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Background Purpose Methods Results Conclusions The advantages of proton therapy can be further enhanced with online magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) guidance. One of the challenges in the realization of MRI‐guided proton therapy (MRPT) is accurately calculating the radiation dose in the presence of magnetic fields.This study aims to develop an efficient and accurate proton dose calculation algorithm adapted to the presence of magnetic fields.An analytical‐numerical radiation dose calculation algorithm, Proton and Ion Dose Engine (PRIDE), was developed. The algorithm combines the pencil beam algorithm (PBA) with a novel iterative voxel‐based ray‐tracing algorithm. The new ray‐tracing method uses fewer assumptions and ensures broader applicability for proton beam trajectory prediction in magnetic fields, and has been compared to Wolf's method and Schellhammer's method. The accuracy of PRIDE algorithm was validated on three phantoms and two practical plans (one single‐field water plan and one prostate tumor plan) in different magnetic field strengths up to 3.0 T. The validation was performed by comparing the results against the Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, using the global gamma index criteria of 2%/2 mm and 3%/3 mm with a 10% threshold.PRIDE showed good agreement with MC in homogeneous and slab heterogeneous phantom, achieving gamma passing rates (%GPs) above 99% for 2%/2 mm criteria when magnetic field strength is not greater than 1.5 T. Although the agreement decreased for scenarios involving high proton energy (240 MeV) and strong magnetic field (3.0 T), the 2%/2 mm %GPs still remained above 98%. In lateral heterogeneous phantom, the accuracy of PRIDE decreased due to the PBA's limitation. For the two practical plans in different magnetic fields, %GPs exceeded 98% and 99% for 2%/2 mm and 3%/3 mm criteria, respectively.PRIDE can perform efficient and accurate proton dose calculation in magnetic fields up to 3.0 T, and is expected to work as a useful tool for proton dose calculation in MRPT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The study aimed to retrospectively identify the prognostic factors of surgically treated primary tongue squamous cell carcinoma (TSCC) cases and assess the benefits of surgical neck lymph node dissection (LND) in early‐stage cancer. Methods: Patients with primary TSCC with pT1‐2N0‐1M0 stage without distant metastasis who were treated with surgery during 2014–2016 at Xiangya Hospital, Central South University were included. Univariate and multivariate Cox models were constructed to explore prognostic factors of overall survival (OS), disease‐free survival (DFS), and local recurrence‐free survival (LRFS). Sub‐group analysis was used to assess the effect of adjuvant therapy and the prognostic value of LND for the early‐stage patients. Results: In total, 440 patients met the inclusion criteria. During the follow‐up period, the 5‐year OS, DFS, were 84.4% and 70.0%, respectively. Univariate analysis showed that TNM stage, lymphovascular invasion (LVI), and/or perineural invasion (PNI), pathological differentiation, etc. were significant predictors of OS and DFS. Multivariate analysis showed that TNM stage and the degree of pathological differentiation were independent prognostic factors for all outcomes. Besides, the number of cervical LND could independently predict both DFS and LRFS while LVI/PNI were associated with DFS. And high‐quality neck LND (≥30) significantly improved DFS and LRFS for patients of pT1cN0M0 or stage I as compared to those without LND. Conclusions: TNM stage and pathological differentiation were crucial prognostic factors for postoperative patients with TSCC. Notably, high‐quality cervical LND was beneficial for the improvement of DFS and LRFS for patients of pT1cN0M0 or stage I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study aimed to explore the association between ideal cardiovascular health metrics (ICVHM) and arthritis (AR), as well as the interactions of various indicators in ICVHM on AR in US adults. Methods: We involved 17,041 participants who were interviewed by NHANES from 2011 to 2018. AR included osteoarthritis or degenerative arthritis (OA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and psoriatic arthritis and other arthritis (Other AR). Logistic regression was applied to analyze the association between AR and ICVHM. Mixed graphical model (MGM) was used to explore the interaction between variables in ICVHM. Results: Higher ICVHM scores had a protective effect on AR. Compared to "≤1" score, the ORs of AR in participants with 2, 3, 4, and ≥5 were 0.586, 0.472, 0.259, and 0.130, respectively. Similar results were also found in different types of AR. ICVHM has a maximum area under the curve value of 0.765 and the interaction between blood pressure and total cholesterol was 0.43. Conclusions: ICVHM correlates significantly with AR and is better at identifying AR than individual indicators. ICVHM can be better improved by controlling the indicators with stronger interactions. Our findings provide guidance for promoting health factors, which have important implications for identification and prevention of AR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has demonstrated its efficacy in degrading organophosphorus or organochlorine pesticide residues without generating secondary pollution. Yet its potential in degrading triazole pesticides and methoxyacrylate pesticides that are gaining popularities in more and more countries remains unexplored. Using benazoxystrobin as the modelling molecule to be degraded, we demonstrated in this paper that CAP could effectively degrade triazole or methoxyacrylate pesticides, with the efficacy being influenced by many factors such as the voltage, flow rate, and frequency. Specifically, CAP could effectively degrade benazoxystrobin via destroying the benzene ring structure; the degradation efficacy can reach 90%, with 'ionized oxygen', '60 V voltage' '2 L.min−1 oxygen flow rate' and '9 min treatment duration' being associated with the optimal degradation effect; active CAP articles capable of degrading benazoxystrobin are enriched with ROS, where more oxygen is needed to degrade higher concentration of benazoxystrobin. Our study, for the first time, showed the efficacy of CAP in degrading triazole and methoxyacrylate type of pesticides, providing experimental support for its industrial translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chiral macrocycles with circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) have attracted increasing attention due to the rigid structure, symmetrical chiral geometry and large luminescence dissymmetry factors (glum). However, most chiral macrocycles are more emissive in solutions but have weakened fluorescence quantum yields (ΦF) in aggregates, limiting their further application. In this paper, chiral macrocycle R/S‐PhTPE was synthesized by combining chiral macrocycle architectonics with Z‐o‐phenyltetraphenylethylene (PhTPE) foldamer. Enhanced solution state emission and characteristic aggregation enhanced emission (AEE) effect can be observed for R/S‐PhTPE due to the folded PhTPE conformation. Macrocycle immobilization and folded conformation endow PhTPE moiety with stable helical conformation. Most importantly, R/S‐PhTPE exhibits opposite CPL signals compared with common chiral TPEs, demonstrating the evident impact of folded conformation. This work reports the first and deep insights into the chiroptical properties of chiral PhTPE foldamers, and will provide a new strategy to tune ΦF and CPL signals of AIE active chiral macrocycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AIM: To investigate the effect of hypoxia-preconditioned human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell-derived exosomes (hUCMSC-Exos) on pulmonary vascular endothelial-mesenchymal transition (EndMT) in hypoxic pulmonary hypertension (HPH). METHODS: (l) Primary hUCMSCs were isolated and cultured by tissue adhesion method, and hUCMSC-Exos were extracted by ultrafiltration and identified. (2) Twenty-four SPF male SD rats were randomly divided into normoxia (N) group, hypoxia (H) group, hypoxia+normoxic hUCMSC-Exos group and hypoxia+hypoxia-preconditioned hUCMSC-Exos group, with 6 rats in each group. The rats in H group and intervention groups were placed in a cabin that simulated the hypoxic environment at an altitude of 5 000 m, and normoxic hUCMSC-Exos, hypoxia-precon-ditioned hUCMSC-Exos or equivalent volume of PBS were injected through the tail vein on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 10th and 14th days in hypoxia environment. After 21 d of modeling, the right ventricular systolic pressure (RVSP) and right ventricular hypertrophy index (RVHI) of the rats were detected, and the pathological changes of lung tissues were observed by HE staining. (3) After starvation for 12 h, human pulmonary arteriole endothelial cells (HPAECs) were randomly divided into normoxic control (N-Con) group, hypoxic model (H-Con) group, hypoxia+normoxic hUCMSC-Exos group and hypoxia+hypoxia-preconditioned hUCMSC-Exos group. The migration ability and tube formation ability of HPAECs were detected by Transwell assay and tube formation experiment. The expression of CD31 and α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) in HPAECs was detected by immunofluorescence double-staining. The protein levels of CD31, VE-cadherin, α-SMA and vimentin in pulmonary vessels and HPAECs were assessed by Western blot. RESULTS: (1) The HPH rat model was successfully established after 21 d of hypoxia, and EndMT occurred in pulmonary vessels. Compared with N group, the levels of RVSP, RVHI, percentage of vascular wall area (WA%) and percentage of vascular wall thickness (WT%) in H group were significantly increased (P<0.01), pulmonary vascular wall thickening and the protein levels of CD31 and VE-cadherin were significantly decreased (P<0. 