines (TGF-β and IL-10) and decreased the level of IL-17 both in aortic tissues and serum. Interestingly, simvastatin attenuated Ang II-induced gut microbial dysbiosis, which might be associated with the accumulation of Tregs. In conclusion, simvastatin therapy prevented the development of AAA induced by Ang II in ApoE−/− mice, which might be partly due to the induction of Treg accumulation. In addition, simvastatin regulated gut microbial dysbiosis, which might also be associated with Treg generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an active learning enabled robotic painting system, called ShadowPainter, which acquires artist-specific painting information from the artwork creating process and achieves robotic reproduction of the artwork. The artist’s painting process information, including interactive trajectories of paintbrushes with the environment and states of the canvas, is collected by a novel Visual Measurement System (VMS). A Robotic Painting System (RPS), accompanied by the VSM, is developed to reproduce human paintings by actively imitating the measured painting process. The critical factors that influence the final painting performance of the robot are revealed. At the end of this paper, the reproduced artworks and the painting ability of the RPS are evaluated by local and global criteria and metrics. The experimental results show that our ShadowPainter can reproduce human-level brush strokes, painting techniques, and overall paintings. Compared with the existing work, our system produces natural strokes and painting details that are closer to human artworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the thermal stability of nanocrystalline (NC) AZ31/TiB2 magnesium matrix composites was investigated, while the microstructure evolution and mechanical properties were analyzed. The results indicated the AZ31/TiB2 still maintained NC structure after annealing at 350 °C for 180 min. Even at the high annealing temperature of 400 °C and 450 °C for 180 min, their average grain size just reached about 124 nm and 155 nm, indicating excellent thermal stability. The TiB2 particles with sub-micron size uniformly distributed in Mg matrix had no change in size and no reaction with matrix during the annealing treatment. Due to the strong Zener pinning effect of TiB2 particles, the grain growth of Mg matrix at high temperature was effectively inhibited. Meanwhile, the solution and precipitation behavior of Al atoms were completed in a short time, due to the existence of many grain boundaries and structural defects. By calculation, the grain growth kinetics was described by the kinetics equation D 8 - D 0 8 = k t and the activation energy Eg for grain growth was 131.6 kJ/mol, which was much higher than that of pure Mg (92 kJ/mol). Due to their excellent thermal stability, the decrease in both compressive yield strength and ultimate compressive strength was no more than 12.2% after annealing treatment. Even annealing at 450 °C for 180 min, the CYS and UCS of the samples were still above 283 MPa and 295 MPa, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of lead-free inorganic perovskite material, such as Cs2AgBiBr6, is of great importance to solve the toxicity and stability issues of traditional lead halide perovskite solar cells. However, due to a wide bandgap of Cs2AgBiBr6 film, its light absorption ability is largely limited and the photoelectronic conversion efficiency is normally lower than 4.23%. In this text, by using a hydrogenation method, the bandgap of Cs2AgBiBr6 films could be tunable from 2.18 eV to 1.64 eV. At the same time, the highest photoelectric conversion efficiency of hydrogenated Cs2AgBiBr6 perovskite solar cell has been improved up to 6.37% with good environmental stability. Further investigations confirmed that the interstitial doping of atomic hydrogen in Cs2AgBiBr6 lattice could not only adjust its valence and conduction band energy levels, but also optimize the carrier mobility and carrier lifetime. All these works provide an insightful strategy to fabricate high performance lead-free inorganic perovskite solar cells. Though inorganic perovskites are an attractive, non-toxic and stable alternative to organic-inorganic halide perovskite solar cells, realizing efficient devices remains a challenge. Here, the authors report hydrogenated lead-free inorganic perovskite solar cells with enhanced power conversion efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To achieve zero-carbon economy, advanced anode catalysts are desirable for hydrogen production and biomass upgrading powered by renewable energy. Ni-based non-precious electrocatalysts are considered as potential candidates because of intrinsic redox attributes, but in-depth understanding and rational design of Ni site coordination still remain challenging. Here, we perform anodic electrochemical oxidation of Ni-metalloids (NiPx, NiSx, and NiSex) to in-situ construct different oxyanion-coordinated amorphous nickel oxyhydroxides (NiOOH-TOx), among which NiOOH-POx shows optimal local coordination environment and boosts electrocatalytic activity of Ni sites towards selective oxidation of methanol to formate. Experiments and theoretical results demonstrate that NiOOH-POx possesses improved adsorption of OH* and methanol, and favors the formation of CH3O* intermediates. The coordinated phosphate oxyanions effectively tailor the d band center of Ni sites and increases Ni-O covalency, promoting the catalytic activity. This study provides additional