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Thin film solar cells have been extensively explored because of their low cost, good low light, and high efficiencies. In this contribution, the novel Cu(Fe, Sn)S4(CFTS) thin film solar cell was investigated via the simulated software SCAPS. Meanwhile, the Fe content, carrier concentration, and working temperature of the absorber layer were compared. It is demonstrated that the best efficiency (12.6455 %) of solar cells was achieved at the [Fe]/([Fe] + [Sn]) ratio of about 0.45 owning to the optimized transport of carriers at CFTS/CdS heterojunction. Simultaneously, the conduction band minimum position of CFTS is the same as that of the buffer layer along with the Fe content of about 0.29. By varying the carrier concentration and working temperature, the highest efficiency of CFTS solar reached 24.8663 %, which provides theoretical guidance for the fabrication of CFTS thin film solar cells.

The general strategy developed for the quantification of the synergistic effect for composite materials is expected to guide the design of supercapacitors with suppressed self-discharge.

ABSTRACT This study is motivated by the need for the development of green artificial reef concrete (GARC) and the reuse of granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) and steel slag (SS) [...]

In this brief, the Time-Division Multiplier (TDM)-based electronic wattmeter has be integrated for the first time. To integrate the wattmeter and properly select parameters for its circuit, this brief provides the modeling of TDM and the theoretical analysis of three types of errors, which improved the TDM theory. Based on these analysis, the considerations for designing the circuits of the modules of TDM are provided. Besides, the analysis using root locus theory for notch filter design are also provided, which simplified the initialization and determination of the design parameters. The wattmeter circuits, whose maximum input voltage and current amplitudes are ±15 V and ±2.5 mA respectively, is integrated into a chip manufactured by a 0.35- $\mu \text{m}$ high-voltage semiconductor process and occupying area of $1.6\times2$ .5 mm2. And the precision of this integrated wattmeter is sub-100 ppm, represented by relative systematic error.

The exploration of the intrusion detection effect of urban rail transit management system aims to further improve the safety performance of the traffic field in urban construction. Thus, the deep convolution neural network model AlexNet with more network layers and stronger learning ability is adopted and improved, to ensure the safe operation of urban rail transit. Meanwhile, the GRU (Gate Recurrent Unit) neural network is introduced into the improved AlexNet to build an intrusion detection model of urban rail transit management system. Finally, the model performance is verified through the collected data and simulation experiments. Through the comparative analysis of the model and other scholars’ models in related fields, the recognition accuracy of intrusion detection of the intrusion detection model reaches 96.00%, which is at least 1.55% higher than that of other neural network models. Besides, its training time is stable at about 55.05 seconds, and the test time is stable at about 22.17 seconds. Moreover, the analysis result of data transmission security performance indicates that the data message delivery rate of this model is more than 80%, the data message leakage rate and packet loss rate are less than 10%, and the average delay is basically stable at about 350 milliseconds. Therefore, the constructed model can achieve high data transmission security performance under the premise of ensuring prediction accuracy, which can provide experimental basis for improving the safety performance of rail transit systems in smart cities.

Partial label learning (PLL), an important branch of weakly supervised learning, addresses the problem that each instance is associated with a set of candidate labels and only one is correct. In this paper, a novel adversarial model PL-MIGAN is proposed to simultaneously mitigate two fundamental issues of generative adversarial networks (GANs) in PLL: label disambiguation performance of discriminator and instance synthesis quality of generator. First of all, multi-class support vector machines (SVMs) applied in discriminator to disambiguate the candidate labels and identify fake instances. This strategy not only improves the disadvantage that traditional supervised loss is unable to perform disambiguation but also reduces the influence of cumulative error caused by noise label propagation. Furthermore, a partial contrastive loss is constructed to extend the self-supervised contrastive approach to PLL, allowing us to effectively leverage ambiguous labels information. Finally, the generator jointly employ mutual information (MI) and partial contrastive loss to estimate the latent distribution of each class label. In addition, in order to reduce the impact of ambiguous information, an iteratively optimization procedure is designed to update the label confidence matrix as conditional information guides the generation of instance classes. As adversarial learning proceeds, both the discriminator and the generator alternately and iteratively boost their performance. Simulation results reveal the overwhelming performance of PL-MIGAN.

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables the connection of a broad range of artifacts with advanced sensory technologies and produces massive amounts of data to support ambient intelligence. While the potential of IoT systems is widely recognized, little work has demonstrated a system with the ability to execute autonomously in the real world. Inspired by the success of robotics in specialized IoT environments, we propose an end-to-end solution for a generic, interactive ambient intelligence system where robots can assist humans in conducting activities in IoT-enabled smart homes. We evaluate the solution using implementations of public benchmarks on open-source platforms and use several activities to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution in real life.

The recycling of LCO is realized in a closed-loop protocol, where the dissolution/extraction of the cobalt element involves no additional precipitates, thus enabling the reusability of the leaching solution.

