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Amorphousized Ni30Co10RE60 (RE = Ho and Tm) ribbons have been prepared by melt-spinning technique, and their microstructure, glass formation ability, magnetic properties and cryogenic magneto-caloric effect (MCE) were systematically investigated. Based on the X-ray diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopic, the Ni30Co10Ho60 and Ni30Co10Tm60 ribbons show fully amorphous structure. The ribbons are confirmed to reveal a second-order magnetic phase transition (paramagnetic to ferromagnetic) by the magnetization measurements and Arrott plot analysis. A considerable MCE is found in Ni30Co10Ho60 and Ni30Co10Tm60 ribbons around their respective Curie temperatures (TC) of 22.7 and 6.3 K, respectively. Under a magnetic field change (∆H) of 0-5 T, the magnetic entropy change (− ∆SM) reaches 12.5 and 14.2 J/kg K, and the relative cooling power reaches 447 and 242 J/kg for Ni30Co10Ho60 and Ni30Co10Tm60, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnetic properties and magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in antiferromagnetic non-superconducting TbNiBC compound have been investigated in detail. Under low magnetic field changes and at low temperatures, the studied compound shows an inverse MCE which is due to the fact of antiferromagnetic ground state, whereas a normal reversible MCE under high magnetic field changes is observed which is related to the field-induced first-order metamagnetic transition from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic states. For the magnetic field change of 0-7 T the values of maximal magnetic entropy change ( $-\Delta S_{\mathrm {M}}^{\max } )$ , refrigerant capacity (RC) and relative cooling power (RCP) for the present TbNiBC are evaluated to be 11.1 J/kg/K, 225 J/kg and 296 J/kg, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnetic properties and magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in the ternary intermetallic compound of EuAuGe have been investigated. The compound undergoes a second-order magnetic phase transition at its own Curie temperatures T∼33 K. A large reversible table-like MCE has been observed from 1 to 40 K, which is related to the magnetic field-sensitive magnetic phase transition. For the magnetic field changes of 0-5 and 0-7 T, the maximum values of magnetic entropy change ( $-{\Delta } S_{\mathrm {M}}^{\max }$) are evaluated to be 7.6 and 10.1 J kg K, respectively; the corresponding relative cooling power ( RCP) are 358 and 499 J kg. The present results indicate that the EuAuGe compound is a considerable candidate for low-temperature refrigeration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rolling bearings are widely applied in rotary machines. Bearing failures can lead to long machine downtime and costly maintenance. To reduce the maintenance time and cost, this article proposes a new denoising approach to remove heavy noise and extract weak bearing fault vibration features. The first step proposes a global variational mode decomposition (VMD) optimization algorithm that adaptively matches the optimal decomposition parameters based on kurtosis. In the second step, an adaptive selection criterion for IMF is developed by kurtosis theory. Meanwhile, an adaptive termination criterion is established based on sample entropy (SampEn), and the fault features are extracted with a Butterworth band-pass filter (BBF). Finally, actual fault-bearing experiments are performed using the proposed denoising approach. The comparison with respect to EEMD and WPD is illustrated in detail. The experimental result shows that the proposed approach is a validated tool for the diagnosis of bearings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rare-earth (RE)-based magnetic solids with large magneto-caloric effect (MCE) have been well investigated recently due to their potential applications in the field of environmentally friendly cryogenic magnetic refrigeration (MR). Herein, two polycrystalline RE-based REFe2Si2 (RE = Dy and Tb) intermetallic compounds have been prepared by an arc-melting way and determined with regard to the structural and magnetic phase transition (MPT) properties as well as the MCE and magneto-caloric performance. Both of the present REFe2Si2 compounds at room temperature are crystallized in a ThCr2Si2-type structure and undergo a first-ordered MPT from antiferromagnetic to paramagnetic state around the Néel temperature (TN) of ~ 4.05 K for DyFe2Si2 and ~ 6.25 K for TbFe2Si2, respectively. Large cryogenic MC effect together with excellent MC performance have been realized in DyFe2Si2 compound. The MC parameters with magnetic field change at 0–5 T of the maximum magnetic entropy changes and the refrigerant capacity/relative cooling power were found to be 16.08 J/kgK and 318.5/403.3 J/kg for DyFe2Si2 and to be 9.88 J/kgK and 105.9/140.8 J/kg for TbFe2Si2, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In search for new targets for the diagnosis and treatment of lupus nephritis (LN), we employed TMT-liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (TMT-LC–MS/MS) combined with RNA-seq and identified a panel of proteins that was dysregulated both at protein level and mRNA level in active LN patients compared with healthy controls. We chose to study the role of IGFBP2 since it is a relatively understudied protein in the context of LN. We further validated that IGFBP2 significantly increased and correlated with SLE activity index in active LN patients. The receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve suggested that plasma IGFBP2 had a high diagnostic efficiency for distinguishing between inactive and active LN patients (AUC = 0.992; 95% CI = 0.974–1.000; P < 0.001). We demonstrated neutralizing IGFBP2-downregulated CD4+ T cell activation, upregulated the ratio of Treg, downregulated AKT/mTOR/4E-BP1 pathway, and significantly improved nephritis in MRL/lpr mice. In all, our work demonstrated IGFBP2 as a biomarker specific for active LN and blocking IGFBP2 could be a new target for treating LN. Key messages: Plasma IGFBP2 is a promising diagnostic marker for distinguishing stable LN from active LN, and it is also a predictor for the poor prognosis of LN. Blockade of IGFBP2 can significantly improve the pathological damage of LN. IGFBP2 may regulate activation of CD4+ T and Treg ratio. Neutralizing IGFBP2 downregulates AKT/mTOR/4E-BP1 pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) is desirable due to ionizing radiation, but the resulting images suffer from serious streak artifacts and spot noise. Recently, deep learning (DL)-based methods have emerged as promising alternatives for medical image processing. However, most DL-based methods are built intuitively and lack interpretability, and it is difficult to effectively separate the artifacts and noise in LDCT images. Obtaining diagnostically useful images, especially when using a low-dose scanner protocol, remains an open challenge. To improve the quality of LDCT images, we developed a novel processing network called the sparse autorepresentation U-Net (SureUnet). First, inspired by multilayer convolutional sparse coding (CSC), we constructed a sparse autorepresentation encoder to sufficiently capture and represent hierarchical image features. Then, we chose the widely used U-Net model for sparse autorepresentation block applications and designed SureUnet by adding a feature decoding block. Therefore, every module has well-defined interpretability in our network. Additionally, hybrid loss functions were specifically designed, including the mean absolute error, edge loss and perceptual loss. Through the cooperation of multiple loss functions, the noise artifact suppression effect of the network was improved. The visual results obtained on the MAYO and UIH datasets show that the proposed method’s noise artifact suppression effect was more significant. The quantitative results showed promising improvement levels compared to those of the other state-of-the-art methods. The SureUnet model significantly outperformed the compared methods on two datasets, with margins of 0.4 dB for the PSNR, 0.007 for the SSIM, and 1.6 for the FID on the MAYO dataset and margins of 0.5 dB for the PSNR, 0.004 for the SSIM and 2.9 for the FID on the UIH dataset. This work paves the way for sparse autorepresentation in DL for processing LDCT images. Experimental results have demonstrated the competitive performance of SureUnet in terms of noise suppression, structural fidelity and visual impression improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]