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Dataset biases are notoriously detrimental to model robustness and generalization. The identify-emphasize paradigm appears to be effective in dealing with unknown biases. However, we discover that it is still plagued by two challenges: A, the quality of the identified bias-conflicting samples is far from satisfactory; B, the emphasizing strategies only produce suboptimal performance. In this paper, for challenge A, we propose an effective bias-conflicting scoring method (ECS) to boost the identification accuracy, along with two practical strategies — peer-picking and epoch-ensemble. For challenge B, we point out that the gradient contribution statistics can be a reliable indicator to inspect whether the optimization is dominated by bias-aligned samples. Then, we propose gradient alignment (GA), which employs gradient statistics to balance the contributions of the mined bias-aligned and bias-conflicting samples dynamically throughout the learning process, forcing models to leverage intrinsic features to make fair decisions. Furthermore, we incorporate self-supervised (SS) pretext tasks into training, which enable models to exploit richer features rather than the simple shortcuts, resulting in more robust models. Experiments are conducted on multiple datasets in various settings, demonstrating that the proposed solution can mitigate the impact of unknown biases and achieve state-of-the-art performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphology and function in a fetal heart with severe tricuspid regurgitation remains challenging. The aim of this study was to assess cardiac morphology and function in fetuses with severe tricuspid regurgitation by fetal heart quantification (HQ) and to assess the practical value of fetal HQ. Clinical information was analyzed for 63 pregnant women who underwent fetal cardiac ultrasonography. The women were divided into those who had a fetus with severe tricuspid regurgitation (n = 20) and those with a normal fetus (n = 40). The global sphericity index (GSI), fractional area change (FAC), and global longitudinal strain (GLS) of both ventricles and the sphericity index (SI) and fractional shortening (FS) of 24 segments were quantified by fetal HQ using speckle tracking imaging. Fetuses with severe tricuspid regurgitation had a significantly lower GSI (1.14 ± 0.10 vs. 1.26 ± 0.08, p < 0.001) and a higher GSI Z-score (-0.98 ± 1.01 vs. 0.25 ± 0.87, p < 0.001) as well as a significantly lower right ventricular FAC (36.50 ± 7.34% vs. 45.19 ± 3.39%, p < 0.001), FAC Z-score (-1.02 ± 1.41 vs. 0.49 ± 0.74, p < 0.001), and GLS (-21.01 ± 5.66% vs. 45.19 ± 3.49%, p < 0.001). The SI and SI Z-score were significantly lower in segments 1–18 of the right ventricle in fetuses with severe tricuspid regurgitation (p < 0.05); furthermore, FS of segments 1–12 and 19–24 and the FS Z-score of segments 18–24 were significantly lower in fetuses with severe tricuspid regurgitation (p < 0.05). Fetal HQ is useful for evaluation of cardiac morphology and function in fetuses with severe tricuspid regurgitation and can provide important reference information for both clinical diagnosis and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Cu-based MGs as electrodes for dye degradation exhibit high catalytic performance. • The degradation efficiency is 96% within 40 min using Cu 55 Zr 45 MG electrodes. • The Cu 55 Zr 45 MG electrodes can degrade the dye solution with different pH values. • Electrochemical action tends to the generation of the active substances. Metallic glasses have received a lot of attention on wastewater treatment due to their unique atomic structure, and the use of metallic glasses as electrodes has produced unexpected electrocatalytic degradation effects for many pollutants through combining with electrochemical technology. However, it still is a formidable challenge to find a metallic glass electrode material with both efficient and clean for the catalytic degradation of pollutants. In this work, the Cu 55 Zr 45 metallic glassy ribbons are used as an electrode to degrade azo dyes and show the excellent degradation effect, which can reach 95.6% within 40 min. In the degradation process, almost no additives are produced and Cu 55 Zr 45 metallic glassy ribbons have excellent effects under different pH conditions. Meanwhile, it exhibits good stability for degradation efficiency during the 8 cycle degradation tests of the amorphous alloy electrode. When the copper nanoparticles are exposed on the surface of the ribbons, the oxidized copper obtained synergistically produce activated radicals is the primary degradation mechanism, where the auxiliary degradation mechanisms include electron transfer and the promotion of active chlorine. This research develops a new type of electrode material for wastewater treatment, and the economy and high efficiency of Cu 55 Zr 45 metallic glass endow it the expandable functional applications. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A collaborative and interdisciplinary strategy spanning hydrodynamics, sophisticated materials, elasticity, and microelectromechanical systems technologies is required for the effective deployment of wing propulsive lifting systems in ships and underwater vehicles. The hydrodynamic characteristics play a crucial role in the motion performance of the marine vehicle, which employs a wing propulsive lifting system. The present study aims at reviewing the hydrodynamics of the wing propulsive lifting system for ships and underwater vehicles, covering the relevant classical work, mathematical models, numerical simulations, and experimental results. This study contributes to the academic discourse by conducting a meticulous examination of the hydrodynamics underlying wing propulsive lifting systems. The classification of research methods enables a comprehensive comparison of results, facilitating accurate performance evaluation. The review concludes by presenting key insight and recommending potential avenues for future research, thereby propelling the knowledge and development of wing-propulsive lifting systems within the scholarly community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microproteins, prevalent across all kingdoms of life, play a crucial role in cell physiology and human health. Although global gene transcription is widely explored and abundantly available, our understanding of microprotein functions using transcriptome data is still limited. To mitigate this problem, we present a database, Mip-mining (https://weilab.sjtu.edu.cn/mipmining/), underpinned by high-quality RNA-sequencing data exclusively aimed at analyzing microprotein functions. The Mip-mining hosts 336 sets of high-quality transcriptome data from 8626 samples and nine representative living organisms, including microorganisms, plants, animals, and humans, in our Mip-mining database. Our database specifically provides a focus on a range of diseases and environmental stress conditions, taking into account chemical, physical, biological, and diseases-related stresses. Comparatively, our platform enables customized analysis by inputting desired data sets with self-determined cutoff values. The practicality of Mip-mining is demonstrated by identifying essential microproteins in different species and revealing the importance of ATP15 in the acetic acid stress tolerance of budding yeast. We believe that Mip-mining will facilitate a greater understanding and application of microproteins in biotechnology. Moreover, it will be beneficial for designing therapeutic strategies under various biological conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lazy-wave riser is an input and output riser for a flexible development system, which is widely used in all the riser and pipeline systems. Because of the influence of various factors, its configuration description, control and motion which have a strong nonlinear character are complex during the running process of the lazy-wave riser. Reference to the specific structure and environmental parameters of a certain lazy-wave risers system with a 300 thousand tons FPSO, with the basis of the specific process of the flexible riser system at work, the lazy-wave risers were discretized into lumped mass models, combined with AQWA, the simplified dynamic model of the whole system at the depth of 2100m has been established by the large hydrodynamic analysis software OrcaFlex. The dynamic response characteristics of the lazy-wave risers have been given by using time domain coupling method. With and without the consideration of the 2nd wave drift load in the simulation process, the effects of the 2nd wave drift load on the results are obtained. The simulation results reveal the difficulty of simulation convergence caused by a large number of risers and flexible components. The 2nd order wave drift loads have a significant effect on the riser system, resulting in the increasement of the effective tension at each end of each riser. To counteract the magnitude of the FPSO response caused by such loads, the number of mooring lines needed to be increased or combined with dynamic positioning techniques to optimize the design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the high heterogeneity and complexity of cancers, patients with different cancer subtypes often have distinct groups of genomic and clinical characteristics. Therefore, the discovery and identification of cancer subtypes are crucial to cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. Recent technological advances have accelerated the increasing availability of multi-omics data for cancer subtyping. To take advantage of the complementary information from multi-omics data, it is necessary to develop computational models that can represent and integrate different layers of data into a single framework. Here, we propose a decoupled contrastive clustering method (Subtype-DCC) based on multi-omics data integration for clustering to identify cancer subtypes. The idea of contrastive learning is introduced into deep clustering based on deep neural networks to learn clustering-friendly representations. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed Subtype-DCC model in identifying cancer subtypes over the currently available state-of-the-art clustering methods. The strength of Subtype-DCC is also supported by the survival and clinical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The configuration of marine towing cable changes significantly during the turning process, with the rotating procedure with fixed cable length being the most frequent. To overcome these challenges, the configuration and dynamic properties of the marine towing cable must be addressed. However, under some particular operating situations, the tugboat must release the marine towed cable during rotation, resulting in a constant change in the length of the marine cable. In view of this, the towed cable is discretized into a lumped mass model based on the lumped mass method, and the dynamic analysis model of the rotation process of towed cable with variable length under different release speeds and different depths is established. This is done with reference to the specific parameters of a towed system, combined with the specific sea conditions of a particular sea area. Time-domain coupling analysis is used to determine the dynamic changes in configuration and stress of marine towing cable at various release speeds and depths. The results of the calculations have some guiding relevance for a certain engineering practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vascular aging is an inevitable process with advancing age, which plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular and microvascular diseases. Diabetic retinopathy (DR) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), characterized by microvascular dysfunction, are the common causes of irreversible blindness worldwide, however there is still a lack of effective therapeutic strategies for rescuing the visual function. In order to develop novel treatments, it is essential to illuminate the pathological mechanisms underlying the vascular aging during DR and AMD progression. In this review, we have summarized the recent discoveries of the effects of oxidative stress and epigenetics on microvascular degeneration, which could provide potential therapeutic targets for DR and AMD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blood–retinal barrier (BRB) breakdown is responsible for multiple ocular diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy, age‐related macular degeneration, and retinal vascular occlusive diseases. Increased vascular permeability contributes to vasogenic edema and tissue damage, with consequent adverse effects on vision. Herein, we found that endothelial CYP2J2 overexpression maintained BRB integrity after ischemia–reperfusion injury and consequently protected against retinal ganglion cell loss. Oxidative stress repressed endothelial ANXA1 expression in vivo and in vitro. CYP2J2 upregulated methyltransferase‐like 3 (METTL3) expression and hence promoted ANXA1 translation via ANXA1 m6A modification in endothelium under oxidative stress. CYP2J2 maintained the distribution of endothelial tight junctions and adherens junctions in an ANXA1‐dependent manner. Endothelial ANXA1 plays an indispensable role in vascular homeostasis and stabilization during development. Endothelial ANXA1 deletion disrupted retinal vascular perfusion as well as BRB integrity. CYP2J2 metabolites restored BRB integrity in the presence of ANXA1. Our findings identified the CYP2J2–METTL3–ANXA1 pathway as a potential therapeutic target for relieving BRB impairments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By means of a new multilayer pseudo‐spectral moist‐convective thermal rotating shallow‐water (mcTRSW) model in a full sphere, we present a possible equatorial adjustment beyond Gill's mechanism for the genesis and dynamics of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO). According to this theory, an eastward‐propagating MJO‐like structure can be generated in a self‐sustained and self‐propelled manner due to nonlinear relaxation (adjustment) of a large‐scale positive buoyancy anomaly, depressed anomaly, or a combination of these, as soon as this anomaly reaches a critical threshold in the presence of moist convection at the Equator. This MJO‐like episode possesses a convectively coupled "hybrid structure" that consists of a "quasi‐equatorial modon" with an enhanced vortex pair and a convectively coupled baroclinic Kelvin wave (BKW), with greater phase speed than that of dipolar structure on an intraseasonal time‐scale. Interaction of the BKW, after circumnavigating the entire Equator, with a new large‐scale buoyancy anomaly may contribute to excitation of a recurrent generation of the next cycle of MJO‐like structure. Overall, the generated "hybrid structure" captures a few of the crudest features of the MJO, including its quadrupolar structure, convective activity, condensation patterns, vorticity field, phase speed, and westerly and easterly inflows in the lower and upper troposphere. Although moisture‐fed convection is a necessary condition for the "hybrid structure" to be excited and maintained in the proposed theory in this study, it is fundamentally different from moisture‐mode theories, because the barotropic equatorial modon and BKW also exist in "dry" environments, while there are no similar "dry" dynamical basic structures in moisture‐mode theories. The proposed theory can therefore be a possible mechanism to explain the genesis and backbone structure of the MJO and to converge some theories that previously seemed divergent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dioxins are a kind of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) with extremely toxic. Municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) process has become one of the most dominant discharge sources of dioxins. A comprehensive discussion about dioxin formation mechanisms was reviewed in this paper, and the mechanisms of high-temperature gas-phase reaction and "de novo" synthesis were systematically illustrated in the form of diagrams. What's more, the effects of various influencing factors on the formation of PCDD/Fs were briefly analyzed in the form of a table. We believed that temperature, catalyst, chlorine source, carbon source, oxygen concentration and moisture were necessary factors for PCDD/Fs formation. Control technologies of dioxins in MSWI process were summarized subsequently from three stages: pre-combustion, in-combustion and post-combustion, and a device for synergistic removal of dioxins based on multi-field force coupling and technical routes for controlling dioxin emissions were proposed, so as to provide mechanisms and methods for effectively reducing the emission concentration of dioxins. An introduction was also conducted of dioxin control technologies in municipal solid waste incineration fly ash (MSWI-FA) in this paper, and their mechanisms, advantages, disadvantages and technical maturity were illustrated in the form of diagrams, which can provide theory and reference for in-depth research of follow-up scholars and industrial application of dioxin control technologies. Finally, current research hotspots, challenges and future research directions were proposed. Implications: In this paper, the main research contents and achievements are as follows: With the emphasis placed on the formation mechanism of dioxins and effects of various influencing factors on the formation of PCDD/Fs. The control technology of dioxins in MSWI process is summarized subsequently from three stages: pre-combustion, in-combustion and post-combustion.A device for synergistic removal of dioxins based on multi-field force coupling and technical routes for controlling dioxin emissions are proposed.A systematic review is conducted of the research progress on control technologies of dioxins in MSWI fly ash in the most recent years.The mechanisms, advantages, disadvantages and technical maturity of PCDD/Fs degradation technologies in MSWI fly ash are illustrated in the form of diagrams.Current research hotspots, challenges and future research directions are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A super-large ensemble simulation dataset with 110 members has been produced by the fully coupled model FGOALS-g3 developed by researchers at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This is the first dataset of large ensemble simulations with a climate system model developed by a Chinese modeling center. The simulation has the largest realizations up to now worldwide in terms of single-model initial-condition