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The enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission (eXTP) is a next-generation flagship X-ray astronomy satellite currently in phase-B study. The large Area Detector (LAD) on board eXTP contains 40 modules, each consisting of a set of 4 × 4 large area SDDs and 4 × 4 collimators, and has a designed effective area of 3.0 m 2 at 8 keV and a Field of View (FoV) of 1 ∘ . To achieve such a large effective area, the collimator’s Open Area Ratio (OAR) should be greater than 70%. In this paper, we introduce the measurement methods used to determine the OAR and the rocking curve (angular response) of the LAD collimator at the 100-m X-ray Test Facility (100XF) of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, and report the results of the collimators manufactured under different conditions. The measured OARs of the collimators are usually smaller than the theoretical values by a few percent, which is due to the non-uniformity and irregularity of the pores. The measured rocking curves are usually broader than the theoretical triangular curves, and the lower the energy of the incident X-ray the broader the rocking curve. This broadening of the rocking curve is the result of reflection on the inner wall of the pores. Our results also show that increasing the etching time in the manufacturing of the collimators can increase the OARs but does not change significantly the shape of the rocking curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spectroscopy focusing array is one of the four main scientific instruments of the enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission, tasked with spectral and timing observation in the energy range 0.5-10 keV. An engineering model of the spectroscopy focusing array with a 4 mirror shells assembly and a focal plane detector using commercial detectors has now been developed. To evaluate the performance, the spectral and timing calibration of the engineering model has been held in the 100-m X-ray Test Facility. A multi-target X-ray source with multiple emission lines is used to calibrate the spectral performance. A timing X-ray source based on a grid controlled X-ray tube has been utilized for the timing calibration. The timing X-ray source can generate X-ray pulses to measure the response time distribution, and can also simulate the pulsar lightcurves to examine the detection ability for pulsars. The energy-channel relation and energy resolution are determined through spectral calibration. The energy resolution at 5.95 keV is 142 eV, now. According to the timing calibration, the mean response time of the engineering model is 1.55 μ s, the full width at half maximum of the response time distribution is 0.45 μ s, and the engineering model has sufficient ability to detect the profile of millisecond pulsars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 100-m X-ray Test Facility (100XF) was developed according to the calibration requirement of the first X-ray astronomical satellite Insight-HXMT in china. After that, the 100XF has provided calibration services for other X-ray astronomical satellites. In order to test the energy response matrices of space-borne detectors and to extend the capability of 100XF, a monochromator based on channel-cut crystals is developed. So far, 3.0-20.7 keV monochromatic X-rays have been realized successfully with Si(111) crystal. The monochromaticity (Δ E FWHM /E) is better than 0.6% @5.9 keV, the flux stability can reach 2.6% in about one hour. The energy stability is particularly good, the variation is 0.05% in about one hour. Further more, the beam spot spreads in the plane orthogonal to the rocking direction after a propagation of 100-meter, which is sufficient and useful for testing detectors with large sensitive area. In this paper, we present the research and establishment of the X-ray monochromator at the 100XF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computationally hard combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) are ubiquitous in many applications. Various digital annealers, dynamical Ising machines, and quantum/photonic systems have been developed for solving COPs, but they still suffer from the memory access issue, scalability, restricted applicability to certain types of COPs, and VLSI-incompatibility, respectively. Here we report a ferroelectric field effect transistor (FeFET) based compute-in-memory (CiM) annealer for solving larger-scale COPs efficiently. Our CiM annealer converts COPs into quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) formulations, and uniquely accelerates in-situ the core vector-matrix-vector (VMV) multiplication operations of QUBO formulations in a single step. Specifically, the three-terminal FeFET structure allows for lossless compression of the stored QUBO matrix, achieving a remarkably 75% chip size saving when solving Max-Cut problems. A multi-epoch simulated annealing (MESA) algorithm is proposed for efficient annealing, achieving up to 27% better solution and ~ 2X speedup than conventional simulated annealing. Experimental validation is performed using the first integrated FeFET chip on 28nm HKMG CMOS technology, indicating great promise of FeFET CiM array in solving general COPs.Yin et al. realize a FeFET based compute-in-memory annealer as an efficient combinatorial optimization solver through algorithm-hardware co-design with