In recent years, research on the QoS-aware service composition problem often assumes that each component service in the process to be solved is equally essential. They do not consider the impact of core component services and other component services on problem-solving, or even though their impact is considered, they are not fully considered. So this paper first proposes a diffractive method based on them. Considering the advantages of artificial bee colony (ABC) such as simplicity, this paper chooses it as the basic algorithm. In addition, with the continuous development of service ecosystem, it gradually formed a variety of domain features. They have an important influence on problem-solving, but the existing research has not explored this influence in-depth. Therefore, this paper digs deep into this influence. Given the characteristics of the problem to be solved in this paper, the S-ABCPC algorithm is designed. At last, experiments have proved the effectiveness of the method proposed in this paper. The impact factors of this method have been studied.

Several leech species of the genera Hirudo, Hirudinaria, and Whitmaniaare widely used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for the oral treatment of disorders associated with blood stasis. Among them, the non‐hematophagous leech Whitmania pigraexpresses a variety of components that have the potential to act on the vertebrate blood coagulation system.

Prevotella copriand its related taxa are widely detected in mammalian gut microbiomesand have been linked with an enterotype in humans. However, their microevolution and macroevolution among hostsare poorly characterized. In this study, extensively collected marker genes and genomes were analyzed to trace their evolutionary history, host specificity, and biogeographic distribution. Investigations based on marker genes and genomes suggest that a P. copri-containing lineage (PCL) harbors diverse species in higher primates. Firstly, P. copriin the human gut consisted of multiple groups exhibiting high genomic divergence and conspicuous but non-strict biogeographic patterns. Most African strains with high genomic divergence from other strains were phylogenetically located at the root of the species, indicating the co-evolutionary history of P. copriand Homo sapiens. Secondly, although long-term co-evolution between PCL and higher primates was revealed, sporadic signals of co-speciationand extensive host jumping of PCL members were suggested among higher primates. Metagenomic and phylogenetic analyses indicated that P. copriand other PCL species found in domesticated mammals had been recently transmitted from humans. Thirdly, strong evidence was found on the extensively horizontal transfer of genes (e.g., genes encoding carbohydrate-active enzymes) among sympatric P. coprigroups and PCL species in the same primate host. Our study provides panoramic insights into the combined effects of vertical and horizontal transmission, as well as potential niche adaptation, on the microevolutionary and macroevolutionary history for an enterotype-representative lineage.

Famous for their two-dimensional magnetism, the transition-metal halides with significant anisotropy and correlated d-electrons have been reduced to a low dimension and caught substantial attention in recent years. At the same time, owing to the excellent capability of discerning various degrees of freedom in solid-state systems, a scanning tunneling microscope greatly advances the understanding of low-dimensional transition-metal halides and their heterostructures by providing key results regarding structural, electronic, and magnetic properties. Here, we review the key insights about the fabrication methods, crystallography, strongly correlated electronic structures, and magnetic orders of low-dimensional revealed by scanning tunneling microscope, and introduce the latest discoveries of emergent physics under the interplay between dimensionality confinement, many-body correlation, and quantum-coupling mechanisms.

As one of the main power sources, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) will continue to be applied on a large scale in the future market. Commercialized LIBs cathode materials contain various valuable metal elements including Li, Co, and Ni. The development of green and efficient recycling technology is essential. Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have recently emerged as a new class of green solvents that could potentially be applied for the LIBs recycling industry due to their capability to leach the active materials without the introduction of environmentally hazardous reagents as used in conventional hydrometallurgy process. Considering the rapid progress, a critical review focusing on the progress and fundamentals about the overall efficiency has practical significance for the further advancement of this field. Herein, we briefly introduce the overall process of using DESs for LIBs recycling and specifically focus on the efficiency of each step. Current fundamental understandings and new experimental approaches to enhance the efficiency of the leaching process, the extraction process, and reusability are summarized. We expect this review article to inspire scientists to use DESs as powerful tools for advancing the frontiers of LIBs recycling.

Conventional hydrometallurgy recycling process for treating wasted lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) typically results in the consumption of large amounts of corrosive leachates. Recent research on reusable leachate is expected to significantly improve the economic and environmental benefits, but is usually limited to specific and unique chemical reactions which could only apply to one type of metal elements. Herein, we report the co-extraction of multiple metal elements can be extracted without adding precipitates by mixed crystal co-precipitation, which enables the reusability of the leachate. We show that an oxalic acid (OA): choline chloride (ChCl): ethylene glycol (EG) type DES leachate system can leach transition metals from wasted LiNixCoyMn1-x-yO2(NCM) cathode materials with satisfactory efficiency (The time required for complete leaching at 120°C is 1.5 h). The transition metals were then efficiently extracted (with a recovery efficiency of over 96% for all elements) by directly adding water without precipitants. Noteworthy, the leachate can be efficiently recovered by directly evaporating the added water. The successful realization of reusability of leachate for the synergistic extraction of multiple elements relies on the regulation of the mixed crystal co-precipitation coefficient, which is realized by rationally design the reaction condition (composition of leachate, temperature and time) and induces the extraction of originally soluble manganese element. Our strategy is expected to be generally applicable and highly competent for industrial applications.

