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Discriminative correlation filters (DCF) with powerful feature descriptors have proven to be very effective for advanced visual object tracking approaches. However, due to the fixed capacity in achieving discriminative learning, existing DCF trackers perform the filter training on a single template extracted by convolutional neural networks (CNN) or hand-crafted descriptors. Such single template learning cannot provide powerful discriminative filters with guaranteed validity under appearance variation. To pinpoint the structural relevance of spatio-temporal appearance to the filtering system, we propose a new tracking algorithm that incorporates the construction of the Grassmannian manifold learning in the DCF formulation. Our method constructs the model appearance within an online updated affine subspace. It enables joint discriminative learning in the origin and basis of the subspace, achieving enhanced discrimination and interpretability of the learned filters. In addition, to improve tracking efficiency, we adaptively integrate online incremental learning to update the obtained manifold. To this end, specific spatio-temporal appearance patterns are dynamically learned during tracking, highlighting relevant variations and alleviating the performance degrading impact of less discriminative representations from a single template. The experimental results obtained on several well-known datasets, i.e., OTB2013, OTB2015, UAV123, and VOT2018, demonstrate the merits of the proposed method and its superiority over the state-of-the-art trackers.

CO2 electroreduction reaction (CO2RR), combined with solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOECs), is a feasible technology for the storage of renewable electric energy, while its development is limited by the catalytic activity and stability on cathodes. Here, a novel garnet oxide (Gd3Fe5O12) cathode is designed, where the garnet oxide is converted to perovskite oxide and iron via in situ electrochemical phase transition during CO2 electroreduction, resulting in high activity with Faradaic efficiency close to 100% and great stability over 1000 h galvanostatic test. A variety of experimental characterizations and density functional theory calculations indicate that in situ exsolved Fe clusters can effectively enhance the adsorption energies of intermediates and lowering the CO2 dissociation barriers. Microkinetic modelling confirms that CO2RR goes through a dissociative adsorption mechanism and the electronic transfer for CO2 dissociation is the rate-determining step.

The past decades have witnessed great efforts in the on-demand ultrasonic field design in which the time reversal technology was widely used in the whole-space acoustic hologram. In practice, the acoustic field of interest is usually bounded in a finite region with flexible distribution. Here, the use of prolate spheroidal wave functions to generate an arbitrary ultrasonic field in a finite region is proposed. The prolate spheroidal functions, which form a complete set of band limited functions and are orthogonal in the infinite and finite regions, can be efficiently reconstructed by the sampling theorem. To display the validation of the proposed method, two types of functional ultrasonic fields are numerically simulated. One type is the ultrasound standing wave field for which six nodes and two nodes are separately realized for two different types of standing waves in the limited range of (-2λ, 2λ). In addition, a composite standing wave field is stimulated with more complicated nodal distributions. The other type is the ultrasound focusing field, where three focal spots with the mainlobe sizes of λ, 0.5λ, and 0.35λ are demonstrated. It is worth noting that the nontrivial side lobes for super-oscillation focusing are designed to be about 3λ away from the central focal spot (the mainlobe size 0.35λ). This work has much significance in the applications of acoustic tweezing, ultrasonic imaging, and treatment.

Cellulose, as a component of green plants, becomes attractive for fabricating biocompatible flexible functional devices but plagued by hydrophilic properties which make it easily break down in water by poor mechanical stability. Here we report a class of SiO2-nanoparticle-decorated bacteria-cellulose meta-skin with a superior stability in water, excellent machining property, ultrathin thickness, and bacteria repairing capacity. We further develop the methodology of meta-skin kirigami that can generate intricate patterns of ~10 μm precision. Benefited from the ultrasound insulation of the surface Cassie-Baxter states, we utilize the meta-skin kirigami to design and fabricate ultrathin (~ 20 μm) and super-light (< 20 mg) chip-scale devices, such as nonlocal holographic meta-lens and the 3D imaging meta-lens, realizing complicated acoustic holograms and high-resolution 3D ultrasound imaging in the far field. The cellulose-based meta-skin kirigami opens the way for exploiting flexible and bio-degradable soft metamaterial devices with functionality customization and key applications in advanced biomedical engineering technologies.

