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Highlights Additive-assisted layer-by-layer (LBL) deposition enables organic solar cells to achieve an unprecedented power conversion efficiency of 20.8%, the highest efficiency to date. The gradient fibrillar morphology enabled by additive-assisted LBL processing promotes the formation of bulk p-i-n structure, improving exciton and carrier diffusion, and reducing recombination losses. The wrinkle pattern morphology achieved by additive-assisted LBL processing is constructed to enhance the light capture capability.

Abstract The power conversion efficiency of organic photovoltaics (OPVs) has witnessed continuous breakthroughs in the past few years, mostly benefiting from the extensive use of a facile ternary blending strategy by blending the host polymer donor:small molecule acceptor mixture with a second small molecule acceptor. Nevertheless, this rather general strategy used in the well‐known PM6 systems fails in constructing high‐performance P3HT‐based ternary OPVs. As a result, the efficiencies of all resulting ternary blends based on a benchmark host P3HT:ZY‐4Cl and a second acceptor are no more than 8%. Employing the mutual miscibility of the binary blends as a guide to screen the second acceptor, here we were able to break the longstanding 10%‐efficiency barrier of ternary OPVs based on P3HT and dual nonfullerene acceptors. With this rational approach, we identified a multifunctional small molecule acceptor BTP‐2Br to simultaneously improve the photovoltaic performance in both P3HT and PM6‐based ternary OPVs. Attractively, the P3HT:ZY‐4Cl:BTP‐2Br ternary blend exhibited a record‐breaking efficiency of 11.41% for P3HT‐based OPVs. This is the first‐ever report that over 11% efficiency is achieved for P3HT‐based ternary OPVs. Importantly, the study helps the community to rely less on trial‐and‐error methods for constructing ternary solar cells.

IntroductionWhen constructing machine learning and deep neural networks, the domain shift problem on different subjects complicates the subject independent electroencephalography (EEG) emotion recognition. Most of the existing domain adaptation methods either treat all source domains as equivalent or train source-specific learners directly, misleading the network to acquire unreasonable transfer knowledge and thus resulting in negative transfer.MethodsThis paper incorporates the individual difference and group commonality of distinct domains and proposes a multi-source information-shared network (MISNet) to enhance the performance of subject independent EEG emotion recognition models. The network stability is enhanced by employing a two-stream training structure with loop iteration strategy to alleviate outlier sources confusing the model. Additionally, we design two auxiliary loss functions for aligning the marginal distributions of domain-specific and domain shared features, and then optimize the convergence process by constraining gradient penalty on these auxiliary loss functions. Furthermore, the pre-training strategy is also proposed to ensure that the initial mapping of shared encoder contains sufficient emotional information.ResultsWe evaluate the proposed MISNet to ascertain the impact of several hyper-parameters on the domain adaptation capability of network. The ablation experiments are conducted on two publically accessible datasets SEED and SEED-IV to assess the effectiveness of each loss function.DiscussionThe experimental results demonstrate that by disentangling private and shared emotional characteristics from differential entropy features of EEG signals, the proposed MISNet can gain robust subject independent performance and strong domain adaptability.

The performance of supercapacitors is significantly influenced by both the nature and the concentration of the electrolyte employed. This study investigates the impact of a neutral electrolyte on the electrochemical properties of the maple-derived monolithic wood biochar (MWB)–sodium sulfate (Na2SO4) supercapacitor. The goal is to determine if a neutral electrolyte, in this case Na2SO4, can increase the supercapacitor energy density compared to a previous study employing a KOH electrolyte. Starting from examining the ion sizes and conductivities of salt species in KOH and Na2SO4 electrolytes, the difference in voltage window, measured specific capacitance, and resistance are discussed. By switching the electrolyte from 4 M KOH to 0.5/1 M Na2SO4, the voltage stability window was extended from 0.8 V to 1.4 V. For 1 M Na2SO4, the supercapacitor attains a specific capacitance of 46 F/g at 5 mA/g, accompanied by an energy density of 12.5 Wh/kg and a maximum power density of 300 W/kg. The MWB electrode, derived from naturally abundant wood, when combined with the non-toxic Na2SO4 electrolyte, offers an environmentally friendly and cost-effective energy storage solution. With a prolonged lifetime and minimal maintenance requirements, MWB-Na2SO4 supercapacitors emerge as a promising choice for diverse applications.

Objective By analyzing the developmental characteristics of bone age in children aged 4-16 in Loudi City, to explore the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and bone age to study the impact of nutritional status on children's growth and development. Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on the relevant data of a total of 7 222 children aged 4-16 who underwent bone age examinations at Loudi Central Hospital from March 2020 to March 2022 to compare the impact of BMI on bone age in different age-gender groups. Results There was a statistical difference in BAD ［difference between bone age and chronological age］ among different BMI groups (P＜0.01) . Among overweight and obese children, the BAD level of girls tended to be higher than that of boys of the same age group, but the difference was statistically significant only between boys and girls aged 7-11 years (P＜0.01) . Among emaciated children, the BAD level of boys tended to be lower than that of girls of the same age group, but the difference was statistically significant only between boys and girls aged 12 years old (P＜0.01) . Conclusion In some age groups, overweight and obesity have a greater impact on the advanced bone age of girls, and weight loss is more likely to causes delayed BA in boys.

