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This paper proposes a solution to mitigate the trade-off between dark and photocurrents in the indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) thin-film transistor (TFT) applications, such as ultraviolet photodetectors, by using a stacked Pt/NiO dual capping layer (CL). The Pt CL forms a Schottky contact with the IGZO channel, which maximizes the depletion width on the channel layer and allows the use of a thicker channel to suppress both dark current and channel resistance. On the other hand, the NiO CL forms a pn heterojunction with the IGZO channel, which provides additional space for generating electron–hole pairs and is forward biased by the photovoltaic voltage under UV irradiation, resulting in a further negative shift in the threshold voltage and a significant increase in photocurrent. Experimental results show that the proposed CL scheme exhibits excellent photoresponsivity, photosensitivity, and specific detectivity in a 40 nm-thick IGZO TFT, with the values of 1888 A/W, 3.37 × 108 A/A, and 3.99 × 1016 Jones, respectively, which are about 55%, 83%, and 68% higher than a traditional 30 nm-thick IGZO TFT using only NiO CL under 275 nm UV irradiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present high-precision mass-dependent nickel isotopic data for a comprehensive suite of achondrites and lunar rocks, providing key insights into the early planetary differentiation and Earth-Moon system formation. The primitive achondrites display high Ni contents and invariant Ni isotopic compositions. Incomplete core-mantle differentiation in primitive achondrite parent bodies resulted in the retention of metal in the mantle, which dominated the Ni budget and accounted for the bulk chondritic Ni isotopic values. The highly reduced differentiated achondrites, aubrites and an ungrouped achondrite (NWA 8409), have variable, and extremely light Ni isotopic compositions. Acid leaching experiments demonstrate that the sulfides are a significant host of light Ni isotopes in aubrites. The most extreme Ni isotope values of aubrites may be due to large Ni isotope fractionation accompanied by silicate-sulfide-metal separation during differentiation of the parent bodies, and subsequent global disruptive collision and reassembly with variably high proportions of sulfides enriched in the mantle. The howardite-eucrite-diogenite (HED) meteorites show Ni isotopic variations that are positively correlated with Ni/Co ratios, a feature that cannot be produced by igneous differentiation. Late accretion of high-Ni and high-Ni/Co chondritic materials after core formation of their likely parent body, Vesta, could have accounted for this correlation. Thus, the primitive silicate mantle of Vesta may have sub-chondritic Ni isotopic compositions, implying possible Ni isotope fractionation during core-mantle differentiation of small planetary bodies. The lunar breccia meteorites have homogenously chondritic Ni isotope values, together with their high Ni/Co of bulk rock and metals therein, suggesting impact contamination. Lunar basalt meteorites have low Ni/Co ratios and are systematically isotopically lighter than the breccias, displaying a positive correlation between Ni isotope value and Ni/Co ratio, as that seen in the HEDs. Therefore, the Ni isotopic systematics in lunar rocks also indicates the effect of late accretion, with the primitive lunar mantle having sub-chondritic Ni isotope values. This implies that the Moon-forming impactor, Theia, was likely an aubrite-like differentiated planetary body whose mantle was enriched in light Ni isotopes. We suggest that there was significant Ni isotope fractionation between core and mantle during differentiation of early formed small planetary bodies, but this signature can be obscured by late accretion in the bulk achondrite records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global basaltic rocks show large variations in nickel (Ni) isotopic compositions relative to peridotites. The origin of this difference remains unknown. We analyzed Ni isotopic compositions of mineral separates from seven Beiyan peridotite xenoliths and 16 nephelinites from eastern China. Spinel is isotopically heavier, and clinopyroxene is systemically lighter than coexisting olivine and orthopyroxene. An ionic model predicts that olivine, orthopyroxene, and spinel are in Ni isotopic equilibrium, whereas clinopyroxene of metasomatic origin is out of equilibrium. The nephelinites have higher Fe3+/ΣFe but lower δ60/58Ni values than the peridotites. Mantle silicate melting likely leads to enrichment of heavy Ni isotopes in melts, and, importantly, it cannot explain the negative correlation between δ60/58Ni and Fe3+/ΣFe of the nephelinites. Therefore, the light Ni isotopic signature requires the involvement of a low‐δ60/58Ni component. Sulfide is a minor Ni‐rich component in the mantle and is isotopically lighter than the silicates. The relative proportion of Ni from sulfides vs. that from silicates varies in mantle‐derived magmas, depending on the sulfur content at sulfide saturation and melting degree. Thus, low‐degree melts with high abundance of dissolved sulfides can be variably enriched in light Ni isotopes. We propose that enhanced sulfide dissolution at high oxygen fugacity is a key reason for light Ni isotopic compositions in the nephelinites. This sulfide dissolution model may also be responsible for producing the Ni isotopic variation in global mafic lithologies. When the highly oxidized, low‐degree melts react with the peridotitic region, they can impart light Ni isotopic signatures to mantle rocks. Plain Language Summary: There is scant information on why global basaltic rocks show large Ni isotopic variations relative to peridotites. We present Ni isotopic data for mineral separates from peridotite xenoliths as well as nephelinites from eastern China. The olivine, orthopyroxene, and spinel are in Ni isotopic equilibrium, whereas clinopyroxene of metasomatic origin is out of equilibrium. Compared to the normal mantle value, the nephelinites have lower Ni isotope values, which are negatively correlated with Fe3+/ΣFe. This signature cannot be produced by mantle silicate melting. Instead, the data suggest enhanced dissolution of isotopically light sulfide into the mantle melts at high oxygen fugacity. Recycling of carbonate sediments can induce incipient mantle melting and increase the oxygen fugacity. The oxidized, low‐degree melts, as represented by the nephelinites, have higher sulfur content at sulfide saturation, leading to a higher proportion of sulfide‐derived Ni in the melts, and thus lighter Ni isotopic compositions. When such melts react with the peridotitic region, they can impart light Ni isotopic signatures to mantle rocks, and potentially lead to the newly formed minerals being out of Ni isotopic equilibrium with primary ones. This sulfide dissolution model may also be responsible for producing the Ni isotopic variation in global mafic lithologies. Key Points: The clinopyroxene is enriched in lighter Ni isotopes, and is out of equilibrium with other silicate minerals due to metasomatic originThe nephelinites have lower δ60/58Ni values, because enhanced sulfide dissolution at high fo2 introduces light Ni isotopes to the meltsSulfide dissolution is an important step in producing the Ni isotopic variations observed in global mafic rocks [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a retraction note for an article titled "Alcoholism identification via convolutional neural network based on parametric ReLU, dropout, and batch normalization" published in the journal Neural Computing & Applications. The article has been retracted by the Editor-in-Chief and the publisher due to concerns regarding compromised editorial handling and peer review process, inappropriate or irrelevant references, and not being in scope of the journal or guest-edited issue. The authors of the article disagree with this retraction. Springer Nature, the publisher, remains neutral in regards to jurisdictional claims and institutional affiliations. [Extracted from the article]