In recent years, discriminative correlation filter (DCF) based algorithms have significantly advanced the state of the art in visual object tracking. The key to the success of DCF is an efficient discriminative regression model trained with powerful multi-cue features, including both hand-crafted and deep neural network features. However, the tracking performance is hindered by their inability to respond adequately to abrupt target appearance variations. This issue is posed by the limited representation capability of fixed image features. In this work, we set out to rectify this shortcoming by proposing a complementary representation of a visual content. Specifically, we propose the use of a collaborative representation between successive frames to extract the dynamic appearance information from a target with rapid appearance changes, which results in suppressing the undesirable impact of the background. The resulting collaborative representation coefficients are combined with the original feature maps using a spatially regularised DCF framework for performance boosting. The experimental results on several benchmarking datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method, as compared with a number of state-of-the-art tracking algorithms.

Heterostructures based on diverse two-dimensional (2D) materials are effective for tailoring and further promoting device performance and exhibit considerable potential in photodetection. However, the problem of high-density thermionic carriers can be hardly overcome in most reported heterostructure devices based on type I and type II band alignment, which leads to an unacceptably small Iphoto/Idark and strong temperature dependence that limit the performance of photodetectors. Here, using the MoTe2/h-BN/MoTe2/h-BN heterostructure, we report the hole-dominated Fowler–Nordheim quantum tunneling transport in both on and off states. The state-of-the-art device operating at room temperature shows high detectivity of >108 Jones at a laser power density of

Ever since the Victorian era, montage, the process of pictorial composition made by juxtaposing or superimposing photographs, has been a very popular post-editing imaging technique. Despite showing a strong power in demonstrating complex wave field effects, this technique has neither been fully explored in acoustic imaging nor been realized in real-time systems with the capability beyond diffraction limits. On the other hand, the recent prospect of metamaterials has shown their great potentials in super-resolution acoustic imaging. However, the miracle jigsaw of more advanced functional modulation of acoustic wave fields at deep subwavelength scale still remains elusive. Here we report the experimental implementation of super-resolution acoustic image montage through a judiciously designed biaxial metamaterial lens. Based on the non-diffraction birefringence in the biaxial metamaterials, we realized various montage functionalities such as duplication, composition, and decomposition of sound images with distinctive deep subwavelength features. Our work represents an important step in developing versatile functional acoustic metamaterial devices for imaging purposes, as it provides on-demand editing of sound field patterns beyond diffraction limits.

The radiation of electromagnetic and mechanical waves depends not only on the intrinsic properties of the emitter but also on the surrounding environment. This principle has laid the foundation for the development of lasers, quantum optics, sonar, musical instruments and other fields related to wave–matter interaction. In the conventional wisdom, the environment is defined exclusively by its eigenstates, and an emitter radiates into and interacts with these eigenstates. Here we show experimentally that this scenario breaks down at a non-Hermitian degeneracy known as an exceptional point. We find a chirality-reversal phenomenon in a ring cavity where the radiation field reveals the missing dimension of the Hilbert space, known as the Jordan vector. This phenomenon demonstrates that the radiation field of an emitter can become fully decoupled from the eigenstates of its environment. The generality of this striking phenomenon in wave–matter interaction is experimentally confirmed in both electromagnetic and acoustic systems. Our finding transforms the fundamental understanding of light–matter interaction and wave–matter interaction in general, and enriches the intriguing physics of exceptional points. The modes of the radiation field generated from an emitter are usually determined by the eigenstates of the surrounding environment. However, this scenario breaks down in a non-Hermitian system, at the spectral degeneracy known as an exceptional point.

The Visual Object Tracking challenge VOT2021 is the ninth annual tracker benchmarking activity organized by the VOT initiative. Results of 71 trackers are presented; many are state-of-the-art trackers published at major computer vision conferences or in journals in recent years. The VOT2021 challenge was composed of four sub-challenges focusing on different tracking domains: (i) VOT-ST2021 challenge focused on short-term tracking in RGB, (ii) VOT-RT2021 challenge focused on "real-time" short-term tracking in RGB, (iii) VOT-LT2021 focused on long-term tracking, namely coping with target disappearance and reappearance and (iv) VOT-RGBD2021 challenge focused on long-term tracking in RGB and depth imagery. The VOT-ST2021 dataset was refreshed, while VOT-RGBD2021 introduces a training dataset and sequestered dataset for winner identification. The source code for most of the trackers, the datasets, the evaluation kit and the results along with the source code for most trackers are publicly available at the challenge website 1 .

