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With the advent of the "Z" era, new tea has replaced traditional tea as a beverage preferred by consumers. This paper mainly starts from the development of new tea beverages in China and analyzes the current situation of China's new tea industry through the PSET model, to analyze the external conditions affecting the development of Starbucks. In addition, through the SWOT model, this paper analyzes NAYUKI's current situation and its market strategy and explores NAYUKI own strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and threats facing its development, and the main problems faced by its marketing strategy. Finally, this paper makes a series of targeted recommendations for NAYUKI. This paper found that although NAYUKI has not yet reached the stage of sustained profitability, it can be expected that the epidemic will weaken its offline consumption interference, as well as the supply chain and store upgrading of enterprises, NAYUKI through the mining of potential consumers in low-tier cities, with the help of industry digital transformation, make full use of the advantages of "third space" stores, innovative marketing to strengthen brand value, and gradually increase the proportion of future Pro stores to reduce costs, the company's profitability is expected to improve in the future.

Eye metrics are effective indicators of focused visual attention and perceived workload that have been used to differentiate surgical expertise and task difficulties. However, the change in eye metrics throughout surgical training in a cohort of trainees is under-investigated. This study collected eye-tracking data from 13 medical students practicing the peg transfer task until reaching the passing criteria of the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery. Six eye metrics measuring focused visual attention and workload were computed and then used in multiple linear regression analysis to predict trial completion time. All predictors were significant in the regression model, collectively explaining 61.7% of the variance in log-transformed completion time. Fixation rates and gaze entropy were the most important metrics at revealing skill acquisition as medical students self-train on the peg-transfer task. The results on these eye metrics demonstrate potential in assessing surgeons-in-training and providing feedback to ensure surgical competency.

Context dependent gaze metrics, derived from eye movements explicitly associated with how a task is being performed, are particularly useful for formative assessment that includes feedback on specific behavioral adjustments for skill acquisitions. In laparoscopic surgery, context dependent gaze metrics are under investigated and commonly derived by either qualitatively inspecting the videos frame by frame or mapping the fixations onto a static surgical task field. This study collected eye-tracking and video data from 13 trainees practicing the peg transfer task. Machine learning algorithms in computer vision were employed to derive metrics of tool speed, fixation rate on (moving or stationary) target objects, and fixation rate on tool-object combination. Preliminary results from a clustering analysis on the measurements from 499 practice trials indicated that the metrics were able to differentiate three skill levels amongst the trainees, suggesting high sensitivity and potential of context dependent gaze metrics for surgical assessment.

The water resource situation in China is severe, and conflicts between the supply and demand of water resources are prominent. Competition for water from key sectors, such as agriculture, industry, and domestic use, is widespread. The Yellow River, as one of the longest rivers in the world, is an important economic belt and an ecological barrier in China. This study considered the nine provinces along the Yellow River as the study area and the three major water-use sectors: agriculture, industry, and domestic as the research objects. The drivers of water consumption in each sector in the nine provinces along the Yellow River were analyzed using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index method. Based on this, a decoupling model was used to explore the relationship between water use in each sector and the corresponding level of economic development. It was found that water use intensity and economic development level were the largest negative and positive influencing factors on water use in each sector, respectively, and the opposite effects of the two may cause the Jevons paradox in water use. The overall agricultural water-saving level in the basin is high and has a large water-saving potential. The negative driving effect of the industrial structure was more significant in provinces with higher development levels. The positive driving effect of residents' consumption levels on domestic water use in rural areas was more obvious than in urban areas. The degree of decoupling between per capita and domestic water consumption in urban areas was the worst in the decoupling of water use in the agricultural, industrial, and domestic sectors and their corresponding levels of economic development. Therefore, focusing on areas with weak agricultural water conservation, promoting industrial structure upgrading, strengthening water conservation education in rural areas, and guiding the water-saving consumption habits of residents can promote the sustainable development of water resources in the provinces along the Yellow River. The research results provide insights into water conservation management in the Yellow River Basin.