The lighter magnesium (Mg) isotopic signatures observed in intraplate basalts are commonly thought to result from deep carbonate recycling, provided that the sharp difference in Mg isotopic composition between surface carbonates and the normal mantle is preserved during plate subduction. However, deep subduction of carbonates and silicates could potentially fractionate Mg isotopes and change their chemical compositions. Subducting silicate rocks that experience metamorphic dehydration lose a small amount of Mg, and preserve the original Mg isotopic signature of their protoliths. When the dehydrated fluids dissolve carbonate minerals, they may evolve into lighter Mg isotopic compositions. The solubility of carbonate minerals in fluids decreases in the order of calcite, aragonite, dolomite, magnesite and siderite, leading to selective and partial dissolution of carbonate minerals along the subduction path. At the island arc depth (70–120 km), the metamorphic fluid dissolves mainly Mg-poor calcites, and thus the fluid has difficulty modifying the Mg isotopic system of the mantle wedge and associated arc basalts. At the greater depth of the back arc system or continental margin (>150 km), the supercritical fluid can dissolve Mg-rich carbonate minerals, and its interaction with the mantle wedge could significantly imprint the light Mg isotopic signature onto the mantle rocks and derivatives. Meanwhile, the carbonate and silicate remaining within the subducting slab could experience elemental and isotopic exchange, during which the silicate can obtain a light Mg isotopic signature and high CaO/Al2O3, whereas the carbonates, particularly the Ca-rich limestone, shift Mg isotopes and MgO contents towards higher values. If this isotopic and elemental exchange event occurs widely during crustal subduction, subducted Ca-rich carbonates can partially transform into being Mg-rich, and a portion of recycled silicates (e.g. carbonated eclogites) can have light Mg isotopic composition alongside carbonates. Both serve as the low-δ26Mg endmember recycled back into the deep mantle, but the latter is not related to deep carbonate recycling. Therefore, it is important to determine whether the light Mg isotopic signatures observed in intraplate basalts are linked to deep carbonate recycling, or alternatively, recycling of carbonated eclogites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. This study plans to build a novel deep learning-based model for the accurate recognition of tuberculosis. Methods: We propose a novel model — rotation angle vector grid-based fractional Fourier entropy and deep stacked sparse autoencoder (RAVG-FrFE–DSSAE) — which uses RAVG-FrFE as a feature extractor and harnesses DSSAE as the classifier. Moreover, an 18-way MDA is introduced on the training set to avoid overfitting. Results: Experimental results of 10 runs of 10-fold CV showcase that this proposed RAVG-FrFE–DSSAE algorithm yields a reasonable performance including of 93.68 ± 1.11% sensitivity, 94.38 ± 1.11% specificity, 94.35 ± 1.04% precision, 94.03 ± 0.69% accuracy, 94.01 ± 0.70% F 1 -score, 88.07 ± 1.38% MCC, 94.01 ± 0.70% FMI, and 0.9725 AUC, respectively. Conclusions: Our result outperforms the eight state-of-the-art approaches. Besides, the result shows the effectiveness of the 18-way MDA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serpentinite is one of the most important sources of volatiles and fluid-mobile elements in subduction zones. Attempts have been made to discriminate serpentinite-derived fluid from other sources (e.g., sediments, altered oceanic crusts) using a variety of geochemical tools, but such differentiation has proven to be changeling because fluids from different lithologies are dynamically mixed in the subduction channel. Serpentinites are essentially distinguished by high Cr contents and variable degrees of 53Cr excess. Given high Cr mobility in Cl-rich metamorphic fluids based on experimental determination, Cr elemental and isotope compositions could be potential markers for fluid-mediated mass transfer from serpentinites. Here, we test this hypothesis by analyzing Cr concentrations and isotope compositions of meta-basalts, as well as country mica schists, marbles and serpentinites from the southwestern Tianshan Orogen. The meta-basalts have highly variable Cr concentrations (30.0–625 ppm) and resolvable δ53Cr variations (−0.25‰ to −0.05‰), while mica schists and marbles have similar isotope compositions and low Cr contents (δ53Cr of −0.15‰ to −0.14‰ with Cr contents of 89.5–110 ppm for mica schists, δ53Cr of −0.21‰ to −0.17‰ with Cr contents of 4.1–8.73 ppm for marbles, respectively). Most of the investigated meta-basalts were carbonated. The positive correlations of loss on ignition (LOI), CO 2 , Sb and Sb/Ce with Cr contents, as well as with δ53Cr for these carbonated meta-basalts indicate that the metamorphic fluids are at least partially sourced from serpentinites and sedimentary carbonates. High pressure serpentinites display similar δ53Cr variations from −0.19‰ to −0.02‰, but high Cr contents ranging from 934 to 4920 ppm. Chromium isotope variations of these serpentinites could not be generated by serpentinization, due to opposite trends of Cr isotopes and serpentinization indexes compared with previous observations. Instead, dehydration of serpentinites during subduction/exhumation accounts for Cr isotope variations, generating fluids with high Cr concentrations and relatively lighter isotope compositions. According to a Rayleigh dehydration model, the estimated Cr isotope fractionation factor (α fluid-residue) between fluids and residual serpentinites is approximately 0.99995 –0.99975, implying that Cr species in the subducted serpentine derived fluid is probably as complexes of Cr3+-Cl− H 2 O(OH–). The mixing model reveals that investigated carbonated meta-basalts were sourced from initial evolved oceanic basalts metamorphosed by fluids from serpentinite dehydrations, with contributions from sedimentary carbonates. This work emphasizes that coupled Cr element and isotope systems present the potential ability to discriminate the complex fluid sources in subduction zones, particularly serpentinites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Individuals with psychiatric disorders perceive the world differently. Previous studies indicated impaired color vision and weakened color discrimination ability in psychotic patients. Examining the paintings from psychotic patients can measure the visual-motor function. However, few studies examined the potential changes in the color painting behavior in these individuals. The current study aims to discriminate schizophrenia patients from healthy controls (HCs) and predict PANSS scores of schizophrenia patients according to their paintings. Methods: In the present study, we retrospectively analyzed the paintings colored by 281 chronic schizophrenia patients and 35 HCs. The images were scanned and processed using series of computational analyses. Results: The results showed that schizophrenia patients tend to use less color and exhibit different strokes compared to HCs. Using a deep learning residual neural network (ResNet), we were able to discriminate patients from HCs with over 90% accuracy. Further, we developed a novel convolutional neural network to predict PANSS positive, negative, general psychopathology, and total scores. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the prediction was low, which indicates higher accuracy of prediction. Conclusion: In conclusion, the deep learning paradigm showed the large potential to discriminate schizophrenia patients from HCs based on color paintings. Besides, this color painting-based paradigm can effectively predict clinical symptom severity for chronic schizophrenia patients. The color paintings by schizophrenia patients show potential as a tool for clinical diagnosis and prognosis. These findings show potential as a tool for clinical diagnosis and prognosis among schizophrenia patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer-aided diagnosis system is becoming a more and more important tool in clinical treatment, which can provide a verification of the doctors' decisions. In this paper, we proposed a novel abnormal brain detection method for magnetic resonance image. Firstly, a pre-trained AlexNet was modified with batch normalization layers and trained on our brain images. Then, the last several layers were replaced with an extreme learning machine. A searching method was proposed to find the best number of layers to be replaced. Finally, the extreme learning machine was optimized by chaotic bat algorithm to obtain better classification performance. Experiment results based on 5 × hold-out validation revealed that our method achieved state-of-the-art performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We proposed a novel (L, 2) transfer feature learning (L2TFL) approach. • L2TFL can elucidate the optimal layers to be removed prior to selection. • We developed a novel selection algorithm of pretrained network for fusion approach. • SAPNF can determine the best two pretrained models for fusion. • We introduced a deep CCT fusion discriminant correlation analysis fusion method. : COVID-19 is a disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus. Up to 18th October 2020, worldwide there have been 39.6 million confirmed cases resulting in more than 1.1 million deaths. To improve diagnosis, we aimed to design and develop a novel advanced AI system for COVID-19 classification based on chest CT (CCT) images. : Our dataset from local hospitals consisted of 284 COVID-19 images, 281 community-acquired pneumonia images, 293 secondary pulmonary tuberculosis images; and 306 healthy control images. We first used pretrained models (PTMs) to learn features, and proposed a novel (L, 2) transfer feature learning algorithm to extract features, with a hyperparameter of number of layers to be removed (NLR, symbolized as L). Second, we proposed a selection algorithm of pretrained network for fusion to determine the best two models characterized by PTM and NLR. Third, deep CCT fusion by discriminant correlation analysis was proposed to help fuse the two features from the two models. Micro-averaged (MA) F1 score was used as the measuring indicator. The final determined model was named CCSHNet. : On the test set, CCSHNet achieved sensitivities of four classes of 95.61%, 96.25%, 98.30%, and 97.86%, respectively. The precision values of four classes were 97.32%, 96.42%, 96.99%, and 97.38%, respectively. The F1 scores of four classes were 96.46%, 96.33%, 97.64%, and 97.62%, respectively. The MA F1 score was 97.04%. In addition, CCSHNet outperformed 12 state-of-the-art COVID-19 detection methods. : CCSHNet is effective in detecting COVID-19 and other lung infectious diseases using