large ensembles. Each member includes a historical experiment (1850–2014) and an experiment (2015–99) under the very high greenhouse gas emissions Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenario (SSP5-8.5). The dataset includes monthly and daily temperature, precipitation, and other variables, requiring storage of 275 TB. Additionally, the surface air temperature (SAT) and land precipitation simulated by the FGOALS-g3 super-large ensemble have been validated and projected. The ensemble can capture the response of SAT and land precipitation to external forcings well, and the internal variabilities can be quantified. The availability of more than 100 realizations will help researchers to study rare events and improve the understanding of the impact of internal variability on forced climate changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metallic glasses (MGs) with a unique atomic structure have been widely used in the catalytic degradation of organic pollutants in the recent years. Fe78Si9B13 MGs exhibited excellent catalytic performance for the degradation of oily wastewater in a Fenton-like system for the first time. The oil removal and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal from the oily wastewater were 72.67% and 70.18% within 60 min, respectively. Quenching experiments were performed to verify the production of active hydroxyl radicals (·OH) by activating hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The formation of ·OH species can significantly contribute to the degradation reaction of oily wastewater. Fe78Si9B13 MG ribbons were highly efficient materials that exhibited superior reactivity towards H2O2 activation in oily wastewater treatment. The study revealed the catalytic capability of metallic glasses, presenting extensive prospects of their applications in oily wastewater treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scene graph generation aims to detect visual entities and relationships between them from an image. The object-level visual information is of vital importance for predicting accurate relationships. However, most existing methods essentially encode visual information with coarse supervised information, since they regard different relationships as mutually exclusive semantics with equal-distance labels by taking cross-entropy function as the main training loss. Intuitively, different relationship semantics naturally have their own similarity and dissimilarity with different level distances, i.e., the topological information of relationship semantics. It can serve as an inspiring hint to aid learning to grasp the key related visual information. Accordingly, we propose a Semantically Similarity-wise Dual-branch Network (SSDN) which introduces topological information of relationship semantics as extra supervision to aid learning extracting and encoding relationship-related visual information. To avoid possible chaotic feature learning and enable the introduced knowledge to be better absorbed during inference, we design a dual-branch framework consisting of an auxiliary branch and an inference branch. The topological information extracted from the groundtruth is introduced at the front end of the auxiliary branch which then generates a soft embedding to be propagated to the inference branch in a knowledge distillation manner. Extensive experiments show that our model averagely outperforms state-of-the-art approaches on benchmark Visual Genome and VRD significantly, which demonstrates its effectiveness and superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A sparse sensor array was used for passive impact monitoring of large fuselage panels. • Fuzzy genetic algorithm provides adaptive adjustment ability and improves the localization accuracy of the algorithm under different structural conditions. • The impact force is reconstructed by GRU unit with attention mechanism. • Transfer learning is adopted to reduce the cost of training and improve the precision of training. During aircraft operations, the impact events experienced by the aircraft may cause damage to the structure, thus posing a safety hazard. Therefore, an accurate determination of where the impact occurred and the time history of the impact force can provide an important basis for assessing the condition of the aircraft. However, modern aircraft structures are often large and complex, and relying on dense arrays of sensors for monitoring adds additional weight to the aircraft and reduces the economics of aircraft operation. This paper proposes a region-to-point monitoring strategy. First, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model with region localization capability is trained using the sparse sensor array acquisition data. Then, the weighted center algorithm is used to determine the specific location where the impact occurs, in which the added fuzzy genetic algorithm can provide the ability to adjust weights to improve localization accuracy adaptively. As for the impact force prediction, this paper adopts a model based on a Convolutional Neural Network-Gated Recurrent Unit combined with a Squeeze-Excitation attention mechanism (CNN-GRU-SE), which is capable of predicting the impact force occurring in the flat plate and reinforced structure region of the aircraft under different energy conditions. Finally, the impact of incorporating a transfer learning approach on model performance and training cost is investigated for fuselage regions with different structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic electrode materials have attracted significant attention for rechargeable lithium organic batteries owing to the anticipated electrochemical property and environmentally friendly features. Benzoquinone and naphthoquinone as the simplest quinone substances have been considered as promising cathode materials because of their high theoretical specific capacities and discharge voltages. However, they are soluble in most organic liquid electrolytes, which results in poor electrochemical performance. Herein, a novel molecular cathode material based on naphthoquinone, i.e., 2,2'‐(1,4‐phenylenedithio) bis(1,4‐naphthoquinone) (1,4‐PNQ), is designed and synthesized. It shows greatly decreased solubility as a result of strong intermolecular interactions. In a lithium half cell, it exhibits high carbonyl utilization of close to 100% with a high initial capacity of 231 mAh g‐1. Meanwhile, 1,4‐PNQ presents improved cyclability, retaining a high capacity of 185 mAh g‐1 after 120 cycles. Remarkably, it retains 93.5% of the initial capacity after 500 cycles at 5 C rate. This work provides a novel molecular design strategy to develop naphthoquinone‐derived cathode materials for high performance lithium organic batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metallic glasses (MGs) with unique structures and properties have attracted much attention in a variety of chemical reactions. However, the industrial treatment of dye wastewater with ultrahigh concentration still remains a daunting challenge. Herein, it has been reported that Cu 46 Zr 44.5 Al 7.5 Y 2 MGs are designed and applied to enhance heterogeneous persulfate (PS) activation for acid orange II (AO II) degradation. The Cu-based MGs exhibit the excellent catalytic behavior and reusability, and the high degradation efficiency (98 %) for 400 mg L−1 AO II dye aqueous solution is achieved within 70 min under PS activation overcoming the ultrahigh concentration limitation. Additionally, the degradation efficiency can still maintain more than 98.4 % within 23 min after reused 10 times. The probable degradation pathway may be proposed based on the intermediate identifications during the whole reaction. The highly reactive species for sulfate radicals, hydroxyl radicals and superoxide radicals (·SO 4 −, ·OH and ·O 2 −) generated from the reaction between Cu-based nanocomposites and PS molecules can contribute to improving the catalytic performance. These findings will provide a reasonable and potential strategy to design a catalytic degradation system for ultrahigh concentration dye wastewater treatment. [Display omitted] • The Cu 46 Zr 44.5 Al 7.5 Y 2 MGs exhibit excellent catalytic performance in PS system. • Cu-based MGs/PS degrades AO II dyes in an ultrahigh concentration of 400 mg L−1. • The degradation efficiency maintains more than 98.4 % after reused 10 times. • Effect of PS activation tends to generation of ·SO 4 −, ·OH and ·O 2 − radicals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• BC had more disordered structure as the SOF content increased. • SOF adhered to the BC surface and inhibited the oxidation of BC. • There were correlations between SOF content and physicochemical properties of BC. In the present study, the effects of soluble organic matter (SOF) on the physicochemical properties were revealed to enrich the black carbon (BC) reprocessing strategy for marine engines. The SOF content, oxidation reactivity, graphitization degree, primary particle diameter (Dp) and nanostructure were analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Raman spectrometer and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The results showed that the particles with higher SOF content had larger Dp values, lower graphitization degree and higher oxidation reactivity. Based on SOF would adsorb on the BC surface and increase the adhesion between the particles in the cylinder, a quantitative correlation between SOF content and the physicochemical properties of BC was derived. Meanwhile, the SOF inside the particles formed a porous structure, which improved the oxidation reactivity. In summary, the results of this study are important for a deeper understanding of the nature of marine engine particles and the reduction of nanoparticulate emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A sparse sensor array was used for passive impact monitoring of large fuselage panels. • VMD was used to decompose the aliasing signals caused by complex structures. • MPE was used to extract the features of the decomposed signals. • TCA transform is used to reduce the difference of data distribution between the source domain and the target domain to complete the transfer learning, so that the network trained by the data collected in a small range can be applied to the whole structure. • The weighted centroid location algorithm was used to locate the impact point. Impacts are common damage events in aviation scenarios that can cause damage to the structural integrity ofan aircraft and pose a threat to its safe operation. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor impact events. A region-to-point monitoring method is proposed to address the challenges posed by the large area of monitored aircraft structures and the long distance between sensors. Firstly, to fully use the information in the original impact signal and reduce the aliasing effect caused by the reinforced structure, the original signal is decomposed into several modes with different frequency bands by Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD). The Multi-scale Permutation Entropy (MPE) value is then calculated to reflect the various characteristics of each mode, which is used as a basis for classification. Secondly, Transfer Component Analysis (TCA) is selected as a transfer learning method to reduce the difference between the features of the source domain and the target domains' features. Thirdly, the TCA-transformed source domain data are used to train the Probabilistic Neural Network model (PNN), and the unfamiliar target domain data are used to verify the impact area identification. Finally, based on regional location, the system identification technology and weighted centroid algorithm can be used to obtain the history of impact force and the precise coordinates of the impact location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuropeptides acting as signaling molecules in the nervous system of various animals play crucial roles in a wide range of physiological functions and hormone regulation behaviors. Neuropeptides offer many opportunities for the discovery of new drugs and targets for the treatment of neurological diseases. In recent years, there have been several data-driven computational predictors of various types of bioactive peptides, but the relevant work about neuropeptides is little at present. In this work, we developed an interpretable stacking model, named NeuroPpred-Fuse, for the prediction of neuropeptides through fusing a variety of sequence-derived features and feature selection methods. Specifically, we used six types of sequence-derived features to encode the peptide sequences and then combined them. In the first layer, we ensembled three base classifiers and four feature selection algorithms, which select non-redundant important features complementarily. In the second layer, the output of the first layer was merged and fed into logistic regression (LR) classifier to train the model. Moreover, we analyzed the selected features and explained the feasibility of the selected features. Experimental results show that our model achieved 90.6% accuracy and 95.8% AUC on the independent test set, outperforming the state-of-the-art models. In addition, we exhibited the distribution of selected features by these tree models and compared the results on the training set to that on the test set. These results fully showed that our model has a certain generalization ability. Therefore, we expect that our model would provide important advances in the discovery of neuropeptides as new drugs for the treatment of neurological diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of heterogeneous catalysts of non-noble metal with both high reactivity and activity for the oxygen reduction reaction in catalytic degradation of organic pollutants is a formidable challenge. Here we design an innovative and rational self-propagating combustion method for metallic glasses to synthesize Cu-based composite with high catalytic activity, in which the main compounds of Cu and Cu 2 O are uniformly dispersed on the surface. The Cu/Cu 2 O/ZrO 2 composite exhibits superior catalytic capability compared to other catalysts. The degradation efficiencies all are approximately 99.8% and the total organic carbon (TOC) removals can be up to more than 60% under optimal reaction conditions. The degradation intermediates and possible decomposition pathways of two dyes for Fenton-like catalytic system were systematically investigated. Importantly, the possible catalytic mechanisms can be proposed catalytic oxidation reaction by activated hydroxyl radicals (·OH) and superoxide anion radicals (·O 2 −). These findings provide a new strategy to design efficient composite catalysts for the functional application of wastewater treatment. [Display omitted] • The multifunctional Cu/Cu 2 O/ZrO 2 composite was synthesized by selt-igniting metallic glasses. • The Cu/Cu 2 O/ZrO 2 composite exhibited superior catalytic performance than other various materials. • Kinetic constant and activation energy during degradation process were calculated. • Main reactive species are hydroxyl and superoxide radicals generating to activate H 2 O 2 in catalytic reaction. • Synergistic effect between Cu and Cu 2 O to accelerate the electron transfer was proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mg-Al illiminates were prepared via three-pass double temperature stage hot rolling process, and processed by different annealing processes. The diffusion behavior of the Interface of the rolled and annealed laminates was studied V1/ SEM and EDS energy spectrum analysis. it was found that in the double--temperature stage hot roiling process it the thinning of magnesium alloy mainly occurs in the high temperature stage and maintaining a suitable low temperature section can better control the oxidation of the interfaces. The change of the interface in the roiling process can be divided into three stages: surface broken stage initial diffusion stage, and thickening diffusion stage. In the annealing evolution, the interface in the surface broken stage is dominated by oxidation at various temperatures, and the interface diffusion layer thickness in the initial diffusion stage will increase slightly WILL the increase of annealing temperature and time, but there Is no diffusion platform. When the interface of the thickening diffusion stage Is annealed in the range of 250 - 350, the diffusion layer becomes thicker and transforms from metallurgical combination to phase change combinaion. The formation time of the diffusion platform decreases WILL the increase of annealing temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To explore the feasibility of applying smart-planes fetal heart (S-Planes FH) to 3D volumes to generate and display the outflow tract views (OFTVs) and evaluate its agreement and reliability in determining fetal vessel dimensions.Methods: A total of 147 normal fetuses in the second or third trimester were enrolled. Once conventional 2D sonographic examination was finished, one or more 3D static volumes were then acquired in the 4-chamber view (4CV). The OFTVs automatically generated and displayed via a simple offline operation using S-Planes FH software. Per fetus, a single qualified S-Planes FH image was selected by an expert. The inner diameters of the aorta (AO) and pulmonary artery (PA) were measured in 2D and S-Planes FH images, respectively. The agreement and reliability of the two methods were verified by the Bland-Altman method and the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), respectively.Results: A total of 515 3D static volumes were successfully acquired in 147 fetuses. The OFTVs were generated and displayed using S-Planes FH in 138 (93.9%) cases. S-Planes FH had good agreement in measuring the diameters of great arteries (95% CI of limits, -0.9419 to 1.1464 for AO diameter, -0.8871 to 1.7007 for PA diameter). The intraobserver and interobserver ICCs in this study were greater than 0.81, indicating almost perfect reliability of the two methods with regard to observers.Conclusions: S-Planes FH software is a feasible method for generating OFTVs as well as determining vessel dimensions in the second and third trimesters and had good agreement with 2D examination. Therefore, it possesses clinical value in screening for CHD and can be operated by different sonographers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic design of secondary magnetically insulated transmission line (MITL) for a 3.8-MV gamma-ray radiation facility is proposed. To produce appropriate dose rate of gamma-ray under the condition of reliable insulation, an equivalent circuit model including inductive cavity, MITL, and gamma-ray diode is established. Impedance