Torenia Concolor Lindley var. formosama Yamazaki ethanolic extract (TCEE) is reported to have anti-inflammatory and anti-obesity properties. However, the effects of TCEE and its underlying mechanisms in the activation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) have not yet been investigated. Increasing the endothelium-derived nitric oxide (NO) production has been known to be beneficial against the development of cardiovascular diseases. In this study, we investigated the effect of TCEE on eNOS activation and NO-related endothelial function and inflammation by using in vitro system. In endothelial cells (ECs), TCEE increased NO production in a concentration-dependent a manner without affecting the expression of eNOS. In addition, TCEE increased the phosphorylation of eNOS at serine 635 residue (Ser635) and Ser1179, Akt at Ser473, calmodulin kinase II (CaMKII) at threonine residue 286 (Thr286) and AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) at Thr172. Moreover, TCEE-induced NO production, and EC proliferation, migration and tube formation were diminished by pretreatment with LY294002 (an Akt inhibitor), KN62 (a CaMKII inhibitor) and compound C (an AMPK inhibitor). Additionally, TCEE attenuated the tumor necrosis factor-α-induced inflammatory response as evidenced by the expression of adhesion molecules in ECs and monocyte adhesion onto ECs. These inflammatory effects of TCEE were abolished by L-NG-nitroarginine methyl ester (a NOS inhibitor). Collectively, our findings suggest that TCEE confers protection from endothelial dysfunction by activating the Akt/CaMKII/AMPK/eNOS/NO signaling pathway.

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become a valuable platform for many applications, including communication networks. UAV-enabled wireless communication faces challenges in complex urban and dynamic environments. UAVs can suffer from power limitations and path losses caused by non-line-of-sight connections, which may hamper better communication performance. To address these issues, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) have been proposed as a helpful tool to enhance UAV communication networks. However, due to the high mobility of UAV, complex channel environments, and dynamic RIS configurations, it is challenging to estimate the link quality of ground users. In this paper, we propose a link quality estimation model using a gated recurrent unit (GRU) to assess the link quality of ground users for a multi-user RIS-assisted UAV-enabled wireless communication system. Our proposed framework uses a time series of user channel data and RIS phase shift information to estimate the quality of the link for each ground user. Simulation results showed that the proposed GRU model effectively and accurately estimates the link quality of the ground users in the RIS-assisted UAV-enabled wireless communication network.

The Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) are two widely used scales to measure resilience. Although both scales seek to assess an individual’s ability to recover from and adapt to disruptions or stressful events, they may capture different aspects of resilience. While the CD-RISC focuses on resources that can help individuals recover from and adapt to disruptions or stressful events, the BRS directly measures one’s ability to bounce back or be resilient. The aim of this study is to empirically examine the differences between the CD-RISC and the BRS. Two samples (n = 202, 246) consisting of undergraduate students from Taiwan were used. The results of confirmatory factor analysis show that the CD-RISC and the BRS are highly correlated but still distinct. The results of regression analyses show that the CD-RISC and the BRS have unique predictive effects on depression and life satisfaction. The research findings suggest that the CD-RISC and the BRS capture different aspects of resilience. For future research on resilience, researchers should pay attention to the differences between these scales and choose the one that most closely fits their research purpose.

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a complex, chronic, widespread pain syndrome that can cause significant health and economic burden. Emerging evidence has shown that neuroinflammation is an underlying pathological mechanism in fibromyalgia. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are key mediators of the immune system. TLR4 is expressed primarily in microglia and regulates downstream signaling pathways, such as MyD88/NF-κB and TRIF/IRF3. It remains unknown whether electroacupuncture (EA) has therapeutic benefit in attenuating fibromyalgia pain and what role the TLR4 pathway may play in this effect. We compared EA with sham EA to eliminate the placebo effect due to acupuncture. We demonstrated that intermittent cold stress significantly induced an increase in mechanical and thermal FM pain in mice (mechanical: 2.48 ± 0.53 g; thermal: 5.64 ± 0.32 s). EA but not sham EA has analgesic effect on FM mice. TLR4 and inflammatory mediators-related molecules were increased in FM mice’s thalamus, medial prefrontal cortex, somatosensory cortex, and amygdala, indicating neuroinflammation and microglial activation. These molecules were reduced by EA but not sham EA. Furthermore, a new chemogenetics method was used to precisely inhibit SSC activity displayed an anti-nociceptive effect through TLR4 pathway. Our results imply that the analgesic effect of EA is associated with TLR4 downregulation. We provide novel evidence that EA can modulate the TLR4 signaling pathway, revealing potential therapeutic targets for FM pain.

In 2020 the world experienced the threat of the COVID-19 epidemic, as seniors and chronic disease patients typically try to reduce their exercise and social activities to avoid increasing the risk of infection, which could lead to increased loneliness and even many diseases. This research combining golf croquet games with AIoT companion robots constructs a home-based intelligent exercise system thus uses the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), deduces users’ intention to use this system based on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, and adds the needs of love and belonging, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, and self-actualization in Maslow’s needs theory to conduct system needs analysis. The analysis results show that participants have a high level of acceptance of this system, believing that it is easy to learn and operate, can increase interaction with others, also found that this system can improve self-confirmation, satisfying the third for knowledge, feeling happy, and self-actualization needs are easier to fulfill. In the future, we shall collect and record the seniors in the process of use, so as to find out their health problems as soon as possible, expand their daily life through this exercise, and achieve the goal of happy living and health care.

Visual-inertial integrated navigation system (VINS) has been extensively studied over the past decades to provide accurate and low-cost positioning solutions for autonomous systems. Satisfactory performance can be obtained in an ideal scenario with sufficient and static environment features. However, there are usually numerous dynamic objects in deep urban areas, and these moving objects can severely distort the feature tracking process which is fatal to the feature-based VINS. The well-known method mitigates the effects of dynamic objects is to detect the vehicles using deep neural networks and remove the features belongs to the surrounding vehicle. However, excessive exclusion of features can severely distort the geometry of feature distribution, leading to limited visual measurements. Instead of directly eliminating the features from dynamic objects, this paper proposes to adopt the visual measurement model based on the quality of feature tracking to improve the performance of VINS. Firstly, a self-tuning covariance estimation approach is proposed to model the uncertainty of each feature measurements by integrating two parts: 1) the geometry of feature distribution (GFD), 2) the quality of feature tracking. Secondly, an adaptive M-estimator is proposed to correct the measurement residual model to further mitigate the impacts of outlier measurements, such as the dynamic features. Different from the conventional M-estimator, the proposed method effectively alleviates the reliance of excessive parameterization of M-estimator. Experiments are conducted in a typical urban area of Hong Kong with numerous dynamic objects, and the results show that the proposed method could effectively mitigate the effects of dynamic objects and improved accuracy of VINS is obtained when compared with the conventional method.

As e-commerce services and Internet technology have rapidly developed in recent years, many services and applications integrating these technologies can now be completed online. These commercial activities include online auctions, online ticketing and online payments. The client shops from the store online, andthe store delivers the goods to the client. The goods can be divided into digital products without entities, as well as actual entities. If it is a physical product, the store will deliver the package to the client through itslogistics. However, there have been many cases of switched goods purchased by clients in recent years. Earlier, some scholars proposed a security mechanism with a subliminal channel for E-cash and digital content. Only the sender and the receiver would know that the secret information was hidden in the signature. So the privacy of this subliminal message couldbe ensured. We apply this concept to the logistics environment to design secure logistics architecture with subliminal messages. The client can check the subliminal message of the received package, and know whether the package has been switched by malicious people. In addition, the proposed scheme also applies sensor technology;the client can check the GPS location, the temperature and humidity at any time during the delivery process. So intelligent logisticswouldthereby be achieved. This paper proposes an intelligent and secure package sensoring logistics system based on a subliminal channel. The proposed architecture uses the related mechanisms tosolve the problems of a logistics system, including how to achieve mutual authentication, data integrity, anti-switch package, package location and status tracing, resisting replay attacks, forward and backward secrecy, and non-repudiation issues.

3D-mapping-aided (3DMA) global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning that improves positioning performance in dense urban areas has been under development in the recent years, but it still faces many challenges. This paper details a new algorithm that explores the potential of using building boundary for positioning. Rather than applying complex simulations to analyze and correct signal reflections by buildings, the approach utilizes a convolutional neural network to differentiate between the sky and building in a sky-pointing fisheye image. A new skymask matching algorithm is then proposed to match the segmented fisheye images with skymasks generated from a 3D building model. Each matched skymask holds a latitude and longitude coordinate to determine the precise location of the fisheye image. The results are then compared with the conventional GNSS and advanced 3DMA GNSS positioning methods. The aims of the proposed algorithm are to increase positioning and heading accuracy in a rich urban environment.

To enhance industrial competitiveness and increase productivity, every country has strived to create a smart factory by introducing technologies such as Internet of Things, big data and artificial intelligence into production line and build cyber-physical system for the purpose of promoting manufacturing efficiency. For mission assignment, production line management or manufacturing field analysis, the location information of employee, machine and material is very essential. To promote manufacturing efficiency, of course, the location information became more important. A Bluetooth low energy (BLE) positioning system for the manufacturing is developed in this research. A "Tag tracking" mechanism is addressed and adopted, which uses Beacon to catch the location information and a BLE receiver is also used to receive the broadcasting information from Beacon. The position information from the BLE receiver will be compared with the data in the database for calculating the location of the target. The status of the target may also be obtained by using the data from the BLE receiver. Comparing with the mobile device, this method can reduce energy consumption and make the maintenance simple and easy. In the real applications, the target may not be limited to human. The "Regional label positioning technology" is also investigated in this research. Defining a suitable zone location and arranging BLE receiver location, and positioning analysis theory are the key factors included in this developed technology. The developed system will be tested for real industry applications. The test results show that the feasibility of this technology.

With the advances in industry and commerce, passengers have become more accepting of environmental sustainability issues; thus, more people now choose to travel by bus. Government administration constitutes an important part of bus transportation services as the government gives the right-of-way to transportation companies allowing them to provide services. When these services are of poor quality, passengers may lodge complaints. The increase in consumer awareness and developments in wireless communication technologies have made it possible for passengers to easily and immediately submit complaints about transportation companies to government institutions, which has brought drastic changes to the supply-demand chain comprised of the public sector, transportation companies, and passengers. This study proposed the use of big data analysis technology including systematized case assignment and data visualization to improve management processes in the public sector and optimize customer complaint services. Taichung City, Taiwan was selected as the research area. There, the customer complaint management process in public sector was improved, effectively solving such issues as station-skipping, allowing the public sector to fully grasp the service level of transportation companies, improving the sustainability of bus operations, and supporting the sustainable development of the public sector-transportation company-passenger supply chain.

Accurate localization of road agents is the basis of intelligent transportation systems, which is still difficult to achieve for GNSS positioning in urban areas due to the signal interferences from buildings. Various collaborative positioning techniques are recently developed to improve the positioning performance by the aid from neighboring agents. However, it is still challenging to study their performances comprehensively. The GNSS measurement error behavior is complicated in urban areas and unable to be represented by naive models. On the other hand, real experiment requiring numbers of devices is hard to be conducted, especially for a large-scale test. Therefore, a GNSS realistic urban measurement simulator is developed to provide measurements for collaborative positioning studies. The proposed simulator employs a ray-tracing technique searching for all possible interferences in the urban area. Then, it categorizes them into direct, reflected, diffracted, and multipath signal to simulate the pseudorange, carrier-phase, 〖C/N〗_0, and Doppler shift measurements correspondingly. The performance of the proposed simulator is validated through real experimental comparisons with different scenarios. The proposed simulator is also applied with different positioning algorithms, which verifies it is sophisticated enough for the collaborative positioning studies in the urban area.

Adlay (Coix lachryma-jobi L. var. ma-yuen Stapf) contains various phytonutrients for treating many diseases in Asia. To investigate whether orally administered of adlay bran oil (ABO) can cause drug interactions, the effects of ABO on the pharmacokinetics of five cytochrome P450 (CYP) probe drugs were evaluated. Rats were given a single oral dose (2.5 mL/kg BW) of ABO 1 h before administration of a drug cocktail either orally or intravenously, and blood was collected at various time points. A single oral dose of ABO administration did not affect the pharmacokinetics of five probe drugs when given as a drug cocktail intravenously. However, ABO increased plasma theophylline, dextromethorphan, and diltiazem when co-administered an oral drug cocktail. After 7-days of feeding with an ABO-containing diet, plasma concentrations of theophylline and chlorzoxazone were increased after oral administration of drug cocktail. The major CYP enzyme activities in liver and intestinal were not affected by ABO treatment. Results from this study indicate that a single oral dose or short-term administration of ABO may increase plasma drug concentrations when ABO is given concomitantly with drugs. ABO is likely to enhance intestinal drug absorption. Therefore, caution is needed to avoid food-drug interactions between ABO and co-administered drugs.

Zinc cobalt oxide-zinc hydroxide (ZnCo2O4-Zn(OH)2) microspheres were successfully fabricated on carbon cloth via a sample hydrothermal method. The surface morphology of these microspheres and their efficacy in degrading methyl violet were further modulated by varying the thermal annealing temperatures. The manipulation of thermal annealing temperatures was pivotal in adjusting the porosity of ZnCo2O4-Zn(OH)2 microspheres to amplify their photocatalytic performance. Various analytical techniques were utilized to evaluate the physical and chemical properties of the ZnCo2O4-Zn(OH)2 microspheres, including field-emission scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, field-emission transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and UV-vis spectroscopy. Compared to untreated ZnCo2O4-Zn(OH)2 microspheres, those subjected to thermal annealing exhibited increased specific surface area and light absorption capacity, rendering them highly effective photocatalysts under UVC light exposure. Subsequent studies have confirmed the superior performance of ZnCo2O4-Zn(OH)2 microspheres as a reusable photocatalyst for degrading methyl violet and tetracycline. Additionally, trapping experiments during the photodegradation process involving ZnCo2O4-Zn(OH)2 microspheres have identified hydroxyl radicals (·OH) and superoxide radicals (·O2–) as the primary reactive species.

