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Plant growth-promoting bacterium plays a significant role in improving plant tolerance to abiotic stresses. However, there are low survival and poor effect in field application, especially in unfavorable environments. Our previous study suggested that encapsulation of Bacillus pumilus G5 from polyvinyl alcohol‑sodium alginate could improve plant growth and soil fertility under drought and salt soil conditions. However, in the G5 microbeads, the polyvinyl alcohol could not be degraded after entering the soil, and the loss of viable bacteria was severe during the drying process. Achieving a more eco-friendly and efficient formulation based on biodegradable polymers can have significant effects on increasing the quantity and quality of agricultural products. Herein, G5 has immobilized in the composite wall of sodium alginate-trehalose-kaolin microbeads and then evaluated the performance, and applied on the Pharbitis nil under salt or/and drought stress by pot experiment. A 2 % sodium alginate, 1 % trehalose, and 1 % kaolin formulation for the coating films resulted in optimal G5 microbeads embedding efficiency, viable bacteria, degradation rate, and sustained release. Also, the G5 microbeads exhibited longer storage life than that of the G5 suspension. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the G5 microcapsules had a near-spherical structure with a particle size of around 1000 μm forming a continuous dense composite wall membrane with obvious protrusions and folds on the surface, which facilitated the release of the G5 strain. The interior of the G5 capsule was rough and suitable for bacterial attachment. Infrared spectroscopy showed that the G5 microcapsules are a simple physical mixture with no chemical reaction between the excipients, making the G5 microcapsules chemically stable. The inclusion of the G5 microcapsules considerably induced Pharbitis nil seedlings growth and biomass under drought and/or salt stress. In the rhizosphere soil of Pharbitis nil, the G5 microcapsules increased the total cultivable bacteria population, the activities of invertase, urease, phosphatase, and catalase, and the contents of available nitrogen and available phosphorus. We concluded that a suitable formulation by bio-encapsulation with eco-friendly excipients for alleviating drought and/or salt stress in plants will be advantageous in sustainable agriculture.

Drought and salt stresses adversely affect the growth and yield of plants in agricultural production. Bacillus pumilus, an important plant growth-promoting bacterium, play a significant role in improving plant tolerance to abiotic stresses. In this study, B. pumilus G5 were immobilized in polyvinyl alcohol‑sodium alginate (PVA-SA) microbeads and then applied on the Pharbitis nil under drought and salt stresses by pot experiment. Orthogonal array experiments showed that the optimal immobilization conditions of PVA-SA immobilized G5 microbeads were adsorbent 6.0%, PVA: SA 1:1 (3.0%), CaCl

Image quality assessment (IQA) is a task of measuring the perceptual quality of a given image and it is a hot study direction in the region of video and image processing and blind image quality assessment (BIQA) model is one of the most utilized full models. Among the existing BIQA models, the CORNIA model has achieved good performance. In the CORNIA model, Ye et. al. utilized d k-means clustering to cluster the pre-processed image patch s, and utilized d the clustering center as a dictionary. However, experimental observations have shown that when the dictionary size is small, the Superiority of CORNIA decreases rapidly. To address this, we introduce active learning strategies into unsupervised character learning, proposing an active character learning (AFL) framework, and apply it to BIQA model.

We propose a blind image quality assessment (BIQA) model using learning to rank (LTR) method in order to overcome the defects of the existing BIQA model. In this model, we first simplify the problem of predicting exact image quality score with the classification of image quality preference and we then use feature fusion and multiple kernel learning based on group lasso (MKLGL) methods to train a classifier. Finally, based on the voting strategy, a simple and effective image quality prediction model is constructed. Experimental results on the existing IQA datasets show that our proposed method is highly consistent with the subjective perception of human eyes and is superior to existing BIQA methods. In addition, our method is highly scalable.

The application of fluorescent nanoparticles to the detection of inorganic ions and organic compounds has been attracted wide attention recently. In this paper, an "off-on" method for highly sensitive and selective detection of Hg2+ and l-cysteine (l-Cys) or Hg2+ and I- using home-made nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots (N-CQDs) as fluorescent probe was reported. The N-CQDs with a fluorescence quantum yield of 42.2% were prepared using tartaric acid, citric acid and ethanediamine as the precursors in the oleic acid media. The fluorescence of the obtained N-CQDs could be quenched selectively and sensitively by the addition of Hg2+ (turn-off) with a detection limit of 83.5nM. When l-Cys or I- was added into the N-CQDs-Hg2+ system, the fluorescence was recovered effectively (turn-on). This process could be used to the detection of l-Cys or I- with a detection limit of 45.8 and 92.3nM, respectively.

Histamine is an indicator of food quality and indispensable in the efficient functioning of various physiological systems. Rapid and sensitive determination of histamine is urgently needed in food analysis and clinical diagnostics. Traditional histamine detection methods require qualified personnel, need complex operation processes, and are time-consuming. In this study, a biofunctionalized nanoporous alumina membrane based electrochemical biosensor with magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) concentration and signal amplification was developed for histamine determination. Nanoporous alumina membranes were modified by anti-histamine antibody and integrated into polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chambers. The specific antibody modified MNPs were used to concentrate histamine from samples and transferred to the antibody modified nanoporous membrane. The MNPs conjugated to histamine were captured in the nanopores via specific reaction between histamine and anti-histamine antibody, resulting in a blocking effect that was amplified by MNPs in the nanopores. The blockage signals could be measured by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy across the nanoporous alumina membrane. The sensing platform had great sensitivity and the limit of detection (LOD) reached as low as 3 nM. This biosensor could be successfully applied for histamine determination in saury that was stored in frozen conditions for different hours, presenting a potentially novel, sensitive, and specific sensing system for food quality assessment and safety support.

Classical works have described how touch therapy has been effective in the recovery and good appetite of children in hospitals. This paper proposes an affective tele-touch system prototype customized for therapeutic touches over the Internet. The affective contact area was designated to the posterior forearm surface where three stimuli were made available: vibration, warmth, and tickle. Affective tele-touches could be applied either with a sensory haptic device. We have conducted touch therapy experiments with this system to look at the experimental subjects' recovery from video-induced sadness with heartbeat rates as the psycho-physiological measurement indicator. Our results show that a touch from a human hand or a tele-touch was able to reduce heartbeat rates of the participants after they watched a sad video clip.