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The magnetic interactions of iron-rich manganese-based ThMn12 type rare earth metal intermetallic compounds are extremely complex. The antiferromagnetic structure sublattice and the ferromagnetic structure sublattice had coexisted and competed with each other. Previous works are focus on studying magnetic properties of RFexMn12−x (x = 0–9.0, Δx = 0.2). In this work, we obtained a detailed magnetic phase diagram for iron-rich ErFexMn12−x series alloy samples with a fine composition increment (Δx = 0.2), and studied the exchange bias effect and magneto-caloric effect of samples. ErFexMn12−x series (x = 7.0–9.0, Δx = 0.2) alloy samples were synthesized by arc melting, and the pure ThMn12-type phase structure was confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The neutron diffraction test was used to confirm the Mn atom preferentially occupying the 8i position and to quantify the Mn. The magnetic properties of the materials were characterized by a comprehensive physical property measurement system (PPMS). Accurate magnetic phase diagrams of the samples in the composition range 7.0–9.0 were obtained. Along with temperature decrease, the samples experienced paramagnetic, ferromagnetic changes for samples with x < 7.4 and x > 8.4, and paramagnetic, antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic or paramagnetic, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic changes for samples with 7.4 ≤ x ≤ 8.2. The tunable exchange bias effect was observed for sample with 7.4 ≤ x ≤ 8.2, which resulting from competing magnetic interacting among ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic sublattices. The maximum magnetic entropy change in an ErFe9.0Mn3.0 specimen reached 1.92 J/kg/K around room temperature when the magnetic field change was 5 T. This study increases our understanding of exchange bias effects and allows us to better control them.

By the combination of transmission electron microscope, neutron diffraction and small-angle neutron scattering methods, mechanical fatigue behavior of AL6XN austenitic stainless steel was investigated in the temperature range of 400–600 °C. At 400 °C, in addition to the occurrence of dynamic strain aging, the formation of short-range order was evidenced from the forbidden electron diffraction spot of 1/3 {422} in face-centered cubic (fcc) structure viewed down [111] zone axis, which facilitate the planar slip mode of dislocation and result in the work hardening during the fatigue deformation. The fatigue damage is mainly dominated by the accumulation of planar slip band and the interaction among various slip systems. With increasing temperature, precipitates of chi phase, Laves phase and sigma phase were formed during the fatigue tests at 500 and 600 °C. An increase in precipitation content at 600 °C has also been confirmed by both scanning electron microscope and small-angle neutron scattering analysis. The dislocation pileup originating from the uncoordinated deformation between precipitate and austenitic matrix is an important fatigue damage leading to crack. The continuous cycle softening behavior was also observed on the fatigue curve at 600 °C, which is considered to be caused by dynamic recovery.

Piezoelectric energy harvesting has attracted tremendous interest for designing sustainable self-powered devices/systems targeted to special environment such as wireless or wearable applications. The traditional cavity (e.g., phononic cavity mode) excitation is highly applicable in terms of sufficient power generation, nevertheless, has to endure the drawback of extremely poor robustness intrinsic to the trivial cavity modes. We propose to use phononic thin plate systems for robust energy harvesting application relying on zero-dimensional cavities confined by the Kekule distorted topological vortices. The harvesting power induced by topological cavities is about 30 times that of the bare plate. Further studies on the effects of deliberately introduced defects on the output power show that the proposed energy harvesting system is highly robust against symmetry-preserving defects, and is less influenced even for symmetry-breaking defects at moderate perturbation level. Beyond the reported energy harvesting application, we foresee that our work may open avenues for robust operations in the realm of wireless sensing and structural health monitoring.