a FeFET chip, matrix lossless compression, and a multi-epoch simulated annealing algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corn germ meal (CGM) is one of the major byproducts of corn starch extraction. Although CGM has rich fiber content, it lacks good protein content and amino acid balance, and therefore cannot be fully utilized as animal feed. In this study, we investigated the processing effect of cellulase synergized with Bacillus velezensis on the nutritional value of pretreated CGM (PCGM) in two-stage solid-state fermentation (SSF). High-throughput sequencing technology was used to explore the dynamic changes in microbial diversity. The results showed that compared with four combinations of B. velezensis + Lactiplantibacillus plantarum (PCGM-BL), cellulase + L. plantarum (PCGM-CL),control group (PCGM-CK), and cellulase + B. velezensis + L. plantarum (PCGM-BCL), the fourth combination of PCGM-BCL significantly improved the nutritional characteristics of PCGM. After two-stage SSF (48 h), viable bacterial count and contents of crude protein (CP) and trichloroacetic acid-soluble protein (TCA-SP) all were increased in PCGM-BCL (p < 0.05), while the pH was reduced to 4.38 ± 0.02. In addition, compared with PCGM-BL, the cellulose degradation rate increased from 5.02 to 50.74%, increasing the amounts of short-chain fatty acids (216.61 ± 2.74 to 1727.55 ± 23.00 µg/g) and total amino acids (18.60 to 21.02%) in PCGM-BCL. Furthermore, high-throughput sequencing analysis revealed significant dynamic changes in microbial diversity. In the first stage of PCGM-BCL fermentation, Bacillus was the dominant genus (99.87%), which after 24 h of anaerobic fermentation changed to lactobacillus (37.45%). Kyoto Encylopaedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) metabolic pathway analysis revealed that the pathways related to the metabolism of carbohydrates, amino acids, cofactors, and vitamins accounted for more than 10% of the enriched pathways throughout the fermentation period. Concisely, we show that cellulase can effectively improve the nutritional value of PCGM when synergized with B. velezensis in two-stage SSF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La0.8A0.2NiO3 (A=K, Ba, Y) catalysts supported on the microwave-absorbing ceramic heating carrier were prepared by the sol-gel method. The crystalline phase and the catalytic activity of the La0.8A0.2NiO3 catalysts were characterized by XRD and H2 temperature-programmed reduction (TPR). The effects of reaction temperature, oxygen concentration, and gas flow rate on the direct decomposition of nitric oxide over the synthesized catalysts were studied under microwave irradiation (2.45 GHz). The XRD results indicated that the La0.8A0.2NiO3 catalysts formed an ABO3 perovskite structure, and the H2-TPR results revealed that the relative reducibility of the catalysts increased in the order of La0.8K0.2NiO3 > La0.8Ba0.2NiO3 > La0.8Y0.2NiO3. Under microwave irradiation, the highest NO conversion amounted to 98.9%, which was obtained with the La0.8K0.2NiO3 catalyst at 400 °C. The oxygen concentration did not inhibit the NO decomposition on the La0.8A0.2NiO3 catalysts, thus the N2 selectivity exceeded 99.8% under excess oxygen at 550 °C. The NO conversion of the La0.8A0.2NiO3 catalysts decreased linearly with the increase in the gas flow rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Neuroblastoma, one of the most prevalent childhood cancers, is often treated with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. However, prognosis and survival are still dismal for children with neuroblastoma at high risk. Consequently, it is vital to identify new and effective treatment targets. As a component of the meiotic cohesion complex, REC8 is involved in a wide range of malignancies. The current work assessed the impact of REC8 knockdown on SH-SY5Y and SK-N-AS neuroblastoma cells and delved into the molecular mechanism behind this effect. Methods: Knockdown of REC8 using the small interfering (si) RNA technology, and the results were verified by quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and western blot. The Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) was used to examine cell proliferation, while flow cytometry was used to examine cell cycle progression and apoptosis. Analyses of angiogenesis included tube formation experiments. Transwell tests were used to examine cell migration and invasion. Results: The data showed that downregulation of the REC8 led to a substantial decrease in cell proliferation by stopping the cell cycle in the G1 phase. REC8 knockdown significantly reduced neuroblastoma cell proliferation, migration, invasion, angiogenesis, induced cell cycle arrest, and enhanced apoptosis. We also discovered that repressing REC8 expression in neuroblastoma cell lines SH-SY5Y and SK-N-AS reduced their ability to activate the STAT3/VEGF signaling pathway. Conclusions: Neuroblastoma therapy may benefit from targeting REC8 and its downstream targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is one of the biggest health threats of the 21st century. Although China is the biggest developing country, with a large population and different climate types, its projections of large-scale heat-related excess mortality remain understudied. In particular, the effects of climate change on aging populations have not been well studied, and may result in significantly