Yellow water is a kind of Chinese liquor-making wastewater, and contains rich organic components such as alcohols and organic acids, if not treated, it can cause environmental pollution. Herein, continuous aromatic ester production from Chinese liquor yellow water by a packed-bed column bioreactor with immobilized lipase was achieved. Inspired by interface activation of lipase, lipase from Aspergillus oryzae(AOL) was immobilized on LX-1000HA resin with silicone DC1-2577 modification (SH-LX-1000HA) and oleic acid modification (LX-1000HA-NH2-OA), respectively. Benefiting from the hydrophobic properties of the surface, the resultant AOL@SH LX-1000HA and AOL@LX-1000HA-NH2-OA were 2.3-times and 1.5-times higher activity than that of free AOL, reached 240 U/g and 156 U/g respectively. Meanwhile, the AOL@SH LX-1000HA and AOL@LX-1000HA-NH2-OA exhibited higher thermal stability, storage stability, and recyclability than free lipase. Furthermore, the aromatic ester production from yellow water by an packed-bed column bioreactor increased from 1.293g/L to 3.976g/L. This efficient continuous bioprocess presents great industrial potential for high value utilization from Chinese liquor yellow water.

While hydrometallurgy is the primary technology for recycling spent lithium-ion batteries due to various advantages, it still involves substantial consumption of chemical reagents and poses challenges in wastewater emission. Herein, we report the realization of cathode recycling under lean-leachate conditions by dynamically stabilizing hole-mediated diffusion kinetics, which is enabled by synchronizing the extraction step during the leaching stage, thus continuously removing the dissolved ions out of the leachate. Theoretical molecular dynamics simulations predict that preventing the accumulation of the dissolved ions is efficient for keeping the leaching process proceeding. Experimentally, even with a small dosage of leachate (0.5 mL), a 94.51% leaching efficiency can be achieved (90 °C, 40 min) for spent LNO materials. Considering that our strategy is not limited to a specific materials system, it could be extended to recycle other valuable materials (including LCO or NCM 811) with minimal leachate usage.

A 17.3‐inch WQHD foldable AMOLED display with 10 bit depth was developed. Electrical regulation was carried out to realize high uniformity and contrast ratio. Nearly 100% Adobe and DCI‐P3 coverage revealed its outstanding color expression capacity. De‐mura and IR‐drop compensation IP were integrated to improve visual effects and user experience.

QoS-aware service composition problem has been drawn great attention in recent years. As an NP-hard problem, high time complexity is inevitable if global optimization algorithms (such as integer programming) are adopted. Researchers applied various evolutionary algorithms to decrease the time complexity by looking for a near-optimum solution. However, each evolutionary algorithm has two or more parameters, the values of which are to be assigned by algorithm designers and likely have impacts on the optimization results (primarily time complexity and optimality). The authors' experiments show that there are some dependencies between the features of a service composition problem, the values of an evolutionary algorithm's parameters, and the optimization results. In this article, the authors propose an improved algorithm called Service-Oriented Artificial Bee Colony algorithm considering Priori Knowledge (S-ABCPK) to solve service composition problem and focus on the S-ABCPK's parameter turning issue. The objective is to identify the potential dependency for designers of a service composition algorithm easily setting up the values of S-ABCPK parameters to obtain a preferable composition solution without many times of tedious attempts. Eight features of the service composition problem and the priori knowledge, five S-ABCPK parameters and two metrics of the final solution are identified. Based on a large volume of experiment data, S-ABCPK parameter tuning for a given service composition problem is conducted using C4.5 algorithm and the dependency between problem features and S-ABCPK parameters are established using the neural network method. An experiment on a validation dataset shows the feasibility of the approach.

We propose methods based on the conditional restricted Boltzmann machine (CRBM) for the service recommendation. First, we construct a CRBM model, the individualised characteristics of customers and indexes of satisfaction have been encoded into its conditional units, and the using status of services has been encoded into its visible units. Next, a method for dynamically adjusting learning rates is proposed to improve the training process of the CRBM. Finally, we develop a neighbourhood-based approach to further boost recommendation results. The evaluation on a dataset extracted from a manufacturing company, validates that the above-proposed methods have highly practical relevance to the service recommendation problem in real world business.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose an extended Kalman particle filter (EPF) approach for dynamic state estimation of synchronous machine using the phasor measurement unit’s measurements.Design/methodology/approach EPF combines the extended Kalman filter (EKF) with the particle filter (PF) to accurately estimate the dynamic states of synchronous machine. EKF is used to make particles of PF transfer to the likelihood distribution from the previous distribution. Therefore, the sample impoverishment in the implementation of PF is able to be avoided.Findings The proposed method is capable of estimating the dynamic states of synchronous machine with high accuracy. The real-time capability of this method is also acceptable.Practical implications The effectiveness of the proposed approach is tested on IEEE 30-bus system.Originality/value Introducing EKF into PF, EPF is proposed to estimate the dynamic states of synchronous machine. The accuracy of a dynamic state estimation is increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an area-efficient design of a column-parallel second-order digital decimation filter for a $\Sigma \Delta$ analog-to-digital converter-based CMOS image sensor. By using the proposed pre-bitwise-inversion topology having the same mathematical function, the chip area could be curtailed, where the bit-wise-inversion block, required by the correlated-double-sampling, is moved to the front of the adder. Following such a technique as this, more than six inverters and multiplexers can be reduced. This paper also proposes an adder scheme with only 118 transistors to implement the 13-bit dynamic range integrator. Moreover, the number of MSB cells inside the ripple counter is optimized to balance leakage current and active power consumption. Compared with the prior art, the proposed decimation filter core (without registers) can achieve a reduction of about 24% in transistor count. The proposed design is implemented with a 130-nm standard CMOS process. The total chip area of the digital decimation filter is only $4.5\times 145~\mu \text{m}^{2}$ per column, which is less than half area compared against the prior art. According to the post-layout simulation, the maximum operating frequency is 124 MHz, and the total power consumption, including the filter core and 13-bit registers, is less than 6.35 $\mu \text{W}$ under a typical 50-MHz clock frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores on the concept and form of the ancient Chinese ceramic art which known as the Two Sages of Harmony and Union. It states that the art symbolizes the Chinese Cupid who governed the marital affairs. It also cites the value for understanding ancient Chinese culture and social concepts that evolved into a folk legend and an object of worship.