Abstract With the power conversion efficiency of binary polymer solar cells dramatically improved, the thermal stability of the small-molecule acceptors raised the main concerns on the device operating stability. Here, to address this issue, thiophene-dicarboxylate spacer tethered small-molecule acceptors are designed, and their molecular geometries are further regulated via the thiophene-core isomerism engineering, affording dimeric TDY-α with a 2, 5-substitution and TDY-β with 3, 4-substitution on the core. It shows that TDY-α processes a higher glass transition temperature, better crystallinity relative to its individual small-molecule acceptor segment and isomeric counterpart of TDY-β, and a more stable morphology with the polymer donor. As a result, the TDY-α based device delivers a higher device efficiency of 18.1%, and most important, achieves an extrapolated lifetime of about 35000 hours that retaining 80% of their initial efficiency. Our result suggests that with proper geometry design, the tethered small-molecule acceptors can achieve both high device efficiency and operating stability.

The Peace Corps program was once considered an unconventional approach to American diplomacy centered on pragmatic philosophy. The iniciative of Peace Corps in China was perceived as an extraordinary endeavor, yet it has been effectively operating in China for nearly thirty years. The volunteers involved in the program have been instrumental in promoting people-to-people exchanges between the United States and China, drawing from their experiences in cultural immersion. The creation of the “U.S.-China Friendship Volunteers” path was intended to improve bilateral relations between the two nations. Despite opposition from the U.S. Congress, the Peace Corps has not surpassed the foreign policy of the Untied States. However, when the Peace Corps program goes against the policy between the United States and China , it has to end its development in China. This contradicts the claimed political neutrality of the Peace Corps. Throughout the “U.S.-China Friendship Volunteers” program, most volunteers have worked in universities in large cities. Consequently, the cultural adaptation environment for Peace Corps volunteers in China is unique. They are presented with more challenging cultural differences, with relatively lower acculturation stress in their material life. The Peace Corps enables most volunteers to bolster cultural exchanges between China and the United States through active cultural learning support. The development of the Peace Corps project in China reveals no fundamental distinction between its activities in China and other countries. Hence, the “U.S.-China Friendship Volunteers” program of the Peace Corps is not an exception to the pragmatic diplomatic philosophy of the United States.

Abstract With the widespread acceptance of the cloud-native concept and the emergence of a large number of dedicated cloud-native applications, the service stacks of cloud-native applications have received extensive attention in the industry. To analyze the extensibility problems of service stacks, a cloud-native light-cone model is proposed, which focuses on the dimensions of application, infrastructure, tenant and workflow, and provides a perspective view that reflects the concerns of stakeholders. Based on this model, various challenges in designing extensible cloud-native service stacks are identified by classification. To solve these challenges, a holistic architecture and a set of key technologies are designed, involving unified runtime abstraction, cluster bootstrapped creation, application-specific controllers, etc. Furthermore, the OMStack (Oriental Mind Stack) is implemented, which integrates these technologies and provides a group of PaaS and SaaS services for container cluster (OMCC), artificial intelligence (OMAI), big data (OMBD) and so on. Experimental analysis and production applications demonstrate the practicality, efficiency and reliability of the proposed architecture, stack and services.

Abstract One of the most appealing material systems for solar energy conversion is all‐polymer blend. Presently, the three key merits (power conversion efficiency, operation stability and mechanical robustness) exhibited a trade‐off in a particular all‐polymer blend system, which greatly limit its commercial application. Diverting the classic ternary tactic of organic solar cells based on polymer, nonfullerene small molecule and fullerene, herein we demonstrate that the three merits of a benchmark all‐polymer blend PM6:PY‐IT can be simultaneously maximized via the introduction of a polymerized fullerene derivative PPCBMB. Importantly, the addition of the guest component promoted the power conversion efficiency of PM6:PY‐IT blend from 16.59% to 18.04%. Meanwhile, the device stability and film ductility are also improved due to the addition of this polymerized fullerene material. Morphology and device physics analyses reveal that optimal ternary system contains well‐maintained molecular packing and crystallinity, being beneficial to keeping favorable charge transport and the reduced domain size contributed to charge generation and ductility improvement. Furthermore, the ternary photovoltaic blend was successfully used as photocatalysts, and an excellent heavy metal removal from water was demonstrated. This study showcases the multi‐functions of all‐polymer blends via the use of polymerized fullerenes.