01), while the protein levels of α-SMA and vimentin were significantly increased in pulmonary vessels (P<0.05 or P<0.01). Compared with H group, the RVSP, RVHI, WA% and WT% (P<0.01) were significantly decreased (P<0.05 or P<0.01), and pulmonary vascular remodeling was attenuated after normoxic or hypoxia-preconditioned hUCMSC-Exos intervention. After hypoxia-preconditioned hUCMSC-Exos intervention, HPH pul-monary vascular remodeling and EndMT formation were significantly inhibited. (2) After 48 h of hypoxic treatment, the migration, tubule formation and EndMT of HPAECs were induced. Compared with H-Con group, cell migration and tube formation were significantly decreased after hypoxia-preconditioned hUCMSC-Exos intervention (P<0. 01). The protein levels of CD31 and VE-cadherin were increased, while the protein levels of α-SMA and vimentin were decreased (P<0.05 or P<0.01). CONCLUSION: Hypoxia-preconditioned hUCMSC-Exos attenuate the formation of HPH pulmonary vascular remodeling by inhibiting pulmonary vascular EndMT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech emotion recognition (SER) is an active research area in affective computing. Recognizing emotions from speech signals helps to assess human behaviour, which has promising applications in the area of human-computer interaction. The performance of deep learning-based SER methods relies heavily on feature learning. In this paper, we propose SCAR-NET, an improved convolutional neural network, to extract emotional features from speech signals and implement classification. This work includes two main parts: First, we extract spectral, temporal, and spectral-temporal correlation features through three parallel paths; and then split-convolve-aggregate residual blocks are designed for multi-branch deep feature learning. The features are refined by global average pooling (GAP) and pass through a softmax classifier to generate predictions for different emotions. We also conduct a series of experiments to evaluate the robustness and effectiveness of SCAR-NET which can achieve 96.45%, 83.13%, and 89.93% accuracy on the speech emotion datasets EMO-DB, SAVEE, and RAVDESS. These results show the outperformance of SCAR-NET. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interaction of the two coupling bubble with a floating structure is modelled to investigate the dynamic behavior of the warship under an underwater explosion (UNDEX) by coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) method. In this study, the CEL method is first verified by the experimental results for free field underwater explosion. Then, a series of cases for various initial distance and delay intervals between the bubble pair are implemented to analyze the deformation and damage modes of the floating structure. It is observed that for large initial distance between the bubble pair synchronously generated, the floating structure can be damaged with longitudinal bending buckling in the middle domain. When the initial distance between the bubble pair decreases to a critical value, the floating structrure is damaged with a remarkable crevasse besides the longitudinal bending buckling in the middle domain. However, under two bubbles with different phase differences, the floating structure a the deformation of the whipping motion without remarkable local structural damage. This is because there is the conspicuous despression effect between two out-of-phase bubbles, which weakens the bubble pulsation load. These phenomena present a theoretical reference for further studies on the destruction of underwater explosion on the ship structure caused by multiple bubbles generated with various phase differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The role of inflammation in pulmonary hypertension is gradually important. • Dynamic observation of Macrophage-Derived inflammation in mice with hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension. • Hypoxic Pulmonary Hypertension inflammation can be through activation of IL-33 Signaling Pathway. • Pulmonary artery remodeling in HPH mice worsens progressively in a time-dependent manner, with inflammatory predominating in the early stage and pulmonary vascular remodeling occurring in the later stage. The role of inflammation in pulmonary hypertension is gradually gaining increasing research attention. However, no previous study has evaluated the characteristics of inflammation during chronic hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the characteristics of the inflammatory process involved in hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension in mice. The current study evaluated from day 4 to day 28 of hypoxia, the PAAT and PAAT/PET decreased, accompanied by pulmonary vascular remodeling and right ventricular hypertrophy, as well as increased numbers of CD68 macrophages. The expression of the pro-inflammatory factors IL-1β and IL-33 increased, but decreased on day 28. The expression of IL-12 increased from day 4 to day 28, whereas that of the anti-inflammatory factor IL-10 in lung tissue decreased. Furthermore, the expression of the IL-33/ST2 signaling pathway also increased over time under hypoxic conditions. In conclusion, pulmonary artery remodeling in HPH mice worsens progressively in a time-dependent manner, with inflammatory cell infiltration predominating in the early stage and pulmonary vascular remodeling occurring in the later stage. IL-33/ST2 signaling pathways in hypoxia-induced PAH mice. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fibrosis is a common healing process that occurs during stress and injury in cardiovascular diseases. The evolution of fibrosis is associated with cardiovascular disease states and causes adverse effects. Fibroblast activation is responsible for the formation and progression of fibrosis. The incipient detection of activated fibroblasts is important for patient management and prognosis. Fibroblast activation protein (FAP), a membrane-bound serine protease, is almost specifically expressed in activated fibroblasts. The development of targeted FAP-inhibitor (FAPI) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging enabled the visualisation of FAP, that is, incipient fibrosis. Recently, research on FAPI PET imaging in cardiovascular diseases increased and is highly sought. Hence, we comprehensively reviewed the application of FAPI PET imaging in cardiovascular diseases based on the state-of-the-art published research. These studies provided some insights into the value of FAPI PET imaging in the early detection of cardiovascular fibrosis, risk stratification, response evaluation, and prediction of the evolution of left ventricular function. Future studies should be conducted with larger populations and multicentre patterns, especially for response evaluation and outcome prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electro-oxidation of ethylene glycol (EG) derived from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into value-added C2 products is essential for the electro-reforming of waste PET. However, achieving high selectivity and stability in the EG oxidation reaction (EGOR) remains a significant challenge. Herein, we successfully fabricated segregation-less Pd1Ag1 alloy nanoparticles (NPs) that can be used for the electro-reforming of waste PET into glycolate C2 products with high selectivity (97%) and long-term stability (>500 h). Electrochemical measurements and in situ Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results reveal that the addition of Ag atoms improves glycolate selectivity by reducing its adsorption on Pd active sites. In addition, the surface *OH species generated on Ag sites facilitate the rapid oxidation of toxic carbonyl species, thereby improving the stability of Pd sites. Therefore, the synergistic effects of Pd1Ag1 NPs provide an effective way for practical electro-reforming of real-world waste PET into value-added products with high selectivity and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smallpox was eradicated in less than 200 years after Edward Jenner's practice of cowpox variolation