Search

DNA methylation plays a vital role in tissue development and differentiation in eukaryotes. Epigenetic studies have been seldom conducted in the extremely diverse and evolutionarily highly successful bilaterian lineage Mollusca. In the present study, we conducted the genome-wide profiling of DNA methylation for five tissues of a bivalve mollusc, Chlamys farreri using the methylation-sensitive amplification polymorphism (MSAP) technique. The methylation levels were quite similar among tissues, ranging from 20.9% to 21.7%. CG methylation was the dominant type (14.9%–16.5%) in the C. farreri genome, but CHG methylation also accounted for a substantial fraction of total methylation (5.1%–6.3%). Relatively high methylation diversity was observed within tissues. Methylation differentiation between tissues was evaluated and 460 tissue-specific epiloci were identified. Kidney differs from the other tissues in DNA methylation profiles. Our study presents the first look at the tissue-specific DNA methylation patterns in a bivalve mollusc and represents an initial step towards understanding of epigenetic regulatory mechanism underlying tissue development and differentiation in bivalves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed sensing offers great promise in structural health monitoring of bridges and other types of critical structures. Over the years, a number of different Brillouin scattering–based systems have been developed for distributed sensing, including sensors based on the Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer. This study pertains to the quantitative characterization of Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer–based sensors for monitoring of distributed strains and detection of defects. This study involved experiments involving a 15-m-long beam and simulated defects. In the experiments, the effect of strain localization at the defect sites was masked by the low spatial resolution of the Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer. The Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer–measured response was evaluated by numerical modeling of the beam. Computation of the flexural strains involved a hybrid approach in which the experimentally determined degraded stiffnesses of the defect zones were employed in the finite element model. Unlike the Brillouin optical time domain reflectometer–measured strains, finite element model analysis of the beam indicated formation of sharp peaks in the strain distributions at the locations of the defects. The effects of these measurement errors were numerically quantified by separating them from the influence of the spatial resolution errors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In most of flexible production schemes, the flexible manufacturing cells (FMCs) are more economical and feasible. So, an important task is to establish the correct reliability analysis model for the FMCs. However, with the increasing of system complexity, some reliability analysis modes can hardly describe the actual situation. Besides, due to the lack of test-data and field-data during the design stage of FMC' system, the reliability modeling will be more complicated. In order to deal with the deficient data and the uncertainty occurred from analysis and judgment, this article analyzes the reliability of FMCs system through the method of fuzzy fault tree, which is based on triangular fuzzy membership. At last, a practical example is illustrated. The reliability analysis model indicates that it can offer a diagnostic tool for FMCs system and improve the efficiency of operation and production in FMCs system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-coherent fiber-optic sensors combined with neural network algorithms were designed to carry out a load-sensitizing spherical bearing. Four sensing fibers were wound around the outside of the pot support of the spherical bearing uniformly deployed from upper to bottom. The upper three were configured in a distributed way to respond to the applied load as a function of the three strain sensors. The bottom one was employed as a temperature compensation sensor. A loading experiment was implemented to test the performance of the designed system. The results showed that there was a hysteresis in all the three sensors between loading and unloading process. The neural network algorithm is proposed to set up a function of the three sensors, treated as a set of input vectors to establish the input-output relationship between the applied loads and the constructed input vectors, in order to overcome the hysteresis existing in each sensor. An accuracy of 6% for load sensing was approached after temperature compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twelve polymorphic and informative microsatellite markers were isolated and characterized for the Yesso scallop, Mizuhopecten yessoensis. We characterized these loci by genotyping 48 individuals; the number of alleles ranged from two to eight, and the values of observed heterozygosity and expected heterozygosity varied from 0 to 0.8333 and from 0.2546 to 0.8231, respectively. No significant linkage disequilibrium between pairs of loci was found and three loci showed significant heterozygote deficiency from the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. These markers are potential for studies of the population structure, individual or hybrid identification of the species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-dimensional layered ferroelectric materials, such as CuInP2S6 (CIPS), are promising candidates for novel and high-performance photocatalysts, owing to their ultrathin layer thickness, strong interlayer coupling, and intrinsic spontaneous polarization, while how to control the photocatalytic activity in layered CIPS remains unexplored. In this work, we report for the first time, the photocatalytic activity of ferroelectric CIPS for the chemical deposition of silver nanostructures (AgNSs). The results show that the shape and spatial distribution of AgNSs on CIPS are tunable by controlling layer thickness, environmental temperature, and light wavelength. The ferroelectric polarization in CIPS plays a critical role in tunable AgNS photodeposition, as evidenced by layer thickness and temperature dependence experiments. We further reveal that AgNS photodeposition process starts from active site creation, selective nanoparticle nucleation/aggregation, to continuous film formation. Moreover, AgNS/CIPS heterostructures prepared by photodeposition exhibit excellent resistance switching behavior and good surface enhancement Raman Scattering activity. Our findings provide new insight into the photocatalytic activity of layered ferroelectrics and offer a new material platform for advanced functional device applications in smart memristors and enhanced chemical sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNA methylation plays a vital role in tissue development and differentiation in eukaryotes. Epigenetic studies have been seldom conducted in the extremely diverse and evolutionarily highly successful bilaterian lineage Mollusca. In the present study, we conducted the genome-wide profiling of DNA methylation for five tissues of a bivalve mollusc, Chlamys farreri using the methylation-sensitive amplification polymorphism (MSAP) technique. The methylation levels were quite similar among tissues, ranging from 20.9% to 21.7%. CG methylation was the dominant type (14.9%–16.5%) in the C. farreri genome, but CHG methylation also accounted for a substantial fraction of total methylation (5.1%–6.3%). Relatively high methylation diversity was observed within tissues. Methylation differentiation between tissues was evaluated and 460 tissue-specific epiloci were identified. Kidney differs from the other tissues in DNA methylation profiles. Our study presents the first look at the tissue-specific DNA methylation patterns in a bivalve mollusc and represents an initial step towards understanding of epigenetic regulatory mechanism underlying tissue development and differentiation in bivalves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ground settlement (GS) in an oil tank determines its structural integrity and commercial service. However, GS monitoring faces challenges, particularly due to the significant temperature differences induced by solar radiation around the tank in daytime. To address this problem, this paper digs out a prior and proposes a temperature uncertainty reduction algorithm based on that. This prior has a spatial Gaussian distribution of temperature around the tank, and numerical simulation and practical tests are conducted to demonstrate it. In addition, combining uniformly packaged sensor probes and the spatial prior of temperature, the temperature uncertainty is verified to be Gaussian-distributed too. Then, the overall temperature uncertainty can be captured by Gaussian fitting and then removed. The practical test verified a 91% reduction rate in temperature uncertainty, and this approach enables GS sensors to effectively perform daytime monitoring by mitigating temperature-related uncertainties.

