Synthesis of ultrathin semicircle-shaped copper nanowires in ethanol solution for low haze flexible transparent conductors

Nano Research - Copper nanowires (CuNWs) are becoming an indispensable item for next-generation transparent optical devices due to their excellent conductivity and transparency. In this work,...     

The effects of qi-gong and acupuncture on human cerebral evoked potentials and electroencephalogram

Although a number of studies on traditional Chinese medicine, such as qi-gong (QG), acupuncture (AC), moxibustion and Chinese herbal drugs, have been reported in recent years, there are few reports on human cerebral evoked potentials (EPs), especially relating only to QG and AC. In the present study, we examined the changes in EPs and electroencephalogram (EEG) by QG, and by AC stimulation to the point called "Zusanli" on the left lower leg, with one healthy male adult. 1. With regard to the effect of QG, significant changes in EP-components originated from the cortex suggest both facilitating and inhibitory effects of QG on the cortex. However, no significant changes in EP-components originated from the subcortex and no significant changes in EEG power% suggest that QG does not affect the subcortex. 2. With regard to the effects of AC, significant changes in EP-components originated from the cortex suggest facilitating and inhibitory effects of AC stimulation on the cortex. Furthermore, it is suggested that AC stimulation has few effects on the somatosensory and the visual pathways up to the cortex, while it has complicated effects on the auditory pathway up to the cortex.     

Functional knockout of the transient outward current, long-QT syndrome, and cardiac remodeling in mice expressing a dominant-negative Kv4 alpha subunit

Amino acid changes S180A (S-->A at site 180), H197Y, Y277F, T285A, and A308S are known to shift the maximum wavelength of absorption (lambda max) of red and green visual pigments toward blue, essentially in an additive fashion. To test the generality of this "five-sites" rule, we have determined the partial amino acid sequences of red and green pigments from five mammalian orders (Artiodactyla, Carnivora, Lagomorpha, Perissodactyla, and Rodentia). The result suggests that cat (Felis catus), dog (Canis familiaris), and goat (Capra hircus) pigments all with AHYTA at the five critical sites have lambda max values of approximately 530 nm, whereas rat (Rattus norvegicus) pigment with AYYTS has a lambda max value of approximately 510 nm, which is accurately predicted by the five-sites rule. However, the observed lambda max values of the orthologous pigments of European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), and guinea pig (Cavia procellus) are consistently more than 10 nm higher than the predicted values, suggesting the existence of additional molecular mechanisms for red and green color vision. The inferred amino acid sequences of ancestral organisms suggest that the extant mammalian red and green pigments appear to have evolved from a single ancestral green-red hybrid pigment by directed amino acid substitutions.     

Highly efficient, widely tunable, 10-Hz parametric amplifier pumped by frequency-doubled femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser pulses

We report a 10-Hz, highly efficient, widely tunable (from the visible to the IR), broadband femtosecond optical parametric generator and optical parametric amplifier (OPA) in BBO, LBO, and CBO crystals pumped by the frequency-doubled output of a regeneratively amplified Ti:sapphire laser at 400 nm. The output of the system is continuously tunable from 440 nm to 2.5 mum with a maximum overall efficiency of ~25% at 670 nm and an optical conversion efficiency of more than 36% in the OPA stage. The effects of the seed beam energy, the type of the crystal and the crystal length, and the pumping energy of the output of the OPA, such as the optical efficiency, the bandwidth, the pulse duration, and the group velocity mismatch between the signal and the idler and between the seeder and the pump, are investigated. The results provide useful information for optimization of the design of the system.     