in 1796. The forty-three years of us living free of smallpox, beginning in 1979, never truly separated us from poxviruses. The recent outbreak of monkeypox in May 2022 might well warn us of the necessity of keeping up both the scientific research and public awareness of poxviruses. One of them in particular, the vaccinia virus (VACV), has been extensively studied as a vector given its broad host range, extraordinary thermal stability, and exceptional immunogenicity. Unceasing fundamental biological research on VACV provides us with a better understanding of its genetic elements, involvement in cellular signaling pathways, and modulation of host immune responses. This enables the rational design of safer and more efficacious next-generation vectors. To address the new technological advancement within the past decade in VACV research, this review covers the studies of viral immunomodulatory genes, modifications in commonly used vectors, novel mechanisms for rapid generation and purification of recombinant virus, and several other innovative approaches to studying its biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In situ vaccination can elicit systemic antitumor immunity to potentiate immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) in poorly immunogenic tumors. Herein, an immunogenic cell death (ICD) inducer for in situ vaccination, which is based on a mitochondria‐targeting modification of fenofibric acid (FFa), a lipid‐lowering drug with potential inhibitory efficacy of respiratory complex I is developed. Mitochondria‐targeting FFa (Mito‐FFa) inhibits complex I efficiently and increases mitochondrial ROS (mtROS) generation, which further triggers endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress with unprecedented calreticulin (CRT) exposure on tumor cellular membranes. Moreover, the generated mtROS also oxidizes mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and promotes it leakage into the cytoplasm for cGAS‐STING‐dependent type I interferon (IFN‐I) secretion. The synchronous CRT exposure and IFN‐I secretion successively improve the uptake of tumor antigens, maturation of dendritic cells (DCs) and cross‐priming of CD8+ T cells. In a poorly immunogenic 4T1 tumor model, a single intratumoral (i.t.) Mito‐FFa injection turns immune‐cold tumors into hot ones and elicits systemic tumor‐specific CD8+ T cells responses against primary and metastatic tumors. Furthermore, the synergistic effect with PD‐L1 blockade and good bio‐safety of i.t. Mito‐FFa administration suggest the great translational potential of Mito‐FFa in tumor immunotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beam diffraction management with on‐demand efficiency over compact devices is important in various applications, such as communications, spectroscopy, wireless power transfer, and others. Recently, the in‐depth study of metasurfaces, such as phase gradient metasurfaces (PGMs) or metagratings (MGs) made of discrete elements, has promoted an ultrathin platform to manipulate diffractions. However, most studies only focus on symmetrical diffraction orders or different propagating diffraction orders with equally distributed energy. It is difficult to efficiently excite beams with arbitrary energy distribution by phase‐only metasurfaces due to the complex optimization procedure. Here, to address these challenges, Fourier harmonic component engineering is proposed to allocate the energy between multiple diffraction beams. By introducing phase‐corrected gradient (PCG) on the metasurface platform, lossless transformation from the incidence to far‐field patterns can be obtained. A variety of diffraction situations are considered (symmetric and asymmetric, with equal or arbitrary energy ratio), where the simulated and measured far‐field patterns are in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions and the achieved diffraction efficiency is up to 98.3%. The proposed method paves the way for multichannel wireless communication applications and can be readily extended to other frequency regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Huygens' metasurfaces, as a class of artificial electromagnetic surfaces, have garnered significant interest due to their ability to effectively manipulate electromagnetic wave fronts. In this article, a Huygens' element with a simple design is discussed. The structure comprises a dielectric substrate sandwiched between a reverse-opening resonant ring and a pair of single-opening resonant rings. The proposed structure enables independent modulation of the electrical and magnetic response, particularly delivering transmittance amplitude of at least 0.8 and 0°–360° phase control simultaneously in a single double layer without vias. Based on this structure, we create a Huygens' metasurface focusing lens that gathers plane waves at the focal point. Then, a patch antenna is mounted onto this metalens to transform the radiated spherical waves into plane waves, increasing the antenna gain by up to 11 dBi. The experimental and simulated results demonstrate excellent agreement, demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed metalens and the importance of the designed Huygens-atom for metalens applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The advancements in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology have recently emerged as an effective, cost-efficient, and versatile solution for monitoring crop growth with high spatial and temporal precision. This monitoring is usually achieved through the computation of vegetation indices (VIs) from agricultural lands. The VIs are based on the incoming radiance to the camera, which is affected when there is a change in the scene illumination. Such a change will cause a change in the VIs and subsequent measures, e.g., the VI-based chlorophyll-content estimation. In an ideal situation, the results from VIs should be free from the impact of scene illumination and should reflect the true state of the crop's condition. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of various VIs computed on images taken under sunny, overcast and partially cloudy days. To improve the invariance to the scene illumination, we furthermore evaluated the use of the empirical line method (ELM), which calibrates the drone images using reference panels, and the multi-scale Retinex algorithm, which performs an online calibration based on color constancy. For the assessment, we used the VIs to predict leaf chlorophyll content, which we then compared to field measurements. Results: The results show that the ELM worked well when the imaging conditions during the flight were stable but its performance degraded under variable illumination on a partially cloudy day. For leaf chlorophyll content estimation, The r 2 of the multivariant linear model built by VIs were 0.6 and 0.56 for sunny and overcast illumination conditions, respectively. The performance of the ELM-corrected model maintained stability and increased repeatability compared to non-corrected data. The Retinex algorithm effectively dealt with the variable illumination, outperforming the other methods in the estimation of chlorophyll content. The r 2 of the multivariable linear model based on illumination-corrected consistent VIs was 0.61 under the variable illumination condition. Conclusions: Our work indicated the significance of illumination correction in improving the performance of VIs and VI-based estimation of chlorophyll content, particularly in the presence of fluctuating illumination conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech emotion recognition (SER) is an active research area in affective computing. Recognizing emotions from speech signals helps to assess human behaviour, which has promising applications in the area of human-computer interaction. The performance of deep learning-based SER methods relies heavily on feature learning. In this paper, we propose SCAR-NET, an improved convolutional neural network, to extract emotional features from speech signals and implement classification. This work includes two main parts: First, we extract spectral, temporal, and spectral-temporal correlation features through three parallel paths; and then split-convolve-aggregate residual blocks are designed for multi-branch deep feature learning. The features are refined by global average pooling (GAP) and pass through a softmax classifier to generate predictions for different emotions. We also conduct a series of experiments to evaluate the robustness and effectiveness of SCAR-NET which can achieve 96.45%, 83.13%, and 89.93% accuracy on the speech emotion datasets EMO-DB, SAVEE, and RAVDESS. These results show the outperformance of SCAR-NET. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reliable material removal rate (MRR) prediction method significantly optimizes the grinding surface quality and improves the processing efficiency for robotic abrasive belt grinding. Using worn-belt image features to predict MRR is a direct and reliable method; however, this method is rarely reported at present. This paper proposes an MRR prediction method for Inconel 718 grinding based on the abrasive belt image analysis and categorical boosting (CatBoost) algorithm. During belt grinding, four wear types of abrasive belts, namely fracture, adhesion, rubbing wear, and fall-off, are identified and analyzed. Under various grinding parameters, the experimental MRR rapidly decreases at first, then in a gradual manner. For an effective evaluation of belt wear severity, cutting grain area ratio, color moments, and texture features are extracted from belt images. MRR and abrasive belt image features are strongly correlated after normalization. All image features are taken into account for MRR prediction model training. Verification experiments indicate that the predicted data is in good agreement with the experimental data. The maximum absolute error, mean absolute error, root mean square error, and determination coefficient of the MRR prediction model are 0.17 μm, 0.4 μm, 0.2 μm, and 99.42%, respectively, which are superior to those of other popular machine learning algorithms. In this study, we present a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between MRR and abrasive belt characteristics, as well as demonstrate the feasibility of accurately predicting MRR using the CatBoost algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The separation of xylene isomers still remains an industrially challenging task. Here, porous purine-based metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have been synthesized and studied for their potential in xylene separations. In particular, Zn(purine)I showed excellent para-xylene/ortho-xylene separation capability with a diffusion selectivity of 6 and high equilibrium adsorption selectivity as indicated by coadsorption experiments. This high selectivity is attributed to the shape and size of the channel aperture within the rigid framework of Zn(purine)I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glycerol is seen in biological systems as an intermediate in lipid metabolism. In recent years, glycerol has been reported to act as a chemical chaperone to correct the conformation of proteins. Here, we investigate the role of glycerol in galectin-7 (Gal-7). The thermal shift and CD assays showed that the thermal stability of Gal-7 increased with glycerol concentration but with little secondary structure changes induced by glycerol. In addition, glycerol can inhibit Gal-7-mediated erythrocyte agglutination. We also solved the crystal structures of human Gal-7 in complex with glycerol in two different conditions. Glycerol binds at the carbohydrate-recognition binding sites of Gal-7, which indicates glycerol as a small ligand for Gal-7. Surprisingly, glycerol can bind a new pocket near the N-terminus of Gal-7, which can greatly reduce the flexibility and improve the stability of this region. Moreover, overexpression of Gal-7 decreased the intracellular triglyceride levels and increased mRNA expression of aquaporin-3 (AQP-3) when HeLa cells were incubated with glycerol. These findings indicate that Gal-7 might regulate glycerol metabolism. Overall, our results on human Gal-7 raise the perspective to systematically explore this so far unrecognized phenomenon for Gal-7 in glycerol metabolism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Serine carboxypeptidase-like protein (SCPL) plays an important role in response to stress in plant. However, our knowledge of the function of the SCPL gene family is limited. Results: In this study, a comprehensive and systematic analysis of SCPL gene family was conducted to explore the phylogeny and evolution of the SCPL gene in Gossypium hirsutum. The phenotype and molecular mechanism of silencing of the Gh_SCPL42 under Verticillium wilt stress was also studied. Our results showed that 96 SCPL genes were observed in genome of G. hirsutum, which distributed on 25 chromosomes and most of them were located in the nucleus. The phylogenetic tree analysis showed that members of SCPL gene family can be divided into three subgroups in G. hirsutum, which are relatively conservative in evolution. SCPL gene has a wide range of tissue expression types in G. hirsutum. Promoter analysis showed that the most cis-acting elements related to MeJA and ABA were contained. Through RNA-seq combined with genotyping, it was found that 11 GhSCPL genes not only had significant expression changes during Verticillium wilt stress but also had differential SNPs in the upstream, downstream, exonic or intronic regions. The expression of these 11 genes in the resistant (Zhongzhimian 2) and susceptible (Junmian 1) materials was further analyzed by qRT-PCR, it was found that 6 genes showed significant expression differences in the two materials. Among them, Gh_SCPL42 has the most obvious expression change. Furthermore, virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) showed necrosis and yellowing of leaves and significantly higher disease severity index (DSI) and disease severity rate (DSR) values in VIGS plants than in control silenced Gh_SCPL42 plants. Moreover, the expression levels of genes related to the SA and JA pathways were significantly downregulated. These results show that Gh_SCPL42 might improve resistance to Verticillium wilt through the SA and JA pathways in G. hirsutum. Conclusion: In conclusion, our findings indicated that Gh_SCPL42 gene plays an important role in resistance to Verticillium wilt in cotton. It was provided an important theoretical basis for further research on the function of SCPL gene family and the molecular mechanism of resistance to Verticillium wilt in cotton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The treatment of wastewater by adsorption is a good alternative technique and attracts extensive attention worldwide due to its versatility, scalability, and low operational costs. In this work, a Fe3O4 nanospheres/carbon core–shell structure is fabricated by combination of a template method and calcination. The morphology and crystal structure of the synthesized composite are characterized by transmission electron microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, and from nitrogen adsorption–desorption isotherms, confirming that the carbon layer with a porous structure is successfully loaded onto the surface of the face-centered cubic Fe3O4 nanospheres to form a core–shell structure. The adsorption performance of the Fe3O4 nanospheres/carbon core–shell structure is investigated by studying the effects of the initial pH value of the solution, the contact time, the initial concentration of the pollutants, the adsorption temperature, and the amount of adsorbent. The Fe3O4 nanospheres/carbon core–shell structure effectively removes heavy metal Chromium(VI) and a reactive light yellow dye. The results of batch experiments show that the removal efficiencies of heavy metal Chromium(VI) and the reactive light yellow dye are close to 100% under optimized conditions. The good adsorption performance of the Fe3O4 nanospheres/carbon core–shell structure toward various types of pollutants suggests a potential application in wastewater treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic and inorganic acids are common catalysts to promote the hydrolysis of methyltrialkoxysilanes, but they are challenging to modulate the inherent CH 3 SiO 1.5 backbone of polymethylsilsesquioxane (PMSQ) xerogels. Here, an aluminum chloride aqueous solution is proposed for the first time as an acid catalyst to enhance the hydrolysis of methyltriethoxysilane (MTES). This approach allows the PMSQ xerogels to have a more flexible [-Al-O-] m -[Si O ] n backbone structure. The optimal concentration of aluminum chloride and surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide in the MTES sol was 1.069 mmol/L and 0.885 mmol/L, respectively, endowing the as-synthesized PMSQ xerogel with a high compression strength of 0.450 MPa and maximum compression strain of 76.1%. Notably, the tiny incorporation of alumina phase (0.4 mol%) in the Si-O-Si backbone made the PMSQ xerogels hydrophobic up to 400 °C for 1 h in the air. The PMSQ xerogels possessed superior thermal insulation properties (32.0–38.0 mW/(m·K)) and could be processed into desired large-sized shapes. [Display omitted] • AlCl 3 aqueous solution was proposed as the acid catalyst for the hydrolysis of MTES precursors. • The pH stabilities of MTES precursors catalyzed by various acid catalysts were compared. • The AlCl 3 and surfactant CTAB concentrations in the MTES sols were optimized. • Properties of PMSQ aerogels synthesized in various acid catalysts were compared. • Emerging design aspects regarding aerogels with [-Al-O-] m -[Si-O] n backbone were proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Three pairs of chiral binaphthyl based macrocyclic tetraphenylethylenes (TPEs) with flexible macrocycle backbones and different linkage lengths were designed and synthesized. • The homochiral helical orientations of TPEs in the crystal structures demonstrate the successful chirality transfer