and transmission time of MITL are detailly analyzed and optimally designed. More precisely, a particle-in-cell (PIC) model is developed to calculate loss-front velocity, operation impedance, and output parameters. The results are coincident with the circuit model and meet the design requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing global food and oil security problems, improvement in rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) yield become urgent. Moreover, previous studies rarely used the semi-dwarf and compact plant type of rapeseed to improve yield potential. Herein, we aimed to investigate the effects of different nitrogen application rates and plant density on root growth and yield-related traits using three genotypes with different plant types to clarify various regulatory mechanisms using semi-dwarf and compact plant type mutants to achieve high yield. Split-split-plot experiments with three nitrogen application rates (N1: N2: N3, 120: 240: 360 kg ha−1) and three plant densities (D1: D2: D3, 15 × 104: 45 × 104: 75 × 104 plants·ha−1) were conducted during the three growing seasons (2019–2022) using semi-dwarf mutant HS5 sca , and HS5 (wild type) as well as their F 1 hybrid HS5 +/sca. With decreasing nitrogen application rate (N3 to N2), the expression level of IAA signal response genes BnaA07. GH3 and BnaA03. IAA13 was decreased in root, while increased in shoot at the early-flowering stage. Moreover, IAA content was decreased in roots and aboveground parts, whereas soluble sugar content of root bleeding sap was increased and volume of root bleeding sap was decreased in three genotypes at early-flowering stage. Additionally, nitrogen accumulation per plant and yield per plant was decreased, while population nitrogen accumulation and population yield were increased with decreasing nitrogen application rate in three studied genotypes. On the other side, with increasing plant density, the expression of BnaA07. GH3 and BnaA03. IAA13 genes were first increased and then decreased in root tissues. In addition, root surface area, the total volume of root bleeding sap, and nitrogen accumulation were decreased, which decreased dry matter and yield per plant. However, total root area, population nitrogen accumulation, and population yield in the three genotypes were increased, and yield was the highest at D2. The population yield of HS5 sca , HS5 +/sca , and HS5 achieved the largest increase of 26.0%, 10.3%, and 9.5% under N2D2 in 2019, 6.9%, 8.4%, and 4.7% under N3D2 in 2020, respectively, as compared to N3D1. Moreover, the morphological indices of HS5 +/sca were greater than other genotypes, with the highest population yield. Appropriate nitrogen application rate with plant density optimized the root architecture and aboveground type of HS5 +/sca that improved auxin level through affecting the downstream auxin-related genes, as well as improved dry matter accumulation and distribution, which increased yield potential. Compared with the two parents, F 1 genotype HS5 +/sca was suitable for nitrogen fertilizer (240 kg ha−1) and plant density (45–75 × 104 plants ha−1). + /sca heterozygous genotypes might promote root growth under low nitrogen application rate and high plant density. A strong root system is an important guarantee of high yield; thus, this heterozygous site could use to introduce excellent hybrids in rapeseed production to further improve root traits and optimize cultivation factors to increase seed yield. • Various plant architecture rapeseeds responded differently to nitrogen and density. • HS5 +/sca was suitable for reducing nitrogen rate and increasing plant density. • BnaA3. IAA7 mutation caused more lateral roots and root biomass in HS5 +/sca. • Auxin level and its signaling genes expression affected root-crown growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matrine is an active component of Leguminosae plants and is thought to exhibit anti-tumor effects. However, the effects of matrine on drug-resistant cancer have not been fully elucidated. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of matrine on vincristine (VCR)-resistant retinoblastoma (RB) cells and to assess the underlying mechanisms governing this effect. The drug-resistant cell line SO-Rb50/VCR was established by incubation with VCR at increasing concentrations. The effects of matrine on SO-Rb50 and SO-RB50/VCR cell growth and proliferation were evaluated using light microscopy and Cell-Counting Kit-8 assay. In addition, the effects of matrine on cell apoptosis, proliferation and cell cycle staging together with its potential underlying mechanisms were investigated. Matrine inhibited the proliferation of SO-Rb50 and SO-RB50/VCR cells in a concentration-dependent manner (0.2-1.1 mg/ml). However, matrine at the half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) appeared to trigger apoptosis of these cells and had a tendency to arrest the cell cycle at the G0/G1 phase. Matrine treatment also promoted the expression of Bax and reduced the expression of Bcl-2 and cyclin D1 compared with the control. However, matrine was not able to increase the sensitivity of cells to VCR. The results of the present study suggested that matrine has the potential to promote the apoptosis of SO-Rb50/VCR cells and arrest cell cycling, indicating a possible benefit of matrine for the treatment of drug-resistant RB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a quantum Monte Carlo study of the phase transition between antiferromagnetic and valence-bond solid ground states in the square-lattice S = 1/2 J–Q model. The critical correlation function of the Q terms gives a scaling dimension corresponding to the value ν = 0.455 ± 0.002 of the correlation-length exponent. This value agrees with previous (less precise) results from conventional methods, e.g., finite-size scaling of the near-critical order parameters. We also study the Q-derivatives of the Binder cumulants of the order parameters for L2 lattices with L up to 448. The slope grows as L1/ν with a value of ν consistent with the scaling dimension of the Q term. There are no indications of runaway flow to a first-order phase transition. The mutually consistent estimates of ν provide compelling support for a continuous deconfined quantum-critical point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use quantum Monte Carlo simulations to study an S = 1/2 spin model with competing multi-spin interactions. We find a quantum phase transition between a columnar valence-bond solid (cVBS) and a Néel antiferromagnet (AFM), as in the scenario of deconfined quantum-critical points, as well as a transition between the AFM and a staggered valence-bond solid (sVBS). By continuously varying a parameter, the sVBS–AFM and AFM–cVBS boundaries merge into a direct sVBS–cVBS transition. Unlike previous models with putative deconfined AFM–cVBS transitions, e.g., the standard J–Q model, in our extended J–Q model with competing cVBS and sVBS inducing terms the transition can be tuned from continuous to first-order. We find the expected emergent U(1) symmetry of the microscopically Z4 symmetric cVBS order parameter when the transition is continuous. In contrast, when the transition changes to first-order, the clock-like Z4 fluctuations are absent and there is no emergent higher symmetry. We argue that the confined spinons in the sVBS phase are fracton-like. We also present results for an SU(3) symmetric model with a similar phase diagram. The new family of models can serve as a useful tool for further investigating open questions related to deconfined quantum criticality and its associated emergent symmetries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in background zonal wind in the tropical Pacific are often invoked to explain changes in ENSO properties. However, the sensitivity of ENSO to mean zonal winds has been thoroughly explored only in intermediate coupled models (following Zebiak and Cane), not in coupled GCMs. The role of mean meridional winds has received even less attention. Accordingly, the goal of this study is to examine systematically the effects of both zonal (equatorial) and meridional (cross-equatorial) background winds on ENSO using targeted experiments with a comprehensive climate model (CESM). Changes in the mean winds are generated by imposing heat flux forcing in two confined regions at a sufficient distance north and south of the equator. We find that the strengthening of either wind component reduces ENSO amplitude, especially eastern Pacific SST variability, and inhibits meridional swings of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). The effect of zonal winds is generally stronger than that of meridional winds. A stability analysis reveals that the strengthening of zonal and meridional winds weakens the ENSO key positive feedbacks, specifically the zonal advection and thermocline feedbacks, which explains these changes. Zonal wind enhancement also intensifies mean upwelling and hence dynamical damping, leading to a further weakening of El Niño events. Ultimately, this study argues that the zonal and, to a lesser extent, meridional wind strengthening of the past decades may have contributed to the observed shift of El Niño characteristics after the year 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguments based on atmospheric energetics and aqua-planet model