IntroductionEEG signals can non-invasively monitor the brain activities and have been widely used in brain-computer interfaces (BCI). One of the research areas is to recognize emotions objectively through EEG. In fact, the emotion of people changes over time, however, most of the existing affective BCIs process data and recognize emotions offline, and thus cannot be applied to real-time emotion recognition.MethodsIn order to solve this problem, we introduce the instance selection strategy into transfer learning and propose a simplified style transfer mapping algorithm. In the proposed method, the informative instances are firstly selected from the source domain data, and then the update strategy of hyperparameters is also simplified for style transfer mapping, making the model training more quickly and accurately for a new subject.ResultsTo verify the effectiveness of our algorithm, we carry out the experiments on SEED, SEED-IV and the offline dataset collected by ourselves, and achieve the recognition accuracies up to 86.78%, 82.55% and 77.68% in computing time of 7s, 4s and 10s, respectively. Furthermore, we also develop a real-time emotion recognition system which integrates the modules of EEG signal acquisition, data processing, emotion recognition and result visualization.DiscussionBoth the results of offline and online experiments show that the proposed algorithm can accurately recognize emotions in a short time, meeting the needs of real-time emotion recognition applications.

Abstract Music can be regarded as an art of expressing inner feelings. However, most of the existing networks for music generation ignore the analysis of its emotional expression. In this paper, we propose to synthesise music according to the specified emotion, and also integrate the internal structural characteristics of music into the generation process. Specifically, we embed the emotional labels along with music structure features as the conditional input and then investigate the GRU network for generating emotional music. In addition to the generator, we also design a novel perceptually optimised emotion classification model which aims for promoting the generated music close to the emotion expression of real music. In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, both the subjective and objective experiments are conducted to verify that our method can produce emotional music correlated to the specified emotion and music structures.

Abstract The use of deuterium are critical for promoting the fundamental understanding of aggregate materials and their new functions. Particularly, the solution structure of conjugated polymers can be hardly resolved without deuteration. However, studies about the isotopic effects of casting solvents on the aggregated structures of photovoltaic polymers and their bulk‐heterojunction blends are deficient. Here, the impact of deuterated solvents on the thermal behavior, aggregated structures, and device performance of photovoltaic polymers is clearly delineated for the first time by multiple techniques. The enhanced π‐π stacking order of photovoltaic polymers is highly relevant to their relatively poor miscibility with deuterated solvents. Benefiting from higher crystallinity and optimized morphology of deuterated solvents processed films, the devices are able to achieve better efficiency and notable improvement in thermal stability. Our results highlight the isotopic effects of solvents on the aggregated structure of conjugated polymer systems and reveal the potential of innovative approaches to fabricate thermally stable high‐efficiency solar cells.

From the perspective of pragmatic diplomatic philosophy, Peace Corps can benefit the United States, which is an important reason for the domestic support it receives within the United States. Through the volunteers’ acculturation experience, cultural exchanges between the United States and host countries are promoted and the awareness of the American society about the Third World countries is raised, which is the true value of the Peace Corps from the perspective of American interests. As members of American society, Peace Corps volunteers gain a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the Third World in their host countries, which is not only an important part of improving the awareness of the American society the Third World, but is also an important bridge to spread this awareness in the United States. When volunteers return to the United States after finishing their service, they bring their understanding of the Third World to different industries and fields in American domestic society. Among them, American education and diplomacy are mostly affected. These are of great significance in improving the international vision and awareness of American education and the reliability of American foreign policy.

Most of the existing emotion elicitation databases use the film clips as stimuli and do not take into account the age and gender differences of participants. Considering the short videos have the advantages of short in time, easy to understand and strong emotional appeal, we choose them to construct a standardized database of Chinese emotional short videos by the joint analysis of age and gender differences. Two experiments are performed to establish and validate our database. In the Experiment 1, we selected 240 stimuli from 2700 short videos and analyzed the subjective evaluation results of 360 participants with different ages and genders. As a result, a total of 54 short videos with three categories of emotions were picked out for 6 groups of participants, including the male and female respectively aged in 20-24, 25-29 and 30-34. In the Experiment 2, we recorded the EEG signals and subjective experience scores of 81 participants while watching different video stimuli. Both the results of EEG emotion recognition and subjective evaluation indicate that our database of 54 short videos can achieve better emotion elicitation effects compared with film clips. Furthermore, the targeted delivery of specific short videos has also been verified to be effective, helping the researchers choose appropriate emotional elicitation stimuli for different participants and promoting the study of individual differences in emotion responses.

Along with the extensive application of energy storage devices, the spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are unquestionably classified into the secondary resources due to its high content of several valuable metals. However, current recycling methods have the main drawback to their tedious process, especially the purification and separation process. Herein, we propose a simplified process to recycle both cathode (LiCoO2) and anode (graphite) in the spent LIBs and regenerate newly high-performance anode material, CoO/CoFe2O4/expanded graphite (EG). This process not only has the advantages of succinct procedure and easy control of reaction conditions, but also effectively separates and recycles lithium from transition metals. The 98.43% of lithium is recovered from leachate when the solid product CoO/CoFe2O4/EG is synthesized as anode material for LIBs. And the product exhibits improved cyclic stability (890 mAh g−1 at 1 A g−1 after 700 cycles) and superior rate capability (208 mAh g−1 at 5 A g−1). The merit of this delicate recycling design can be summarized as three aspects: the utilization of Fe impurity in waste LiCoO2, the transformation of waste graphite to EG, and the regeneration of anode material. This approach properly recycles the valuable components of spent LIBs, which introduces an insight into the future recycling.

