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This study investigates the fracture characteristics and damage mechanism of granite after treatment under different heating rates. The cracked straight-through Brazilian disc(CSTBD)specimen was used for high-temperature treatment with four heating rates under four sets of heating temperatures. The Brazilian splitting experiments were carried out using electro-hydraulic servo press after cooling down to room temperature, and the static fracture process was analyzed to investigate the effect of heating rate on the fracture mechanical properties of specimens. The results show that: (1) Granite treated at different high temperatures shifted from brittle to ductile damage. (2)The peak damage load of granite treated with different heating rates at the same temperature decreased with the increase of heating rate. At the same temperature, the increase of heating rate doesn't lead to obvious difference in the apparent color of granite, but with gradual increase of apparent cracks. (3)At different heating rates, the longitudinal wave velocity and elastic modulus at 200 ℃ and 400 ℃ show subtle changes, yet at 600 ℃ and above, the longitudinal wave velocity and elastic modulus decrease significantly with the increase of heating rate. (4) The fracture toughness of granite shows gradual decay with the increase of temperature. At the same temperature, type I fracture toughness of granite specimens decreases with the increase of heating rate. At 400 ℃, heating rate exerts maximum influence on the fracture toughness of granite.

The standardized workflow of computer-aided static guided implant surgery includes preoperative examination, data acquisition, guide design, guide fabrication and surgery. Errors may occur at each step, leading to irreversible cumulative effects and thus impacting the accuracy of implant placement. However, clinicians tend to focus on factors causing errors in surgical operations, ignoring the possibility of irreversible errors in nonstandard guided surgery. Based on the clinical practice of domestic experts and research progress at home and abroad, this paper summarizes the sources of errors in guided implant surgery from the perspectives of preoperative inspection, data collection, guide designing and manufacturing and describes strategies to resolve errors so as to gain expert consensus. Consensus recommendation: 1. Preoperative considerations: the appropriate implant guide type should be selected according to the patient's oral condition before surgery, and a retaining screw-assisted support guide should be selected if necessary. 2. Data acquisition should be standardized as much as possible, including beam CT and extraoral scanning. CBCT performed with the patient’s head fixed and with a small field of view is recommended. For patients with metal prostheses inside the mouth, a registration marker guide should be used, and the ambient temperature and light of the external oral scanner should be reasonably controlled. 3. Optimization of computer-aided design: it is recommended to select a handle-guided planting system and a closed metal sleeve and to register images by overlapping markers. Properly designing the retaining screws, extending the support structure of the guide plate and increasing the length of the guide section are methods to feasibly reduce the incidence of surgical errors. 4. Improving computer-aided production: it is also crucial to set the best printing parameters according to different printing technologies and to choose the most appropriate postprocessing procedures.

Electricigens decompose organic matter and convert stored chemical energy into electrical energy through extracellular electron transfer. They are significant biocatalysts for microbial fuel cells with practical applications in green energy generation, effluent treatment, and bioremediation. A facultative anaerobic electrogenic strain SQ-1 is isolated from sludge in a biotechnology factory. The strain SQ-1 is a close relative of Klebsiella variicola. Multilayered biofilms form on the surface of a carbon electrode after the isolated bacteria are inoculated into a microbial fuel cell device. This strain produces high current densities of 625 μA cm–2 by using acetate as the carbon source in a three-electrode configuration. The electricity generation performance is also analyzed in a dual-chamber microbial fuel cell. It reaches a maximum power density of 560 mW m–2 when the corresponding output voltage is 0.59 V. The facultative strain SQ-1 utilizes hydrous ferric oxide as an electron acceptor to perform extracellular electricigenic respiration in anaerobic conditions. Since facultative strains possess better properties than anaerobic strains, Klebsiella sp. SQ-1 may be a promising exoelectrogenic strain for applications in microbial electrochemistry.

Abstract Background To assess the age and timeline distribution of ocular axial length shortening among myopic children treated with photobiomodulation therapy in the real world situations. Methods Retrospective study of photobiomodulation therapy in Chinese children aged 4 to 13 years old where axial length measurements were recorded and assessed to determine effectiveness at two age groups (4 ∼ 8 years old group and 9 ∼ 13 years old group). Data was collected from myopic children who received photobiomodulation therapy for 6 ∼ 12 months. Effectiveness of myopia control was defined as any follow-up axial length ≤ baseline axial length, confirming a reduction in axial length. Independent t-test was used to compare the effectiveness of the younger group and the older group with SPSS 22.0. Results 342 myopic children were included with mean age 8.64 ± 2.20 years and baseline mean axial length of 24.41 ± 1.17 mm. There were 85.40%, 46.30%, 71.20% and 58.30% children with axial length shortening recorded at follow-up for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months, respectively. With respect to the axial length shortened eyes, the mean axial length difference (standard deviation) was − 0.039 (0.11) mm, -0.032 (0.11) mm, -0.037 (0.12) mm, -0.028 (0.57) mm at 1, 3, 6, and 12-month follow-up, respectively. Greater AL shortening was observed among the older group who had longer baseline axial lengths than the younger group (P