Introduction:Marfan syndrome (MFS) carries a risk of aortic dissection and death. The current aneurysm repair guideline of diameter ≥5cm may neglect up to 15% of MFS patients who dissect at smaller diameters. Since dissection can occur biomechanically when wall stress exceeds tissue strength, patient-specific biomechanics may enhance risk stratification for MFS patients. The goal of this study was to compare aneurysm wall stresses between propensity score-matched MFS and non-MFS aneurysm patients.Methods:The cohort consisted of 5 MFS and 42 non-MFS patients with aortic aneurysm. Preoperative CTA or MR scans were used to create 3D hexahedral meshes. Finite element analysis was performed with MFS and nonMFS material properties to determine peak (99th percentile) diastolic stresses[TE1] . Propensity scores were calculated by logistic regression using age, sex, height, hypertension, diabetes, smoking history, valve type, and sinus diameter. Five pairs were formed by 1:1 optimal matching without replacement. Comparisons used the paired t-test.Results:Diameters were similar at the sinus but lower for MFS at the STJ (3.4±0.5 vs 3.9±0.7cm, p=0.003) and the ascending aorta (3.1±0.5 vs 4.3±0.5cm, p<0.001). Peak circumferential stresses (CS) were similar between MFS and nonMFS aneurysms across all regions. As well, peak longitudinal stresses (LS) were similar between the two cohorts across all regions (Fig 1).Conclusion:Both CS and LS were similar at all regions for MFS vs non-MFS patients. Because LS has been implicated in acute dissection and LS were similar, differences in tissue strength, rather than wall stress, are most likely causes of high dissection rates in MFS due to material weakness from fibrillin mutation.

Introduction:Current diameter-based guidelines for ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms do not consistently predict risk of dissection/rupture. Aneurysm wall stresses may better predict risk but correlate weakly with diameter. Our objective was to correlate aneurysm wall stresses with indexed diameters in relation to 3-year all-cause mortality.Methods:Finite element analyses were performed on 255 patients with aneurysms ≥4.0cm. Three-dimensional geometries were reconstructed from computed tomography and models developed accounting for pre-stress geometries. A fiber-embedded hyperelastic material model was applied to obtain circumferential (circ.) and longitudinal (long.) wall stress distributions under systolic pressure. Peak wall stresses were compared across diameter/[body surface area (BSA)] and diameter/[height (ht)] thresholds from the literature. Hazard ratios for 3-year all-cause mortality and surgical aneurysm repair were estimated using cause-specific Cox proportional hazards models.Results:Compared to the 22% cumulative incidence of aneurysm repair at 3 years, indexed diameter indicated repair at baseline in 17/255 (7%) patients, including only 4/230 (1.7%) with diameter <5.5cm. Peak wall stresses did not significantly differ across literature-proposed thresholds for diameter/BSA (circ: p=0.15; long: p=0.18), but did differ for diameter/ht (circ: p=0.003; long: p=0.048). All-cause mortality was associated with peak long. stresses independent of indexed diameter (p=0.009). Peak long. stresses were best predicted by diameter (c-statistic=0.66), followed by diameter/ht (c-statistic=0.59), and diameter/BSA (c-statistic=0.55).Conclusions:Diameter/ht better stratified peak wall stresses than diameter/BSA. Peak long. stresses independently predicted all-cause mortality, adjusting for age and indexed diameter. Peak long. stresses may aid risk stratification for adverse events.

The objective of social network services (SNS) is to fulfil users' social needs, and this is quite different from the traditional functional-oriented genetic services (GSs) which are leveraged to fulfil specific functional needs. We clarify the difference between GS and SNS and give the corresponding abstract models. Different SNS have different sorts of abilities of facilitating the social activities, so we propose a concept 'degree of sociability (DoS)' as a key attribute of SNS to depict such differences. On account that a user's daily behaviour sequence is intertwined by the usage of various GS and SNS, we import SNS into traditional service processes and to form a novel socialised service process (SSP) model that has the ability of satisfying users' functional and social needs simultaneously. Criteria for selecting SNS in terms of a user's social needs are briefly summarised. A real-world case study is conducted to validate this research.

