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Cell migration is an essential physiological process in the life cycle of cells, playing a crucial role in cancer metastasis, neural development, and cellular immune response. However, achieving precise control of cell migration at single‐cell level is challenging due to the intricate and diverse microenvironments of cells. Here, an optical technique is presented that utilizes light‐actuated micronavigators to guide the directional migration of individual cells both in vitro and in vivo. Employing high‐speed scanning optical tweezers, micronavigators near target cells are trapped and rotated at a rotation speed of up to 12 000 rpm, which, to the best of knowledge, represents the fastest rotation of light‐driven micromotors in a biological environment to date. The micronavigators generate a powerful fluid shear force (up to 40 pN) which can guide the migration of immune and nerve cells in a predetermined direction. Furthermore, micronavigators are employed to guide cell migration in various biological systems, including lab‐on‐a‐chip devices and blood vessels within living animals. This technique offers new opportunities for controlling cell migration, enabling precise immune activation, and neuron repair at the single‐cell level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The active delivery of nanodrugs has been a bottleneck problem in nanomedicine. While modification of nanodrugs with targeting agents can enhance their retention at the lesion location, the transportation of nanodrugs in the circulation system is still a passive process. The navigation of nanodrugs with external forces such as magnetic field has been shown to be effective for active delivery, but the existing techniques are limited to specific materials like magnetic nanoparticles. In this study, an alternative actuation method is proposed based on optical manipulation for remote navigation of nanodrugs in vivo, which is compatible with most of the common drug carriers and exhibits significantly higher manipulation precision. By the programmable scanning of the laser beam, the motion trajectory and velocity of the nanodrugs can be precisely controlled in real time, making it possible for intelligent drug delivery, such as inverse‐flow transportation, selective entry into specific vascular branch, and dynamic circumvention across obstacles. In addition, the controlled mass delivery of nanodrugs can be realized through indirect actuation by the microflow field. The developed optical manipulation method provides a new solution for the active delivery of nanodrugs, with promising potential for the treatment of blood diseases such as leukemia and thrombosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With high reconfigurability and swarming intelligence, programmable medical micromachines (PMMs) represent a revolution in microrobots for executing complex coordinated tasks, especially for dynamic routing of various targets along their respective routes. However, it is difficult to achieve a biocompatible implantation into the body due to their exogenous building blocks. Herein, a living microrouter based on an organic integration of endogenous red blood cells (RBCs), programmable scanning optical tweezers and flexible optofluidic strategy is reported. By harvesting energy from a designed optical force landscape, five RBCs are optically rotated in a controlled velocity and direction, under which, a specific actuation flow is achieved to exert the well‐defined hydrodynamic forces on various biological targets, thus enabling a selective routing by integrating three successive functions, i.e., dynamic input, inner processing, and controlled output. Benefited from the optofluidic manipulation, various blood cells, such as the platelets and white blood cells, are transported toward the damaged vessel and cell debris for the dynamic hemostasis and targeted clearance, respectively. Moreover, the microrouter enables a precise transport of nanodrugs for active and targeted delivery in a large quantity. The proposed RBC microrouter might provide a biocompatible medical platform for cell separation, drug delivery, and immunotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic rotation and deformation of human red blood cells (RBCs) are extremely important to investigate the survival and mechanical features of cells, which will be of great physiological and pathological significance. Here, we report an optical approach that is capable of both rotating and deforming RBCs with light from two tapered fiber probes (TFPs). With laser beams at the wavelength of 980 nm injected into the TFPs, a single RBC was rotated around different axes while single or multiple RBCs were stretched by adjusting the points of action and magnitude of the optical forces from the TFPs. The biological safety of the approach was also discussed by taking the laser power required into account.

Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), the first photon-counting laser altimetry satellite, is the most advanced on-orbit altimetry system in the world. The data obtained by it contain a large number of background photons, limited by sensitive photon detection system. In this study, a density-based adaptive method (DBAM) for photons detection of ground and canopy method is proposed, which is aimed at solving the problem of signal photons detection in vegetation areas. First, the photon density is homogenized according to the noise photon rate, to reduce the effect of uneven background noise. Then, the ground signal photons were extracted by the search ellipse adaptively changing direction and size along the slope direction to find the maximum density direction. The canopy signal photons were extracted again from the rest photons of the first step by using a vertical elliptical search area. At last of the DBAM, the photons between the ground and the canopy are extracted as vegetation signal photons. The effectiveness of DBAM is evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that the proposed method can effectively detect ground and canopy photons, with the Kappa coefficient of 0.88 and 0.91 of two selected datasets. Compared to the results of ATL08, DBAM can better adapt to the slope, the extracted ground photons have better continuity and can extract more accuracy vegetation photons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serving as natural vehicles to deliver oxygen throughout the whole body, red blood cells (RBCs) have been regarded as important indicators for biomedical analysis and clinical diagnosis. Various diseases can be induced due to the dysfunction of RBCs. Hence, a flexible tool is required to perform precise manipulation and quantitative characterization of their physiological mechanisms and viscoelastic properties. Optical tweezers have emerged as potential candidates due to their noncontact manipulation and femtonewton‐precision measurements. This review aimed to highlight the recent advances in the multifunctional manipulation of RBCs using optical tweezers, including controllable deformation, dynamic stretching, RBC aggregation, blood separation and Raman characterization. Further, great attentions have been focused on the precise assembly of functional biophotonics devices with trapped RBCs, and a brief overview was offered for the growing interests to manipulate RBCs in vivo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important waveform feature, the number of peaks indicates the complexity of the surface coverage within the laser footprint. At present, the common methods of determining the number of peaks are based on waveform decomposition because the full waveform can be regarded as the superposition of multiple Gaussian waves. However, the empirical thresholds can affect the performance of the algorithms, and the process is time-consuming and inefficient. This study attempts to develop an automatic peak-number-driven classifier and picker based on machine learning (ML) and convolutional neural network (CNN) models. Waveforms were divided into four categories according to the peak-number. The results of five classifiers show good agreement with the verification data from GLAH14, with overall accuracies of 90.65%, 92.69%, 92.45%, 91.95%, and 93.05%. Moreover, F1 score was calculated to evaluate the classification performance of each classifier for different categories. The results indicate that each classifier accurately distinguishes waveforms with different numbers of crests, especially invalid and single-peak waveforms. The ability to quickly and automatically extract the number of peaks based on ML methods will be of great benefit for specific research to screen suitable experimental data [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shore zone is the most active zone in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere of nature, and has the environmental characteristics of both ocean and land. The ICESat-2 satellite provides height measurements of shore zone using a photon-counting LiDAR. The purpose of this study is to explore the application potential of ICESat-2 satellite data in shore zone classification. Saint Lawrence Island, Alaska, was chosen as the study area. Firstly, in this study, the upper and lower boundaries of the shore zone of the study area were extracted based on Google Earth images. The slope and width between the two boundaries were then calculated according to the formula. Secondly, six statistical indicators (standard deviation, relative standard deviation, average absolute deviation, relative average deviation, absolute median error and quartile deviation) related to the substrate and sediment classification that could reflect the characteristics of the shore zone profile were extracted, and the statistical indicators were used as input parameters of the softmax regression model for classification. Finally, the accuracy of the shore zone classification was validated using the ShoreZone classification system. The results show that, among the 246 shore zone sections in the study area, 86% (212) has been correctly classified. The results therefore indicate that ICESat-2 data can be used to support the characterization of shore zone morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visual perception of a moving target is not always true. Wheels turning rapidly, for instance, may look like rotating inversely. This phenomenon is known as the wagon‐wheel effect (WWE) and it is caused by the undersampling of visual information. Here, an analogous manifestation of the WWE concept is described in the scenario of light–matter interactions, by showing that the dynamic response of a particle, to an optical trap scanned at different rates, can be diametrically opposed. Further, such behaviors are modulated by the particle dimensions, which can be exploited for particle size selection. The results uncover a distinct paradigm of nontrivial optical manipulation and expand the bidirectional optical sorting range of dielectric particles to the sub‐200 nm scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Control of blood microflow is crucial for the prevention and therapy of blood disorders, such as cardiovascular diseases and their complications. Conventional control strategies generally implant exogenous synthetic materials into blood vessels as labeling markers or actuating sources, which are invasive and incompatible with biological systems. Here, a label‐free, noninvasive, and biocompatible device constructed from natural red blood cells (RBCs) for controlling blood microflow in vivo is reported. The RBCs, optically manipulated, arranged, and rotated using scanning optical tweezers, can function as an optofluidic switch for targeted switching, directional enrichment, dynamic redirecting, and rotary actuation of blood microflow inside zebrafish. The regulation precision of the switch is determined to be at the single‐cell level, and the response time is measured as ≈200 ms using a streamline tracking method. This in vivo optofluidic switch may provide a biofriendly device for exploring blood microenvironments in a noncontact and noninvasive manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is advantageous for fish to choose different substrate types and brightness based on their