This research aimed to examine the relations among harsh discipline (including psychological aggression and corporal punishment), parent-child attachment, and peer attachment. More specifically, two mediation models (one for psychological aggression, one for corporal punishment) were investigated in which father-child attachment and mother-child attachment were hypothesized to mediate the relations between both paternal and maternal harsh discipline and peer attachment. In addition, differences across gender of the mediation model were examined. Participants were 668 children in grades four to eight and both their parents in China. The Chinese version of Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale (CTSPC) and the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) were used as the main assessment tools to measure parental use of harsh discipline, parent-child attachment, and peer attachment. Findings revealed that the direct path from neither fathers’ nor mothers’ harsh discipline to peer attachment was significant. Harsh discipline by one parent was indirectly related to peer attachment through the attachment between this parent and the child, but not through the attachment between his/her spouse and the child. In addition, the direct and indirect relations between harsh parental discipline and peer attachment did not differ across child gender. The findings provided an important supplement and extension to previous examinations of the factors associated with peer attachment and its mechanisms. In addition, the results also suggested the need for intervention programs aiming at improving children’s peer relationships to take the parenting and parent-child relationships into account.

PurposeThis paper applied grey wave forecasting in a decomposition–ensemble forecasting method for modelling the complex and non-linear features in time series data. This application aims to test the advantages of grey wave forecasting method in predicting time series with periodic fluctuations.Design/methodology/approachThe decomposition–ensemble method combines empirical mode decomposition (EMD), component reconstruction technology and grey wave forecasting. More specifically, EMD is used to decompose time series data into different intrinsic mode function (IMF) components in the first step. Permutation entropy and the average of each IMF are checked for component reconstruction. Then the grey wave forecasting model or ARMA is used to predict each IMF according to the characters of each IMF.FindingsIn the empirical analysis, the China container freight index (CCFI) is applied in checking prediction performance. Using two different time periods, the results show that the proposed method performs better than random walk and ARMA in multi-step-ahead prediction.Originality/valueThe decomposition–ensemble method based on EMD and grey wave forecasting model expands the application area of the grey system theory and graphic forecasting method. Grey wave forecasting performs better for data set with periodic fluctuations. Forecasting CCFI assists practitioners in the shipping industry in decision-making.

In laparoscopic surgery, looking in the target areas is an indicator of proficiency. However, gaze behaviors revealing feedforward control (i.e., looking ahead) and their importance have been under-investigated in surgery. This study aims to establish the sensitivity and relative importance of different scene-dependent gaze and motion metrics for estimating trainee proficiency levels in surgical skills.Medical students performed the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery peg transfer task while recording their gaze on the monitor and tool activities inside the trainer box. Using computer vision and fixation algorithms, five scene-dependent gaze metrics and one tool speed metric were computed for 499 practice trials. Cluster analysis on the six metrics was used to group the trials into different clusters/proficiency levels, and ANOVAs were conducted to test differences between proficiency levels. A Random Forest model was trained to study metric importance at predicting proficiency levels.Three clusters were identified, corresponding to three proficiency levels. The correspondence between the clusters and proficiency levels was confirmed by differences between completion times (FScene-dependent gaze metrics revealed skill levels of trainees more precisely than between experts and novices as suggested in the literature. Further, feedforward gaze metrics appeared to be more important than feedback ones at predicting proficiency.

Enzymes that facilitate the local deposition of electron dense reaction products have been widely used as labels in electron microscopy (EM) for the identification of synaptic contacts in neural tissue. Peroxidases, in particular, can efficiently metabolize 3,3'-diaminobenzidine tetrahydrochloride hydrate (DAB) to produce precipitates with high contrast under EM following heavy metal staining, and can be genetically encoded to facilitate the labeling of specific cell-types or organelles. Nevertheless, the peroxidase/DAB method has so far not been reported to work in a multiplexed manner in combination with 3D volume EM techniques (e.g. Serial blockface electron microscopy, SBEM; Focused ion beam electron microscopy, FIBSEM) that are favored for the large-scale ultrastructural assessment of synaptic architecture However, a recently described peroxidase with enhanced enzymatic activity (dAPEX2) can efficienty deposit EM-visible DAB products in thick tissue without detergent treatment opening the possibility for the multiplex labeling of genetically defined cell-types in combination with volume EM methods. Here we demonstrate that multiplexed dAPEX2/DAB tagging is compatible with both FIBSEM and SBEM volume EM approaches and use them to map long-range genetically identified synaptic inputs from the anterior cingulate cortex to the periaqueductal gray in the mouse brain.

