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Shaoyan Li,1,2,* Fengyan Gong,1,2 Zekun Zhou,1,2,* Xu Gong1,2 1Department of Hand and Podiatric Surgery, Orthopedics Center, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, 130021, People’s Republic of China; 2Jilin Province Key Laboratory on Tissue Repair, Reconstruction and Regeneration, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, 130021, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Xu Gong, Department of Hand and Podiatric Surgery, Orthopedics center, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, 130021, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86-13944099151, Email gongxu@jlu.edu.cnIntroduction: Topical verapamil has been demonstrated to reduce the fibroproliferative scar. Therefore, it was hypothesized that topical verapamil could reduce adhesion formation after tendon repair. The current study aimed to examine the effects of verapamil-loaded polydopamine nanoparticles (VP-PDA NPs) on the adhesion formation of Achilles tendon laceration and repair in a rat model.Methods: We randomly assigned 72 male Sprague-Dawley rats to the control, the PDA NPs, and the VP-PDA NPs groups (n = 24 per group). The quality of tendon healing was evaluated by the maximal tensile strength four and six weeks after surgery. The degree of tendon adhesion was scored on days 4, 15, 29, and 43 after surgery. The expressions of transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-β 1), vimentin, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), and collagens type I and III were detected through Western blotting or immunohistochemistry at four weeks after surgery.Results: In vitro release tests revealed that 61.3% of verapamil was released from VP-PDA NPs in four weeks. There was a significant increase in average failure to load in the VP-PDA NPs group (89.27 ± 5.09 N) compared with the PDA NPs group (65.52 ± 2.04 N) (p = 0.003) and the control group (74.52 ± 4.24 N) (p = 0.029). Adhesion scores were significantly reduced in the VP-PDA NPs group at six weeks (3.175 ± 0.08) and four weeks (3.35 ± 0.25) compared with the other groups. Moreover, VP-PDA NPs significantly reduced the expression of vimentin, α-SMA, TGF-β 1, and collagens type I and III.Conclusion: These data suggest that VP-PDA NPs reduced adhesion formation and enhanced tendon healing during rat tendon injury. Since topical verapamil has been used in clinics without side effects, VP-PDA NPs would have direct translation implications. However, its anti-adhesive effects on intrasynovial tendon injury must be examined.Keywords: tendon injury, adhesion formation, verapamil, nanoparticle

The synthesis of the originally proposed structure of (±)-nicotlactone A, a potent antiviral lignan with three continuous chiral centers, is reported in 5 steps from methyl acrylate. The key steps of the synthesis included an In-catalyzed regioselective allylation and a Mn-catalyzed Mukaiyama hydration reaction. Our synthetic strategy also enabled us to get the other three epimers and investigate the structure–activity relationship. The NMR data of the synthesized compounds do not match that of the isolated sample, indicating that the structure of nicotlactone A remains to be reassigned. All the synthetic target compounds were evaluated for their anti-tobacco mosaic virus (anti-TMV) activity. Bioassay results indicated that (±)-8-demethylnicotlactone A displayed similar anti-TMV activity to the commercial agent ningnanmycin, thus being a promising candidate or lead compound for developing novel antiviral agents in crop protection.

Styled online in-between motion generation has important application scenarios in computer animation and games. Its core challenge lies in the need to satisfy four critical requirements simultaneously: generation speed, motion quality, style diversity, and synthesis controllability. While the first two challenges demand a delicate balance between simple fast models and learning capacity for generation quality, the latter two are rarely investigated together in existing methods, which largely focus on either control without style or uncontrolled stylized motions. To this end, we propose a Real-time Stylized Motion Transition method (RSMT) to achieve all aforementioned goals. Our method consists of two critical, independent components: a general motion manifold model and a style motion sampler. The former acts as a high-quality motion source and the latter synthesizes styled motions on the fly under control signals. Since both components can be trained separately on different datasets, our method provides great flexibility, requires less data, and generalizes well when no/few samples are available for unseen styles. Through exhaustive evaluation, our method proves to be fast, high-quality, versatile, and controllable. The code and data are available at {https://github.com/yuyujunjun/RSMT-Realtime-Stylized-Motion-Transition.}

