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Caenorhabditis elegans is a versatile model organism for exploring complex biological systems. Microbes and the external environment can affect the nervous system and drive behavioral changes in C. elegans. For better survival, C. elegans may develop behavioral immunity to avoid potential environmental pathogens. However, the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying this avoidance behavior are not fully understood. The dissection of sensorimotor circuits in behavioral immunity may promote advancements in research on the neuronal connectome in uncovering neuronal regulators of behavioral immunity. In this review, we discuss how the nervous system coordinates behavioral immunity by translating various pathogen-derived cues and physiological damage to motor output in response to pathogenic threats in C. elegans. This understanding may provide insights into the fundamental principles of immune strategies that can be applied across species and potentially contribute to the development of novel therapies for immune-related diseases.

Detection based on LiDAR and camera fusion is increasingly popular for researchers in the autonomous driving domain. Compared to the camera-only and LiDAR-only methods, the fusion-based methods indeed improve the detection accuracy on public-available datasets. However, due to the complexity of the projection or fusion mechanism, few of these methods can run in real time even on an advanced desktop GPU. Thus, in this paper, we propose a new fusion detection model G-Fusion with a light and fast image view-transform module. According to our receptive field analysis of image feature maps, we directly project image features to only one voxel layer located on the ground, then fuse the LiDAR and image features by concatenation and convolution. With this delicately designed module, G-Fusion greatly boosts the state-of-the-art speed performance on the nuScenes dataset, achieving a good balance with the competitive detection scores. Meanwhile, since the precision of sensor extrinsic parameters is important for most fusion-based methods, we also deeply dig into our model’s calibration error tolerance ability and discover the failure noise condition.

This paper introduces a four-band tunable perfect absorber built on Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystal. The operating frequency range is 4.75 THz to 9.25 THz, which is in the terahertz band. The absorber exhibits multiple narrow bands, polarization incoherence, high sensitivity, and tunability. The structure comprises a gold layer, a silica dielectric layer, and a top layer of Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystal from bottom to top. The Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystal structure at the top consists of a circular ring left after being cut by a 45° rotation of the cruciform and a cruciform design containing a central circular cavity. Simulation results reveal four absorption peaks attributed to cavity resonance and surface plasmon resonance, with absorption efficiencies of 0.998, 0.994, 0.989, and 0.998, respectively. Furthermore, changing the radius of the inner ring in the top layer structure allows for varying the number of absorption peaks. We also propose a new fabrication process for Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystals absorbers. The calculated results demonstrate that the designed absorber, characterized by a simple structure and high sensitivity of 2620 GHz/RIU, holds significant potential for applications in optical switches, optical modulators, biomedicine, and sensing.

Disinfection by-products (DBPs), including trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs), have attracted attention due to their carcinogenic properties, leading to varying conclusions. This meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the dose-response relationship and the dose-dependent effect of DBPs on cancer risk. We performed a selective search in PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase databases for articles published up to September 15th, 2023. Our meta-analysis eventually included 25 articles, encompassing 8 cohort studies with 6038,525 participants and 10,668 cases, and 17 case-control studies with 10,847 cases and 20,702 controls. We observed a positive correlation between increased cancer risk and higher concentrations of total trihalomethanes (TTHM) in water, longer exposure durations, and higher cumulative TTHM intake. These associations showed a linear trend, with relative risks (RRs) and 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) being 1.02 (1.01–1.03), 1.04 (1.02–1.06), and 1.02 (1.00–1.03), respectively. Gender-specific analyses revealed slightly U-shaped relationships in both males and females, with males exhibiting higher risks. The threshold dose for TTHM in relation to cancer risk was determined to be 55 µg/L for females and 40 µg/L for males. A linear association was also identified between bladder cancer risk and TTHM exposure, with an RR and 95 % CI of 1.08 (1.05–1.11). Positive linear associations were observed between cancer risk and exposure to chloroform, bromodichloromethane (BDCM), and HAA5, with RRs and 95 % CIs of 1.02 (1.01–1.03), 1.33 (1.18–1.50), and 1.07 (1.03–1.12), respectively. Positive dose-dependent effects were noted for brominated THMs above 35 µg/L and chloroform above 75 µg/L. While heterogeneity was observed in the studies for quantitative synthesis, no publication bias was detected. Exposure to TTHM, chloroform, BDCM, or HAA5 may contribute to carcinogenesis, and the risk of cancer appears to be dose-dependent on DBP exposure levels. A cumulative effect is suggested by the positive correlation between TTHM exposure and cancer risk. Bladder cancer and endocrine-related cancers show dose-dependent and positive associations with TTHM exposure. Males may be more susceptible to TTHM compared to females.