Enzymes that facilitate the local deposition of electron dense reaction products have been widely used as labels in electron microscopy (EM) for the identification of synaptic contacts in neural tissue. Peroxidases, in particular, can efficiently metabolize 3,3′-diaminobenzidine tetrahydrochloride hydrate (DAB) to produce precipitates with high contrast under EM following heavy metal staining, and can be genetically encoded to facilitate the labeling of specific cell-types or organelles. Nevertheless, the peroxidase/DAB method has so far not been reported to work in a multiplexed manner in combination with 3D volume EM techniques (e.g. Serial blockface electron microscopy, SBEM; Focused ion beam electron microscopy, FIBSEM) that are favored for the large-scale ultrastructural assessment of synaptic architecture However, a recently described peroxidase with enhanced enzymatic activity (dAPEX2) can efficienty deposit EM-visible DAB products in thick tissue without detergent treatment opening the possibility for the multiplex labeling of genetically defined cell-types in combination with volume EM methods. Here we demonstrate that multiplexed dAPEX2/DAB tagging is compatible with both FIBSEM and SBEM volume EM approaches and use them to map long-range genetically identified synaptic inputs from the anterior cingulate cortex to the periaqueductal gray in the mouse brain.

Substance use disorders present major health risks and economic burdens, while current healthcare systems face insufficient resources and accessibility deficiencies that challenge long term treatment for chronic diseases. This paper presents a theoretical approach of integrating the concept of episodic future thinking into immersive virtual reality to treat substance use disorders. Episodic future thinking can extend the temporal window over which an individual values rewards, rebalancing the impulsive and executive decision systems and thereby reducing the valuation of substances of abuse. In theory, virtual reality can enhance episodic future thinking by providing realistic cues and contexts. We propose using schema theory to guide the design of virtual reality for facilitating episodic future thinking. Future work should focus on developing and evaluating a proof-of-concept of this theoretical framework.

Mg-5Li-1Al alloy was processed by cross accumulative roll bonding (CARB). The processed Mg-5Li-1Al sheet possesses ultra-fine grains, and its strength increases both in the rolling direction (RD) and transverse direction (TD) with the elongation remaining 16˜18%. The proper CARB processing is helpful to improve the isotropy of mechanical properties of Mg-5Li-1Al sheet. At the same time, the CARB process has a beneficial effect on improving the plasticity of Mg-5Li-1Al sheet. With the change of the direction between the CARB passes, the basal texture of Mg-5Li-1Al sheet is weakened, and the non-basal texture is strengthened. Both prismatic slip and pyramidal slip are initiated. The dominant deformation mechanism changes from twin deformation to slip deformation, and finally shear deformation. The grain refinement mechanism changes from twin dynamic recrystallization to continuous dynamic recrystallization, and finally rotational dynamic recrystallization.

Reservoirs located in middle and high latitudes freeze for months in winter, where the accumulation characteristics of pollutants are changed by superimposed influence of salt exclusion from ice on the surface and pollution release from sediments at the bottom. Taking total nitrogen (TN) of Biliuhe reservoir in Northeast China as an example, we developed a model to simulate TN accumulation characteristics influenced by ice and sediments during the freezing period (NACISF), and quantified contributions of TN from ice and sediments. Model parameters of ice and sediments were determined by laboratory freeze-up simulation experiment and sediment release flux simulation experiment, and water quality data were obtained from field investigations. Results showed that the annual average amount of TN input during the ice-covered period from 2015 to 2020 was 220.77 t, the output was 400.11 t, and the accumulated amount was 589.52 t. TN excluded from ice and released from sediments contributed 8.12% and 7.17% of the total TN inputs in winter, respectively. Analysis showed that the TN excluded from ice was positively correlated with ice thickness and initial TN concentration. The maximum ice thickness of Biliuhe reservoir had a 13 year cyclic feature, and the proportion of TN excluded from ice to the total TN inputs in different periods ranged from 10.68% to 17.30% (mean 13.18%). Meanwhile, TN accumulated seasonally as summer autumn winter spring. The TN exclusion effect in 2050 would be weakened when considering the combined effects of climate change and human activities, with a reduction of about 40.85% compared to the current. It is concluded that the NACISF model took into account the influences of both ice and sediments, which provided a detailed understanding of the accumulation characteristics of TN during freezing period, and had important reference significance for water quality management in winter.