Through development of non-fullerene acceptors, OPVs have reached efficiencies of 18%, yet the inadequate operational lifetime still poses a challenge for the commercialisation. Here, the authors investigate the origin of instability of NFA solar cells, and propose some strategies to mitigate this issue.

Abstract Solar cells featuring polythiophenes as donors are one of the optoelectronic devices that hold notable promises for commercial application, profiting from the lowest synthetic complexity and excellent scalability. However, the complex phase behaviors of polythiophenes and their blends put constraints on modulating electrical performance and thus realizing stable performance under thermal stress. In this contribution, we present a multi‐technique approach that combines calorimetry, scattering, spectroscopy, and microscopy to thoroughly probe the thermodynamic mixing, thermal properties of materials, the evolution of nanoscale domain structure, and device performance of poly(3‐hexylthiophene) (P3HT) with a range of nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs) such as ITIC, IDTBR, and ZY‐4Cl. Accordingly, two blending guidelines are established for matching these popular NFAs with P3HT to enable highly efficient and thermally stable cells. First, blend systems with weak vitrification and hypo‐miscibility are excellent candidates for efficient solar cells. Furthermore, high thermal stability can be achieved by selecting NFAs with diffusion‐limited crystallization. The P3HT:ZY‐4Cl blend was found to endow the best performance of over 10% efficiency and an exceptionally high T80 lifetime of >6000 h under continuous thermal annealing, which are among the highest values for P3HT‐based solar cells. This realization of high thermal stability and efficiency demonstrates the remarkable potentials of simple polythiophene :nonfullerene pairs in electronic applications.

Abstract Establishing a platform successfully is just the basis for railway service companies to meet the demands of online to offline (O2O) supply chain services. In this paper, the K-means algorithm is first used to construct the user segmentation model of railway service companies and the AISAS (Attention-Interest-Search-Action-Share) method is used to establish the evaluation O2O model. According to this result, we propose four modes to establish O2O supply chain service platform for railway enterprise, which are self-built and self-operated (SBSO, Mode1), commissioned construction and self-operated (CCSO, Mode2), self-built and commissioned operation (SBCO, Mode3), commissioned construction and commissioned operation (CCCO, Mode4). By comparing the advantages and disadvantages of the four modes, the results illustrate the optimal model is impacted by the nature of the platform's operating products and the operating capabilities of the partners. The railway service enterprise needs to transform the traditional multi-level management model into the flat model to adapt the O2O supply chain strategies.

The study aims to build a model that predicts the behavior of the use of blended learning by English teachers of basic education in China in the environment of repeated lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the relationships between ICT self-efficacy, organizational support for blended learning, attitudes toward blended learning, and the use of blended learning. Data were collected from 562 teachers using a survey questionnaire. Employing partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), a hypothesized model was tested for path coefficients and predictive power. This study found that ICT self-efficacy and organizational support for blended learning are sound predictors of teachers' use of blended learning and that the former appeared to be a stronger determinant. In addition, attitudes toward blended learning can directly influence teachers' use of blended learning and mediate the relationship between ICT efficacy and the use of blended learning and between organizational support for blended learning and the use of blended learning. These three variables account for 54.7% of the variance in teachers' use of blended learning.

Based on the relief theory and similarity attraction theory, this study investigates the influence of leader humor on employee creativity through the mediate impact of employees’ perceived workload, occupational coping self-efficacy, and employee similarity perception with a leader as a potential moderator. The data were collected through an online survey that included matched questionnaire data from 351 employees and their direct leaders in China. This study used SPSS 26 software and Mplus 7.0 software to analyze the data and found that (1) leader humor has a significant positive impact on employees’ creativity; (2) employees’ perceived workload and occupational coping self-efficacy mediated the positive relationship between leader humor and employee creativity; (3) similarity perception negatively moderated the influence of leader humor on perceived workload, and it also positively moderated the influence of leader humor on occupational coping self-efficacy. In addition to corroborating and expanding on previous findings regarding the relationship between leader humor and employee creativity during the COVID-19 period, the aforementioned conclusions also derive management implications for fostering employee creativity and reducing employee workload from the perspective of leader humor.

Abstract All‐polymer solar cells (All‐PSCs) have attracted tremendous research interest in the recent decade due to the great potentials in stretchable electronic applications in terms of long‐term stability and mechanical stretchability. Driven by the molecular design of novel polymer acceptors and morphology optimization, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of All‐PSCs has developed rapidly and now exceeded 17%. This review outlines the promising strategies for high‐performance All‐PSCs from the aspect of morphology control with the motivation to rationally guide the optimization. In this review, we briefly discuss the thermodynamic mixing principles of all‐polymer blends and the effects of the molecular structure of conjugated polymers on thin‐film morphology in All‐PSCs. The crucial role of molecular miscibility in influencing morphological features and performance metrics was highlighted. We also expound on the effective methods of controlling film morphology through properly tuning the aggregation behavior of polymers. In particular, insightful studies on the commonly used naphthalene diimide‐based acceptor polymers and the newly emerging polymerized nonfullerene small molecule acceptors (ITIC‐series, Y6 ‐series, etc) are discussed in detail. Finally, we present an outlook on the major challenges and the new opportunities of All‐PSCs for efficiency breakthroughs targeting 20%.