first-line clinical imaging and can therefore assist radiologists in making accurate diagnoses based on CCTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, high utility itemsets (HUIs) mining has been an active research topic in data mining. In this study, we propose two efficient pattern-growth based HUI mining algorithms, called High Utility Itemset based on Length and Tail-Node tree (HUIL-TN) and High Utility Itemset based on Tail-Node tree (HUI-TN). These two algorithms avoid the time-consuming candidate generation stage and the need of scanning the original dataset multiple times for exact utility values. A novel tree structure, named tail-node tree (TN-tree) is proposed as a key element of our algorithms to maintain complete utililty-information of existing itemsets of a dataset. The performance of HUIL-TN and HUI-TN was evaluated against state-of-the-art reference methods on various datasets. Experimental results showed that our algorithms exceed or close to the best performance on all datasets in terms of running time, while other algorithms can only excel in certain types of dataset. Scalability tests were also performed and our algorithms obtained the flattest curves among all competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. COVID-19 has caused large death tolls all over the world. Accurate diagnosis is of significant importance for early treatment. Methods. In this study, we proposed a novel PSSPNN model for classification between COVID-19, secondary pulmonary tuberculosis, community-captured pneumonia, and healthy subjects. PSSPNN entails five improvements: we first proposed the n-conv stochastic pooling module. Second, a novel stochastic pooling neural network was proposed. Third, PatchShuffle was introduced as a regularization term. Fourth, an improved multiple-way data augmentation was used. Fifth, Grad-CAM was utilized to interpret our AI model. Results. The 10 runs with random seed on the test set showed our algorithm achieved a microaveraged F1 score of 95.79%. Moreover, our method is better than nine state-of-the-art approaches. Conclusion. This proposed PSSPNN will help assist radiologists to make diagnosis more quickly and accurately on COVID-19 cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We analysed over 320 COVID-19 images and 320 healthy control images. • We proposed an improved CNN to extract individual image-level features. • We proposed to use GCN to extract relation-aware representations. • We proposed a DFF technology to combine features from GCN and CNN. • The proposed FCGNet gives better performance than 15 state-of-the-art approaches. (Aim) COVID-19 is an infectious disease spreading to the world this year. In this study, we plan to develop an artificial intelligence based tool to diagnose on chest CT images. (Method) On one hand, we extract features from a self-created convolutional neural network (CNN) to learn individual image-level representations. The proposed CNN employed several new techniques such as rank-based average pooling and multiple-way data augmentation. On the other hand, relation-aware representations were learnt from graph convolutional network (GCN). Deep feature fusion (DFF) was developed in this work to fuse individual image-level features and relation-aware features from both GCN and CNN, respectively. The best model was named as FGCNet. (Results) The experiment first chose the best model from eight proposed network models, and then compared it with 15 state-of-the-art approaches. (Conclusion) The proposed FGCNet model is effective and gives better performance than all 15 state-of-the-art methods. Thus, our proposed FGCNet model can assist radiologists to rapidly detect COVID-19 from chest CT images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A pre-trained MobileNetV2 was leveraged to extract features from brain MRIs automatically. • The optimal feature layer in MobileNetV2 was obtained by experiment. • Three random neural networks: ELM, RVFL and SNN were trained for classification. • A novel chaotic bat algorithm was employed to improve the performance of classifiers. • The trained model can serve as a visual question answering system and produce accurate results. Computer aided diagnosis systems are playing an important part in clinical treatment. They can help the doctors and physicians to verify the diagnosis decisions. In this study, a new classification algorithm for the brain magnetic resonance image is proposed. Initially, we utilized a MobileNetV2 to extract features from the input brain images, which was pre-trained on ImageNet dataset. Instead of training the deep network, we simply calculate the output of its certain layer to form the feature vector. The optimal feature layer is obtained by the experiment. Then, three different feedforward networks: extreme learning machine, Schmidt neural network and random vector functional-link net, are trained for classification. Chaotic bat algorithm was proposed to optimize the weights and biases in the three randomized neural networks to boost their classification accuracy. The result from 5×hold-out validation reveals that our method can achieve good generalization performance which is comparable to state-of-the-art pathological brain detection methods. The trained model can serve as a visual question answering system and produce accurate results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is a common and frequently occurring disease of the upper respiratory tract. The nasal instillation of the Gram‐negative (G−) bacterial product lipopolysaccharide (LPS) can induce not only acute sinusitis but also the development of CRSwNP in animal models. Nevertheless, the expression and distribution of LPS in patients with CRSwNP have not been investigated. And the study was to investigate the expression of LPS and its relationship with glucocorticoid receptors (GRs) in CRSwNP. Methods: Multiple methods, including bacterial culture and immunohistochemistry, were used to detect and analyze nasal bacteria, plasma LPS content, and the levels of LPS and GR‐α/β, cluster of differentiation 68 (CD68), and myeloperoxidase (MPO) expression, as well as their relationship in CRSwNP. Results: The number of G− bacteria and Escherichia coli (E. coli) was not significantly different between CRSwNP subjects and the controls. However, the positive rate of LPS was much higher than that of E. coli in CRSwNP subjects and was significantly higher in noneosinophilic CRSwNP subjects than in eosinophilic CRSwNP subjects. Moreover, the LPS levels were positively correlated with GR‐β but not GR‐α expression in CRSwNP. Immunofluorescence assays showed that LPS was mainly detected in CD68+ macrophages and MPO+ neutrophils, in addition to histiocytes, in CRSwNP. Conclusions: Persistent LPS in CRSwNP can lead to unresolved mucosal inflammation, eventually leading to tissue remodeling and the development of CRSwNP. Our findings suggest that increased LPS content and possible resistance to glucocorticoids may be one of the important pathogenic mechanisms of G− bacteria in CRSwNP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-utility pattern mining is a research hotspot in the field of pattern mining, and one of its main research topics is how to improve the efficiency of the mining algorithm. Based on the study on the state-of-the-art high-utility pattern mining algorithms, this paper proposes an improved strategy that removes noncandidate items from the global header table and local header table as early as possible, thus reducing search space and improving efficiency of the algorithm. The proposed strategy is applied to the algorithm EFIM (EFficient high-utility Itemset Mining). Experimental verification was carried out on nine typical datasets (including two large datasets); results show that our strategy can effectively improve temporal efficiency for mining high-utility patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alcoholism changes the structure of brain. Several somatic marker hypothesis network-related regions are known to be damaged in chronic alcoholism. Neuroimaging approach can help us better understanding the impairment discovered in alcohol-dependent subjects. In this research, we recruited subjects from participating hospitals. In total, 188 abstinent long-term chronic alcoholic participants (95 men and 93 women) and 191 non-alcoholic control participants (95 men and 96 women) were enrolled in our experiment via computerized diagnostic interview schedule version IV and medical history interview employed to determine whether the applicants can be enrolled or excluded. The Siemens Verio Tim 3.0 T MR scanner (Siemens Medical Solutions, Erlangen, Germany) was employed to scan the subjects. Then, we proposed a 10-layer convolutional neural network for the diagnosis based on imaging, including three advanced techniques: parametric rectified linear unit (PReLU); batch normalization; and dropout. The structure of network is fine-tuned. The results show that our method secured a sensitivity of 97.73 ± 1.04%, a specificity of 97.69 ± 0.87%, and an accuracy of 97.71 ± 0.68%. We observed the PReLU gives better performance than ordinary ReLU, clipped ReLU, and leaky ReLU. The batch normalization and dropout gained enhanced performance as batch normalization overcame the internal covariate shift and dropout got over the overfitting. The results of our proposed 10-layer CNN model show its performance better than seven