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Purpose: Our purpose was to develop a deep learning-based computed tomography (CT) perfusion mapping (DL-CTPM) method that synthesizes lung perfusion images from CT images.Methods and Materials: This paper presents a retrospective analysis of the pulmonary technetium-99m-labeled macroaggregated albumin single-photon emission CT (SPECT)/CT scans obtained from 73 patients at Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong in 2019. The left and right lung scans were separated to double the size of the data set to 146. A 3-dimensional attention residual neural network was constructed to extract textural features from the CT images and reconstruct corresponding functional images. Eighty-four samples were randomly selected for training and cross-validation, and the remaining 62 were used for model testing in terms of voxel-wise agreement and function-wise concordance. To assess the voxel-wise agreement, the Spearman's correlation coefficient (R) and structural similarity index measure between the images predicted by the DL-CTPM and the corresponding SPECT perfusion images were computed to assess the statistical and perceptual image similarities, respectively. To assess the function-wise concordance, the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) was computed to determine the similarity of the low/high functional lung volumes.Results: The evaluation of the voxel-wise agreement showed a moderate-to-high voxel value correlation (0.6733 ± 0.1728) and high structural similarity (0.7635 ± 0.0697) between the SPECT and DL-CTPM predicted perfusions. The evaluation of the function-wise concordance obtained an average DSC value of 0.8183 ± 0.0752 for high-functional lungs (range, 0.5819-0.9255) and 0.6501 ± 0.1061 for low-functional lungs (range, 0.2405-0.8212). Ninety-four percent of the test cases demonstrated high concordance (DSC >0.7) between the high-functional volumes contoured from the predicted and ground-truth perfusions.Conclusions: We developed a novel DL-CTPM method for estimating perfusion-based lung functional images from the CT domain using a 3-dimensional attention residual neural network, which yielded moderate-to-high voxel-wise approximations of lung perfusion. To further contextualize these results toward future clinical application, a multi-institutional large-cohort study is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Diabetes is associated with the progression of atrial fibrillation (AF) and atrial flutter (AFL). However, whether glucose-lowering agents could reduce AF/AFL remains unclear. We hypothesized that different glucose-lowering agents exhibit different characteristic effects on the risk of AF/AFL.Objectives: The goals of this study were to evaluate the effect of different glucose-lowering agents and identify the optimal treatment that can reduce AF/AFL events in patients with diabetes.Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library from their inception to September 30, 2020. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines were used in this network meta-analysis. The primary end point of our study was AF or AFL. Only studies that reported AF/AFL as clinical end points with a follow-up period of at least 12 months were included. The results from trials were presented as odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The results were pooled using a Bayesian random-effects model.Results: Five eligible studies (9 glucose-lowering agents, including thiazolidinedione, metformin, sulfonylurea, insulin, dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist [GLP-1RA], sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor, alpha-glucosidase inhibitor, and non-sulfonylurea) consisting of 263,583 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus were included. Based on the pooled results, GLP-1RA significantly reduced AF/AFL events compared with metformin (OR 0.17; 95% CI 0.04-0.61), sulfonylurea (OR 0.23; 95% CI 0.07-0.73), insulin (OR 0.20; 95% CI 0.07-0.86), and non-sulfonylurea (OR 0.18; 95% CI 0.04-0.66).Conclusion: Compared with other glucose-lowering agents, GLP-1RA could reduce the risk of AF/AFL in patients with diabetes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biofilm is an important survival mode of microorganisms in nature. Biofilm culture is supposed to be a way of learning from nature to endow microorganisms with a strong tolerance. However, microorganisms possess different biofilm formation abilities, and universal scaffolds, especially edible scaffolds, suitable for fast biofilm formation are not found yet. Zein is a hydrophobic and biocompatible prolamine-rich protein from corn and is one of the most used biomacromolecules now. In this work, natural zein was utilized to produce electrospun zein nanofibrous biomaterial. The results demonstrate that edible electrospun zein nanofibrous scaffolds significantly enhance biofilm formation, where bacterial probiotics and yeasts are 