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This study proposes a novel design of a flexible, wear-resistant de-icing brush to address the issues of significant road damage and the rapid wear caused by traditional de-icing machinery. The technique utilizes semi-rigid steel wire rope as a high-speed cutting brush, leveraging the mechanism of brittle-ductile deformation fracture. Using epoxy resin materials and optimizing the brush head's tilt angle enhances its wear resistance and milling performance, thus reducing road damage. The de-icing performance of the flexible brush head was evaluated through tensile and wear-resistant tests. Experimental results indicated a sample displacement of approximately 3.86 mm, with the steel wire rope beginning to slip from the brush head when the tensile force reached 1018 N. A 20-minute coating and soaking process with the epoxy resin material resulted in a 2.7-fold increase in the wear resistance of the brush head compared to a conventional one. Moreover, operating the de-icing brush at 600 r/min reduced the brush head's wear rate. The novel flexible, wear-resistant de-icing brush designed in this study offers a promising solution to the severe road damage and rapid wear induced by conventional de-icing machinery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The defect detection in the urban underground utility tunnel faces the challenges of low illuminance and large shadow region. The images collected have problems such as noise and uneven illumination, posing higher requirements for the image feature extraction ability of the network model. A residual feature pyramid attention network based on dense connections (RFPADNet) is proposed in the defect detection of the urban underground comprehensive pipe in this paper. The proposed network consists of three dense blocks, and each dense block uses four residual feature pyramid attention models (RFPAM) as the main feature extractors. Its focus is to utilize residual learning to obtain the fused multi-scale feature information. Soft mask branches are added to the multi-scale channels to enhance the network model's ability to extract positive features. The experimental results show that the network model proposed in this paper has a training accuracy of 97.50%. Compared with the existing network models, it could achieve better results in various test sets, which has good feasibility and practicality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high-power fiber laser was used to cut AZ31B magnesium alloy. The effects of laser cutting speed, assisted air pressure, and defocus on cutting quality were studied systematically. Scanning electron microscope and ultra-depth-of-field three-dimensional microscope were used to observe the morphology of kerf and the cutting surface. The results show that the kerf width at the straight line and the kerf width at the sharp corner always keep the synchronous change law. The cutting surface can usually be divided into three areas: top area, scour area, and stripe area. The change of the area of the three regions has an important influence on the roughness value of the cutting surface. Studying the variation of roughness by studying the variation of three areas is applicable to laser cutting speed and assisted air pressure, but not to defocus. The slag height decreases from 75.87 to 46.83 μm with the increase of laser cutting speed. The slag height decreases rapidly to 52.88 μm and then increases slowly to 61.74 μm with the change of defocus. The slag height decreases rapidly from 58.37 to 24.81 μm with the increase of assisted air pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For channel and spatial feature map C×W×H in object detection task, its information fusion usually relies on attention mechanism, that is, all C channels and the entire space W×H are all compressed respectively via average/max pooling, and then their attention weight masks are obtained based on correlation calculation. This coarse-grained global operation ignores the differences among multiple channels and diverse spatial regions, resulting in inaccurate attention weights. In addition, how to mine the contextual information in the space W×H is also a challenge for object recognition and localization. To this end, we propose a Fine-Grained Dual Level Attention Mechanism joint Spacial Context Information Fusion module for object detection (FGDLAM&SCIF). It is a cascaded structure, firstly, we subdivide the feature space W×H into n (optimized as n = 4 in experiments) subspaces and construct a global adaptive pooling and one-dimensional convolution algorithm to effectively extract the feature channel weights on each subspace respectively. Secondly, the C feature channels are divided into n (n = 4) sub-channels, and then a multi-scale module is constructed in the feature space W×H to mine context information. Finally, row and column coding is used to fuse them orthogonally to obtain enhanced features. This module is embeddable, which can be transplanted into any object detection network, such as YOLOv4/v5, PPYOLOE, YOLOX and MobileNet, ResNet as well. Experiments are conducted on the MS COCO 2017 and Pascal VOC 2007 datasets to verify its effectiveness and good portability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Accurate preoperative assessment of the efficacy of high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) ablation for uterine fibroids is essential for good treatment results. The aim of