state-of-the-art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose was to investigate the differences in spontaneous functional connectivity (FC) of the primary visual cortex (V1) between patients with neovascular glaucoma (NVG) and healthy controls (HCs) using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Methods: A total of 18 patients with NVG (nine males and nine females) and 18 HCs with similar age and sex background were enrolled in the study and inspected using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. The differences in FC of the V1 between the two groups were compared using the independent samples t-test. We used the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to compare the average FC values of NVG subjects with those of HCs. Results: FC in the left V1 and right fusiform gyrus, bilateral cuneus, and left precuneus was significantly decreased in the NVG group compared with that reported in the HC group. Meanwhile, patients with NVG presented increased FC between the right V1 and bilateral middle frontal gyrus. However, they also exhibited declining FC between the right V1 and left precuneus, and bilateral cuneus. The ROC curve analysis of each brain region indicated that the accuracy of the area under the ROC curves regarding NVG was excellent. Conclusion: NVG involves aberrant FC in the V1 in different brain areas, including the visual-related and cognitive-related regions. These findings may assist in unveiling the underlying neural mechanisms of impaired visual function in NVG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AIM: Unilateral sensorineural hearing loss is a brain disease, which causes slight morphology changes within brain structure. Traditional manual method may ignore this change. METHOD: In this work, we developed a novel method, based on the double-density dual-tree complex (DDDTCWT), and radial basis function kernel principal component analysis (RKPCA) and multinomial logistic regression (MLR) for the magnetic resonance imaging scanning. We first used DDDTCWT to extract features. Afterwards, we used RKPCA to reduce feature dimensionalities. Finally, MLR was employed to be the classifier. RESULT: The 10 times of 10-fold stratified cross validation showed our method achieved an overall accuracy of 96.44 ± 0.88%. The sensitivities of detecting left-sided sensorineural hearing loss, right-sided sensorineural hearing loss, and healthy controls were 96.67 ± 2.72%, 96.67 ± 3.51%, and 96.00 ± 4.10%, respectively. CONCLUSION: Our method performed better than both raw and improved AlexNet, and eight state-of-the-art methods via a stringent statistical 10 × 10-fold stratified cross validation. The MLR gives better classification performance than decision tree, support vector machine, and back-propagation neural network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately classify teeth category is important in further dental diagnosis. Analyzing huge dental data, that is, identifying the teeth category, is often a hard task. Current automatic methods are based on computer vision and deep learning approaches. In this study, we aimed to classify the teeth category into four classes: incisor, canine, premolar, and molar. Cone beam computed tomography was used to collect the data. We proposed a seven‐layer deep convolutional neural network with global average pooling to identify teeth category. Data augmentation method was used to enlarge the size of training dataset. The results showed the sensitivities of incisor, canine, premolar, and molar teeth are 88%, 86%, 84%, and 90%, respectively. The average sensitivity is 87.0%. We validated max pooling gives better results than average pooling. Our method is better than three state‐of‐the‐art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the most critical component of wireless power transfer (WPT) and wireless energy harvesting (WEH) systems, the rectifier is required to exhibit excellent performance. Most existing works focus on improvement in efficiency and bandwidth for a given input power level. However, in practice, the input power level is usually unpredictable. Therefore, a rectifier which exhibits high efficiency over a wide range of input power is highly desirable. But existing structures can only achieve limited input power range with a complex configuration. A novel cooperative structure using two diodes with diverse characteristics is proposed to solve these problems. Theoretical analysis and a comparison of performances with conventional ones are carried out. For validation in different application scenarios, two rectifiers operating at 2.4 GHz were designed, fabricated, and measured. For the proposed rectifier I, the measured efficiency is larger than 60% over an input power range from 3.5 to 25.2 dBm. While for rectifier II, the measured efficiency remains over 50% with input power from −6 to 26.5 dBm. These results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed structure in extending the input power range, especially for the low power region. Furthermore, the application in a WPT system was also demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Novel SiO 2 /PUF composites were designed and fabricated. • The composites with hierarchical pores showed excellent thermal insulation. • The composites exhibited great flame-retardancy and smoke-suppression. • The flame-retardant mechanism of the composites was proposed. Polyurethane foam (PUF) is widely used in building insulation field but highly flammable. In an effort to develop an efficient way to reduce flammability and smoke release of PUF without sacrificing its inherent merits, a novel strategy has been proposed to decorate silica aerogels onto the surface of PUF to fabricate hierarchically porous SiO 2 /PUF composites. Due to the unique hierarchically porous structure, the resultant composites showed superior thermal insulation with a lower thermal conductivity of 0.0282 W/(m K). The introduction of silica aerogels also effectively improved the compressive strength, almost 220% of that of neat PUF. Notably, the SiO 2 /PUF composites were rendered self-extinguishing in vertical burning tests and had a high limiting oxygen index (LOI) value of 32.5%. Cone calorimetry (CC) tests revealed that the peak heat release rate (PHRR) and peak smoke production release (PSPR) of the SiO 2 /PUF composites were reduced by 40.4% and 45.6%, respectively. Particularly, the specific optical density (Ds) of the composites displayed as 55.7% reduction in the smoke density chamber tests, showing excellent smoke-suppression. The mechanism analysis suggested that a compact silica-rich hybrid barrier formed, preventing thermal degradation products and energy transfer during combustion. These results indicate SiO 2 /PUF composites have enormous potential as building insulation materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer is one of the common cancers threatening the health of women while the incident rate of it is quite low in men to contribute to a major killer of men. Early syndromes of breast cancer including micro-calcification, mass, and distortion in mammography images can be very helpful for radiologists to make diagnosis of the cancer at early stage, which means the cancer can be treated or even be cured timely and thus make early diagnosis important. To assist radiologists with diagnosis, we set up a computer-aided diagnosis system to make diagnosis decision of breast cancer in this paper. We acquired regions of interests in mammographic images from public database, and labeled regions containing micro-calcification or mass as abnormality while regions without such abnormalities as normality. By transferring the state-of-the-art networks into our quest, we found that ResNet18 performed best and achieved mean accuracy of 95.91%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Heterologous promoters could be converted to powerful promoters in S. lividans. • P tac * RBS3 showed stronger capacity for gene expression than the P tipA in S. lividans. • Engineered promoters were also useful for the metabolic engineering of S. lividans. • This study will greatly expand the gene expression toolkit of Streptomyces. Abstract Due to the lack of powerful gene regulation elements, the engineering development of Streptomyces is often limited. Here, we disclosed that the heterologous σ70 -dependent promoters, which have been reported as inefficient tools for gene expression in Streptomyces , could be efficiently recognized by Streptomyces housekeeping factor σ hrdB. Therefore, an effective strategy was developed to engineer these promoters for robust gene expression in Streptomyces by fusing them with optimized 5′-untranslation regions (5′-UTRs). As a proof of concept, the widely used P tac in E. coli was engineered by fusing its core promoter region with the 5′-UTR R15 from a relatively powerful Streptomyces promoter P kasO * R15 and resulted in P tac* , the activity of which was 8.1-fold that of P tac and 1.7-fold that of P kasO * R15 in S. lividans TK24. Next, the 5′-UTR R15 was optimized by randomizing the ribosome binding site (RBS). Based on the base biases of those RBSs with higher activity, eight artificial RBSs were rationally designed, and the optimal resulting promoter P tac * RBS3 showed about 2.1, 3.6, and 17.6 times the activity of P tac *, P kasO * R15 , and P tac , respectively, demonstrating that the heterologous P tac was converted into a type of robust Streptomyces promoters. This study thus