The borehole induced polarization method has been widely used in deep mineral exploration, oil and gas resource exploration, and water resource exploration because of its high efficiency and good exploration effect. At present, the related research on the cross-well induced polarization method assumes that the underground medium is isotropic, but the electrical characteristics of the actual earth medium are anisotropic. To analyze the influence of the anisotropic characteristics on the cross-well induced polarization method, in this paper, the anisotropic forward algorithm of conductivity and polarizability in different principal axis directions based on the finite element method is studied. A three-dimensional forward simulation of the cross-well induced polarization method in anisotropic media is realized. The effectiveness and correctness of the algorithm are verified by testing and comparing complex 3-D isotropic and anisotropic models. Anisotropic geological models of the horizontal plate and inclined plate are constructed to analyze the anisotropic influences of conductivity and polarizability in different principal axis directions on the cross-well induced polarization response. The results show that the emitter sources with different depths in the well have different influences on the electrical response of the plates. Anisotropic conductivity and polarizability in horizontal plates exhibit most pronounced characteristics in the x-direction, significantly influencing the apparent polarizability curves. However, when the resistivity and polarizability are both anisotropic, the change in the z-direction is the most complicated. When the plate is inclined, the amplitude of the electrical response curve decreases to a certain extent, and the position where the amplitude appears shifts to different degrees. Notably, the response curves of the y-direction anisotropy are basically consistent with the response curves of the isotropy, regardless of the anisotropy of the conductivity and polarizability or anomalous body tilts. The results of this study improve our understanding of the influence of anisotropy on cross-well induced polarization and provide theoretical support for the interpretation of cross-well induced polarization data considering anisotropy.

Background: To evaluate the predictive value of sICAM-1 and sP-Selectins in the risk of death in a prospective cohort of adult acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Methods: Adult ARDS patients were included. Plasma sICAM-1, sP-Selectins, and inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1b, IL-6, IL-8, and IL-17A) were detected in ARDS subjects. The correlation between different factors and the potential of sICAM-1 and sP-Selectins as endothelial markers to predict the risk of deathfrom ARDS was analyzed. Results: Plasma sICAM-1 and sP-Selectins were higher in ARDS patients and higher in non-survivors of ARDS. sICAM-1 was significantly correlated with TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-8, and sP-Selectins was also significantly correlated with IL-6 and IL-8. Above the critical values of 245.5 ng/mL (sICAM-1) and 482.5 ng/mL (sP-Selectins), the death of the ARDS population increased. High plasma sICAM-1 and sP-Selectins at ICU admission were independent predictors of death of ARDS patients. Conclusion: sICAM-1 and sP-Selectins can predict the risk of death in critically ill patients with ARDS.

Simulations of rock damage and gas transport following underground explosions that omit preexisting fracture networks in the subsurface cannot fully characterize the influence of geo-structural variability on gas transport. Previous studies do not consider the impact that fracture network structure and variability have on gas seepage. In this study, we develop a sequentially coupled, axi-symmetric model to look at the damage pattern and resulting gas breakthrough curves following an underground explosion given different fracture network realizations. We simulate 0.327 and 0.164 kT chemical explosives with burial depths of 100 m for 90 stochastically generated fracture networks. Gases quickly reach the surface in 30% of the higher yield simulations and 5% of the lower yield simulations. The fast breakthrough can be attributed to the formation of connected pathways between fractures to the surface. The formation of a connected damage pathway to the surface is not clearly correlated with the fracture intensity (P32) in our simulations. Breakthrough curves with slower transport are highly variable depending on the fracture network sample. The variability in the breakthrough behavior indicates that ignoring the influence of fracture networks on rock damage, which strongly influences the hydraulic properties following an underground explosion, will likely lead to a large underestimation of the uncertainty in the gas transport to the surface. This work highlights the need for incorporation of fracture networks into models for accurately predicting gas seepage following underground explosions.

Ultra high pressure common rail system can realize adjustable injection rate by controlling the relationship between fuel injection and pressurization timing, and then affect the fuel injection characteristics of diesel engine. In order to ascertain the effect law and its formation mechanism of the fuel injection and pressurization pulse width on the fuel injection characteristics of ultra high pressure common rail system, on the basis of introducing the mathematical model of the system, the simulation model of ultra high pressure common rail system was established, and the accuracy of the model was verified by performance experiment, the effect of fuel injection and pressurization pulse width on the fuel injection characteristics of the system under different common rail pressure were analyzed. The results show that with the increase of fuel injection pulse width, the shape of fuel injection rate curve is similar to saddle shape and the proportion of large fuel injection rate range in the whole injection process increases gradually. At the same time, the fuel injection opening delay remains unchanged, but the fuel injection closing delay increases significantly when the fuel injection pulse width is small (0.6~1 ms), while it remains basically unchanged when the fuel injection pulse width is large (1~1.4 ms). With the increase of pressurization pulse width, the shape of fuel injection rate curve is similar to saddle shape and remains unchanged under the condition of small injection pulse width, while the fuel injection rate curve shape may appear similar to the "inverted saddle-shaped" under the condition of large injection pulse width, this is due to the rapid decrease of pressurization pressure caused by the closing of the solenoid valve control signal in the pressure-amplifier device before the end of fuel injection.