insights into modulation of active-center coordination environment via oxyanions for organic molecules transformation. Coordination environments around metal sites are important in electrocatalysis. Here, Ni metalloid oxidation produces oxyanion doped amorphous Ni-oxyhydroxides where substitution with phosphorus is found to boost methanol electrooxidation activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To describe the clinical manifestations, immunological features, and risk factors in patients with sarcoidosis complicated with autoimmune diseases (ADs) as well as determine the frequency of autoantibodies and possible correlation between autoantibodies and laboratory data. Patients with pathologically confirmed sarcoidosis at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital (China) between January 2017 and October 2020 were included. Age- and sex-matched patients who visited the rheumatology outpatient clinic without systemic or ADs were included as controls. Demographic, clinical, serological, and radiological data of sarcoidosis patients were recorded and analyzed. To exclude ADs, autoantibodies, such as antinuclear antibody, extractable nuclear antigen antibodies, and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody were assessed in controls. A total of 154 sarcoidosis patients (111 females; 72.1%) with a mean ± standard deviation age of 50.7 ± 10.3 years were included. Nineteen patients (12.3%) had ADs; Hashimoto's thyroiditis (n = 6) and Sjogren's syndrome (n = 4) were common. Age, globulin, immunoglobulin G, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and C-reactive protein were significantly different between sarcoidosis patients with and without ADs. The ESR level might be a risk factor for sarcoidosis complicated with ADs (RR = 1.053; P = 0.018). Autoantibodies were detected in 29 patients (18.8%), and the frequency was significantly higher than that in controls (18.8% vs. 3%; P = 0.001). Sarcoidosis patients were more likely to have autoantibodies despite the absence of ADs (10.4% vs. 3%; P = 0.031). Age may be a risk factor for sarcoidosis patients presenting with autoantibodies (RR = 1.077; P = 0.042). An association was identified between ADs and sarcoidosis. The inflammatory indexes, such as ESR, IgG, and CRP, were significantly different between sarcoidosis patients with and without ADs. ESR might be a risk factor for the coexistence of ADs and sarcoidosis. Sarcoidosis patients were prone to being autoantibody-positive despite the absence of ADs, and age might be a risk factor for sarcoidosis presenting with autoantibodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, micron-sized two-dimensional graphene oxide (GO) was combined with chitosan fibres, followed by immersion into dopamine lye (DA lye) through a solution complex to increase the tensile strength of fibre from 252.22 to 411.62 MPa and Young's modulus from 18.95 to 25.67 GPa. GO sheets endue an effective stress transmission mechanism to chitosan fibre when such composite fibres are subjected to external forces. Self-polymerised poly-dopamine (PDA) formed a coating on the chitosan fibre surface, crosslinking the chitosan molecular, and thereby effectively offsetting the influence of intramolecular hydrogen bonds. Furthermore, the composite fibre exhibited an excellent antibacterial rate of > 99.9% and negligible toxicity to human fibroblasts, indicating its superior biocompatibility. The multiple van der Waals forces enhanced interfacial interactions between the GO surface and chitosan matrix, and the crosslinking and adhesion effect of the PDA coating to the chitosan fibre considerably improved the mechanical properties of the composite fibre. The results of this study can provide a guideline for bulk preparation and replication for synthesising high mechanical performance and multiple functional GO/natural polymer composite fibres, which can be used in many applications, such as biomedical and medical materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The raw syngas effluent from a fluidized bed gasifier typically contains a large amount of fly ash having a high concentration of carbon, which is undesirable. The present work examined the newly developed entrained-flow gasification technology intended to gasify raw syngas. Simulation of gas–solid flow and reaction behavior in an industrial-scale entrained-flow gasifier applying this new technology was first performed to obtain a better understanding of the particle flow and gasification characteristics. In addition, the devolatilization and heterogeneous reactions of fly ash particles were characterized by thermogravimetric analysis and user-defined function. The predictions from the simulation showed good agreement with the results of in situ experimental measurements. The combustion reaction for raw syngas occurred in the burner jet zone. As the hot gaseous products diffused, gasification reactions dominated the other zones. When burner inclination angle was 0°, 8.5°, and 25.5°, the temperature at the bottom outlet of the gasifier was lower than the ash flow temperature with the value of 1360 °C. Solid slag formed and blocked the outlet. By comparison, this gasifier with the burner inclination angle of 17° could discharge the liquid slag and function as a continuous operation. In this way, the carbon conversion in fly ash reached the maximum value of 87%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose the Glyph-Semanteme fusion Embedding (GSE) for Chinese