During the Covid-19 pandemic in Taiwan, analytical tools of PEST (political, economic, social-cultural, and technological), SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat), nine building blocks of a business model canvas, and knowledge management were combined to develop a theoretical framework, and used to assess business, smart and sustainable management of two case companies: Tung Sheng Company Limited and its subsidiary, Strong Basic Enterprise Limited. A heuristic inquiry research design was adopted. In addition to secondary data from the two case companies, major top managers were interviewed to reveal constructive questions about the existing business models and to re-interpret strategy. The results showed that case companies own capabilities of R & D (research and development) as a foundation to further apply new smart ICT (information and communication technology) and execute green manufacturing. Additionally, strong key partnerships are used to diversify business investment for leveraging on limited resources given current insufficient qualified employees. Resilient practices adopted new and green technology to help mitigate the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. This study provides a useful framework and practical information about how to examine business models, smart and sustainable management processes of the two case companies and to make adjustments in strategies for the future.

In this paper, the performance of Cu-(In,Ga)-S2 (CIGS2) solar cells with adjusting composite CGI-ratio absorber is explored and compared through an improved three-stage co-evaporation technique. For co-evaporating CIGS2 absorber as a less toxic alternative to Cd-containing film, we analyse the effect of the CGI-ratio stoichiometry and crystallinity, and explore its opto-electric sensing characteristic of individual solar cell. The results of this research signify the potential of high-performance CIGS2-absorption solar cells for photovoltaic (PV)-module industrial applications. For the optimal CIGS2-absorption film (CGI=0.95), the Raman main-phase signal (A1) falls at 291 cm-1, which is excited by the 532-nm line of Ar+-laser. Using photo-luminescence (PL) spectroscopy, the corresponding main-peak bandgaps measured is 1.59 eV at the same CGI-ratio film. Meanwhile, the best conversion efficiency (=3.212%) and the average external quantum efficiency (EQE=51.1% in the visible-wavelength region) of photo-electric properties were achieved for the developed CIGS2-solar cells (CGI=0.95). The discoveries of this CIGS2-absorption PV research provide a new scientific understanding of solar cells. Moreover, this research undeniably contributes to a major advancement towards practical PV-module applications and can help more to build an eco-friendly community.

Recently, cobalt iron boron (CoFeB) thin films have been widely investigated to apply to magnetic sensors, due to their high magnetic moment, anisotropy, and stability. However, most of these studies are conducted on rigid silicon substrates. For more diverse applications of magnetic sensors and angle sensors, it is important to explore the properties of ferromagnetic thin films grown on non-rigid deformable substrates. Here, using representative deformable substrates such as polyimide (PI), polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) that can be bent or stretched, we report experimental comparison of in-plane magnetic field angle-dependent properties of the amorphous Ta/CoFeB/MgO/Ta thin film which is grown on those deformable substrates. We investigate effects of substrate roughness, tensile stress, characteristics of deformable substrates, and sputtering process on the change of magnetic properties like coercive field (Hc), remanence over saturation magnetization (Mr/Ms), and their biaxial characteristics. This work presents unconventional foundations for exploring deformable magnetic sensors capable of detecting magnetic field angle.

To avoid loss of information and incorrect ranking, this paper proposes a method for ranking generalized fuzzy numbers, which guarantees both horizontal and vertical values are important parameters affecting the final ranking score. In this method, the normalized height coefficient is introduced to evaluate the influence of the height of fuzzy numbers on the final ranking score. The higher the normalized height coefficient of a fuzzy number is, the higher its ranking. The left area and the right area are presented to calculate the impact of vertical value on the final ranking score. The left area is considered the benefit area. The right area is considered the cost area. The fuzzy number is preferred if the benefit area is larger and the cost area is smaller. The proposed method can be employed to rank both normal and non-normal fuzzy numbers without normalization or height minimization. Numerical examples and comparison with other methods highlight the feasibility and robustness of the proposed method, which can overcome the shortcomings of some existing methods and can support decision-makers to select the best alternative.

Background: Few studies have investigated the longitudinal association between cervical spondylosis (CS) and migraine by using a nationwide population-based database. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study from 2000 to 2011 identifying 27,930 cases of cervical spondylosis and 111,720 control subjects (those without cervical spondylosis) from a single database. The subjects were frequency-matched on the basis of sex, age, and diagnosis date. The non- cervical spondylosis cohort was four times the size of the cervical spondylosis cohort. To quantify the effects of cervical spondylosis on the risk of migraine, univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analyses were used to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: After a 10-year follow-up controlling for potential confounding factors, overall migraine incidence was higher in the cervical spondylosis cohort than in the non- cervical spondylosis cohort (5.16 and 2.09 per 1,000 people per year, respectively; crude hazard ratio = 2.48, 95% confidence interval = 2.28–2.69) with an adjusted hazard ratio of 2.03 (95% confidence interval = 1.86–2.22) after accounting for sex, age, comorbidities, and medication. Individuals with myelopathy in the cervical spondylosis cohort had a 2.19 times (95% confidence interval = 1.80–2.66) higher incidence of migraine compared than did those in the non- cervical spondylosis cohort. Conclusion: Individuals with cervical spondylosis exhibited a higher risk of migraine than those without cervical spondylosis. The migraine incidence rate was even higher among individuals with cervical spondylotic myelopathy.

This paper presents an optimized energy management strategy for Li-ion power batteries used on electric vehicles (EVs) at low temperatures. Under low-temperature environments, EVs suffer a sharp driving range loss resulted from the energy and power capability reduction of the battery. Simultaneously, because of Li plating, battery degradation becomes an increasing concern as temperature drops. All these factors could greatly increase the total vehicle operation cost. Prior to battery charging and vehicle operating, preheating battery to a battery-friendly temperature is an approach to promote energy utilization and reduce total cost. Based on the proposed LiFePO4 battery model, the total vehicle operation cost under certain driving cycles is quantified in the present paper. Then given a certain ambient temperature, a target temperature of preheating is optimized under the principle of minimizing total cost. As for the preheating method, a liquid heating system is also implemented on an electric bus. Simulation results show that the preheating process becomes increasingly necessary with a decreasing ambient temperature; however, the preheating demand declines as driving range grows. Vehicle tests verify that the preheating management strategy proposed in this paper is able to save total vehicle operation cost.

14-Deoxy-11,12-didehydroandrographolide (deAND), a diterpenoid in Andrographis paniculata (Burm. f.) Nees, acts as a bioactive phytonutrient that can treat many diseases. To investigate the protective effects of deAND on reducing fatty liver disease, male mice were fed a high-fat and high-cholesterol (HFHC) diet without or with 0.05% and 0.1% deAND supplementation. Cholesterol accumulation, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities in liver and liver injury were evaluated after deAND treatment. The results show that deAND treatment for 7 weeks reduced plasma alanine aminotransferase activity and lowered hepatic cholesterol accumulation, tumor nuclear factor-α, and histological lesions. 0.1% deAND treatment reduced HFHC diet-induced apoptosis by lowering the caspase 3/pro-caspase 3 ratio. After 11-weeks of deAND treatment, increased NOD-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3), capase-1, and interleukin-1β protein levels in liver were suppressed by deAND treatment. In addition, nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) mRNA expression, heme oxygenase-1 protein expression, and the activities of glutathione peroxidase and glutathione reductase were increased in mice fed the HFHC diet. However, those activities of antioxidant enzymes or proteins were also upregulated by 0.1% deAND treatment. Furthermore, deAND treatment tended to lower hepatic lipid peroxides. Finally, deAND treatment reversed the depletion of hepatic glutamate level induced by HFHC diet. These results indicate that deAND may ameliorate HFHC diet-induced steatohepatitis and liver injury by increasing antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities.

Smart health applications have received significant attention in recent years. Novel applications hold significant promise to overcome many of the inconveniences faced by persons with disabilities throughout daily living. For people with blindness and low vision (BLV), environmental perception is compromised, creating myriad difficulties. Precise localization is still a gap in the field and is critical to safe navigation. Conventional GNSS positioning cannot provide satisfactory performance in urban canyons. 3D mapping-aided (3DMA) GNSS may serve as an urban GNSS solution, since the availability of 3D city models has widely increased. As a result, this study developed a real-time 3DMA GNSS-positioning system based on state-of-the-art 3DMA GNSS algorithms. Shadow matching was integrated with likelihood-based ranging 3DMA GNSS, generating positioning hypothesis candidates. To increase robustness, the 3DMA GNSS solution was then optimized with Doppler measurements using factor graph optimization (FGO) in a loosely-coupled fashion. This study also evaluated positioning performance using an advanced wearable system’s recorded data in New York City. The real-time forward processed FGO can provide a root-mean-square error (RMSE) with about 21 m. The RMSE drops to 16 m when the data is post-processed with FGO in a combined direction. Overall results show that the proposed loosely-coupled 3DMA FGO algorithm can provide a better and more robust positioning performance for the multi-sensor integration approach used by this wearable for persons with BLV.

A low-cost bio-mass-derived carbon substrate has been employed to synthesize MoS₂@carbon composites through a hydrothermal method. Carbon fibers derived from natural cotton provide a three-dimensional and open framework for the uniform growth of MoS₂ nanosheets, thus constructing hierarchically coaxial architecture. The unique structure could synergistically benefit fast Li-ion and electron transport from the conductive carbon scaffold and porous MoS₂ nanostructures. As a result, the MoS₂@carbon composites, when served as anodes for Li-ion batteries, exhibit a high reversible specific capacity of 820 mAh g^-1, high-rate capability (457 mAh g^-1 at 2 A g^-1), and excellent cycling stability. The superior electrochemical performance makes the MoS₂@carbon composites to be low-cost and promising anode materials for Li-ion batteries.

In the last decades, cultivation of chia (Salvia hispanica L.) has expanded around the world and the seeds have become well known due to their rich composition in nutrients and bioactive compounds. The aim of this work was to evaluate the physical, chemical and nutritional profile of eight chia seeds grown in different Latin-American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru). The results showed that several nutritional parameters such as the protein content and amino acid profile, dietary fiber content, lipid content, mineral composition and phytate present in the seeds depend on the location they were grown in. Other parameters such as ash content, fatty acid profile or physical parameters were uniform across locations (except for color parameters). The results support the notion that nutritional characteristics of seeds are determined by the seed's origin, further analysis is needed to define the exact mechanisms that control the changes in the seeds nutritional properties.

The risk of lung exposure to silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) and related lung inflammatory injury is increasing with the wide application of SiNPs in a variety of industries. A growing body of research has revealed that cyclooxygenase (COX)-2/ prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) up-regulated by SiNPs toxicity has a role during pulmonary inflammation. The detailed mechanisms underlying SiNPs-induced COX-2 expression and PGE2 synthesis remain unknown. The present study aims to dissect the molecular components involved in COX-2/PGE2 up-regulated by SiNPs in human pulmonary alveolar epithelial cells (HPAEpiCs) which are one of the major targets while SiNPs are inhaled. In the present study, we demonstrated that SiNPs induced COX-2 expression and PGE2 release, which were inhibited by pretreatment with a reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenger (edaravone) or the inhibitors of proline-rich tyrosine kinase 2 (Pyk2, PF-431396), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR, AG1478), phosphatidylinositol 3‑kinase (PI3K, LY294002), protein kinase B (Akt, Akt inhibitor VIII), p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) (p38 MAPK inhibitor VIII), c-Jun N-terminal kinases (JNK)1/2 (SP600125), Forkhead Box O1 (FoxO1, AS1842856), and activator protein 1 (AP-1, Tanshinone IIA). In addition, we also found that SiNPs induced ROS-dependent Pyk2, EGFR, Akt, p38 MAPK, and JNK1/2 activation in these cells. These signaling pathways induced by SiNPs could further cause c-Jun and FoxO1 activation and translocation from the cytosol to the nucleus. AP-1 and FoxO1 activation could increase COX-2 and PGE2 levels induced by SiNPs. Finally, the COX-2/PGE2 axis might promote the inflammatory responses in HPAEpiCs. In conclusion, we suggested that SiNPs induced COX-2 expression accompanied by PGE2 synthesis mediated via ROS/Pyk2/EGFR/PI3K/Akt/p38 MAPK- and JNK1/2-dependent FoxO1 and AP-1 activation in HPAEpiCs.

Research on the development of new lightweight Al-Li alloys using selective laser melting pro-cess has great potential for industrial applications. This paper reports on the development of novel aluminum-lithium alloys using selective laser melting technology. Al-Cu-Li-Mg-Ag-Sc-Zr pre-alloyed powders with lithium contents of 1 wt.%, 2 wt.% and 3 wt.%, respectively, were prepared by inert gas atomization. After SLM process optimization, the microstructure and me-chanical properties of the as-formed specimens were investigated. The densification of the three newly developed alloys are 99.51 %, 98.96 % and 92.01 %, respectively. They all have good form-ability, with the lithium loss rate about 15 %. The as-formed alloy with 1% Li content presents good comprehensive properties with a yield strength of 412.6 ± 16.0 MPa, an ultimate tensile strength of 461.1 ± 11.7 MPa, and an elongation of 13.6 ± 1.1%. The three alloys exhibit a layered molten pool stacking morphology and have a typical heterostructure. The columnar crystals and equiaxed fine grains are alternately arranged, and most of the precipitated phases are enriched at the grain boundaries. The change of Li content mainly affects the precipitation of Cu-containing phase. When the Li content is 1 wt.%, there are θ phase, T1 phase and TB phase. When Li increased to 2 wt.%, T1 and T2 phases precipitated together. When Li reaches 3 wt.%, δ' phase precipitates with T2 phase. This study provides useful guidance for the future SLM form-ing of new crack-free and high-strength Al-Li alloys.