Reliability is a key performance indicator of distributed service systems. On the condition that a customer raises a demand with a very strict reliability, it is possibly difficult for a service broker to offer a composite service that fully satisfies the reliability expectation. In the real world, the customers would like to pay extra money to assure the successful execution of a composite service, and the brokers usually adopt a redundancy-based mechanism to enhance the reliability of the composite service. The authors consider two scenarios of reliability enhancement: (1) a composite service exists but its reliability fails to meet the expectations of customers; and (2) no composite services exist yet, but it is known that the expected reliability is too high to be met. To handle them, the authors propose the RE-ECS and RE-PLN algorithms, respectively, in which three heuristic rules are proposed and the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm are adopted to find an approximate optimal trade-off between the improvement extent and the total cost of the reliability enhancement. The authors use two traditional redundancy strategies (i.e., sequential and parallel) for enhancing the reliability a single service task, and a new redundancy strategy called path redundancy for extending a new path into a composite service to improve the global reliability. Nine experiments are conducted and some factors having potential influences on the effect, cost, and efficiency of the reliability enhancement are analyzed. This work is of significance for service brokers to build and enhance their composite services to satisfy those strict expectations on reliability.

Abstract: This paper is concerned with exploring stability analysis for a class of Markovian jump systems (MJSs) with generally uncertain transition rates (GUTRs). In the GUTR model, each transition rate can be completely unknown or only its estimate value is known. This new uncertain model is more general than the existing ones and can be applicable to more practical situations. The stability criterion for such a class of uncertain MJSs is derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed method. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The charge frustration with the mixed-valence state inherent to LiTi2O4, which is found to be the only oxide superconductor with spinel structure, is the impetus for paying special attention to unveil the underlying intriguing superconducting properties. Here, we report a pronounced fourfold rotational symmetry of the superconductivity in high-quality single-crystalline LiTi2O4(001) thin films. Both the magnetoresistivity and upper critical field under an applied magnetic field manifest striking fourfold oscillations deep inside the superconducting state, whereas the anisotropy vanishes in the normal state, demonstrating that it is an intrinsic property of the superconducting phase. We attribute this behavior to the unconventional d-wave superconducting Cooper pairs with the irreducible representation of Egprotected by the Ohpoint group in cubic LiTi2O4. Our findings show the nontrivial character of the pairing interaction in a three-dimensional spinel oxide superconductor.

WangZ., LiuY., XuY., XiaoP. andLiR. 2013. The divergence of cpcBA-IGS sequences between Dolichospermumand Aphanizomenon(Cyanobacteria) and the molecular detection of Dolichospermum flos-aquaein Taihu Lake, China. Phycologia52: 447–454. DOI: 10.2216/12–125.1The occurrence of bloom-forming heterocystous cyanobacteria such as Dolichospermum flos-aquaehas become increasingly serious. This study was conducted to provide a detailed understanding of diversity, distribution and seasonal dynamics of Dolichospermum flos-aquaepopulations in Taihu Lake, China. Morphological identifications showed Dolichospermum flos-aquaeand Aphanizomnon flos-aquaewere the two main heterocystous cyanobacteria in Taihu Lake. Phylogenetic analysis based on cpcBA-IGS sequences, the highly variable intergenic spacer (IGS) region between two phycobilisome subunits (cpcBand cpcA), distinguished Dolichospermumfrom other filametous cyanobacterial genera. Therefore, the real-time PCR detection of Dolichospermum flos-aquaebased on cpcBA-IGS sequences was developed to study the distribution and abundance of Dolichospermum flos-aquae. The investigation began in August 2008 and extended through September 2010. Dolichospermum flos-aquaeoccurred throughout the entire lake. There was an average abundance of 2.0 × 106gene copies L−1, and the peak abundance was in the western part of Taihu Lake during late spring when it reached 4.0 × 107copies L−1. Dolichospermum flos-aquaehad a regular annual cycle; it began appearing in late autumn and it reached a peak in late spring.

LiuY.*, WangZ.*, LinS., YuG. andLiR. 2013. Polyphasic characterization of Planktothrix spiroidessp. nov. (Oscillatoriales, Cyanobacteria), a freshwater bloom-forming alga superficially resembling Arthrospira. Phycologia52: 326–332. DOI: 10.2216/13–146.1In the present study, 24 cyanobacterial strains with regular helical trichomes were isolated from four different freshwater bodies in China. These strains were initially identified as a freshwater Arthrospira-like cyanobacterium. Analysis of their 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences revealed that these strains formed a monophyletic group with Planktothrix. Further molecular phylogenetic analyses based on the cpcBA-IGS and rpoC1genes supported the finding that these strains belonged to Planktothrix, not Arthrospira. In addition, the fatty acid composition showed that the strains contained 18:3α but lacked 18:3γ, which was similar to Planktothrix. These results showed that the alga formed a new group within Planktothrixand that this group, which resembled Arthrospirain morphology, was unrelated to Arthrospira. The strains were distinct from previously described Planktothrixspecies, and therefore a new species, Planktothrix spiroidessp. nov., was established.