character and apply it to Offline Handwritten Chinese Text Recognition (offline-HCTR). It is well known that the number of Chinese characters is very large and the glyphs of these characters are complex, but few researchers realize that the underlying reason for this phenomenon is that Chinese is a form of ideogram, which indicates that there are correlations between the glyph and semanteme of a character. In order to utilize this feature and create better representations for Chinese characters, firstly, we extract the glyph embedding and semanteme embedding for each Chinese character; then we propose a parameterized gated fusion strategy to automatically calculate the Glyph-Semanteme fusion Embedding for each character by fusing its glyph embedding and semanteme embedding. We apply the proposed GSE to an attention-based Encoder-decoder network for the offline-HCTR task. Furthermore, two kinds of GSE, Character-level GSE (CGSE) and Text-level GSE (TGSE), are applied to the decoder phase to yield the predictions. On the standard benchmark ICDAR-2013 HCTR competition dataset, the proposed method achieves 96.65% character-level recognition accuracy, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed glyph-semanteme fusion embedding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, person re-identification based on video has become a hot topic in the field of person re-identification. The self-attention mechanism can improve the ability of deep neural networks in computer vision tasks such as image classification, image segmentation and natural language processing tasks. In order to verify whether the self-attention can improve the performance or not in person re-identification tasks, this paper applies two self-attention mechanisms, non-local attention and recurrent criss-cross attention to person re-identification model, and experiments are conducted on Market-1501, DukeMTMC-reID and MSMT17 person re-identification datasets. The results show that the self-attention mechanism can improve the accuracy of the person re-identification model. The accuracy is higher when the self-attention module is inserted into the convolutional layers of the re-identification network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One new compound, crocusatin M (1), and three new glycosidic compounds, crocusatins N-P (2–4), along with nine known compounds were isolated from the dried stigmas of Crocus sativus. The structures of new compounds were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic analysis, and the absolute configurations of 1, 2, and 3 were unambiguously assigned by the comparison of experimental and calculated ECD data. This is the first report of the isolation of 4 with the HMG moiety from the genus Crocus. Compounds 1 and 4 exhibited weak anti-inflammatory activities on inhibiting lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced NO production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cadmium selenide (CdSe) belongs to the binary II-VI group semiconductor with a direct bandgap of ∼1.7 eV. The suitable bandgap, high stability, and low manufacturing cost make CdSe an extraordinary candidate as the top cell material in silicon-based tandem solar cells. However, only a few studies have focused on CdSe thin-film solar cells in the past decades. With the advantages of a high deposition rate (∼2 °m/min) and high uniformity, rapid thermal evaporation (RTE) was used to maximize the use efficiency of CdSe source material. A stable and pure hexagonal phase CdSe thin film with a large grain size was achieved. The CdSe film demonstrated a 1.72 eV bandgap, narrow photoluminescence peak, and fast photoresponse. With the optimal device structure and film thickness, we finally achieved a preliminary efficiency of 1.88% for CdSe thin-film solar cells, suggesting the applicability of CdSe thin-film solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disc grinding is a commonly-utilized removal technology to generate the machining surface with higher precision. The material removal is caused by the force interaction between abrasives, which releases much heat during grinding. The dynamic thermal–mechanical coupling can be a crucial factor to influence the surface performance of the workpiece. However, previous studies on disc grinding are not enough for investigating the influence of the removal mechanism on the surface's quality with dynamic thermal–mechanical coupling effect, which is caused by the double-side enclosed construction of grinding tool. To fill this gap, a novel coupled theoretical model is established based on effective abrasives dynamic removal. The moving trajectory of the discrete dynamic abrasives is deduced firstly. Meanwhile, the dynamic mechanical interaction is calculated by effective abrasives movements and height differences. Afterwards, the dynamic thermal relaxation is calculated by a finite difference method according to the effective abrasives moving trajectory and dynamic mechanical interactions, which is further validated by the finite element method. On account of the distribution of dynamic thermal–mechanical coupling, the uneven machining is found in disc grinding process. Furthermore, disc grinding experiments are performed to validate the analyzed regulations by the measurements of machining surface profile. The obtained findings are anticipated to be meaningful for improving disc grinding mechanism and optimization in wafer machining enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]