Aumolertinib, as a novel third-generation epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI), has been widely employed as a first-line treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with EGFR mutation. However, reports regarding the benefit of using aumolertinib as a monotherapy in pulmonary giant cell carcinoma are relatively scarce. In this report, we present a pulmonary giant cell carcinoma case harboring the EGFR Leu858Arg (L858R) mutation, with the patient at stage cT2bN3M1c IVB. Through the use of autolearning as a single agent, we effectively controlled the progression of pulmonary giant cell carcinoma, achieving a 6-month progression-free survival during the treatment course. Notably, the patient’s tumor not only ceased its growth but also continued to shrink, highlighting a significant therapeutic effect. This case reveals the effectiveness of aumolertinib as a monotherapy in controlling disease progression. The finding underscores the therapeutic advantage of aumolertinib in this particular subgroup of patients, offering a novel treatment option for pulmonary giant cell carcinoma.

Object detection, which is one of the most fundamental visual recognition tasks, has been a hotspot in computer vision. CNN (Convolutional Neural Networks) have been widely employed for building detector. Due to the success of RPN (Region Proposal Network), the two-stage detectors get both classification accuracy and precise regression bounding boxes. However, they still struggle in small-size object detection. In this paper, we present a deep network, namely Spatial Fine-Grained Network (SFGN). The SFGN that exploits Spatial Fine-Grained Features (SFGF) concatenates the higher resolution features, which is fine-grained with the low resolution features and high-level semantic by stacking spatial features for fine-grained features. An enhanced region proposal generator is proposed to get the objectless for small object to obtain a small set of proposal. The contextual information surrounding the region of interest is embedded using local spatial information for increasing the useful information and discriminating the background. For improving the detection performance, we use a simple yet surprisingly effective online hard example mining (OHEM) algorithm for training region proposal generator. It embeds an efficiently implemented soft non-maximum suppression (soft-NMS) for replacing with tradition NMS to obtain consistent improvements without increasing the computational complexity in inference. On PASCAL VOC 2007 and PASCAL VOC 2012 datasets, our SFGN improves baseline model from 81.2% mAP to 80.6% mAP. On MS COCO dataset, SFGN also performs better than baseline model. As intuition suggests, our detection results provide strong evidence that our SFGN improves detection accuracy, especially in small object test.

Abstract. Background: Much experimental work has established that the passage of time is represented along a horizontal or a vertical mental timeline (MTL). Recent research (Hartmann et al., 2014) discovered an additional diagonal MTL that develops from bottom left to top right. This study sought to extend Hartmann et al.’s (2014) work by exploring if the particular representations of diagonal timelines vary across linguistic communities. Methods: We conducted an experiment that recruited English and Mandarin speakers as participants. The experimental setups measured the participants’ space-time mappings along the bottom-left/top-right, top-left/bottom-right, bottom-right/top-left, and top-right/bottom-left axes. Results: There are cross-linguistic/cultural differences in the mental representations of diagonal timelines. While the English speakers displayed a salient propensity to conceive of time as oriented from bottom left to top right, the Mandarin speakers favored a timeline unfolding from top left to bottom right. Discussion: We assume that cultural artifacts such as writing direction may play an important role in affecting the horizontal dimension of people’s MTLs. The current findings refine the existing literature and demonstrate that distinct types of linguistic metaphors may respectively explain the vertical dimension of the MTLs for speakers of different native languages.

Conceptual metaphors are essential for explaining and understanding social concerns. Natural disaster metaphors are commonly employed to access the abstract and negative impacts of social issues. Five of the top 10 most prevalent natural disaster frames in the Center for Chinese Linguistics (CCL)—earthquake, flood, fire hazard, drought, typhoon, landslide, volcano, sandstorm, tsunami, and debris flow—share a common economic target domain and show economic recession. Additionally, corpus-based research has revealed that the landslide frame is the most salient in figuratively representing economic declines. An experimental study derived from the corpus analysis has found that the landslide-framed economic crises posed more severity to participants and exerted a notable influence on their opinions and judgments. Therefore, when effective communication of economic hazards is to be realized, metaphorical representation of economic crises demands great consideration.