underestimation of heat effects. In this study, we took four climate change scenarios of Tier-1 in CMIP6, which were combinations of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). We used the exposure-response functions derived from previous studies combined with baseline age-specific non-accidental mortality rates to project heat-related excess mortality. Then, we employed the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method to decompose the impacts of climate change, population growth, and aging on heat-related excess mortality. Finally, we multiplied the heat-related Years of Life Lost (YLL) with the Value of a Statistical Life Year (VSLY) to quantify the economic burden of premature mortality. We found that the heat-related excess mortality would be concentrated in central China and in the densely populated south-eastern coastal regions. When aging is considered, heat-related excess mortality will become 2.8–6.7 times than that without considering aging in 2081–2100 under different scenarios. The contribution analysis showed that the effect of aging on heat-related deaths would be much higher than that of climate change. Our findings highlighted that aging would lead to a severe increase of heat-related deaths and suggesting that regional-specific policies should be formulated in response to heat-related risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-volatile memories (NVMs) have the potential to reshape next-generation memory systems because of their promising properties of near-zero leakage power consumption, high density and non-volatility. However, NVMs also face critical security threats that exploit the non-volatile property. Compared to volatile memory, the capability of retaining data even after power down makes NVM more vulnerable. Existing solutions to address the security issues of NVMs are mainly based on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which incurs significant performance and power overhead. In this paper, we propose a lightweight memory encryption/decryption scheme by exploiting in-situ memory operations with negligible overhead. To validate the feasibility of the encryption/decryption scheme, device-level and array-level experiments are performed using ferroelectric field effect transistor (FeFET) as an example NVM without loss of generality. Besides, a comprehensive evaluation is performed on a 128 × 128 FeFET AND-type memory array in terms of area, latency, power and throughput. Compared with the AES-based scheme, our scheme shows ~22.6×/~14.1× increase in encryption/decryption throughput with negligible power penalty. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of our scheme over the AES-based scheme when deploying different neural network workloads. Our scheme yields significant latency reduction by 90% on average for encryption and decryption processes.Existing solutions based Advanced Encryption Standard to address the security issues of nonvolatile memories incurs significant performance and power overhead. Here, the authors propose a lightweight XOR-gate based encryption/decryption technique by exploiting in-situ array operations, which achieves significant area/latency/power reduction compared to conventional designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Einstein Probe (EP) mission is a science mission designed for the time domain astronomy, which is approved by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2017 and is to be launched in 2023 with a duration time of more than 3 years. The Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT) is an important payload onboard EP, which employs the Wolter I focusing mirror as the X-ray collection unit and the PNCCD as the focal plane detector. The Phase C study has been finished in 2021. During the Phase C, the structural and thermal model (STM) of the mirror assembly of FXT, provided by the European Space Agency (ESA), a mirror assembly developed by the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), a qualification model (QM) PNCCD and other components, are integrated and tested in IHEP. All optical performances meet the goal requirement of EP, such as the field of view of 60 arcmins, the angular resolution of less than 30 arcsec HEW on-axis, and the focal length of ab. 1600 mm. After that, the FXT is assembled, integrated, and tested on the EP satellite platform. Furthermore, these performances are not changed after the mechanical and thermal tests on the spacecraft platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 100-m X-ray Test Facility of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) was initially proposed in 2012 for the test and calibration of the X-ray detectors of the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT) with the capability to support future X-ray missions. The large instrument chamber connected with a long vacuum tube can accommodate the X-ray mirror, focal plane detector and other instruments. The X-ray sources are installed at the other end of the vacuum tube with a distance of 105 m, which can provide an almost parallel X-ray beam covering 0.2 ∼ 60 keV energy band. The X-ray mirror modules of the Einstein Probe (EP) and the enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission (eXTP) and payload of the Gravitational wave high-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) have been tested and calibrated with this facility. It has