0.9–1.4 Log cfu/cm2 (8–25 ×) and 1.7–3.3 Log cfu/cm2 (50–2000 ×) higher than the values on polystyrene plates and zein films, respectively. Gaps in biofilm formation abilities between bacteria and yeasts are narrowed from 1.7–1.8 Log cfu/cm2 (50–63 ×) to 0.5–0.6 Log cfu/cm2 (3–4 ×), respectively. Biofilms quickly formed on electrospun zein nanofibrous scaffolds before the occurrence of serious swelling deformation of the scaffolds. This is the first attempt to use edible electrospun fibrous scaffolds based on natural biomacromolecules for enhancing biofilm formation, crucially important for the application of probiotics and yeast in food and medical industries. Electrospun zein nanofibrous scaffolds can serve as powerful tools to enhance the biofilm formation of valuable food microorganisms and close the huge gaps in biofilm formation abilities between microorganisms, providing a convenient and universal strategy to produce biofilm-phenotyped probiotics and yeasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human vibriosis, caused by pathogenic Vibrio spp., such as Vibrio parahaemolyticus , Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio vulnificus, has been increasing worldwide, mediated by increasing consumption of seafood. The present study was conducted to examine the global prevalence of V. vulnificus , V. parahaemolyticus and V. cholerae in fishes. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and CNKI for peer-reviewed articles and dissertations prior to December 31, 2021. A total of 24,831 articles were retrieved, and 82 articles contained 61 fish families were included. The global pooled prevalence of V. cholerae , V. parahaemolyticus and V. vulnificus in fishes was 9.56 % (95 % CI: 2.12–20.92), 24.77 % (95 % CI: 17.40–32.93) and 5.29 % (95 % CI: 0.38–13.61), respectively. Subgroup and meta-regression analyses showed that study-level covariates, including temperature, country, continent, origin and detection methods partly explained the between-study heterogeneity. These heterogeneities were underpinned by differences of the three Vibrio spp. in fishes at geographical and climatic scales. These results reveal a high global prevalence of pathogenic Vibrio spp. in fishes and highlight the need for implementation of more effective prevention and control measures to reduce food-borne infection in humans. [Display omitted] • Comprehensive statistics on the prevalence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus , Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio vulnificus of fishes was conducted. • Global prevalence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus , Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio vulnificus in different fish families was calculated. • Geographical and climatic scales affect the prevalence of foodborne Vibrio spp. in fish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Radiation dermatitis (RD) is a common, unpleasant side effect of patients receiving radiation therapy. In clinical practice, the severity of RD is graded manually through visual inspection, which is labor intensive and often leads to large interrater variations. To overcome these shortcomings, this study aimed to develop an automatic RD assessment based on deep learning (DL) techniques that could efficiently assist the RD severity classification in clinical application.Methods and Materials: A total of 1205 photographs of the head and neck region were collected from patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) undergoing radiation therapy. The severity of RD in these photographs was graded by 5 qualified assessors based on the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group guidance. An end-to-end RD grading framework was developed by combining a DL-based segmentation network and a DL-based RD severity classifier, which are used for segmenting the neck region from the camera-captured photographs and grading, respectively. U-Net was used for segmentation and another convolutional neural network classifier (DenseNet-121) was applied to RD severity classification. Dice similarity coefficient was used to evaluate the performance of segmentation. Severity classification was evaluated by several metrics, including overall accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score.Results: Results of segmentation showed that the averaged dice similarity coefficients were 91.2% and 90.8% for front and side view, respectively. For RD severity classification, the overall accuracy of test photographs was 83.0%. Our method accurately classified 90.5% of grade 0, 67.2% of grade 1, 93.8% of grade 2, and 100% of above grade 2 cases. The overall prediction performance was comparable with human assessors. There was no significant difference in accuracy when using manually or automatically segmented regions (P = .683).Conclusions: We have successfully demonstrated a DL-based method for automatic assessment of RD severity in patients with NPC. This method holds great