The web has undergone a tremendous shift from information repository to the provisioning capacity of services. As an effective means of constructing coarse-grained solutions by dynamically aggregating a set of services to satisfy complex requirements, traditional service composition suffers from dramatic decrease on the efficiency of determining the optimal solution when large scale services are available in the Internet based service market. Most current approaches look for the optimal composition solution by real-time computation, and the composition efficiency greatly depends on the adopted algorithms. To eliminate such deficiency, this paper proposes a semi-empirical composition approach which incorporates the extraction of empirical evidence from historical experiences to provide guidance to solution space reduction to real-time service selection. Service communities and historical requirements are further organized into clusters based on similarity measurement, and then the probabilistic correspondences between the two types of clusters are identified by statistical analysis. For each new request, its hosting requirement cluster would be identified and corresponding service clusters would be determined by leveraging Bayesian inference. Concrete services would be selected from the reduced solution space to constitute the final composition. Timing strategies for re-clustering and consideration to special cases in clustering ensures continual adaption of the approach to changing environment. Instead of relying solely on pure real-time computation, the approach distinguishes from traditional methods by combining the two perspectives together.

AbstractFor feature matching in 3D computer vision, there are two main kinds of methods, i.e. global-based and local-based algorithms. Although both have achieved some useful results, they still have own disadvantages. This paper proposes a novel method which combines the global and local information as much as possible so that it can take both advantages. A series of sub-pixel window correlation method is employed with the guidance of fronto-parallel result to produce some local results. These local results are then repeatedly merged by quadratic pseudo-boolean optimization under the guidance of global information. After several sub-pixel local optimizations, the error rates at high resolution are tremendously reduced. When combining the global and local traits together, the third step optimization can both reduce the low resolution error as well as keep high-accuracy resolution error low. Compared with other existing algorithms, the proposed approach performs well when the scene is comprised with planar or curved surfaces. Practical experiments are carried out in this research to illustrate the method and typical results.

Community-based software development is a promising model to help reduce the pressures such as development costs, human resources access, new market development, and building business competencies. But the big concern is how to ensure the quality of the outsourcing service. In this paper, a service quality evaluation method for community-based software outsourcing process has been proposed. A service quality indicator model with three layers and five dimensions is explained and applied to community-based software outsourcing service supported by Call-For-Implementation (CFI) platform. The calculation method for each quality indicator is demonstrated in detail. A prototype is developed to support the evaluation process and exhibit results of quality evaluation for the community-based software outsourcing based on CFI. This prototype not only measures and displays the status of service quality in real-time, but also provides history data to guide software outsourcing process management.

Service is defined as a provider-to-client co-production that creates and captures value while sharing risks. Value plays a central position in the lifecycle of services, for example, new values are defined in service mode, designing service models to support the proposed values, and developing service systems to deliver values to customers and providers. It is also necessary to make clear what kinds of characteristics service value has. In this paper, the authors make a classification on service values and discuss characteristics of service value, that is, transitivity, decomposability, partition, transformation, and dependency. The authors illuminate these characteristics by presenting several practical examples, as well as introducing value-aware service engineering and methodology (VASEM). Results of this paper will provide references to value-oriented service innovation, service design and service system development in SSME domain.

Service composition and Web mash-up are promising for meeting specific business requirements by integrating multiple distributed services and SaaS (Software as a Service) has become a popular way of software development and delivery paradigm. An application that meets the business challenges the customer faces in managing its supply chain by integrating two existing SaaS offerings into a newly developed technology presented to validate the service composition technologies. This paper contributes with a practice of a light weight approach of the problems that are inevitable in SaaS integration such as data synchronization, process control, and identification. The purpose of this paper tries to provide a reference for researchers and engineers in this domain.

We present a novel paradigm of sensor placement concerning data precision. Sensors are used to measure a quantity of a moving target in the scenario of a wireless sensor network. These sensors, cooperating with each other, estimate the quantity in a real-time manner. We consider a problem on a minimum-cost scheme of sensor placement. The problem is described with a grid model, and the approximation of such a description is presented. The problem is solved with the branch-and-bound method and tabu search. The experiments demonstrate the validation, efficiency and scalability of this algorithm.

Introduction:Natural history studies of ascending thoracic aortic aneurysm (aTAA) identified maximum diameter as a predictor of aortic dissection, informing guidelines for prophylactic surgery. Studies have since challenged the biomechanical basis of diameter-based risk assessment. Indices of diameter with measures of body size were proposed to account for individual variation in diameter, including body surface area as aortic size index (ASI) or height as aortic height index (AHI). The goal of this study was to determine differences in aneurysm wall stresses across previously defined clinical risk groups for ASI and AHI.Methods:Height and weight measurements were retrospectively reviewed for 264 male veterans with aTAA. Wall stresses were previously simulated using finite element analyses on patient-specific geometries. Group differences in wall stress were assessed among ASI and AHI risk groups using the Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn tests.Results:Median ± interquartile range circumferential stresses among ASI risk groups were 486.5 ± 132.8, 510.7 ± 140.5, and 617.2 ± 201.6 kPa for groups 1-3 (P= .19). Longitudinal stresses were 307.3 ± 70.8, 300.8 ± 67.9, and 359.1 ± 57.2 kPa (P= .09). Among AHI risk groups, circumferential stresses were 476.9 ± 151.4, 503.3 ± 135.4, and 586.2 ± 102.6 kPa for groups 1-3 (P= .008). Longitudinal stresses were 297.6 ± 80.7, 304.1 ± 64.7, and 361.2 ± 122.9 kPa (P= .004). For both circumferential and longitudinal stresses, pairwise comparisons were significant between groups 1,3 and 2,3. No observations were classified as group 4 for ASI or AHI.Conclusions:Differences in wall stress were not significant across ASI risk groups and were significant between AHI groups 1,3 and 2,3. While both indices have been shown to stratify clinical outcomes, AHI-based risk groups may better reflect differences in biomechanical state. Prospective studies may further elucidate the relationship between biomechanical status and clinical outcomes.