Background: Surgical site infection (SSI) after colorectal surgery (CRS) remains a significant problem for its negative clinical outcomes. However, it is poorly understood in China. This study aims to investigate the incidence, risk factors and microbiology of SSI after CRS. Methods: A nationwide prospective multicenter design was applied. Patients in 19 Chinese hospitals from 2015 to 2018 were prospectively monitored for SSI after CRS. Demographic data, hospital characteristics, and potential perioperative risk factors were collected and analyzed, using univariate and multivariate logistic regression models. Results: Among 3,663 study participants, 134(3.66%) episodes of SSI were identified. The incidence rate of SSI decreased from 5.9 infections per 100 procedures in 2015 to 3.1 infections per 100 procedures in 2018 (incidence rate ratio, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.28–0.94). The SSI rates were 1.88, 4.15, 6.27 and 11.58 per 100 operations for the National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance system (NNIS) risk index categories of 0, 1, and 2 or 3, respectively. Escherichia coli (54/134, 40.3%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (10/134, 7.5%) were the most frequently isolated microorganisms. A high prevalence of antibiotic resistance were observed in our study, with rates of extended spectrum beta-lactamase-producing or carbapenem-resistant Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumonia of 50.0%(27/54) and 30.0%(3/10) respectively. Preoperative hospital stay ≥ 48 h (OR = 2.28, 95% CI: 1.03-5.02, P = 0.042) and contaminated or dirty wound (OR = 3.38, 95% CI: 1.88-6.06, P = 4.50 × 10−5) were significantly associated with increasing risk of SSI after CRS. Conclusion: A statistically significant but modest decrease in the incidence rate of CRS SSI over the 4-year study period was observed in this study. Noticeably, the relatively high rates of multidrug-resistant pathogens causing SSI after CRS should be alert, while more studies with large population are needed due to the small number of isolates identified in our survey.

In this paper, an interesting video combination framework was established based on Unreal Engine 4. By substituting the green screen image with panoramic videos, our framework could produce lifelike synthetic videos in which the foreground is the portrait captured by real-time TV cameras whereas the background is a pseudo scenario generated by previously captured panoramic videos. The pseudo background updates itself from the panoramic video according to the pose information of the TV camera so that the portrait looks as if immersed into the pseudo scenario rather than the green screen. Our proposed framework could be applied not only in virtual studios but also in cellphone applications, e.g., given a previously captured panoramic video of a schoolyard, users could shoot a video by their front cellphone camera before a green screen. The output is a synthetic video which seems as if the users are in the schoolyard, as the users rotate their camera, the schoolyard background also moves.

User behavior modeling and interest prediction are always the key elements in preference analysis, product recommendation and personalized service. The psychological memory theory has been proved capable of reflecting changes in user interest. However, merely focusing on the memory forgetting mechanism (the retention-only model) or considering the superimposition of interest retention in short term (the gradual-retention model), existing methods have a poor prediction capability because of ignoring the long-term impact of repeated behaviors. In this paper, we propose a step-enhancement of memory retention (SEMR) model which integrates the cross-enhancement-effects of multiple historical behaviors under different time windows to characterize user interest. In addition, we use some extended correction methods to eliminate the effect of discontinuous records. Numerical experiments using real TV viewing data validate the efficiency of our proposed model and methods, which reduce the average prediction error to 0.3, outperforming the traditional models by around 50%.

Generation point cloud from single image is a classical problem in computer vision. The learning methods for this task often adopt local distance metrics as loss function, which means the generated points are not easy to meet the overall shape distribution of the target object. To solve this problem, we introduce a voxel reconstruction network with distribution fitting as auxiliary task and propose a novel framework named Voxel-Assisted Points Generation Network(VAPGN). The auxiliary learning with voxel generation makes it easier to capture the shape distribution of objects in the image during the encoder phase, thereby effectively improving the result of point cloud reconstruction. To meet the needs of mobile and embedded applications, a mobile version of the model is also proposed. In the experiments, we verify the feasibility of our network on the ShapeNet dataset. The proposed framework has achieved outstanding performance on the point cloud generation task, comparing with various state-of-the-art methods.

The densely-sampled light field (LF) is highly desirable in many applications, such as 3D reconstruction, post-capture refocusing and virtual/augmented reality. However, it is costly and challenging to capture them because of the high dimensional nature. Existing view synthesis methods employ depth information for the densely-sampled LF reconstruction from the undersampled LF with a large disparity range, but fail to achieve non-Lambertian performance. In this article, a novel coarse-to-fine LF reconstruction method is proposed. We will develop a hybrid reconstruction framework that fuses model-based sparse regularization with deep learning. Specifically, sparse regularization with directional filter bank is utilized to solve the large baseline problem and gives a coarse densely-sampled LF. In addition, for those that cannot be recovered by classical model-based methods due to limited angular resolution, is estimated by learning a pseudo 4D convolutional neural network, and thereby offering a refinement on the intermediate LF. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our method on both real-world and synthetic LF images when compared with state-of-the-art methods.