Sepsis is a common and deadly syndrome that despite all the progress in its control, the death rate caused by it is high. Sepsis is a serious problem that needs immediate attention and treatment. This infection, especially if it is caused by bacteria resistant to several drugs, causes high mortality. About two-thirds of sepsis cases occur in hospitalized patients. Several factors such as increasing the age of the population, increasing the duration of chronic diseases, high consumption of antibiotics and corticosteroids, use of mechanical devices and intravascular devices play a role in increasing its incidence. We herein demonstrate the biogenic procedure for the in situ immobilizing gold nanoparticles over lignin (Lig)-modified Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles mediated by Cydonia leaf extract (Fe3O4@Lig-Ag NPs) and its catalytic activity on the acetylation of alcohols using acetic anhydride and subsequent biological performances. The successful synthesis of Fe3O4@Lig-Ag NPs was assessed using an array of advanced techniques like field emission scanning electron microscopy, fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy EDX, elemental mapping, vibrating-sample magnetometer, and X-ray diffraction. Cecal ligation and puncture was used for inducing the sepsis model in rats. Several doses of Fe3O4@Lig-Ag NPs (45, 15, and 5 µg/kg) on oxidant–antioxidant, inflammatory mediators mRNA such as IL-1 and TNF-α, and its effects on the levels of expression were assessed in the kidney, liver, duodenum, lung, and stomach. When septic rats kidney, liver, duodenum, lung, and stomach were compared with those of the control group, it was found that Fe3O4@Lig-Ag NPs dose-dependent administration raised glutathione levels and superoxide dismutase activity and significantly reduced the levels of malondialdehyde. The Fe3O4@Lig-Ag NPs (45 µg/kg) indicated greater anti-oxidative effects than the 5 and 15 µg/kg doses for all the assessed parameters. In addition, the expression of TNF-α mRNA in the CLP + 45 µg/kg group was decreased in comparison with the control group. Fe3O4@Lig-Ag NPs reduced oxidative stress by enhancing the free radicals scavenging effects and supporting endogenous antioxidants. The Fe3O4@Lig-Ag NPs potent antioxidant property may be related to the cytokine cascade suppression during sepsis. The above findings offer that Fe3O4@Lig-Ag NPs administration may indicate a modern treatment for the inhibition of liver, kidney, lung, duodenum, and stomach tissues damage caused by septic conditions.

As an inevitable trend of the development of the times, this paper explores the application of big data technology in enterprise financial decision-making and constructs a complete process of enterprise financial management based on data mining. The improved k-Means algorithm is used to complete the clustering analysis of financial data, and the CAP algorithm is applied to the identification and classification of financial problems to realize the early warning of the financial crisis. Combining analysis and early warning, the financial decision management system in enterprise cloud accounting is constructed using the ID3 algorithm. Company H, a real estate enterprise, was selected as a research case and analyzed by collecting financial data and using data mining methods. The profitability, solvency, operations, growth, and cash capacity scores for Company H in 2021 are 11.19, 4.24, 4.94, −0.56, and −0.48, respectively. The changes in Company H’s profitability, solvency, and operations are relatively stable from 2013-2019.

Extensive research has confirmed numerous advantages of exercise for promoting brain health. More recent studies have proposed the potential benefits of lactate, the by-product of exercise, in various aspects of brain function and disorders. However, there remains a gap in understanding the effects of lactate dosage and its impact on aged rodents. The present study first examined the long-term effects of three different doses of lactate intervention (2000 mg/kg, 1000 mg/kg, and 500 mg/kg) and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on aging mice (20–22 months) as the 1st experiment. Subsequently, in the 2nd experiment, we investigated the long-term effects of 500 mg/kg lactate intervention and HIIT on brain neuroplasticity in aged mice (25–27 months).The results of the 1st experiment demonstrated that both HIIT and different doses of lactate intervention (500 mg/kg and 2000 mg/kg) positively impacted the neuroplasticity biomarker VEGF in the hippocampus of aging mice. Subsequently, the 2nd experiment revealed that long-term HIIT significantly improved the performance of mice in open-field, novel object recognition, and passive avoidance tests. However, lactate intervention did not significantly affect these behavioral tests. Moreover, compared to the control group, both HIIT and lactate intervention positively influenced the angiogenesis signaling pathway (p/t-AKT/ENOS/VEGF), mitochondrial biomarker (SDHA), and metabolic protein (p/t-CREB, p/t-HSL, and LDH) in the hippocampus of aged mice. Notably, only lactate intervention significantly elevated the BDNF (PGC-1α, SIRT1, and BDNF) signaling pathway and metabolic content (lactate and pyruvate). In the end, long-term HIIT and lactate intervention failed to change the protein expression of p/t-MTOR, iNOS, nNOS, HIF-1α, SYNAPSIN, SIRT3, NAMPT, CS, FNDC5 and Pan Lactic aid-Lysine in the hippocampus of aged mice.In summary, the present study proved that long-term HIIT and lactate treatment have positive effects on the brain functions of aged mice, suggesting the potential usage of lactate as a therapeutic strategy in neurodegenerative diseases in the elderly population.

