Search

Abstract Vibration with a frequency of 100 Hz is widely distributed in the power equipment, and it can provide a new way to supply energy for sensors by vibration energy harvesting. The vibration energy harvesting method based on electromagnetic induction principle was studied through the arrayed structure of magnets and coils. Static magnetic field models were established for four magnet array structures and it was found that the alternating magnet array has the largest magnetic flux and magnetic flux gradient. Based on the alternating magnet array, prototypes of energy harvester with vertical and parallel movement mode were proposed. Through structural parameter optimisation analysis, two different energy harvesters were fabricated and it was found that the energy harvester with a parallel movement mode has better output performances. The energy harvester could provide output voltage/current and power of 8.35 V/17.39 mA and 15.13 mW (matched resistance is 200 Ω) at an acceleration of 5 m·s−2. The 100 mF capacitor could be charged to 2.72 V within 300 s, and the final voltage of the capacitor is greater than 3 V, which could sustainably drive commercial wireless temperature/humidity sensors.

Meat quality is a key factor determining the economic viability of the broiler industry, particularly in native broiler breeds. Skeletal muscles contain a mixture of muscle fibers, each possessing unique physicochemical properties; the composition of myofiber types within these muscles is closely linked to meat quality. However, comprehension of the regulatory mechanisms governing this trait remains limited. Therefore, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) with a population of 400 yellow-feather broilers to explore genetic variations associated with myofiber-type composition at the genomic level. Whole-genome resequencing was employed to detect genetic variations and immunohistochemistry was used for muscle fiber typing in the sartorius muscle. We identified 1 and 18 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) significantly and potentially associated with the proportion of slow muscle fibers, respectively, and 1 and 12 SNPs significantly and potentially associated with the area proportion of slow muscle fibers, respectively. We annotated several candidate genes, including DMD, KLF7, CREB1, EFCAB11, GADD45A, GSTT1, and GSTT1L, which are related to myofiber type composition. We also demonstrated that myofiber composition traits exhibit low-to-medium heritability, indicating potential for enhancement through genetic selection. These findings provide a crucial reference for further studies on the regulatory mechanisms of poultry meat quality and for advancing the breeding of superior-quality broiler chickens.

The rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and communication standards has led to an increasing demand for data security, particularly with limited hardware resources. In addition to conventional software-level data encryption, physical-layer security techniques, such as device-specific radio frequency fingerprints (RFFs), are emerging as promising solutions. This article first summarizes prior arts on timestamped RFFs generation and reconfigurable power amplifier (PA) designs. Following that, an innovative 2-stage PA incorporating a reconfigurable class A stage with a Doherty amplifier, designed in 65-nm CMOS to generate 4096 timestamped RFFs without introducing in-band power variation, is presented. Multiple 3-bit resistive digital-to-analog converters (RDACs) are applied to control body biasing units within the two-stage PA, facilitating the generation of massive and distinguishable RFFs. Subsequently, time-varying unequally spaced multitone (USMT) techniques are proposed to further elevate the count of available timestamped RFFs from 4096 to 16 384. The validation results of RFFs utilizing 64-QAM WiFi-6E advertising packets, employing time-varying USMT transmitted within the 5.39–5.41-GHz band, confirm the successful generation of 16 384 distinct RFF patterns. Moreover, the measurement results demonstrate that more than 11 504 RFFs among the generated patterns can be classified with an accuracy exceeding 99%.

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and microtubule (MT) network form extensive contact with each other and their interconnection plays a pivotal role in ER maintenance and distribution as well as MT stability. The ER participates in a variety of biological processes including protein folding and processing, lipid biosynthesis, and Ca2+ storage. MTs specifically regulate cellular architecture, provide routes for transport of molecules or organelles, and mediate signaling events. The ER morphology and dynamics are regulated by a class of ER shaping proteins, which also provide the physical contact structure for linking of ER and MT. In addition to these ER-localized and MT-binding proteins, specific motor proteins and adaptor-linking proteins also mediate bidirectional communication between the two structures. In this review, we summarize the current understanding of the structure and function of ER-MT interconnection. We further highlight the morphologic factors which coordinate the ER-MT network and maintain the normal physiological function of neurons, with their defect causing neurodegenerative diseases such as Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP). These findings promote our understanding of the pathogenesis of HSP and provide important therapeutic targets for treatment of these diseases.