potential for efficient and effective assessing and monitoring of RD in patients with NPC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multi-scale chemical characteristics and source apportionment of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were analysed in Tianjin, China, using 1-hr resolution VOC-species data between November 1, 2018 and March 15, 2019. The average total VOC (TVOC) concentration was 30.6 ppbv during the heating season. The alkanes accounted for highest proportion of the TVOC, while the alkenes were the predominant species forming ozone, especially ethylene. Compared to the clean period, the concentration of acetylene during the haze events showed highest increase rate, followed by the ethane; and the concentrations and proportions of alkanes and alkenes were highest during the growth stage (GS) of haze events. The multi-scale apportionment results suggested petrochemical industry and solvent usage (PI/SU, 31.2%), vehicle emissions and liquefied petroleum gas (VE/LPG, 20.5%), and combustion emissions (CE, 19.1%) were the main VOC sources during the heating season. Compared to the clean period, the contributions of PI/SU, VE/LPG, CE, and refinery emissions notably increased during the haze events, while that of gasoline evaporation decreased. The contributions of PI/SU and RPI showed significantly increase during the GS of haze events, whereas most sources decreased during the dissipation stage of haze events. Diurnal-variations in source contributions during the haze events were clearer than the clean period, and the contributions of PI/SU, VE/LPG, and CE during the haze events were markedly higher at night. These findings provide valuable information to inform effective VOC control and prevention measures with specific relevance for the control of ozone pollution in Tianjin. Image 1 • Acetylene increased most significantly during the haze events than the clean period. • Ethylene was a predominant species forming ozone. • Gasoline evaporation significantly decreased during the haze events. • Petrochemical industry and solvent usage notably increased in the haze-event growth-stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• In local denoising, the nonlocal WDF filter provides better results. • The WDF filter can be realized with a hardware implementation, such as an optical system. • Simple filters, such as apertures and Gaussian-weighted averages, can be highly effective in reducing noise. Nonlocal means denoising (NLM) and block-matching and 3D filtering (BM3D) have become the most popular algorithms for image processing. The disadvantage of these methods is that they cannot be realized by hardware implementation. The Wigner distribution function (WDF) has advantages such as explicit physical meaning, spatial frequency distribution of each pixel, and suitability for optical implementation. In recent years, the wide-field imaging system has been used extensively in multiple situations such as aviation, medicine, and traffic. Large-field images often have multiple point spread functions (PSF) and local random noise. However, the results have shown that most nonlocal filters have inadequate effects on local noise filtering. This paper analytically examines the Wigner transform of a multi-Gaussian function and investigates the effects of cross-term and noise on filter reconstruction in image processing. Based on the results, a new space-variant filter with a simple mathematical formula is proposed and applied to local high-frequency noise filtering. Since the filter is closely related to the intensity distribution in the spatial and frequency domains, it provides a simple way to process local noise while simultaneously preserving the high-frequency information of the image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand the characteristics, source apportionment, and regional transport of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and ozone (O 3) in a typical city with severe air pollution in central China, we observed and analyzed 115 VOC species at an urban site in Zhengzhou from 29 July to 26 September 2021. During this period, observation- and emission-based approaches revealed that Zhengzhou was in a VOC-limited regime. The average concentration of total VOCs (TVOCs) was 162.25 ± 71.42 μg/m3, dominated by oxygenated VOCs (OVOCs, 34.49%), alkanes (24.29%), and aromatics (19.49%). Six VOC sources were identified using positive matrix factorization (PMF) model, including paint solvent usage (25.32%), secondary production (24.11%), industrial production (19.22%), vehicle exhaust (16.18%), biogenic emission (8.87%), and combustion (6.30%). To assess the regional contribution and source apportionment of VOCs and O 3 , Comprehensive Air Quality Model with Extensions (CAMx) with the Ozone Source Apportionment Technology (OSAT) was used for simulation. Results showed that the VOCs were significantly affected by local emissions (about 70%), while O 3 was mainly attributed to regional