from chiral binaphthyl to TPE via the soft macrocycle backbone. • Obvious aggregation-induced emission (AIE) and CPL properties can be detected owing to the chiral macrocyclic architectures. • The chiral macrocycle with the longest linkage length can produce the largest aggregation-induced circularly polarized luminescence (AI-CPL) signals in films with luminescence dissymmetry factor (g lum) up to 1.9 × 10−3. Developing chiral macrocycles with intense circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) has received considerable interest. The chirality transfer in the chiral macrocycles with separated chiral sources and luminophores is crucial but rarely explored. In this paper, we designed and synthesized three pairs of chiral binaphthyl based macrocyclic tetraphenylethylenes (TPEs) with flexible macrocycle backbones and different linkage lengths. The homochiral helical orientations of TPEs in the crystal structures demonstrate the successful chirality transfer from chiral binaphthyl to TPE via the soft macrocycle backbone. Obvious aggregation-induced emission (AIE) and CPL properties can be detected owing to the chiral macrocyclic architectures. Most importantly, the chiral macrocycle with the longest linkage length can produce the largest aggregation-induced circularly polarized luminescence (AI-CPL) signals in films with luminescence dissymmetry factor (g lum) up to 1.9 × 10−3. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Four types of O 2 adsorption structures and six ORR reaction pathways were found. • The number of electrons gained by the intermediates determines the O 2 adsorption structures and ORR reaction pathways. • ICOHP and a composition descriptor were found to summarize the ORR activity rules. Exploring earth-abundant and inexpensive electrocatalysts to realize efficient oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is urgently desired. In this work, through first-principles calculations, we have strategically designed a series of single-atom catalysts (SACs) for ORR by immobilizing single atoms on the surface of Mo 4/3 B 2 O 2 , denoted as TM@Mo 4/3 B 2 O 2 (TM representing 3d, 4d, and 5d transition metal atoms, excluding Tc and Hg). Significantly, for 4e− ORR, the best catalyst was Co@Mo 4/3 B 2 O 2 and Ru@Mo 4/3 B 2 O 2 , with an overpotential of 0.61 V and 0.63 V, close to the commonly used Pt catalyst (0.45 V). In 2e− ORR, Zn@Mo 4/3 B 2 O 2 had the best catalytic activity, with a ΔG *OOH of -2.47 eV, close to the commonly used Pd catalyst (ΔG *OOH = -3.17 eV). By calculating the electronic properties of SACs, it was found that the number of electrons gained by the intermediate *O 2 and *OOH from the SACs determines the O 2 adsorption structures and ORR reaction pathways. In addition, there are two descriptors: ICOHP and a composition descriptor which provides atomic-level insights, that were found to summarize the ORR activity rules. Our work enriches the applications of the MBenes family in catalysis, and provides feasible guidance for the design of low-cost and high-effect ORR catalysts. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inorganic cesium lead halide perovskite nanocrystals are candidates for lighting and display materials due to their outstanding optoelectronic properties. However, the dissolution issue of perovskite nanocrystals in polar solvents remains a challenge for practical applications. Herein, we present a newly designed one‐step spin‐coating strategy to prepare a novel multicolor‐tunable CsPbX3 (X=Cl, Br, I) nanocrystal film, where the CsPbX3 precursor solution was formed by dissolving PbO, Cs2CO3, and CH3NH3X into the ionic liquid n‐butylammonium butyrate. The as‐designed CsPbX3 nanocrystal films show high color purity with a narrow emission width. Also, the blue CsPb(Cl/Br)3 film demonstrates an absolute photoluminescence quantum yields (PLQY) of 15.6 %, which is higher than 11.7 % of green CsPbBr3 and 8.3 % of red CsPb(Br/I)3 film. This study develops an effective approach to preparing CsPbX3 nanocrystal thin films, opening a new avenue to design perovskite nanocrystals‐based devices for lighting and display applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to develop a deep learning method that skips the time‐consuming inverse optimization process for automatic generation of machine‐deliverable intensity‐modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) plans. Methods: Ninety cervical cancer clinical IMRT plans were collected to train a two‐stage convolution neural network, of which 66 plans were assigned for training, 11 for validation, and 13 for test. The neural network took patients' computed tomography (CT) anatomy as the input and predicted the fluence map for each radiation beam. The predicted fluence maps were then imported into a treatment planning system and converted to multileaf collimators motion sequences. The automatic plan was evaluated against its corresponding clinical plan, and its machine deliverability was validated by patient‐specific IMRT quality assurance (QA). Results: There were no significant differences in dose parameters between automatic and clinical plans for all 13 test patients, indicating a good prediction of fluence maps and a decent quality of automatic plans. The average dice similarity coefficient of isodose volumes encompassed by 0%–100% isodose lines ranged from 0.94 to 1. In patient‐specific IMRT QA, the mean gamma passing rate of automatic plans achieved 99.5% under 3%/3 mm criteria, and 97.3% under 2%/2 mm criteria, with a low dose threshold of 10%. Conclusions: The proposed deep learning framework can produce machine‐deliverable IMRT plans with quality similar to the clinical plans in the test set. It skips the inverse plan optimization process and provides an effective and efficient method to accelerate treatment planning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photoelectrochemical water splitting based on nanostructured bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) can be a promising strategy to produce low‐cost and green H2 to replace fossil fuels and realize carbon neutrality. Herein, a simple chemical way to realize in situ carbon doping into BiVO4 crystalline structure is designed and obtained carbon‐doped BiVO4, namely C‐BiVO4, can improve the electronic conductivity of BiVO4. In addition, the introduction of the synthesized carbon quantum dots (CQDs) as a co‐catalyst, immobilizes CQDs onto the C‐BiVO4 nanosheet and acquires the optimized C‐BiVO4/CQDs heterogeneous structure, which not only boosts light absorption, but also enhances the separation and transfer of the photo‐generated charges. Stemming from the dual carbon actions, the as‐prepared C‐BiVO4/CQDs photoanode exhibits an excellent photocurrent density of 4.83 mA cm−2 at 1.23 V versus the RHE without the use of any hole scavengers. To assure the practical application of the sensitive photocatalyst, a polyaniline layer is electroplated onto the C‐BiVO4/CQDs catalyst as a conducting, electroactive, and protective layer to sustain a remarkable long‐term photocurrent density of 2.75 mA cm−2 for 9 hours. This work suggests that the proposed low‐cost, environmentally friendly dual carbon actions can modify photocatalyst and achieve green production of H2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We introduce an integrated strategy for fabricating a new Janus fabric with heating and cooling modes, which requires no additional external energy to work. • Both indoor and outdoor experiments reveal its significant performance in heating and cooling modes. • Numerically verify the Mie scattering of the T-shaped ZnO whisker coating. • The Janus fabric could be an enabling energy saving technology for intelligent architecture textile and allow assisting in decarbonisation. The emergence of thermal management technologies is vital to enhancement of personal thermal comfort and reduction in building energy consumption. Despite of tremendous advancement in thermoregulative textiles, the cooling and heating functions are often achieved separately, failing to meet the practical requirements under a dynamically changing thermal environment. Regarding such a significant scientific and technological challenge, we report on an innovative Janus thermoregulative fabric with cooling and heating modes, based on solar heat shielding and photothermal conversion, respectively. The Zirconium carbide (ZrC) nanoparticles with broad-band absorption and photo-thermal conversion were deposited one side of a polyester fabric substrate using magnetron sputtering, while the T-shaped ZnO (TZ) micro-whiskers minimizing heat gain in the visible and near-infrared (NIR) were coated on the opposite side with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polyurethane (PU) resin. The home-made chambers covered by the Janus fabric are cooled by 5–7 °C and warmed by 2–3 °C under both indoor and outdoor environments. The photothermal enhancement in the heating mode is significantly improved by over 20% in the solar irradiance absorption, and in the cooling