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In the development of high‐performance organic solar cells (OSCs), the self‐organization of organic semiconductors plays a crucial role. This study focuses on the precisely manipulation of molecular assemble via tuning alkyl side‐chain topology in a series of low‐cost nonfused‐ring electron acceptors (NFREAs). Among the three NFREAs investigated, DPA‐4, which possesses an asymmetric alkyl side‐chain length, exhibits a tight packing in the crystal and high crystallinity in the film, contributing to improved electron mobility and favorable film morphology for DPA‐4. As a result, the OSC device based on DPA‐4 achieves an excellent power conversion efficiency of 16.67 %, ranking among the highest efficiencies for NFREA‐based OSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the development of high‐performance organic solar cells (OSCs), the self‐organization of organic semiconductors plays a crucial role. This study focuses on the precisely manipulation of molecular assemble via tuning alkyl side‐chain topology in a series of low‐cost nonfused‐ring electron acceptors (NFREAs). Among the three NFREAs investigated, DPA‐4, which possesses an asymmetric alkyl side‐chain length, exhibits a tight packing in the crystal and high crystallinity in the film, contributing to improved electron mobility and favorable film morphology for DPA‐4. As a result, the OSC device based on DPA‐4 achieves an excellent power conversion efficiency of 16.67 %, ranking among the highest efficiencies for NFREA‐based OSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive Summary: By employing thiazole and 4‐chlorothiazole as the A′ units, two A‐D‐A′‐D‐A type nonfused‐ring electron acceptors (NFREAs) Tz‐H and Tz‐Cl were designed and synthesized. Replacing thiazole in Tz‐H with 4‐chlorothiazole can not only remarkably shorten the synthetic route through C—H direct arylation but also enhance molecular planarity with the simultaneous incorporation of S···N and S···Cl noncovalently conformational locks (NoCLs). The photovoltaic devices based on PM6:Tz‐Cl exhibited a power conversion efficiency as high as 11.10%, much higher than that of PM6:Tz‐H (6.41%), mainly due to more efficient exciton dissociation, better and more balanced carrier mobility, less charge recombination, and more favorable morphology. These findings demonstrate the great potential of NoCLs in achieving low‐cost and high‐performance NFREAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many breakthroughs on security and privacy-preserving techniques have emerged to mitigate the trust loss of cloud hosting environment caused by various types of attacks. To enhance memory-level security of multi-keyword fuzzy search, a widely occurred query request, we take the initiative to apply Trusted Execution Environment (a.k.a TEE) technology to our protocol design which provides hardware-based tamper-proof enclaves. Then we propose the Edit Distance-based Obfuscation Mechanism to further protect the query process executed outside TEE against access pattern leakage. With concerns of practicality and performance, we also propose the two-layer fuzzy index structure and Trend-aware Cache. The former addresses the space limitation of TEE memory for searching large datasets, while the latter optimizes the cache utility of TEE with trend-aware coordinator to effectively reduce the communication overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creep, sulfate erosion resistance, fly ash content of concrete, and sustained compression load are important factors that will affect the long-term performance of concrete. It is of great interest to combine these effects together to make a comprehensive investigation of fly ash concrete. However, the concrete creep under both sustained compression load and sulfate attack conditions has rarely been reported. To obtain the creep characteristics of fly ash concrete in a sulfate environment, this paper first finishes the creep experiments of fly ash concrete under sustained compression load and sulfate attack. The test factors include the load stress level, the concentration of sulfate solution, and the content of fly ash. Based on the creep mechanism of fly ash concrete under sulfate erosion, the relationship between time-dependent section area variation and creep was carried out. After comparing different creep models, the creep calculation model of fly ash concrete under sulfate erosion was built via the B4 model combined with the cross-sectional area of the damaged layer and undamaged layer of concrete. Finally, comparing the calculated values with the test results, the calculated results were in good agreement with the test data, which is of practical significance to the practical engineering application and the improvement of structural reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To make radial basis function (RBF) networks efficient for large-scale learning tasks, the parallel technique provides a promising way for the construction of multicolumn RBF network (MCRN), where the task to be tackled is decomposed into several subtasks and RBF networks designed for these subtasks are integrated as a parallel structure to obtain the final model. This paper focuses on presenting an efficient design method for MCRN based on improved generalized hybrid constructive (GHC) learning algorithm such that desired performance and high efficiency are guaranteed. Specifically, a minimum difference scheme is firstly introduced to divide a large-scale dataset into several parts with similar distribution. For each subtask, a compact RBF network is designed by improved GHC learning algorithm. By fully considering the inherent properties