Abstract Stray magnetic fields with a fixed frequency of 50/60 Hz are ubiquitous in buildings, factories, and power system equipment. Researchers are increasingly focusing on harvesting electrical energy from stray magnetic fields to provide sustainable energy for the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Magneto‐mechano‐electric energy conversion is the most efficient way to convert low‐frequency stray magnetic fields into electricity. In this study, we proposed a hybrid piezo/triboelectric nanogenerator (HP/TENG) on the basis of a cantilever beam to use stray magnetic fields from the surrounding environment. The hybrid nanogenerator provided high output voltage/current and power of ∼176 V/375 μA and 4.7 mW (matched impedance of 20 kΩ) in a magnetic field environment of 4 Oe. The device provided a stable 3.6 V direct current output by incorporating energy management circuitry to sustainably drive power to commercial wireless temperature/humidity sensors. The HP/TENG has a significant application potential in IoT, which can use stray magnetic energy and a power wireless sensor system.

Abstract Interest Flooding Attack (IFA) is one of the main security threats for the Named Data Networking (NDN). Most of its existing countermeasures enable intermediate routers near the attackers to independently detect the attack and consider the typical attack scenario in which attackers directly send malicious Interests at a constant and relatively high rate after the attack starts. Moreover, they may also throttle legitimate Interests when enforcing the existing defense measures at intermediate routers as it is still difficult for them to distinguish the Interests issued by attackers from those issued by legitimate consumers. Instead, this work aims at a more sophisticated attack scenario in which attackers start the attack at a relatively lower rate but gradually speed up to keep the Pending Interest Tables (PITs) of the victims increasing to finally deplete the PIT resources for legitimate consumers. It is relatively difficult for intermediate routers to independently and timely detect such a sophisticated IFA. To solve this problem, we propose a mechanism to detect and mitigate the sophisticated IFA from the network-wide view, dubbed as DMNWV. In DMNWV, a central controller monitors the network and makes a comprehensive and prompt decision on whether there is an ongoing IFA based on the overall state of the whole network collected from the abnormity information reports sent by the first-hop routers of attackers. Attack sources can be directly located after an IFA is determined, and then the routers directly connected to attackers (i.e., access routers) can take targeted measures based on the located attackers to prevent malicious Interest from entering the network without throttling legitimate Interests. We conduct an experimental study to evaluate the performance of DMNWV, explore the parameter settings of the attack detection algorithm at access routers, and measure the communication overhead of the central controller. The experimental results validate that DMNWV can timely detect and mitigate the sophisticated IFA without throttling requests from legitimate consumers with significantly low communication overhead of the central controller, which will not bring about too much burden to the network.

The spectral computed tomography (CT) based on photon counting detectors can collect the incident photons with different energy ranges. However, due to the low photon counts in narrow energy bin and the unhomogeneous response problem of detector cells, there are severe noise and ring artifacts in reconstructed spectral CT images. We proposed an image denoising and ring artifacts removal method via improved Fully Convolutional Pyramid Residual Network (FCPRN). In our study, we scanned a mouse specimen with spectral CT based on photon counting detector, and reconstructed mouse CT images as data set. Then we use the data set to train our network for image denoising and ring artifacts removal. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method could reduce noise and suppress ring artifacts of spectral CT images concurrently in different energy ranges. And the performance of the FCPRN is better than that of some networks for CT image denoising.

As a promising future Internet architecture, named data networking (NDN) supports namebased routing and caching for content retrieval throughout the network, which enables fast, reliable, and, more importantly, energy-efficient content dissemination in smart cities. However, NDN's vulnerability against the content poisoning attack is considered to decelerate the process of applying NDN to energy management in smart cities. The content poisoning isolates valid content from the network by injecting a poisoned content with a legitimate name into in-network caches. The caching, delivery, and signature verification of poisoned content diminish the advantage of NDN in energy efficiency when it disseminates content in smart cities. This paper focuses on content poisoning mitigation for energy management in smart cities and first analyzes the state of the art and the challenges of content poisoning mitigation. We then propose a light-weight mitigation mechanism by enhancing NDN with a name-key-based forwarding and multipath forwarding-based inband probe. Name-key-based forwarding forwards interests toward content sources trusted by consumers to reduce the injection of poisoned content. If there is still on-path content poisoning, the multipath forwarding of a reissued interest that excludes poisoned content acts as inband probes and invokes on-demand signature verifications at intermediate routers. This purges poisoned content from caches as soon as possible, delivers legitimate content to the present consumer, and restores legitimate content retrieval for future Interests without requiring any out-of-band communications. Our experimental results demonstrate that our proposed content poisoning mitigation mechanism restores legitimate content retrieval pretty soon with relatively small verification overhead at intermediate routers and is well adapted to diverse network settings, which would accelerate the deployment of NDN in smart cities to disseminate content in an energy-efficient way.

Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) is a critical neuropeptide modulating the mammalian stress response. It is involved in many functional activities within various brain regions, among which there is a subset of CRH neurons occupying a considerable proportion of the cortical GABAergic interneurons. Here, we utilized rabies virus-based monosynaptic retrograde tracing system to map the whole-brain afferent presynaptic partners of the CRH neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). We find that the ACC CRH neurons integrate information from the cortex, thalamus, hippocampal formation, amygdala, and also several other midbrain and hindbrain nuclei. Furthermore, our results reveal that ACC CRH neurons receive direct inputs from two neuromodulatory systems, the basal forebrain cholinergic neurons and raphe serotoninergic neurons. These findings together expand our knowledge about the connectivity of the cortical GABAergic neurons and also provide a basis for further investigation of the circuit function of cortical CRH neurons.

The turbulence effect, thermal blooming effect, laser beam aberration, platform jitter, and other effects in the process of high energy laser propagation in the atmosphere will cause serious degradation of laser beam quality, which will have a negative impact on the actual application of laser propagation engineering. It is important in the engineering application of high-energy laser propagation to evaluate the far-field intensity distribution quickly. Based on the optical transfer function (OTF) theory of imaging system, the propagation process of high-energy lasers is modeled as the imaging process of point source. By using the convolution of point spread function (PSF) of jitter, turbulence, thermal blooming, and aberration of emission system, fast calculation of the far-field intensity distribution of high energy laser is realized. The calculation results are compared with those obtained by the 4D wave optics simulation program in different propagation scenarios. The results show that the calculated facula distribution and encircled energy of this method are in good agreement with the simulation results of wave optics, which can realize the fast and accurate evaluation of the far-field intensity distribution of high-energy laser propagation and provide a reference for practical engineering application.

Preclinical studies have proven that nanosecond pulsed electric field (nsPEF) ablation can be a safe and effective treatment for humans with unresectable liver cancer that are ineligible for thermal ablation. The concomitant activation of antitumor immunity by nsPEF can also potentially prevent tumor recurrence. However, whether nsPEF exhibits similar efficacy in a clinical setting remains to be investigated. A prospective clinical trial (clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT04039747) was conducted to evaluate the safety and efficacy of ultrasound (US)‐guided nsPEF ablation in 15 patients with unresectable liver cancer that were ineligible for thermal ablation. We found that nsPEF ablation was safe and produced a 12‐month recurrence‐free survival (RFS) and local RFS of 60% (9/15) and 86.7% (13/15), respectively, in the enrolled patients. Integrative proteomic and metabolomic analysis showed that sphingolipid metabolism was the most significantly enriched pathway in patient sera after nsPEF without recurrence within 8 months. A similar upregulation of sphingolipid metabolism was observed in the intratumoral mononuclear phagocytes (MNPs), rather than other immune and nonimmune cells, of an nsPEF‐treated mouse model. We then demonstrated that lymphocyte antigen 6 complex, locus C2‐positive (Ly6c2+) monocytes first differentiated into Ly6c2+ monocyte‐derived macrophages with an increase in sphingolipid metabolic activity, and subsequently into Ly6c2+ dendritic cells (DCs). Ly6c2+ DCs communicated with CD8+ T cells and increased the proportions of IFN‐γ+ CD8+ memory T cells after nsPEF, and this finding was subsequently confirmed by depletion of liver Ly6c2+ MNPs. In conclusion, nsPEF was a safe and effective treatment for liver cancer. The alteration of sphingolipid metabolism induced by nsPEF was associated with the differentiation of Ly6c2+ MNPs, and subsequently induced the formation of memory CD8+ T cells with potent antitumor effect.