Description, Dynamically modulated metasurface breaks Lorentz symmetry and realizes nonreciprocal sound manipulation., In linear, lossless, time-invariant, and nonbiased acoustic systems, mode transitions are time reversible, consistent with Lorentz reciprocity and implying a strict symmetry in space-time for sound manipulation. Here, we overcome this fundamental limitation by implementing spatiotemporally modulated acoustic metamaterials that support nonreciprocal sound steering. Our mechanism relies on the coupling between an ultrathin membrane and external biasing electromagnetic fields, realizing programmable dynamic control of the acoustic impedance over a motionless and noiseless platform. The fast and flexible impedance modulation of our metamaterial imparts an effective unidirectional momentum in space-time to realize nonreciprocal transitions in k-ω space between different diffraction modes. On the basis of these principles, we demonstrate efficient nonreciprocal sound steering, showcasing unidirectional evanescent wave conversion and nonreciprocal upconversion focusing. More generally, our metamaterial platform offers opportunities for generation of nonreciprocal Bloch waves and extension to other domains, such as non-Hermitian topological and parity-time symmetric acoustics.

Although it originated in quantum physics, the concept of $n\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}o\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}n\ensuremath{-}H\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}e\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}r\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}m\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}i\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}t\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}i\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}c\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}i\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}t\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}y$ (particularly involving a Hamiltonian with $b\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}a\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}l\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}a\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}n\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}c\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}e\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}d$ gain and loss, and thus $P\phantom{\rule{0}{0ex}}T$ symmetry and an exceptional point in frequency space) can also play a key role in classical systems, including those in acoustics. By incorporating suitably engineered gain or loss media, both cavity and scattering acoustic systems can produce a series of intriguing wave phenomena, with prospects for application in the design of innovative functional devices. This review aims to introduce the pedagogical models and recent achievements in this field, in the hope of being useful to a diverse audience.

Agricultural tillage practices significantly affect the structure and function of soil micro-bial community, as well as its control over soil carbon cycling. Conservation tillage practice based on no-tillage and crop straw returning is an important measure to improve soil carbon sequestration and fertility, in which soil microorganisms play a key role. Although many previous studies focus on the structure and function of microbial communities under conservation tillage, our overall understanding of soil microbial responses at community level upon conservation tillage is still lacking, due to the complexity of the soil, environmental factors and the different selections of microbial research methods. Furthermore, previous studies paid more attention to the role of soil microorganisms as decomposers and the contribution of plant-derived carbon to the formation of soil carbon pool, but ignored the contribution of microbial-derived carbon to the formation and stability of soil carbon pool. We summarized the paradigm shift in soil organic matter formation and stability theories, reviewed the research methods of soil microbial community, focused on the effects of conservation tillage on soil microbial biomass, community diversity and composition, carbon metabolism, as well as microbial-derived carbon storage, and proposed suggestions for future study, aiming to provide support for future studies regarding microbial responses and its control over soil carbon dynamics in agroecosystem.农田生态系统耕作方式显著影响土壤微生物群落结构和功能,进而影响土壤微生物介导的土壤碳循环过程。以免耕结合作物秸秆还田为核心的保护性耕作是提升土壤碳汇功能和肥力的重要措施,其中土壤微生物发挥了关键作用。尽管有较多关于保护性耕作下微生物群落结构与功能的研究,但由于土壤系统的复杂性、环境因素以及微生物群落评价方法的差异性,尚未形成对保护性耕作下土壤微生物群落响应规律的系统认知。此外,研究多关注土壤微生物作为分解者的作用以及植物源碳对土壤碳库形成的贡献,而忽略了微生物源碳对土壤碳库形成和稳定的贡献。本文在归纳土壤有机质形成和稳定理论体系演变的基础上,梳理了土壤微生物研究方法的进展,重点阐述了保护性耕作对土壤微生物生物量、群落多样性和组成、碳代谢活性以及微生物源有机碳截获的影响,并对未来该领域的研究方向进行展望,以期为探索农田生态系统土壤微生物群落响应规律及其介导的土壤碳循环功能提供参考。.