this study was to develop robust radiomics models for predicting the prognosis of HIFU-treated uterine fibroids and to explain the internal predictive process of the model using Shapley additive explanations (SHAP). Methods: This retrospective study included 300 patients with uterine fibroids who received HIFU and were classified as having a favorable or unfavorable prognosis based on the postoperative nonperfusion volume ratio. Patients were divided into a training set (N = 240) and a test set (N = 60). The 1295 radiomics features were extracted from T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) and contrast-enhanced T1-weighted imaging (CE-T1WI) scans. After data preprocessing and feature filtering, radiomics models were constructed by extreme gradient boosting and light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM), and the optimal performance was obtained by Bayesian optimization. Finally, the SHAP approach was used to explain the internal prediction process. Results: The models constructed using LightGBM had the best performance, and the AUCs of the T2WI and CE-T1WI models were 87.2 (95% CI = 87.1–87.5) and 84.8 (95% CI = 84.6–85.7), respectively. The use of SHAP technology can help physicians understand the impact of radiomic features on the predicted outcomes of the model from a global and individual perspective. Conclusion: Multiparametric radiomic models have shown their robustness in predicting HIFU prognosis. Radiomic features can be a potential source of biomarkers to support preoperative assessment of HIFU treatment and improve the understanding of uterine fibroid heterogeneity. Clinical relevance statement: An interpretable radiomics model can help clinicians to effectively predict the prognosis of HIFU treatment for uterine fibroids. The heterogeneity of fibroids can be characterized by various radiomics features and the application of SHAP can be used to visually explain the prediction process of radiomics models. Key points: Radiomics models can be used to effectively predict the prognosis of fibroids treated with HIFU. The heterogeneity of fibroids can be characterized by various radiomics features. The application of SHAP can be used to visually explain the prediction process of radiomics models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How wetland vegetation productivity affects the compositional and functional diversities of microorganisms was examined following succession of Scirpus mariqueter monotype vegetation initiated by a restoration project on reclamation-denuded tidal flats. Soil samples were collected seasonally along with plant succession across a spatial gradient of vegetation coverage in the first year and also from densely vegetated areas in the growing season of the fourth year. The vegetation expansion rapidly modified landscape appearance of the tidal flats, leading to remarkable temporal increases in plant productivity (indicated by height and density) and soil organic matter (SOM) contents in the first year. The growing season plant productivity and SOM further increased after 3 years of vegetation development. Bacterial taxonomic diversities (based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing) did not change in spring and summer but greatly increased in autumn when plant productivity peaked and plant debris was partly released to soil; thereafter, the diversity remained at high levels and did not increase much in the following 3 years. In addition, microbial taxonomic diversities, and the modularity and complexity of microbial co-occurrence networks, increased from bare flats, sparsely vegetated areas, to densely revegetated areas. These results supported a positive but saturating relationship between microbial diversity and wetland plant productivity. The increasing taxonomic diversity was associated with higher number of "rare" microbes (i.e., those at abundances < 0.1%) at larger productivity. Also, soil with higher microbial taxonomic diversities had more degradable carbon sources and greater microbial functional diversity in Biolog EcoPlate analysis. Microbial functional prediction suggested more diversified metabolic types and enhanced levels of critical wetland functions including methanotrophy, sulfate respiration, and fermentation at higher plant productivity. To conclude, plant productivity showed positive impacts on microbial taxonomic and functional diversities at the initial stages of wetland vegetation succession, presumably because higher productivity supported more rare species and promoted microbial niche differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The incorporation of ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.; RG), a winter manure, could partly replace chemical N and reduce N loss during the succeeding rice seasons, but little is known about its impact on greenhouse gas emission. This study investigated the effect of different RG-urea substitution ratios (0% RG and 100% urea, 25% RG and 75% urea, 50% RG and 50% urea, 75% RG and 25% urea, 100% RG and 0% urea,) on net C and N mineralization, CH4 and N2O emissions in a paddy soil. Methods: Gas samples for CH4 and N2O fluxes were collected by using a closed chamber and determined by chromatograph method. Net C and N mineralization from the incorporated RG residue were tested by a mesh bag method. Results: Net C and N mineralization from RG followed a single exponential decay model, with 95.5%-97.8% of the original C and 98.7%-99.3% of N released during 