Objective Pancreatic cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Poor prognosis and low survival rates have driven the development of novel therapeutic strategies. Nanosecond pulsed electric field has emerged as a novel, minimal invasive and non-thermal treatment for solid tumors. It is of great significance to study the combination therapy of nsPEF and other treatment strategies for pancreatic cancer.Methods We developed neutrophil membrane-wrapped liposomal nanoparticles loaded with gemcitabine (NE/Lip-GEM) and investigated their use as a complementary agent for nsPEF treatment.Results Our results showed that neutrophil-mediated delivery of liposomal-gemcitabine (NE/Lip-GEM) efficiently inhibited the growth of pancreatic tumors in mice whose has been treated with incomplete nsPEF ablation.Conclusions The combination of nsPEF and NE/Lip-GEM may be a promising synergistic strategy for pancreatic cancer therapy.

Abstract Nanoknife is a new tumor ablation technology. It forms nano permanent perforation on tumor cells by releasing high‐voltage pulses, destroying the intracellular balance and making cells apoptosis rapidly. So nano knife is also known as irreversible electroporation (IRE). IRE ablation technology and nanoparticles (NPs) have unique advantages in tumor treatment. Relevant studies have confirmed that NPs can enhance the effect of IRE ablation, expand the ablation boundary and reduce the threshold intensity of tumor cell perforation. Moreover, IRE combined with the drug‐loaded NPs can synergize tumor immunotherapy. Thus, the combination of NPs and IRE has broad research prospects. This paper reviews the mechanism of tumor treatment with NPs combined with IRE and discusses the future challenges and opportunities of combining these two technologies.

Pulsed field ablation can increase membrane permeability and is an emerging non-thermal ablation. While ablating tumor tissues, electrical pulses not only act on the membrane structure of cells to cause irreversible electroporation, but also convert tumors into an immune active state, increase the permeability of microvessels, inhibit the proliferation of pathological blood vessels, and soften the extracellular matrix thereby inhibiting infiltrative tumor growth. Electrical pulses can alter the tumor microenvironment, making the inhibitory effect on the tumor not limited to short-term killing, but mobilizing the collective immune system to inhibit tumor growth and invasion together.

Intelligent technologies have the potential to transform organizations and organizing processes. In particular, they are unique from prior organizational technologies in that they reposition technology as agent rather than a tool or object of use. Scholars studying human-machine communication (HMC) have begun to theorize the dual role played by human and machine agency, but they have focused primarily on the individual level. Drawing on Structuration Theory (Giddens, 1984), we propose a theoretical framework to explain agency in HMC as a process involving the negotiation of control between human and machine agents. This article contributes to HMC scholarship by offering a framework and research agenda to guide future theory-building and research on the use of intelligent technologies in organizational contexts.

Based on the characteristics of a hypergeometric function, the analytical expressions for the phase structure function and angle-of-arrival (AOA) fluctuations of plane and spherical waves propagating through oceanic turbulence are derived. The results are verified by comparing them with the numerical calculations of the definitions using four important parameters (i.e., the rate of dissipation of mean-squared temperature the rate of dissipation of kinetic energy per unit mass of fluid the ratio of temperature to salinity contribution to the refractive index spectrum and the Kolmogorov microscale The relation between AOA fluctuations and the spatial coherence radius is also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By investigating the spatial and temporal variations of the propagating pulses, we have shown for the first time that the lattice waveguides can induce nonlinear effects to tailor the plasma channel generated by a femtosecond laser pulse. Different types of the spatiotemporal localized nonlinear light bullet’s propagating configurations have been predicted. By adjusting the parameters of the modulation potential, longer continuum filaments and reshaped laser pulses can be obtained, due to the focusing nonlinearity of the lattice modulation index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general analytic expression for the temporal spectrum of atmospheric scintillation under weak turbulence condition is derived. It was employed to study the characteristics of the temporal spectra for horizontal uniform path and whole layer atmospheric non-uniform path. In the non-uniform path, the H-V turbulence model and the Gaussian wind speed model are utilized. It has been found that when the receiver diameter is larger than Fresnel scale (λL)1/2, the temporal spectrum of the plane wave have a power law behavior with a scaling index - 17/3 in high-frequency range. The change of the turbulence strength has little influence on the shape of the temporal spectrum. Based on the characteristics of the temporal spectrum, the aperture-averaging and time-averaging effects on scintillation were analyzed in the frequency domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]