Noise reduction and other manipulation of sound waves has been a major concern in science and engineering. Here, we propose a ventilated soundproof acoustic metamaterial consisting of resonant cavities arranged around a central air passage. This metamaterial can accomplish strong sound insulation performance. The transmission loss is larger than 30 dB within a wide frequency range (625–1695 Hz) due to the prohibited band. More intriguingly, we discover that rotating the opening, somewhat like an acoustic switch, can directly control the sound transmission of the deaf band. This is particularly useful for opening a narrow but high transmission window at the frequency of interest, which provides a new degree of freedom for sound control. Through band structure analysis and effective parameter calculation, we discover the sound insulation mechanism of the ventilated metamaterial and reveal the underlying mechanism of the switchable narrow-band sound transmission. Beyond the 1D study, the proposed acoustic metamaterial is expanded to a 3D soundproof metacage. We find that the sound insulation performance and switchable sound transmission phenomena are still retained for the metacage. The results reported here may inspire more exploration of sound barriers and multifunctional applications, such as innovative building facades for noise reduction and logic components for acoustic circuits.

Localized zero-energy fermionic states can bind to topological defects such as two-dimensional vortices, which can be realized in the bulk of artificial acoustic and optical lattices.

Answer extraction is an important part of the field of automatic question answering (QA). The traditional answer extraction method relies heavily on contextual semantics, which makes the extraction process consume a lot of time and manpower. Aiming at the question of answer extraction, a method based on the bidirectional long-term memory network conditional random field (Bi-LSTM-CRF) is proposed. This question is extracted in parts from the answer segment. Extract the entity that contains the answer, and then extract the final answer from it. On a valid data set, the accuracy of the experimental results can reach more than 0.6050.

[EN] By studying platonic crystals based on lattices of cavities containing N-beam resonators, we conclude that crystals made of 1-beam resonators easily produce low-frequency omnidirectional bandgaps. Based on this favorable property, hardly obtained for resonant cavities containing a higher number of beams N >= 2, we have designed single-phase metamaterial plates for the suppression of low frequency flexural waves in a broad range of frequencies. These metamaterials are obtained by using resonant cavities containing a multiple number M of identical 1-beam resonators uniformly distributed in the cavity. Square lattices of this type of resonators have been studied by using the impedance matrix approach and the multiple scattering method. This semi-analytical method has been employed to show the existence of complete bandgaps whose width can be optimized by increasing M. For the case M = 4, the largest number of resonators studied here, three complete bandgaps separated by two narrow passbands appear in the band structure. The formation of these complete bandgaps originates from the dynamic interaction between different local resonators as well as their interaction with the propagating waves in the host plate. By using composite structures consisting of platonic crystal slabs with complementary bandgaps, these separated bandgaps easily merge into a broadband wave attenuation region. The normalized width, defined as the percentage of the bandwidth to its central frequency, reaches 95.3%, representing an enhancement of about one order of magnitude compared with the absolute bandwidth obtained for the case of a single 1-beam resonator in the cavity. It is shown that the gaps can be easily tuned to lower frequencies by changing the geometrical parameters, such as the length of the beam, the radius and thickness of the smaller circular plate. Since the metamaterial is made of a single-phase material without attaching heavy masses, the work reported here provides a simple approach to construct low-cost structures with potential applications in aeronautic and astronautic industries for broadband vibration suppression at low frequencies. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd., This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of the Spanish government and the European Union Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) [Grant No. TEC2014-53088-C3-1-R], and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Nos. 11432004 and 11421091]. Penglin Gao acknowledges a scholarship provided by China Scholarship Council [Grant No. 201606120070].

Nowadays, we are surrounded by huge amounts of data, and massive amounts of data have become an important strategic resource for all walks of life. In 2007, Jim Gray, a pioneer in the database field, pointed out that big data will become an effective way for humans to touch, understand and approximate complex systems in reality, and believes that the fourth paradigm-"data exploration" will be ushered in. It started the upsurge of examining big data from the perspective of scientific research. Starting from the development status of big data at home and abroad, this paper introduces the basic concept of big data, characteristics of big data and processing flow, and finally introduces the key technologies related to data mining as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

Nowadays, big data has become a constantly extended and widely mentioned term. It can excavate, describe and utilize a large amount of structured, unstructured and semi-structured data to obtain more information. With the rapid increase of data, big data has become more and more diverse, and the big data technology has emerged consequently. This paper reviews the literature of big data and the related technologies, such as Hadoop and Map Reduce. And it discusses the life cycle of big data, that is, big data acquisition, preprocessing, storage and analysis. Then it expounds the representative application of big data. Finally, based on the above study, this paper summarizes the development of big data.