192 days. The RG-urea substitution ratio increased CH4 emission, but was negatively correlated with N2O emission. In comparison with 0% substitution, global warming potential (GWP) and greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI) were not significantly different for the 25% and 50% RG substitutions, but were significantly higher for the 75% and 100% substitutions (P < 0.05). Soil redox, C and N remaining in litter residue were key characteristics explaining CH4 emission, while NH4+-N and NO3−-N were correlated with N2O emission. Conclusion: The increased GWP by CH4 emission after RG incorporation could be offset by N2O reduction when RG-urea substitution ratio was 50% or less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Binary Decomposition can be adopted in ordered and unordered ways. Inspired by the case that label order information can be exploited to improve the ordinal classification performance through adopting an ordered decomposition strategy, this paper explores whether the effectiveness of binary decomposition in nominal classification tasks can be improved by setting a virtual label order. The essential purpose of setting a virtual order is to obtain small intra-class distances and large inter-class distances after binary decomposition, such that simpler binary classification tasks are obtained. The experimental results show that setting a virtual order results in an improvement of the classification performance as expected. However, the performance obtained by setting a virtual order does not show significant superiority in comparison with the one produced by some unordered decomposition strategies, and the reasons have been analysed in the context of the relationship between virtual orders and inter-class distances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective photosensitizers are of particular importance for the widespread clinical utilization of phototherapy. However, conventional photosensitizers are usually plagued by short-wavelength absorption, inadequate photostability, low reactive oxygen species (ROS) quantum yields, and aggregation-caused ROS quenching. Here, we report a near-infrared (NIR)-supramolecular photosensitizer (RuDA) via self-assembly of an organometallic Ru(II)-arene complex in aqueous solution. RuDA can generate singlet oxygen (1O2) only in aggregate state, showing distinct aggregation-induced 1O2 generation behavior due to the greatly increased singlet-triplet intersystem crossing process. Upon 808 nm laser irradiation, RuDA with excellent photostability displays efficient 1O2 and heat generation in a 1O2 quantum yield of 16.4% (FDA-approved indocyanine green: ΦΔ = 0.2%) together with high photothermal conversion efficiency of 24.2% (commercial gold nanorods: 21.0%, gold nanoshells: 13.0%). In addition, RuDA-NPs with good biocompatibility can be preferably accumulated at tumor sites, inducing significant tumor regression with a 95.2% tumor volume reduction in vivo during photodynamic therapy. This aggregation enhanced photodynamic therapy provides a strategy for the design of photosensitizers with promising photophysical and photochemical characteristics. Photosensitisers are used in phototherapy to kill cancer cells. Here, the authors describe an organometallic Ru(II)-arene that functions as a phtotosensitiser and produces singlet oxygen and tumour regression in mice [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs) for sodium-ion batteries developed at present have some problems, such as limited absorption uptake of liquid electrolyte (LE) and low ionic conductivity of corresponding GPEs caused by the difficulty of transporting sodium ions with large radius. In view of these problems, hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC) is used as raw material to prepare high-performance HPMC-based GPE (HPMC-GPE). When HPMC membrane is added to the LE containing NaClO4 and propylene carbonate (PC) will lead to the ring-opening polymerization of PC, and the products of ring-opening polymerization of PC will be grafted into HPMC side chain. This destroys the dense structure of HPMC membrane and enhances the affinity of HPMC membrane to LE, and then, a large amount of LE (up to 1796 wt.%) can be stored in the molecular chain of HPMC. With the thermal movement of HPMC molecular chain, the volume of HPMC molecular increases significantly in 3D space, providing a large free volume and fast migration channel for sodium ions conduction. The experimental results show that the ionic conductivity of HPMC-GPE is 3.3 × 10–3 S cm−1 and has an electrochemical stability window of 4.72 V. SIB assembled with SnS/rGO working electrode, sodium metal counter electrode and HPMC-GPE has good rate performance and cycle stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a novel phase demodulation method for multiple self-mixing interferometry (MSMI) is proposed, which can improve the resolution and accuracy of vibration measurement in laser self-mixing interferometry (SMI). The sinusoidal phase modulation of the beam is obtained by an electro-optic modulator (EOM), and phase demodulation is performed by a lock-in amplifier analysis method. The phase equation of MSMI was derived and the theory of the lock-in amplification technique was analyzed in detail. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed by means of simulated signals and then demonstrated by several experimental measurements. The experimental results indicated a good correspondence between theory and experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construct dielectric films with high energy density and efficiency are the key factor to fabricate high-performance dielectric film capacitors. In this paper, an all organic composite film was constructed based on high dielectric polymer and linear dielectric polymer. After the optimized polycondensation reaction of a linear dielectric polymer aromatic polythiourea (ArPTU), the proper molecular weight ArPTU was obtained, which was introduced into poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) (PVDF-TrFE-CFE) terpolymer for a composite dielectrics. The results indicate that the addition of ArPTU molecules reduces the dielectric loss and improves the breakdown field strength of the PVDF-TrFE-CFE effectively. For the PVDF-TrFE-CFE/ArPTU (90/10) composite film, the maximum energy density about 22.06 J/cm3 at 407.57 MV/m was achieved, and high discharge efficiency about 72% was presented. This composite material can be casted on flexible substrate easily, and PVDF-TrFE-CFE/ArPTU organic composite films having high energy density, high breakdown field strength, low dielectric loss, and higher discharge efficiency are obtained. This is an unreported exploration about high energy density organic dielectric films based on PVDF-TrFE-CFE matrix and linear polymer dielectrics, and the findings of this research can provide a simple and scalable method for producing flexible high energy density materials for energy storage devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel micro-vibration reconstruction method based on inverse Hilbert transform is presented. By inversing either side of the SMI signal after Hilbert transform, micro-vibration can be reconstructed quickly and conveniently. In the paper, the principle of inverse Hilbert transform algorithm is studied. And, the effectiveness of the method is verified through simulated signals, and several experiments are carried out, including the self-mixing signal affected by speckle effect. The experimental results show that the external cavity phase can be rapidly extracted by inverse Hilbert transform algorithm, and the relative error is no more than 7%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is an economically important fruit of the Punicaceae family and widely cultivated in the world. In 2019 and 2020, pomegranate fruits showing rot symptoms initiating from seed were observed in different pomegranate-cultivated fields in Henan province of China. Bacteria as a potential pathogen were isolated from the rot tissue of pomegranate seeds, and its pathogenicity was confirmed. The bacterium was identified as Bacillus altitudinis based on morphology and sequence analysis on the 16S ribosomal DNA and the gyrB gene. This is the first report on Bacillus altitudinis causing seed rot of pomegranate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: Autotoxicity is a serious problem for continuous cropping of cucumber, it can limit its own growth and that of nearby cucumber plants and decrease yield and quality. Cinnamic acid (CA) derivatives are a class of autotoxins that can mimic autotoxic effects in cucumber. Methods: We screened an Arabidopsis long hairpin RNA (lhRNA) library under CA-mimicked autotoxicity stress to obtain autotoxicity-resistant mutant lines. The glycerol-3-phosphate 2-O-acyltransferase 6 (GPAT6) gene was found to be silenced in one resistant mutant line, and GPAT6 homologous gene in cucumber was cloned and named CuGPAT6. To test gene function quickly, a new tobacco rattle virus (TRV)-mediated virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) system was established in cucumber using a special agroinfiltration solution and whole cotyledonary nodes. Results: Cucumber phytoene desaturase gene (CuPDS) and CuGPAT6 gene were successfully silenced with a newly established tobacco rattle virus (TRV)-mediated virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) system in cucumber showing photobleaching and decreased CuPDS expression in leaves; and silencing of CuGPAT6 enhanced the tolerance to the autotoxin stress mimicked by CA in cucumber. Conclusions: It indicated that the alleviation of the damage caused by CA treatment was probably through maintaining the integrity of cellular structure, supporting cell vitality and promoting growth in roots, and increasing the integrate chloroplast and thylakoid numbers in leaves, which restored the growth and net photosynthesis rate of CA treated CuGPAT6 silenced plants to the similar level to those of control plants. The results also demonstrated that the newly established TRV mediated VIGS system is functional, rapid, convenient and highly efficient in cucumber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied various soil characteristics associated with Scirpus mariqueter growth and spatial heterogeneity in the Shanghai Nanhui Dongtan wetlands. In September and October 2015, 12 soil characteristics (soil organic carbon, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, orthophosphate, pH, moisture content, particle size, salinity, and tidal elevation) were analyzed from 101 soil samples. The key factors affecting S. mariqueter spatial distribution were determined using canonical correspondence analysis and curve-fitting analysis. Results showed that vegetation indices of height, cover, density, and biomass were positively correlated (P < 0.05) with tidal flat elevation. S. mariqueter was mainly distributed at tidal flat