Microcystis aeruginosa is a common cyanobacteria found in water blooms and often causes ecological harm. Antibiotics are also increasingly used for the prevention and treatment of bacterial infections in aquaculture. However, since most antibiotics cannot be fully metabolized, they enter the water environment and cause ecological impacts. In this paper, the effects of the two quinolone antibiotics (enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin) on the population density and microcystins (MCs) production of Microcystis aeruginosa were studied. It is of great significance for the ecological risk assessment of antibiotics to the water environment. The results showed that the 96h EC50 values of enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin to Microcystis aeruginosa were 56.10mg/L and 49.80mg/L respectively, and the toxicity of ciprofloxacin to Microcystis aeruginosa was slightly stronger than that of enrofloxacin. With the increase of the two quinolone antibiotic concentration, the growth inhibition rate (IR) increased, but when the concentration reached a certain height, the IR would reach its threshold. Long-term exposure to low concentrations of these two quinolone antibiotics is not only more likely to lead to the outbreak of Microcystis aeruginosa, but also increase its toxin production capacity. The highest contents of MCs in enrofloxacin and ciprofloxacin groups were 95.539 μg/g and 93.720 μg/g, respectively. The MCs value of these three enrofloxacin treatment groups was more than above 51.8 times that of control group (CK) on the 4th day; from 8th day to 14th day, the MCs value of these three enrofloxacin treatment groups was more than above 3.2 times that of CK group. For another ciprofloxacin, the MCs value of the treatment group was more than 64.98 times that of the CK group on the 4th day, and from 8th day to 14th day, the MCs value of the treatment group was more than 2.7 times that of the CK group. These findings provide crucial management rationale.

The fundamental objective is to study the application of multivariate sets of data in Gaussian distribution. This paper examines broad measurements of structure for both Gaussian and non-Gaussian distributions, which shows that they can be described in terms of the infor-mation-theoretic between the given covariance matrix and correlated random variables (in terms of relative entropy). In order to develop the multivariate Gaussian distribution with entropy and mutual information, several significant methodologies are presented through the discussion supported by illustrations, both technically and statistically. The content obtained allows readers to better perceive concepts, comprehend techniques, and properly execute software programs for future study on the topic's science and implementations. It also helps readers grasp the themes' fundamental concepts. Involving the relative entropy and mutual information as well as the potential correlated covariance analysis based on differential equations, a wide range of information is addressed, including basic to application concerns.

Background: Objective quantitative texture characteristics may be helpful in salivary glandular tumor differential diagnosis. This study uses machine learning (ML) to explore and validate the performance of ultrasound (US) texture features in diagnosing salivary glandular tumors. Material and methods: 122 patients with salivary glandular tumors, including 71 benign and 51 malignant tumors, are enrolled. A representative brightness mode US pictures are selected for further Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) texture analysis. We use t-test to test the significance and use receiver operating characteristic curve method to fund optimal cut-point for these significant features. After splitting 80% data into training set and 20% data into testing set, we use five machine learning models k-nearest Neighbors (kNN), Naïve Bayes, Logistic regression, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and supportive vector machine (SVM) to explore and validate the performance of US GLCM texture features in diagnosing salivary glandular tumors. Results: This study includes 49 female and 73 male patients, with a mean age of 53 years old, ranging from 21 to 93. We find that six GLCM texture features (contrast, inverse difference movement, entropy, dissimilarity, inverse difference and difference entropy) are significantly different between benign from malignant tumors (p<0.05). On ML, the overall accuracy rates are 74.3% (95%CI: 59.8-88.8%), 94.3% (86.6-100%), 72% (54-89%), 84% (69.5-97.3%) and 73.5% (58.7-88.4%) for kNN, Naïve Bayes, Logistic regression, one node ANN and SVM, respectively. Conclusion: US texture analysis with ML has potential as an objective and valuable tool for assessment of salivary gland tumors.

Background: Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the leading malignancy diseases worldwide, especially in Asian. CAST is a potential oncogene in GC carcinogenesis process. The character of macrophage infiltration in GC microenvironment was also unaddressed. Methods: We first applied machine searching in gene candidate evaluation of GC. CAST expression was analyzed via the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) and Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis 2 (GEPIA2) database. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was downloaded from STRING. We investigated the impact of CAST on clinical prognosis using Kaplan-Meier plotter. The correlations between CAST and Lgr5 and macrophage infiltration in GC was surveyed via TIMER 2.0. Finally, GeneMANIA was also used to evaluate the possible functional linkage between genes. Results: After machine-assisted searching, CAST expression was found signicant difference in the overall survival of GC patients. STRING revealed CAST related proteomics and transcriptomics associations, mainly about CAPN family. Moreover, CAST significantly impacts the prognosis of GC from other datasets validation. Notably, high CAST expression was correlated with worse overall survival in GC patients (hazard ratio = 1.59; logrank P = 9.4 x 10-8). CAST and Lgr5 expressions were both positively correlated with WNT 2 and WNT 2B. Among GC patients in several datasets, CAST and macrophage infiltration evaluated together showed no obvious trend toward poor clinical overall survival. Conclusion: CAST plays an important role in GC clinical prognosis and is associated with WNT 2/WNT 2B/Lgr5. Our study denmostrated that CAST in GC overall survival is regulated by macrophage infiltration.

Among the plant resources in pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America, the Chia (Salvia hispanica L.) is unique in being the only member of the Lamiaceae cultivated for the mericarps. Recently the crop has gained considerable attention due to its high of content omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid, antioxidants, fibre and protein classifying it as a nutraceutical.

Accelerators play a critical role in fostering innovative ecosystems and nurturing startups. The evaluation and selection of startups, particularly technology-based startups, for acceleration programs are essential in accelerator economy and management. Assessment of startups requires consideration of numerical and qualitative criteria such as sales, prior startup experience, demand validation, and product maturity. Startups must be ranked based on the varying importance of criteria, which can be identified as a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. MCDM methods have proven effective in managing complex problems. However, the use of MCDM techniques in startup selection and evaluation of criteria interrelationships from the accelerator perspective is yet to be researched. This study proposes a hybrid DEMATEL-ANP-based fuzzy PROMETHEE II model to rank startups and examine the interrelationships between factors. The final preference values are fuzzy numbers, making a fuzzy ranking method necessary for decision-making. An extension of ranking fuzzy numbers using a spread area-based relative maximizing and minimizing set is suggested to improve the flexibility of existing ranking MCDM methods. Algorithms and formulas are derived and a comparison demonstrates the merits of the proposed method. Finally, a numerical experiment is designed to address the viability of the hybrid DEMATEL-ANP-based fuzzy PROMETHEE II model.

Lithium rich layered oxides (LRLO) are a wide class of innovative active materials for positive electrodes in lithium-ion (LIB) and lithium-metal secondary batteries (LMB). LRLOs are over-stoichiometric layered oxides rich in lithium and manganese, with general formula Li1+xTM1-xO2, where TM is a blend of transition metals comprising Mn (main constituent), Ni, Co, Fe and others. Due to the very variable composition and the extended defectivity their structural identity is still debated among researchers being likely an unresolved hybrid between a monoclinic (mC24) and a hexagonal lattice (hR12). Once casted in composite positive electrode films and assembled in LIBs or LMBs, LRLOs can delivery reversible specific capacities above 220-240 mAhg-1, thus beyond any other available intercalation cathode material for LIBs, with mean working potential above 3.3-3.4 V vs Li for hundreds of cycles in liquid aprotic commercial electrodes. In this review we critically outline the recent advancements in the fundamental understanding of the physico-chemical properties of LRLO as well as the most exciting innovations in their battery performance. We focus in particular on the elusive structural identity of these phases, on the complexity of the reaction mechanism in batteries as well as on practical strategies to minimize or remove cobalt from the lattice while preserving the outstanding performance upon cycling.

Previous study demonstrated the reconstituted type I collagen matrix extracted from rabbit tendons enabled to regenerate the TMJ disc in the rabbit. The aim of this study was to investigate changes in the extracellular matrix (ECM) and mechanisms of regeneration in TMJ disc. In 36 New Zealand rabbits that underwent a partial discectomy, discs were replaced with reconstituted collagen templates for 3 months. A histological analysis showed that moderate to severe degeneration appeared in partially discectomized joints without implantation. In contrast, discs that received the reconstituted collagen template regenerated, and returned to normal to protect the joint. Cells in the regenerative tissue expressed ECM, and fibers became regular and compact due to tissue remodeling over time. Reparative cells differentiated into chondroblasts, and showed highly dense pericellular fibers. The morphology and collagen composition of the disc and condyle in the 3-month experimental group were similar to those of normal tissues. In conclusion, the reconstituted collagen template facilitated the regeneration of surgically discectomized discs. Type I and type II collagens play a crucial role in the regeneration of articular discs.

The development of cost-effective methods for estimating hydraulic conductivity profiles has been an ongoing effort in the field of engineering practice, which can be used to increase availability to clarify the hydrogeological complexity of fractured rock aquifers for the aid of solving groundwater-related problems. A methodology is presented, which combines electrical well logs, fluid conductivity logs, double packer hydraulic tests, Archie’s law, and the Kozeny-Carman-Bear equation to investigate relations between formation factor and hydraulic conductivity. This method was applied to develop hydraulic conductivity profiles based on the data collected from 88 boreholes in Taiwan's mountainous areas. The investigation results include: (1) Well logging signals were suggested to be categorized by rock types to establish effective relationships with hydraulic conductivity. (2) Removing the mud-bearing section data with two proposed data clustering techniques could effectively enhance the correlation between the formation factor and hydraulic conductivity. (3) The predictive models for estimating hydraulic conductivity have been developed for sandstone, schist, and slate. (4) The prevalence of clay content in most of Taiwan's mountainous rock formations has been found, which implies that careful consideration of clay-related issues in complex geologic formations is essential while applying Archie's law theory.

The selectin of a demand forecasting method is critical for companies aiming to avoid manufacturing overproduction or shortages in pursuit of sustainable development. Various qualitative and quantitative criteria with different weights must be considered during the evaluation of a forecasting method. The qualitative criteria and criteria weights are usually assessed in linguistic terms. Aggregating these various criteria and linguistic weights for evaluating and selecting demand forecasting methods in sustainable manufacturing is a major challenge. This paper proposes an extension of fuzzy Elimination and Choice Translating Reality (ELECTRE) I to resolve this problem. In the proposed method, fuzzy weighted ratings are defuzzified with the signed distance to develop a crisp ELECTRE I model. Moreover, an extension to ELECTRE I is developed by suggesting an extended modified discordance matrix and a closeness coefficient for ranking alternatives. The proposed extension can overcome the problem of information loss which can lead to incorrect ranking result when using the Hadamard product to combine concordance and modified discordance matrices. A comparison is conducted to show the advantage of the proposed extension. Finally, a numerical example is used to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method; furthermore, a numerical comparison is made to display the advantage of the proposed method.

Tefluthrin (Tef) is categorized as a type-I pyrethroid insecticide, telmisartan (Tel) functions as an angiotensin II receptor blocker, and KB-R7943 was identified as an inhibitor of Na+-Ca2+ exchange process. However, the influence of these compounds on the amplitude and gating properties of voltage-gated Na+ current (INa) in neurons associated with pain signaling remains unclear. In cultured dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, whole-cell current recordings revealed that Tef or Tel increased the peak amplitude of INa, concomitant with an elevation in the time constant of INa inactivation, particularly in the slow component. Conversely, exposure to KB-R7943 resulted in a depression in INa, coupled with a decrease in the slow component of the inactivation time constant of INa. Theoretical simulations and bifurcation analyses were performed on a modeled interneuron in the spinal dorsal horn. The occurrence of INa inactivation accentuated the subthreshold oscillations (SO) in the membrane potential. With an increase in applied current, SO became more pronounced, accompanied by the emergence of high-frequency spiking (HF) with a frequency of approximately 150 Hz. Moreover, an elevation in INa conductance further intensified both SO and HF. Consequently, through experimental and in silico studies, this work reflects that Tef, Tel, or KB-R7943 significantly impacts the magnitude and gating properties of INa in neurons associated with pain signaling. The alterations in INa magnitude and gating in these neurons suggest a close relationship with pain transmission.

Physical activity is well-established as an important protective factor against degenerative conditions and a promoter of tissue growth and renewal. The discovery of FNDC5 as the precursor of irisin in 2012 sparked significant interest in its potential as a diagnostic biomarker and a therapeutic agent for various diseases. Clinical studies have examined the correlation between plasma irisin levels and pathological conditions using a range of assays, but the lack of reliable measurements for endogenous irisin has led to uncertainty about its prognostic/diagnostic potential as an exercise surrogate. Animal and tissue-engineering models have shown the protective effects of irisin treatment in reversing functional impairment and potentially permanent damage, but dosage ambiguities remain unresolved. This review provides a comprehensive examination of the clinical and basic studies of irisin in the context of degenerative conditions and explores its potential as a therapeutic approach in the physiological processes involved in tissue repair/regeneration.