greatly expands promoter diversity for the engineering of Streptomyces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • A comprehensive study on the Maowu garnet clinopyroxenites from the Dabie–Sulu orogen. • The first observation of Mg isotopically light metasomatized mantle wedge. • Sedimentary Mg-rich carbonate could be dissolved in subduction supercritical fluid. Abstract Recent studies have concluded that subducted calcium (Ca-) rich carbonates could be dissolved in slab-derived aqueous fluids and transported upwards into the shallow mantle wedge (75–120 km), while magnesium (Mg-) rich carbonates could be delivered to a greater depth (i.e., the mantle transition zone, ∼410 km), melted, and recycled into the convective upper mantle. However, it remains unknown whether or not Mg-rich carbonates can be transferred to the deep mantle wedge (>∼120 km) by subduction-zone fluids, which, if true, is important for tracing deep carbon. In this paper, we report a comprehensive mineralogical, geochemical, stable (Mg and O) and radiogenic isotopic (zircon U–Pb) study of garnet clinopyroxenites from the Maowu ultra-mafic massif (a slice of the mantle wedge) in the Dabie orogeny, Central China. Whole-rock and mineral trace elemental features and zircon U–Pb ages reveal evidence of mantle wedge metasomatism by a slab-derived melt or supercritical fluid from the subducted rutile-bearing eclogitic Paleo-Tethys oceanic crust, in addition to subsequent metamorphism occurring during the Triassic collision between the South and North China blocks. Combined with the results of previous works, the high Th/U ratios of both whole rocks and metasomatized zircons with no oscillatory zoning lead us to infer that a supercritical liquid rather than a melt was the metasomatic agent during oceanic subduction at peak conditions (5.3–6.3 GPa and ∼800 °C, 160 – 190 km). Abundant carbonate mineral inclusions (including calcite, dolomite and magnesite) and the high δ 18 O VSMOW values of the metasomatized zircons (up to 12.2‰) indicate that sedimentary carbonates were leached by the supercritical fluid. Furthermore, whole-rock δ 26 Mg values (−0.99‰ to −0.65‰) that are lower than normal mantle values (− 0.25 ± 0.07 ‰) imply that the incorporated carbonates contain not only calcites but also a certain amount of dolomites (approximately 1–10 wt.% of the metasomatic supercritical liquid). The dissolved Mg-rich carbonates in the slab-derived supercritical liquid could effectively modify the Mg isotope composition of the deep mantle wedge. Our study represents a critical step towards achieving a broad understanding of the behaviours of recycled carbonate during slab subduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In an effort to overcome issues encountered in additive flame retardants for rigid polyurethane foams (RPUFs), a novel reactive flame-retardant triol (TDHTPP) based on a triazine and phosphate structure was designed and synthesized. This triol was chemically incorporated in the main chains of RPUFs as a chain-extender to prepare inherently flame-retardant RPUFs. TDHTPP showed good solubility in the polyols (polyol 4110 and PEG 400) of RPUF, making it convenient for industrial fabrication, such as in spay foaming. Excellent compatibility of TDHTPP with the polymer matrix endowed flame-retardant RPUFs (FR-RPUFs) much higher compressive strength than that of the neat RPUF, and a low thermal conductivity of ∼0.03 W/(m·K). Notably, with only 5 wt% of TDHTPP incorporated, the resultant RPUF displayed a UL-94 V-0 rating and more importantly, exhibited a great persistent flame retardancy during thermal accelerated aging tests at 140 °C for 96 h. Further characterization revealed that TDHTPP possessed both vapor-phase and condensed-phase flame-retardant behaviors, in which, vapor-phase action was dominant. This work provides a facile route to synthesize RPUFs with persistent flame retardancy, excellent thermal insulation and mechanical properties. Graphical abstract Image 1 Highlights • A novel reactive retardant THDTPP was designed to prepare inherently flame-retardant RPUFs. • Great compatibility of TDHTPP with matrix endows FR-RPUFs with excellent thermal insulating and mechanical properties. • The persistent flame retardancy of these foams was confirmed by thermal aging tests. • These foams with excellent properties show a promising prospect in the field of building thermal insulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of measures taken by local and national government agencies to control releases of metals, former industrial sites in China that are contaminated with lead (Pb) in soils have been abandoned. Compared with historic sites themselves, little attention has been paid to contamination with Pb in areas surrounding these sites. In this study, a method by integrating sequential extraction and isotopic fingerprinting was proposed to reveal the key fractions of Pb contaminants in soils, trace their sources and determine the subject of liability for remediation. Topsoils from near a historic site, where lead oxide was produced, were found to be contaminated. Concentrations of Pb in soils were inversely proportional to distances from the industrial site and depth in soils. The predominant form of Pb was the Fe/Mn-oxide-bound fraction (FM3), which accounted for from 53.39% to 82.07% of total concentrations of Pb. Concentrations of Pb in vegetables produced on contaminated soils exceeded those allowed in food for consumption by humans. An assessment of hazards and risks posed by consumption of vegetables grown on these soils indicated relatively high potential for adverse effects on local residents around the closed plant. By use of isotopic finger printing for Pb, the abandoned factory was determined to be the most likely source of Pb in topsoils, especially fraction FM3. To mitigate exposures of people to Pb via consumption of locally produced food, recommended strategies should target legacy sources of Pb to soils in the vicinity of this historic industrial site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a serious monogenic disease characterized by cardiac hypertrophy, fibrosis, sudden cardiac death, and heart failure. Previously, we identi- fied that miR-139-5p was down-regulated in HCM patients. However, the regulatory effects of miR-139-5p remain unclear. Thus, we investigated the role of miR-139-5p in the regulation of cardiac hypertrophy. The expression of miR-139-5p in left ventricular tissues in HCM patients and mice subjected to transverse aortic constriction (TAC) was significantly down-regulated. Knockdown of miR-139-5p expression in neonatal rat cardiomyocytes (NRCMs) induced cardiomyocyte enlargement and increased atrial natriuretic polypeptide (ANP) expression. Overexpression of miR-139-5p antagonized isoproterenol (ISO)-induced cardiomyocyte enlargement and ANP/brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) up-regulation. More importantly, we found that c-Jun expression was inhibited by miR-139-5p in NRCMs. Knockdown of c-Jun expression significantly attenuated cardiac hypertrophy induced by miR-139-5p deprivation. Our data indicated that miR-139-5p was down-regulated in the hearts of HCM patients and that it inhibited cardiac hypertrophy by targetting c-Jun expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim Emotion recognition based on facial expression is an important field in affective computing. Current emotion recognition systems may suffer from two shortcomings: translation in facial image may deteriorate the recognition performance, and the classifier is not robust. Method To solve above two problems, our team proposed a novel intelligent emotion recognition system. Our method used stationary wavelet entropy to extract features, and employed a single hidden layer feedforward neural network as the classifier. To prevent the training of the classifier fall into local optimum points, we introduced the Jaya algorithm. Results The simulation results over a 20-subject 700-image dataset showed our algorithm reached an overall accuracy of 96.80 ± 0.14%. Conclusion This proposed approach performs better than five state-of-the-art approaches in terms of overall accuracy. Besides, the db4 wavelet performs the best among other whole db wavelet family. The 4-level wavelet decomposition is superior to other levels. In the future, we shall test other advanced features and training algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature has documented systematic variations in the Ni stable isotope compositions of several terrestrial and marine reservoirs of this bioessential trace metal. For example, dissolved Ni in the world's major rivers has been shown to be more enriched in heavy isotopes than the continental rocks from which that Ni was derived (Cameron and Vance, 2014, Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta , 128, 195–211). This observation implies that one or more chemical reactions occurring during weathering of Ni-rich rock drives stable isotope fractionation that results in retention of lighter isotopes of Ni associated with solid phases. We present new Ni isotope analyses of samples from various horizons of the Webster-Addie laterite, near Democrat, North Carolina, USA, as well as results from two sets of experiments designed to constrain the fundamental mechanism(s) driving the isotopic variation observed in that weathering profile. Bedrock samples (dunite and talc-rich, altered dunite) have δ 60/58 