Mechanical topological insulators have enabled a myriad of unprecedented characteristics that are otherwise not conceivable in traditional periodic structures. While rich in dynamics, new developments in the domain of mechanical topological systems are hindered by their inherent inability to exhibit negative elastic or inertial couplings owing to the inevitable loss of dynamical stability. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to remedy this challenge by introducing a class of architected inertial metamaterials (AIMs) as a platform for designing mechanical lattices with novel topological and dispersion traits. We show that carefully coupling elastically supported masses via moment-free rigid linkages invokes a dynamically stable negative inertial coupling, which is essential for topological classes in need of such negative interconnection. The potential of the proposed AIMs is demonstrated via three examples: (i) a mechanical analogue of Majorana edge states, (ii) a square diatomic AIM that can sustain the quantum valley Hall effect (classically arising in hexagonal lattices), and (iii) a square tetratomic AIM with topological corner modes. We envision that the presented framework will pave the way for a plethora of robust topological mechanical systems.

Making heat stand still Dissipative oscillating systems (waves) can be described mathematically in terms of non-Hermitian physics. When parity-time symmetric systems have dissipative components, the interplay between gain and loss can lead to unusual and exotic behavior. Li et al. show theoretically and demonstrate experimentally that such behavior need not be limited to wave systems. Looking at the diffusion of heat, they devised an experimental setup comprising two thermally coupled disks rotating in opposite directions. The thermal energy transported by each disk is strongly coupled to the disk rotating in the opposite direction, providing a return path for the heat wave. For a particular rotation rate, there is an exceptional point where thermal coupling and counterrotating motion balance, resulting in the thermal energy profile being stationary over time. Science , this issue p. 170

There is increasing interest in improving the freeze-thaw stability of emulsions by interfacial engineering in the food colloid field. The present work reported that for Pickering emulsions stabilized by heat-induced soy protein isolate (SPI) nanoparticles, their freeze-thaw stability could be well modulated by modifying the characteristics of the nanoparticles. The SPI nanoparticles with different characteristics (e.g., particle size, surface hydrophobicity) were obtained by heating the SPI solutions at initial concentrations (ci) of 0.25–6.0 wt% at 95 °C for 15 min. All the initial Pickering emulsions were formed at an oil fraction of 0.4 and protein concentration of 0.25 wt% in the aqueous phase, in the presence of 300 mM NaCl. In general, increasing the ci resulted in a progressive enhancement in freeze-thaw stability of the emulsions against creaming and coalescence, but accelerated the flocculation. The higher creaming stability at higher ci values seemed to be closely associated with the enhanced coalescence stability, as well as the strengthened gel-like network of these initial emulsions. There were close interplays between the freeze-thaw stability and the properties of the initial emulsions, or characteristics (e.g. particle size or surface hydrophobicity) of heat-induced SPI nanoparticles. The results confirmed that the SPI nanoparticles with larger sizes, higher surface hydrophobicity and more efficient packing at interface exhibit a greater potential to produce Pickering emulsions with higher freeze-thaw stability. The findings would be of relevance for understanding the freeze-thaw stability of Pickering emulsions stabilized by protein-based particles, as well as for the development of protein-stabilized emulsion formulations with a high freeze-thaw stability.

The construction of carbon–carbon bonds is a central tenet of modern synthetic chemistry. Metal-catalyzed C–H functionalization can serve as a particularly powerful tool for achieving carbon–carbon bond formation. This review summarizes the early adventures and recent advancements in catalytic transformation of unactivated C(sp3)–H bonds into C(sp3)–C(sp3) bonds. To date, three main strategies have emerged to enable this transformation, namely, metallocarbene-triggered C(sp3)–H alkylation, auxiliary-directed C(sp3)–H alkylation, and photo-induced C(sp3)–H alkylation. Compared with traditional cross-coupling reactions having both coupling partners activated with functional groups or base-promoted enolate chemistry, catalytic alkylation of unactivated C(sp3)–H bonds for C(sp3)–C(sp3) bond formation not only offers novel disconnections in retrosynthetic analysis, but also represents the future trend in green and atom-economic chemistry.