Liquid biopsy is a rapidly emerging field which involves the minimal/non-invasive assessment of signature somatic mutations through analysis of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) shed by tumor cells in bodily fluids. The broad, unmet need for liquid biopsy lung cancer detection is the lack of multiplex platform that can detect a mutation panel of lung cancer genes using minimum amount of sample, especially for ultra-short ctDNA (usctDNA). Here we developed a non-PCR and non-NGS-based single droplet based multiplexing microsensor technology “Electric Field-Induced Released and Measurement (EFIRM) Liquid Biopsy” (m-eLB) for lung can-cer-associated usctDNA. The m-eLB provides multiplexable assessment of usctDNA within a single droplet of biofluid in only one well of micro-electrodes, as each electrode coated with dif-ferent probes for the ctDNA. In this m-eLB prototype, it demonstrates accuracy for 3 tyrosine ki-nase inhibitor related EGFR target sequences in synthetic nucleotides. The accuracy for the multi-plexing assay has an AUC of 0.98 for L858R, Ex19del, AUC of 0.94 for Ex19 deletion and AUC of 0.93 for T790M. By combining the 3 EGFR assay together, the AUC was 0.97 for the multiplexing assay.

Oral cancer ranks sixth among Taiwan's top 10 cancers, and most patients with poor prognosis acquire metastases. The essential fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) has been found to diminish many cancer properties. However, the anti-cancer activity of ALA in oral cancer has yet to be determined. Migration and invasion assays confirmed OSCC cells' EMT capabilities, whereas flow cytometry and Western blotting identified the molecular pathways. ALA dramatically reduced cell growth in a concentration dependent manner, according to the findings. Low concentrations of ALA (100 or 200 μM) inhibit colony formation, expression of Twist and EMT-related proteins, expression of MMP2/-9 proteins and enzyme activity, as well as cell migration and invasion. Treatment with high concentrations of ALA (200 or 400 μM) greatly increases JNK phosphorylation and c-jun nuclear accumulation, then upregulates the FasL/caspase8/caspase3 and Bid/cytochrome c/caspase9/caspase3 pathways, leading to cell death. Low concentrations of ALA inhibit SAS and GNM cell migration and invasion by suppressing Twist and downregulating EMT-related proteins, or by decreasing the protein expression and enzyme activity of MMP-2/-9, whereas high concentrations of ALA promote apoptosis by activating the JNK/FasL/caspase 8/caspase 3-extrinsic pathway and the Bid/cytochrome c/caspase 9 pathway. ALA demonstrates potential as a treatment for OSCC patients.

(1) Background: Water resources at Chia lagoon experience possible threat to its sustainability. Communities are seeking alternatives to improve water quality at the lagoon. The study evaluated the extent at which local communities are WTP to improve water quality at Chia lagoon and the influencing factors. (2) Methods: A study was conducted at Chia lagoon, Western Part of Lake Malawi from November, 2015 to March, 2016. Wide range of data collection approaches such as household surveys, exploratory surveys, focus group discussions, key informant interviews and field observation were employed. A sample of 240 households were selected randomly. Qualitative data was analysed using content analysis. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to determine factors influence WTP. (3) Results: Out of 240 respondents, 57.4% expressed WTP. Multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated significant (P<0.01 or P<0.05) relationship between demographic (Gender, age, literacy level), social-economic (Land ownership, main agriculture water source and income) and institution (civic education and social network, extension, water user rights) factors and WTP. (4) Conclusion: The findings from this study provide significant clues for further research and baseline information for local government and local communities in development of more effective and holistic approaches to improve water quality.

In this paper, we propose a method to find all efficient solutions of an interval multiple objective linear programming (IMOLP) problem with interval coefficients in the objective functions, the constraint matrix and the right-hand side vector. The set of all efficient solutions of an IMOLP problem can completely supply information to the decision makers in finding their most preferred solutions but, up to now, not all efficient solutions of an IMOLP problem can be found by known methods. A numerical example is given to illustrate the working of the proposed method.

The impact of antecedent soil moisture content on soil erosion is a complicated phenomenon, which is still under argument with contradictions in research results. Hence, the objective of this study is to investigate the impact of antecedent soil moisture content to soil loss on clay soil by conducting two-year field experiments under natural rainfall on runoff plots with length of 10 meters, width of 3 meters, and uniform slope of 9%. Volumetric soil moisture sensors were used to log soil moisture changes, and soil moisture readings were used along with rainfall records to quantify the antecedent soil moisture conditions for each rainfall event. Results of this study show duration of the effective erosion event outranks the antecedent volumetric soil moisture content. Field study also suggests that accumulative rain falling within 48 hours (Pp48) prior to an effective erosion event strongly correlated with soil loss per Rainfall-Runoff Erosivity Index (Soil Loss / EI30), particularly when the duration of an effective erosion event is either between 3 ~ 7 hours or 10~ 30 hours. Hence, Pp48 can be considered as an alternative to replace antecedent soil moisture content in RUSLE 2’s cover and management factor.

We report on the role of synergistic polarization of Ba0.9Sr0.1TiO3 (BST) nanoparticles in sulfur cathodes to enhance the redox kinetics of polysulfides for high-capacity Li-S batteries. Ferroelectric nanoparticles are known to significantly improve the electrochemical performance of Li-S batteries due to their inherent self-polarization and high adsorption capacity towards polysulfides. X-ray diffraction spectra confirmed the tetragonal symmetry (c/a=1.0073), while Raman spectroscopic analysis validated the presence of tetragonal orientation Raman modes in BST-modified composites. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images showed a homogeneous distribution of BST in the sulfur cathode system, with grain sizes ranging from 1 to 1.5 μm. Notably, the BST-coupled S50BST30CB10PVDF10 composite cathode achieved a capacity of approximately 820 mAh/g at 100 mA/g, maintaining stability over 100 cycles, demonstrating improved electrochemical performance. Two distinct plateaus between 2.3 V to 2.0 V and 2.0 V to 1.5 V further underscore the superior performance of BST ferroelectric nanoparticles in enhancing the redox kinetics of Li-S batteries. By leveraging the favourable affinity of polar substances towards polysulfides, we aimed to create a more stable reactive environment within the cathodic site, effectively trapping polysulfide intermediates through the synergistic polarization of BST nanoparticles. The synergistic polarization induced by the asymmetric crystal structure of ferroelectrics is anticipated to generate internal electric fields, enhancing chemisorption with heteropolar reactive. The observed high cyclic stability further validates the efficacy of these composite cathodes in mitigating the polysulfide shuttle effect, offering promising prospects for advancing Li-S battery technology.

A multiscale model that enables quantitative understanding and prediction of the size effect on scattering properties of micro- and nanostructures is crucial for the design of LED surface textures optimized for high light extraction efficiency (LEE). In this paper, a hybrid process for combining full-wave finite-difference time-domain simulation and a ray-tracing technique based on a bidirectional scattering distribution function model is proposed. We apply this method to study the influence of different pattern sizes of a patterned sapphire substrate on GaN-based LED light extraction from the microscale to the nanoscale. The results show that near-wavelength–scaled patterns with strong diffraction are not expected to enhance LEE. By contrast, microscaled patterns with optical diffusion behavior have the highest LEE at a specific aspect ratio, and subwavelength-scaled patterns that have antireflection properties show marked enhancement of LEE for a wide range of aspect ratios.

The undoped and tungsten (W)-doped vanadium dioxide (VO₂) thin films were prepared by electron beam evaporation associated with ion-beam assisted deposition (IAD). The influence of different W-doped contents (3%-5%) on the optical, electrical, structural, and thermos-mechanical properties of VO₂ thin films was investigated experimentally. Spectral transmittance results showed that with the increase of W-doped contents, the transmittance in the visible light range (400-750 nm) decreases from 60.2% to 53.9%, and the transmittance in the infrared wavelength range (2.5 μm to 5.5 μm) drops from 55.8% to 15.4%. As the W-doped content increases, the residual stress in the VO₂ thin film decreases from -0.276 GPa to -0.238 GPa, but the surface roughness increases. For temperature-dependent spectroscopic measurements, heating the VO2 thin films from 30°C to 100°C showed the most significant change in transmittance for the 5% W-doped VO₂ thin film. When the heating temperature exceeds 55°C, the optical transmittance drops significantly, and the visible light transmittance drops by about 11%. Finally, X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were used to evaluate the microstructure characteristics of VO₂ thin films.

Falls, highly common in the constantly increasing global aging population, can have a variety of negative effects on their health, well-being, and quality of life, including restricting their capabilities to conduct Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), which are crucial for one’s sustenance. Timely assistance during falls is highly necessary, which involves tracking the indoor location of the elderly during their diverse navigational patterns associated with ADLs to detect the precise location of a fall. With the decreasing caregiver population on a global scale, it is important that the future of intelligent living environments can detect falls during ADL.s while being able to track the indoor location of the elderly in the real world. Prior works in these fields have several limitations, such as – the lack of functionalities to detect both falls and indoor locations, high cost of implementation, complicated design, the requirement of multiple hardware components for deployment, and the necessity to develop new hardware for implementation, which make the wide-scale deployment of such technologies challenging. To address these challenges, this work proposes a cost-effective and simplistic design paradigm for an Ambient Assisted Living system that can capture multimodal components of user behaviors during ADLs that are necessary for performing fall detection and indoor localization in a simultaneous manner in the real world. Proof of concept results from real-world experiments are presented to uphold the effective working of the system. The findings from two comparison studies with prior works in this field are also presented to uphold the novelty of this work. The first comparison study shows how the proposed system outperforms prior works in the areas of indoor localization and fall detection in terms of the effectiveness of its software design and hardware design. The second comparison study shows that the cost for the development of this system is the least as compared to prior works in these fields, which involved real-world development of the underlining systems, thereby upholding its cost-effective nature.

Background and Aims: The impact of antibody response after direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy in hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected recipients before and after liver transplantation (LT) is still undetermined. Methods: In this observational cohort study, we aimed to explore the association of changes in anti-HCV antibody titers after pre-LT DAA therapy with allograft injury, including biliary complications (BCs) and acute cellular rejection (ACR). Results: A total of 153 cases were enrolled from January 2015 to February 2021. Serum anti-HCV antibody titers were assessed before and after (day 30) LT. Among all recipients, 31/153 (20.3%) had pre-LT DAA therapy (DAA group) and 122/153 (79.7%) did not undergo pre-LT DAA therapy (DAA-naïve group). Higher incidence of post-LT BCs was observed in the DAA group (P = 0.028). Compared with the DAA-naïve group, the DAA group had a significantly higher mean level of anti-HCV titer upregulation (P = 0.0024); furthermore, among the recipients with BCs (n = 28) and ACR (n = 41), those in the DAA group exhibited significantly higher mean levels of anti-HCV antibody titer upregulation (P < 0.005). Conclusion: In conclusion, we speculated that anti-HCV antibody titer upregulation, which might have been induced by restoration of HCV-specific immune responses with pre-LT DAA therapy, were associated with post-LT allograft injury.

Infrared sensors incorporating suspended zinc oxide (ZnO) pyroelectric films and thermally-insulated silicon substrates are fabricated using conventional MEMS-based thin-film deposition, photolithography, and etching techniques. The responsivity of the pyroelectric film is improved through annealing at 500℃ for 4 h. The voltage response of the fabricated sensors is evaluated experimentally for a substrate thickness of 1 µm over a sensing range of 30 cm. The results show that the voltage signal varies as an inverse exponential function of the distance. A positioning system based on three infrared sensors is implemented in LabVIEW. It is shown that the position estimates obtained using the proposed system are in excellent agreement with the actual locations. In general, the results presented in this study provide a useful source of reference for the further development of MEMS-based pyroelectric infrared sensors.

A new-type vibration sensor based on a fiber Bragg grating combining with a special structure-packaged design is proposed for monitoring the mechanical vibration signals. Three different sensing structures including the film squeeze type, new film squeeze type and elastic tape squeeze type are proposed for measuring the vibration signals with the frequency range from tens to thousands of Hz. In the comparison of experimental results, the new film squeeze structure has a nice sensing performance in the range from 100 to 1000 Hz with the sensitivity of 35 mV/V. For the elastic tape squeeze structure, the elastic tape is designed to encapsulate the optical fiber with a good frequency response from 1100 to 3100 Hz. In addition, by using the new film squeeze structure to measure the steady-state and non-steady-state vibration signals, the spectral components of sensing signals are analyzed by using the wavelet transformation for confirming the testing signals. These vibration fiber sensors can be applied in the measurement of high-end manufacture-facility vibration or earthquake vibrations etc.

Is there any possible synergic effect of fertility outcome between spindle view-assisted intracyto-plasmic sperm injection (SV-ICSI) with or without assisted oocyte activation (AOA) for patients with low fertilization rate history? To explore the answer, a retrospective study was held in our fertility center by reviewing patients receiving SV-ICSI during 2019/03 to 2023/06. Total 47 pa-tients were included, the fertility outcomes of intervention group (AOA-SV-ICSI, 14 patients) and control group (SV-ICSI, 33 patients), such as fertilization rate, blastocyst formation rate and clin-ical pregnancy rate, were analyzed. The blastocyst formation rate between groups was signifi-cantly higher in AOA-SV-ICSI group (p=0.020), but the fertilization rate and clinical pregnancy rate did not reach any statistical significance. This discovery of increased blastocyst formation rate in low fertilization rate patients could possibly help them in getting more usable embryos in fertility treatment.