elevations of 2.0-3.4 m. Plant coverage and density were positively correlated (P < 0.05) with total nitrogen and soil salinity. Based on the curve-fitting and independent samples t-test analyses, thresholds of total nitrogen, conductivity, and tidal flat elevation of soil were 0.5475 g/kg, 0.8368 μS/cm, and 2.75 m, respectively. This study provides critical data for future coastal wetland remediation worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A homologue of the Arabidopsis gene FUSCA3 (FUS3), isolated from the protocorm-like body (PLB) of Rosa canina and designated RcFUS3, encodes 331 amino acid residues. It was shown that RcFUS3 is specifically expressed in the PLB of R. canina and that its subcellular localization is in the nucleus. The Arabidopsis fus3-3 mutant phenotype could be rescued by over-expression of RcFUS3, suggesting that RcFUS3 has a function similar to that of Arabidopsis FUS3. Over-expression of RcFUS3 in wild type Arabidopsis resulted in a decrease in endogenous GA and CTK levels, an increase in ABA and IAA contents, starch grain accumulation in the cotyledon and hypocotyl, failure of cotyledon extension and abnormal elongation of the hypocotyl, abnormal stomatal and pavement cells, an increase in branch numbers, prolongation of the growth cycle, and morphological changes in floral organs. Interestingly, over-expression of RcFUS3 in homozygous form resulted in premature degradation of the tapetum, indehiscent anthers and hypogenetic stamens, causing complete male sterility in Arabidopsis; this is the first observation that over-expression of a gene (RcFUS3) homologous to FUS3 can lead to male sterility and starch grain accumulation in Arabidopsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A micro/nanoscale strain sensor based on helical gold nanotube films (GNTFs) is proposed, which is prepared by magnetron sputtering using carbon nanocoils (CNCs) as templates. The gauge factor of the sensor reaches 5, while the stretch of it can achieve more than 10% owing to the helical geometries. The resistance increase of GNTFs with temperature decreasing from 300 to 4 K indicates a thermal activation tunneling model for electron transport. With thicknesses increasing from 16 to 32 nm, the GNTFs show a structural transition from discontinuous to quasi-continuous film. In this transition region, the conductive path of GNTFs increases rapidly, resulting in a rapid resistance decrease of CNC-GNTF composite structure. When a helical GNTF is stretched, the resistance is increased. The helical GNTFs in the transition region exhibit the highest response sensitivity, which owes to the special torsion-dominated strains of this helical structure to some extent. The unique helical morphology gives the sensor great stretchability and special electrical response. Choosing appropriate CNCs and GNTFs with suitable thickness, the helical GNTFs can be used as micro/nanostretchable strain sensors, stretchable electrodes or connects, resonators in micro/nanoelectromechanical system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image segmentation is defined by separating scenes into different parts. The grayscale histogram-based method is a widely used method in image segmentation because of its low computational complexity. However, traditional grayscale histogram-based methods usually suffer from wrong segmentation or low structure because of the irregularities and sharp details on the grayscale histogram and the absence of spatial information. This study presents an accurate image segmentation method by using the variational mode decomposition (VMD) and correlation coefficient (CC). First, grayscale histogram is decomposed into certain band-limit modes by VMD to remove the adverse effects. Then, the candidate centroids of the clusters are obtained by searching the refined histogram both vertically and horizontally. The K-means method is used to generate the segmentation results. Finally, some over-segmented regions are merged following the CCs of spatial histogram, which is also refined by the VMD method. The proposed method was applied to four images. The obtained experimental results show that the proposed method can generate reasonable segmentation results than those of the existing image segmentation algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: Many microbes are beneficial to plants and are termed as plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB). This study explores the effect and mechanism of endophytic bacteria on wheat iron stress. Methods: Bacteria and wheat seedlings were hydroponically co-cultured under different concentrations of iron. Growth parameters were measured and transcriptions of ferritins as well as transporters were quantified by real-time quantitative PCR. Results: An endophytic Bacillus altitudinis WR10 was isolated from the root of Triticum aestivum L. The strain is resistant to 5 mM iron and it bioleaches more than 80% iron after 24 h of incubation. Meanwhile, WR10 produces as much as 35pM indole 3 acetic acid (IAA) during fermentation but there was no accumulation of cytokinin (zeatin to be precise). Inoculation of WR10 significantly improves the growth of the primary root and main sprout in wheat seedlings in a co-culture model under iron stress after two weeks hydroponic cultivation. The presence of WR10 up-regulates the expression of many genes encoding ferritins in wheat roots under iron stress. Conclusions: Besides its ability to bioleach iron, IAA producing