Many unusual wave phenomena in artificial structures are governed by their topological properties. However, the topology of diffusion remains almost unexplored. One reason is that diffusion is fundamentally different from wave propagation because of its purely dissipative nature. The other is that the diffusion field is mostly composed of modes that extend over wide ranges, making it difficult to be rendered within the tight-binding theory as commonly employed in wave physics. Here, the above challenges are overcome and systematic studies are performed on the topology of heat diffusion. Based on a continuum model, the band structure and geometric phase are analytically obtained without using the tight-binding approximation. A deterministic parameter is found to link the geometric phase with the edge state, thereby proving the bulk-boundary correspondence for heat diffusion. The topological edge state is experimentally demonstrated as localized heat diffusion and its dependence on the boundary conditions is verified. This approach is general, rigorous, and able to reveal rich knowledge about the system with great accuracy. The findings set up a solid foundation to explore the topology in novel thermal management applications.

One-way sound-wave propagation has been a research hotspot in acoustics during the past decade, with the production of acoustic diode, acoustic topological insulator, and parity-time-symmetric acoustic metamaterial. Here, we investigate topological pumping for sound waves in a coupled cavity chain along selective paths driven by dynamic modulation. We first showcase the adiabatic passage of sound energy in a heterostructured Su-Schrieffer-Heeger cavity chain. By solving the Dirac-like governing equation, we calculate the eigenspectrum of this model and prove the existence of a topologically protected interface state and end states. From the eigenspectrum, if no level crossing exists, energy transfer of the sound wave (or acoustic topological pumping) is reversed under adiabatic modulation, leading to the release and return of sound energy for a specific topological state. However, when the level crossing occurs, we find that topological pumping between the interface state and end states can be selectively excited, rendering complete transfer of the sound energy between two topological states. Moreover, topological pumping of sound waves can exist along the asymmetric paths under driven modulation. Our work has promising applications for robust, selective, and efficient sound energy transfer in acoustic network systems.

We demonstrate the transient parity-time (PT) symmetry in electronics. It is revealed by equivalent circuit transformation according to the switching states of electronic systems. With the phasor method and Laplace transformation, we derive the hidden PT-symmetric Hamiltonian in the switching oscillation, which are characterized by free oscillation modes. Both spectral and dynamic properties of the PT electronic structure demonstrate the phase transition with eigenmode orthogonality. Importantly, the observed transient PT symmetry enables exceptional-point-induced optimal switching oscillation suppression, which shows the significance of PT symmetry in electronic systems with temporary responses. Our work paves the way for breakthroughs in the PT symmetry theory and has essential applications such as anti-interference in switch-mode electronics.

We investigate the topological skin effect in a ring resonator array which can be mapped into the square root of a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model with non-Hermitian asymmetric coupling. The asymmetric coupling is realized by integrating the same amount of gain and loss into the two half perimeters of linking rings that effectively couple two adjacent site rings. Such a square-root topological insulator inherits the properties from its parent Hamiltonian, which has the same phase transition points and exhibits non-Bloch features as well. We show the band closing points for open chain are different from that of periodic chain as a result of the skin effect. Moreover, the square-root insulator supports multiple topological edge modes as the number of band gaps is doubled compared to the original Hamiltonian. The full-wave simulations agree well with the theoretical analyses based on a tight-binding model. The study provides a promising approach to investigate the skin effect by utilizing ring resonators and may find potential applications in light trapping, lasers, and filters.

Breaking the diffraction limit to achieve super-resolution focusing is a long-sought goal in the field of acoustic imaging and detection. Here, we demonstrated super-resolution focusing of high-frequency ultrasound (5 MHz) based on an acoustic meta-lens with four centrosymmetric dart-like sharp-edge apertures. For the diffracted ultrasound carrying high spatial frequencies, super-resolution focusing is generated in the far field with mainlobe size breaking the diffraction limit (

We explore the exceptional point (EP) induced phase transition and amplitude/phase modulation in thermal diffusion systems. We start from the asymmetric coupling double-channel model, where the temperature field is unbalanced in the amplitude and locked in the symmetric phase. By extending into the one-dimensional tight-binding non-Hermitian lattice, we study the convection-driven phase locking and the asymmetric-couplinginduced diffusive skin effect with the high-order EPs in static systems. Combining convection and asymmetric couplings, we further show the phase-locking diffusive skin effect. Our work reveals the mechanism of controlling both the amplitude and phase of temperature fields in thermal coupling systems and has potential applications in non-Hermitian topology in thermal diffusion.