Background: Immune escape is a key factor influencing survival rate of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) patients, but molecular mechanism of ubiquitin binding enzyme E2T (UBE2T) affecting immune escape of LUAD remains unclear. The objective was to probe role of UBE2T in LUAD. Methods: Bioinformatics means were adopted for analyzing UBE2T and forkhead box A1 (FOXA1) expression in LUAD tissues, the gene binding sites, the pathway UBE2T regulates, and the correlation between UBE2T and glycolysis genes. Dual luciferase and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays were conducted for validating the binding relationship between the two genes. Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and western blot were employed to evaluate UBE2T, FOXA1, and programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) levels in cancer cells. MTT assay was conducted for detecting cell viability. Cytotoxicity assay detected CD8+T cell toxicity. Cytokine expression was assayed by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Extracellular acidification rate (ECAR) and oxygen consumption rate (OCR) were assayed by extracellular flow analyzer. Glycolytic gene expression was analyzed by qRT-PCR, and glycolysis-related indicators were detected by ELISA. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) detected CD8+T cell infiltration in tumor tissues. Results: FOXA1 and UBE2T were up-regulated in LUAD, and a binding site existed between UBE2T and FOXA1. Overexpressing UBE2T could increase PD-L1 expression and inhibit toxicity of CD8+T cells to LUAD cells. Overexpressing UBE2T repressed CD8+T cell activity in LUAD by activating the glycolysis pathway, and the addition of glycolysis inhibitor 2-deoxy-d-glucose (2-DG) reversed the above results. Mechanistically, FOXA1 promoted the immune escape of LUAD by up-regulating UBE2T and thus mediating glycolysis. In vivo experiments revealed that UBE2T knockdown hindered tumor growth, inhibited PD-L1 expression, and facilitated CD8+T cell infiltration. Conclusion: FOXA1 up-regulated the expression of UBE2T, which activated glycolysis, and thus inhibited activity of CD8+T cells, causing immune escape of LUAD.

Surface plasmon resonance sensors have found wide applications in optical sensing field due to their excellent sensitivity to the slight refractive index change of surrounding medium. However, the intrinsically high optical losses in metals make it nontrivial to obtain narrow resonance spectra, which greatly limits the performance of surface plasmon resonance sensors. This review first introduces the influence factors of plasmon linewidths of metallic nanostructures. Then, various approaches to achieve narrow resonance linewidths are summarized, including the fabrication of nanostructured surface plasmon resonance sensors supporting surface lattice resonance/plasmonic Fano resonance or coupling with a photonic cavity, the preparation of surface plasmon resonance sensors with ultra-narrow resonators, as well as strategies such as platform-induced modification, alternating different dielectric layers, and the coupling with whispering-gallery-modes. Lastly, the applications and some existing challenges of surface plasmon resonance sensors are discussed. This review aims to provide guidance for the further development of nanostructured surface plasmon resonance sensors.

The miniMOS technique has been widely used in the C. elegans community to generate single copy insertions. A worm is considered as a potential insertion candidate if it is resistant to G418 antibiotics and does not express a co-injected fluorescence marker. If the expression of the extrachromosomal array is very low, it is possible for a worm to be mistakenly identified as a miniMOS candidate, as this low expression level can still confer resistance to G418 without producing a detectable fluorescence signal from the co-injection marker. This may increase the workload for identifying the insertion locus in the subsequent steps. In the present study, we modified the plasmid platform for miniMOS insertion by incorporating a myo-2 promoter-driven TagRFP or a ubiquitous H2B::GFP expression cassette into the targeting vector and introducing two loxP sites flanking the selection cassettes. Based on this new miniMOS tool kit, the removable fluorescence reporters can be used to visualize the single copy insertions, greatly reducing insertion locus identification efforts. In our experience, this new platform greatly facilitates the isolation of the miniMOS mutants.

Epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) mediated by fluid shear stress (FSS) in the tumor microenvironment plays an important role in driving metastasis of the malignant tumor. As a mechanotransducer, Yes‐associated protein (YAP) is known to translocate into the nucleus to initiate transcription of genes involved in cell proliferation upon extracellular biophysical stimuli. Here, we showed that FSS facilitated cytoskeleton rearrangement in hepatocellular carcinoma cells, which led to the release of YAP from its binding partner, integrin β subunit, in the cytomembrane. Moreover, we found that upregulation of guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF)‐H1, a microtubule‐associated Rho GEF, is a critical step in the FSS‐induced translocation of YAP. Nuclear YAP activated the expression of the EMT‐regulating transcription factor SNAI1, but suppressed the expression of N6‐methyladenosine (m6A) modulators; together, this promoted the expression of EMT‐related genes. We also observed that FSS‐treated HepG2 cells showed markedly increased tumorigenesis and metastasis in vivo. Collectively, our findings unravel the underlying molecular processes by which FSS induces translocation of YAP from the cytomembrane to the nucleus, contributes to EMT and enhances metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Abstract Accumulating evidence over the last two decades has established the causal role of a unidirectional orthography in shaping speakers’ mental representations of time. Casasanto and Bottini (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 473-479, 2014) extended previous findings by showing that exposure to mirror-reversed orthography of speakers’ native language could completely redirect their mental timelines within minutes. However, the question of whether such a causal effect of writing direction on temporal cognition can be identified in speakers whose native languages adopt bidirectional orthographies remains underexplored in the literature. To address this issue, the present study focused on Japanese which uses bidirectional writing systems, one proceeding horizontally from left to right (HLR) and one vertically from top to bottom (VTB). Two experiments were performed, and the tasks asked participants to process standard/mirror orthography prime questions about time arranged horizontally or vertically, followed by horizontal or vertical arrays of pictorial target stimuli about temporal relations. Results demonstrated that Japanese speakers encoded passage of time into a top-to-bottom linear path commensurate with the VTB writing direction, but they did not align their mental representations of time with the HLR writing orientation. Accordingly, exposure to mirror-reversed bidirectional orthographies redirected Japanese speakers’ vertical but not horizontal space-time mappings. Theoretical implications concerning the causal effects of bidirectional orthographies and the generalizability of the representational flexibility of time maintained by Casasanto and Bottini (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 473-479) are discussed.

Neural plasticity underlies learning and is regulated by modulation of gap junctions. Here, the authors show that NMDAR- and CaMKII-mediated cell autonomous downregulation of gap junction molecules in a circuit of interneurons facilitates olfactory learning affecting behavior in C. elegans.

This study recruited English monolinguals, Mandarin monolinguals, and Mandarin–English (ME) bilinguals to examine whether native English and native Mandarin speakers think about time differently and whether the acquisition of L2 English could reshape native Mandarin speakers’ mental representations of temporal sequence. Across two experiments, we used the temporal congruency categorization paradigm which involved two-alternative forced-choice reaction time tasks to contrast experimental conditions that were assumed to be either compatible or incompatible with the internal spatiotemporal associations. Results add to previous studies by confirming that native English and native Mandarin speakers do think about time differently, and the significant crosslinguistic discrepancy primarily lies in the vertical representations of time flow. However, current findings also clarify the existing literature, demonstrating that the acquisition of L2 English does not appear to affect native Mandarin speakers’ temporal cognition. ME bilinguals, irrespective of whether they attained elementary or advanced level of English proficiency, exhibited temporal thinking patterns commensurate with those of Mandarin monolinguals. Some theoretical implications regarding the effect of bilingualism on cognition in general can be drawn from the present study, a crucial one being that it provides evidence against the view that L2 acquisition can reshape habitual modes of thinking established by L1.

Olfactory integration is important for survival in a natural habitat. However, how the nervous system processes signals of two odorants present simultaneously to generate a coherent behavioral response is poorly understood. Here, we characterize circuit basis for a form of olfactory integration in Caenorhabditis elegans. We find that the presence of a repulsive odorant, 2-nonanone, that signals threat strongly blocks the attraction of other odorants, such as isoamyl alcohol (IAA) or benzaldehyde, that signal food. Using a forward genetic screen, we found that genes known to regulate the structure and function of sensory neurons, osm-5 and osm-1, played a critical role in the integration process. Loss of these genes mildly reduces the response to the repellent 2-nonanone and disrupts the integration effect. Restoring the function of OSM-5 in either AWB or ASH, two sensory neurons known to mediate 2-nonanone-evoked avoidance, is sufficient to rescue. Sensory neurons AWB and downstream interneurons AVA, AIB, RIM that play critical roles in olfactory sensorimotor response are able to process signals generated by 2-nonanone or IAA or the mixture of the two odorants and contribute to the integration. Thus, our results identify redundant neural circuits that regulate the robust effect of a repulsive odorant to block responses to attractive odorants and uncover the neuronal and cellular basis for this complex olfactory task.

plasmonic induced reflection (PIR) effect has potential applications in many nanophotonics devices, Such as slow light, absorber and filter. To realize plasmonic induced interference, in this paper, we present PIR effect in a periodic subwavelength array of nanoslit side-coupled to nanodisk resonator. Both finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) and coupled-mode theory (CMT) method indicate that the destructive interference between the bright mode resonator (nanosilt) and dark mode resonator (nanodisk) leads to PIR effect. Double-band absorption with maximum absorbance up to 96% and 90% is achieved 1440 nm and 1661 nm, respectively. The effect of structural parameters on reflection and the field distribution are also studied in detail. Moreover, multiple PIR effect can be realized by introducing more dark mode resonators. The results will pave the way towards the design of double band PIR, which may have potential application in slow light technology, plasmonic modulator, plasmonic filter and multiband plasmonic absorbers.

