Low-cost and two-cycle hardware structures of PRINCE lightweight block cipher

In this paper, low-cost and two-cycle hardware structures of the PRINCE lightweight block cipher are presented. In the first structure, we proposed an area-constrained structure, and in the second structure, a high-speed implementation of the PRINCE cipher is presented. The substitution box (S-box) and the inverse of S-box (S-box⁻¹) blocks are the most complex blocks in the PRINCE cipher. These blocks are designed by an efficient structure with low critical path delay. In the low-cost structure, the S-boxes and S-boxes⁻¹ are shared between the round computations and the intermediate step of PRINCE cipher. Therefore, the proposed architecture is implemented based on the lowest number of computation resources. The two-cycle implementation of PRINCE cipher is designed by a processing element (PE), which is a general and reconfigurable element. This structure has a regular form with the minimum number of the control signal. Implementation results of the proposed structures in 180-nm CMOS technology and Virtex-4 and Virtex-6 FPGA families are achieved. The proposed structures, based on the results, have better critical path delay and throughput compared with other's related works.     

Evaluation of air blast parameters in block cave mining using particle flow code

Air blast, a sudden mass movement of air, can occur in underground mining system where caving develops an extensive mass of unsupported rock spanning a large void. Air blast can result in injury to mine personnel, damage to equipment or disrupts mine operation. Evaluation of air blast parameters is, therefore, an essential part to develop strategies to mitigate the hazard. The properties of a muckpile or a caved zone are significant factors affecting the magnitude of air blast in particular on the undercut and extraction levels. This research investigates the effect of muckpile properties on air flow using the numerical code, PFC2D. The critical parameters such as thickness, block size and porosity (swell factor) of the muckpile have been studied to quantify how much they could change the magnitude of air pressures and velocities while the air flows through the muckpile. It was found that the porosity of the muckpile is the most effective parameter on the magnitude of air blast and by designing a thick layer of blasted rock with low porosity in the caved zone, the intensity of the air blast can be significantly reduced. The findings of this study can be used to design air blast plugs or bulkheads in order to isolate any potential air blast from the active workings, or to quantify the minimum thickness of the muckpile above extraction levels to manage air blast hazards.     

Continuous Flow Fabrication of Block Copolymer–Grafted Silica Micro‐Particles in Environmentally Friendly Water/Ethanol Media

Polymer‐grafted inorganic particles (PGIPs) are attractive building blocks for numerous chemical and material applications. Surface‐initiated controlled radical polymerization (SI‐CRP) is the most feasible method to fabricate PGIPs. However, a conventional in‐batch reaction still suffers from several disadvantages, including time‐consuming purification processes, low grafting efficiency, and possible gelation problems. Herein, a facile method is demonstrated to synthesize block copolymer–grafted inorganic particles, that is, poly(poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate) (PPEGMEMA)‐b‐poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM)–grafted silica micro‐particles using continuous flow chemistry in an environmentally friendly aqueous media. Immobilizing the chain transfer agent and subsequent SI‐CRP can be accomplished sequentially in a continuous flow system, avoiding multi‐step purification processes in between. The chain length (MW) of the grafted polymers is tunable by adjusting the flow time or monomer concentration, and the narrower molar mass dispersity (Р< 1.4) of the grafted polymers reveals the uniform polymer chains on the particles. Moreover, compared with the in‐batch reaction at the same condition, the continuous system also suppresses possible gelation problems.     

步长自适应的测量矩阵迭代优化方法

在压缩感知中，降低传感矩阵的列相干性可以提高重构精度。因为稀疏字典一般是固定的，所以目前主要通过优化测量矩阵来间接降低传感矩阵列相干性。提出一种改进的测量矩阵优化算法，使用梯度下降法更新测量矩阵并结合Barzilai-Borwen方法以及Armijo准则，使步长能够在迭代中自适应调整并保证算法收敛性。仿真实验表明，所提出的方法具有更快的收敛速度并且能够得到更优的测量矩阵。     