Ni values of + 0.06 to + 0.20‰, in excellent agreement with previous research. A sample of “yellow laterite” is enriched in lighter isotopes of Ni, with δ 60/58 Ni = − 0.21‰. Mixed-phase samples containing quartz and traces of serpentine, goethite, and smectite range from + 0.13 to + 0.35‰. Experimental leaching of Ni from olivine in dilute acid at ambient conditions results in no resolvable fractionation, indicating that initial release of Ni to solution from bedrock is not responsible for the isotope variation we observe in the natural samples. Sorption of Ni onto montmorillonite, a minor secondary weathering product present in laterites, is associated with a very small fractionation of + 0.11 ± 0.09‰, with lighter isotopes sorbed on the smectitic clay. Such adsorption can thus account for some, but not all of the isotope systematics observed in the weathering profile. Given previous evidence that sorption of Ni to Fe oxyhydroxides does drive a fractionation of appropriate sense and magnitude (Wasylenki et al., 2015, Chem. Geol. , 400, 56–64), we infer that oxidation of Fe 2+ released from bedrock and precipitation result in retention of a light pool of Ni in solid weathering products, thereby enriching dissolved Ni in heavier isotopes. Because much of the continental crust's Ni budget is hosted by mafic and ultramafic rocks, which weather very rapidly at Earth's surface, and for which Fe oxyhydroxides are extremely common weathering products, this Ni fractionation mechanism may be relevant for terrestrial weathering of Ni-bearing rocks in general, even though the overall mineralogy and chemistry of weathering profiles varies with parent lithology and environmental conditions. Secondary, hydrous, Ni-rich Mg-silicates from veins in the saprolite zone are enriched in heavy isotopes, with δ 60/58 Ni = + 0.29 to + 0.86‰. Similar Ni-rich Mg-silicate samples from several similar profiles around the world display a similar range from + 0.36 to + 0.90‰, suggesting that the processes responsible for isotopic fractionation at the North Carolina locality are general phenomena characteristic of laterites worldwide. We hypothesize that, in laterites, continual downward percolation of meteoric waters and progressive, chromatographic exchange with goethite-bound Ni progressively shifts the Ni contents of solids toward lighter and fluids toward heavier isotopic compositions. When fluids reach the Mg-rich, Si-rich saprolite zone, isotopically heavy garnierite minerals precipitate in veins. The phenomena we report and discuss here may long have been the dominant controls on the distribution of Ni isotopes in Earth's near-surface, terrestrial environment, at least since oxygenation of the atmosphere. Due to lack of abundant oxygen in air and water earlier in Earth history, the biogeochemical cycle of Ni isotopes was almost certainly rather different, such that riverine dissolved Ni was not necessarily enriched in heavy isotopes relative to continental crust, and the oceans may not have been so highly enriched in heavy isotopes of Ni as they are presently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is an important brain disease. It alters the brain structure. Recently, scholars tend to use computer vision based techniques to detect AUD. We collected 235 subjects, 114 alcoholic and 121 non-alcoholic. Among the 235 image, 100 images were used as training set, and data augmentation method was used. The rest 135 images were used as test set. Further, we chose the latest powerful technique-convolutional neural network (CNN) based on convolutional layer, rectified linear unit layer, pooling layer, fully connected layer, and softmax layer. We also compared three different pooling techniques: max pooling, average pooling, and stochastic pooling. The results showed that our method achieved a sensitivity of 96.88%, a specificity of 97.18%, and an accuracy of 97.04%. Our method was better than three state-of-the-art approaches. Besides, stochastic pooling performed better than other max pooling and average pooling. We validated CNN with five convolution layers and two fully connected layers performed the best. The GPU yielded a 149× acceleration in training and a 166× acceleration in test, compared to CPU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slab-derived fluids play a key role in mass transfer and elemental/isotopic exchanges in subduction zones. The exhumation of deeply subducted crust is achieved via a subduction channel where fluids from various sources are abundant, and thus the chemical/isotopic compositions of these rocks could have been modified by subduction-zone fluid–rock interactions. Here, we investigate the Mg isotopic systematics of eclogites from southwestern Tianshan, in conjunction with major/trace element and Sr-Nd isotopes, to characterize the source and nature of fluids and to decipher how fluid–rock interactions in subduction channel might influence the Mg isotopic systematics of exhumed eclogites. The eclogites have high LILEs (especially Ba) and Pb, high initial 87 Sr/ 86 Sr (up to 0.7117; higher than that of coeval seawater), and varying Ni and Co (mostly lower than those of oceanic basalts), suggesting that these eclogites have interacted with metamorphic fluids mainly released from subducted sediments, with minor contributions from altered oceanic crust or altered abyssal peridotites. The positive correlation between 87 Sr/ 86 Sr and Pb* (an index of Pb enrichment; Pb* = 2*Pb N /[Ce N + Pr N ]), and the decoupling relationships and bidirectional patterns in 87 Sr/ 86 Sr-Rb/Sr, Pb*-Rb/Sr and Pb*-Ba/Pb spaces imply the presence of two compositionally different components for the fluids: one enriched in LILEs, and the other enriched in Pb and 87 Sr/ 86 Sr. The systematically heavier Mg isotopic compositions (δ 26 Mg = − 0.37 to + 0.26) relative to oceanic basalts (− 0.25 ± 0.07) and the roughly negative correlation of δ 26 Mg with MgO for the southwestern Tianshan eclogites, cannot be explained by inheritance of Mg isotopic signatures from ancient seafloor alteration or prograde metamorphism. Instead, the signatures are most likely produced by fluid–rock interactions during the exhumation of eclogites. The high Rb/Sr and Ba/Pb but low Pb* eclogites generally have high bulk-rock δ 26 Mg values, whereas high Pb* and 87 Sr/ 86 Sr eclogites have mantle-like δ 26 Mg values, suggesting that the two fluid components have diverse influences on the Mg isotopic systematics of these eclogites. The LILE-rich fluid component, possibly derived from mica-group minerals, contains a considerable amount of isotopically heavy Mg that has shifted the δ 26 Mg of the eclogites towards higher values. By contrast, the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr- and Pb-rich fluid component, most likely released from epidote-group minerals in metasediments, has little Mg so as not to modify the Mg isotopic composition of the eclogites. In addition, the influence of talc-derived fluid might be evident in a very few eclogites that have low Rb/Sr and Ba/Pb but slightly heavier Mg isotopic compositions. These findings represent an important step toward a broad understanding of the Mg isotope geochemistry in subduction zones, and contributing to understanding why island arc basalts have averagely heavier Mg isotopic compositions than the normal mantle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of co-sputtered Zirconium Silicon Oxide (Zr x Si 1−x O 2 ) gate dielectrics to improve the performance of α-IGZO TFT is demonstrated. Through modulating the sputtering power of the SiO 2 and ZrO 2 targets, the control of dielectric constant in a range of 6.9–31.6 is shown. Prevention of polycrystalline formation of the Zr x Si 1−x O 2 film up to 600 °C annealing and its effectiveness in reducing leakage currents and interface trap density are presented. Moreover, it is revealed that the Zr 0.85 Si 0.15 O 2 dielectric could lead to significantly improved TFT performance in terms of subthreshold swing (SS=81 mV/dec), field-effect mobility (μ FE =51.7 cm 2 /Vs), and threshold voltage shift (ΔV TH =0.03 V). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ni isotopic systematics in banded iron formations (BIFs) potentially recorded the Ni isotopic composition of ancient seawater over Precambrian geological history. However, the utility of BIFs as proxies requires quantitative knowledge of how Ni isotopes fractionated as dissolved Ni was initially incorporated into iron-rich sediments and how diagenesis may have affected the Ni isotopic systematics. Here we report results of synthesis experiments to investigate the behavior of Ni isotopes during Ni coprecipitation with ferrihydrite and then transformation of ferrihydrite to hematite. Ferrihydrite coprecipitation experiments at neutral p H demonstrated that the dissolved Ni was variably heavier than coprecipitated Ni (likely a mixture of surface-adsorbed and structurally incorporated Ni), with the isotope fractionation becoming larger as the fraction of Ni associated with solid increased (Δ 60/58 Ni solution-solid = +0.08 to +0.50‰). Further experiments at lower p H (3.7–6.7), in which structurally incorporated Ni likely dominated in solids, documented a decrease in Δ 60/58 Ni solution-solid from +0.44‰ to −0.18‰ as the p H decreased. The negative value for Δ 60/58 Ni solution-solid at low p H indicates the enrichment of heavier isotopes in incorporated Ni relative to dissolved and adsorbed Ni, possibly as a result of the presence of a small amount of tetrahedral Ni 2+ in addition to octahedral Ni 2+ in the ferrihydrite structure. The results of the ferrihydrite experiments thus reflect equilibrium isotope fractionation between three pools of Ni, with δ 60/58 Ni values in the order of incorporated > dissolved > adsorbed. Hematite was synthesized by transformation of Ni-bearing ferrihydrite in aqueous solution at ∼100 °C. A significant amount of Ni (up to 60%) was released (desorbed) from solids into solutions as p H dropped from ∼7 to 4.5–5.5 upon phase transformation. Rinsing of the synthesized hematite in 2 M acetic acid released only very small amounts of Ni (<4% of total Ni, presumably surface-adsorbed) that were isotopically heavier (δ 60/58 Ni = +0.11 ± 0.06‰) than the residues (presumably dominated by incorporated Ni), which had δ 60/58 Ni of −0.26 ± 0.07‰. The preference of lighter isotopes for the incorporated Ni relative to the surface-adsorbed Ni after phase transformation (most had been released into solution) is probably due to distortion of Ni O octahedra in the hematite structure, with weaker Ni O bond strengths on average. Hence, the more variable Δ 60/58 Ni solution-solid values (−0.04 to +0.77‰) observed in hematite experiments most likely reflect thermodynamically driven Rayleigh fractionation, with incorporated Ni unavailable to exchange with dissolved Ni due to continuous reduction in size of the highly reactive surface pool of Ni, through which all solid-solution exchange must occur. Overall, the synthesized hematite was isotopically lighter than the ferrihydrite by ∼0.08‰ in δ 60/58 Ni, which is however within the current analytical uncertainties (±0.09‰). This implies that earliest diagenesis of BIFs results in very limited change in the isotopic composition of solid-associated Ni. Our experimental results, although conducted in a very simple system that differs from Archean seawater, represent an important step toward reconstruction of the Ni isotopic composition of ancient seawater from Ni isotopic signatures in BIFs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient surface texturing technique that uses patterned trench etching and the selective formation of GaN nanostructures on the trench bottoms to improve the light extraction of vertical GaN-based light-emitting diodes (VLEDs) is proposed and demonstrated. Theoretical and experimental results that show the effectiveness of the proposed surface roughening scheme in improving light output power (LOP) and wall-plug efficiency (WPE) are presented and discussed. Compared with conventional VLEDs, significant improvements in LOP and WPE at 350 mA of about 37.6% and 5.1%, respectively, are obtained for the proposed VLEDs. The effective lateral light emission harvested by patterned trenches and the strongly enhanced angular randomization of photons that minimizes the total internal reflection at the GaN/air interface are responsible for the LOP and WPE improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus caused by a strain of coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Several noteworthy variants of SARS-CoV-2 were declared by WHO as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron. Till 13/Dec/2022, it has caused 6.65 million death tolls, and over 649 million confirmed positive cases. Based on the convolutional neural network (CNN), this study first proposes a ten-layer CNN as the backbone model. Then, the exponential linear unit (ELU) is introduced to replace ReLU, and the traditional convolutional block is now transformed into conv-ELU. Finally, an ELU-based CNN (ELUCNN) model is proposed for COVID-19 diagnosis. Besides, the MDA strategy is used to enhance the size of the training set. We develop a mobile app integrating ELUCNN, and this web app is run on a client–server modeled structure. Ten runs of the tenfold cross-validation experiment show our model yields a sensitivity of 94.41±0.98\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$94.41\pm 0.98$$\end{document}, a specificity of 94.84±1.21\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$94.84\pm 1.21$$\end{document}, an accuracy of 94.62±0.96\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$94.62\pm 0.96$$\end{document}, and an F1 score of 94.61±0.95\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$94.61\pm 0.95$$\end{document}. The ELUCNN model and mobile app are effective in COVID-19 diagnosis and give better results than 14 state-of-the-art COVID-19 diagnosis models concerning accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cell segmentation and counting is a time-consuming and important experimental step in traditional biomedical research. Many current counting methods are Point-based methods which require exact cell locations. However, there are few such cell datasets with detailed object coordinates. Most existing cell datasets only have the total number of cells and a global segmentation annotation. To effectively use existing datasets, we divide the cell counting task into the cell's number prediction and cell segmentation. We propose a GAN-based efficient lightweight multi-scale-feature-fusion multi-task model (ELMGAN). To coordinate the learning of these two tasks, we propose a Norm-Combined Hybrid loss function (NH loss) and use the method of the generative adversarial network to train our networks. We propose a new Fold Beyond-nearest Upsampling method (FBU) in our lightweight and fast multi-scale-feature-fusion multi-task generator (LFMMG), which is twice as fast as the traditional interpolation upsampling method. We use multi-scale feature fusion technology to improve the quality of segmentation images. LFMMG reduces the number of parameters by nearly 50% compared with U-Net and gets better performance on cell segmentation. Compared with the traditional GAN model, our method improves the speed of image processing by nearly ten times. In addition, we also propose a Coordinated Multitasking Training Discriminator (CMTD) to refine the accuracy of the details of the features. Our method achieves non-Point-based counting that no longer needs to annotate the exact position of each cell in the image during the training and achieves excellent results in cell counting and segmentation. • We proposed a non-Point based counting method based on the number of cells and the global segmentation. • We proposed ELMGAN to segment and count cells, and proposed the NH Loss to train our network. • Our new upsampling method: FBU is twice as fast as the traditional interpolation methods. • Our generator: LFMMG is only one tenth the size of traditional Gan, but ten times faster. • Our ELMGAN overcomes the limitation of Point-based counting methods, and is better than SOTA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mg isotopic compositions of 11 peridotite xenoliths and 21 HIMU-like intraplate basaltic lavas from New Zealand’s South Island and Antipodes Islands, respectively, provide new evidence bearing on the origin of continental intraplate alkaline basalts. Olivine and orthopyroxene in the peridotites display very limited Mg isotopic variations (−0.28‰ to −0.17‰ for olivine; −0.24‰ to −0.14‰ for orthopyroxene). The clinopyroxenes have Mg isotopic compositions (−0.37‰ to −0.10‰) slightly lighter than coexisting olivine and orthopyroxene. Calculated whole rock δ 26 Mg values of the peridotites vary from −0.27‰ to −0.16‰, falling within the normal mantle range (−0.25 ± 0.07‰). By contrast, the δ 26 Mg values of continental intraplate lavas vary from −0.47‰ to −0.06‰ and negatively correlate with (Gd/Yb) N ratios. The difference in Mg isotopic systematics between peridotites and intraplate basalts reveals that the former cannot be the sole magma source to the latter, and a lithology with a lighter Mg isotopic composition such as carbonated eclogite must also have contributed. Thus, the intraplate lavas with HIMU-like source signatures likely represent the product of mixing of melts derived from peridotite and recycled carbonated eclogite. Magnesium isotopes may therefore be a useful tracer of mantle sources to intraplate volcanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To further enhance the light extraction efficiency of GaN-based thin-film flip-chip light-emitting diodes (TFFC-LEDs), a surface roughening technique using KrF excimer laser ablation and chemical wet etching is demonstrated. Both optical ray-tracing simulations and experimental results of the light emission characteristics are presented and discussed. With the proposed twofold surface texturing scheme with circular protrusions superimposed by hexagonal cones, the angular randomization of photons at the emission surface was maximized, enhancements in light output power of 13.08% (12.81%) and wall-plug efficiency of 2.87% (2.25%) at 350 mA (700 mA) compared to those of a TFFC-LED without surface texturing were obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnesium isotopic compositions of mudrocks metamorphosed at sub-greenschist facies from three lower Paleozoic basins (northern Lake District, southern Lake District, and Southern Uplands) in the British Caledonides were measured in order to understand the behavior of Mg isotopes during diagenesis and low-grade metamorphism. Carbonate-free mudrocks from the northern Lake District have heavy δ 26 Mg values varying from −0.17 to +0.25. By contrast, Mg isotopic compositions of carbonate-bearing mudrocks from the southern Lake District and Southern Uplands vary more