been also used to characterize the focal plane camera and aluminum filter used on the Einstein Probe. In this paper, we will introduce the overall configuration and capability of the facility, and give a brief introduction of some calibration results performed with this facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realizing compact and scalable Ising machines that are compatible with CMOS-process technology is crucial to the effectiveness and practicality of using such hardware platforms for accelerating computationally intractable problems. Besides the need for realizing compact Ising spins, the implementation of the coupling network, which describes the spin interaction, is also a potential bottleneck in the scalability of such platforms. Therefore, in this work, we propose an Ising machine platform that exploits the novel behavior of compact bi-stable CMOS-latches (cross-coupled inverters) as classical Ising spins interacting through highly scalable and CMOS-process compatible ferroelectric-HfO2-based Ferroelectric FETs (FeFETs) which act as coupling elements. We experimentally demonstrate the prototype building blocks of this system, and evaluate the scaling behavior of the system using simulations. Our work not only provides a pathway to realizing CMOS-compatible designs but also to overcoming their scaling challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bacillus, an excellent organic-degrading agent, can degrade lignocellulose. Notably, some B. velezensis strains encode lignocellulases. However, their ability to degrade lignocellulose in fermented feed is not much appreciated. This study performed a comparative genomic analysis of twenty-three B. velezensis strains to find common carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) encoding genes and evaluated their potential to degrade lignocellulose. The comparative genomic and CAZyme database-based analyses identified several potential CAZymes genes that degrade cellulose (GH1, GH4, GH5, GH13, GH16, GH32, PL1, and PL9), hemicellulose (GH11, GH26, GH43, GH51, and CE3) and lignin (AA4, AA6, AA7, and AA10). Furthermore, Illumina RNA-seq transcriptome analysis revealed the expression of more than 1794 genes in B. velezensis CL-4 fermented corn germ meal at 48 h (FCGM 48 h). Gene ontology analysis of expressed genes revealed their enrichment in hydrolase activity (breaking the glycosyl bonds during carbohydrate metabolism), indicating the upregulation of CAZymes. In total, 58 differentially upregulated CAZymes-encoding genes were identified in FCGM 48 h compared to FCGM 0 h. The upregulated CAZymes-encoding genes were related to cellulose (6-phospho-β-galactosidase and 6-phospho-α-glucosidase), starch (α-glucosidase and α-amylase), pectin (pectin lyase), and hemicellulose (arabinan endo-1,5-α-L-arabinosidase, xylan 1,4-beta-xylosidase, α-N-arabinofuranosidase, and acetyl xylan esterase). Importantly, arabinoxylan degradation mainly occurred in FCGM 48 h, followed by partial degradation of cellulose, pectin, and starch. This study can support the development of enzymatic cocktails for the solid-state fermented feed (SFF). Key points: Comparative genomics and transcriptomics revealed that B. velezensis encodes a series of lignocellulosic enzymes capable of degrading polysaccharides. Arabinoxylan degradation mainly occurs after 48 h of B. velezensis CL-4 fermentation, followed by the partial degradation of cellulose, pectin and starch. Exogenous cellulase could significantly improve the fermentation quality of corn germ meal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defocus blur detection (DBD) aims to separate blurred and unblurred regions for a given image. Due to its potential and practical applications, this task has attracted much attention. Most of the existing DBD models have achieved competitive performance by aggregating multi-level features extracted from fully convolutional networks. However, they also suffer from several challenges, such as coarse object boundaries of the defocus blur regions, background clutter, and the detection of low contrast focal regions. In this paper, we develop a hierarchical edge-aware network to solve the above problems, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first trial to develop an end-to-end network with edge awareness for DBD. We design an edge feature extraction network to capture boundary information, a hierarchical interior perception network is used to generate local and global context information, which is helpful to detect the low contrast focal regions. Moreover, a hierarchical edge-aware fusion network is proposed to hierarchically fuse edge information and semantic features. Benefiting from the rich edge information, the fused features can generate more accurate boundaries. Finally, we propose a progressive feature refinement network to refine the output features. Experimental results on two widely used DBD datasets demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defocus blur detection (DBD) aims to separate blurred and unblurred regions for a given image. Benefiting from the powerful extraction capabilities of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), deep learning based defocus blur detection has achieved a remarkable progress compared with traditional methods. However, due to the limited local receptive field of CNNs, it is difficult to achieve satisfactory results in the