Sensors operating in open-air environments can be affected by various environmental factors. Specifically, ground settlement (GS) monitoring sensors installed in oil tanks are susceptible to non-uniform temperature fields caused by uneven sunshine exposure. This disparity in environmental conditions can lead to errors in sensor readings. To address this issue, this study aimed to analyze the impact of temperature on GS monitoring sensors and establish a mapping relationship between temperature uncertainty (fluctuations of measurement caused by temperature variation) and temperature variation. By collecting the temperature information and inferring the temperature uncertainty being introduced, this interference can be removed. However, it is crucial to note that in real-world complex scenarios, the relationship between temperature uncertainty and temperature variation is not always a constant positive correlation, which limits the data available for certain periods. Moreover, the limited availability of data presents a challenge when analyzing the complex mapping relationship. To overcome these challenges, a transfer-learning-based algorithm was introduced to develop a more accurate model for predicting temperature uncertainty based on temperature variation, even with limited data. Subsequently, a practical test was conducted to validate the proposed algorithm's performance. The results demonstrated that the algorithm outperformed a simple linear fitting model using the least squares method (LSM), achieving an improvement of up to 21.9%. This outcome highlights the algorithm's potential for enhancing the performance of GS sensors in daytime monitoring and contributing to the safe operation of oil tank facilities and infrastructure health monitoring., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

The results of applications of various methods for measuring the parameters of high-speed loading using a strain gauge, a fiber Bragg grating located on a metal measuring rod and an interferometer monitoring the movement of the free boundary of the end of the rod are presented. Numerical simulation confirmed the adequacy of the description of the shock-wave process according to experimental data and showed that, with the thickness of the adhesive layer fixing the fiber Bragg grating and the strain gauge on a dimensional rod up to 100 µm, the deformation parameters of the sensors correspond to the parameters of the stress-strain state of the rod. Experimentally, a good correspondence of the results of measuring the magnitude of the relative deformation at a pulse duration of 10-100 µs using sensors of various types is shown, and an estimate of the limit values of the measured values of the deformation wave parameters is given.