A neutral aqueous tin-based flow battery is proposed by employing Sn2+/Sn as active materials for the negative side, [Fe(CN)6]3−/ Fe(CN)6]4−as active materials for the positive side, and potassium chloride as the supporting electrolyte, and its overall performances and cost for capacity unit are investigated. Cyclic voltammetry is performed and shows that the Sn2+/Sn has outstanding electrochemical behavior. The charging-discharging tests are conducted with the optimized electrolyte composition of 0.2 M [Fe(CN)6]3−and 3 M KCl. It is shown that the flow cell can reach a high energy efficiency of 80% at 10 mA cm−2and be stably operated at 40 mA cm−2. The 120-cycling test shows that the flow cell can be of superior cycling performances, benefitting from the dendrite-free property of tin. Finally, cost analysis further confirms its competitiveness in price, offering a promising future for commercial application. This work not only forms a promising energy storage device with dendrite-free and low-cost benefits, but also provide a deep insight into its overall behavior, which is highly beneficial to the full understanding and further advancement of the proposed neutral tin-iron flow battery.

Partial Label Learning (PLL) is a weakly supervised learning framework where each training instance is associated with more than one candidate label. However, label ambiguity in the case of label imbalance has not been well solved. In this paper, a novel label imbalance-aware algorithm named PL-LIMAP is proposed to effectively solve this problem. Firstly, a partial manifold constrained low-rank representation method is proposed to learn the instance affinity matrix, which can identify instances with the same label by fully mining the manifold structure of the data. Moreover, for making full use of the information hidden in candidate labels, the Jaccard distance is introduced to measure the similarity between candidate labels to obtain the label affinity matrix. The combination of these two affinity matrices can achieve the purpose of disambiguation through complementary information. Meanwhile, aiming to determine the imbalance of ambiguous labels, specialized measures are proposed to evaluate the imbalance level in PLL. According to the imbalance level of different labels, an alternative weighting scheme is proposed to mitigate the imbalance of ambiguous labels. As a consequence, the ground-truth label of an instance can be found out even though its label information is not available in advance. Experiments reveal the overwhelming performances of PL-LIMAP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new 3D Cd(II) coordination polymer, [Cd3(HBPTC)2(4,4′-bpy)2], was prepared by the reaction of cadmium nitrate with H4BPTC (1,1′-biphenyl-2,4,4′,6-tetracarboxylic acid) in the presence of 4,4′-bpy (4,4′-bipyridine). This compound displays an amazing (4,10)-connected topological net. The fluorescent property of the compound was also studied, and a blue shift on the emission band was observed in comparison with the free H4BPTC ligand.

Objective: Historic studies of nonsyndromic ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms (aTAAs) suggested that aTAA growth rate was approximately 0.6mm/year, but data were limited, with relatively few studies using computed tomography (CT) imaging. Our objective was to reevaluate the annual growth rate of nonsyndromic ATAAs that do not meet criteria for surgical repair in the contemporary era.Methods: Nonsurgical patients (ATAA diameter<5.5cm) undergoing aTAA surveillance with repeat CT imaging taken 3-5 years apart were identified. Maximum aTAA diameter was determined by a single radiologist using centerline measurements. Average growth rate was evaluated based on longest available follow-up.Results: Seventy-four patients were included. Average follow-up time was 3.98±0.86 years. Patients were primarily male (n=74, 100%), with average age of 67.4±7.7 years and a history of smoking (n=57, 77%), hypertension (n=54, 73%), and dyslipidemia (n=54, 73%). Average baseline aTAA diameter was 43.2±4.2 mm and average growth rate was 0.11±0.34 mm/year, with a rate of 0.12±0.33 mm/year in patients with tricuspid aortic valves (n=68) and 0.08±0.22 mm/year in patients with bicuspid valves, excluding one outlier with a negative growth rate of -0.79mm/year (Figure 1). There was no difference in growth rate between patients with initial diameter ≤45mm vs. >45mm. Only 5 patients experienced clinically significant changes in diameter with magnitude >5% of baseline.Conclusions: In this population, most patients did not experience annual aneurysm growth over 5 years, regardless of initial aTAA diameter. Thus, in the modern era, aTAAs may not grow as quickly as previously described, which is important in determining appropriate intervals for aneurysm surveillance based upon risk:benefit ratio.Figure 1. Comparison of average annual growth rate distributions between overall population and patients with tricuspid vs. bicuspid aortic valves