detection of the low-contrast focal regions. Besides, the output maps of the most of previous works have coarse object boundaries and background clutter. In this paper, we propose a hybrid CNN-Transformer architecture with an edge guidance aggregation module (EGAM) and a feature fusion module (FFM) for DBD. In our knowledge, this is the first study to utilize a transformer encoder for DBD to capture the global context information. Additionally, an edge extraction network (EENet) is adopted to obtain local edge information of in-focus objects. To effectively aggregate local edge information and global semantic features, three EGAMs are integrated into an edge guidance fusion network (EGFNet). Benefiting from the rich edge information, the fused features can generate more accurate boundaries. Finally, three FFMs are cascaded as a hierarchical feature aggregation network (HFANet) to hierarchically decode and refine the feature maps. Experimental results on three widely used DBD datasets demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sodium bicarbonate pretreatment and solid-state fermentation (SSF) were used to maximize the nutritional value of corn germ meal (CGM) by inoculating it with Bacillus velezensis CL-4 (isolated from chicken cecal contents and capable of degrading lignocellulose). Based on genome sequencing, B. velezensis CL-4 has a 4,063,558 bp ring chromosome and 46.27% GC content. Furthermore, genes associated with degradation of lignocellulose degradation were detected. Pretreatment of CGM (PCGM) with sodium bicarbonate (optimized to 0.06 g/mL) neutralized low pH. Fermented and pretreated CGM (FPCGM) contained more crude protein (CP), soluble protein of trichloroacetic acid (TCA-SP), and total amino acids (aa) than CGM and PCGM. Degradation rates of cellulose and hemicellulose were reduced by 21.33 and 71.35%, respectively, after 48 h fermentation. Based on electron microscopy, FPCGM destroys the surface structure and adds small debris of the CGM substrate, due to lignocellulose breakdown. Furthermore, 2-oxoadipic acid and dimethyl sulfone were the most important metabolites during pretreatment. Concentrations of adenosine, cytidine, guanosine, S-methyl-5'-thioadenosine, and adenine decreased significantly after 48 h fermentation, whereas concentrations of probiotics, enzymes, and fatty acids (including palmitic, 16-hydroxypalmitic, and linoleic acids) were significantly improved after fermentation. In conclusion, the novel pretreatment of CGM provided a proof of concept for using B. velezensis CL-4 to degrade lignocellulose components, improve nutritional characteristics of CGM, and expand CGM lignocellulosic biological feed production. Key points: • Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) can be used as an economical and green additive to pretreat corn germ meal; • Fermentation with B. velezensis degrades the cellulose and hemicellulose component of corn germ meal and improves its feed quality; • As a novel qualified presumption of safety (QPS) strain, B. velezensis should have broad potential applications in food and feed industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Probiotics are considered to play an crucial role in the treatment of high-fat diet (HFD)-induced lipid metabolic diseases, including metabolic syndrome (MS). This study aimed to investigate the effects of Lactobacillus plantarum S9 on MS in HFD-fed rats, and to explore the underlying role of probiotics in the treatment of MS. Sprague-Dawley rats were fed with HFD for 8 weeks, followed by the treatment of L. plantarum S9 for 6 weeks, and The body weight and blood glucose level of rats were detected on time. The results showed that L. plantarum S9 significantly decreased the body weight gain, Lee's index, and liver index. Additionally, L. plantarum S9 reduced the levels of serum lipids and insulin resistance. L. plantarum S9 also decreased the levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST) in liver. Moreover, the serum levels of MS-related inflammatory signaling molecules, including lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), were significantly elevated. Western blot analysis showed that L. plantarum S9 inhibited the activation of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathway, decreased the expression level of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), suppressed the activation of inflammatory signaling pathways, and reduced the expression levels of inflammatory factors in HFD-fed rats. Moreover, it further decreased the ratios of p-IκBα/IκBα, p-p65/NF-κB p65, and p-p38/p38. In summary, L. plantarum S9, as a potential functional strain, prevents or can prevent onset of MS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing circuit camouflaging techniques to prevent reverse engineering increase circuit-complexity with significant area, energy, and delay penalty. In this paper, we propose an efficient hardware encryption technique with minimal complexity and overheads based on ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET) active interconnects. By utilizing the threshold voltage programmability of the FeFETs, run-time reconfigurable inverter-buffer logic, utilizing two FeFETs and an inverter, is enabled. Judicious placement of the proposed logic makes it act as a hardware encryption key and enable encoding and decoding of the functional output without affecting the critical path timing