mode, the Janus fabric has a large reflectivity (∼90%) and a high emissivity (>90%) in the mid-infrared simultaneously. The fabrication of the present Janus fabric is highly scalable, showing great potential in improving personal thermal management and energy saving of indoor air conditioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autologous matrix-induced chondrogenesis improves microfracture (MF), but the lack of functional cells and factors inhibit a curative effect. Here, inspired by the healing process of wounds, we prepared a polysaccharide hybrid scaffold (HDCP) to immobilize endogenous growth factors (eGFs), which were derived from platelet-rich plasma (PRP). Compared with the absence of PRP, the hybrid cross-linking network endowed this scaffold with a denser pore structure, enhanced mechanical properties, and slower protein mass transfer rate, thus ensuring the long-term sustainable release of eGFs. In vitro studies confirmed that HDCP promoted bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell recruitment, proliferation, and chondrogenic differentiation. In vivo implantation indicated that HDCP regenerated a smooth articular cartilage surface with a regular fibrous matrix arrangement structure, and the mechanical strength of the regenerated cartilage considerably improved. The obvious MF enhancement implied that PRP and polysaccharide scaffold hybridization could be used as an implantable matrix for cartilage repair. The polysaccharide hybrid scaffolds (HDCP) encapsulated with endogenous GFs prepared by collagen activation of PRP and HADN-mediated hybrid cross-linking mechanism displayed the abilities to realize long term sustainable release of endogenous GFs, good biocompatibility, abilities to enhance BMSCs enrichment and migration in vitro and in vivo and enhance the efficacy of MF, which might be a potential implantable matrix for MF enhancement. [Display omitted] • The HADN-medicated PRP realized sustainable release of endogenous growth factors. • The HDCP facilitated proliferation, migration and GAG secretion of BMSCs in vitro. • The HDCP enhanced functional cells enrichment and matrix formation in vivo. • The HDCP promoted the mechanical strength of the regenerated cartilage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initiation of timely and sufficient zygotic genome activation (ZGA) is crucial for the beginning of life, yet our knowledge of transcription factors (TFs) contributing to ZGA remains limited. Here, we screened the proteome of early mouse embryos after cycloheximide (CHX) treatment and identified maternally derived KLF17 as a potential TF for ZGA genes. Using a conditional knockout (cKO) mouse model, we further investigated the role of maternal KLF17 and found that it promotes embryonic development and full fertility. Mechanistically, KLF17 preferentially binds to promoters and recruits RNA polymerase II (RNA Pol II) in early 2-cell embryos, facilitating the expression of major ZGA genes. Maternal Klf17 knockout resulted in a downregulation of 9% of ZGA genes and aberrant RNA Pol II pre-configuration, which could be partially rescued by introducing exogenous KLF17. Overall, our study provides a strategy for screening essential ZGA factors and identifies KLF17 as a crucial TF in this process. [Display omitted] • Maternal transcription complexes are translationally activated before major ZGA • KLF17 is maternally required for preimplantation development and female fertility • Maternal KLF17 guides RNA Pol II to promote timely ZGA initiation • Maternal KLF17 participates in RNA Pol II pre-configuration Hu et al. identify KLF17 as a crucial player in early embryonic development through proteomic analysis in mice, showcasing its involvement in major ZGA. They highlight the importance of KLF17 as an independent regulatory factor, actively participating in RNA Pol II pre-configuration and exerting maternal effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Extrusion transformed plant protein molecules from spherical to fibrous. • Extrusion induced more flexible protein molecular chains. • Extrusion led original chemical bonds to break and formed new crosslinks. • Molecular weight of peptides in digesta decreased post extrusion. • Extrusion reduced the free amino acids in cell transport products. Extruded plant proteins, also known as textured vegetable proteins (TVPs), serve as vital components in plant-based meat analogue, yet their structural and nutritional characteristics remain elusive. In this study, we examined the impact of high-moisture (HM) and low-moisture (LM) extrusion on the structures, digestion and absorption of three types of plant proteins. Extrusion transformed plant proteins from spherical to fibrous forms, and formed larger aggregate particles. It also led to the disruption of original disulfide bonds and hydrophobic interactions within protein molecules, and the formation of new cross-links. Intriguingly, compared to native plant proteins, TVPs' α-helix/β-sheet values decreased from 0.68 to 0.69 to 0.56–0.65. Extrusion increased the proportion of peptides shorter than 1 kD in digesta of TVPs by 1.44–23.63%. In comparison to unextruded plant proteins, TVPs exhibited lower content of free amino acids in cell transport products. Our findings demonstrated that extrusion can modify protein secondary structure by diminishing the α-helix/β-sheet value, and impact protein tertiary structure by reducing disulfide bonds and hydrophobic interactions, promoting the digestion and absorption of plant proteins. These insights offer valuable scientific backing for the utilization of extruded plant-based proteins, bolstering their role in enhancing the palatability and nutritional profile of plant-based meat substitutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional methods of generating vortex beams based on metasurfaces consist mainly in modulating propagation phase or geometric phase. Here, by introducing detour phase, we propose the construction of dual-polarized vortex beam generators in the form of metasurface and metagrating (MG). The phase is modulated through moving the position of meta-atoms instead of varying the geometrical parameters or rotating the unit cells. To use detour phase, two kinds of unit cells are designed to achieve specific diffraction order. Each unit can arbitrarily and independently adjust the operation frequency and diffraction angle of transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarizations. Two vortex beam generators are designed and fabricated with different topological charges carried by orthogonal polarizations. To demonstrate the ability to independently manipulate, two polarizations of the generator based on MG are designed in different frequency bands. Both the simulation and experimental results validate the proposed method, showing great potential for polarization division multiplexing in orbital angular momentum (OAM) communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic semiconductor devices with low energy consumption and excellent stability are highly desirable. Controlling the intermolecular alignment orientation by designing the molecular structure or optimization of the film preparation process is an alternative way to achieve this goal. In this paper, a new idea was proposed to realize the formation of an aligned monomolecular layer and multimolecular layer thin films on the electrode substrate by controlling the surface pressure of molecular layer on the liquid surface by LB technology. An amphiphilic π‐conjugated D−A molecule was synthesized, and the influence of spin coating and LB technology on intermolecular ordered stacking in the film and the electrical memory performance were investigated. The results demonstrated that the film fabricated by LB technology has some advantages compared with that fabricated by spin‐coating method, such as higher crystallinity, lower surface roughness and better‐organized monomolecular and multimolecular layer, which significantly promoted the performance of the electrical memory device with lower power consumption and longer stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spontaneous heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) syndrome, characterized by clinical and serologic features of HIT despite the absence of proximate heparin exposure, can be triggered by total knee arthroplasty (TKA). A 56-year-old female receiving aspirin thromboprophylaxis post-TKA presented with aphasia and thrombocytopenia on post-operative day 11. Imaging studies revealed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) and intravenous bivalirudin was initiated. Her serum tested strong-positive for IgG anti-PF4/polyanion complexes and serotonin-release assay in the presence and absence of heparin; strong-positive IgG-specific chemiluminescent immunoassay; and moderate-positive latex immunoturbidimetric assay. Two 65 g doses of IVIG were administered. With the improvement of her platelet count, she was transitioned from bivalirudin to warfarin. At one-year