Direct raycasting of unstructured cell-centered data by discontinuity Roe-average computation

In the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), the upwind finite volume method (FVM) is widely applied to solve 3D flows with discontinuity phenomena (e.g., shock waves). It produces unstructured data at the center of each cell (cell-centered data) with the flow discontinuity constraint on the inner-face between face-neighboring cells. For visualization, existing approaches with interpolation usually pre-extrapolate cell-centered data into cell-vertexed data (data values given at cell vertices) and only handle cell-vertexed data during actual rendering, which unconsciously depress the rendering accuracy and violate the discontinuity constraint. In this paper, we propose a novel method to visualize cell-centered data directly avoiding extrapolation and keep the discontinuity in the rendering data on the framework of multi-pass raycasting. During resampling, the field is reconstructed using the original cell-centered data value and the cell-gradient estimated by Green–Gauss theorem. To keep the discontinuity, we reconstruct the field at an inner-face resampled point using both the face-adjacencies and get two discontinuous field values. Then the field is obtained by computing Roe-average of the two. The analysis and experiments demonstrate that our approach gains a high-accuracy reconstruction and leads to a high-quality image.     

A portable stereo vision system for whole body surface imaging

This paper presents a whole body surface imaging system based on stereo vision technology. We have adopted a compact and economical configuration which involves only four stereo units to image the frontal and rear sides of the body. The success of the system depends on a stereo matching process that can effectively segment the body from the background in addition to recovering sufficient geometric details. For this purpose, we have developed a novel sub-pixel, dense stereo matching algorithm which includes two major phases. In the first phase, the foreground is accurately segmented with the help of a predefined virtual interface in the disparity space image, and a coarse disparity map is generated with block matching. In the second phase, local least squares matching is performed in combination with global optimization within a regularization framework, so as to ensure both accuracy and reliability. Our experimental results show that the system can realistically capture smooth and complete whole body shapes with high accuracy.     

Measurement of enterprise knowledge by state characterization

Abstract: Enterprise production is becoming more and more knowledge oriented nowadays and knowledge management is playing a key role in making commercial profit and maintaining enterprise competence. Knowledge characterization and measurement are the bases of knowledge management, and this paper aims to develop a method for characterizing and measuring knowledge in a comprehensive and practical way. Knowledge in its static state is modelled as a vector, whose values vary with the situation, and changes in state are modelled as a finite state machine.     

Dynamically modulated intensity interrogation scheme using waveguide coupled surface plasmon resonance sensors

An electro-optically modulated intensity interrogation method based on tunable waveguide coupled surface plasmon resonance sensors has been proposed. It has been theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that the proposed scheme can enable sensitive measurement of measurand variations. By modulating the refractive index in the waveguide layer, this interrogation method yields modulated signal whose amplitude is related to measurand's refractive index. This amplitude modulated signal offers a higher signal to noise ratio and eliminates additive noise in the sensor system. A preliminary investigation using saline buffers with different NaCl concentrations shows a resolution of 2.3 × 10^?6 refractive index unit by our approach. Resolution can be controlled by the amplitude of the applied modulation voltage and can be further enhanced by optimizing the device structure or improving the electro-optical (E-O) coefficient of the E-O material. This approach is simple, stable, and promising for low-cost or multi-channel SPR biosensor applications.     

A novel digital filter structure with minimum roundoff noise

In this paper, a novel structure is derived for efficient implementation of digital filters as well as minimizing the finite word length (FWL) errors. Such a structure is actually an improved version of that reported previously. The performance of this new structure and the famous normalized lattice structure are analyzed by deriving the corresponding expression for the roundoff noise gain. Design examples are presented to illustrate the behavior of the proposed structure and to compare it with some existing ones. It is shown that the proposed structure outperforms the others in terms of minimizing roundoff noise as well as implementation efficiency.     

Using system dynamics for simulation and optimization of one coal industry system under fuzzy environment

In this paper, we have developed a model that integrates system dynamics with fuzzy multiple objective programming (SD-FMOP). This model can be used to study the complex interactions in a industry system. In the process of confirming sensitive parameters and fuzzy variables of the SD model, we made use of fuzzy multi-objective programming to help yield the solution. We adopted the chance-constraint programming model to convert the fuzzy variables into precise values. We use genetic algorithm to solve FMOP model, and obtain the Pareto solution through the programming models. It is evident that FMOP is effective in optimizing the given system to obtain the decision objectives of the SD model. The results recorded from the SD model are in our option, reasonable and credible. These results may help governments to establish more effective policy related to the coal industry development.