delay. Additionally, a peripheral programming scheme for reconfigurable logic by reusing the existing scan chain logic is proposed, obviating the need for specialized programming logic and circuitry for keybit distribution. Our analysis shows an average encryption probability of 97.43% with an increase of 2.24%/ 3.67% delay for the most critical path/ sum of 100 critical paths delay for ISCAS85 benchmarks. Hardware security is importance with outsourcing of integrated circuit fabrication to various foundries. Here, the authors propose a compact encryption logic based on the active interconnects constructed with ferroelectric field-effect transistors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main scientific goal of the Gravitational wave high-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) is to monitor various types of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRB) originated from merger of binary compact stars, which could also produce gravitational wave, and collapse of massive stars. In order to study the response of GECAM Gamma-Ray Detectors (GRDs) to high-energy bursts and test the in-flight trigger and localization software of GECAM before the launch, a portable GRB simulator device is designed and implemented based on grid controlled X-ray tube (GCXT) and direct digital synthesis (DDS) technologies. The design of this GRB simulator which modulates X-ray flux powered by high voltage up to 20 kV is demonstrated, and the time jitter (FWHM) of the device is about 0.9 μs. Before the launch in December, 2020, both two GECAM satellites were irradiated by different types of GRBs (including short and long bursts in duration) generated by this GRB simulator. The light curves detected with GECAM/GRDs are consistent with the programmed input functions within statistical uncertainties, indicating the good performance of both the GRDs and the GRB simulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the analysis of the principle of building energy use, we can understand the four meteorological parameters that have the greatest impact on the energy consumption of marine buildings: the first is air temperature, the second is relative humidity, the third is wind speed, and the fourth is the sun. Now China's satellite technology is constantly improving. People can already use satellite data to time weather data. This kind of satellite data can provide weather data for various periods of time for a long time Therefore, this article contains the satellite data of recent decades and the data simulation model of the same period. In order to ensure the accuracy of the experimental data, we took into account the influence of air temperature, humidity, and wind speed when collecting the data. In order to prevent accidents, a new sports monitoring system is designed. This sports monitoring system can provide people's physical conditions in real time, as well as people's postures during exercise, to prevent people from causing sports injuries due to errors in exercise postures. Not only that, this kind of the exercise monitoring system can also monitor the calories consumed by people exercising. Based on this exercise posture and calorie consumption, a modeling evaluation is also established. This modeling evaluation can effectively prevent people from accidents due to physical exhaustion, and at the same time, this modeling system can also locate the position of the person according to various trajectories during the movement and determine whether the athlete is in a safe state according to the physical condition of the athlete, so as to ensure the physical health of the athlete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have developed micro-slot optics (MSO) which can be used in the mirrors to reflect and focus X-rays. It is composed of a large number of concentric rings of curved MSO plates with necessary radial supporting structures to form a spherical shape. Flat MSO plates can be fabricated by X-ray lithography and normal electroplating; however, the subsequent plastically deforming process is very difficult to achieve, since the tiny curvature of the metal MSO is within its elastically deforming range. In this work, a method is developed to fabricate spherically curved MSO plates. After the X-ray lithography process, spherical MSO plates can be obtained directly by electroplating on a curved substrate. X-ray testing results show an obvious focal spot, with an angular resolution of about 5 arcmin, demonstrating that the micro-slots in the MSO plates have been curved successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an augmented reality interactive method based on improved Kinect sensor commands to eliminate the tracking error of moving targets. Designed posture tracking architecture. Experiments show that the above two types of algorithms can meet the needs of the project and have certain light resistance. Among them, the algorithm based on feature points has certain advantages in speed and requires fewer manual processing steps. In this case, it is necessary to combine the previous algorithm to solve the posture, use the optical flow method to track the feature points, avoid the operation of extracting, matching, and removing the mismatch of each frame of feature points, and improve the speed of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convolutional neural networks have achieved competitive performance