This paper designs and fabricates a small-type permanent-magnet linear motor and driver for automation applications. It covers structural design, magnetic circuit analysis, control strategies, and hardware development. Magnetic circuit analysis software JMAG is used for flux density distribution, back electromotive force(back-EMF), and electromagnetic force analysis. To address end effects and cogging force, auxiliary core structures and control strategies are proposed. The motor has a three-phase, six-coil, seven-pole configuration, achieving a peak phase voltage of 3.621 V at 1.0 m/s with a total harmonic distortion(THD) of 0.49 % and the voltages of each phase are balancing a phase voltage error of -0.002 V. The average electromagnetic force is 5.46 N/A. The driver uses a three-phase inverter with voltage space vector pulse width modulation(VSVPWM), dq-axes current closed-loop control, electromagnetic force control, and S-curve motion trajectory control. Simulations with JMAG-RT models in MATLAB/Simulink verify the control strategies. A microcontroller (TMS320F280045) serves as the control core, and a magnetic encoder with a 488 nm resolution provides position feedback. Each phase winding has an equivalent resistance of approximately 3.0 Ω and an inductance of approximately 1.98 mH. The S-curve motion trajectory control achieves a maximum position error of approximately 5.0 μm and a speed ripple of approximately 0.03 m/s at steady speed. With cogging force improvement, the maximum electromagnetic force is 4.90 N, and the q-axis current compensates around 1.05 A based on mover position. S-curve motion trajectory control results in highly stable and responsive performance. Practical tests show that the designed small-type permanent-magnet linear motor and its driver provide efficient, stable, and high-precision solutions for automation applications.

A new optical steganography scheme is proposed that transmits a stealth optical code-division multiple-access (OCDMA) signal through a public binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) channel. Polarization beam splitters and arrayed waveguide gratings are used to implement a spectral-polarization coding (SPC) system with an incoherent optical source. We employ a Walsh–Hadamard code as the signature code of the user who wants to transmit stealth information using the system. A free space optical link applied to this system maintains the polarization states of light during propagation. The secret data is extracted using correlation detection and balanced subtraction in the OCDMA decoder of the intended receiver, and the other signal from the public channel is reduced by the OCDMA decoder. At the demodulator of the public channel, BPSK demodulation eliminates the stealth signal so that the public channel is not affected by the stealth signal. The two signals cannot interfere with each other. The results of this study show that our proposed optical steganography system is highly secure. The stealth signal can be favorably hidden in the public channel when the average source power of the stealth signal, public noise, and public signal are −5, −3, and 0 dBm, respectively.

This paper presents the findings of an exploratory study on the continuously generating Big Data on Twitter related to the sharing of information, news, views, opinions, ideas, knowledge, feedback, and experiences about the COVID-19 pandemic, with a specific focus on the Omicron variant, which is the globally dominant variant of SARS-CoV-2 at this time. A total of 12028 tweets about the Omicron variant were studied, and the specific characteristics of tweets that were analyzed include - sentiment, language, source, type, and embedded URLs. The findings of this study are manifold. First, from sentiment analysis, it was observed that 50.5% of tweets had the ‘neutral’ emotion. The other emotions - ‘bad’, ‘good’, ‘terrible’, and ‘great’ were found in 15.6%, 14.0%, 12.5%, and 7.5% of the tweets, respectively. Second, the findings of language interpretation showed that 65.9% of the tweets were posted in English. It was followed by Spanish or Castillian, French, Italian, Japanese, and other languages, which were found in 10.5%, 5.1%, 3.3%, 2.5%, and <2% of the tweets, respectively. Third, the findings from source tracking showed that “Twitter for Android” was associated with 35.2% of tweets. It was followed by “Twitter Web App”, “Twitter for iPhone”, “Twitter for iPad”, “TweetDeck”, and all other sources that accounted for 29.2%, 25.8%, 3.8%, 1.6%, and <1% of the tweets, respectively. Fourth, studying the type of tweets revealed that retweets accounted for 60.8% of the tweets, it was followed by original tweets and replies that accounted for 19.8% and 19.4% of the tweets, respectively. Fifth, in terms of embedded URL analysis, the most common domains embedded in the tweets were found to be twitter.com, which was followed by biorxiv.org, nature.com, wapo.st, nzherald.co.nz, recvprofits.com, science.org, and other URLs. Finally, to support similar research and development in this field centered around the analysis of tweets, we have developed an open-access Twitter dataset that comprises tweets about the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant since the first detected case of this variant on November 24, 2021.

ZrO2-YO1.5-TaO2.5(ZYTO) composite ceramic is considered to be the candidate of next generation of thermal barrier coatings as its excellent thermal stability and low thermal conductivity in high temperature, however, the mechanical properties and fracture tougheness of ZYTO system may be the shortcomings compared with the 8YSZ. In this study, ZYTO composite ceramics were successfully prepared by chemical coprecipitation reaction, the microsture of resulting composites were studied as a function of doping of M-YTaO4. Mechanical properties, including the density, porosity, hardness and Young's modulus, are determinate; the toughening mechanism were verified by the crack growth behavior of Vickers indentation test Results suggested that M-YTaO4 refines the fluorite phase grain and strengthens the grain interface in the composite ceramic. The thermal mismatch between the second phase and matrix produces residual stress in the bulk and affects the crack propagation behavior. With the increase of M-YTaO4 doping, the grain coarsening and ferroelastic domains are observed in the experiments. The ferroelastic domains with orthogonal polarization directions near crack tip evidences the ferroelastic toughening mechanism. The competition among these crack behaviors, such as cracks deflection, bridging and bifurcation, dominates the actual fracture toughness of the composite. The best toughening formula is determinate in the two-phase region and the highest fracture toughness is about to 3.1MPa·m1/2. Above all, mechanical properties of ZYTO composite ceramics look potential for thermal barrier coatings materials.

In all areas of medicine, especially in radiology, computers are increasing year by year. Filmless radiology, speech recognition software, electronic application forms, and teleradiology are recent developments that have greatly improved radiologists' performance. This research explores radiology software trends, predictions, and the challenges posed by informatics and historical trend analysis. The rationale behind this research is that information technology (IT) is overgrowing almost every day. We must continuously seek new ways to apply IT to make more use of resources. Consequently, IT becomes increasingly crucial to radiology organizations' innovative thinking, workflow, and business models. This study aimed to analyze all radiology software publications in the Science Citation Index (SCI). From 1991 to July 2021, SCI was used to search for publications systematically. We have also widely used this historical method in radiology software research. The findings and discussions are base on an assessment of trends, predictions, contributions, and challenges in radiology software, and we are exploring radiology software with six evolutionary stages. The gift of this research is that radiology managers realize that the use of new information technologies is closely related to survival in a competitive environment. Radiology companies can review these new technologies to develop more innovative business models and services to improve operational deficiencies.

Reactions of Co(OAc)24H2O, N‚N'-bis(3-pyridylmethyl)oxalamide (L) and 4,4’-sulfonyldibenzoic acid (H2SDA) afforded four coordination polymers with the same mixed ligands, {[Co(L)(SDA)(H2O)2]·H2O·CH3OH}n, 1, {[Co(L)0.5(SDA)]·2H2O·0.5L}n, 2, {[Co(L)1.5(SDA)(H2O)]·H2O}n, 3, and {[Co2(L)1.5(SDA)2(H2O)2]·4H2O}n, 4, which have been structurally characterized by using single crystal X-ray crystallography. Complexes 1 – 4 are 2D layers, revealing the topologies of sql, 2,6L1, (4,4)Ia and 6L12, respectively, and demonstrating that the metal to ligand ratio, solvent system and reaction temperature are important in determining the structural diversity. Immersion of these complexes into various solvents show that the structural types govern the chemical stabilities of 1 – 4. Reversible structural transformation can be shown for complexes 1 and 2 upon solvent removal and adsorption, while those of 3 and 4 are irreversible.

This study encourages volunteer managers to innovate when enhancing volunteers' organizational commitment by adopting the new variable of psychological ownership, thus creating new management practices and systems. The findings indicate that psychological ownership significantly affects organizational commitment and can also enhance it through the partial mediating effect of volunteer motivation. Evidently, psychological ownership can become a major factor influencing volunteer retention. Consequently, two innovative management strategies are suggested to foster volunteer organizational commitment: Firstly, construct a diverse knowledge base for volunteer managers, facilitating a cognitive shift in leaders to enhance leadership, achieve better information sharing, and collaboration using diverse knowledge. Secondly, treat the organization's volunteers as a subsystem, develop psychological ownership as the foundation for system operations, integrate the volunteer system with the staff system through a decentralized decision-making structure, 'empower' the volunteer system, and stimulate members' sense of participation and responsibility, thereby fostering innovation and continuous improvement.

Co-free Li-rich oxide is a promising cathode for low cost high energy density Li-ion battery but presents poor cyclic stability. To address this issue, CeO2 is coated on Co-free Li-rich oxide through a low-temperature aged process, resulting in a novel CeO2-coated Li-rich oxide compo-site. Due to the low-temperature aged process, a uniform CeO2 coating layer of 6 nm in thickness is successfully coated on Co-free Li-rich oxide. With this uniform coating, the resulting CeO2-coated Li-rich oxide composite presents improved cyclic stability as well as rate capability as the cathode of Li-ion battery. The capacity retention of the resulting CeO2-coated Li-rich oxide is enhanced from 67% to 85% after 100 cycles and its capacity retention of 5C/0.05C is enhanced from 10% to 23%, compared with the uncoated sample. Such significant improvements enable this low-temperature aged process to be helpful for the practical application of Li-rich oxide materials, not limited to Co-free Li-rich oxide.

The consumption of fiber in the human diet is a global recommendation to ensure a healthy diet. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), a gluten-free grain, and chia (Salvia hispanica), a seed, contain high fiber content and both have the potential to be explored in the development of nutraceutical and pharmaceutical formulations. An interesting characteristic of chia is its ability to form viscous mucilage when in contact with water, bringing the prospect of a binder in solid formulations. To produce tablets with a high fiber content, it is more appropriate to transform the material into granules using a wet process, with the help of a tool that exploits this possibility. Therefore, the objective of the present work was to study, using the Mixer Torque Rheometer, the feasibility of using chia as a binder to produce granulated quinoa and the development of chewable tablets. To this end, an experimental design was carried out to evaluate the impact of variables on the rheometer results for subsequent granulation. It was possible to obtain the granulation point for the formulations and after producing the granules, physical tests were carried out in which we noticed improvements in the flow. In the end, a formulation was selected for the development of chewable tablets containing quinoa and chia fibers.

The bimetallic (Ta/(Ti, V, Co, Nb) mesoporous MCM-41 nanoparticles were obtained by direct synthesis and hydrothermal treatment. The obtained mesoporous materials were characterized by XRD, XRF, N2 adsorption/desorption, SEM, TEM, XPS, Raman, UV-Vis, PL spectroscopy. A more significant effect was observed on mesoporous structure, typi-cally for MCM-41, and optic properties if the second metal (Ti, Co) does not belong to the same Vb group with Ta as V, Nb. The obtained new nanoparticles were used as catalysts for oxidation with H2O2 of olefinic compounds (1,4 cyclohexadiene, cyclohexene, styrene) and photodegradation of organic pollutants (phenol, methyl orange) from water. The re-sults showed improving of activity and selectivity in oxidation reactions by addition of the second metal to Ta-MCM-41 catalyst. The slow addition of H2O2 was also be benefit for the selectivity in epoxide products and stability of the catalysts. The band gap energy values decrease in the presence of the second metal and the band edge diagram evidenced posi-tive potential for all the conduction band of the bimetallic samples except TaTi-MCM-41. The higher photocatalytic degradation was obtained for samples with TaTi and TaV.

The aim of this work is to synthesis and characterize the Ta/TaN multilayer thin film coatings on 52100 tool steel under three different levels of N2 gas flow rate. The High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS) technique was used for the deposition of Ta/TaN thin film multilayers on the substrate. Microstructure, coating thickness, composition, hardness and tribological properties of Ta/TaN multilayer coatings were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), microhardness tester and pin-on-disc tester, respectively. Adhesion property was evaluated via scratch testing of the thin film thin film layer. The lowest coefficient of friction was observed with the thin film layer of higher N2 gas flow rate due to the highest adhesion value of the coating on the surface. The obtained results on hardness, adhesion and coefficient of friction properties demonstrated that this Ta/TaN multilayer thin film coating can be used for tribological applications.

By reactive DC magnetron sputtering from a pure Ta target onto silicon substrates, Ta(N) films were prepared with a different N₂ flow rate of 0, 12, 17, 25, 38, 58 sccm. The effects of N₂ flow rate on the electrical properties, crystal structure, elemental composition and optical properties of Ta(N) were studied. These properties were characterized by the four-probe method, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE). Results show that the deposition rate decreases with an increase of the N₂ flows. On the other hand, the resistivity increases, the crystal size decreases, and the crystal structure transitions from β-Ta to TaN(111), and finally becomes the N-rich phase Ta₃N₅ (130,040). Studying the optical properties, it is found that there are differences in the refractive index (n) and extinction coefficient (k) of Ta(N) with different thicknesses and different N₂ flow rates, and dependent on the crystal size and crystal phase structure.