In modern SD-WAN networks, a global controller is able to steer traffic on different paths based on application requirements and global intents. However, existing solutions cannot dynamically tune the way bandwidth is shared between flows inside each overlay link, in particular when the available capacity is uncertain due to cross traffic. In this context, we propose a global QoS (Quality of Service) policy optimization model that dynamically adjusts rate limits of applications based on their requirements to follow the evolution of network conditions. It relies on a novel cross-traffic estimator for the available bandwidth of overlay links that only exploits already available measurements. We propose two local search algorithms, one centralized and one distributed, that leverage cross-traffic estimation. We show in packet-level simulations a significant performance improvement in terms of SLA (Service Level Agreement) satisfaction. For instance, the adaptive tuning of load balancing and QoS policies based on cross-traffic estimation can improve SLA satisfaction by $40\%$ compared to static policies., Comment: Accepted to IEEE NETSOFT 2023

An efficient enantioselective reductive amination and amidation cascade reaction has been developed. Catalyzed by iridium or rhodium complexes and with the help of sets of additives, the coupling of simple alkyl diamines and α-ketoesters occurs smoothly to afford the chiral cyclic piperazinone products. For disubstituted and monosubstituted alkyl diamine substrates, the corresponding reactions proceed through distinctive types of intermediates and thus require different transition metals to achieve high enantioselectivity, namely, iridium for the former and rhodium for the latter. In this transformation, the applied highly modular phosphoramidite-phosphine hybrid ligands displayed preeminent versatility and tunability.

Astragalus membranaceus has complex components as a natural drug and has multilevel, multitarget, and multichannel effects on dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). However, the immune mechanism, gene module, and molecular subtype of astragalus membranaceus in the treatment of DCM are still not revealed. Microarray information of GSE84796 was downloaded from the GEO database, including RNA sequencing data of seven normal cardiac tissues and ten DCM cardiac tissues. A total of 4029 DCM differentially expressed genes were obtained, including 1855 upregulated genes and 2174 downregulated genes. GO/KEGG/GSEA analysis suggested that the activation of T cells and B cells was the primary cause of DCM. WGCNA was used to obtain blue module genes. The blue module genes are primarily ADCY7, BANK1, CD1E, CD19, CD38, CD300LF, CLEC4E, FLT3, GPR18, HCAR3, IRF4, LAMP3, MRC1, SYK, and TLR8, which successfully divided DCM into three molecular subtypes. Based on the CIBERSORT algorithm, the immune infiltration profile of DCM was analyzed. Many immune cell subtypes, including the abovementioned immune cells, showed different levels of increased infiltration in the myocardial tissue of DCM. However, this infiltration pattern was not obviously correlated with clinical characteristics, such as age, EF, and sex. Based on network pharmacology and ClueGO, 20 active components of Astragalus membranaceus and 40 components of DMCTGS were obtained from TCMSP. Through analysis of the immune regulatory network, we found that Astragalus membranaceus effectively regulates the activation of immune cells, such as B cells and T cells, cytokine secretion, and other processes and can intervene in DCM at multiple components, targets, and levels. The above mechanisms were verified by molecular docking results, which confirmed that AKT1, VEGFA, MMP9, and RELA are promising potential targets of DCM.

On the basis of the structure of nicotlactone A (

To promote the discovery and development of new fungicides, a series of novel pyrazol-5-yl-benzamide derivatives were designed, synthesized by hopping and inversion of amide groups of pyrazole-4-carboxamides, and evaluated for their antifungal activities. The bioassay data revealed that compound 5IIc exhibited an excellent in vitro activity against Sclerotinia sclerotiorum with an EC50 value of 0.20 mg/L, close to that of commercial fungicide Fluxapyroxad (EC50 = 0.12 mg/L) and Boscalid (EC50 = 0.11 mg/L). For Valsa mali, compound 5IIc (EC50 = 3.68 mg/L) showed a significantly higher activity than Fluxapyroxad (EC50 = 12.67 mg/L) and Boscalid (EC50 = 14.83 mg/L). In addition, in vivo experiments proved that compound 5IIc has an excellent protective fungicidal activity with an inhibitory rate of 97.1% against S. sclerotiorum at 50 mg/L, while the positive control Fluxapyroxad showed a 98.6% inhibitory effect. The molecular docking simulation revealed that compound 5IIc interact with TRP173, SER39, and ARG43 of succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) through a hydrogen bond and p-π interaction, which could explain the probable mechanism of the action between compound 5IIc and target protein. Also, the SDH enzymatic inhibition assay was carried out to further validate its mode of action. These results demonstrate that compound 5IIc could be a promising fungicide candidate and provide a valuable reference for further investigation.