in defocus blur detection (DBD). However, due to the different receptive fields of different convolutional layers, there are distinct differences in the features generated by these layers, and the complementary information between cross-level features cannot be fully utilized. Besides, there are still challenges to be solved in homogeneous regions. To tackle the above issues, we focus on both homogeneous region dataset augmentation and model design to propose a novel DBD model based on adaptive cross-level feature fusion and refinement. Specifically, in terms of homogeneous region dataset enhancement, a Laplace filter is used to extract the homogeneous region image patch of the training image to realize homogeneous region image augmentation, which improves the robustness of the model for DBD in the homogeneous region; in terms of model design, we propose an adaptive fusion mechanism with self-learning weights and design the adaptive cross-level feature fusion module, which adaptively discriminates between different levels of features and fuses them step-by-step. In addition, we design the cross-level feature refinement module and embed it into the network, which captures the complementary information of the cross-level features, and refines cross-level feature information from coarse to fine in the decoder stage. Experimental results on two commonly used datasets show that the proposed method outperforms 13 state-of-the-art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bacillus velezensis is widely used for agricultural biocontrol, due to its ability to enhance plant growth while suppressing the growth of microbial pathogens. However, there are few reports on its application in fermented feed. Here, a two-stage solid-state fermentation process using Bacillus velezensis followed by Lactobacillus plantarum was developed to degrade antinutritional factors (ANFs) and improve soybean meal (SBM) nutrition for animal feed. The process was evaluated for performance in degrading SBM antinutritional factors, dynamic changes in physicochemical characteristics, microorganisms and metabolites. After two-stage fermentation, degradation rates of glycinin and β-conglycinin contents reached 78.60% and 72.89%, respectively. The pH of fermented SBM (FSBM) decreased to 4.78 ± 0.04 and lactic acid content reached 183.38 ± 4.86 mmol/kg. NSP-degrading enzymes (Non-starch polysaccharide, NSPases) and protease were detected from the fermented product, which caused the changed microstructure of SBM. Compared to uninoculated SBM, FSBM exhibited increased proportions of crude protein (51.97 ± 0.44% vs. 47.28 ± 0.34%), Ca, total phosphorus (P), and trichloroacetic acid-soluble protein (11.79 ± 0.13% vs. 5.07 ± 0.06%). Additionally, cellulose and hemicellulose proportions declined by 22.10% and 39.15%, respectively. Total amino acid content increased by 5.05%, while the difference of AA content between the 24 h, 48 h and 72 h of fermentation was not significant (P > 0.05). Furthermore, FSBM also showed antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. These results demonstrated that two-stage SBM fermentation process based on Bacillus velezensis 157 and Lactobacillus plantarum BLCC2-0015 is an effective approach to reduce ANFs content and improve the quality of SBM feed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gut microbiota dysbiosis, associated with insulin resistance, weak intestinal barrier integrity, and inflammation, may also play a role in the development of dietary-induced nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This study investigates the effects of dietary Lactobacillus plantarum NA136 administration on gut microbiota composition in an insulin-resistant C57BL/6J mouse NAFLD model. Comparison of mice with and without L. plantarum NA136 treatment revealed that L. plantarum NA136 treatment not only relieved insulin resistance but also significantly increased relative proportions of Desulfovibrio, Alistipes, Prevotella, and Enterorhabdus in gut microbiota of NAFLD mice. Meanwhile, L. plantarum NA136 administration also inhibited pathogenic bacterial growth, while promoting growth of probiotics such as Allobaculum, Lactobacillus, and, most markedly, Bifidobacterium. Moreover, L. plantarum NA136 treatment of NAFLD mice improved intestinal barrier integrity and attenuated high-fat and fructose diet (HFD/F)-induced inflammation. These results implicate gut-liver-axis-dependent microbiota modulation as the underlying mechanism for L. plantarum NA136-induced amelioration of NAFLD. Key points • L. plantarum NA136 corrects gut microbiota disorders caused by a high-fat and fructose diet. • L. plantarum NA136 strengthens the intestinal barrier and reduces inflammation in the liver. • L. plantarum NA136 relieves NAFLD by improving the gut-liver axis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hepatic lipid metabolic disorders and oxidative stress are involved in the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This study is to determine the protective effects of Lactobacillus plantarum NA136 on high-fat diet and fructose (HFD/F)-induced NAFLD and to elucidate its underlying molecular mechanisms. Male C57BL/6J mice had been fed with normal diet (ND), HFD/F, or HFD/F supplemented with L. plantarum NA136 for 16 weeks. Treatment with L. plantarum NA136 significantly lowered the body weight gain and decreased the mass of fat