and super-regional transport. Regarding multi-directional regional transport of VOCs and O 3 , dominant contributions were from the northeast and east-northeast directions, and O 3 contributions were also predominantly from the east and east-southeast directions. In terms of source apportionment, the transportation and industrial sectors (including solvent usage) were the major contributors to O 3 and VOCs. To alleviate VOCs and O 3 pollution, transportation and industrial emission reduction should be strengthened, and regional coordination, especially from the northeast to east-southeast directions, should be emphasized in addition to local management. [Display omitted] • 115 VOC species, including 21 OVOCs, were measured and analyzed in Zhengzhou. • Local emissions mainly affected VOCs (∼70%) rather than O 3. • Regional contributions of VOCs and O 3 were mainly from the NE and ENE directions. • Transportation and industrial sectors were the major contributors to VOCs and O 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quorum sensing has been widely applied to enhance the energy recovery of bioelectrochemical system as a sustainable pathway to enhance communication between cells and electrodes. However, how signalling molecules (acyl-homoserine lactones, AHLs) regulate the microbial community to improve hydrogen generation in microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) is not well understood, especially the subsequent influence on interspecies relationships among not only electrode-respiring bacteria but also hydrogen scavengers. Understanding AHL regulation in a complicated and actual biofilm system will be valuable for future applications of microbial electrochemical technology. Herein, we added short-chain AHLs (3OC6) to regulate the biofilm community on bio-electrodes in MECs. As a result, hydrogen yields were enhanced with AHL addition, increasing by 5.57%, 38.68%, and 81.82% with varied external voltages (0.8 V, 0.6 V, and 0.4 V, respectively). Accordingly, overall reactor performance was enhanced, including coulombic efficiency, electron recovery efficiency, and energy efficiency. Based on an electrochemical impedance spectra analysis, the structured biofilm under simple nutrient conditions (acetate) showed a lower internal resistance with AHL addition, indicating that the microbial communities were altered to enhance electron transfer between the biofilm and electrode. The change in the cathodic microbial structure with more electrochemically active bacteria and fewer hydrogen scavengers could contribute to a higher electron recovery and hydrogen yield with AHL addition. The regulation of the microbial community structure by AHLs represents a potential strategy to enhance electron transfer and hydrogen generation in bioelectrochemical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging techniques have garnered significant interest in recent years for their ability to reconstruct obscured scenes. This type of imaging typically needs numerous temporal histograms, which require thousands of scans on the relay surface. Reconstructing obscured targets using several channels, i.e., capturing echoes from a few positions of the relay surface, is an attractive prospect but has so far been restricted to localization applications. Herein, we propose a rectangle-based data-driven method and first demonstrate that the 2D size of the hidden target can be detected even with as few as 2 or 3 detectors by exploiting the information inside an echo signal. Specifically, we conceptualize the occluded target as a rectangle representing the target size and train a multi-layer perceptron to learn the correspondence of the hidden scene from the generated data, in which the method can directly respond to unknown targets. Both numerical simulations and experiments are performed to evaluate the feasibility of this method. Furthermore, this work provides a feasible way of detecting hidden scene without scanning. [Display omitted] Reconstructing obscured objects using several channels without scanning is an attractive prospect but has thus far been restricted to localization applications. Herein, we propose a rectangle-based data-driven method which conceptualize the occluded target as a rectangle, and first demonstrates that the 2D size of the hidden target can be detected even with as few as 2 or 3 detectors by exploiting the information inside an echo signal. (a) shows a schematic diagram of the hidden scene, where P L is left bound the target and B L i is the left side of the box. (b) represents the recorded temporal histograms which contains information about the obscured target, where t P c is the closest ToF of the hidden target on the histogram, and t P f is the farthest ToF of the hidden target. (c) is a photo of the hidden scene. (d) is a depth image of the hidden scene as a front view, generated by the rectangle-based (multi-layers perceptron) MLP. • Proposes a rectangle-based data-driven method to associate