Objective Geomechanical analysis plays a crucial role in exploring and developing oil and gas reservoirs. However, the study of in-situ stress in the Yijianfang–Yingshan formations of the Middle to Lower Ordovician in the Shunbei oilfield has lagged behind. This paper compares and analyzes the rock mechanics and in-situ stress characteristics of different types of carbonate reservoirs in the Yijianfang-Yingshan formations of the Lower Paleozoic Ordovician in the Shunbei No. 4 block, and explores the control effect of micro-grain structures on the in-situ stress and rock mechanics parameters of carbonate reservoirs. It aims to provide fundamental geological data for the evaluating of ultra-deep carbonate reservoirs in the Shunbei area. Methods This study, based on the spring combination model, determined the rock mechanics and in-situ stress characteristics through rock mechanics experiments and array acoustic logging, and characterized the micro-pore structure of the limestone using casting thin sections and X-ray μ-computed tomography analysis. Results The results indicate that the Young's modulus of the Yijianfang–Yingshan formations ranges from 50 to 89 GPa, the compressive strength from 99 to 136 MPa, and the Poisson's ratio from 0.25 to 0.32. The maximum horizontal principal stress of the formations ranges from 200 to 225 MPa, while the minimum horizontal principal stress ranges from 125 to 160 MPa. Conclusion Significant differences in rock mechanics parameters and in-situ stress exist among different types of carbonate reservoirs in the Yijianfang–Yingshan formations. From Type I to Type III and non-reservoir carbonate rocks, the Young's modulus, compressive strength, and maximum horizontal principal stress increase dramatically, while the Poisson's ratio and minimum horizontal principal stress show little change. Compared to micritic limestone, sandy–bioclastic limestone has larger calcite particles and reduced particle cohesion, resulting in decreased compressive strength and Young's modulus. Some calcite particles appear sub-rounded or rounded with higher three-dimensional particle sphericity, also leading to weaker intergranular engagement and further reduction in compressive strength and Young's modulus. The presence of numerous pores and fractures in sandy-bioclastic limestone facilitates frictional sliding and potential failure along microfractures or particle interfaces, contributing to lower compressive strength and Young's modulus as well. In addition, micritic limestones in the Yijianfang–Yingshan formations are affected by hydrothermal activity, with some dolomite being replaced by quartz, which increases the compressive strength and Young's modulus. The macroscopic mechanical characteristics and rock mechanics parameters of the rock are constrained by the micro-grain structures. The low-value zones of the Young's modulus, compressive strength, and maximum horizontal principal stress in the Yijianfang–Yingshan formations are identified as the advantageous reservoir development zones in the Shunbei No. 4 block.

Designing perfect anomalous reflectors is crucial for achieving many metasurface-based applications, but available design approaches for the cases of extremely large bending angles either require unrealistic gain–loss materials or rely on brute-force optimizations lacking physical guidance. Here, we propose a deterministic approach to design passive metasurfaces that can reflect impinging light to arbitrary nonspecular directions with almost 100% efficiencies. With both incident and out-going far-field waves given, we can retrieve the surface-impedance profile of the target metadevice by matching boundary conditions with all allowed near-field modes added self-consistently and then construct the metadevices deterministically based on passive meta-atoms exhibiting local responses. We design/fabricate two proof-of-concept microwave metadevices and experimentally demonstrate that the first one achieves anomalous reflection to a 70° angle with efficiency ∼98%, and the second one can generate multiple reflected beams with desired bending angles and power allocations. Our findings pave the way for realizing high-efficiency wave-control metadevices with desired functionalities.

Objective To analyze the clinical characteristics of Legionnaires’ disease in immunosuppressive patients， and to explore the significance of blood metagenomic next-generation sequencing （mNGS） in the early diagnosis and treatment of Legionnaires’ disease in immunosuppressive patients. Methods A patient with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma who developed pulmonary infection after chemotherapy was reported. The diagnosis of Legionella pneumophila infection was confirmed by blood mNGS. Using “Legionella” “blood” “metagenomic next-generation sequencing” and “mNGS” as the keywords in both Chinese and English， relevant studies were searched from CNKI database， Chinese core journals and PubMed database. Clinical data of patients positive for Legionella pneumophila by blood mNGS were analyzed. Results The female patient， aged 50-year-old， was admitted to our hospital due to “the diagnosis of angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma and continuing chemotherapy for more than 10 months”. After twice intravenous chemotherapy， the patient was complicated with myelosuppression， cough and fever. The possibility of pulmonary infection was considered. Conventional antibiotic therapy yielded low efficacy. Blood mNGS confirmed the infection with Legionella pneumophila. After adjusted antibiotic treatment （levofloxacin + tigecycline）， the patient was improved and discharged. According to literature review， two cases with complete clinical data were searched. Both two cases were children with hematological diseases who were complicated with pulmonary infection after stem cell transplantation. After the pathogen was identified by blood mNGS， the disease was mitigated after anti-Legionella treatment. Conclusions Immunosuppressed patients with Legionella pneumophila infection are likely to be complicated with bloodstream infection， and clinical manifestations are non-specific. mNGS contributes to prompt identification of the pathogen. Combined anti-infection treatment should be delivered and the course of treatment should be properly prolonged， aiming to lower the risk of progression into severe pneumonia.

Aiming at the urgent demand of unmanned and intelligent border security system, an unattended border monitoring system is designed for weak infrastructure border area. The system composition and sub-system design are introduced, and the key technologies for engineering realization are given, ground surveillance radar and electro-optics device single-site collaborative detection and tracking technology, and multi-target tracking algorithm with intermittent observations are proposed. The realization and demonstration verification test of prototype system prove the scientificity and rationality of the design, which achieve the tactical and technical requirements of high point monitoring with the unattended capability.

Objective To develop a Comprehensive Mental Health Assessment (CMHA) questionnaire for soldiers and test its reliability and validity. Methods With the Military Demand-Resource model as the theoretical conception, and psychological measurement, statistical analysis, expert evaluation, collective discussion as the research method, a pre-questionnaire containing 98 items was revised based on the prediction of 935 soldiers. Another 1 689 soldiers were selected from basic army units to test the reliability and validity of the questionnaire using cluster sampling. Results The formal CMHA questionnaire contained 94 items and 12 factors (adaptability, positive coping, depression, negative emotion, positive emotion, work involvement, loneliness, friendship, family satisfaction, institutional trust, interpersonal trust and life meaning). The internal consistency coefficient of the total questionnaire was 0.978. The test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.756 (P < 0.01). Confirmatory factor analysis supported the 12-factor model, and fitted well with the measured data. Conclusion Our prepared CMHA questionnaire has good reliability and validity and is an effective tool to measure soldiers' multidimensional mental health.