This work proposes an end-to-end cross-domain feature similarity guided deep neural network for perceptual quality assessment. Our proposed blind image quality assessment approach is based on the observation that features similarity across different domains (e.g., Semantic Recognition and Quality Prediction) is well correlated with the subjective quality annotations. Such phenomenon is validated by thoroughly analyze the intrinsic interaction between an object recognition task and a quality prediction task in terms of characteristics of the human visual system. Based on the observation, we designed an explicable and self-contained cross-domain feature similarity guided BIQA framework. Experimental results on both authentical and synthetic image quality databases demonstrate the superiority of our approach, as compared to the state-of-the-art models.

Due to the mechanical flexibility, light weight, aesthetics, absorption tunability and environmental friendliness, organic solar cells (OSCs) have superior application potential over their inorganic counterparts including silicon and perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Thanks to these benefits, the past decade have witnessed the rapid growth of flexible OSCs, semitransparent OSCs and indoor OSCs. In this progress report, we firstly overview the recent advance of the applications of the three promising OSCs. Subsequently, we sketch the critical points for the three classes of OSCs and highlight the efforts paid by the research community to address these issues. Besides, we discuss some popular strategies to afford great performance of each kind of OSC, respectively, and underline the corresponding breakthrough directions. Last but not least, we present the remaining challenges for advancing the commercial applications of these three classes of OSCs.

The purpose was to integrate cultural psychology into cross-cultural adaptation and analyze the factors of entrepreneurial psychology and entrepreneurial intention of venture entrepreneurs. The research framework of cross-cultural adaptation is constructed, and four hypotheses are put forward, and 100 venture entrepreneurs in multinational enterprises are randomly recruited and investigated through the QS (Questionnaire Survey) design. Finally, the results are analyzed through statistical software. The results show that among the basic information of venture entrepreneurs, the proportion of gender is balanced, and the educational level is generally high, with the majority of young entrepreneurs aged 20–35. Meanwhile, there are significant differences in the four dimensions of cross-cultural competence, cross-cultural adaptation, entrepreneurial intention, and psychological adaptation of venture entrepreneurs (p

Abstract π‐Conjugated organic/polymer materials‐based solar cells have attracted tremendous research interest in the fields of chemistry, physics, materials science, and energy science. To date, the best‐performance polymer solar cells (PSCs) have achieved power conversion efficiencies exceeding 18%, mostly driven by the molecular design and device structure optimization of the photovoltaic materials. This review article provides a comprehensive overview of the key advances and current status in aggregated structure research of PSCs. Here, we start by providing a brief tutorial on the aggregated structure of photovoltaic polymers. The characteristic parameters at different length scales and the associated characterization techniques are overviewed. Subsequently, a variety of effective strategies to control the aggregated structure of photovoltaic polymers are discussed for polymer:fullerene solar cells and polymer:nonfullerene small molecule solar cells. Particularly, the control strategies for achieving record efficiencies in each type of PSCs are highlighted. More importantly, the in‐depth structure–performance relationships are demonstrated with selected examples. Finally, future challenges and research prospects on understanding and optimizing the aggregated structure of photovoltaic polymers and their blends are provided.

Owing to the advantages of low synthetic cost and high scalability of synthesis, polythiophene and its derivatives (PTs) have been of interest in the community of organic photovoltaics (OPVs). Nevertheless, the typical efficiency of PT based photovoltaic devices reported so far is much lower than those of the prevailing push-pull type conjugated polymer donors. Recent studies have underscored that the excessively low miscibility between PT and nonfullerene acceptor is the major reason accounting for the unfavorable active layer morphology and the inferior performance of OPVs based on a well-known PT, namely PDCBT-Cl and a non-halogenated nonfullerene acceptor IDIC. How to manipulate the miscibility between PT and acceptor molecule is important for further improving the device efficiency of this class of potentially low-cost blend systems. In this study, we introduced different numbers of F atoms to the end groups of IDIC to tune the intermolecular interaction of the hypo-miscible blend system (PDCBT-Cl:IDIC). Based on calorimetric, microscopic, and scattering characterizations, a clear relationship between the number of F atoms, miscibility, and device performance was established. With the increased number of F atoms in IDIC, the resulting acceptors exhibited enhanced miscibility with PDCBT-Cl, and the domain sizes of the blend films were reduced substantially. As a result, distinctively different photovoltaic performances were achieved for these blend systems. This study demonstrates that varying the number of F atoms in the acceptors is a feasible way to manipulate the molecular interaction and the film morphology toward high-performance polythiophene:nonfullerene based OPVs.