The bulk-boundary or bulk-edge correspondence is a principle relating surface confined states to the topological classification of the bulk. By marrying non-Hermitian ingredients in terms of gain or loss with media that violate reciprocity, an unconventional non-Bloch bulk-boundary correspondence leads to unusual localization of bulk states at boundaries- a phenomenon coined non-Hermitian skin effect. Here, we numerically employ the acoustoelectric effect in electrically biased and layered piezophononic media as a solid framework for non-Hermitian and nonreciprocal topological mechanics in the MHz regime. Thanks to a non-Hermitian skin effect for mechanical vibrations, we find that the bulk bands of finite systems are highly sensitive to the type of crystal termination, which indicates a failure of using traditional Bloch bands to predict the wave characteristics. More surprisingly, when reversing the electrical bias, we unveil how topological edge and bulk vibrations can be harnessed either at the same or opposite interfaces. Yet, while bulk states are found to display this unconventional skin effect, we further discuss how in-gap edge states in the same instant, counterintuitively are able to delocalize along the entire layered medium. We foresee that our predictions will stimulate new avenues in echo-less ultrasonics based on exotic wave physics. J. C. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) through the Starting Grant No. 714577 PHONOMETA and from the MINECO through a Ramón y Cajal grant (Grant No. RYC-2015-17156). Publicado

A quantitative discussion of the combined influence of three electromechanical effects: piezoelectricity, flexoelectricity, and electrostriction in solids is provided for acoustic absorption and gain. While piezoelectricity occurs in non-centrosymmetric materials only, flexoelectricity and electrostriction exist in all materials. Two important new results are demonstrated: 1) the possibility to realize acoustic gain in all materials (centrosymmetric and non-centrosymmetric) when the acoustic Cherenkov condition is fulfilled, and 2) realization of acoustic gain in the presence of a strong dc electric field, even when the Cherenkov condition is not fulfilled, in the case of strong cross-coupling between piezoelectricity, flexoelectricity, and electrostriction. A simple analytical expression for the acoustic dispersion relation is derived for the combined effect of piezoelectricity, flexoelectricity, and electrostriction. At lower frequencies, the piezoelectric effect dominates for inversion-asymmetric materials. At high frequencies (˜>1 MHz) flexoelectricity becomes increasingly important and eventually provides a major mechanism for gain and absorption in barium titanate (BaTiO3). In the presence of strong electric fields (˜>1 MV m-1), electrostriction provides a dominant isolated contribution to absorption/gain in BaTiO3. Strong coupling between the three electromechanical contributions determines the total absorption/gain coefficient. Publicado

This Letter reports the feasibility of a structure specifically designed for the control of flexural waves propagating in thin perforated plates. The structure, here denominated as a redirector device, consists of a square array of free holes that splits the impinging beam and transmits sideways their vibrational energy. This behavior is known as a Poisson-like effect, and it was theoretically described in different acoustic structures. This effect is experimentally demonstrated for flexural waves excited in an aluminum perforated plate, and it is explained in terms of a physical mechanism different to that reported for acoustic waves interacting with thin hollow cylinders embedded in water. In addition, a collimator device based also in free holes is designed and validated with the purpose of providing the beam impinging the redirector device. The measurements indicate that the amount of redirected energy is strongly enhanced when a barrier of two-beam resonators is added at the rear side of the redirector. All the designs are validated by an experimental setup employing 1 mm thick aluminum plates.

The characteristics of strengthening nanoparticles have a major influence on the mechanical property and irradiation resistance of oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) steels. In situ small angle neutron scattering (SANS) experiments were performed to determine the evolution of nanoparticles in 9Cr ODS steel powders varied with temperature. Initial-added Y2O3 was completely dissolved into the steel matrix after mechanical alloying. Nanoparticles emerge after annealing at 600 °C for 10 min and coarsen slightly after 12 h. The radius of nanoparticles increases from 0.73 nm at 600 °C to 1.63 nm at 1000 °C, while the volume fraction decreases with increasing annealing temperature.