Reversible control over the microparticle motion using light excites interesting applications in optofluidics, microswimmers, artificial optical matter, and biomedical engineering. The dielectric microspheres swim towards the near infrared pulsed laser in response to the backaction force mediated by photonic nanojet. Hereby, we report that the backaction force exhibits hysteretic behaviour owing to the distinguishable responses of the temperature rise inside the nanojet and the temperature rise of the liquid ensemble. Accordingly, the magnitude of backaction force at the same laser power varies between power increase and decrease stages. In order to develop multidimensional manipulation tool, we studied the possibility of using lasers with different spatiotemporal profiles to mediate the backaction force, and developed the counterpropagating beam scheme for reversible control of the particle motion directions. We further harness the hysteresis to reverse the direction of backaction force on dielectric particles in presence of a constant force from a counter-propagating beam with broadband supercontinuum spectrum. In contrast to the microsphere caught in the single beam gradient trap, the microsphere encounters augmented Brownian motion at higher balanced power level. The microsphere would eventually escape from the common region of the paired beams, enabling high throughput morphology analysis for cancer cell classification, biopsy, and diagnosis.

Skin effect that all eigenmodes within a frequency range become edge states is dictated by the topological properties of complex eigenvalues unique in non-Hermitian systems. The prevailing attempts to realize such a fascinating effect are confined to either one-dimensional or nonreciprocal systems exhibiting asymmetric couplings. Here, inspired by a recent model Hamiltonian theory, we propose a realistic reciprocal two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystal (PhC) system that shows the desired skin effect. Specifically, we establish a routine for designing such non-Hermitian systems via revealing the inherent connections between the nontrivial eigenvalue topology of order-2 exceptional points (EPs) and the skin effects. Guided by the proposed strategy, we successfully design a 2D PhC that possesses the EPs with nonzero eigenvalue winding numbers. The spectral area along a specific wavevector direction is then formed by leveraging the symmetry of the macroscopic geometry and the unit cell. The projected-band-structure calculations are performed to demonstrate that the desired skin effect exists at the specific crystalline interfaces. We finally employ time-domain simulations to vividly illustrate this phenomenon by exciting a pulse at the center of a finite-sized PhC. Our results form a solid basis for further experimental confirmations and applications of the skin effect.

Dynamical controls on terahertz (THz) wavefronts are crucial for many applications, but available mechanism requests tunable elements with sub-micrometer sizes that are difficult to find in the THz regime. Here, different from the local-tuning mechanism, we propose an alternative approach to construct wavefront-control meta-devices combining specifically designed metasurfaces and globally tuned graphene layers. Coupled-mode-theory (CMT) analyses reveal that graphene serves as a tunable loss to drive the whole meta-device to transit from one functional phase to another passing through an intermediate regime, exhibiting distinct far-field (FF) reflection wavefronts. As a proof of concept, we design/fabricate a graphene meta-device and experimentally demonstrate that it can reflect normally incident THz wave to pre-designed directions with different polarizations under appropriate gating voltages. We finally design a graphene meta-device and numerically demonstrate that it can generate vectorial THz beams with continuously varying polarization distributions upon gating. These findings pave the road to realizing a wide range of THz applications, such as sensing, imaging, and wireless communications.

Achieving a pre-designed scattering pattern from an ultra-compact platform is highly desired for on-chip integration optics, but conventional techniques suffer from the limitations of bulky size, wavelength-scale modulation and low efficiency. Here, we propose a new strategy to efficiently generate arbitrary spin-polarized scattering far-field patterns from surface-wave (SW) excitations on a designer Pancharatnam–Berry (PB) metasurface. We find that a PB meta-atom serves as a subwavelength scatter to decouple impinging SW to a spin-polarized propagating wave (PW) with tailored amplitude and phase, and thus interference among PWs generated by scatterings at different PB meta-atoms can generate a tailored far-field pattern. As a proof of concept, we design and fabricate a series of PB metasurfaces in the microwave regime and experimentally demonstrate that they can generate desired radiation patterns within a broad frequency band, including unidirectional radiation, line/point focusing, vortex beam and hologram. These findings may stimulate important applications in on-chip integrated photonics.

Introduction: Ultrasound sonography provides a quick method for determining which nodule to sample for fine needle aspiration biopsy in thyroid nodules. On the other hand, the computed tomography examination is not restricted by echo attenuation and distinguishes between benign and malignant nodules. Objective: To compare computed tomography examinations against ultrasound/fine needle aspiration biopsy in the differential diagnosis of thyroid nodules. Methods: Data regarding computed tomography examinations, sonographic finding following fine needle aspiration biopsy, and tumor histology of 953 nodules from 698 patients who underwent thyroidectomy were collected and analyzed. The beneficial score for detection of the malignant tumor for each adopted modality was evaluated. Results: Ultrasound images did not show a well-circumscribed solid mass in 89 nodules, and ultimately did not detect nodules in fine needle aspiration biopsies (false positive non-malignant nodules). Ultrasound images showed parenchymatous disease (false positive malignant nodules) in several nodules. Computed tomography examinations demonstrated higher difficulty in detection of malignant nodules of 1.0–2.0 cm size than ultrasound examination following fine needle aspiration biopsies; compared to tumor histological data, computed tomography examinations had a sensitivity of 0.879. Conclusion: Computed tomography examinations are a more reliable method for differential diagnosis of thyroid nodules than ultrasound examinations followed by fine needle aspiration biopsy. Level of Evidence: III.