echoes and target size. • Reconstructs the non-line-of-sight target 2D size using few detection channels. • Conceptualizes the occluded target as a rectangle representing the target size. • Provides a feasible way of detecting hidden scene using fixed laser and few detectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To investigate a novel deep-learning network that synthesizes virtual contrast-enhanced T1-weighted (vceT1w) magnetic resonance images (MRI) from multimodality contrast-free MRI for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).Methods and Materials: This article presents a retrospective analysis of multiparametric MRI, with and without contrast enhancement by gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs), obtained from 64 biopsy-proven cases of NPC treated at Hong Kong Queen Elizabeth Hospital. A multimodality-guided synergistic neural network (MMgSN-Net) was developed to leverage complementary information between contrast-free T1-weighted and T2-weighted MRI for vceT1w MRI synthesis. Thirty-five patients were randomly selected for model training, whereas 29 patients were selected for model testing. The synthetic images generated from MMgSN-Net were quantitatively evaluated against real GBCA-enhanced T1-weighted MRI using a series of statistical evaluating metrics, which include mean absolute error (MAE), mean squared error (MSE), structural similarity index (SSIM), and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). Qualitative visual assessment between the real and synthetic MRI was also performed. Effectiveness of our MMgSN-Net was compared with 3 state-of-the-art deep-learning networks, including U-Net, CycleGAN, and Hi-Net, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Furthermore, a Turing test was performed by 7 board-certified radiation oncologists from 4 hospitals for assessing authenticity of the synthesized vceT1w MRI against the real GBCA-enhanced T1-weighted MRI.Results: Results from the quantitative evaluations demonstrated that our MMgSN-Net outperformed U-Net, CycleGAN and Hi-Net, yielding the top-ranked scores in averaged MAE (44.50 ± 13.01), MSE (9193.22 ± 5405.00), SSIM (0.887 ± 0.042), and PSNR (33.17 ± 2.14). Furthermore, the mean accuracy of the 7 readers in the Turing tests was determined to be 49.43%, equivalent to random guessing (ie, 50%) in distinguishing between real GBCA-enhanced T1-weighted and synthetic vceT1w MRI. Qualitative evaluation indicated that MMgSN-Net gave the best approximation to the ground-truth images, particularly in visualization of tumor-to-muscle interface and the intratumor texture information.Conclusions: Our MMgSN-Net was capable of synthesizing highly realistic vceT1w MRI that outperformed the 3 comparable state-of-the-art networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• High-precision but large-range automatic image stacking technique. • Minimizing the manual operation and additional optical modules in engineering applications. • The dynamic metric optimization strategy avoids falling into local extremes. • It's universal applicability regardless of the arrangements, aperture numbers, and coherence. Image stacking is the first step of alignment of the sparse aperture telescopes. We propose an all-purpose automatic image stacking technique using dynamic metric stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm (DM-SPGD). With the image stacking modeled as an optimization problem, the dynamic metric functions consisting of a distance metric and an energy metric are defined. According to the judgment of the spot state, the two metrics, both computed from the focal spot at each step, are switched dynamically to perform SPGD optimization. By use of the dynamic metric functions, DM-SPGD can exactly and quickly correct any-amplitude tip/tilt errors, regardless of the array arrangements, aperture numbers and coherence as verified by simulation. In addition, jitter and changes in piston brought about by the environment have no effect on the image stacking. Multiple closed-loop image stacking experiments are performed, demonstrating that the offsets of randomly distributed spots can be all controlled below 0.5 pixels within 300 iterations (within 30 s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a method for solving the differential equation of light rays. We define functions which represent Cartesian coordinates and take the arc length as the independent variable. Then the ray equation can be transformed to convenient pattern by these defined functions. This proposed method avoids the complex transformation and interpolation in traditional techniques. So the coordinate value can be directly solved using the computational software. The solution procedure has been demonstrated by a ray tracing simulation in an axial gradient refractive-index media. And the computer code can be developed. Comparing with the analytical solution shows that the error of the proposed method is small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The