Non-autoregressive (NAR) modeling has gained more and more attention in speech processing. With recent state-of-the-art attention-based automatic speech recognition (ASR) structure, NAR can realize promising real-time factor (RTF) improvement with only small degradation of accuracy compared to the autoregressive (AR) models. However, the recognition inference needs to wait for the completion of a full speech utterance, which limits their applications on low latency scenarios. To address this issue, we propose a novel end-to-end streaming NAR speech recognition system by combining blockwise-attention and connectionist temporal classification with mask-predict (Mask-CTC) NAR. During inference, the input audio is separated into small blocks and then processed in a blockwise streaming way. To address the insertion and deletion error at the edge of the output of each block, we apply an overlapping decoding strategy with a dynamic mapping trick that can produce more coherent sentences. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves online ASR recognition in low latency conditions compared to vanilla Mask-CTC. Moreover, it can achieve a much faster inference speed compared to the AR attention-based models. All of our codes will be publicly available at https://github.com/espnet/espnet., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figures, Interspeech21 conference

Neural end-to-end (E2E) models have become a promising technique to realize practical automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems. When realizing such a system, one important issue is the segmentation of audio to deal with streaming input or long recording. After audio segmentation, the ASR model with a small real-time factor (RTF) is preferable because the latency of the system can be faster. Recently, E2E ASR based on non-autoregressive models becomes a promising approach since it can decode an $N$-length token sequence with less than $N$ iterations. We propose a system to concatenate audio segmentation and non-autoregressive ASR to realize high accuracy and low RTF ASR. As a non-autoregressive ASR, the insertion-based model is used. In addition, instead of concatenating separated models for segmentation and ASR, we introduce a new architecture that realizes audio segmentation and non-autoregressive ASR by a single neural network. Experimental results on Japanese and English dataset show that the method achieved a reasonable trade-off between accuracy and RTF compared with baseline autoregressive Transformer and connectionist temporal classification.

The release of liquid effluent of nuclear power into aquatic system increases with the rapid development of nuclear facilities in coastal and inland regions. Aquatic model animals are very important for the study of the radiation hazards to non-human biota in water environment and its extrapolation of dose-effect relationship to human models. However, the study of the radiation dose rate calculation model of the aquatic animal zebrafish is still on the homogeneous isotropic model used for the protection of the environment. A series of zebrafish models (including adults, larvae and embryos, named zebrafish-family: ZF-family) with multiple internal organs are established in this study to investigate the mechanism of radiation damage effect in order to protect non-human species. The internal and external dose coefficients (DCs) of the whole body, heart and gonads of zebrafishes are calculated in water environment with the combination of the real experimental culture condition, using Monte Carlo application package GATE (Geant4 Application for Emission Tomography) and eight nuclides, i.e., 3H, 14C, 90Sr, 60Co, 110mAg, 134Cs, 137Cs, 131I, which are commonly found in the liquid effluent of nuclear power plants, as the source items, The results show that the level of nuclide γ energy determines the external DCs (DCext), and 90Sr plays the most important role in internal DCs (DCint). The comparison between the external DCs of the heart and gonad and that of the whole body shows that DCs (DCext) of heart and gonad for females are 80% and 43% lower than that of whole body, respectively, while for males, the DCs (DCext) of heart is 44% lower than that of the whole body, and DCs (DCext) of gonad is slightly higher than that of the whole body for most nuclides (up to 25%).The dose of internal radiation makes greater contribution than that of external radiation to pure beta emitter (3H, 14C, 90Sr). This internal DCs of ZF-family model with complex internal structure turns out to demonstrate more sensitive DCs change trend and higher calculation values compared with the internal DCs of the simple ellipsoid model. In this model, the photon emitter with strong penetrating power has higher internal DCs, while the low-energy pure beta nuclide does not alter much. In conclusion, it is vital to carry out refined systematic modeling for model organisms, and the determination of DCs of model organs can promote the evaluation of the radiation effects on non-human species.