The multi-stage tectonism of compression and extension occurred in the southern part of the Lower Yangtze region in the Mesozoic, which is one of the important factors restricting the breakthrough of oil and gas exploration in this area. This paper aims to reveal the influence of Mesozoic tectonisim on oil and gas preservation in the Lower Yangtze area. Based on the seismic profile interpretation data, field outcrop survey, regional tectonic evolution history analysis and the drilling core data and oil-gas display of the Well Wanjingdi-1, we comprehensively discussed the favorable structural preservation conditions in the southern part of the Lower Yangtze region. The results of seismic interpretation profile and surface survey show that the southern part of the lower Yangtze River has experienced two important tectonic processes since the Late Triassic. The first stage is fold deformation, thrust fault and uplift erosion caused by Indosinian compression, and the second stage is extension since the Late Cretaceous, resulting in the formation of fault basin and normal fault activity. Shale gas display was obtained from the Permian shale in the Well Wanjingdi-1, and light oil was found in the drilling of the Lower Triassic Yinkeng Formation, indicating that the southern Lower Yangtze region has good enrichment conditions and resource potential, which points out a new direction for oil and gas exploration in the region. The analysis of structural preservation conditions shows that the Well Wanjingdi-1 is located in the syncline of the fold-depression belt. The amount of uplift and denudation was small in the Indosinian period. Since the late Cretaceous, the depression has a small amplitude of extension and has good sealing and reservoir forming conditions. It is a favorable structural position for oil and gas preservation in this region. Based on the comprehensive analysis of regional structure and sedimentary basin evolution, it is considered that in the southern Lower Yangtze region, the syncline structural belt in the southern margin of the basin with small erosion amount of Triassic strata or the central zone of fault basin overlying thick Cretaceous-Cenozoic strata should be taken as the key target to search for favorable oil and gas zones.

In conventional airfoil optimization design method, the aerodynamic performance of the optimal airfoil can deteriorate at the non-design point, so it is necessary to study the airfoil robust optimization method.An airfoil robustness design method based on convolutional neural network and polynomial chaos method is proposed.Firstly, an aerodynamic force prediction method based on convolutional neural network model is established.And then, the polynomial chaos method is used to perform the uncertainty quantification for mach number and attack angle, a design system of airfoil robust aerodynamic optimization is constructed.Finally, the optimization design verification is carried out for the aerodynamic optimization design problem, in which the RAE2822 airfoil is taken as the basis airfoil.The results show that the robustness design method of the airfoil proposed in this paper is feasible, the optimized airfoil aerodynamic performance and robust aerodynamic optimization design efficiency are improved in a wide design range.

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) are applied in safety-critical fields such as autonomous driving, aircraft collision detection, and smart credit. They are highly susceptible to input perturbations, but little research on RNN-oriented testing techniques has been conducted, leaving a threat to a large number of sequential application domains. To address these gaps, improve the test adequacy of RNNs, find more defects, and improve the performance of RNNs models and their robustness to input perturbations. We aim to propose a test coverage metric for the underlying structure of RNNs, which is used to guide the generation of test inputs to test RNNs. Although coverage metrics have been proposed for RNNs, such as the hidden state coverage in RNN-Test, they ignore the fact that the underlying structure of RNNs is still a fully connected neural network but with an additional “delayer” that records the network state at the time of data input. We use the contributions, i.e., the combination of the outputs of neurons and the weights they emit, as the minimum computational unit of RNNs to explore the finer-grained logical structure inside the recurrent cells. Compared to existing coverage metrics, our research covers the decision mechanism of RNNs in more detail and is more likely to generate more adversarial samples and discover more flaws in the model. In this paper, we redefine the contribution coverage metric applicable to Stacked LSTMs and Stacked GRUs by considering the joint effect of neurons and weights in the underlying structure of the neural network. We propose a new coverage metric, RNNCon, which can be used to guide the generation of adversarial test inputs. And we design and implement a test framework prototype RNNCon-Test. 2 datasets, 4 LSTM models, and 4 GRU models are used to verify the effectiveness of RNNCon-Test. Compared to the current state-of-the-art study RNN-Test, RNNCon can cover a deeper decision logic of RNNs. RNNCon-Test is not only effective in identifying defects in Deep Learning (DL) systems but also in improving the performance of the model if the adversarial inputs generated by RNNCon-Test are filtered and added to the training set to retrain the model. In the case where the accuracy of the model is already high, RNNCon-Test is still able to improve the accuracy of the model by up to 0.45%.

The combustion characteristics of ammonia/hydrogen premixed laminar flow and the effect of hydrogen on the combustion performance of ammonia fuel were studied. First, the corresponding model of ammonia/ hydrogen premixed laminar combustion is established by using GRI3.0 mechanism, Konnov mechanism, Mei mechanism, Okafor mechanism, and Otomo mechanism respectively. Second, the simulation results are compared with the experimental results. It is found that the Mei mechanism and Okafor mechanism are more suitable for ammonia/ hydrogen premixed laminar combustion. On this basis, the effects of equivalent ratio, hydrogen ratio, and initial temperature on laminar flame velocity, maximum combustion temperature, and NO mole fraction were studied. The results show that the laminar flame velocity, the maximum combustion temperature, and the mole fraction of NO first increase and then decrease with the increase of the equivalent ratio, and the laminar flame velocity reaches the maximum when the equivalent ratio is 1.1. At the same time, with the increase of hydrogen ratio and initial temperature, the maximum combustion temperature increases first and then decreases. The mole fraction of NO increased with the increase of hydrogen ratio and initial temperature. The results show that mixing hydrogen in ammonia can improve the combustion characteristics of ammonia.