The paper proposes an ultra-narrow band graphene refractive index sensor, consisting of a patterned graphene layer on the top, a dielectric layer of SiO2 in the middle, and a bottom Au layer. The absorption sensor achieves the absorption efficiency of 99.41% and 99.22% at 5.664 THz and 8.062 THz, with the absorption bandwidths 0.0171 THz and 0.0152 THz, respectively. Compared with noble metal absorbers, our graphene absorber can achieve tunability by adjusting the Fermi level and relaxation time of the graphene layer with the geometry of the absorber unchanged, which greatly saves the manufacturing cost. The results show that the sensor has the properties of polarization-independence and large-angle insensitivity due to the symmetric structure. In addition, the practical application of testing the content of hemoglobin biomolecules was conducted, the frequency of first resonance mode shows a shift of 0.017 THz, and the second resonance mode has a shift of 0.016 THz, demonstrating the good frequency sensitivity of our sensor. The S (sensitivities) of the sensor were calculated at 875 GHz/RIU and 775 GHz/RIU, and quality factors FOM (Figure of Merit) are 26.51 and 18.90, respectively; and the minimum limit of detection is 0.04. By comparing with previous similar sensors, our sensor has better sensing performance, which can be applied to photon detection in the terahertz band, biochemical sensing, and other fields.

Interesting coherence and correlations appear between superpositions of two bosonic modes when the modes are parametrically coupled to a third intermediate mode and are also coupled to external modes which are in thermal states of unequal mean photon numbers. Under such conditions, it is found that one of linear superpositions of the modes, which is effectively decoupled from the other modes, can be perfectly coherent with the other orthogonal superposition of the modes and can simultaneously exhibit anticoherence with the intermediate mode, which can give rise to entanglement between the modes. It is shown that the coherence effects have a substantial effect on the population distribution between the modes, which may result in lowering the population of the intermediate mode. This shows that the system can be employed to cool modes to lower temperatures. Furthermore, for appropriate thermal photon numbers and coupling strengths between the modes, it is found that entanglement between the directly coupled superposition and the intermediate modes may occur in a less restricted range of the number of the thermal photons such that the modes could be strongly entangled, even at large numbers of the thermal photons.

Internal state alters sensory behaviors to optimize survival strategies. The neuronal mechanisms underlying hunger-dependent behavioral plasticity are not fully characterized. Here we show that feeding state alters C. elegans thermotaxis behavior by engaging a modulatory circuit whose activity gates the output of the core thermotaxis network. Feeding state does not alter the activity of the core thermotaxis circuit comprised of AFD thermosensory and AIY interneurons. Instead, prolonged food deprivation potentiates temperature responses in the AWC sensory neurons, which inhibit the postsynaptic AIA interneurons to override and disrupt AFD-driven thermotaxis behavior. Acute inhibition and activation of AWC and AIA, respectively, restores negative thermotaxis in starved animals. We find that state-dependent modulation of AWC-AIA temperature responses requires INS-1 insulin-like peptide signaling from the gut and DAF-16/FOXO function in AWC. Our results describe a mechanism by which functional reconfiguration of a sensory network via gut-brain signaling drives state-dependent behavioral flexibility.

Abstract The activation of EphA2 receptor by its natural ligand EphrinA1 causes blood brain barrier dysfunction, and inactivation of EphA2 reduces BBB damage in ischemic stroke. Thus, EphA2 targeted antagonists may serve as neuroprotective agents. We engineered four mutants of EphrinA1, EM1, EM2, EM3 and EM4, respectively. The computational analysis showed that these four mutants were capable of interacting with EphA2. Their potential neuroprotective effects were examined in mouse focal ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) model. EM2 exhibited strong neuroprotective effects, including reduced brain infarct volume, neuronal apoptosis, cerebral edema, and improved neurological scores. The EM2-mediated protection was associated with a comparative decrease in BBB leakage, inflammatory infiltration, and higher expression levels of tight junction proteins, such as zonula occludens-1 and Occludin. I/R-induced high expression of Rho-associated protein kinase 2 (ROCK2) was down-regulated after EM2 treatment. Moreover, EM2 reduced agonist doxazosin-induced EphA2 phosphorylation and cells rounding in PC3 cells, indicating EphA2-antagonizing activity of EM2. These finding provided evidences of the neuroprotection of EphA2 antagonist and a novel approach for ischemic stroke treatment. These results also suggested that a receptor agonist can be switched to an antagonist by substituting one or more relevant residues.