tissues, lipids, AST, and ALT levels of HFD/F-treated mice. Our results showed that L. plantarum NA136 activated AMPK pathway to phosphorylate ACC and to suppress the SREBP-1/FAS signaling to inhibit the de novo lipogenesis and increase the fatty acid oxidation. Furthermore, with treatment of L. plantarum NA136, the nuclear translocation of NF-E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) was also increased which could activate antioxidant pathway. These findings suggested that L. plantarum NA136 improved NAFLD by regulating the fatty acid metabolism and defending against oxidative stress through AMPK and Nrf2 pathways, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the influence of moisture content (MC) and steaming temperature on defects developing during steaming prior to kiln drying, mass loss, heat transfer, microstructures, extractives, and chemical transformation of Eucalyptus grandis × E. urophylla specimens (with moisture content of 120, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20%) were observed in this study. Specimens of each experimental moisture content were steamed at 80, 100, and 120 °C for 4 h after pre-heating at atmospheric pressure, respectively. Results revealed that it was most beneficial to conduct steaming at 100 °C when the moisture content was approximately 50% after air drying when stagewise heating-up and continuous steaming schedule were adopted. Under this condition, there was a notable decrease in defects including edge bends, surface splits, and inner splits. Steaming was also a drying period characterized by various extents of mass loss. Changes in microstructures and extractive contents proved the increasing permeability of steamed wood. Deacetylation and crosslinking reactions happened in the hemicellulose of the sample materials, which contributed to the loss of hemicellulose after treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new technique, micro-explosion, was used to pretreat fast-growing poplar wood and improve membrane porosity. Poplar lumber with a thickness of 20 mm was pretreated 10 times at pressures of 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 MPa. Subsequently, the test and control groups were dried in air to equilibrium moisture content. Several slices of 2-3 mm long at depths of 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 mm were cut from the samples of both the pretreated and control groups for use in the scanning electron microscope. Numerous fine fractures were found at the weak parts of the cells, the pit membranes, following an instantaneous exhaust process which used pressurized air. With the increase in depth, the fractures became fewer and finer. Regardless of the fracture extent, at each level of pressure, the fractures could reach a depth of 8 mm. According to the diversity of fracture extent and location, the fractures could be classified into three main types: radial fracture opening along the pit membrane, ring fracture opening along the pit membrane and crush. The SEM photographs illustrated that the large capillary system of the micro-explosion-treated samples was widened, which could reduce resistance to moisture movement. Thus, micro-explosion treatment could be applied not only in the wood drying industry, but also to wood impregnation, as an effective method for improving impregnation efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conics-based calibration has been widely inves- tigated in the past several years. The primary method is to utilize the generalized eigenvalue decomposition (GED) of conics. In this paper, we extend the GED method to deal with a general case: two enclosing ellipses. We construct a link between enclosing ellipses and confocal conics. The homography is, thus, decomposed to three components, each of which corresponds to a clear geometrical meaning. Other general conics cases including separate case, intersecting case and hyperbolas case are also discussed. Experiments with simulated and real data demonstrate the good performance of our camera calibration algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed a method for analyzing the change in snow cover using MODIS imagery. The method was applied to images of western Sichuan Province, China taken between 2002 and 2008. The model for extracting data on snow cover from MODIS images was created by spectral analysis. The multi-temporal snow layers were used to evaluate the temporal and spatial change in the area under snow cover between 2002 and 2008 using overlay and statistical analysis in ARCGIS. The majority (60.4%) of western Sichuan was rarely covered by snow and only 0.3% was covered by perennial snow in 2002. Snow cover was primarily distributed in Garzê and Aba. The area under snow cover was significantly and negatively correlated with the average monthly temperature and rainfall in 2002. The largest area under snow cover was measured in 2006 and the smallest was in 2007. Similarly, the area of snowmelt was the highest in 2006 and lowest in 2007. In general, the elevation of the snow line increased throughout the period 2002-2008; however, the elevation decreased in some years. Our results provide an important insight into the distribution of snow in this region, and may be useful for climate modeling and predicting the availability of water resources and the occurrence of floods and droughts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]