The development of intelligence in China is in full swing, and it is at the world's leading level in many fields. Guided by the scientific judgment of the government work report ' promoting the deep integration of the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and the real economy ', the deep integration with intelligence is an important starting point for achieving high-quality economic development in China. The realization of high-quality development of micro-enterprises is an important prerequisite and basic guarantee for high-quality development at the macro level. It is undoubtedly an important issue to study intelligent technology and high-quality development of micro-enterprises in the new era. In recent years, scholars at home and abroad have made extensive explorations in the economic effects of artificial intelligence, the influencing factors of high-quality development of enterprises, and intelligent ' enabling ' high-quality development, which have contributed important results with reference value and significance to the study of intelligent and high-quality development of enterprises.This paper reviews and summarizes this, in order to provide some help for the high quality development of enterprises.

In practical engineering applications, the investment, income, subsidies and other costs of energy storage batteries have a certain impact on the overall economic benefits of primary frequency modulation. The larger the capacity of the configured battery energy storage system, the better the primary frequency modulation effect will be, but at the same time, the problem is that the cost of investment in the energy storage system will increase, which will offset the benefits of primary frequency modulation loss reduction of its auxiliary photovoltaic station from an economic perspective. Therefore, this paper will clarify the benefits and costs of the primary frequency modulation application environment of the energy storage system, and establish an economic analysis model from delaying the investment of photovoltaic station equipment, reducing the cost of light waste, environmental benefits, direct benefits, government subsidies, energy storage investment costs and other aspects. Finally, a photovoltaic station is taken as an example to simulate and analyse the sensitivity.

The aim of the present work is to upgrade the functionality and environmental friendliness of polypropylene (PP) by means of a blending technique. The influence of the metal pigment on the odor, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and metal texture of PP, and the effects of the extractant, adsorbent and processing technology on the odor and VOC of PP composites were studied systematically. It was found that metallic pigment significantly increased the VOC, odor, metallic texture and MFR of PP, and reduced the impact strength and elongation at break. The adsorbent and extractant can effectively reduce the VOC and odor of the PP composites. When the adsorbent and extractant contents were 0.5 and 5 wt%, respectively, the maximum reduction in the VOC and odor reached 73.6% and 1 level, respectively. When the extractant and adsorbent were used at the same time, the method of adding extractant and adsorbent from the main and the secondary feeding port respectively was significantly superior to the method of adding the extractant and adsorbent from the main feeding port together in reducing the odor and VOC of PP composites, which displayed a good synergistic effect.

Airy beams exhibit intriguing properties such as nonspreading, self-bending, and self-healing and have attracted considerable recent interest because of their many potential applications in photonics, such as to beam focusing, light-sheet microscopy, and biomedical imaging. However, previous approaches to generate Airy beams using photonic structures have suffered from severe chromatic problems arising from strong frequency dispersion of the scatterers. Here, we design and fabricate a metasurface composed of silicon posts for the frequency range 0.4–0.8 THz in transmission mode, and we experimentally demonstrate achromatic Airy beams exhibiting autofocusing properties. We further show numerically that a generated achromatic Airy-beam-based metalens exhibits self-healing properties that are immune to scattering by particles and that it also possesses a larger depth of focus than a traditional metalens. Our results pave the way to the realization of flat photonic devices for applications to noninvasive biomedical imaging and light-sheet microscopy, and we provide a numerical demonstration of a device protocol.

Vectorial optical fields (VOFs) exhibiting tailored wave fronts and spatially inhomogeneous polarization distributions are particularly useful in photonic applications. However, devices to generate them, made by natural materials or recently proposed metasurfaces, are either bulky in size or less efficient, or exhibit restricted performances. Here, we propose a general approach to design metadevices that can efficiently generate two distinct VOFs under illuminations of circularly polarized lights with different helicity. After illustrating our scheme via both Jones matrix analyses and analytical model calculations, we experimentally demonstrate two metadevices in the near-infrared regime, which can generate vortex beams carrying different orbital angular momenta yet with distinct inhomogeneous polarization distributions. Our results provide an ultracompact platform for bifunctional generations of VOFs, which may stimulate future works on VOF-related applications in integration photonics.

P/TGMS (Photo/thermo-sensitive genic male sterile) lines are crucial resources for two-line hybrid rice breeding. Previous studies revealed that slow development is a general mechanism for sterility-fertility conversion of P/TGMS in Arabidopsis. However, the difference in P/TGMS genes between rice and Arabidopsis suggests the presence of a distinct P/TGMS mechanism in rice. In this study, we isolated a novel P/TGMS line, ostms19, which shows sterility under high-temperature conditions and fertility under low-temperature conditions. OsTMS19 encodes a novel pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) protein essential for pollen formation, in which a point mutation GTA(Val) to GCA(Ala) leads to ostms19 P/TGMS phenotype. It is highly expressed in the tapetum and localized to mitochondria. Under high temperature or long-day photoperiod conditions, excessive ROS accumulation in ostms19 anthers during pollen mitosis disrupts gene expression and intine formation, causing male sterility. Conversely, under low temperature or short-day photoperiod conditions, ROS can be effectively scavenged in anthers, resulting in fertility restoration. This indicates that ROS homeostasis is critical for fertility conversion. This relationship between ROS homeostasis and fertility conversion has also been observed in other tested rice P/TGMS lines. Therefore, we propose that ROS homeostasis is a general mechanism for the sterility-fertility conversion of rice P/TGMS lines.