Metamaterials enabling multifunctional wave control have long attracted great interest, but remain largely unexplored in ventilation-required settings. Using the space-coiling strategy, we design and fabricate a compact acoustic meta-structure consisting of labyrinth resonators arranged around a central air passage. Such meta-structures provide a promising route to design well-ventilated and simultaneously highly-effective sound-proofing barriers allowing broadband (about one octave band) transmission loss up to almost 30 dB in the range of 660–1200 Hz. More interestingly, due to the interferences between the forward propagating waves and those re-radiated by the surrounding resonators, some asymmetric Fano-like resonances are observed appearing in the transmission gap. This Fano-like resonance is very useful to open a high transmission window at frequencies of interest by changing the length of coiled-up channels. Our findings are both numerically and experimentally verified, which may stimulate multifunctional applications, such as broadband sound insulation with high transmission loss and tunable acoustic communication, especially in ventilation-required environments.

Since the Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka used a viral vector to transfer the combination of 4 factors into differentiated somatic cells and reprogramed them to obtain similar embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), it provided one integrative method for studying many medical fields. Patient-derived iPSCs have provided an opportunity to study human diseases for which no suitable model systems are available. iPSC technology has since become a major breakthrough in the field of stem cell research. With the continuous development of iPSC technology and the continuous improvement of technical levels, excellent advances have become more and more common in the basic research and medical fields of life sciences. This article reviews the development history, clinical application, and problems and prospects of iPSC, and focuses on the application of iPSC in neurological diseases.

Hypertensive intracerebral hemorrhage (HICH) is a type of acute cerebrovascular disease with high rates of incidence, mortality, and disability, and is a cause of more frequent instances of secondary brain insult (SBI). In-depth study of the pathogenesis and pathophysiological mechanisms of SBI in HICH contributes to its clinical treatment and prognosis. This article presents a brief summary of the pathophysiological mechanism and treatment of SBI after HICH.

The impedance matrix method is applied to study the scattering of flexural waves propagating in an infinite thin plate containing an $N$-beam resonator. The resonator consists of a circular hole containing a smaller plate connected to the background plate by a number $N$ of rectangular beams. After representing the boundary conditions in a modal multipole expansion form, a compact expression is obtained for the T-matrix, which relates the incident and the scattered transverse (out-of-plane) waves. The analysis of the scattering cross-section reveals interesting scattering features, like resonances and anisotropy, associated with this type of resonators. Numerical experiments performed within the framework of the finite element method support the accuracy of the model here developed., 16 pages, 8 figures

Aims: The aim of this study was to explore the efficacy of Jian-Pi Lian-Se Tang (JPLST), a formula of traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of salivation and frequent nighttime urination (FNU) in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Method: Forty-eight patients with ALS suffering from salivation and/or FNU who were outpatients or inpatients of Shuguang Hospital were included into the study and divided into 2 groups as follows: the JPLST group (n = 24) included patients who were additionally treated with JPLST, and the control group (n = 24) included patients who were treated by routine Western medicine (for 6 weeks). The changes in the quantity of salivation/sialorrhea (QS) (in mL) and in FNU as the primary result and the total scores of the Amyloid Lateral Sclerosis Function Rating Scale (ALSFRS) and of the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) as the secondary result were used to evaluate the clinical efficacy for both groups. Results: No significant differences were found for the baseline of QS, FNU, and the scores of the ESS and of the ALSFRS before and after treatment for both groups. At the end of the 6th week, 2 patients in the JPLST group and 4 patients in the control group withdrew from the study. QS and FNU were much less severe in the JPLST group than before treatment, and the ESS scores were improved, too. The ALSFRS did not show any significant differences in both groups compared with before treatment at the end of week 6. No side effects were found for both groups by laboratory tests. Conclusion: The much improved parameters of QS, FNU, and ESS for the JPLST group indicate that JPLST may be a potential additional treatment for salivation and FNU in ALS patients. Large-scale multicenter double-blind randomized-control studies are needed to verify the effectiveness of JPLST in improving salivation and FNU in patients with ALS.