Effects of annealing temperature and annealing time on the microstructure, interfacial bonding properties and mechanical properties of alternate α/β Mg-Li alloy composite plates by accumulative roll bonding (ARB) were investigated. Due to the large reduction, a part of the relatively harder Mg-5Li-1Al alloy is embedded into the softer Mg-12Li-1Al alloy to achieve metallurgical bonding in the process of composite rolling. The optimum annealing temperature of the composite plate is 350 °C or 400 °C. At the same time, the formation mechanism of the interfacial diffusion region was discussed, and results show that there exist two diffusion regions, diffusion layer 1 and diffusion layer 2. The diffusion layer 1 is mainly composed of Li3Mg7 phase, and the diffusion layer 2 is composed of Li0.92Mg4.08 phase. The interfacial bonding ability of Mg-Li alloy composite plate first increases and then decreases with the increase of annealing temperature and annealing time. Compared with the composite plate processed by one pass ARB, the annealing time of the composite plate processed by six passes ARB increases due to the increase of cumulative strain, and the optimum annealing process is at 400 °C for 30 min.

The aim of the present investigation was to enhance the solubility, dissolution, and oral bioavailability of praziquantel (PZQ), a poorly water-soluble BCS II drug (Biopharmaceutical Classification System), using a solid dispersion (SD) technique involving hydrophilic copolymers. The SD formulations were prepared by a solvent evaporation method with PZQ and PEG 4000 (polyethylene glycol 4000), PEG 6000, or P 188 polymers at various weight ratios or a combination of PEG 4000/P 188. The optimized SD formulation, which had the highest solubility in distilled water, was further characterized by its surface morphology, crystallinity, and dissolution in 0.1 M HCl with 0.2% w/v of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) revealed the amorphous form of PZQ in the SDs. Moreover, at an oral dosage of 5 mg/kg PZQ, the SDs had higher Cmax values and areas under the curve (AUCs) compared to those of commercial PZQ tablets. Preparation of PZQ-loaded SDs using PEG 4000/P 188 is a promising strategy to improve the oral bioavailability of PZQ.

Ultrafine-grain and high-strength Mg-5Li-1Al sheets were prepared by accumulative roll bonding (ARB) process. Evolution of microstructure and mechanical properties of ARB-processed Mg-5Li-1Al sheets was investigated. Results show that, during ARB process, the evolution of deformation mechanism of t Mg-5Li-1Al alloy is as follows: twinning deformation, shear deformation, forming macro shear zone, and finally dynamic recrystallization (DRX). The grain refining mechanism changes from twin DRX to rotation DRX. With the increase in ARB cycles, strength of the Mg-5Li-1Al sheets is enhanced, whilst elongation varies slightly. With the increase in rolling cycles, anisotropy of mechanical properties decreases. It is conclusive that strain hardening and grain refinement dominate the strengthening mechanism of Mg-5Li-1Al alloy.

In this work, we explore the dependencies between speaker recognition and emotion recognition. We first show that knowledge learned for speaker recognition can be reused for emotion recognition through transfer learning. Then, we show the effect of emotion on speaker recognition. For emotion recognition, we show that using a simple linear model is enough to obtain good performance on the features extracted from pre-trained models such as the x-vector model. Then, we improve emotion recognition performance by fine-tuning for emotion classification. We evaluated our experiments on three different types of datasets: IEMOCAP, MSP-Podcast, and Crema-D. By fine-tuning, we obtained 30.40%, 7.99%, and 8.61% absolute improvement on IEMOCAP, MSP-Podcast, and Crema-D respectively over baseline model with no pre-training. Finally, we present results on the effect of emotion on speaker verification. We observed that speaker verification performance is prone to changes in test speaker emotions. We found that trials with angry utterances performed worst in all three datasets. We hope our analysis will initiate a new line of research in the speaker recognition community., 45th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2020

Compartmental models have been used to model information diffusion on social media. However, there have been few studies on modelling positive and negative public opinions using compartmental models. This study aimed for using sentiment analysis and compartmental model to model the propagation of positive and negative opinions on microblogging big media. The authors studied the news propagation of seven popular social topics on China's Sina Weibo microblogging platform. Natural language processing and sentiment analysis were used to identify public opinions from microblogging big data. Then two existing (SIZ and SEIZ) models and a newly developed (SE2IZ) model were implemented to model the news propagation and evaluate the trends of public opinions on selected social topics. Simulation study was used to check model fitting performance. The results show that the new SE2IZ model has a better model fitting performance than existing models. This study sheds some new light on using social media for public opinion estimation and prediction.