Introduction: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is not only common in the general population but even more so in patients with tumors of the head and neck region. Untreated, it leads to reduced quality of life, increased daytime sleepiness, and other comorbidities. The aim of this study was to determine the difference in the occurrence of OSA in the patient population with head and neck tumors compared to the general population as represented by the Trend cohort of the Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) , and to assess the influence of tumor treatment. Methods: Between July 2018 and December 2021, preoperative polysomnography was conducted in 47 patients with histologically confirmed squamous cell carcinoma in the oropharynx, hypo-pharynx, or larynx. A follow-up polysomnography was performed in 23 patients 2-11 months af-ter completing treatment. The collected data was correlated with tumor treatment and tumor size. Results: Of the included patients, 43 were male and four were female. Age ranged from 54 to 90 years. The pretherapeutic measurement found no significant difference in the prevalence of a pathologically elevated apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) in our patients compared to the SHIP-Trend cohort. In the follow-up measurement after treatment completion, a significant deterioration in AHI was observed. Initially, 70 % of patients had an AHI > 5, after therapy this increased to 87 %. The effect was particularly pronounced in the group of patients with advanced tumor stages who had received primary chemoradiation. Conclusion: OSA is a relevant condition in patients with head and neck cancer. Tumor treatment can lead to an increased occurrence of sleep-related breathing disorders, especially in patients with advanced tumor stages undergoing primary chemoradiation. Additional studies are neces-sary to better understand the exact mechanism involved.

It is well known that that there is an intrinsic link between the financial and energy sectors, which can be analyzed through their spillover effects, which are measures of how the shocks to returns in different assets affect each other’s subsequent volatility in both spot and futures markets. Financial derivatives, which are not only highly representative of the underlying indices, but can also be traded on both the spot and futures markets, include Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), a tradable spot index whose aim is to replicate the return of an underlying benchmark index. When ETF futures are not available to examine spillover effects, “generated regressors” are useful for constructing both Financial ETF futures and Energy ETF futures. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the co-volatility spillovers within and across the US energy and financial sectors in both spot and futures markets, by using “generated regressors” and a multivariate conditional volatility model, namely Diagonal BEKK. The daily data used are from 1998/12/23 to 2016/4/22. The data set is analyzed in its entirety, and are also subdivided into three distinct subsets. The empirical results show there is a significant relationship between the Financial ETF and Energy ETF in the spot and futures markets. Therefore, financial and energy ETFs are suitable for constructing a financial portfolio from an optimal risk management perspective, and also for dynamic hedging purposes.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most prevalent and disabling mental disorders worldwide. Among the symptoms of MDD, sleep disturbance such as insomnia is prominent and the first reason patients may seek professional help. However, the underlying pathophysiology of this comorbidity is still elusive. Recently, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have begun to unveil the genetic background of several psychiatric disorders, including MDD and insomnia. Identifying the shared genomic risk loci between comorbid psychiatric disorders could be a valuable strategy to understand their comorbidity. This study seeks to identify the shared genes and biological pathways between MDD and insomnia based on their shared genetic variants. First, we performed a meta-analysis based on the GWAS summary statistics of MDD and insomnia obtained from Psychiatric Genomics Consortium and UK Biobank, respectively. Next, we associated shared genetic variants to genes using two gene mapping strategies: (a) positional mapping based on genomic proximity and (b) expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) mapping based on gene expression linkage across multiple tissues. As a result, a total of 719 shared genes were identified. Over half (51%) of them are protein-coding genes. Functional enrichment analysis shows that the most enriched biological pathways are related to epigenetic modification, sensory perception, and immunologic signatures. We also identified druggable targets using a network approach. Together these results may provide insights into understanding the genetic predisposition and underlying biological pathways of comorbid MDD and insomnia symptoms.

This study uses a mass-spring-damping system to simulate the repeated strain of liquefaction cyclic triaxial tests. The two results are compared in this paper to understand the feasibility of the mass-spring-damping system developed in this paper and the feasibility of future research on this related topic and development potential. The main factors affecting this mode's repeated strain are the spring coefficient k and the external force Q0. The spring coefficient has an inverse relationship but does not increase in multiples. The external force has a direct proportional relationship but does not increase the result- a non-multiple increase. When the pore water pressure of the liquefied cyclic triaxial test specimen rises, it will cause the specimen to liquefy, decreasing effective stress, shear modulus G, and damping ratio D, causing an increase in strain. The shear modulus and damping ratio are related to the spring coefficients k and c. Both are variables that change with time. This article takes an original thin-tube specimen at point A in the Yunlin area in Taiwan as a testing example. Through Mathematica software, it can be obtained that the mass m=1kg, the spring coefficient k=244e-0.1t kgf/cm, and the damping coefficient c=0.739e-0.257t kgf-s/cm and external force Q0=10.1sin2πt kg; Finally, this study selected the original thin-tube specimens from four locations in the Yunlin area, and simulated the repeated strain amount of the cyclic triaxial test specimens through a spring-damping system. The results show that the spring-damping system is feasible for simulated cyclic triaxial tests because the model is simple and the parameters are easy to understand and obtain, which also shows the extensibility of this model. Preliminary results of the research show that this model can further simulate the repeated strain obtained by cyclic triaxial tests without considering the increased trend in pore water pressure and the decrease in effective stress during cyclic loading.

Tantalum doped ZnO structures (ZnO:Ta) were synthesized and some of their characteristics were studied. ZnO material was deposited on silicon substrates by using a hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) reactor. The raw materials were a pill made of a mixture of ZnO and Ta₂O₅ powders, and molecular hydrogen was used as a reactant gas. Percentage of tantalum was varied from 0 to 500 mg by varying the percentage of tantalum oxide in the mixture of the pill source, by holding a fixed amount of 500 mg of ZnO in all experiments. X-ray diffractograms confirmed the presence of zinc oxide in the wurtzite phase and metallic zinc with a hexagonal structure, and no other phase was detected. Displacements to lower angles of reflection peaks, compared with those from samples without contamination, were interpreted as the inclusion of the Ta atoms in the matrix of the ZnO. This fact was confirmed by EDS and XRD measurements. From SEM images from undoped samples exhibited mostly micro sized semi-spherical structures while doped samples displayed a trend to grown as nanocrystalline rods. The presence of tantalum during the synthesis affects the way of the growth. Green photoluminescence at naked eye was observed when Ta doped samples were illuminated by ultraviolet radiation and confirmed by PL spectra. PL intensity on Ta doped ZnO varied from those undoped samples up to 8 times.

Siliceous sandstones used in Khmer temples such as the Prasat Basset, Wat Ek Phnom, Phnom Banan temples in Battambang Province, Phnom Chisor and Ta Prohm temples in Ta Keo Province, and Wat Nokor Bachey temple in Kampong Cham Province in Cambodia were investigated in this study. Chemical composition analyses and magnetic susceptibility measurements were conducted for the sandstone blocks used in these temples. Siliceous sandstone is a primary construction material in all investigated temples. Two types of siliceous sandstone, pale brown and red, were found. Pale brown siliceous sandstone was used for the construction of all the investigated temples. In contrast, red siliceous sandstone was found only in the Wat Ek Phnom, Prasat Basset, and Phnom Banan temples. It is suggested that the pale brown siliceous sandstone originated from the Phra Wihan Formation within the Khorat Group. Based on the chemical composition analysis, the pale brown siliceous sandstone in the Ta Prohm temple at Tonle Bati and the Wat Nokor Bachey temple may have been sourced from the lower level of the Phra Wihan Formation. In contrast, the pale brown siliceous sandstone used in the Prasat Basset, Wat Ek Phnom, and Phnom Banan temples was likely sourced from the upper level. The origin of the red siliceous sandstone is proposed to be from the Sao Khua Formation, which is situated above the Phra Wihan Formation.

This study investigates the effect of Re addition on the microstructure evolution and oxidation resistance of Co-Cr-Ta-Ti-C alloys. The alloys tested in this study consist of a Co-rich matrix with mixed HCP and FCC phases, together with TaTiC2 and Ti-based carbides. The addition of Re promotes the precipitation and growth of a CoCr-rich σ phase. Differential thermal analysis (DTA) showed that the melting temperatures did not change drastically up to 10 at% Re addition, whereas 15 at% Re addition significantly increased the melting temperature of the alloys. Oxidation tests in air at 1200°C showed that excessive Re content could lead to deterioration in oxidation resistance, mainly due to the accelerated formation of volatile Re oxides.

Oriental lacquer, a natural and renewable polymeric coating, comes from the sap produced by lacquer trees. For practical application, oriental lacquer must be refined to reduce excess water and enhance its quality. In this study, drying oils were blended with oriental lacquer during the refining process to prepare an oil-modified refined lacquer (OMRL). The type and adding amount (0, 10, and 20% by wt.) of drying oils for wood coatings utilization were evaluated. Rhus succedanea oriental lacquer is composed of 54.1% urushiols, 34.3% water, 7.2% plant gum, and 4.4% nitrogenous compounds, and drying oils, including tung oil (TO), linseed oil (LO), and dehydrated castor oil (DCO) were used as materials in this study. The results show that the drying oil acts as a diluent, which reduces the viscosity and enhances the workability and could shorten the touch-free drying time and speed up the hardened drying of the OMRL. The results also indicate that the hardness, mass retention, Tg, tensile strength, abrasion resistance, and lightfastness of OMRL films decrease as more drying oils are blended. Conversely, the bending resistance, elongation at break, impact resistance increase, and particularly, the gloss, is greatly improved through the blending of more drying oils. In conclusion, the LO-modified refined lacquer (RL) has the highest film gloss and the DCO-modified RL has the shortest drying time for coating; otherwise, the film properties are similar among the three types of drying oil.

This study presents an innovative approach for the utilization of industrial by-products and municipal waste in the production of sustainable and environmentally friendly cement mortar. We explored stabilized stainless-steel reduced slag (SSRS) and polyethylene (PE) plastic waste as partial replacements for aggregates. Various engineering properties of the resulting cement mortar specimens, including slump, slump flow, compressive strength, flexural strength, tensile strength, water absorption, and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), were investigated through comprehensive experimental tests. The influence of different water-cement (w/c) ratios and substitution amounts on the engineering properties of the cement mortar samples was thoroughly examined. The findings revealed that an increase in PE substitution adversely affected the overall workability of the cement mortar mixtures, whereas an increase in SSRS amount contributed to enhanced workability. As for the hardened properties, a consistent trend was observed for both cases, with higher w/c ratios and substitution amounts leading to reduced mechanical properties. Water absorption and UPV test results validated the increased formation of porosity with higher w/c ratios and substitution amounts. This study proposes a promising method to effectively repurpose industrial by-products and municipal wastes, transforming them into sustainable construction and building materials. Additionally, a comparative analysis of transportation costs and carbon footprint emissions between SSRS-cement mortar and PE-cement mortar was conducted to assess their environmental impact and sustainability. Generally, higher w/c ratios and replacement levels corresponded to reduced carbon footprint. The geographical location of the source of SSRS and PE remains a challenge and studies to overcome this challenge must be further explored.

Our previous retrospective observational study demonstrated the safety of laparoscopically assisted subtotal colectomy with ileorectal anastomosis and preservation of the superior rectal artery (SRA), without instances of leakage, in patients with slow-transit constipation (STC). Thus, we extended the enrollment period and enlarged the sample size to detect the differences in the post-operative complications, and surgical and functional outcomes between patients who underwent laparoscopically assisted subtotal colectomy with and without SRA preservation. We conducted a retrospective single-center analysis of patients with STC who underwent laparoscopically assisted subtotal colectomy between 2016 and 2020. The diagnosis of STC was based on the colonic transit and anal functional tests, and barium enema to exclude secondary causes. Patients were divided into group A that underwent surgery with SRA preservation, and group B that underwent ligation of the SRA during surgery. Outcome assessments for both groups included the incidence of anastomotic breakdown, intraoperative complications, length of hospital stay, estimated blood loss, time to first flatus, and complications. Propensity-score matching allocated 34 patients to groups A and B each. Postoperative bowel function, including time to first flatus, stool, and oral intake, recovered better in group A than that in group B. Anastomotic leakage, a significant postoperative complication, was less frequent in patients with SRA preservation. Preservation of the SRA in patients undergoing laparoscopically assisted subtotal colectomy with ileorectal anastomosis for STC is associated with favorable postoperative bowel function recovery and lower anastomotic leakage rates.

The objective of this study is to investigate the use of excavation behavior prediction and analysis software in the field of civil en-gineering. PLAXIS and SoilWorks, widely used in the engineering and academic communities, were employed as research tools for analyzing gravel layers and deriving appropriate ranges of soil elastic modulus for different software programs. By collecting excavation cases in the Xindian area of New Taipei City, Taiwan, and conducting deep excavation analysis using the displacement of retaining walls, this study provides recommended ranges for localized selection of soil elastic modulus. The suggested range for PLAXIS is 7,840 N/m² to 9,800 N/m², while Soil-Works suggests a range of 2,450 N/m² to 3,430 N/m². These ranges allow for reasonable estimation of maximum deformations during the final excavation stage. Based on the research findings, it is recommended that engineers refer to the provided ranges when selecting soil elastic modulus for excavation analysis in gravel layers using different soft-ware programs in the Xindian area of Taiwan to improve the accuracy of deformation predictions during the final excavation stage. These results serve as important references for engineers and contribute to the effective prediction and management of excavation behavior in civil engineering projects.

Current-voltage characteristics curves of NFinFET are presented and are fitted with the modi-fied current-voltage (I-V) formulas, where the modified term in the triode region is demon-strated to be indispensable. In the as-known I-V formula, important parameters need determin-ing to make both the measured data and the fitting data as close as possible. Those parameters include kN (associated with the sizes of the transistor and mobility), (associated with Early Voltage), and Vth (the threshold voltage). The differences between the measured data and the fit-ting data vary as the applied source-drain bias, proving that the mobility of the carriers is not consistently constant. On the other hand, a modified formula, called kink effect factor, is nega-tively or positively added simulating solitary heat waves, which disturb the propagation of car-riers and thus influence the Source-Drain current (IDS). The new statistical standard deviations () are then found to be effectively suppressed as the kink effect is taken into account.