of RBF networks, a K -nearest potential centers based criterion is established to calculate the output of testing sample. Experiments on some benchmark classification problems are conducted to verify the advantages of the proposed method. In terms of training and testing efficiencies and classification accuracy, it is shown that our model is superior over some existing ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of deep learning, the accuracy of face recognition of learning based approaches has even exceeded that of humans in some circumstances. However, identifying faces that are heavily deflected is still a challenging issue. To synthesize the frontal view from large-pose faces, a face merged generative adversarial network (FM-GAN) equipped with two generators and one discriminator is proposed in this paper. Generally, generative adversarial network (GAN) has only one generator and one discriminator to compete with each other to make the network convergence. By introducing an additional generator, the confrontation power is greatly enhanced and thus the performance of the designed model is improved. In the proposed framework, the first generator learns the upper and lower parts of a face to capture essential facial features. These high-dimensional information of the merged face together with the multi-scale encoded profile are transmitted into the second generator. Based on the competition with the discriminator, the final frontal face is synthesized by the second generator. To reduce the model complexity, FM-GAN only encodes the original image once through a pre-trained network, and the extracted features are shared by the two decoders. In addition, the first generator simultaneously produces the upper and lower parts of a face by the same encoder. Therefore, only the parameters of two decoders and one discriminator are required to be updated during the training process. The experimental results show that the frontal faces synthesized by our model can better preserve the facial identity and photorealistic than by some existing GANs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One key challenge for data owners to host their databases in the cloud is data privacy. In this paper, we first demonstrate that even with the most recent hardware-based security technology such as Intel SGX, a hypervisor can still sniff key database operations running in its guest virtual machine (VM) such as the frequency and type of SQL queries, by monitoring the access pattern of this VM's main and secondary memory. To ensure security against such access pattern monitoring attacks, we then propose ProDB, a minimal adaptation of a conventional DBMS with both hardware enclave and Oblivious RAM protocol. To enhance its performance for practical use, we also design a SQL-aware Path ORAM protocol called SaP ORAM, which optimizes the classic Path ORAM protocol under practical database workload. Through security analysis and extensive experimental results, we prove and show ProDB achieves high security and throughput on commodity cloud hosting servers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study aimed to investigate the safety and efficacy of minimally invasive total mesoesophageal excision (TME) for esophageal cancer.Methods: We retrospectively collected data from patients with esophageal cancer who underwent esophagectomy at our center between January 2011 and June 2017. Among 611 eligible patients, 302 underwent minimally invasive total mesoesophageal excision (the TME group) and 309 underwent non-total mesoesophageal excision (the NME group). Outcomes were compared after 1-to-1 propensity score matching, and subgroup analyses were performed for cases involving pT1-2 or pT3-4a disease.Results: The propensity score matching produced 249 pairs of patients. The TME group had a shorter operative time (P < 0.001), lower intraoperative bleeding (P < 0.001), and a shorter postoperative hospital stay (P < 0.001). There were no significant differences between the two groups in the number of removed lymph nodes, 30-day mortality, or postoperative complications. In addition, both groups had similar 3-year rates of overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). However, the 3-year recurrence rate in the esophageal bed was significantly lower in the TME group (P = 0.033). Furthermore, among patients with pT3-4a disease, the TME group had better 3-year rates of OS, DFS, and recurrence.Conclusion: Minimally invasive total mesoesophageal excision appears to be a safe technique that can reduce tumor recurrence in the esophageal bed. Furthermore, this technique provided survival benefits for patients with pT3-4a disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to clarify the deformation effect of fly ash concrete members after loading and unloading subsequently, experiments on creep and creep recovery of fly ash concrete were carried out on consideration of three fly ash contents and two concrete loading ages. After comparing the available prediction models for concrete creep, the B4 model was modified by multiplying the influence coefficient and creep terms, and the fly ash concrete creep prediction model was established correspondingly. The comparison shows that the modified B4 model is in good agreement with the experimental data. Furthermore, based on the experimental phenomena and the development law of creep recovery of fly ash concrete, the prediction model for creep recovery of fly ash concrete was proposed in combination with the factors affecting creep recovery which include loading age, fly ash content, etc. Finally, the calculated values of the proposed creep recovery model were compared with the experimental results and the applicability