Compartmental models have been used to model information diffusion on social media. However, there have been few studies on modelling positive and negative public opinions using compartmental models. This study aimed for using sentiment analysis and compartmental model to model the propagation of positive and negative opinions on microblogging big media. The authors studied the news propagation of seven popular social topics on China's Sina Weibo microblogging platform. Natural language processing and sentiment analysis were used to identify public opinions from microblogging big data. Then two existing (SIZ and SEIZ) models and a newly developed (SE2IZ) model were implemented to model the news propagation and evaluate the trends of public opinions on selected social topics. Simulation study was used to check model fitting performance. The results show that the new SE2IZ model has a better model fitting performance than existing models. This study sheds some new light on using social media for public opinion estimation and prediction.

Mg–5Li–1Al (LA51) and Mg–5Li–1Al–0.5Y (LA51–0.5Y) alloys were smelted and rolled with different accumulated strains (36% and 68%) and rolling temperatures (373 K and 573 K). The microstructure, mechanical properties, fracture morphology and texture of the specimens were investigated. Results show that, due to the PSN (particle stimulate nucleation) mechanism, the addition of 0.5 wt.% Y improves the deformation resistance and weakens the basal texture of LA51 alloy. The effect of Y on UTS (ultimate tensile strength) of as-rolled alloys is more obvious than that of the as-cast alloy. Accumulated strain and rolling temperature could influence the twinning number, slip systems and DRX (dynamic recrystallization), thus affecting the microstructure and mechanical properties of the alloy. Under the proper combination of the above factors, the as-rolled LA51–0.5Y alloy with an accumulated strain of 68% at 573 K possesses the best comprehensive mechanical properties. Keywords: Mg–Li alloy, Accumulated strain, Rolling temperature, Microstructure, Mechanical property, Texture

Accumulative roll bonding (ARB) technique is used to manufacture fine-grained and high-strength Mg–8Li–3Al–1Zn alloy. Then, investigate the microstructure and mechanical properties. Results show that, the ARB-processed sheet possesses good bonding performance. The ARB refines the grains and causes the phase distribution to be scattered. With the increase of ARB passes, the σ0.2, σb, and hardness values are enhanced, whereas the elongation value first decreases, then slightly increases with the increase of ARB passes. The ARB5 sheet possesses the smallest grain size (about 3 µm) and the best comprehensive mechanical properties, the tensile strength, elongation, and hardness are 287.02 MPa, 12.5%, and 77.2 HV0.05, respectively.

The aim of the present investigation was to enhance the solubility, dissolution, and oral bioavailability of praziquantel (PZQ), a poorly water-soluble BCS II drug (Biopharmaceutical Classification System), using a solid dispersion (SD) technique involving hydrophilic copolymers. The SD formulations were prepared by a solvent evaporation method with PZQ and PEG 4000 (polyethylene glycol 4000), PEG 6000, or P 188 polymers at various weight ratios or a combination of PEG 4000/P 188. The optimized SD formulation, which had the highest solubility in distilled water, was further characterized by its surface morphology, crystallinity, and dissolution in 0.1 M HCl with 0.2% w/v of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) revealed the amorphous form of PZQ in the SDs. Moreover, at an oral dosage of 5 mg/kg PZQ, the SDs had higher C

Mg-9Li-6Al(LA96) and Mg-9Li-6Al-2La(LA96-2La), after solution treatment, were aged at 50C and 150C, respectively. The microstructure evolution and hardness variation of the alloys under different aging parameters were investigated. The results show that the morphology of MgLi2Al(h) phases in LA96 changes from short and rod like to particulate during the aging period, and the size of particulate phase becomes larger and larger in the late aging period. The small, stripy a phases precipitate from b phases. The microstructure evolution leads to a continuous decrease in hardness. A temporary increase of hardness appears in the process of aging treatment at 150C because of the precipitation of AlLi phases. The addition of La inhibits the variation of MgLi2Al morphology and the precipitation of small and stripy a phases in b phases, and it makes the decrease rate of hardness become lower in the process of aging treatment.