To develop novel succinate dehydrogenase inhibitors (SDHIs), two series of novel

To discover more effective antifungal agents, twenty N-(1H-pyrazol-5-yl)nicotinamide derivatives were designed, synthesized, and structurally confirmed by

Intraday return predictability has firstly been identified in the equity markets, and we extend the analysis to the crude oil market by using high-frequency United States Oil Fund data from 2006 to 2018. We find a different intraday prediction pattern in the oil market, where only the first half-hour returns positively predict the last half-hour returns. A market timing strategy based on these findings generates substantial profits. We further decompose the first half-hour return into its overnight and open half-hour components and find that the former contains more predictive information. The economic mechanisms of infrequent portfolio rebalancing and the presence of late-informed investors explain our findings. Notably, unlike equity markets, the oil market exhibits a unique intraday trading volume pattern due to the release of two routine oil inventory announcements. However, the information contained in the inventory announcements does not offer predictability for the last half-hour returns.

With the development of Internet of Things (IoT), people’s demand for location-based services is increasingly urgent. Based on magnetometer, accelerometer, and rate gyro, i.e., MARG sensors, the position and attitude estimation methods such as complementary filter (CF), Kalman filter (KF), and their various modifications have been the research hot spot. However, the CF-based methods are empirical and lack robustness; the KF-based methods are memory-free observers, whose solution may diverge when the filter lacks uniform observability. In this article, a virtual-measurement-combined extended KF (VMC-EKF) method is proposed by fusing the carrier’s motion state with EKF method. Similar to the graph optimization, the proposed method can measure the key information in VMC phase, and thus remove the requirement of uniform observability. The number of virtual measurements can be estimated based on carrier’s motion state and its gradient, which determines the number of iterations of the prediction phase and the correction phase. In order to verify the performance of the proposed method, a series of numerical simulation experiments, turntable experiments, and foot-mounted experiments are carried out. The corresponding testing platform is set up based on MPU9250, which is a typical and low-cost motion tracking integrated circuit (IC) of MARG sensors. The raw data of MARG sensors can communicate with the host computer via wired or wireless communication, and then be imported into MATLAB for processing and analysis by the compared methods. The test results show that the proposed method can achieve fast convergence of attitude estimation and avoid the divergence of position estimation compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

The present study aimed to observe the content difference of macrophage migration inhibitory factor [MIF; novoprotein recombinant human MIF (n‑6his) (ch33)], TGFβ1 and MMP13 in patients with and without ligamentum flavum (LF) hypertrophy and investigate the roles of MIF in LF hypertrophy. The concentration of MIF, TGFβ1 and MMP13 in LF were detected by ELISA in a lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) group and a lumbar disc herniation (LDH) group. Culture of primary LFs and identification were performed for the subsequent study. Cell treatments and cell proliferation assay by CCK‑8 was performed. Western blot and quantitative PCR analysis were used to detect the expression of TGFβ1, MMP13, type I collagen (COL‑1) and type III collagen (COL‑3) and Src which were promoted by MIF. The concentration of MIF, TGFβ1 and MMP13 were higher in the LSS group compared with the LDH group. Culture of primary LFs and identification were performed. Significant difference in LFs proliferation occurred with treatment by MIF at a concentration of 40 nM for 48 h (P0.05). The gene and protein expression of TGFβ1, MMP13, COL‑1, COL‑3 and Src were promoted by MIF (P0.05). Proliferation of LFs was induced by MIF and MIF‑induced proliferation of LFs was inhibited by PP1 (a Src inhibitor). MIF may promote the proliferation of LFs through the Src kinase signaling pathway and can promote extracellular matrix changes by its pro‑inflammatory effect. MIF and its mediated inflammatory reaction are driving factors of LF hypertrophy.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Evaluation of qPCR and AFS for skeletal TB diagnosis by ROC curve analysis in decalcified (A) and non-decalcified subjects (B). Figure S2. Evaluation of qPCR and AFS for diagnosing bone TB by ROC curve analysis in spinal TB (A) and nonspinal skeletal TB (B). Figure S3. Evaluation of qPCR and AFS for skeletal TB diagnosis by ROC curve analysis in skeletal TB patients plus pulmonary TB (A) and patients with skeletal TB alone (B).