follow-up, she remained free of recurrent thrombosis and neurologically stable with a normal platelet count. Previous reports of post-TKA spontaneous HIT syndrome include venous/arterial thrombosis and adrenal hemorrhage, and this report of CVST expands the clinical spectrum of this rare complication of orthopedic surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alkali-metal-ion doping is an efficient strategy to improve the device performance of thin film solar cells. Though doping with Li+ or Cs+ doping has been reported in Ag–Bi–I solar cells, the influence of doping with other alkali metal ions on Ag–Bi–I solar cells has not been systematically studied. In this work, we investigate the effects of five alkali metal ions (Li+, Na+, K+, Rb+, and Cs+) on the structure, morphology, and optical and electrical properties of Ag2BiI5 absorber layers, and also their influence on the device performance. All alkali-metal-doped Ag2BiI5 thin films show high crystallinity and have similar suitable band gaps. Hall effect measurements demonstrate that the alkali-metal-doped Ag2BiI5 films show an improved electrical performance compared with the pristine Ag2BiI5 thin film, which is beneficial to achieving high-efficiency solar cells. Unexpectedly, Cs+ doping can significantly increase the grain size of Ag2BiI5 thin films, leading to a porous absorber that reduces the device efficiency. The device performance of Li+-, Na+-, K+- and Rb+-doped Ag2BiI5 is significantly improved compared with that of pristine Ag2BiI5. It is found that the order of the power conversion efficiency promotion ability is K+ > Rb+ > Na+ > Li+ > Cs+ under the same experimental conditions. The present approach can be extended to other Bi-based solar cells to improve their device performance, which is critical for applications in absorbers with poor electrical performance or low crystallinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a low-profile planar 1 bit non-diffractive vortex beam generator is proposed based on frequency selective surface (FSS) in microwave region. The characteristic of Bessel beam is introduced to control the divergence of the vortex beam. The proposed unit cell is analyzed through equivalent circuit model. The main resonance is provided by the coupling between the patches and the circular slot grid. A cross patch is embedded in the slot to form another resonance. Two elements with 0° and 180° transmission phase are designed to discretize the phase distribution of the metalens. The simulation results show that the metalens can generate fulfill non-diffracting transmission upon a distance of the 32λ0, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coordination connection of organic linkers to the metal clusters leads to the formation of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), where the metal clusters and ligands are spatially entangled in a periodic manner. The immense availability of tuneable ligands of different length and functionalities gives rise to robust molecular porosity ranging from several angstroms to nanometres. Among the large family of MOFs, hafnium (Hf) based MOFs have been demonstrated to be highly promising for practical applications due to their unique and outstanding characteristics such as chemical, thermal, and mechanical stability, and acidic nature. Since the report of UiO-66(Hf) and DUT-51(Hf) in 2012, less than 200 Hf-MOFs (ca. 50 types of structures) have been reported. Besides, tetravalent cerium [Ce(IV)] has been proven to be capable of forming similar topological MOF structures to Zr and Hf since its first discovery in 2015. So far, ca. 40 Ce(IV) MOFs with 60% having UiO-66-type structure have been reported. This review will offer a holistic summary of the chemistry, uniqueness, synthesis, and applications of Hf/Ce(IV)-MOFs with a focus on presenting the development in the Hf/Ce(IV)-clusters, topologies, ligand structures, synthetic strategies, and practical applications of Hf/Ce(IV)-MOFs. In the end, we will present the research outlook for the development of Hf/Ce(IV)-MOFs in the future, including fundamental design of Hf/Ce(IV)-clusters, defect engineering, and various applications including membrane development, diversified types of catalytic reactions, irradiation absorption in nuclear waste treatment, water production and wastewater treatment, etc. We will also present the emerging computational approaches coupled with machine-learning algorithms that can be applied in screening Hf and Ce(IV) based MOF structures and identifying the best-performing MOFs for tailor-made applications in future practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our sense of touch helps us encounter the richness of our natural world. Across a myriad of contexts and repetitions, we have learned to deploy certain exploratory movements in order to elicit perceptual cues that are salient and efficient. The task of identifying optimal exploration strategies and somatosensory cues that underlie our softness perception remains relevant and incomplete. Leveraging psychophysical evaluations combined with computational finite element modeling of skin contact mechanics, we investigate an illusion phenomenon in exploring softness; where small-compliant and large-stiff spheres are indiscriminable. By modulating contact interactions at the finger pad, we find this elasticity-curvature illusion is observable in passive touch, when the finger is constrained to be stationary and only cutaneous responses from mechanosensitive afferents are perceptible. However, these spheres become readily discriminable when explored volitionally with musculoskeletal proprioception available. We subsequently exploit this phenomenon to dissociate relative contributions from cutaneous and proprioceptive signals in encoding our percept of material softness. Our findings shed light on how we volitionally explore soft objects, i.e., by controlling surface contact force to optimally elicit and integrate proprioceptive inputs amidst indiscriminable cutaneous contact cues. Moreover, in passive touch, e.g., for touch-enabled displays grounded to the finger, we find those spheres are discriminable when rates of change in cutaneous contact are varied between the stimuli, to supplant proprioceptive feedback. Author summary: How do we differentiate soft objects by touch, as we do in judging the ripeness of fruit? Our understanding of how material softness is perceptually encoded remains incomplete. This study investigates an illusion phenomenon that occurs in discriminating material compliances. We find that small-compliant and large-stiff spheres are naturally indistinguishable when pressed into a stationary finger, but readily discriminable when pressed upon. This phenomenon illuminates an interplay within our somatosensory system, in particular, between cutaneous responses from skin receptors and proprioceptive feedback traditionally tied to joint movements. It also reveals how our movements optimally evoke these cues to inform our percept of softness. Understanding how softness is encoded at skin contact is key to designing touch-enabled displays. Moreover, our approach is to computationally evaluate combinations of stimulus elasticity and curvature in modeling space prior to empirical experiments with human subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friction is a nonlinear effect that occurs in all mechanical systems which may cause limit cycles, tracking errors, and other undesirable effects. Traditional static friction models cannot characterize all the friction situations. In recent years, neural network (NN) technique has been widely used to approximate the nonlinear function. In this paper, a new method which combines radical basis function neural network (BRFNN) with beetle antennae search (BAS) algorithm for modeling friction in a robotic joint is proposed. Velocity, load, and temperature are considered as the three factors that influence the static friction. It is shown that the proposed BAS-RBFNN possesses better performance in terms of faster convergence rate and higher accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Droplet impact on cylindrical surfaces is a widespread phenomenon observed in both nature and industrial applications. The wettability and size of the cylinders, and the initial impact velocity, are expected to influence the impact dynamics, such as generating different droplet morphology, spreading/retracting processes, and contact time, which could finally determine the anti-icing property of power transmission lines. A particle-based mesh-free numerical approach, many-body dissipative particle dynamics, is employed to study the impact dynamics. The cylinders with three different sizes and three types of wettability are modelled, and different initial impact velocities are set. The simulations show the two liquid films (or lamellae) formed after impact can coalesce at the bottom site of a hydrophilic cylinder while they keep separate on hydrophobic and superhydrophobic cylinders. The maximum spreading