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Purpose: To assess the diurnal changes in corneal biomechanics in healthy young adults. Methods: At Wenzhou Medical University Eye Hospital in China, a prospective case series. Each healthy subject had six Corvis ST examinations, from 10:00 on a first day to 6:00 on the following day, at 4-hour intervals. The data collected included the biomechanically corrected IOP (bIOP), the central corneal thickness (CCT) and six dynamic corneal response (DCR) parameters, namely deformation amplitude (DA), the ratio between DA values at the apex and 2 mm from the apex (DAR2), integrated inverse radius (IIR), the stiffness parameter at first applanation (SP-A1), Corvis biomechanical index (CBI) and the updated stress-strain index (SSIv2). A multilevel model was used to assess the changes in DCR parameters of patients over time during the examination period. Results: Sixty-one subjects were included and intra-operator reproducibility was good for most DCR parameters at the 6 time points. DA, DAR2, IIR and CBI showed small fluctuations during the 24-hour cycle with mean values of 0.1, 0.16, 0.34, and 0.04 units, respectively, while SP-A1 showed higher variations averaging 20.57 units and SSIv2 had the least fluctuation within 0.10 units during 24-hour cycle. After correcting for the effects of CCT and bIOP, the diurnal fluctuations in IIR, CBI and SSIv2 were not statistically significant, unlike the fluctuations in DA, DAR2 and SP-A1, which remained significant. Conclusions: Compared with the DA, DAR2, IIR and CBI, SP-A1 was more affected while SSIv2 was the less affected by the diurnal variations and associated corneal edema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic procrastination is a common problem among postgraduate students, one that has caused negative consequences that cannot be ignored. Therefore, finding out how to effectively eliminate academic procrastination behavior has become an essential task in educational practice. Based on the use of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to explore the relationship between the perceived supervisor support and academic procrastination of postgraduate students, a total of 448 questionnaires were gathered from postgraduate students across China. The results showed significant correlations between the perceived supervisor support, basic psychological needs satisfaction, learning engagement, and academic procrastination of postgraduate students. The relationship between the perceived supervisor support and academic procrastination of postgraduate students was mediated by basic psychological needs satisfaction and learning engagement. Additionally, basic psychological needs satisfaction and learning engagement played a chain-mediating role between the perceived supervisor support and academic procrastination of postgraduate students. The findings of this study contributed to the enhancement of the interaction between supervisors and students in higher education and improving the quality of postgraduate education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real-time and accurate detection and ranging of ships play a pivotal role in ensuring navigation safety, this study aims to enhance the navigation safety and environmental perception capabilities of inland waterway vessels. In the ship detection stage, addressing challenges such as large parameters, high computational complexity, and poor real-time performance in existing ship detection models, this paper proposes the MS-YOLOv5s ship target detection algorithm. This algorithm, based on YOLOv5s, utilizes the lightweight MobileNetV3-Small network to replace the original YOLOv5s feature extraction backbone network, thereby improving the detection speed. The results indicate that the parameter size of the MS-YOLOv5s model is 3.55M, only 50.49% of YOLOv5s. Achieving a detection rate of 50.28 FPS, the precision is 96.80%, and the mAP is 98.40%, striking a balance between high accuracy and low computational demand. In the depth estimation stage, influenced by the environment, leading to unstable measurement data, this paper proposes a binocular Kalman filter fusion ranging algorithm. The standard deviation of the ranging results is minimized to 6.032μm, which is one order of magnitude smaller than traditional ranging algorithms, significantly enhancing the robustness of the measurement results. Within a distance of 20m from the ship target, the error can be controlled within 3%, showcasing the applicability of the method proposed in this paper in complex inland waterway environments contributes to the enhancement of ships' environmental perception capabilities and navigation safety, holding positive implications for the development of intelligent vessels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrochromic (EC) devices represent an emerging energy-saving technology, exhibiting the capability to dynamically modulate light and heat transmittance. Despite their promising potential, the commercialization of EC devices faces substantial impediments such as high cost, intricate fabrication process, and low optical contrast inherent in conventional EC materials relying on the ion insertion/extraction mechanism. In this study, we introduce an innovative "electrode-free" electrochromic (EC) device, termed the EECD, which lacks an EC-layer on the electrodes during device assembling and in the bleached state. This device features a simplified fabrication process and delivers superior optical modulation. It achieves a high optical contrast ranging from 68-85% across the visible spectrum and boasts a rapid response time, reaching 90% coloring in just 17 seconds. In addition, EECD exhibits stable cycling for over 10,000 cycles without noticeable degradation and maintains functionality across a broad temperature range (0 °C to 50 °C). Furthermore, the fabricated large-area devices (40 cm × 40 cm) demonstrate excellent tinting uniformity, suggesting excellent scalability of this approach. Our study establishes a paradigmatic breakthrough for EC smart windows. Cheng Yang and co-workers develop an "electrode-free" electrochromic window, featuring a simplified fabrication process and delivering superior optical modulation capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roads congestion pricing has been considered as an effective solution following the successful implementation of such programs by many cities such as Singapore, Stockholm, and London. In multiple cases, congestion pricing projects have not been implemented, and multitudinous industrialized countries' governments are struggling to find an effective and satisfactory way of introducing congestion pricing schemes that will not be affected by the public's negative opinion and resistance. The lack of political and public acceptability can, therefore, be blamed for the nonimplementation of many congestion pricing projects in many cities around the world. This paper reviews eight cases where congestion pricing schemes were implemented or rejected, as well as the major influencing factors that enable congestion pricing introduction and acceptability by road users, discusses public and political acceptance of urban road pricing, and provides a valuable guideline for policy and decision-makers., 1. Introduction Across the world, traffic congestion had been a significant issue in most urban areas. These congestions lead to delays in the movement of both goods and passengers. The [...]

Nobel metal doping is an effective strategy to enhance the catalytic activity of electrocatalysts. Herein, a novel bifunctional electrocatalyst based on NiFe layered double hydroxide with ultra‐low Pd2+ doping (NiFePd LDH) was constructed by a one‐step hydrothermal method, where the Pd2+ is introduced by PdCl42−. The results show that Ni2+ and Pd2+ species are concomitantly deposited, and the slow‐release introduction of Pd2+ improves the element uniform distribution and effectively affects the electronic structures of active species by inducing local defects and lattice distortions, which is beneficial for stimulating the catalytic activity of NiFePd LDH. Under the optimal hydrothermal time, NiFePd LDH‐3 h only requires OER/HER overpotentials of 270 mV at 50 mA cm−2/‐316 mV at −10 mA cm−2, respectively, whose Tafel slopes are only 69.3/135.8 mV dec−1. As a bifunctional catalyst, it achieves a low voltage of 1.74 V at 10 mA cm−2 for overall water splitting with excellent long‐term durability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]