underlying dynamics of microbial (bacteria and archaea) communities ecologically responding to an applied potential are critical to achieving the goal of enhancing bioenergy recovery but are not sufficiently understood. We built a MEC-AD mode that increased methane production rate by several times (max. 3.8 times) during the startup period compared to control AD, changed the absence or presence of external voltage to provide the pre-, dur-, and post- samples for microbial analysis. From a time and spatially dependent community analysis of electrode-respiring bacteria and methanogens, the corresponding Geobacter developed under the influence of external voltage, pairing with methanogens in the anodic and cathodic biofilm to generate methane. Additionally, at the cathode, the Alkaliphilus (basophilic bacteria) also correspondingly shifted alongside the change of external voltage. The mcrA sequencing confirmed a change in the dominant microbe from acetoclastic (mostly Methanosarcina mazei LYC) to hydrogenotrophic methanogens (mostly basophilic Methanobacterium alcaliphilum) at the cathode with 0.8 V voltage. Overall, the external voltage not only enriched the functional microbes including electrogens and methanogens but also indirectly shifted the composition of the bacterial and archaeal community via disturbing the pH condition. The predictive functional profiling indicated that the cathodic methanogenesis principally followed the metabolism pathway of the hydrogenotrophic methanogens, suggesting the F420 co-enzyme could be the key mediate for electron transfer. All data suggested that the electric stimulation would change and maintain the micro-environmental conditions to shift the bacterial/archaeal community. Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image Highlights • Electricity-driven induced a core-shell structure of microbial communities. • Hydrogenotrophs and acetoclastic methanogens enriched at cathodic community. • Basophilic Alkaliphilus and Methanobacterium alcaliphilum were influenced by electricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cathodic methanogenesis is a promising method for accelerating and stabilising bioenergy recovery in anaerobic processes. The change in composition of microbial (especially methanogenic) communities in response to an applied potential—and especially the associated pH gradient—is critical for achieving this goal, but is not well understood in cathodic biofilms. We found here that the pH-polarised region in the 2 mm surrounding the cathode ranged from 6.9 to 10.1, as determined using a pH microsensor; this substantially affected methane production rate as well as microbial community structure. Miseq sequencing data of a highly conserved region of the mcrA gene revealed a dramatic variation in alpha diversity of methanogens concentrated in electrode biofilms under the applied potential, and confirmed that the dominant microbes at the cathode were hydrogenotrophic methanogens (mostly basophilic Methanobacterium alcaliphilum ). These results indicate that regional pH variation in the microenvironment surrounding the electrode is an ecological niche enriched with Methanobacterium . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the buckling behaviors of rods confined in a finite space is of paramount importance in a diversity of engineering fields. In this paper, theoretical analyses, numerical simulations and experimental measurements are combined to investigate the buckling and postbuckling of a long rod confined in a circular tube. Under uniaxial compression, the initially straight rod first buckles into a sinusoidal shape, followed by the occurrence of snap-through instability or helical buckling, which leads to a complicated, three-dimensional configuration consisting of serially connected sinusoids and helices. A new theoretical model is presented to analyze the sinusoidal and helical buckling processes of the confined rod. The complete load–displacement curve of the buckled system during loading and unloading can be well predicted by the present theory. The critical conditions are obtained for the occurrence of the sinusoidal buckling and the sinusoid–helix transitions of buckling modes. It is found, both theoretically and experimentally, that the morphological evolution during unloading exhibits distinctly different features from that during loading due to the peculiar energetic features of snap-through instability. A flexible multibody dynamics method on the basis of the geometrically exact beam theory is employed to numerically explore the buckling behavior of slender rods and to reveal the underlying energetic mechanisms. The theoretical, numerical, and experimental results agree with each other very well. The theoretical model and the numerical method presented in this work are expected to analyze some other problems of confined rods, beams, and their combined systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing the noise level of fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) has been paid much attention. The relative intensity noise (RIN) of the light source is a dominant noise source and different methods have been used to reduce the RIN. However, the performance of the RIN suppression methods suffering from parameter variation is rarely discussed. In this paper, we introduced a method that uses the period LMS (PLMS) adaptive filter in the FOG system with noise subtraction implementation to ensure the sensor's performance in varying environment. By analyzing the sampled detector signals in the system, the parameters in the system are determined based on the convergence requirement and noise performance of PLMS. Simulations as well as experiments of a FOG system with the PLMS algorithm implemented in the signal processing board are used to verify the feasibility of the method. The performance comparison between the PLMS filter and the predetermined Wiener filter in different temperature is tested and analyzed, which reveals the variability of the system parameters and verifies the necessity and ability of the introduced method to adapt to the varying environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We propose a simple but efficient pre-processing algorithm capable of extracting translation positions of the structure light directly from raw images of Incoherent pattern-illumination Fourier ptychography (IFP), termed translation position extracting (TPE). • TPE removes the requirement of IFP for prior knowledge of translation positions, thus further relaxing the practical conditions. Both simulation and experiment are performed to demonstrate its effectiveness. • The calculation cost of the TPE algorithm is similar to the cross-correlation, which is far lower than the existing translation extraction algorithm based on iterative optimization. Incoherent Pattern-illuminated Fourier ptychography (IFP) is a newly developed super-resolution method, where accurate prior knowledge of translation positions is essential for image reconstruction. To release this limitation, we propose a pre-processing algorithm capable of extracting translation positions of the structure light directly from raw images of IFP, termed translation position extracting (TPE). TPE mainly involves two steps. First, the speckle parts mixed in the acquired raw images, in which the illumination motion is encoded, are isolated by intensity averaging and division. Then the cross-correlations of the speckle dataset are computed to determine the shift positions. TPE-IFP improves the previous IFP by removal of the requirement for prior knowledge of translation positions. Its effectiveness is demonstrated by obtaining high-quality super-resolution images in absence of location information in both simulations and experiments. By further relaxing the practical conditions, the proposed TPE may accelerate the applications of IFP. What's more, as a pre-processing approach, TPE might also contribute to the estimation of pattern positions for the similar speckle-based imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A novel pathway for homocoupling of terminal alkynes has been described using cyclopalladated ferrocenylimine 1 or 2/CuI as catalyst in the air. This catalytic system could tolerate several functional groups. The palladacycle 2 in the presence of n-Bu4NBr as an additive could be applied to Sonogashira cross-coupling reaction of aryl iodides, aryl bromides, and some activated aryl chlorides with terminal alkynes under amine- and copper-free conditions, mostly to give moderate to excellent yields. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• The system combines the advantages of multi vision and synthetic aperture imaging. • In this system, besides a high-resolution image captured by synthetic aperture system, lower-resolution images with parallax can be obtained by multi-vision system. • By fusing the high-resolution image and lower-resolution images, a high precision measurement can be achieved. A new system that combines multi-vision system and synthetic aperture system is proposed to improve the measurement of small-scale or longer-range object. In the system, the parallax information is recorded by multi-vision system, meanwhile, a higher optical resolution image is obtained by synthesizing several optical apertures of multi-vision system to increase the effective aperture. By fusing the higher resolution image into the parallax images, we can acquire higher resolution images with parallax information from which the measurement can be improved greatly. As an example, a trinocular vision system improved by synthetic aperture has been studied experimentally. Results show that the method can improve the resolution in detection about two times and perform more accurate measurement than traditional multi-vision system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An efficient multibody model of arresting cable systems is proposed. • ALE