A nonuniform temperature field can deteriorate the performance of sensors, especially those working in the field, such as an optical sensor for oil-tank ground settlement (GS) monitoring. In this case, the GS monitoring employs hydraulic-level-based sensors (HLBS), which are uniformly installed along with the oil-tank basement perimeter and are all connected by hydraulic tubes. Then, the cylinder structure of the oil tank itself can create a strong temperature difference between the sensors installed in the sunlit front and those in the shadow. Practically, this sunlight-dependent difference can be over 30 °C, by which the thermal expansion of the measuring liquid inside the connecting hydraulic tubes keeps on driving a movement and, thereby, leads to fluctuations in the final result of the oil-tank GS monitoring system. Now, this system can work well at night when the temperature difference becomes negligible. However, temperature uncertainty is generated in the GS sensors due to the large temperature difference between the sensors in the daytime. In this paper, we measured the temperature where the sensor was located. Then, we compared the results of the GS sensors with their corresponding temperatures and fitted them with two separate curves, respectively. After observing the similarity in the tendency of the two curves, we found that there was a qualitative correlative relationship between the change in temperature and the uncertainty in the sensor results. Then, a curve similarity analysis (CSA) principle based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criteria was employed to establish an algorithm, by which the temperature uncertainty in the GS sensors was reduced. A practical test proved that the standard deviation was improved by 73.4% by the algorithm. This work could be an example for reducing the temperature uncertainty from in-field sensors through the CSA method.

A loading test of the ground settlement (GS) performance of the oil tank must be examined before beginning its commercial service. This test requires the sensors to be installed around the oil tank, and the GS is measured while water is being filled in, where the liquid level is read with an ultrasonic radar equipment, etc., to indicate the applied water loads. During the service of the oil tank, loading and unloading corresponding to the oil inlet and outlet are the critical factors to cause the oil tank destruction in a fatigue way. Thus, a regular in-service loading test is the means of evaluating the tank base health condition. However, the sensors for GS measurement of the oil tank are mostly based on a liquid hydraulic sensor, which is an intrinsically static sensor determined by the fluidity of the measurement liquid. In order to meet the instantaneous requirement of the loading test, first, the configuration of the optical GS sensor was designed to suit the simultaneous measurement. Secondly, a data acquisition system was designed by combining the digital signal processing with a field programmable gate array to carry out a parallel multiple channel data collection. This ensures that the GS sensors are interrogated simultaneously to snapshot a GS status of the oil tank, even if its load was changed slowly. A practical oil inlet process was recorded with an ultrasonic radar oil level measurement, and the results of oil tank GS were verified with a manual measurement by using the Electronic Total Station. The effectiveness of our sensor monitoring of the oil tank GS performance during the loading test has been proven.

There are many studies revealed that metal-based nanoparticles (NPs) possess excellent bactericidal effect on multitudinous bacteria and fungi. However, the control effect of NPs as antimicrobial agents to against Vibrio parahaemolyticus infection remain in poorly understood for blood clam, Tegillarca granosa. In order to evaluate the effect, the changes in six physiological parameters and the immune-related genes expression of clams exposed to V. parahaemolyticus alone or along with NPs (nZnO or nCuO) were investigated in present study. Results showed that both tested NPs exerted prominent redemptive or mitigative effect in an inverse dose-dependent way on physiological indexes of clam, especially in the total counts, phagocytosis and the cell viability of haemocytes, as well as the concentration and activity of lysozymes, when co-exposed with Vibrio. Gene expression analysis showed NPs at a concentration of 0.1 mg/L generally mitigated the downregulation of immune-related genes after clam exposure to V. parahaemolyticus. The combination of 0.1 mg/mL nZnO and nCuO additives has been shown to significantly enhance the humoral immunity of blood clam, suggesting its potential as a protective measure against V. parahaemolyticus infection in T. granosa., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In recent years, researchers have made great progress in solving complex electromagnetic field computing problems by using deep learning methods. However, the approaches found in literature were devoted to solving the real-number problem of electromagnetic field calculations. For the complex number problem, there was no good solution. Here, we proposed an advanced computation method for metasurfaces based on a complex residual neural network (CRNN). We predicted the scattering ( S ) 21 parameters of a cylindrical structure in the range of 1.2 to 1.7 µm wavelengths. By providing a set of cylindrical structure parameters, we could quickly predict the S 21 parameters with CRNN and design a metalens, which proved the ability of the proposed method. In addition, our method can also be extended to the calculation of electromagnetic fields where the speed of the calculation of the complex number of metasurfaces should be accelerated.