simulations link the latitudinal position of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) to atmospheric cross-equatorial energy transport—a greater southward transport corresponds to a more northerly position of the ITCZ. This idea is often invoked to explain an interhemispheric dipole pattern of precipitation anomalies in paleoclimates. In contrast, here we demonstrate that in the tropical Pacific the response of the fully coupled ocean-atmosphere system to a hemispherically asymmetric thermal forcing, modulating this energy transport, involves an interplay between the ITCZ and its counterpart in the South Pacific—the Southern Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ). This interplay leads to interhemispheric seesaw changes in tropical precipitation, such that the latitudinal position of each rain band remains largely fixed, but their intensities follow a robust inverse relationship. The seesaw behavior is also evident in the past and future coupled climate simulations of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). We also show that the tropical Pacific precipitation response to thermal forcing is qualitatively different between the aqua-planet (without ocean heat transport), slab-ocean (with climatological ocean heat transport represented by a "Q-flux") and fully-coupled model configurations. Specifically, the induced changes in the ITCZ latitudinal position successively decrease, while the seesaw precipitation intensity response becomes more prominent, from the aqua-planet to the slab-ocean to the fully-coupled configuration. Thus, the ITCZ/SPCZ seesaw can explain the paleoclimate precipitation dipole pattern without invoking a too strong climate forcing and is relevant to future projections of tropical precipitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

F plasma modification on the Sb 2 Se 3 film could effectively suppress the surface defects of Se vacancy, thus resulting in an improved electrical conductivity of Sb 2 Se 3. Owing to this, an enhanced photo-current and a superior stability characteristic are achieved for the F plasma modified Sb 2 Se 3 photodetector. • F plasma modification can suppress the Se vacancy on Sb 2 Se 3 film. • F plasma modification opens a new way to improve the film conductivity of Sb 2 Se 3. • Optoelectronic property of F modified Sb 2 Se 3 photodetector is firstly reported. • F plasma modification leads to an improved performance of Sb 2 Se 3 photodetector. Antimony selenide (Sb 2 Se 3) emerges with great potential for broad-spectrum photonics due to the moderate band gap and excellent optical properties. However, the undesirable bulk electrical conductivity of Sb 2 Se 3 drags down the carriers transport through the film and limits the device performance. To counter this challenge, herein, a ground-breaking surface technique based on fluorine plasma is applied on the Sb 2 Se 3 films and analyzes through binding energy properties, morphologies and sheet resistances. F plasma modification is found to provide an obvious improvement of the conductivity of Sb 2 Se 3 film, as a result of the suppressed Se vacancy. Moreover, we investigate the performance of Sb 2 Se 3 thin film photodetector with F modification for the first time. The device presents a broad spectral photo-response ranging from visible to near-infrared region (500–1050 nm). Owing to the improved conductivity of Sb 2 Se 3 film, the photodetector achieves a competitive responsivity of 35.42 A W−1, a high detectivity of 4.89 × 1011 Jones, a ultrahigh external quantum efficiency of 5.06 × 103% and a fast rise and decay time of 21.4 and 22.1 ms, achieving an obvious improvement as compared with the pristine device. This breakthrough opens up a new route to improve the conductivity of Sb 2 Se 3 film and develop high-performance Sb 2 Se 3 film photodetector devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of topography on the linear stability of both barotropic vortices and two-layer, baroclinic vortices are examined by considering cylindrical topography and vortices with stepwise relative vorticity profiles in the quasigeostrophic approximation. Four vortex configurations are considered, classified by the number of relative vorticity steps in the horizontal and the number of layers in the vertical: barotropic one-step vortex (Rankine vortex), barotropic two-step vortex, and their two-layer, baroclinic counterparts with the vorticity steps in the upper layer. In the barotropic calculation, the vortex is destabilized by topography having an oppositely signed potential vorticity jump while stabilized by topography of same-signed jump, that is, anticyclones are destabilized by seamounts while stabilized by depressions. Further, topography of ap- propriate sign and magnitude can excite a mode-1 instability for a two-step vortex, especially relevant for topographic encounters of an otherwise stable vortex. The baroclinic calculation is in general consistent with the barotropic calculation except that the growth rate weakens and, for a two-step vortex, becomes less sensitive to topography (sign and magnitude) as baroclinicity increases. The smaller growth rate for a baro-clinic vortex is consistent with previous findings that vortices with sufficient baroclinic structure could cross the topography relatively easily. Nonlinear contour dynamics simulations are conducted to confirm the linear stability analysis and to describe the subsequent evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semi-hydrogenation of alkynols to alkenols with Pd-based catalysts is of great significance in fine chemical industries. Industrial Lindlar catalysts, employing Pb to modify the Pd nanoparticles for higher selectivity toward alkenols, however, generally suffer from both a severe activity decrease and environment pollution caused by using heavy metal Pb and additives. Therefore, how to overcome the selectivity–activity paradox remains a great challenge in industry. Here, we report a controllable strategy for the synthesis of semi-hydrogenation catalysts, which successfully improves the catalytic performance through selectively poisoning the edge and corner sites of Pd nanoparticles. When the integrity of the crystal face is reserved, both higher activity (∼1340 h−1) and selectivity (∼95% at 99% conversion) are achieved in the semi-hydrogenation of 2-methyl-3-butyn-2-ol (MBY) in ethanol, an industrially important intermediate product for the synthesis of vitamin E, without adding any toxic additives. What's more, the yield could exceed 98% at 99% conversion under no solvent and organic adsorbate conditions, which had never been achieved before. This work provides a different perspective to design and develop high performance catalysts for semi-hydrogenation of alkenols or even substituted alkynes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is one of the effective methods to control NOx emission from diesel engine. The present study focused on the amount of soot particles that are back into the engine cylinder via EGR recirculated gas, to explore its influence mechanism on exhaust soot particle characteristics. A DPF (diesel particulate filter) was integrated in EGR loop, which was employed to remove recirculated soot particles and reduce PM emissions. A comprehensive set of experimental techniques were used to characterize the morphology, nanostructure, surface functional groups and oxidation behaviors of soot particles. Results revealed that when soot particles underwent in-cylinder oxidation again via EGR recirculated gas, exhaust soot particles had smaller primary particle size (d p), longer fringe length (La), smaller separation distance (D s) and tortuosity (T f), as well as lower relative amount of aliphatic C–H group and oxidation reactivity. Due to higher graphitization degree of recirculated soot particles, the internal burning was conducted earlier during oxidation processes, which resulted in hollow structure at 50% and 75% burn-off stages. • DPF integrated in EGR loop could reduce PM emissions from diesel engine. • Soot particles via EGR recirculated gas had two times of in-cylinder oxidation. • Higher oxidation degree produced mature soot particles. • Hollow structures appeared in recirculated soot particles during oxidation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pipelines and cables are widely used for transporting oil resources in offshore oil exploitation. J-tubes are a well-known means of placing small-diameter pipeline risers and umbilical connections on offshore platforms. In this paper, OrcaFlex develops a model of an umbilical cable J-tube pull-in installation based on an umbilical cable cross section design. The hydrodynamic response to various wave directions is studied using the lumped mass method. The results show that the longitudinal waves have little effect on the maximum effective tension of the section under water. The transverse waves will cause the cable to vibrate violently in the transverse direction. The mean shear force under the wave direction of 120° is the largest, followed by 60° and 75°, and finally 90° and 105°. In addition to the hydrodynamic response data, the mechanical characteristics of the umbilical cable and the factors that should be considered in the pull-in installation of the J-tube are provided with significance for practical application of engineering. • The numerical model of the process of umbilical cable pull-in is established in Orcaflex. • The lumped mass method is used to simulate the umbilical cable. • The dynamic properties of the umbilical cable pull-in operation under different wave directions are studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lock-in thermography provides a fast, low-cost, and accurate non-destructive testing for subsurface defect detection in materials. However, there is serious sensor noise and background interference presented in the infrared images captured by lock-in thermography. In this paper, we set up lock-in thermography experiments to analyze the characteristics of sensor noise and background interference. Based on their different characteristics, we design a two-stage CNN model for the joint removal of sensor noise and background interference. This model consists of a number of multi-direction feature extraction blocks (MDFEBs) to extract local features in different directions for pixel-level sensor noise removal, and an encoder–decoder architecture with large receptive fields to extract global features for background interference correction. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms the well-established infrared image denoising and non-uniform background correction techniques on specimens made of different materials and at various excitation frequencies. The proposed two-stage CNN model provides high-quality input of infrared images for the following subsurface defect detection task in lock-in thermography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • MIPs synthesized for atrazine had high-selective binding capacity towards atrazine. • MIPs-SPE achieved >93% recovery of atrazine from spiked apple juice samples. • Colorimetric assay using AuNPs (size 43 nm) achieved a <0.01 mg L−1 detection limit. • SERS assay using AuNPs (size 27 nm) achieved a <0.005 mg L−1 quantification limit. • MIPs-AuNPs colorimetric/SERS sensor can determine atrazine in foods within 30 min. Abstract Rapid and reliable determination of atrazine, a common chemical contaminant, in agri-foods is highly necessary. We reported a novel dual-chemosensor coupling, a separation [molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs)], an instrumental-free detection [gold nanoparticles (AuNPs)-based colorimetric assay] and an instrument-based quantification [surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)] method for high-throughput and sensitive determination of atrazine in apple juice. Used as the selective sorbent for the solid phase extraction, MIPs effectively extracted atrazine from apple juice with high recoveries (∼93%). AuNPs of different sizes (large; medium; and small) performed differently in the two analytical methods. Large-AuNPs provided the highest sensitivity in colorimetric analysis (<0.01 mg L−1), while medium-AuNPs achieved the lowest limit of detection (0.0012 mg L−1) and quantification (0.0040 mg L−1) in SERS analysis. With minor modifications, protocols for both analytical methods can rapidly detect and/or quantify atrazine in different food products complying with the Health Canada regulation (0.005 mg L−1). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The effects of nanosized TiB 2 particles on microstructural and mechanical properties of the hot extruded in-situ TiB 2 /Al-Cu-Li composite after T6 heat treatment are quantitatively evaluated by using scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction technique and X-ray diffraction. Most TiB 2 particles are aggregated together to form the particle bands. The composite develops the typical fiber textures, <111> and paralleling to extruded direction, while the matrix alloy only develops weak <111> and <113> textures. The intensity and volume fraction of major texture components can increase significantly with the addition of TiB 2 particles. Due to the introduction of TiB 2 particles, T1 and S phases not only have higher number density, but also are smaller. In addition, the T1 phases can connect with each other to form a continuous network in the composite. The θ' phase, identified in matrix alloy, is rarely observed in the composite. The yield strength and ultimate tensile strength of composite have increased by 248 MPa and 152 MPa compared with matrix alloy, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sb 2 Se 3 is a potential light harvesting material for photovoltaic cells due to its excellent optical, electrical properties and eco-friendly nature. Herein, an efficient Sb 2 Se 3 sensitized solar cell (SSC) is prepared for the first time through a solution-based successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) process which is flexible, low-cost and easy to access. Aiming to further improve the device performance, a novel approach based on TiCl 4 treatment on mesoporous TiO 2 is introduced, which is found to optimize the growth condition of Sb 2 Se 3 nanoparticles and improve the interfacial surface state, resulting in the better band alignment and controlled recombination losses in Sb 2 Se 3 SSCs. The TiCl 4 treated device achieves the better photoelectric conversion efficiency of 1.22%, which is much higher than that of 0.46% for the solar cell without TiCl 4 treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) have significantly advanced the generation of highly realistic and expressive 3D scenes. However, the task of editing NeRF, particularly in terms of geometry modification, poses a significant challenge. This issue has obstructed NeRF's wider adoption across various applications. To tackle the problem of efficiently editing neural implicit fields, we introduce Neural Impostor, a hybrid representation incorporating an explicit tetrahedral mesh alongside a multigrid implicit field designated for each tetrahedron within the explicit mesh. Our framework bridges the explicit shape manipulation and the geometric editing of implicit fields by utilizing multigrid barycentric coordinate encoding, thus offering a pragmatic solution to deform, composite, and generate neural implicit fields while maintaining a complex volumetric appearance. Furthermore, we propose a comprehensive pipeline for editing neural implicit fields based on a set of explicit geometric editing operations. We show the robustness and adaptability of our system through diverse examples and experiments, including the editing of both synthetic objects and real captured data. Finally, we demonstrate the authoring process of a hybrid synthetic‐captured object utilizing a variety of editing operations, underlining the transformative potential of Neural Impostor in the field of 3D content creation and manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors identify an interdecadal oscillatory mode of the North Atlantic atmosphere-ocean system in a general circulation model (GFDL CM2.1) via a linear inverse model (LIM). The oscillation mechanism is mostly embedded in the subpolar gyre: anomalous advection generates density anomalies in the eastern subpolar gyre, which propagate along the mean gyre circulation and reach the subpolar gyre center around 10 years later, when associated anomalous advection of the opposite sign starts the other half cycle. As density anomalies reach the Labrador Sea deep convection region, Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) anomalies are also induced. Both the gyre and AMOC anomalies then propagate equatorward slowly, following the advection of density anomalies. The oscillation is further demonstrated to be more likely an ocean-only mode while excited by the atmospheric forcing; in particular, it can be approximated as a linearly driven damped oscillator that is partly excited by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The slowly evolving interdecadal oscillation significantly improves and prolongs the LIM's prediction skill of sea surface temperature (SST) evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately and quantitatively monitoring the damages in composite structures is very challenging, but important for assessing their integrity. In this paper, an innovative damage location identification and size quantification assessment method based on Lamb wave is proposed for composite laminates. A continuous hidden Markov model (CHMM)-based damage scaling factor together with a weighted average imaging algorithm is adopted in damage location identification. To quantify the degree of structural deviation from the healthy state, the inconspicuous change of guided wave (GW) signal is converted to a CHMM-based damage scaling factor with significant change. Based on the damage scaling factors of all GW sensing paths, a weighted average imaging algorithm is performed to identify the most probable damage location. In addition, a damage quantitative mathematical expression is proposed to approximately estimate the size of circular-shaped damage founded on several different damage-related characterizations. The implementation of the proposed quantitative methodology is comparatively simple and straightforward for damage detection. Experiments on three composite panels with multiple damage cases are conducted to substantiate the proposed method. The sensor layers with embedded piezoelectric transducer (PZT) sensor networks surf-mounted on the structures are employed to excite and receive Lamb wave signals since their superiority of flexibility, electrical stability and apt for complex structures. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is capable of pinpointing both the location and size of the circular-hole damage in composite structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of submarine maneuverability is an important part in the overall design of submarines. The goal of this investigation is to study the hydrodynamic coefficients of SUBOFF AFF-8 in rotating arm maneuver. This paper consists of two parts, which deal with the test technology and test results, respectively. Part Ⅱ of this paper presents the angular velocity-dependent derivatives and spatial coupling coefficients of SUBOFF AFF-8 and investigates the forces and moments in steady turn. The forces and moments of SUBOFF AFF-8 are investigated and the hydrodynamic coefficients of SUBOFF AFF-8 are fitted. The results show the coefficients with r in the lower corner represent the linearity of hydrodynamic forces. In order to get more accurate nonlinear coefficients and coupling coefficients, the drift angle should not be too small in the rotating arm test. When SUBOFF AFF-8 has both drift angle and attack angle, the nonlinear degree of rotation increases sharply, which will bring great difficulties to the measurement of forces and moments. • The main contributions of this paper are the following: • The forces and moments of SUBOFF AFF-8 in steady turn are investigated. • The angular velocity-dependent derivatives and spatial coupling coefficients of SUBOFF AFF-8 are fitted. • The measuring and testing technique of the rotating arm test is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LiFePO4 batteries exhibit voltage plateau and voltage hysteresis characteristics during charging and discharging processes; however, the estimation of state-of-charge relies on voltage detection. Thus, the estimation accuracy of SOC is low in a traditional method. In this paper, a full charge and discharge SOC correction method is proposed; i.e., the SOC is corrected to 100% when the battery is fully charged and to 0% when fully discharged, and the actual usable capacity is corrected using the fully discharged capacity after being fully charged. Thereby, the cumulative error of the ampere-hour integration method is dynamically corrected. In engineering applications, however, the battery systems do not always undergo full charge and discharge cycling due to the operating conditions. By making full use of the distributed control characteristics of the multi-branch topology battery system, the present work proposes an optimized system control strategy to realize the unsynchronized full charge and discharge cluster by cluster, which extends the application of the full charge and discharge SOC correction method. The experimental results verify the accuracy of the proposed SOC correction method and the feasibility of the control strategy. A more reliable and efficient battery management scheme is provided for LFP battery system, which has high practical value in engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of submarine maneuverability is an important part in the overall design of submarines. The goal of this investigation is to study the hydrodynamic coefficients of SUBOFF AFF-8 in rotating arm maneuver. This paper consists of two parts, which deal with the test technology and test results, respectively. In Part I, the measuring and testing technique of the rotating arm test in rotating arm basin of Zhejiang University (ZJU) is presented. The connection between the model and the trailer is completed through a cylindrical strut. A steel base is pre-installed inside the model to connect one end of the strut. The detailed calibration of the six-component balance is presented. The linear hydrodynamic coefficients on the horizontal and vertical plane are obtained and compared with the results of DTRC. The results show that the ZJU test values is reliable. The difference between DTRC and ZJU is within 10%. Some technical details about the rotating arm test are discussed in the conclusion. Part Ⅱ of this paper presents the angular velocity-dependent derivatives and spatial coupling coefficients of SUBOFF AFF-8 and investigates the forces and moments in steady turn. • The main contributions of this paper are the following: • The measuring and testing technique of the rotating arm test is presented. • The detailed calibration of the six-component balance is introduced. • The linear hydrodynamic coefficients of SUBOFF AFF-8 on the horizontal and vertical plane are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Focusing on learning category-extended detector with limited data. • Meeting the needs of real-world applications. • Conflict-free loss leads to acceptable unified detectors in one training round. • A well designed retraining phase further improve performance. • Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. Object detectors are typically learned on fully-annotated training data with fixed predefined categories. However, categories are often required to be increased progressively. Usually, only the original training set annotated with old classes and some new training data labeled with new classes are available in such scenarios. Based on the limited datasets, a unified detector that can handle all categories is strongly needed. We propose a practical scheme to achieve it in this work. A conflict-free loss is designed to avoid label ambiguity, leading to an acceptable detector in one training round. To further improve performance, we propose a retraining phase in which Monte Carlo Dropout is employed to calculate the localization confidence to mine more accurate bounding boxes, and an overlap-weighted method is proposed for making better use of pseudo annotations during retraining. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Investigating the effect of FSC on soot oxidation is important for DPF regeneration. • Morphology, nanostructure, composition and sulfur functional groups are analyzed. • Higher relative concentration of C–S bond corresponds to shorter La. • The relative amounts of –SH and C–S are correlated with soot oxidation reactivity. • Metal sulfates CaSO 4 shown to promote soot oxidation during thermal process. Soot particles with sulfur functional groups (SFGs) are one of the main concerns from shipping emissions, especially when they are produced from fuel combustion with high fuel sulfur content (FSC). The present study investigates the physicochemical characteristics of soot particles generated from different FSC fuels on a marine auxiliary diesel engine. A comprehensive set of experimental techniques including Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) are employed to characterize SFGs, chemical elements, morphology, nanostructure, volatile organic fraction (VOF) content and oxidation behavior, respectively. Results reveal that, FSC has negligible influences on combustion performance, yet its high content increases the concentrations of SFGs (–SH, C–S–S, C–S, SO 4 2−) and sulfur element VOF content and primary particle size (d p) of soot particles. Linear correlations between soot fringe length (La), oxidation activation energy (Ea) and relative concentrations of –SH and C–S are observed, respectively. Higher relative concentration of C–S bond corresponds to shorter La. The relative amounts of –SH and C–S could improve soot oxidation reactivity, associated with lower Ea. In addition, metal-sulfates are formed from the combination of SO 4 2− with metal elements contained in fuel or lube oils, among which CaSO 4 is shown an enhancing factor for soot oxidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tidal current energy shows great attractiveness as it stores an enormous amount of predictable sustainable resources that can be extracted and used for commercial power generation. The present study aims at investigating the performance of a 300 W counter-rotating type horizontal axis tidal turbine (HATT) by computational fluid dynamic (CFD) and experiments. And this study provides a novel method to test the performance of a tidal current turbine. In the present work, a bi-directional counter-rotating type HATT, the power and blade diameter are 300 W and 1 m respectively, was designed according to blade element momentum theory (BEMT). The CFD simulations, flume experiment tests, and sea trial were carried out to evaluate its performance. The experiment tests include 1/4 prototype blades towing tank model test and prototype large radius rotating arm tank test. The power coefficients of the blades under different blade tip speed ratios were obtained. Results shown that a good agreement has been obtained between the CFD predictions and the experiment data, moreover, the counter-rotating type HATT has a great power output performance. Such results provide valuable data for validating the hydrodynamic design and numerical simulations of counter-rotating type HATT. What's more, this work provides a novel method to test the performance of a tidal current turbine, which is a large-radius rotating arm tank test. • A counter-rotating type horizontal axis tidal turbine was devised and tested. • Rotating arm tank was used to test the performance of a tidal turbine. • The difference of towing tank test and rotating arm tank test was analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]