B. altitudinis WR10 can alleviate iron stress in wheat by up-regulation of ferritin-encoded genes in roots, which is important for maintaining iron homeostasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, artificial pit mud (APM) is widely used in Chinese liquor-making industry and plays a particular role in the production of Chinese strong flavor liquor (CSFL). However, APM frequently ages during fermentation, thus becoming unsuitable for sustainable use due to its low-quality. The reasons behind, and results of, APM aging during the production of CSFL are not yet understood. Sequencing the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene shows that prokaryotic diversity is significantly decreased (Shannon's diversity index, P < 0.01) and community composition is distinctly changed (from 1197 to 865 OTUs) in aging APM. On the phylum level, the increase of Firmicutes and decrease of Proteobacteria are the main consequences of APM aging during the production of CSFL. The counting of cultivatable bacteria confirmed that there was a large increase in Lactobacilli and aerobic spore-forming bacteria in aging low-quality APM (more than twofold). Unexpectedly, the total number of caproic acid-producing bacteria, mainly Clostridia, did not change significantly between the two kinds of APM. Furthermore, biochemical analysis indicates that the pH and the levels of NH and K are decreased in aging low-quality APM ( P < 0.01). The results obtained in this study support the possibility that environmental factors (pH, nutrients) induce the decrease of prokaryotic diversity, and the changed community composition influences the environmental properties. Therefore, through interfering with the cycle, APM aging can be controlled potentially by adjustment of environmental factors and/or supplementation of diminished or missed microorganisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The air-lubricated six-axis force/moment sensor, a novel sensor developed using the gas lubrication principle, could avoid the coupling phenomenon and increase its precision to 0.2% full scale. During the sensor development, the stability of the nozzle-floating plate mechanism is a key issue, which is mainly caused by the 'hammer phenomenon' that is affected by the size of the nozzle's orifice. In this study, an air hammer stability criterion for the sensor was proposed and the design of the nozzle was optimized to avoid the air hammer phenomenon. The stable characteristics of the optimized nozzle were further verified with experiments through comparison with characteristics of the normal nozzle. In conclusion, the hammer instability phenomenon was averted through the optimal design of the nozzle and the precision of the air-lubricated six-axis sensor was improved, which can be applied in calibrating flexible tactile sensors with high-precision requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel algorithm based on a phase modulation and demodulation technique for multiple self-mixing interferometry was proposed in this paper. This algorithm can measure nanoscale vibration in real time and enhance the measurement resolution of a multiple self-mixing interferometer twofold compared with that of a self-mixing interferometer. In this paper, the principles of the method were described in detail, and a phase equation for multiple self-mixing interferometry was derived. Experiments were confirmed by conducting a series of experiments with different amplitudes, different signal-to-noise ratios, and different vibration waveforms. The experimental results showed that the algorithm can rapidly demodulate vibration in real time and indicated good agreement between theory and experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An economical strain sensor is fabricated by sandwiching a carbonized cotton cloth (CC) between two polydimethylsilane (PDMS) films. The natural networks of carbon fibers in CC bring the sensor changeable resistance under strain. This sensor is used to monitor three types of strains, which are pressure, bending and torsion, while the resistance response of which shows exponential relation to strains. Response time of the sensor is less than 35 ms. The maximum resistance decrease of the CC sensor under pressure, bending and torsion are 27, 65 and 45% respectively. The gauge factors at 3% strain of the sensor under bending and torsion are 15 and 8 respectively. The sensor is compressed under pressure, and is stretched under bending or torsion. The sensor shows higher sensitivity under tension compared to that under compression. The high sensitivity, great flexibility and stability, easy fabricating make the CC sensor a promising candidate in wearable sensing devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, a chi gene from Trichoderma asperellum, designated Tachi, was cloned and functionally characterized in soybean. Firstly, the effects of sodium thiosulfate on soybean Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation with embryonic tip regeneration system were investigated. The transformation frequency was improved by adding sodium thiosulfate in co-culture medium for three soybean genotypes. Transgenic soybean plants with constitutive expression of Tachi showed increased resistance to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum compared to WT plants. Meanwhile, overexpression of Tachi in soybean exhibited increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) level as well as peroxidase (POD) and catalase (SOD) activities, decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) content, along with diminished electrolytic leakage rate after S. sclerotiorum inoculation. These results suggest that Tachi can improve disease resistance in plants by enhancing ROS accumulation and activities of ROS scavenging enzymes and then diminishing cell death. Therefore, Tachi represents a candidate gene with potential application for increasing disease resistance in plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using cotyledons as explants a new method of peanut regeneration was established via somatic embryogenesis (SE), involving a kind of first-observed SE structure that was shaped like bulbil and therefore named bulbil-like body (BLB). On Murashige and Skoog (MS) media containing a higher concentration of 2,4-D (20.0 mg/L) and incubated in the dark, all the inoculated cotyledon explants formed BLBs with a high frequency of average 26 BLBs per cotyledon explant, and 100.00 % of the formed BLBs spontaneously developed into multiple shoots (3-5 shoots per BLB) without changing induction and incubation conditions. On average, about 103 shoots can be induced from an individual cotyledon explant. On MS media supplemented with 1.0 mg/L NAA all the separated shoots formed normal roots to develop into plantlets. The morphological and histological analyses of BLBs at different development stages revealed that BLB was a special kind of SE structure originated from cortex cells of peanut cotyledon explants, and each individual BLB was composed of multiple embryoids further developing into multiple shoots. To our knowledge, BLB is a novel type of SE structure in peanut different from the known SE structures because of its special shape, induction conditions, somatic embryogenic nature, and multiple-embryoid characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a seven-terminal transformer has been designed. We have suggested its equivalent-circuit model. This transformer has a primary coil with a center tap and two secondary coils. Based on this transformer, a low-cost transformer-based gate-coupled quadrature oscillator (LTGC-QO) using 0.18 µm CMOS technology has been developed. The LTGC-QO consumes 7 mW at 1 V power supply. The simulated phase noise at 1 MHz offset is-116.3 dBc/Hz. The chip area is 400×500 µm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity of Ca/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IV (CaMKIV) is sensitive to activity-dependent changes in the level of intracellular Ca. Following neuronal stimulation, the activation of CaMKIV may trigger synaptic modifications and transcriptional responses, both of which are involved in regulating cognitive and emotional behavior. Here, we used CaMKIV knockout (KO) neurons and mice to examine the function of CaMKIV in Ca-stimulated intracellular signaling and animal behavior, respectively. Following NMDA receptor activation or membrane depolarization, the up-regulation of CREB (cAMP responsive element binding protein) and its target gene Bdnf (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) was intact in cortical neurons obtained from CaMKIV KO mice. CaMKIV KO mice displayed severe impairment in contextual fear memory but normal locomotor activity and anxiety level in the contextual training chamber. Although CaMKIV KO mice showed normal memory in the standard passive avoidance task, they were defective in learning the temporal dissociative passive avoidance task. As indicated by the light/dark test and marble-burying test data, CaMKIV KO mice showed less anxiety and normal perseveration. In the voluntary wheel-running test, CaMKIV KO mice showed normal running time and distance but higher maximal running speed. Our results demonstrate the function of CaMKIV in regulating different forms of fear memory, anxiety, and certain aspect of motor function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Basic transcription factor 3 (BTF3), the β-subunit of the nascent polypeptide-associated complex, is responsible for the transcriptional initiation of RNA polymerase II and is also involved in cell apoptosis, translation initiation regulation, growth, development, and other functions. Here, we report the impact of BTF3 on abiotic tolerance in higher plants. The transcription levels of the TaBTF3 gene, first isolated from wheat seedlings in our lab, were differentially regulated by diverse abiotic stresses and hormone treatments, including PEG-induced stress (20 % polyethylene glycol 6000), cold (4 °C), salt (100 mM NaCl), abscisic acid (100 μM), methyl jasmonate (50 μM), and salicylic acid (50 μM). Southern blot analysis indicated that, in the wheat genome, TaBTF3 is a multi-copy gene. Compared to BSMV- GFP-infected wheat plants (control), under freezing (−8 °C for 48 h) or drought stress (withholding water for 15 days) conditions, TaBTF3-silenced wheat plants showed lower survival rates, free proline content, and relative water content and higher relative electrical conductivity and water loss rate. These results suggest that silencing of the TaBTF3 gene may impair tolerance to freezing and drought stresses in wheat and that it may be involved in the response to abiotic stresses in higher plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To solve the energy-saving and emission-reduction problem which caused by the deterioration of the thermal properties of coke in blast furnace and to improve the technologies applied to the inhibition