diameter in the axial direction increases with the increase of impact velocity and cylinder size. Besides, the distribution of droplet detachment mode shows a strong dependence on initial impact velocity and cylinder size. In bouncing mode, the contact time increases with the increase of impact velocity while in dripping/bouncing mode, it has an opposite trend. The splashing angle is also observed to be dependent on the cylinder size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] Li-ion batteries suffer from two key safety issues: thermal overload and compression recovery, which may lead to flammability and mechanical failure. Silica aerogels are promising solutions to both these issues owing to their excellent thermal stability and tailored mechanical properties. However, finding the optimum sol composition in sol-gel-based aerogel synthesis is needed to address these issues at industry-relevant scales. Here, we propose an innovative approach to determine the optimum sol composition for methylsilsesquioxane (MSQ) aerogel sheets, which is based on the mechanisms of the effects of molar ratios of hydrolysis water and isopropyl alcohol (IPA) to methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) on the physical properties of MSQ aerogel sheets and according to the ternary contour distribution of their properties. The synthesized MSQ aerogels exhibited a soft, light, and powderless texture and featured superhydrophobic properties (150.2°), low thermal conductivity of 33.6 mW/(m·K), high thermal stability temperature in nitrogen atmosphere at 479.3 °C and moderate short-term (<6 h) service temperature of 120.0 °C. Significantly, the structural stability and elasticity of the aerogels surpassed the current state-of-the-art, showing recovery to 81.3 % of the original thickness and 85.2 % of the original stress after being subjected to 400 cycles of high-speed and high-strain consecutive compression, respectively. These excellent properties make the MSQ aerogel sheets promising for applications in thermal load and compression recovery management of diverse energy storage devices, including batteries for next-generation electric vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a new technique to design a low-profile planar vortex beam generator is proposed based on microwave frequency selective surface (FSS), which is capable of generating orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode under circularly polarized incidence. Such OAM generator is composed of transmissive units distributed over a planar surface. Each unit cell, behaving as a spatial phase shifter, is composed of a stack of patches and grids separated by thin dielectric substrates. In order to reduce the thickness of the device, a rectangular patch is embedded in the middle layer to introduce an additional resonance. Compared to other resonant unit cells, this structure presents nearly perfect efficiency to convert circularly polarized incident wave to its cross-polarized component. A simple equivalent circuit model, composed of transmission lines coupled together with shunt capacitors and inductors, is presented to analyze this structure. The prototype of the proposed planar OAM generator operating in $x$ -band is designed, fabricated, and experimentally characterized. Good agreement is achieved between full-wave simulations and measurements. It is demonstrated that the generator can achieve an efficiency of 85% at 10.7 GHz with an overall thickness of $0.067\lambda _{0}$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friction is a nonlinear effect that occurs in all mechanical systems which may cause limit cycles, tracking errors, and other undesirable effects. Traditional static friction models cannot characterize all the friction situations. In recent years, neural network (NN) technique has been widely used to approximate the nonlinear function. In this paper, a new method which combines radical basis function neural network (BRFNN) with beetle antennae search (BAS) algorithm for modeling friction in a robotic joint is proposed. Velocity, load, and temperature are considered as the three factors that influence the static friction. It is shown that the proposed BAS-RBFNN possesses better performance in terms of faster convergence rate and higher accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethylene glycol (EG)-based hybrid nanofluids containing graphene oxide–silver nanosheets (GO–Ag) were simply prepared without using any surfactant. The graphene oxide–silver composites were characterized using X-ray diffraction analysis, transmission electron microscope, infrared and UV–visible spectroscopy. The stability of GO–Ag nanofluids was estimated by UV–visible spectroscopy. The GO–Ag/EG hybrid nanofluids has good stability without significant sedimentation for 60 days. A few thermophysical properties of GO–Ag/EG nanofluids with 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 wt% nanosheets were analysed experimentally at different temperatures ranging from 20 to 50°C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The droplet anisotropic wetting on chemically heterogeneous stripe-patterned substrates after impact is studied by using many-body dissipative particle dynamics in this work. After a low-velocity impact on substrates with different length ratio (ratio of stripe width to the initial droplet size) and Cassie area fraction, the droplet can show various shapes and contact angles in parallel and orthogonal directions to the stripes. The elongation of the droplet can be increasingly evident when increasing the length ratio. Also, the contact angles at both directions follow the Cassie-Baxter predicted values well at low length ratio while deviate from them at high length ratio. Both the capillary and kinetic effects have a significant influence on the anisotropic wetting. When impact with higher velocity, the droplet leaves some residues on the hydrophilic stripes of the substrates. Surprisingly, the residues for substrates with certain length ratio (≤0.316) are distributed in circular regions with almost identical radii, indicating the spreading stages of them are independent on the surface properties and dominated by the kinetic effect. When the droplet reaches a stable state, the main body shows anisotropic wetting behavior, indicating the capillary effect dominates the wetting instead of the kinetic effect at the retraction stage. Unlabelled Image • Combined effect of length ratio, Cassie area fraction and initial kinetic energy is considered in spreading on substrates. • Critical length ratio is identified to separate the anisotropy and isotropy of wetting. • The droplet shows no anisotropic effect in spreading stage when given a high initial impact velocity. • A simple algorithm is proposed to calculate the contact angle of the droplet with distorted contact line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new method for generating high-efficiency vortex beam carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode is proposed based on the miniaturized element frequency selective surfaces (MEFSS) in the microwave region. The unit cell is a class of sub-wavelength periodic structure, which is composed of non-resonant elements with a low profile. A flat metalens is designed to control the wavefront of the propagating electromagnetic waves based on different phase responses of eight kinds of MEFSS unit cells. Under linearly-polarized normal incidence, a vortex beam carrying OAM mode with a topological charge of 1 is excited. The measurement results are in good agreement with the theoretical prediction and full-wave simulation. The proposed method shows great potential applications in generating OAM mode with high efficiency at microwave frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To investigate the potential of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) histogram parameters in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) for distinguishing different tumor stages and determining lymph node status and correlations between ADC values and p53 and Ki-67 expression.Procedures: Forty-nine EOC patients underwent preoperative magnetic resonance imaging. Staging and lymph node status were determined postoperatively. ADC values were measured using histogram analysis and compared between groups. Relationships between ADCs and Ki-67 and p53 expression were explored.Results: DC parameters differed significantly between stage I vs II, I vs III, and I vs IV. The parameters were significantly lower in the lymph node-positive group than in the lymph node-negative group, were significantly negatively correlated with Ki-67 labeling index, and were all significantly lower in the mutation-type p53 group than in the wild-type p53 group.Conclusions: ADC histogram analysis can help discriminate stage I from advanced-stage EOC and predict lymph node metastasis. ADC parameters were correlated with Ki-67 labeling index; the parameters may help indicate p53 expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]