A modified helical phase is presented in this paper. The generated vortex beams with the modified helical phases are characterized with ring-broken intensity distributions. The transverse intensity patterns of the generated vortex beams at a defined axial position and the focal plane are analyzed, respectively. The results demonstrate that the generated beam has an opening, whose size can be customized with a variable l′. The proposed vortex beams realized optical guiding of microparticles in the transverse planes of the beams. This kind of ring-broken beams will be promising for optical manipulation. Keywords: Helical phase, Optical vortices, Optical manipulation

The electrolyte is an important component of dye-sensitized solar cells. Here, Haoet al. use an electron donor additive in the cobalt-based electrolyte, which speeds up the dye regeneration and slows down recombinations. The resulting devices are stable and more efficient than those without additive.

Nitric oxide (NO) is released into the air by NO-producing organisms; however, it is unclear if animals utilize NO as a sensory cue. We show that C. elegans avoids Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA14) in part by detecting PA14-produced NO. PA14 mutants deficient for NO production fail to elicit avoidance and NO donors repel worms. PA14 and NO avoidance are mediated by a chemosensory neuron (ASJ) and these responses require receptor guanylate cyclases and cyclic nucleotide gated ion channels. ASJ exhibits calcium increases at both the onset and removal of NO. These NO-evoked ON and OFF calcium transients are affected by a redox sensing protein, TRX-1/thioredoxin. TRX-1’s trans-nitrosylation activity inhibits the ON transient whereas TRX-1’s de-nitrosylation activity promotes the OFF transient. Thus, C. elegans exploits bacterially produced NO as a cue to mediate avoidance and TRX-1 endows ASJ with a bi-phasic response to NO exposure.

An MXene material absorbs visible and IR light which makes a MXene-based solar absorber an ideal absorber. Here, we propose a high-absorption broadband absorber based on an array of MXene composite cylinder ring structures. The structure designed in this article fully utilizes the MXene material's large surface area to volume ratio, and in the wavelength range of 300-5000 nm, the average absorption efficiency is as high as 98.44%, and the energy absorption rate in the AM 1.5 solar radiation spectrum is 98.76%. The absorption characteristics of the absorber are analyzed by using the finitedifference time-domain (FDTD) method. The electric and magnetic field patterns indicate that the high absorption performance is attributed to the coupling effect of surface plasmon resonance and gap surface plasmon resonance. Furthermore, the absorber exhibits insensitivity to the polarization angle and demonstrates high absorption efficiency even at large incidence angles. Within a certain manufacturing tolerance range, the absorber can still maintain its broadband absorption characteristics. The absorber also shows a high thermal emissivity of 98.5% when the temperature is 1750 K. The findings offer a theoretical foundation for the development of absorption metamaterials for solar energy harvesting elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a borophene-based grating structure (BBGS) to realize multi-band plasmoninduced absorption. The coupling of two resonance modes excited by upper borophene grating (UBG) and lower borophene grating (LBG) leads to plasmon-induced absorption. The coupled-mode theory (CMT) is utilized to fit the absorption spectrum. The simulated spectrum fits well with the calculated result. We found the absorption peaks exhibit a blue shift with an increase in the carrier density of borophene grating. Further, as the coupling distance D increases, the first absorption peak shows a blue shift, while the second absorption peak exhibits a red shift, leading to a smaller reflection window. Moreover, the enhancement absorption effect caused by the bottom PEC layer is also analyzed. On this basis, using a three-layer borophene grating structure, we designed a three-band perfect absorber with intensities of 99.83%, 99.45%, and 99.96% in the near-infrared region. The effect of polarization angle and relaxation time on the absorption spectra is studied in detail. Although several plasmon-induced absorption based on two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as graphene, black phosphorus, and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), have been previously reported, this paper proposes a borophene-based metamaterial to achieve plasmon-induced perfect absorption since borophene has some advantages such as high surface-to-volume ratios, mechanical compliance, high carrier mobility, excellent flexibility, and long-term stability. Therefore, the proposed borophene-based metamaterial will be beneficial in the fields of multi-band perfect absorber in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]