Although many approaches have been proposed to manipulate propagating waves (PWs) and surface waves (SWs), usually each operation needs a separate meta-device, being unfavorable for optical integrations. Here, we propose a scheme to design a single meta-device that can efficiently generate SWs and/or PWs with pre-designed wavefronts, under the excitations of circularly polarized (CP) PWs with different helicity. As a proof of concept, we design and fabricate a microwave meta-device and experimentally demonstrate that it can convert incident CP waves of opposite helicity to SWs possessing different wavefronts and traveling to opposite directions, both exhibiting very high efficiencies. We further generalize our scheme to design a meta-device and numerically demonstrate that it can either excite a SW beam with tailored wavefront or generate a far-field PW with pre-designed wavefront, as shined by CP waves with different helicity. Our work opens the door to achieving simultaneous controls on far- and near-field electromagnetic environments based on a single ultra-compact platform.

Although coupled plasmonic systems have been extensively studied in the past decades, their theoretical understanding is still far from satisfactory. Here, based on experimental and numerical studies on a series of symmetry-broken nano-patch plasmonic resonators, we found that Fano’s formula, widely used in modeling such systems previously, works well for one polarization but completely fails for another polarization. In contrast, a two-mode coupled-mode theory (CMT) can interpret all experimental results well. This motivated us to employ the CMT to establish a complete phase diagram for such coupled plasmonic systems, which not only revealed the diversified effects and their governing physics in different phase regions, but more importantly, also justifies the applicabilities of two simplified models (including Fano’s formula) derived previously. Our results present a unified picture for the distinct effects discovered in such systems, which can facilitate people’s understanding of the governing physics and can design functional devices facing requests for diversified applications.

Plasmons, as emerging optical diffraction-unlimited information carriers, promise the high-capacity, high-speed, and integrated photonic chips. The on-chip precise manipulations of plasmon in an arbitrary platform, whether two-dimensional (2D) or one-dimensional (1D), appears demanding but non-trivial. Here, we proposed a meta-wall, consisting of specifically designed meta-atoms, that allows the high-efficiency transformation of propagating plasmon polaritons from 2D platforms to 1D plasmonic waveguides, forming the trans-dimensional plasmonic routers. The mechanism to compensate the momentum transformation in the router can be traced via a local dynamic phase gradient of the meta-atom and reciprocal lattice vector. To demonstrate such a scheme, a directional router based on phase-gradient meta-wall is designed to couple 2D SPP to a 1D plasmonic waveguide, while a unidirectional router based on grating metawall is designed to route 2D SPP to the arbitrarily desired direction along the 1D plasmonic waveguide by changing the incident angle of 2D SPP. The on-chip routers of trans-dimensional SPP demonstrated here provide a flexible tool to manipulate propagation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and may pave the way for designing integrated plasmonic network and devices.

Image Captioning is the task of providing a natural language description for an image. It has caught significant amounts of attention from both computer vision and natural language processing communities. Most image captioning models adopt deep encoder-decoder architectures to achieve state-of-the-art performances. However, it is difficult to model knowledge on relationships between input image region pairs in the encoder. Furthermore, the word in the decoder hardly knows the correlation to specific image regions. In this article, a novel deep encoder-decoder model is proposed for image captioning which is developed on sparse Transformer framework. The encoder adopts a multi-level representation of image features based on self-attention to exploit low-level and high-level features, naturally the correlations between image region pairs are adequately modeled as self-attention operation can be seen as a way of encoding pairwise relationships. The decoder improves the concentration of multi-head self-attention on the global context by explicitly selecting the most relevant segments at each row of the attention matrix. It can help the model focus on the more contributing image regions and generate more accurate words in the context. Experiments demonstrate that our model outperforms previous methods and achieves higher performance on MSCOCO and Flickr30k datasets. Our code is available at https://github.com/2014gaokao/ImageCaptioning.

In this work, hierarchical porous resins (PRs) are fabricated and applied as novel adsorbent for removal of oily substance. The oil/water (o/w) high internal phase emulsions (HIPEs), stabilized by phenolic resin precursor and tween 80, were used as the template for simultaneous polymerization of aqueous phase, methenamine, sodium persulfate and liquid paraffin. Subsequently, dopamine hydrochloride, 1-dodecanethiol and Fe3O4 particles are grafted onto the interface of PRs via adhesion of dopamine and Markel addition reaction between quinone groups on dopamine and sulfhydryl groups on 1-dodecanethiol. The as-prepared composites possessed hydrophobicity and magnetic property (HPRs). The physical and chemical properties, morphology and adsorption properties of HPRs are characterized by XRD, FT-IR, TGA, SEM, N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms. The as-synthesized HPRs composites had a typical hierarchical porous structure, and the resulted macropores with a well-defined open-cell and interconnecting pore throat structure could be controlled via the composition of the aqueous phase of emulsion. The hierarchical porous structure of HPRs contained macropores ranging from 0.3 μm to 4 μm and mesopores of 11.26 nm. HPRs have rough and hydrophobic surface (water contact angle of 130∘) with specific surface area of 15.06 m2/g and pore volume of 0.0349 cm3/g. The oil adsorption rate and the oil retention rate for toluene are 11.765 g/g and 86.43%, respectively. The oil adsorption rate in the first minute can reach more than 80% of the highest oil adsorption rate. The oil adsorption rate of HPRs after three recycling experiments can still reach 87.32%of the first-time oil adsorption rate.