current life cycle stage, foraging requirements, predator avoidance and water conditions. We determined the substrate type and brightness preference of hatchery‐reared and wild juvenile Schizothorax wangchiachii and Percocypris pingi under laboratory conditions. Individuals and groups were exposed to four kinds of substrate types (sand: diameter < 1 mm, small gravel: diameter approximately 2–3 cm, large gravel: diameter approximately 10–15 cm, sand and medium gravel mix: diameter approximately 4–7 cm) and two kinds of substrate brightness (black and white). The results showed that hatchery‐reared and wild S. wangchiachii and P. pingi significantly preferred large gravel and black substrates regardless of the number of fish (p <.05). P. pingi had a significantly higher preference for black substrate than S. wangchiachii both in hatchery‐reared and wild individuals (p <.05). Hatchery‐reared and wild individuals of the two species shared a preference for large gravel and black substrates suggesting that substrate preferences might be genetically based. The findings in the present study could be used to improve the rearing conditions for the two species in hatchery and thereafter to enhance its adaptability after releasing to the wild. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intensity gradient of light represents the most important property for optical tweezers to manipulate small particles, which is known to produce a conservative optical force that is either attractive or repulsive. Here, it is shown that Kerker interference, the interplay between electric and magnetic dipoles induced in nanoparticles, permits the intensity gradient to exert a nonconservative optical force, in the case of a standard optical trap created with linearly or elliptically polarized Gaussian beams. The Kerker‐type intensity‐gradient force has an "anisotropic" directionality, and it tends to repel particles away from the beam axis. Such repulsive effects can greatly sensitize the particle trapping behavior of optical tweezers to the particle size. Utilizing these peculiar properties, all‐optical sorting of Si nanoparticles is theoretically demonstrated, with tunable size‐selection criterion and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controllable organization and transport of cell chain in a fluid, which is of great importance in biological and medical fields, have attracted increasing attentions in recent years. Here we demonstrate an optofluidic strategy, by implanting the microfluidic technique with a large-tapered-angle fiber probe (LTAP), to organize and transport a cell chain in a noncontact and noninvasive manner. After a laser beam at 980-nm wavelength launched into LTAP, the E. coli cells were continuously trapped and then arranged into a cell chain one after another. The chain can be transported by adjusting the magnitudes of optical force and flow drag force. The proposed technique can also be applied for the eukaryotic cells (e. g., yeast cell) and human red blood cells (RBCs). Experiment results were interpreted by the numerical simulation, and the stiffness of cell chain was also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic rotation and deformation of human red blood cells (RBCs) are extremely important to investigate the survival and mechanical features of cells, which will be of great physiological and pathological significance. Here, we report an optical approach that is capable of both rotating and deforming RBCs with light from two tapered fiber probes (TFPs). With laser beams at the wavelength of 980 nm injected into the TFPs, a single RBC was rotated around different axes while single or multiple RBCs were stretched by adjusting the points of action and magnitude of the optical forces from the TFPs. The biological safety of the approach was also discussed by taking the laser power required into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY Practically, the maximum transmission power of transmission systems is limited. This power constraint causes the variable power control derived from no maximum power limitation suffering from performance degradation. In this paper, a constrained variable-power adaptive M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation scheme for MIMO systems with space-time coding is developed. Convex optimization is used to derive the switching thresholds of the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio for power control (PC) and adaptive modulation under the constraints of maximum power, average power, and target BER. In the derivation of the relation between modulation and power, the exact BER expression of binary phase shift keying modulation and a tight bound for higher order quadrature amplitude modulation are used to make the PC scheme fulfill the target BER even at low signal-to-noise ratio where the previous PC schemes fail to meet the target BER. Numerical results show that the derived control scheme under the power constraints can obtain the spectrum efficiency and BER performance close to the previous control scheme without power limitation. Moreover, it can satisfy the requirements of power limitation and target BER and can effectively avoid the excessive power consumption of previous PC scheme in poor channel condition. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ultrastructure of the egg chorion surface in the loachMisgurnus anguillicaudatuswas investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). A single micropyle, which belonged to type II, was found at the animal pole of anM. anguillicaudatusegg. Several sinistral grooves which originated at the micropyle probably served for sperm guidance. The egg envelope had numerous pores with bud-like fillings and a regular arrangement like honeycomb. Lots of small knobs were situated on the zona radiata at the vegetal pole. Water contact triggered egg stickiness within about 10 seconds. The egg surface became smooth after treatment with trypsin solution. The features of the micropyle, pores and stickiness were correlated with the reproductive strategy of the loach and are important for egg identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensity-Gradient Force: Kerker-Type Intensity-Gradient Force of Light (Laser Photonics Rev. 14(4)/2020) In article number 1900265 by Yao Zhang and co-workers, a nontrivial optical intensity-gradient force is uncovered in conventional optical tweezers set-ups. Its non-conservative and anisotropic properties are in sharp contrast to the classical widespread picture of optical intensity-gradient forces. [Extracted from the article]

The single‐cell screening has attracted great attentions in advanced biomedicine and tissue biology, especially for the early disease diagnosis and treatment monitoring. In this work, by using a specific‐designed fiber probe with a flat facet, we propose an "optical fan" strategy to screen K562 cells at the single‐cell level from a populations of RBCs. After the 980‐nm laser beam injected into the fiber probe, the RBCs were blown away but holding target K562 cells in place. Further, multiple leukemic cells can be screened from hundreds of red blood cells, providing an efficient approach for the cell screening. The experimental results were interpreted by the numerical simulation, and the stiffness of optical fan was also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]