[EN] Topological phases have recently been realized in bosonic systems. The associated boundary modes between regions of distinct topology have been used to demonstrate robust waveguiding, protected from defects by the topology of the surrounding bulk. A related type of topologically protected state that is not propagating but is bound to a defect has not been demonstrated to date in a bosonic setting. Here we demonstrate numerically and experimentally that an acoustic mode can be topologically bound to a vortex fabricated in a two-dimensional, Kekul¿e-distorted triangular acoustic lattice. Such lattice realizes an acoustic analog of the Jackiw-Rossi mechanism that topologically binds a bound state in a p-wave superconductor vortex. The acoustic bound state is thus a bosonic analog of a Majorana bound state, where the two valleys replace particle and hole components. We numerically show that it is topologically protected against arbitrary symmetry-preserving local perturbations, and remains pinned to the Dirac frequency of the unperturbed lattice regardless of parameter variations. We demonstrate our prediction experimentally by 3D printing the vortex pattern in a plastic matrix and measuring the spectrum of the acoustic response of the device. Despite viscothermal losses, the measured topological resonance remains robust, with its frequency closely matching our simulations., J. C. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) through the Starting Grant No. 714577 PHONOMETA and from the MINECO through a Ramon y Cajal grant (No. RYC-2015-17156). J. S.-D. acknowledges support from the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of the Spanish Government and the European Union "Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)" through Project No. TEC2014-53088-C3-1-R. P. S.-J. acknowledges support from MINECO/FEDER under Grant No. FIS2015-65706-P. D. T. acknowledges financial support through the Ramon y Cajal fellowship under Grant No. RYC-2016-21188 and to the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through Project No. RTI2018-093921-A-C42.

Objective Observe the clinical efficacy of l-3-n-Butylphthalide (NBP) in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients within 24 h after intravenous thrombolysis using recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (hereafter termed “IT”). Methods One-hundred and seventy-eight patients with AIS were divided randomly into two groups: NBP and control. The former was given a NBP injection within 24 h after IT. After intravenous injection of NBP for 8–10 days, patients switched to soft capsules of NBP before or during meals. NBP treatment was continued for ≥30 days after hospital discharge. In the control group, NBP was not injected within 24 h after IT, and NBP capsules were not given after 8–10 days. Both groups were reviewed for CT or MRI 24 h after IT. The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score was calculated. The number of patients with a modified Rankin scale (mRS) 0–2 before, 24 h, and 90 days after IT was documented. Prevalence of cerebral hemorrhage and reocclusion of blood vessels after IT was calculated. Results There were no differences in sex, age, blood pressure, blood glucose, or cerebral-infarction types between the two groups before treatment. The NIHSS score 24 h after IT and the percentage of mRS scores 0–2 were not significantly different between the two groups. Compared with the control group, the NIHSS score in the NBP group was significantly improved at 90 days, and the number of patients with a mRS score 0–2 increased significantly. There was no significant difference in hemorrhage prevalence after IT between the two groups. Prevalence of blood-vessel occlusion after IT was significantly lower in the NBP group than that in the control group. Conclusion Use of NBP within 24 h after IT can reduce the prevalence of reocclusion of blood vessels without increasing the risk of cerebral hemorrhage.

[EN] The Poisson-like effect, describing the redirection of waves by 90 degrees, is shown to be feasible for flexural waves propagating in perforated thin plates. It is demonstrated that the lowest order symmetric leaky guided mode (S0 mode) is responsible for the splitting of wave motion in two orthogonal directions. The S0 mode shows a feature of stationary waves containing standing wave modes in one and two orthogonal directions for smaller and larger holes, respectively. The former case is well understood thanks to the phenomenon of Wood's anomaly, which was first observed in optical gratings supposed to be transparent. On the contrary, the strong scattering caused by the larger holes leads to a mixed mode occurring when the incident wave is totally transmitted. The mixed mode easily couples with the incoming waves and, therefore, the Poisson-like effect activated under this mechanism is much stronger. Using the Poisson-like effect, a device is proposed in which about 82% of the incident mechanical energy is redirected to the perpendicular direction. Results obtained with arrays of free holes also apply to inclusions with parameters properly chosen. The findings may provide applications in beam splitting and waveguiding. (C) 2018 Acoustical Society of America., Work supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of Spain and the EU Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional under Project No. TEC2014-53088-C3-1-R, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants Nos. 11432004 and 11421091. P.G. acknowledges a scholarship with No. 201606120070 provided by China Scholarship Council.