With the development of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, people’s demand for indoor location-based services is growing. Indoor magnetic field has a wealth of fingerprint information that can be combined with position stamps to construct an indoor magnetic map (IMM). Localization scenarios based on IMM include personnel attendance, equipment tracking, and fire emergency, etc. However, the localization technology is complicated, the localization accuracy based on IMM is generally low, and the localization result lacks credibility due to the fluctuation of indoor magnetic field. Therefore, it is urgent to study a novel localization method in terms of the tradeoff among complexity, accuracy and credibility, which is the purpose of this article. First, the Euclidean distance constraint (EDC) with a variable search radius is proposed to make a rough estimate of the entity’s location. Then the iterative interpolation method (IIM) is proposed to refine the local-IMM, and the multi-magnetic- fingerprint-fusion (MMFF) is proposed to match the magnetic fingerprint based on the refined local-IMM. In short, the proposed method is called focusing matching localization method by combining coarse estimation with fine estimation, which can be abbreviated as EDC-IIM-MMFF. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed localization method is verified by a series of experiments. The tests show that the root mean square error (RMSE) of location solved by the proposed method is less than 0.3 meters, and the 99% cumulative distribution function (CDF) of location error is less than 0.5 meters, and the complexity is lower than the existing methods, such as Gaussian process regression (GPR), extended Kalman filter (EKF), particle filter (PF), etc.

Data are the cornerstone of digital sensors for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, which have been widely used in various fields from social development to human life. However, data failure because of various faults caused by the human or environmental causes may result in the sensor system failure. In order to solve this issue, an online and credible data integrity monitoring (DIM) method for digital sensors is proposed in this article. Overall, this article contributes in the following ways. First, we model the data failure by dividing it into format failure, timing failure, and value failure. Second, several heuristic rules are proposed for the detection and isolation of data failure. Third, the control mechanism named dual variable-length data monitoring window is introduced to improve the credibility of data recovery. Then, we set up a motion tracking platform based on accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, and conduct a series of experiments, such as numerical simulation experiments, static experiments, and turntable experiments to perform the comprehensive evaluation and verification on the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method can significantly improve the data quality. Finally, the tradeoffs among the real time, computational complexity, and credibility of the proposed method are discussed, and it is expected to be applied to other digital sensor systems for IoT applications.

In recent years, gait detection has been widely used in medical rehabilitation, smart phone, criminal investigation, navigation and positioning and other fields. With the rapid development of micro-electro mechanical systems, inertial measurement unit (IMU) has been widely used in the field of gait recognition with many advantages, such as low cost, small size, and light weight. Therefore, this paper proposes a gait recognition algorithm based on IMU, which is named as FPRF-GR. Firstly, a fusion feature engineering operator is designed to eliminate redundant and defective features, which is mainly based on Fast Fourier Transform and principal component analysis. Then, in the design of classifier, in order to meet the requirements of gait recognition model for accuracy, generalization ability, speed, and noise resistance, this paper compares random forest (RF) and several commonly used classification algorithms, and finds that the model constructed by RF can meet the requirements. FPRF-GR builds the model based on RF, and uses the tenfold cross validation method to evaluate the model. Finally, this paper proposes an optimization scheme for the two parameters of decision tree number and sample number in RF. The results show that FPRF-GR can identify five gaits (walk, stationary, run, and up and down stairs) with the average accuracy of 98.2%.