Background/Aims Evidence suggests that Shen-Kang (SK), a traditional Chinese herbal medicine, protects against various types of renal injury. In this study, we evaluated whether SK treatment confers renoprotection in a rat model of chronic tacrolimus (TAC) nephropathy. Methods Rats were treated daily with TAC (1.5mg/kg, subcutaneously) and SK (450 mg/kg, intravenously) for 4 weeks. The effects of SK on TAC-induced renal injury were assessed by measuring renal function, urine albumin excretion, histopathology, inflammatory cell infiltration, expression of profibrotic (transforming growth factor β1 [TGF-β1] and TGF-β inducible gene-h3 [βig-h3]) and proinflammatory cytokines, oxidative stress, and apoptotic cell death. Results Administration of SK preserved glomerular integrity (fractional mesangial area and Wilms tumor 1-positive glomeruli), attenuated tubulointerstitial fibrosis, and reduced the number of ectodermal dysplasia 1-positive cells, and this was paralleled by improved urine albumin excretion and renal dysfunction. At the molecular level, SK treatment suppressed expression of TGF-β1/Smad2/3, βig-h3, and proinflammatory cytokines. Oxidative stress and apoptotic cell death were significantly decreased with SK treatment, and apoptosis-related genes were regulated toward cell survival (active caspase-3 and the B-cell lymphoma-2/Bcl2-associated X [Bcl-2/Bax] ratio). Conclusions SK protects against TAC-induced renal injury.

Background/Aims Accumulating evidence indicates that L-carnitine (LC) protects against multiorgan damage through its antioxidant properties and preservation of the mitochondria. Little information is available about the effects of LC on renal fibrosis. This study examined whether LC treatment would provide renoprotection in a rat model of unilateral ureteral obstruction (UUO) and in vitro. Methods Sprague-Dawley rats that underwent UUO were treated daily with LC for 7 or 14 days. The influence of LC on renal injury caused by UUO was evaluated by histopathology, and analysis of gene expression, oxidative stress, mitochondrial function, programmed cell death, and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/AKT/forkhead box protein O 1a (FoxO1a) signaling. In addition, H2O2-exposed human kidney cells (HK-2) were treated with LC. Results LC treatment inhibited expression of proinflammatory and profibrotic cytokines, and was followed by a significant attenuation of tubulointerstitial inflammation and fibrosis. The increased oxidative stress caused by UUO was associated with mitochondrial dysfunction and excessive apoptosis and autophagy via PI3K/AKT/FoxO1a-dependent signaling, and this was abrogated by administration of LC. In H2O2-exposed HK-2 cells, LC decreased intracellular production of reactive oxygen species, and suppressed expression of profibrotic cytokines and reduced the number of apoptotic cells. Conclusions LC protects against the progression of tubulointerstitial fibrosis in an obstructed kidney.

The fabrication of bespoke artificial defects on bearing raceways helps in mimicking incipient faults during real application or for directly validating the diagnostic technology depending on their shapes and sizes. This is particularly useful when run-to-failure experiments are time-consuming and even difficult in some cases. However, there has been limited systematic research on the design and fabrication of artificial defects on bearing raceways, particularly for the purpose of accelerated testing. In this work, micro-EDM is put forward as a potential technique for the fabrication of artificial defects using drilling/milling mode. A methodology is developed, not only to achieve the full control of the dimension and distribution of defects on a bearing element, but also to qualitatively and quantitatively perform the efficient characterization of the defect surface. A linear regression model with the inclusion of two-way interactions based on an analysis of variance (ANOVA) is presented to optimally select the process parameters. The verification experiments show that this mathematical model obtains a good fit for approximately 80% of the observed data. Through a combination of optical microscopy and confocal microscopy, the morphology and topography of the artificial defects was measured and compared. To conclude, micro-EDM evidences its great potential in terms of machining efficiency, e.g., with an MRR of 0.060 mm3/min, TWR of 0.032 mm3/min and dimensional controllability, e.g., the standard deviation of pitting diameter and depth being 0.5 µm and 0.8 µm, respectively, to achieve a desirable feature shape for bearing defects.

The Q-rung dual hesitant fuzzy (q-RDHF) set is famous for expressing information composed of asymmetry evaluations, because it allows for several possible evaluations in both the membership degree and non-membership degree. Compared with some existing extended fuzzy theories, the q-RDHF set is more superior and flexible because it can handle asymmetric assessments. In order to assemble the evaluation information expressed by q-RDHF elements, this paper aims to propose new operators to integrate q-RDHF elements. The partitioned Bonferroni mean (PBM) operator is well-known for its advantages in coping with the inhomogeneous relationship between asymmetry input arguments. In this paper, we combine the PBM operator with the power average operator, and propose a family of q-RDHF power PBM operators. Some theorems and special cases for the new proposed operators are discussed. Furthermore, we provide a general framework for dealing with multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) problems using the novel proposed method. To better show the calculation details, a numerical case study of the application of the proposed method in a superintendent selection problem is introduced. In addition, we utilize the proposed method to compare it with some existing methods in order to show its flexibility and superiority. The results show that our method is much more advantageous when considering flexible actual situations. Finally, the conclusion is given. The main contributions of this study are to propose an appropriate method to solve unbalanced and asymmetry information in a q-RDHF environment, and to apply it into a realistic superintendent selection problem.

Multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM) issues play important roles in our daily life. In order to solve the problem that decision makers (DMs) may feel hesitant to select the appropriate evaluation values from several possible values in the process of providing evaluations, fuzzy theory and its extensions are widely applied in MAGDM problems. In this study, we first proposed hesitant picture fuzzy sets (HPFSs), which is a combination of the hesitant fuzzy set and picture fuzzy set. Subsequently, we introduced a novel Schweizer–Sklar t-norm and t-conorm operation rules of HPFSs and proposed a family of hesitant picture fuzzy Schweizer–Sklar Maclaurin symmetric mean operators. To show the application procedure of the proposed method to practical MAGDM issues, a numerical example about enterprise informatization level evaluation was employed to elaborate the calculation process with the proposed method. Finally, through the parameter analysis, validity analysis, and comparative analysis with some existing methods, we found that our method is more superior in providing DMs a greater decision-making freedom and relaxing the constraints on expressing personal preferences. This study provides a general framework of the proposed method to MAGDM problems under hesitant picture fuzzy environment, which enriches the fuzzy theory and its applications.

Abstract This paper presents an ensemble learning particle swarm optimization (ELPSO) algorithm for real-time indoor localization based on ultra-wideband (UWB). Indoor localization problem can be formulated as an optimization problem to predict the target. The proposed algorithm expands the original PSO into ELPSO under superbest guide, which is a parameter employed to identify the top gbest by learning from three individual algorithms and updated asynchronously. The performance of the proposed ELPSO is evaluated by using the CEC2005 benchmark and compared with each individual algorithm and other state-of-the-art optimization algorithms. The feasibility of the proposed ELPSO is demonstrated in both 2D and 3D UWB indoor localization system generating promising results.

Purpose: summarized and sorted career success evaluation indicators of skilled employees Design/methodology/approach: Based on Grounded Theory, through interviews and questionnaires to railway skilled employees Findings and Originality/value: the study shows that “subjective career success”, including work-family balance, life satisfaction, career satisfaction, perception of career success, “objective career success”, including level of total revenue venue, growth rate of wage and times of promotion, “knowledge and skills career success” including upgrade of knowledge and skills, classification of skills, external competitiveness and job autonomy, are three important career success evaluation indicators of skilled employees. Originality/value: The results show that different age groups, different titles and different positions of skilled employees, there is a significant difference in the choice of career success evaluation indicators. It provides a useful reference to establish a career development system for the skilled employees.

Purpose: Research universities with industry characteristics play an irreplaceable role in national economic development and social development. With the rapid development of research universities with industry characteristics in China, these universities face new challenges in managing teachers and promoting their quality. This paper aims to examine the impact of teachers’ competency on job performance in research university with industry characteristics Design/methodology/approach: Based on the behavioral event interview and questionnaire methods, a four-dimension (i.e. basic quality, teaching ability, industry awareness and research capacity) competency model was proposed, the influence mechanism of competency on job performance was examined using empirical research. Findings: We found that there is a significant positive correlation between the teachers’ competency level, four dimensions and job performance in research universities with industry characteristics, especially between research capacity, teaching ability, industry awareness and job performance. And academic atmosphere plays a regulatory role in the interaction between the competency and job performance. Practical implications: Our findings can help to improve the management level of teachers in research universities with industry characteristics.Originality/value: The paper introduces the competency theory to the teacher management in research universities with industry characteristics, and gives some interesting findings.

A series of poly(2-oxazoline) (POX) derivatives bearing prolinamide pendants were designed as organocatalysts and evaluated in the direct asymmetric aldol reaction between aromatic aldehydes and cyclic ketones. The structural variation of the alkyl spacer connecting the polymer backbone with the catalytic unit was applied so as to deduce structure−performance relationships combined with comparable experiments from model catalysts. Results showed that the POX-bound prolinamides can promote the aldol reaction more effectively as compared to their small-molecular and non-POX-bound analogs. The catalyst P3 containing the pyrrolidine moiety closer to the tertiary amide backbone exhibited the overall best catalytic efficiency, affording anti-products in 84% yield with 89% ee in the representative aldol addition of cyclohexanone to 4-nitrobenzaldehyde at a 10 mol.% catalyst loading. Furthermore, the influence of trifluoroacetic acid as an additive on the asymmetric transformation was investigated. Theoretical calculations revealed that the protonation of the aldehyde carbonyl group switched the activation mode of the aldol acceptor through hydrogen bond interactions, thereby changing the relative energy barrier of the enamine/aldehyde reaction transition states, which accounted well for the significant improvement in the enantioselectivity of the acidic additives observed experimentally.

Micelles assembled from amphiphilic molecules have proved to be ideal scaffolds to construct artificial catalysts mimicking enzymatic catalytic behavior. In this paper, we describe the synthesis of amphiphilic poly(2-oxazoline) derivatives with l-prolinamide units in the side chain and their application in asymmetric aldol reactions. Upon dissolution in water, the pseudopeptide polymers self-assembled into particles with different sizes, relying on the copolymer composition and distribution of hydrophilic/hydrophobic segments in the polymer chain. A preliminary study has demonstrated that the catalytic activity of these polymeric organocatalysts are strongly dependent on the aggregated architecture. The micelle-type assemblies can act as nanoreactors to efficiently promote the direct aldolisation of cyclohexanone with aromatic aldehydes in aqueous media, affording anti-aldol products in excellent yields (88–99%) and higher stereoselectivities (90/10 dr, 86% ee) compared to their nonmicellar systems under identical conditions.