Building sustainable campuses has become a priority for various higher education institutes (HEIs). Internalization is one of the important tasks in the progress. Therefore, attracting and maintaining international faculty has converted to action for various internationalized campuses. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it has impacted most of the citizens’ life, while the international faculty members’ life might be tight during this period. The purpose of this study is to explore the perspectives of international faculty members on their life in higher education institutes by using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Using a self-compiled online survey, we invited 80 international faculty members of HEIs in Taiwan to investigate this issue. The survey covers career and professional status, teaching and research status, and demographics of the faculty. This study proposes a novel conceptual framework for addressing international faculty’s campus life, the design will examine the relationships among working conditions, views of institutions, views of government’s measures, and levels of satisfaction through PLS-SEM. The demographic profile of the participants revealed (a) most international faculty are employed full-time as lecturers or assistant professors in most public universities; (b) most international faculty members earned their first degree outside of Taiwan; however, 66% of them earned their post-doctoral degrees in Taiwan. The results of PLS-SEM suggest that the international faculty perspective of government is more directly related to their current work satisfaction and overall satisfaction. The designed model has shown work well to assess this issue. This can be extended to other higher education settings to tackle similar issues.

Within the spectrum of a natural image, the amplitude of modulation decreases with spatial frequency. The speed of such an amplitude decrease, or the amplitude spectrum slope, of an image affects the perceived aesthetic value. Additionally, a human observer would consider a symmetric image more appealing than they do an asymmetric one. We investigated how these two factors jointly affect aesthetic preferences by manipulating both the amplitude spectrum slope and the symmetric level of images to assess their effects on aesthetic preference on a 6-point Likert scale. Our results showed that the preference ratings increased with the symmetry level but had an inverted U-shape relation to amplitude spectrum slope. In addition, a strong interaction existed between symmetry level and amplitude spectrum slope on preference rating, in that symmetry can amplify the amplitude spectrum slope’s effects. Such effects can be described by a quadratic function of the spectrum slope. That is, preference is an inverted U-shape function of spectrum slope whose intercept is determined by the number of symmetry axis. In addition, the interaction between the two factors is manifested as the modulation depth of the quadratic function.

Due to the demands of personal travels and entertainments, light airplanes and small business aircrafts are developing rapidly. Light airplane structure is simple; however, it lacks crashworthiness design, especially the considerations on the impact of energy absorption. Therefore, in an event of accident, significant damage to passengers will be usually incurred. Airplanes made of composite materials structurally have high specific strength and good aerodynamic configuration. These materials have become the primary choice for new airplane development. This study mainly explores the topology optimization analysis of the light aircraft’s cockpit made of carbon fiber reinforced composites. This paper compares the compression amounts in the original models of composite material and aluminum alloy fuselages with the models after optimization during the crash-landing, in order to investigate the safety of fuselages made of different materials after structural optimization under the dynamic crashing. This study found that the energy absorbed by the aluminum alloy fuselage during crash-landing is still higher than that by the carbon fiber reinforced composites fuselage. On the other hand, the aluminum alloy fuselage after topology optimization could have an energy absorption capability enhanced by 40%, as compared to the that of the original model of aluminum alloy fuselage.

TiNbZrTa alloys are promising for multidisciplinary applications, such as refractory and biomedical purposes due to their high thermal stability and non-toxicity. Hardness and elastic modulus are among the key features for their adequate industrial applications. The influence of porosity and Ti/Ta ratio were investigated on TiNbZrTa alloys produced by three different processing routes, i.e., (i) blend element and posterior press and sintering (BE + P&amp;S), (ii) mechanical alloying with press and sintering (MA + P&amp;S), and (iii) arc melting and casting. Atomic diffusion was improved during processing, resulting in lower porosity in the following order: casting &lt; MA + P&amp;S &lt; BE + P&amp;S. Ta offered limited atomic diffusion due to its high melting point compared to other constituent elements. Thus, the total porosity of alloys increased with increasing the Ta contents, i.e., by lowering the Ti/Ta ratio. However, the Ti/Ta ratio did not considerably affect the bonding energy or the elastic modulus. Hardness was increased significantly in dense alloys compared to the porous ones. However, porosity and Ti/Ta ratio did not show a clear trend in hardness among the porous alloys.

In this study, the effects of various beryllium (Be) addition (Be-free, 0.1, 0.25, 0.50 wt.%) on the microstructure, mechanical properties, and corrosion corrosion of the Al-Mg-Li alloys were systematically investigated. The best performance was obtained in alloy with 0.1 wt.% Be addition. Trace Be addition promotes the grain refinement of the as-cast alloy ingot and contributes positive effects to the recrystallization, bringing improvement of tensile property. Meanwhile, the best anti-corrosion behavior is also presented at 0.1 wt.% Be addition, due to its potential to reduce the width of precipitates free zone (PFZ). As the Be content increase to an excessive level, the comprehensive performance decreases. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that adding trace Be element into Al-Mg-Li alloys has a positive effect on the comprehensive service performance.

Accurate lithium battery diagnosis and prognosis is critical to increase penetration of electric vehicles and grid-tied storage systems. They are both complex due to the intricate, nonlinear, and path-dependent nature of battery degradation. Data-driven models are anticipated to play a significant role in the behavioral prediction of dynamical systems such as batteries. However, they are often limited by the amount of training data available. In this work, we generated the first big data comprehensive synthetic datasets to train diagnosis and prognosis algorithms. The proof-of-concept datasets are over three orders of magnitude larger than what is currently available in the literature. With benchmark datasets, results from different studies could be easily equated, and the performance of different algorithms can be compared, enhanced, and analyzed extensively. This will expend critical capabilities of current AI algorithms, tools, and techniques to predict scientific data.

Li₂MnO₃ is critical component in the well-studied Li-excess cathode materials xLi₂MnO₃•(1- x)LiMO₂ for achieving high lithium storage capacity. In this article, the diffusion of Li ions in Li₂MnO₃ is studied using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation with well-behaved empirical force fields obtained by fitting against the crystal structure from experiment and phonons calculated using Density Function Theory (DFT). We have found two possible tetrahedral hopping channels, 0-TM and 1-TM(Mn⁴⁺) channel, which are differentiated by the face sharing octahedral cations. Simulation results show that the 0-TM channel is active for Li hopping, while 1-TM(Mn4+) channel is inactive. During the delithiation process, the Li ions in the TM layered are firstly removed, then those in the Li layer. However, the Li ions will be trapped in the tetrahedral 0-TM channels as long as the four face sharing octahedral sites are cleared. Up to x=1.0 for Li₂-xMnO₃, almost all the Li ions are located at the tetrahedral sites, forming a regular array along a axis. The de-intercalation of tetrahedral Li ions requires a high voltage (>5.2 V vs. Li/Li+), limiting the practical capacities measured in lab. The diffusion of Mn ions into the Li layers is observed in a deeper delithiated structure (x=1.2 for Li₂-xMnO₃), indicating an initial phase transformation to a spinel-like structure. However, the Mn ions are mainly trapped in the tetrahedral sites in the Li layer, instead of the octahedral sites fin spinel-like structure. A few of Mn ions diffusing into the octahedral sites in Li layers have no face sharing tetrahedral Li ions, revealing a further Li de-intercalation is imperative for the complete phase transformation. Our model is not stable for x≥1.4 in Li₂-xMnO₃. Other charge compensation mechanism should be considered in this high delithiation stage, eg. oxygen release.

Tourism Geographers in Anglo-American geographical departments migrate to teach and research tourism in applied schools and departments such as business, resource and environment, and even cultural and creative industry. Under national research assessment and funding pressures, tourism geographers are not encouraged to keep on undertaking serious theoretical researches related to their mother discipline and transferred to research applied researches and publish in hybrid journals. Such changes in tourism geographers` research behavior have not been tested and reported in Asian academic contexts, especially Taiwan while frequently being discussed internationally. This research aims to investigate the differences in the research behavior of tourism geographers between those who are staffed in geography departments and those who migrate to applies departments such as tourism and recreation, resource and environment, and others in terms of publishing journals, paradigmatic approaches, research types(qualitative, quantitative, and mixed), research methods and geographical scales conducted based on content analysis of articles published by tourism geographers in geography and tourism and recreation departments. This study revealed that there are significant differences in the research behavior of tourism geographers between different department. Finally, this paper explains the differences in terms of Taiwan changing social and economic conditions, academic traditions and politics of geography and applied departments, research habits and preferences of tourism geographers among departments and other aspects. This study can help international tourism geography academic circles to understand the complexity and diversity of tourism geography academic landscape of the Chinese language.

Neuronal cells are believed to rely on autophagy to maintain cellular homeostasis. Nevertheless, autophagy may be a therapeutic target for neurodegenerative diseases because of the role it plays in neuronal cell death. Despite Beclin 1 association with autophagy and apoptosis, the molecular mechanisms that underlie Tau-induced vesicular pathology and Tau protein aggregates in humans remain poorly understood. Here, we set out to examine the role of three genes-ATG14L, Beclin 1 and VPS34- in autophagy nucleation failure-associated Tau disorders in fruit fly models. We found that either reduced ATG14L levels improve neuronal outcomes, or transgenic expression of ATG6/Beclin 1 greatly reduced age-dependent neurodegeneration and Tau pathology; whereas, the loss of Beclin 1 exacerbated these effects. Prior to p-Tau accumulation, the neuronal Beclin 1 network is critical for reducing p-Tau accumulation, indicating that the loss of Beclin 1 causes Tau pathology and neurodegeneration. As neurodegeneration progressed, glial cells showed an upregulation of vesicular Beclin 1 immunoreactivities. The reduced VPS34 also resulted in p-Tau accumulation, suggesting that neurons require both Beclin 1 and VPS34 to reduce p-Tau accumulation. Our results provide mechanistic insight into the molecular pathways that cause age-dependent Tau pathology and neurodegeneration due to an excess of autophagy nucleation processes and autophagy activity, and we derive novel inferences on the therapeutic possibilities of rebalanced Beclin 1 network by reducing autophagic specific nucleation component of ATG14L.

We employed the Riemannian Face Manifold (RFM) as an alternative approach to the conventional linear Euclidean space for explaining the atypicality bias in face likeliness judgments. The RFM posits that the mental representation of faces is better captured as a manifold of stable states, accounting for the nonlinearity in the physical properties of faces. To examine the relationship between physical and psychological distance of morph and typical/atypical faces, we manipulated the parameter k and incorporated a weight function in the Riemannian metric. Our results indicate that the psychological distance between the morph and typical face was longer than that between the morph and atypical face, consistent with prior research on the atypicality bias in perceptual similarity. The RFM approach provides mathematical support and is a powerful tool for studying face perception and recognition, offering potential implications for explaining the other-race effect. Future research can utilize the RFM to investigate individual differences in face recognition abilities and expertise, and how they impact psychological distance and face processing.

Skeletal muscle is a specialized tissue consisting of nondividing and multinucleated muscle fibers. Skeletal muscle-specific myostatin (MSTN) is a secreted protein that acts as a negative regulator of muscle mass by inhibiting proliferation and differentiation of myoblasts. In this study, we established a screening platform to monitor myostatin promoter activity in rat L8 myoblasts. Extract of Glycyrrhiza uralensis (GUE), an oriental herbal medicine, was identified through this screening platform and, the active fractions of GUE were identified by process-scale liquid column chromatography system. For in vivo study, the GUE as a feed additive was investigated in growth-finishing pigs. The results showed that GUE significantly increased body weight, carcass weight and lean content in pigs. Microbiota analysis indicated that GUE did not affect the composition of gut microbiota in pigs. In summary, this established rodent myoblast screening platform was used to identify a myogenesis-related phytogenic, GUE, and further demonstrated that the active fractions inhibited MSTN expression. These finding suggest a novel application for GUE in growth performance enhancement through modulation of MSTN expression. Furthermore, this established screening platform has great potential for identification and evaluation of a wide variety of phytogenics involving in myogenesis.

Background: Anthracyclines form the backbone of many systemic chemotherapy regimens but dose-limiting cardiotoxicity can also lead to reduction in cardiac function and an increased risk of heart failure. Methods: This review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines and registered on PROSPERO (CRD42022373496). Results: 26 studies met the eligibility criteria including a total of 910 patients. Overall reduction in pooled mean left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) post‐anthracyclines in the placebo arms of included randomised-controlled trials was 4.6% (95% CI, 2.7 to 6.6). The trend in LVEF showed a progressive decline until approximately 180 days after which there was no significant change. Those receiving a cumulative anthracycline dose 300 mg/m2 experienced a more profound reduction. The risk of a 10% absolute decline in LVEF from baseline or decline to an LVEF below 50%, the overall pooled risk was 16% (95% CI: 11 to 21; I2 = 77%). Sensitivity analyses by baseline LVEF and trastuzumab treatment status did not yield significant differences. Conclusion: While the mean LVEF decline in patients without cardioprotective therapy was clinically small, a vulnerable subset experienced significant impairment. Further research to best identify those who benefit most from cardioprotective therapies when receiving anthracyclines are required.

Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) may convey high current and sustain high breakdown voltages; it may provide high power control. In a sense, how IGBT demonstrates the capability of power control was not specifically described, and the equivalent bipolar junction transistors (BJT) activated by an applied bias to the insulated gate is intriguing. As seen in Figure 1, IGBT shows an equivalent circuit structure containing two types of BJT, (NPN-type Bipolar transistor and PNP-type Bipolar transistor), which can be modeled as diode-associated transistor. Apparently, as a bias applies to the controlling gate, the channel beneath the gate oxide gets strongly inversed and turns out to be conductive just like what happens on metal-oxide-silicon field effect transistor (MOSFET), which provides necessary igniting currents to both BJTs and thus causes high current gain flowing through them-selves from the bottom. A proposed and renewed formula provides addressing the above scenario and successfully fitting the measured data that forms the characteristic curves. Some parameters in the proposed formula, which includes size and mobility associated constant, threshold voltage, and Early-Voltage-related lambda for MOSFET, explain and explore the underlying physics. IGBT thus enjoy high input impedance and high current gain due to MOSFET (Insulated Gate) and BJT, respectively. This formula combines both merits of MOSFET and BJT in order to fit the measured data. Indeed, the formula intimately fits IGBT electrical characteristic curves, and thus may be qualified and served as a model. The new model is then advisable for designing power integrated circuit to exactly achieve power saving, power control, and power efficiency.

Despite the ecological importance of forest tree species, our study was motivated by scarce data on dendrochronology studies limited to the northwestern part of Tajikistan due to lack of access to such a part of the country which is difficult to access. Current studies on Junipers in the northwestern part of Tajikistan identified that tree ring-based climate reconstruction is possible. Cores of Juniperus Turkestanica from Taboshar area, Sogd province were developed into 176-year tree-ring width chronology. In the current study a summer (June-September) minimum temperature reconstruction spanning AD 1840–2016 was developed, which can explain 30.0% of the instrumental variableness for the period of 1940–2015. Five warmest (1856–1866, 1869–1871, 1907–1916, 1923–1935, 1988–2016) and four coldest time periods (1840–1855, 1872–1906, 1917–1922, 1940–1984) were identified. The developed reconstruction coincides with cold and warm periods with prior investigations from tree-rings in China, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Spatial correlation analysis with the gridded minimum temperature data shows that the temperature reconstruction covers geographical representation over High Asia. Significant correlation was found between temperature reconstruction with summer SST, which suggests strong linkages of regional temperature variability with Indian-Ocean climate system. The obtained spectral peaks from the spectral analysis of the summer temperature reconstruction were significantly at 84.7-year (90%), 2.9-year (99%), 2.6-year (99%), 2.5-year (99%), 2.4-year (99%) and 2.2-year (99%).

This investigation introduces an efficient method for assessing the reliability of semi-rigid steel frame connections in existing buildings, explicitly targeting the Top Angle and Seat Pad (TA-SP) semi-rigid connection commonly used in Australian cities' high-rise buildings. The moment capacity of these connections was examined through parameter power model testing, meticulously considering the bending, shear, and prying forces actions to determine the weakest elements in the connection system. A plastic hinge model was applied to ensure computational efficiency and accuracy in assessing the connections' ultimate strength. Comparatively, the finite element (F.E) method M−θ curves were introduced to scrutinise the nonlinear behaviour of the connection, providing validation for the predicted analytical approach. Further emphasis was placed on identifying the reliability of the weakest elements in the connection system, employing the First-Order and Second-Order Reliability Methods models to estimate their reliability index. The correlation between the model's failure probability and a percentile error was also explored, utilising Monte Carlo simulation reference for refined validation. Novel formulas and methodologies were introduced to compute the locked-chain-series system reliability, which accounts for the inherent material and geometric variability. The findings highlight the critical significance of the weakest element in determining the overall reliability of the existing TA-SP connection.

Garnet-type Ta-doped Li7La3Zr2O12 (LLZO) ceramic solid electrolytes with Ga2O3 additive were synthesized via a conventional solid-state reaction process. When the amounts of Ga2O3 additive were below 2 mol %, the sintered sample has a dense structure composed of grains with the averaged size of 5 to 10 μm, while 3 mol % or more Ga2O3 addition causes the significant increase in grain size above several 10 to 100 μm, due to the sintering with large amount of liquid Li-Ga-O phase at high temperature. The highest total (bulk + grain-boundary) ionic conductivity of 1.1 mS cm1 at room temperature was obtained in the sample with 5 mol % Ga2O3 addition. However, in galvanostatic testing of the symmetric cell with Li metal electrodes, this sample was shorted by Li dendrite growth into solid electrolyte at current density below 0.2 mA cm2. The tolerance for Li dendrite growth is maximized in sample sintered with 2 mol % Ga2O3 addition, which was shorted at 0.8 mA cm2 in the symmetric cell. Since the interfacial resistance between Li metal and solid electrolyte was nearly identical among the all samples, the difference in tolerance for Li dendrite growth is mainly attributed to the difference in microstructure of sintered samples depending on the amounts of Ga2O3.

Thin twin-roll cast strips from a model Al-Cu-Mg-Li-Zr alloy with a small addition of Sc were prepared. A combination of a fast solidification rate and a favorable effect of Sc microalloying impacts the size and distribution of primary phase particles and the dimension of eutectic cells. Small interdendritic spacing in the range of 10-15 um enables substitution of the initial long-term homogenization annealing by a two-step annealing at 300 and 450 °C and a short solution treatment at 530 °C before quenching and the final age-hardening procedure. A dense dispersion of small Al3(Sc,Zr) precipitates intensively inhibiting recrystallization forms during this treatment. Further refining and fragmentation of the structure were performed using constrained groove pressing before the solution treatment. Small pre-straining of quenched specimens and subsequent age-hardening simulating T8 temper were used to promote the formation of a homogeneous distribution of strengthening particles and to suppress preferential heterogeneous precipitation on subgrain and grain boundaries. Microstructural features and microhardness evolution during annealing were critically examined and confronted with microstructural characteristics observed on reference mold cast alloy or alloys without Sc alloying. The proposed treatment represents a model near net shape procedure for manufacturing thicker sheets for the aerospace industry.

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations present a sophisticated nano-scale computational approach that can play a critical role in material design for next generation batteries. One critical piece of information needed for MD simulations is the non-bonded potential parameters, which can be obtained through quantum mechanics (QM) calculations or experimental methods. However, experimental data is not available for exploratory and novel materials to derive the potential parameters. Also, the QM approach needs significant computational power and is too time consuming for large systems. On the other hand, current Artificial Intelligence techniques are faster, but they cannot be generalized across molecules and properties. As a result, there is a significant barrier to discovering and exploring new materials. Overcoming this barrier, in this work, we propose a Machine Learning (ML) based technique that can learn inter-atomic potential parameters for various particle-particle interactions employing QM calculations. This ML model can be used as an alternative for QM calculations for predicting non-bonded interactions in a computationally efficient manner. Using these parameters as input to MD simulations, we can predict a diverse range of properties, enabling researchers to design new and novel materials suitable for various applications in the absence of experimental data. We employ our ML-based technique to learn the Buckingham potential, a non-bonded interatomic potential. Subsequently, we utilize these predicted values to compute the densities of four distinct molecules, achieving an accuracy exceeding 93%. This serves as a strong demonstration of the efficacy of our proposed approach.

Breast cancer is the most common malignancies in women and the second leading cause of cancer death in women. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtype is a breast cancer subset without ER, PR and HER2 expression, limiting treatment options and presenting a poorer survival rate. Thus, we investigated whether HDACi would be used as potential anti-cancer therapy on breast cancer cells. In this study, we found TNBC and HER2-enrich breast cancers are extremely sensitive to Panobinostat, Belinostat of HDACi via experiments of cell viability assay, apoptotic marker identification and flow cytometry measurement. On the other hand, we developed a bioluminescence based live cell non-invasive apoptosis detection sensor (IADS) detection system to evaluate the quantitative and kinetic analyses of apoptotic cell death by HDAC treatment on breast cancer cells. In addition, the use of HDACi may also be accompanied with chemotherapeutic agent such as doxorubicin to synergic drug sensitivity on TNBC cell (MDA-MB-231), but not in breast normal epithelia cells (MCF-10A), providing therapeutic benefits against breast tumor in clinic.

Objectives: This study proposes a model that integrates three determinants of social cognitive theory (SCT) to explain the impact of FoMO on SNS usage. Design: A cross-sectional study is conducted using data for 259 participants recruited from a website. Main Outcome Measures: The analysis focuses on FoMO, social influence, positive outcome expectancy, refusal self-efficacy, and SNS-related behavior cloud-based sites. Data are examined using descriptive analysis and structural equation modeling. Results: The proposed model reported proper goodness of fit. FoMO does not directly or indirectly impact SNS usage through the determinants of SCT. However, social influence and refusal self-efficacy have a direct effect. Conclusions: The roles of the three determinants of SCT vary by stage of SNS usage. FoMO and refusal self-efficacy are more strongly related with SNS addiction. Further research, particularly longitudinal and intervention studies, is needed to examine the effects of specific factors on SNS addiction.

In recent times, there has been significant enthusiasm for the development of all solid state batteries. This interest stems from a dual focus on safety—addressing concerns related to toxic and flammable organic liquid electrolytes—and the pursuit of high energy density. \cite{SCHNELL2018160,Zheng2018}. While liquid electrolyte batteries constitute for now the vast majority of commercial cells, solid electrolyte batteries show great promise. In parallel with experimental research, computational models \cite{GrazioliEtAlCM2016} clarify the several fundamental physics \cite{LiMonroeARCBM2020} that take place throughout battery operations. We review some classical models, emphasizing the conceptual advancements documented in the most recent works.

The possibility of using graphane monolayer crystals as the electrode material is becoming popular. Graphane is stable at room temperature and has large surface area, but its chemical inertness hinders its direct interactions with Li ions. In this study, we performed density functional theory calculations to study the energetic stability, structural and electronic properties of Li on graphane with various CH divacancy configurations (v12, v13 and v14 ). The results show that adsorption of Li atom reduces the formation energy of the CH divacancy configurations. The Li-v12 is most stable with the highest binding energy of 3.25 eV/Li and relaxes to in-plane with other C atoms. Altering the Li charge state to have Li−1-v12 or Li+1 -v12 affects the energetic stability and electronic characters of Li-v12 . The Li−1-v12 (Li +1-v 12 ) enhances (reduces) the binding force between Li and v 12 configuration, and furthermore it improves (deteriorates) the conductivity of the structure. Further investigation of graphane with vacancies is encouraged due to these intriguing observations, as it holds promise for potential utilization as an electrode material.

Li-rich manganese-based cathode materials (LRMs) are considered one of the most promising cathode materials for the next generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) because of their high energy density. However, there are problems such as capacity decay, poor rate performance, and continuous voltage drop, which seriously limit their large-scale commercial applications. In this work, Li1.2Mn0.54Co0.13Ni0.13O2 coated with Li2MoO4 with unique spinel structure was prepared by wet chemistry method and the subsequent calcination process. The Li2MoO4 coating layer with spinel structure can provide a 3D Li+ transport channel, which is beneficial for improving rate performance, while protecting LRMs from electrolyte corrosion, suppressing interface side reactions, and improving cycling stability. The capacity retention rate of LRMs coated with 3wt% Li2MoO4 increased from 69.25% to 81.85% after 100 cycles at 1C, and the voltage attenuation decreased from 7.06 to 4.98 mV per cycle. The lower Rct also exhibits improved magnification performance. The results indicate that the Li2MoO4 coating effectively improves the cyclic stability and electrochemical performance of LRMs.

Two secondary waste materials, municipal incinerator bottom ash (MIBA) and sewage sludge ash (SSA), were mixed with clay for ceramic manufacturing in this study. Specimens with 5 different MIBA replacement amount of 0%, 5%,10%, 15%, and 20%(wt) and 3 different SSA replacement amount of 0%, 10%, and 20%(wt) were prepared and then a series of tests and analysis were conducted to investigate how the two materials affect the quality of the final product and to what extent. It concludes that a mix with up to 20% of SSA and 5% of MIBA could result in quality tiles complying with specifications for interior or exterior flooring applications at certain kiln temperatures.

The effect of H2S with high concentrations on catalytic dry reforming of methane (DRM) process has seldom been focused on previously. Herein, a thermodynamic analysis of the DRM reactions in the presence of H2S with the concentration varying in 0-20 vol% was conducted firstly. Several typical types of catalysts including MgO, NiO/MgO and LaNiO3 in different states were prepared for executing DRM at 800 C, 0.1 MPa in the feed of 20 vol% CO2 and 20 vol% CH4 balanced with N2. The catalytic performance of each catalyst for DRM process under conditions of absence and presence of H2S was compared. A promotion effect of increasing H2S concentration on both the conversions of CO2 and CH4 and the molar yields of CO and H2 was observed on all the catalysts especially the MgO and the pristine NiO/MgO. While a significant decline in catalytic activity of either the reduced NiO/MgO or the reduced LaNiO3 catalyst after adding H2S, moderate reactant conversions still sustained. The results of process analysis and catalyst structure characterization suggest that H2S participation can contribute to the increment in CO2 and CH4 conversion, and active S-adsorbed species may play the key role of catalysis in the reactions involving H2S.

The steady streaming (SS) phenomenon is gaining increased attention in the microfluidics community, because it can generate net mass flow from the zero-mean vibration. We developed numerical simulation and experimental measurement tools to analyze this vibration induced flow, which has been challenging due to its unsteady nature. Validity of these analysis methods is confirmed by comparing the three-dimensional (3D) flow field induced around a cylindrical micropillar under circular vibration. In the numerical modeling, we directly solved the flow in the Lagrangian frame so that the substrate with a micropillar becomes stationary, and the result was converted to the Eulerian frame to compare them with the experimental results. The present approach enables to avoid the introduction of moving boundary or small perturbation approximation. The flow field obtained by the micro particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurement supported the three-dimensionality observed in the numerical results, which could be important for controlling the mass transport and manipulating particulate objects in the microfluidic systems.