The C1q family includes many proteins that contain a globular (gC1q) domain, and this family is widely conserved from bacteria to mammals. The family is divided into three subgroups: C1q, C1q-like and ghC1q. In this study, a novel C1q family member, s ghC1q , was cloned and identified from Cynoglossus semilaevis (named CssghC1q ). The full-length CssghC1q cDNA spans 905 bp, including an open reading frame (ORF) of 768 bp, a 5′-untranslated region (UTR) of 25 bp and a 3′-UTR of 112 bp. The ORF encodes a putative protein of 255 amino acids (aa) with a deduced molecular weight of 28 kDa. The predicted protein contains a signal peptide (aa 1–19), a coiled-coil region (aa 61–102) and a globular C1q (gC1q) domain (aa 117–255). Protein sequence alignment indicated that the C-terminus of CssghC1q is highly conserved across several species. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that CssghC1q is most closely related to Maylandia zebra C1q-like-2-like . The CssghC1q genomic sequence spanned 1562 bp, with three exons and two introns. CssghC1q is constitutively expressed in all evaluated tissues, with the highest expression in the liver and the weakest in the heart. After a challenge with Vibrio anguillarum, CssghC1q transcript levels exhibited distinct time-dependent response patterns in the blood, head kidney, skin, spleen, intestine and liver. Recombinant CssghC1q protein exhibited antimicrobial activities against Gram-negative bacteria, Gram-positive bacteria and viruses. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values against Vibrio harveyi, Vibrio anguillarum, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus were 0.043 mg/mL, 0.087 mg/mL, 0.174 mg/mL and 0.025 mg/mL, respectively. A low concentration (0.06 mg/mL) of CssghC1q showed significant antiviral activity in vitro against nervous necrosis virus (NNV). These results suggest that CssghC1q plays a vital role in immune defense against bacteria and viruses.

A new ovarian cell line, CSO, was established from half-smooth tongue sole Cynoglossus semilaevis. Primary culture of CSO cells was initiated from digestion of ovarian tissues pieces by trypsin solution and cultured at 24° C in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium-F12 medium (DMEM-F12, 1:1) (pH 7·0), supplemented with 20% foetal bovine serum, basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), epidermal growth factor (EGF), insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) and human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG). The cultured CSO cells, fibroblastic in morphology, proliferated to 100% confluency 3 days later and had been subcultured to passage 80. Chromosome analyses indicated that the CSO cells exhibited chromosomal aneuploidy with a modal chromosome number of 42 that displayed the normal diploid karyotype of C. semilaevis [2n = 42 t, fundamental number (NF ) = 42]. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction revealed that CSO cells could express ovarian somatic cell functional genes p450armo, foxl2 and sox9a but not ovary germ cell marker gene vasa and male-specific gene dmrt1. Transfection experiment demonstrated that CSO cells transfected with pEGFP-N3 plasmid could express green fluorescence protein (GFP) with higher transfection efficiency. The CSO cell line might serve as a valuable tool for studies on the mechanism of sex determination and oogenesis of ovary in flatfish.

GRIM-19 (gene associated with retinoid-interferon-induced mortality 19), a novel cell death regulatory gene, plays important roles in cell apoptosis, embryogenesis, mitochondrial respiratory chain and immune response. To date, little information is known about fish GRIM-19 characteristics except orange-spotted grouper (Epinephelus coioides). Here a new GRIM-19 gene is identified and characterized from turbot (Scophthalmus maximus), an economic marine fish in China and Europe. Briefly, turbot GRIM-19 is a 595-bp gene encoding a 144 amino acids protein, which shares the closest relationship with Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus). The expression of turbot grim-19 in liver, spleen and kidney is up-regulated by the infection of Vibrio anguillarum and LCDV (lymphocystis disease virus). Subsequently, a recombinant protein of turbot GRIM-19 is acquired and the anti-bacterial function is proved by liquid culture inhibition experiment. The subcellular location indicates that turbot GRIM-19 is co-localized with STAT3 in the cytoplasm, which is mainly determined by GRIM-19 41-84 amino acids and STAT3 1-321 amino acids. Finally, the involvements of turbot GRIM-19 in cell apoptosis and NF-κB pathway are investigated. All these data help to understand GRIM-19 function in fish, as well as provide the application possibility of GRIM-19 in fish disease resistance breeding.