Objective. Observe the effect of the Chinese herbal extracts, Yin-Xing-Tong-Zhi, in tablet form, on improving vascular cognitive impairment no dementia (VCIND). Methods. Sixty-eight patients with VCIND were divided randomly into treatment and placebo groups with oral administration of Yin-Xing-Tong-Zhi tablets (YXTZTs) or placebo, respectively, for 24 weeks. Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive (ADAS-Cog) subscale score, MMSE score, Clinician’s Interview-Based Impression of Change Plus Caregiver Input (CIBIC-Plus) score, expression of interleukin- (IL-) 6, IL-8, and tumor necrosis factor- (TNF-) α in serum, and variation of blood-lipid levels were evaluated at different time points. Results. At weeks 12 and 24, the scores for the ADAS-Cog, CIBIC-Plus, and MMSE of the treatment group were significantly lower than those of the control group (P<0.05). All clinical scales at week 24 of the control group were significantly different from those before treatment (P<0.05). Expression of IL-6, IL-8, and TNF-α in the two groups was reduced significantly with variation of the clinical scales of cognitive impairment. Conclusion. YXTZTs may delay the development of cognitive impairment in VCIND patients by modulating expression of VCIND-associated proinflammatory factors.

For a given elastic medium, there is a one-to-one correspondence relation between material properties (elastic moduli and density) and the propagation path of elastic waves. Based on this idea, we propose a new method for designing a cylindrical cloak invisible to out-of-plane shear waves. We begin by writing the Hamiltonian governing the path trajectory of out-of-plane shear waves in an inhomogeneous orthotropic medium. Based on Hamilton’s equations of motion, we derive the ray equation for out-of-plane shear waves and the differential equation that describes the optimal spatial distribution of material properties in the cylindrical cloak. To solve these two differential equations, two boundary conditions are imposed in terms of the continuity conditions of displacement and traction on the outer boundary of the cylindrical cloak. The two differential equations and two boundary conditions constitute a solvable system from which various cloak profiles can be designed. The proposed approach, which differs from the transformation optics approach, provides an intuitive and flexible design platform and allows considerable freedom to construct invisibility cloaks with a specific spatial distribution of material properties. The effects of the material properties and boundary conditions on cloak invisibility are analyzed in detail. Numerical simulations show that optimized cylindrical cloaks with finite material properties can be easily constructed.

Due to quantum coherence, nanoparticles have very large cross sections when scattering with very cold or Ultracold Neutrons (UCN). By calculating the scattering cross section quantum mechanically at first, then treating the nanoparticles as classical objects when including the rotational effects, we can derive the associated energy transfer. We find that rotational effects could play an important role in slowing down UCN. In consequence, the slowing down efficiency can be improved by as much as ~40%. Since thermalization of neutrons with the moderator requires typically hundreds of collisions between them, a ~40% increase of the efficiency per collision could have a significant effect. Other possible applications, such as neutrons scattering with nano shells and magnetic particles,and reducing the systematics induced by the geometric phase effect using nanoparticles in the neutron Electric Dipole Moment (nEDM), are also discussed in this paper.