Generally, the positioning system is based on the wearable inertial and magnetic measurement unit (IMMU), but its positioning algorithm relies heavily on the wearing position, and there is no adaptive positioning algorithm for the wearable position. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a human body topology recognition (BTR) algorithm based on gait information, which can accurately and on real time identifies six typical wearing positions. The average recognition rate is 99.11%, and the real-time performance is controlled within 1.2 s. As a priori information, a gait detection algorithm based on the human BTR is extended. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can accurately classify the gaits of different wearing positions, achieving 99.39% average accuracy. This method realizes the flexibility, diversity, and portability of wearable IMMU. It can be widely used in attitude calculation, posture recognition, and dead reckoning of human or robot.

The micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) digital sensors have been widely used in various fields, e.g., industrial application, navigation and positioning, etc. In order to make full use of the resolution of a sensor, people tend to choose the lower range, which often leads to the out-of-range problem. In fact, it is a tradeoff among resolution, range, and efficiency. It is possible to optimize two of these, but difficult to optimize all three. Therefore, a tri-adaptive method, i.e., adaptive range, adaptive sampling frequency, and adaptive output frequency, is proposed in this paper. We set up two test platforms based on the two common MEMS digital sensors: MPU6050 and MPU9250. The turntable experiments and numerical simulation experiments are conducted to verify the performance of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method can significantly improve resolution based on the tradeoff among resolution, range, and efficiency. Besides, the proposed method is of generalization, which can be applied in industrial robots, medical electronics, and other fields.

Phrymarolin II, a furofuran lignan isolated from Phryma leptostachya L., features a 3,7-dioxabicyclo[3.3.0]octane skeleton. Herein, we report an alternative total synthesis of (±)-phrymarolin II (2), which was performed in 9 steps from commercially available sesamol. The key steps of the synthesis included a zinc-mediated Barbier-type allylation and a copper-catalyzed anomeric O-arylation. Our total synthesis allowed the synthesis of analogues of (±)-phrymarolin II. Most derivatives displayed good to excellent in vivo activity against tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). (±)-Phrymarolin II (2) and compounds (±)-31d and (±)-31g exhibited similar or higher activity than commercial ningnanmycin, which indicated that phrymarolin lignans are a promising new class of plant virus inhibitors.

Nortriterpenoids isolated from Walsura cochinchinensis have attracted much attention from both synthetic and medicinal chemists, yet only recently have efficient synthetic approaches to any members appeared. Shown here is that the common intermediate with a 6/6/5/6-fused tetracyclic ring nucleus can be converted to walsucochin family members. The first total syntheses of (±)-walsucochin A, (±)-walsucochinoids C-F, and their analogues were achieved in this work.

Pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) using inertial and magnetic measurement unit (IMMU) is a current research hotspot that can be used to provide location-based services. The main challenges of the self-contained sensor-based PDR method are mainly sensor errors and orientation estimation errors. In this paper, a novel orientation estimation algorithm and gait phase detection algorithm with strong adaptability are proposed. The variance and magnitude of the angular rate are adopted to detect the gait. The experimental results show that the gait phase detection method can accurately distinguish the swing phase and the stance phase of the foot even under running conditions. By reasonable assumptions, the attitude angles calculated in the swing phase can be calibrated while the attitude angles are in the stance phase. The calibration of velocity not only uses the zero velocity updates method but also makes reasonable assumptions about the bias error of the accelerometer, so that the velocity calculated during the whole swing phase can be calibrated. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed self-contained IMMU is capable of providing consistent beacon-free PDR in different scenarios, achieving less than 1.2% average distance error and average end-to-end position error.

In this paper, a novel filtering method is designed for denoising remote sensing image. Firstly, the image domain of noisy image is partitioned into blocks for estimating the variance of Gaussian w...

In this study, lattices of Bi2WO6 crystals were tuned by cerium doping in a hydrothermal process in order to enhance the shielding properties against low-energy gamma rays. The products obtained were characterized by Raman, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy techniques. The results demonstrated that cerium ions were successfully introduced into the lattices of the Bi2WO6 crystals and they partially replaced the bismuth ion sites. The shielding results showed that 10 mol% cerium doping allowed the Ce-doped Bi2WO6 crystals to shield against 59.5 keV gamma rays at a 49.41% better level compared with the original crystals. The enhanced shielding against low-energy gamma rays was ascribed to the expanded K-edge absorbing area of bismuth after cerium doping. In this study, we developed a facile synthetic method for obtaining Ce-doped Bi2WO6 materials. Importantly, these crystals could be used as functional fillers in rubber composites to prepare wearable products (such as clothing) with desirable shielding properties and no requirement for lead.