widely, with δ 26 Mg ranging from −0.74 to −0.08. Acid leaching experiments on the latter show that the leachates have higher Ca/Al and Ca/K ratios than the residues due to the dissolution of leachable carbonates. The δ 26 Mg values of leachates (−1.54 to −0.21) are always lower than the corresponding residues (δ 26 Mg = −0.39 to +0.09), consistent with isotopically light Mg in carbonates. A rough, negative correlation between δ 26 Mg and Mg/Al for the residual silicate fraction of mudrocks suggests that their Mg isotopic compositions are controlled by the relative proportion of illite/muscovite and chlorite. Global clastic sediments display highly variable Mg isotopic compositions that are negatively correlated with CaO/Al 2 O 3 and CaO/TiO 2 , implying that carbonates introduce light Mg isotopes to sediments, although the silicate end member itself has a wide range of δ 26 Mg, depending on its mineralogy. Magnesium isotopic compositions of mudrocks, as well as their silicate and carbonate fractions, do not vary systemically as metamorphism proceeds from diagenesis to low-grade metamorphism, suggesting limited Mg isotope fractionation during low-temperature metamorphic dehydration (<300 °C). The general decrease of Mg fraction (by mass) contributed by carbonate with increasing metamorphic grade suggests that dissolution or decomposition of carbonates during metamorphism expelled light Mg isotopes. Thus, the Mg isotopic compositions of the silicate fractions in clastic sediments more faithfully reflect their provenance signatures. Our study shows that Mg isotopes can be used to study sedimentary diagenesis, and Mg isotopes may prove a useful tracer of sediments recycled into the mantle given their heterogeneous δ 26 Mg values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quasi-monocrystal ZnO film grown using the hydrothermal growth method is used for the fabrication of Cu2O/ZnO heterojunction (HJ) ultraviolet photodetectors (UV-PDs). The HJ was formed via the sputtering deposition of p-type Cu2O onto hydrothermally grown ZnO film (HTG-ZnO-film). The effect of annealing temperature in the nitrogen ambient on the photoluminescence spectra of the synthesized ZnO film was studied. The optoelectronic properties of Cu2O/ZnO film with various Cu2O thicknesses (250–750 nm) under UV light (365 nm; intensity: 3 mW/cm2) were determined. The UV sensitivity of the HTG-ZnO-film-based UV-PDs and the sputtered ZnO-film-based UV-PDs were 55.6-fold (SHTG) and 8.8-fold (Ssputter), respectively. The significant gain in sensitivity (SHTG/Ssputter = 630%) of the proposed ZnO-film-based device compared to that for the device based on sputtered film can be attributed to the improved photoelectric properties of quasi-monocrystal ZnO film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fabrication of silicon oxynitride (SiON)/ZnO nanotube (NT) arrays and their application in improving the energy conversion efficiency (η) of crystalline Si-based solar cells (SCs) are reported. The SiON/ZnO NT arrays have a graded-refractive-index that varies from 3.5 (Si) to 1.9~2.0 (Si3N4 and ZnO) to 1.72~1.75 (SiON) to 1 (air). Experimental results show that the use of 0.4 μm long ZnO NT arrays coated with a 150 nm thick SiON film increases Δη/η by 39.2% under AM 1.5 G (100 mW/cm2) illumination as compared to that of regular SCs with a Si3N4/micropyramid surface. This enhancement can be attributed to SiON/ZnO NT arrays effectively releasing surface reflection and minimizing Fresnel loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effect of trench etching and arrayed p-electrodes in improving current spreading and the efficiency of light extraction of GaN-based vertical-structured light-emitting diodes (VLEDs). Both simulated and experimental results on the uniformities of current distribution and light emission are presented and discussed. For a 2 × 2 array VLED with a die size of 1020 × 1020 μm 2 , enhancements in light output power by 0.38% (6.03%) and wall-plug efficiency by 2.79% (2.32%) at 364.4 mA/mm 2 (728.9 mA/mm 2 ) as compared with that of regular VLED are achieved experimentally, which are attributed to improved current spreading from the arrayed p-electrode and trench designs as well as enhanced light emission from the trench region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The solubility of the sodium cyclamate in water, methanol, formamide, formic acid, acetic acid, DMF, DMSO and binary methanol + water mixed solvents was measured over the temperature rang from 280 K to 340 K about 5 K intervals by a laser technique under atmospheric pressure. The experimental results indicated that the solubility of sodium cyclamate in the pure and mixed solvents increased with increasing temperature and decreased with increasing mass fraction of methanol in the mixed solvents. The experimental data was correlated by the modified Apelblat model, modified Jouyban–Acree equation and three-parameter van’t Hoff equation. In addition, all the calculated values were in good agreement with all the experimental data in the temperature range studied. We also tried to calculate the thermodynamic functions ( Δ H sol, Δ S sol ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wepresent a density functional theory approach to investigate the thermodynamicsof ice nucleation in supercooled water. Within the theoretical framework,the free-energy functional is constructed by the direct correlationfunction of oxygen–oxygen of the equilibrium water, and thefunction is derived from the reference interaction site model in considerationof the interactions of hydrogen–hydrogen, hydrogen–oxygen,and oxygen–oxygen. The equilibrium properties, including vapor–liquidand liquid–solid phase equilibria, local structure of hexagonalice crystal, and interfacial structure and tension of water–iceare calculated in advance to examine the basis for the theory. Thepredicted phase equilibria and the water–ice surface tensionare in good agreement with the experimental data. In particular, thecritical nucleus radius and free-energy barrier during ice nucleationare predicted. The critical radius is similar to the simulation value,suggesting that the current theoretical approach is suitable in describingthe thermodynamic properties of ice crystallization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnesium isotopic compositions of a set of prograde metamorphosed rocks (greenschists, amphibolites, and eclogites) from East China were measured in order to understand the behavior of Mg isotopes during continental subduction. The δ 26 Mg values of the greenschists vary from −0.269 ± 0.057‰ to −0.133 ± 0.042‰ (2SD), and correlate negatively with the MgO contents and Nb/U ratios, possibly due to the assimilation of isotopicallly heavy felsic schists (δ 26 Mg up to −0.099‰) during the genesis of MORB-like protoliths. The two subgroups of amphibolites have slightly different Mg isotopic compositions. The group I amphibolites with cumulate origin have δ 26 Mg values ranging from −0.243 ± 0.061‰ to −0.192 ± 0.050‰, which reflects clinopyroxene accumulation nature of the protolith. The group II amphibolites have relatively light δ 26 Mg values varying from −0.358 ± 0.061‰ to −0.224 ± 0.056‰, which may result from either source contamination or crustal assimilation of isotopically light components (e.g., carbonates). Eclogitic garnet and clinopyroxene display large inter-mineral Mg isotope fractionations (Δ 26 Mg Cpx-Grt = 1.097 ± 0.056‰ to 1.645 ± 0.081‰) equilibrated at peak metamorphic temperatures. The δ 26 Mg values of the eclogites vary from −0.348 ± 0.041‰ to −0.137 ± 0.063‰, overlapping the ranges of greenschists and amphibolites. Such Mg isotopic variations are not related to unrepresentative sampling nor host–eclogite chemical interactions, instead, they reflect the protolith heterogeneities. Collectively, the similarity of Mg isotopic compositions among the greenschists (−0.196 ± 0.044‰), amphibolites (−0.271 ± 0.042‰), and eclogites (−0.226 ± 0.044‰), suggests that Mg isotope fractionation during continental subduction, if any, is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By utilizing a laser monitoring observationtechnique, solubilitiesof betaine in various solvents including acetic acid, DMSO, ethyleneglycol, 1-pentanol, and isoamyl alcohol were determined at varyingtemperatures. The experimental solubilities in solo solvents wereregressed by λh(Buchowski) equation, van’tHoff equation, Wilson model, and NRTL model, and the results showthat the van’t Hoff equation was the best for fitting betaine’ssolubilities. The change of dissolution Gibbs free energy of betainein different solvents was predicted via the van’t Hoff equation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a type of pneumonia acquired outside the hospital. To recognize CAP more efficiently and more precisely, we propose a novel method—wavelet entropy (WE) is used as the feature extractor, and cat swarm optimization (shortened as CSO) is used to train an artificial neural network (ANN). Our method is abbreviated as WE-ANN-CSO. This proposed WE-ANN-CSO algorithm yields a sensitivity of 91.64 ± 0.99%, a specificity of 90.64 ± 2.11%, a precision of 90.96 ± 1.81%, an accuracy of 91.14 ± 1.12%, an F1 score of 91.29 ± 1.04%, an MCC of 82.31 ± 2.22%, an FMI of 91.29 ± 1.03%, and an AUC of 0.9527. This proposed WE-ANN-CSO algorithm provides better performances than four state-of-the-art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]