of the model was discussed. The creep and creep recovery model of fly ash concrete proposed is of great significance for revealing the time-varying law of fly ash concrete and improving the performance of concrete structures. • Creep and creep recovery of fly ash concrete. • Establishing a modified B4 model for fly ash concrete creep. • Proposing a creep recovery model for fly ash concrete considering load holding time, loading age and fly ash content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To assess the exosomal miR‐21/Let‐7a ratio, a noninvasive method, in distinguishing non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) from benign pulmonary diseases. Methods: The exosomes were extracted from the peripheral blood serum using serum exosomal extraction kit. miR‐21 and Let‐7a levels were evaluated by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. Results: We found that miR‐21/Let‐7a ratio of NSCLC patients was significantly higher than that of healthy people, patients with pulmonary inflammation diseases, and benign pulmonary nodules, respectively. Receiver‐operating characteristic analysis revealed that as compared with healthy controls, miR‐21/Let‐7a produced the area under the curve (AUC) at 0.8029 in patients with NSCLC, which helped to distinguish NSCLC from healthy controls with 81.33% sensitivity and 69.57% specificity. In addition, the AUC of miR‐21/Let‐7a in NSCLC patients was 0.8196 in comparison to patients with pulmonary inflammation diseases. Meanwhile, the sensitivity and specificity were 56.00% and 100%, respectively. Furthermore, compared with patients with benign pulmonary nodules, the AUC of miR‐21/Let‐7a in NSCLC patients was 0.7539. The sensitivity and specificity were 56.00% and 82.61%, respectively. Conclusion: In the present study, our findings revealed that exosomal miR‐21/Let‐7a ratio holds considerable promise as a noninvasive biomarker for the diagnosis of NSCLC from benign pulmonary diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel approach to investigate the assembly and fabrication method for Indium Arsenide nanowires nano devices. Assembly of InAs nanowires field-effect transistor (FET) was realized by dielectrophoresis approach. Before deposition of the contacts, InAs nanowires were treated wet etching in an ammonium polysulfide ((NH4)2Sx) solution to remove a surface oxide layer. The assembled devices were characterized by atomic force microscopy. The experimental results showed that the efficient assembly of InAs nanowires was obtained when the applied alternating current voltage has a frequency of 2MHz and an amplitude of 10V, and the success rate of ideal assembly for InAs nanowires FET had been assessed. Meanwhile, it also provided an effective assembly method for other one-dimensional nanomaterials assembly of nano devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is an aggressive malignancy and a leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Lack of effective early diagnosis strategies and ensuing complications from tumour metastasis account for the majority of ESCC death. Thus, identification of key molecular targets involved in ESCC carcinogenesis and progression is crucial for ESCC prognosis. In this study, four pairs of ESCC tissues were used for mRNA sequencing to determine differentially expressed genes (DEGs). 347 genes were found to be upregulated whereas 255 genes downregulated. By screening DEGs plus bioinformatics analyses such as KEGG, PPI and IPA, we found that there were independent interactions between KRT family members. KRT17 upregulation was confirmed in ESCC and its relationship with clinicopathological features were analysed. KRT17 was significantly associated with ESCC histological grade, lymph node and distant metastasis, TNM stage and five-year survival rate. Upregulation of KRT17 promoted ESCC cell growth, migration, and lung metastasis. Mechanistically, we found that KRT17-promoted ESCC cell growth and migration was accompanied by activation of AKT signalling and induction of EMT. These findings suggested that KRT17 is significantly related to malignant progression and poor prognosis of ESCC patients, and it may serve as a new biological target for ESCC therapy. Oesophageal cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer mortality worldwide and oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the major histological type of oesophageal cancer in Eastern Asia. However, the molecular basis for the development and progression of ESCC remains largely unknown. In this study, RNA sequencing was used to establish the whole-transcriptome profile in ESCC tissues versus the adjacent non-cancer tissues and the results were bioinformatically analysed to predict the roles of the identified differentially expressed genes. We found that upregulation of KRT17 was significantly associated with advanced clinical stage, lymph node and distant metastasis, TNM stage and poor clinical outcome. Keratin 17 (KRT17) upregulation in ESCC cells not only promoted cell proliferation but also increased invasion and metastasis accompanied with AKT activation and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). These data suggested that KRT17 played an important role in ESCC development and progression and may serve as a prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target in ESCC. Unlabelled Image • KRT17 is upregulated in human ESCC, which correlates with poor clinical outcome. • KRT17 promotes ESCC cell proliferation, migration and metastatic potential. • KRT17 activates AKT signaling and induces EMT. • KRT17 may serve as a prognostic biomarker and potential therapeutic target in ESCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]