A broadband dual-polarised antenna with wideband decoupling structure is presented. By using the improved dipole, the proposed antenna achieves a common impedance bandwidth of 62% ranging from 1.645 to 3.13 GHz with standing a wave ratio 90.9%) and high cross polarisation discrimination. It is very suitable for polarisation diversity wireless communication application.

Designing versatile materials for radiation protection is of great significance to the rapid development of nuclear technology. Here, BN@PbWO4 core-shell particles are successfully prepared via a facile sol-gel method. The structure and morphology of products are determined by XRD, SEM, TEM and FTIR techniques. Compared with PbWO4 and h-BN, BN@PbWO4 exhibits much more excellent photocatalytic ability to degrade the organic dye Rhodamine B (RhB). Furthermore, it also has a good ability to jointly shield neutron and gamma radiations, especially better gamma radiation shielding in comparison with PbWO4. This work provides an integrated solution with the material that could deal with organic wastes and shield complex radiations in nuclear industry.

In this paper, we use the improved Diebold & Yilmaz method based on TVP-VAR-SV model to analyze dynamic connectedness between energy, precious metal, industrial metal, agriculture and livestock commodity markets. The results show that the energy, industrial metal, and precious metal commodity markets are the information transmitters in commodity markets, and the agriculture and livestock commodity markets play the roles of information receivers. Furthermore, we employ the GARCH-MIDAS model to study the influence of geopolitical risk on the dynamic connectedness between five commodity markets. We find that geopolitical risk, especially geopolitical act risk, significantly affects the overall connectedness of commodity markets. And more notably, the impacts on the net spillover of various commodity markets are different. Geopolitical risk has positive effects on the net spillover of energy, agriculture and livestock commodity markets, and negative effects on precious metal and industrial metal commodity markets.

Fungal infections could cause tremendous decreases in crop yield and quality. Natural products, including flavonoids and (iso)quinolines, have always been an important source for lead discovery in medicinal and agricultural chemistry. To promote the discovery and development of new fungicides, a series of 3-(iso)quinolinyl-4-chromenone derivatives was designed and synthesized by the active substructure splicing principle and evaluated for their antifungal activities. The lead optimization was guided by bioactivity. The bioassay data revealed that the 3-quinolinyl-4-chromenone 13 showed significant in vitro activities against S. sclerotiorum, V. mali, and B. cinerea with EC50 values of 3.65, 2.61, and 2.32 mg/L, respectively. The 3-isoquinolinyl-4-chromenone 25 exhibited excellent in vitro activity against S. sclerotiorum with an EC50 value of 1.94 mg/L, close to that of commercial fungicide chlorothalonil (EC50 = 1.57 mg/L) but lower than that of boscalid (EC50 = 0.67 mg/L). For V. mali and B. cinerea, 3-isoquinolinyl-4-chromenone 25 (EC50 = 1.56, 1.54 mg/L) showed significantly higher activities than chlorothalonil (EC50 = 11.24, 2.92 mg/L). In addition, in vivo experiments proved that compounds 13 and 25 have excellent protective fungicidal activities with inhibitory rates of 88.24 and 94.12%, respectively, against B. cinerea at 50 mg/L, while the positive controls chlorothalonil and boscalid showed inhibitory rates of 76.47 and 97.06%, respectively. Physiological and biochemical studies showed that the primary action of mechanism of compounds 13 and 25 on S. sclerotiorum and B. cinerea may involve changing mycelial morphology and increasing cell membrane permeability. In addition, compound 13 may also affect the respiratory metabolism of B. cinerea. This study revealed that compounds 13 and 25 could be promising candidates for the development of novel fungicides in crop protection.

Total syntheses of (±)-walsucochin B and (±)-walsucochinoids M and N have been achieved from farnesyl bromide. The key steps of the synthetic sequence are the titanocene-mediated radical cyclization and base-induced cycloaromatization for the rapid construction of the 6/6/5/6-fused tetracyclic skeleton. Importantly, a Cu-mediated remote C-H hydroxylation reaction has been developed to site-selectively install the oxygen function at the C-7 position of the target molecules, thus solving the biggest challenge for the synthesis of the compounds.