formulation is used to model the moving contact between tailhook/pulley and cable. • More than one order of magnitude acceleration is achieved with high accuracy. Arresting cable systems (ACS) are widely used in aircraft carriers to decelerate an aircraft with high landing velocity in a limited runway length. Considering the complexity of the arresting process, it is extremely challenging to accurately and efficiently predict system dynamic behaviors, such as the arresting distance of aircrafts. In this paper, a comprehensive multibody dynamic model of ACS is proposed, where Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) formulation is adopted to efficiently simulate the tailhook/pulley-cable moving contact in ACS. In our model, a moving fine mesh of the ALE cable, which tracks the real-time position of the tailhook, is used to accurately capture the contact behaviors between them, while evenly-distributed coarse meshes are used in non-contact areas, thereby greatly reducing DOFs and contact pairs. Additionally, the pulley joint is used to simulate the cable-sheave moving contact, where contact details are completely neglected and the ALE cable node is fixed to the dimensionless sheave point. Finally, the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method are verified through three numerical tests with correlation to the conventional Lagrangian formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We demonstrate that using only a single deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) is sufficient to detect pistons from broadband extended images. To the best of our knowledge, the technique, reported in this paper, has never been reported. • Compared to other piston sensing methods using neural network, the reported technology being able to discern pistons directly from the broadband intensity summations rather than the intensities of separated wavelengths uses only a single DCNN, which extremely relaxes the optics complexity. • Above all, we believe this paper is suitable for optics and lasers in engineering. It is crucial for sparse aperture systems to preserve imaging quality, which can be addressed when fast corrections of pistons within a fraction of a wavelength are available. In this paper, we demonstrate that only a single deep convolutional neural network is sufficient to extract pistons from wide-band extended images once being appropriately trained. To eliminate the object characters, the feature vector is calculated as the input by a pair of focused and defocused images. This method possesses the capability of fine phasing with high sensing accuracy, and a large-scale capture range without the use of combined wavelengths. Simple and fast, the proposed technique might find wide applications in phasing telescope arrays or segmented mirrors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An efficient multibody model of 3D helical gear-shaft systems is proposed. • Low-frequency approximation and ALE formulation are used to reduce DOFs. • Dynamic equations are simplified and contact detection process is accelerated. • One order of magnitude acceleration is achieved with high accuracy. The dynamics of helical gear-shaft systems are characterized by three-dimensional (3D) meshing contacts that have significant variations in the location and size of the contact area, resulting in noise that is unavoidably transmitted to the gearbox through the shaft. Accurate and efficient predictions of the dynamic behaviors of helical gear and shaft are indispensable in reliable and cost-effective gearbox design. Available analytical methods, though computationally feasible, cannot consider multi-point contacts and uneven tooth-load distribution. In contrast, the finite element (FE) method provides a high-fidelity approach to compute the dynamic behaviors of a general gear-shaft system at high expenses of computation. This paper aims to establish a high-efficiency multibody dynamic model for 3D contacts in helical gear-shaft systems, in which the helical gear is pertinently represented under the framework of Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian formulation and the shaft is discretized by 3D Timoshenko beam elements. The computational efficiency is greatly improved through the following four steps. First, the low-frequency approximation technique is adopted to reduce the degrees of freedom (DOFs) resulting from the fixed boundary normal modes. Second, under the framework of ALE formulation, only the FE nodes of three meshing tooth-faces are defined as boundary nodes. Then, the dynamic equations and Jacobian matrix are simplified by ignoring the inertial forces associated with deformation. Finally, a two-step algorithm is adopted to accelerate the contact detection process. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method are demonstrated through five numerical tests with correlation to commercial nonlinear finite element software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]