to coke deterioration, benzene pyrolysis carbons were used to infiltrate into coke to inhibit coke deterioration for improving the thermal properties of coke. Taking aim at the coke reaction index (CRI) and the coke strength after reaction (CSR), the optimum infiltration conditions of benzene pyrolysis were researched by chemical vapor infiltration using response surface methodology. The models of regression of the thermal properties of coke with the experimental factors were established. Results indicated that the data were adequately fitted into quadratic models. The pyrolysis reaction time was found to have very significant linear effect on CRI and CSR. The pyrolysis reaction temperature, pyrolysis reaction time, flow rate of carrier gas and benzene temperature were found to have very significant quadratic effect on CRI and CSR, respectively. The interactions between some factors had significant effects on CRI and CSR. The experimental conditions range and optimum conditions were derived from three-dimensional response surface, contour plots and the model equations. Optimum results showed that the value of CRI decreased by about 11.94 wt % and the value of CSR increased by about 9.20 wt % under the optimum conditions. The SEM photos of cokes revealed that the pores of infiltrated coke were filled with pyrolysis carbon particles, which greatly reduced the reaction contact area for CO2 to erode coke. The changes of pore structure illustrated that the pores volume and the specific surface area of the infiltrated coke smaller than that of original coke. So infiltration of benzene pyrolysis can notably improve the thermal properties of coke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previously, cDNA-amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis was used to profile differentially expressed transcript-derived fragments (DE-TDFs) of tomato between resistant and susceptible responses against the fungal pathogen Oidium neolycopersici. In the present study, we further investigated a DE-TDF annotated to a putative glutathione S-transferase (GST) that was more rapidly upregulated during the Ol-1-mediated resistance response than during the susceptible response. We used virus-induced gene silencing to knock-down expression of the putative GST gene ( ShGST) in resistant tomato plants ( Solanum habrochiates G1.1560) carrying the Ol-1 gene, and the ShGST-silenced plants showed a susceptible phenotype after inoculation with O. neolycopersici. Microscopic observation demonstrated that O. neolycopersici was able to complete its life cycle on silenced resistant plants and showed similar morphological characteristics to those of the fungus on susceptible tomato plants. The resistance against O. neolycopersici in G1.1560 was associated with hypersensitive response (HR); however, silencing of ShGST did not completely abolish the HR and hydrogen peroxide (HO) accumulation. These results indicate that ShGST is required for resistance against O. neolycopersici in tomato and that decreased HR and HO accumulation may be insufficient for tomato to prevent sporulation of O. neolycopersici. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring spatial-temporal interactions among group members is crucial for group activity recognition. However, most existing approaches cannot jointly consider it from multi-level cross-relations, which results in an incomplete representation. To address this issue, we propose a relational complementary module that comprehensively learns the interactions among members from both time-space and space-time perspectives. To suppress the information redundancy caused by this all-view interaction description, we introduce NH-Softmax to impose sparsity on the few relevant attention weights to generate robust and differentiated feature representations. In addition, to fully explore individual contextual interaction information, relaxed attention (RAT) is designed to enhance the feature information of each individual in a relaxed manner. It fleshes out individual representations by highlighting the most salient features and eases the computational burden. Our experiments on Volleyball dataset and Collective Activity dataset show significant improvements over previous state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high-quality draft genome sequence of a multi-antibiotic resistant strain, Paenibacillus strain LK1 isolated from the rhizosphere of Auricularia auricular is described. Strain LK1 produced several types of phytohormones, which included Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) and Zeatin. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene of strain LK1 showed a close relationship to P. taichungensis and P. pabuli (99% gene sequence similarity). The genome size of strain LK1 was estimated to be 7.16 Mb that consisted of 82 contigs contained in 49 scaffolds. The G + C content of the genome was 45.63% and it encoded 6499 genes, 115 pseudo genes, 8 rRNAs, 33 tRNAs, and 4 ncRNAs, based on the Prokaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline (PGAP). Further analysis of the genome of strain LK1 identified 16 genes encoding monooxygenase and six genes encoding cytochrome P450, which may be potentially involved in zeatin biosynthesis. The draft whole genome sequence and annotation of strain LK1 has been deposited at DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank under the accession number (PEII00000000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]