端盖双滑块+斜顶3次复合抽芯机构注射模设计

针对塑件注射成型自动化实施困难问题， 设计了一副单点潜浇口、两板式2次开模注射模来解决这一难题。模具布局为1模2腔。模具中单腔的机构设置情况为：（1）定模侧，设计了一个油缸驱动的定模顶出机构；动模侧，设置了2个特殊的斜顶+滑块复合机构、1个万能斜顶机构、1个隧道滑块机构、及1个顶针顶出机构；（2）定模顶出机构由油缸驱动定模顶出板以驱动6根斜顶杆来对6个倒扣特征进行自动脱模；（3）2个特殊的复合机构分别为：双滑块+斜顶3次复合抽芯机构、单滑块斜顶两次抽芯机构；此2个机构的作用是，通过斜导柱驱动滑块，从而2次驱动滑块内的斜顶实施2次抽芯，来到达塑件局部区域多次多向抽芯的目的；（4）机构中，使用万能斜顶机构能有效减小模具高度尺寸；使用隧道滑块斜抽芯机构，动模一侧增加1次模板开模打开来驱动隧道滑块实施斜抽芯，能有效利用模具开模动力，降低模具制造成本。     

Functional organisation of the endomembrane network in the digestive gland of the Venus flytrap: revisiting an old story with a new microscopy toolbox

Up-to-date imaging approaches were used to address the spatiotemporal organisation of the endomembrane system in secretory cells of Dionaea muscipula. Different ‘slice and view’ methodologies were performed on resin-embedded samples to finally achieve a 3D reconstruction of the cell architecture, using ultrastructural tomography, array tomography, serial block face-scanning electron microscopy (SBF-SEM), correlation, and volume rendering at the light microscopy level. Observations of cryo-fixed samples by high-pressure freezing revealed changes of the endomembrane system that occur after trap activation and prey digestion. They provide evidence for an original strategy that adapts the secretory machinery to a specific and unique case of stimulated exocytosis in plant cells. A first secretion peak is part of a rapid response to deliver digestive fluids to the cell surface, which delivers the needed stock of digestive materials ‘on site’. The second peak of activity could then be associated with the reconstruction of the Golgi apparatus (GA), endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and vacuolar machinery, in order to prepare for a subsequent round of prey capture. Tubular continuum between ER and Golgi stacks observed on ZIO-impregnated tissues may correspond to an efficient transfer mechanism for lipids and/or proteins, especially for use in rapidly resetting the molecular GA machinery. The occurrence of one vacuolar continuum may permit continuous adjustment of cell homeostasy. The subcellular features of the secretory cells of Dionaea muscipula outline key innovations in the organisation of plant cell compartmentalisation that are used to cope with specific cell needs such as the full use of the GA as a protein factory, and the ability to create protein reservoirs in the periplasmic space. Shape-derived forces of the pleiomorphic vacuole may act as signals to accompany the sorting and entering flows of the cell.     

Densely connected convolutional network block based autoencoder for panorama map compression

As a novel virtual reality (VR) format, panorama maps are attracting increasing attention, while the compression of panorama images is still a concern. In this paper, a densely connected convolutional network block (dense block) based autoencoder is proposed to compress panorama maps. In the proposed autoencoder, dense blocks are specially designed to reuse feature maps and reduce redundancy of features. Meanwhile, a loss function, which imports a position-dependent weight item for each pixel, is proposed to train and adjust network parameters, in order to make the autoencoder fit to properties of panorama maps. Based on the proposed autoencoder and the weighted loss function, a greedy block-wise training scheme is also designed to avoid gradient vanishing problem and speed up training. During training process, the autoencoder is divided into several sub-nets. After each sub-net is trained separately, the whole network is fine-tuned to achieve the best performance. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed autoencoder, compared with JPEG, saves up to 79.69 % bit rates, and obtains 7.27dB gain in BD-WS-PSNR or 0.0789 gain in BD-WS-SSIM. The proposed autoencoder also outperforms JPEG 2000, HEVC and VVC in both BD-WS-PSNR and BD-WS-SSIM. Meanwhile, subjective results show that the proposed autoencoder can recover details of panorama images, and reconstruct maps with high visual quality.     

Optimal Pricing Algorithm in the Electricity Market with Battery and Accumulator and Demand–Supply Balancing

This paper considers the day‐ahead market with batteries and accumulators to level power generation. First, we model consumers with batteries, generators with batteries, and accumulators, all of whom strive to maximize their own profit. An optimal pricing algorithm based on dual decomposition and the steepest descent method is derived and shown to be stable. Finally, the effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated by means of numerical simulations which indicate that it achieves demand–supply balance.