According to clinical practice, the characteristics and issues of pragmatic randomized controlled trial(PRCT) and expertise-based randomized controlled trial (EBRCT) in acupuncture-moxibustion clinical research were summarized. The characteristics of expertise-based pragmatic randomized controlled trial (EB-PRCT), which is the combination of above two, and its application in acupuncture-moxibustion clinical trial were explored. PRCT emphasizes the clinical practice, the positive control of standard therapy and the the blind performance on data collection and statistics. PRCT has the advantage of flexible grouping, nevertheless, it also has shortcomings such as higher cost and lack of typical subjects. EBRCT emphasizes the participation of professional acupuncturists, so that the therapeutic effect is ensured, the compliance of subjects and the bias of manipulation are improved. Thus, the replacement scheme of acupuncturists is essential in EBRCT. Having the complementary advantages, EB-PRCT provides a superior research method for acupuncture-moxibustion clinical trial, and leads to convincing results.

The bicyclo[3.3.1]nonane architecture is a privileged structural motif found in over 1000 natural products with relevance to neurodegenerative disease, bacterial and parasitic infection, and cancer among others. Despite disparate biosynthetic machinery, alkaloid, terpene, and polyketide-producing organisms have all evolved pathways to incorporate this carbocyclic ring system. Natural products of mixed polyketide/terpenoid origins (meroterpenes) are a particularly rich and important source of biologically active bicyclo[3.3.1]nonane-containing molecules. Herein we detail a fully synthetic strategy toward this broad family of targets based on an abiotic annulation/rearrangement strategy resulting in a 10-step total synthesis of garsubellin A, an enhancer of choline acetyltransferase and member of the large family of polycyclic polyprenylated acylphloroglucinols. This work solidifies a strategy for making multiple, diverse meroterpene chemotypes in a programmable assembly process involving a minimal number of chemical transformations., Meroterpenes are a particularly important class of biologically active bicyclo[3.3.1]nonane-containing molecules. Here, the authors report a general strategy toward these valuable targets based on abiotic annulation/rearrangement steps resulting in a concise total synthesis of garsubellin A.

In order to realize the ultrawideband suppression of simultaneous switching noise (SSN), a hybrid-embedded novel electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structure is proposed. The presented EBG structure is based on the traditional Z-bridge EBG embedded the L-bridge EBG structure. By the HFSS software simulation and real test, the results show that the proposed EBG structure can obtain ultrawideband suppression of SSN. Compared with the traditional Z-bridge and L-bridge, the suppression effect is greatly improved. This paper analyzes the reason that the new structure can achieve ultrawideband suppression of SSN based on the equivalent circuit model of the structure. Moreover, the proposed structure will lead to signal integrity problems, which is analyzed by eye diagrams.

The structural, electronic and photocatalytic properties of five vacancy-containing 2D BiI3 monolayers are investigated by the first-principle calculations. The electronic structures show that the five structures are stable and have comparable binding energies to that of the pristine BiI3 monolayer, and the defects can tune the band gaps. Optical spectra indicate that the five structures retain high absorption capacity for visible light. The spin-orbit coupling (SOC) effect is found to play an important role in the band edge of defective structures, and the VBi and VBi-I3 defective BiI3 monolayers can make absolute band edges straddle water redox potentials more easily.

Assembling anisotropic structures with versatility such as good thermal conductivity and mechanical loading for radiation shielding has recently attracted widespread attention. Herein, a facile strategy with (3-mercaptopropyl)trimethoxysilane (KH590) as a surfactant is used to synthesize one-dimensional (1D) PbWO4 structures. Their morphology evolution and crystal phase transition are traced during the growth process by SEM, TEM, and XRD techniques, respectively. The results show that monoclinic PbWO4 nanofibers with typical single-crystal attributes and high production are obtained with the addition of 5 wt% KH590. In addition, although PbWO4 nanoparticles display a slightly high attenuation coefficient for gamma radiation, 1D PbWO4 structures exhibit better thermal conductivity, tensile strength and elongation at break. These findings indicate that the prepared 1D PbWO4 structures have a very promising prospect in the application of state-of-the-art shielding materials for gamma radiation.