Objective: Ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms (aTAAs) carry a risk of type A dissection. Elective repair guidelines were designed around diameter but fall short at capturing dissection risk in small aneurysms. Acute aortic events occur when wall stress exceeds wall strength. Patient-specific wall stress profiles may better predict aortic events. The purpose of this study was to compare the relation of diameter with wall stresses in aTAAs associated with a tricuspid aortic valve (TAV).Methods: Patients with TAV-aTAA diameter ≥ 4.0cm (n=230) were recruited and classified into 0.5cm long diameter groups. Three-dimensional aTAA geometries were reconstructed from ECG-gated computer tomography images. Finite element analyses were performed to simulate the cardiac cycle and determine wall stress profiles at systole. Peak stresses were compared with the Kruskal-Wallis test. Medians with interquartile ranges are reported.Results: TAV-aTAA longitudinal peak wall stress increased with diameter (p=2.7e-7). Longitudinal stresses were 291[266-325] kPa for size 4.0-4.4cm, 330[295-358] kPa for 4.5-4.9cm, 338[318-371] kPa for 5.0-5.4cm, 318[293-351] kPa for 5.5-5.9cm, and 373[363-449] kPa for ≥6.0cm. Circumferential peak wall stress increased with diameter (p=0.0006). Circumferential stresses were 460[419-526] kPa for size 4.0-4.4cm, 503[453-568] kPa for 4.5-4.9cm, 546[429-582] kPa for 5.0-5.4cm, 540[471-608] kPa for 5.5-5.9cm, and 596[507-649] kPa for ≥6.0cm (Figure)Conclusions: Circumferential and longitudinal wall stresses increase with diameter but the large overlap between groups limits diameter utility in risk stratification of aneurysms. Small aTAAs can experience stresses comparable to large aneurysms. Depending on wall strength, patient-specific wall stress may be a better predictor of acute aortic events.

Protein termini play pivotal roles in various biological processes. Although several terminomic strategies have been proposed for the analysis of protein N-termini or protein C-termini separately, few can analyze both ends of proteins at the same time. Herein, we developed a workflow, termed Simultaneous Analysis of Protein N- and C-Terminome (SAPT) based on strong cation exchange chromatography (SCX) fractionation. Taking advantage of terminal peptides’ reduced charge states in low pH SCX for their selective separation, we identified 3724 canonical human protein N-termini and 3129 canonical human protein C-termini, as well as 1463 neo-N-termini from the HeLa cell line, representing the largest human protein C-termini data set and the second largest human protein N-termini data set so far. The whole fractionation procedure was simple and rapid with considerable selectivity by utilizing a commercially available SCX-SPE column. In addition, we report for the first time the comprehensive screening of protein N-terminal and C-terminal modifications, leading to an identification of 8 kinds of protein N-terminal PTMs other than acetylation and 1 kind of protein C-terminal PTM other than amidation. Our results demonstrate the excellent performance and great potential of SAPT in terminomic studies. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD024573.

Introduction:Aneurysm wall stress may better predict rupture/dissection risk than diameter. We hypothesize aTAA have elevated wall stress compared to normal ascending aorta, yet correlation of aTAA wall stress with diameter is weak.Methods:33 patients (age 68.2?7.7 years, n=33 men) underwent aTAA resection. Mean pre-op aTAA diameter was 52.2?4.7mm. 23 normal ascending aorta (AscAo) (age 53?11.8 years, n=13 men, n=10 women) with diameter 32.2?3.2mm, were obtained from rejected donor hearts. ATAA/AscAo specimens underwent micro-CT for wall thickness/geometry. Hyperelastic material model with patient-averaged properties from biaxial stretch testing was assigned to the models. Finite element simulations using LS-DYNA software loaded models to physiologic pressure (120/80mmHg) for wall stress analysis.Results:ATAA vs AscAo peak first principal wall stresses (FPS, circumferential direction) were 225.2?85.9kPa vs 152.2?36.9kPa (p<0.001), and peak second principal stresses (SPS, longitudinal direction) were 136.8?46.5 vs 78.8?25.6kPa (p<0.001) (Figure 1). ATAA vs AscAo mean FPS were 122.0?37.7 vs 97.4?21.0kPa (p=0.008); mean SPS were 64.1?19.3kPa vs 42.1?9.4kPa (p<0.001). Stratifying aTAA by size ?5.5cm (n=9) vs <5.5cm (n=23) had statistically significant difference in size (p<0.01), but did not yield significant wall stress differences: peak FPS 217.8?88.5 vs 236.6?130.0 kPa (p=0.68), peak SPS 132.5?36.6 vs 145.6?81.9 (p=0.63). Correlation was weak between aTAA peak stresses and diameter (FPS R2=0.26, SPS R2=0.16).Conclusions:Elevated wall stress existed in aTAA compared to normal AscAo. However, peak stress in aTAA correlated poorly with diameter demonstrating limitations of diameter-based criteria for aTAA intervention.