Facial image based human age estimation is of great application significance. The public-available facial image datasets used for age estimation suffer greatly from the uneven distribution of images of different age groups, which may lead to the low estimation accuracy of the under-sampled age categories and limit the usage of the age estimation in certain applications. We propose a three-stage probability adjustment based CNN algorithm to solve the imbalanced distribution problem of the dataset. In particular, we construct an ENIN neural network structure by applying the Network in Network (NIN) structure to the traditional convolution neural network (CNN) and use the probability vector adjustment to improve the classification accuracy of the under-sampled age categories. Then, we filter out the images with high possibility of being misclassified after the probability vector adjustment and reset their categories by comparing cosine similarity and retraining the ensembled ENIN classifier. We also introduce a population-age-distribution based accuracy metric Accuracy-P to estimate the performance of the age estimation algorithm in real-world applications. Our experimental results confirm that our algorithm can effectively improve the overall estimation accuracy by significantly improving the accuracy of the under-sampled age groups while maintaining satisfactory accuracy for the other age groups.

Effects of W6+ doping on the phase structural and electrical properties, especially the conduction mechanism at a higher temperature of CaBi4Ti4O15 Aurivillius piezoceramics, have been investigated systematically. The conductivity properties at a temperature range from 500 °C to 650 °C have been characterized by complex impedance spectroscopy. The conductivity shows a nature of ionic conduction mechanism and non-Debye relaxation process at a higher temperature. The non-Debye relaxation behavior and conduction process are dominated by the jump of charge carriers, which can be demonstrated by the similar values of the relaxation activation energy (1.45 eV), hopping conduction energy (1.50 eV), and dc conduction energy (1.39 eV). Meanwhile, the piezoelectric coefficient d33 of CaBi4Ti4O15 has been improved from 7.5 pC/N to 17.8 pC/N and keeps good temperature stability up to 650 °C with appropriate W6+ doping. These results provide a profound insight into the conduction process and mechanism from the viewpoint of microstructure, which is greatly beneficial for the high-temperature application of Aurivillius piezoceramics.

Mg–8Li–(0–3)Ce alloys were prepared with a vacuum melting method. The microstructure and mechanical properties of these alloys were studied. It is found that addition of Ce obviously refines the grain size of the alloy and leads to the formation of intermetallic compound (Mg12Ce). Extrusion and rolling processes lead to the improvement of mechanical properties. The alloys after extrusion have better mechanical properties than those after rolling.

To investigate the roles of microRNAs (miRNA) of Cynoglossus semilaevis in response to Vibrio anguillarum that were previously identified using high-throughput sequencing, microarray analyses was performed on three small RNA libraries (CG, NOSG, and HOSG) prepared from C. semilaevis immune tissues. In total, of 1279 designed probes, 739 (57.78 %) were detectable. The expression levels of these miRNAs were analyzed using pairwise comparisons among the three libraries, and a total of 99 miRNAs were observed to be significantly differentially expressed. The expression patterns of 10 differentially expressed miRNAs were validated by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). In addition, expression of miR-142-5p, miR-223, and miR-181a in response to V. anguillarum at numerous time-points in four tissues, as well as the responses to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid (poly I:C), peptidoglycan (PGN), and red-spotted grouper nervous necrosis virus (RGNNV) in head kidney cells, were studied by qRT-PCR. Taken together, all of the expression profiles showed significant differences compared to the control group; both similarities and differences in the expression responses to the same pathogen were observed. Collectively, these findings highlighted the putative roles for miRNAs in the context of the innate immune response of C. semilaevis exposing to pathogens and that further studies are needed to understand the molecular mechanisms of miRNA regulation in C. semilaevis host–pathogen interactions.

Wearable devices, especially the smart glasses, are gaining growing attention from both academy and industry. However, the smart glasses are suffering from the lack of a safety user authentication method. In this paper, an anti-fake iris authentication mechanism is proposed. The iris recognition method combined with the consistency detection of pupil size change is used in our mechanism to ensure its robustness to fake iris attacks as well as its potential to be deployed on small devices constrained by energy and hardware. Through experiment, the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism is shown.