Aims. To evaluate the efficacy of Lian-Se formula (LSF), one Chinese herb formulation for treating sialorrhea and frequent overnight urination in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Methods. 96 PD patients suffering from sialorrhea and/or frequent nighttime urination were divided into two groups: an LSF group (n = 48) treated with LSF for 6 weeks and a placebo group (n = 48) treated with a placebo formula whose appearance and taste were the same as LSF for 6 weeks. All patients were treated by standard antiparkinsonism medicine according to the PD guideline of China. The changes of the quantity of saliva (QS) (mL), frequency of nighttime urination (FNU) and early sleep activity (ESA), and nocturnal activity (NA) by analyzing actigraphic records as the primary results and the total score of unified Parkinson’s disease rating scale (UPDRS) and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) as the secondary results were used to evaluate the clinical efficacy in both groups. Results. There were no significant differences in the baseline values of QS, FNU, NA, ESA, UPDRS total score, and ESS between the two groups. At the end of week 6, the QS, FNU, NA, and ESA in the LSF group showed superior results to those of the placebo group with no differences in the total UPDRS score between the two groups during the investigation. The ESS was significantly improved at the end of week 6 compared with the baseline and the placebo group. Laboratory test results indicated there were no side effects in either group. Conclusion. The findings of LSF treatment have clear clinical effects in patients with sialorrhea and frequent overnight urination. LSF thus appears to be a potential choice as an additional drug that can improve the sialorrhea and frequent overnight urination symptoms of PD patients.

[EN] A multiple scattering theory is applied to study the properties of flexural waves propagating in a plate with periodically structured N-beam resonators. Each resonator consists of a circular hole containing an inner disk connected to background plate with N rectangular beams. The Bloch theorem is employed to obtain the band structure of a two-dimensional lattice containing a single resonator per unit cell. Also, a numerical algorithm has been developed to get the transmittance through resonator slabs infinitely long in the direction perpendicular to the incident wave. For the numerical validation, a square lattice of 2-beam resonators has been comprehensively analyzed. Its band structure exhibits several flat bands, indicating the existence of local resonances embedded in the structure. Particularly, the one featured as the fundamental mode of the inner disk opens a bandgap at low frequencies. This mode has been fully described in terms of a simple spring-mass model. As a practical application of the results obtained, a homogenization approach has been employed to design a focusing lens for flexural waves, where the index gradient is obtained by adjusting the orientation of the resonators beams. Numerical experiments performed within the framework of a three-dimensional finite element method have been employed to discuss the accuracy of the models described here. Published by AIP Publishing., This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of the Spanish government and the European Union Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) through Project No. TEC2014-53088-C3-1-R, and the National Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 11432004. Penglin Gao acknowledges a scholarship with No. 201606120070 provided by China Scholarship Council.

Recently, the ray tracing method has been used to derive the non-singular cylindrical invisibility cloaks for out-of-plane shear waves, which is impossible via the transformation method directly owing to the singular push-forward mapping. In this paper, the method is adopted to design a kind of non-singular acoustic cloak. Based on Hamilton's equations of motion, eikonal equation and pre-designed ray equations, we derive several constraint equations for bulk modulus and density tensor. On the premise that the perfect matching conditions are satisfied, a series of non-singular physical profiles can be obtained by arranging the singular terms reasonably. The physical profiles derived by the ray tracing method will degenerate to the transformation-based solutions when taking the transport equation into consideration. This illuminates the essence of the newly designed cloaks that they are actually the so-called eikonal cloaks that can accurately control the paths of energy flux but with small disturbance in energy distribution along the paths. The near-perfect invisible performance has been demonstrated by the numerical ray tracing results and the pressure distribution snapshots. Finally, a kind of reduced cloak is conceived, and the good invisible performance has been measured quantitatively by the normalized scattering width.

Topological phases of matter, sound, light, and vibrations have enabled brand new routes to direct and control signals at high fidelity. Chern insulators are known for outcompeting other reciprocal systems in terms of their robustness against crystal imperfections and defects. For sound waves we present the combination of a Chern insulator and a valley-Hall-based configuration and explore novel valley-Chern phases that enable both nonreciprocal band inversion processes and bandwidth broadening of valley-polarized one-way interface states. Interestingly, we find that a valley-Chern system made of two adjacent insulators of which one only breaks the time-reversal symmetry, enables entirely robust waveguiding appearing quantitatively equivalent to the classical Chern insulator. Beyond the rich physics presented, we foresee that our findings may stimulate new research in terms of acoustic waveguiding and control. J.C. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) through the Starting Grant No. 714577 PHONOMETA and from the MINECO through a Ramón y Cajal grant (Grant No. RYC-2015-17156). Z.Z. acknowledges support from the China Scholarship Council. Publicado