The rapid development of nanotechnology boosts the massive production and utilization of various nanoparticles (NPs). However, the NPs escaped into environments form emergent pollutants, which pose a potential threat to marine organisms and ecosystems. Due to their sessile filter-feeding lifestyle, marine bivalves live in pollution-prone coastal areas are more susceptible to land-sourced pollutants such as NPs. However, the impacts of many NPs on the metabolism, one of the most critical physiological processes of an organism, still remain largely unknown in bivalve species. To fill up this knowledge gap, in this study the impacts of four commonly used NPs (nZnO, nFe 2 O 3 , nCuO, and multi-walled carbon tube (MWCNT)) on the filtration rate, oxygen consumption rate, ammonia excretion rate, and O:N ratio were investigated in the blood clam, Tegillarca granosa. In addition, the expressions of ten key metabolism-related genes upon exposure to these NPs were also analyzed. The results demonstrated that exposure of blood clams to the NPs resulted in a reduction in the food intake (indicated by declined filtration rate), a shift in the metabolism substance, and disruptions in key metabolism-related molecular pathways (i.e., glycolysis and tricarboxylic acid cycle), which may render blood clam in energy shortage and thus pose significant threat to the health of this important bivalve species., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Patch clamp is a technique that can measure weak current in the level of picoampere (pA). It has been widely used for cellular electrophysiological recording in fundamental medical researches, such as membrane potential and ion channel currents recording, etc. In order to obtain accurate measurement results, both the resistance and capacitance of the pipette are required to be compensated. Capacitance compensations are composed of slow and fast capacitance compensation. The slow compensation is determined by the lipid bilayer of cell membrane, and its magnitude usually ranges from a few picofarads (pF) to a few microfarads (μF), depending on the cell size. The fast capacitance is formed by the distributed capacitance of the glass pipette, wires and solution, mostly ranging in a few picofarads. After the pipette sucks the cells in the solution, the positions of the glass pipette and wire have been determined, and only taking once compensation for slow and fast capacitance will meet the recording requirements. However, when the study needs to deal with the temperature characteristics, it is still necessary to make a recognition on the temperature characteristic of the capacitance. We found that the time constant of fast capacitance discharge changed with increasing temperature of bath solution when we studied the photothermal effect on cell membrane by patch clamp. Based on this phenomenon, we proposed an equivalent circuit to calculate the temperature-dependent parameters. Experimental results showed that the fast capacitance increased in a positive rate of 0.04 pF/℃, while the pipette resistance decreased. The fine data analysis demonstrated that the temperature rises of bath solution determined the kinetics of the fast capacitance mainly by changing the inner solution resistance of the glass pipette. This result will provide a good reference for the fine temperature characteristic study related to cellular electrophysiology based on patch clamp technique.

We developed a multimodality fluorescence and optical coherence tomography probe based on a double-clad fiber (DCF) combiner. The probe is composed of a DCF combiner, grin lens, and micromotor in the distal end. An integrated swept-source optical coherence tomography and fluorescence intensity imaging system was developed based on the combined probe for the early diagnoses of atherosclerosis. This system is capable of real-time data acquisition and processing as well as image display. For fluorescence imaging, the inflammation of atherosclerosis and necrotic core formed with the annexin V-conjugated Cy5.5 were imaged. Ex vivo imaging of New Zealand white rabbit arteries demonstrated the capability of the combined system.