Lead borate nanowhiskers have been successfully prepared by a facile solvothermal method. The morphologies and crystal sizes of the lead borate nanowhiskers are controlled by adjusting the amount of added ammonia hydroxide in the solvothermal reaction. The morphology evolution and structure changes are tracked during the growth process by field SEM, TEM, and XRD, respectively. The as-prepared lead borate nanowhiskers are 60–90 μm in length and 150–500 nm in diameter and possess typical single-crystal attributes. The influence of lead borate nanowhiskers on the mechanical properties, thermal conductivity, and radiation shielding performance of polymer composites is also discussed. The results show that lead borate nanowhiskers can significantly improve these properties of the composites. The excellent integrated properties contribute to the application of the materials for shielding mixed neutron and gamma radiation.

In this letter, a dual-band isolation enhancement technique for two closely located dual-band planar inverted-F antennas (PIFAs) is proposed using a compact planar spiral line (PSL) structure. The decoupling structure has the dimensions of less than 0.15λ × 0.1λ and can be flexibly applied to various practical multiple-input multiple–output systems. By employing this structure, two PIFAs (with port distance of 0.1λ) can achieve high isolation better than 20.3 and 26.7 dB within the lower band (2.4–2.483 GHz) and higher band (5.25–5.9 GHz), respectively. Meanwhile, the decoupling mechanism and design requirement of PSL are discussed. Influences of the proposed PSL to the efficiency, gain, and radiation pattern of PIFAs were also studied. Good agreement between the simulated results and measured results is obtained.

Indoor magnetic map (IMM) based on magnetic field fluctuations can be used in map assisted indoor positioning and navigation, etc. However, many IMM mapping solutions are time-consuming, labor-intensive, and high-cost, which limit the development and application of IMM. To solve the issues of accuracy, efficiency, and cost of IMM mapping collaboratively, we absorbed the idea of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) method, and proposed a human-interactive mapping method of IMM based on the low-cost magnetometer, accelerometer, and rate gyro, i.e., MARG sensors. First, we defined IMM as the structured data set with a series of position stamps and magnetic field fluctuations. Then, we proposed the concept of general sensory calibration source (GSCS) and related metrics for human-interactive activities which provide virtual information to eliminate the time-accumulated error of position stamps and assist in obtaining stable magnetic field fluctuations. Finally, we conduct a series of experiments to verify the performance of the proposed method. The test results show that the proposed method can not only meet the requirements of mapping accuracy but also significantly improve mapping efficiency and reduce mapping cost, which is superior to other state-of-the-art algorithms. Specifically, the significant results are as follows: the mapping accuracy is about 0.31 m, and the mapping efficiency is 1800 m$^2$ per hour, and the cost of the main module of IMM mapping does not exceed U.S. $10.

Partial hydrogenation of anthracene under CO-H2O, N2-H2O, and H2-H2O over Fe-based catalysts was studied at 400 &deg, C and 10 MPa. Results show that the Fe-based catalysts display obvious catalytic activity for anthracene hydrogenation under CO-H2O instead of hydrogenation under N2-H2O and H2-H2O. The activity follows in the order of Fe(NO3)3&middot, 9H2O &gt, Fe naphthenate &gt, FeSO4&middot, 7H2O. Even though the amount of molecular hydrogen remains higher than that of in situ hydrogen, the anthracene conversion with in situ hydrogen is remarkably higher. It demonstrates that the in situ hydrogen is more active than molecular hydrogen for PAH hydrogenation. To further reveal the exact fate of these Fe-based catalysts, the decomposed products under CO-H2O, N2-H2O and H2-H2O were characterized by TG, XRD, and TEM. Results indicate that the Fe3O4 species play a key role in hydrogenation of anthracene under CO and H2O. Higher catalytic activity for Fe(NO3)3&middot, 9H2O is due to its complete decomposition at 350 &deg, C to acquire higher concentration of active Fe3O4 species. The possible form of in situ hydrogen during this process is also discussed. Given that heavy oil contains abundant polyaromatics, these results are meaningful for enhancing hydrogen shuttling to heavy oil by producing natural hydrogen donors and, thus, benefiting the high-efficient upgrading.