De novo design of the ArsR regulated P ars promoter enables a highly sensitive whole-cell biosensor for arsenic contamination

[Image: see text] Whole-cell biosensors for arsenic contamination are typically designed based on natural bacterial sensing systems, which are often limited by their poor performance for precisely tuning the genetic response to environmental stimuli. Promoter design remains one of the most important approaches to address such issues. Here, we use the arsenic-responsive ArsR-P(ars) regulation system from Escherichia coli MG1655 as the sensing element and coupled gfp or lacZ as the reporter gene to construct the genetic circuit for characterizing the refactored promoters. We first analyzed the ArsR binding site and a library of RNA polymerase binding sites to mine potential promoter sequences. A set of tightly regulated P(ars) promoters by ArsR was designed by placing the ArsR binding sites into the promoter’s core region, and a novel promoter with maximal repression efficiency and optimal fold change was obtained. The fluorescence sensor P(lacV)-P(arsOC2) constructed with the optimized P(arsOC2) promoter showed a fold change of up to 63.80-fold (with green fluorescence visible to the naked eye) at 9.38 ppb arsenic, and the limit of detection was as low as 0.24 ppb. Further, the optimized colorimetric sensor P(lacV)-P(arsOC2)-lacZ with a linear response between 0 and 5 ppb was used to perform colorimetric reactions in 24-well plates combined with a smartphone application for the quantification of the arsenic level in groundwater. This study offers a new approach to improve the performance of bacterial sensing promoters and will facilitate the on-site application of arsenic whole-cell biosensors

Simulating MCP secondary electron avalanche process by Geant4

Nowadays, Microchannel Plate (MCP), as a kind of electron multiplier based on the secondary electron emission, is widely used in many high-sensitive experiments, such as neutrino detection, which require as low noise as possible, while the conventional straight channel MCP will definitely have ion feedback, resulting in the sequential after-pulses being the major source of noise. Normally, the problem can be effectively avoided by coupling two straight MCPs in cascade and combining the channels into a "V" shape known as chevron MCPs, but this method is limited by the manufacturing techniques due to the inevitable gap that will worsen the resolution and peak-to-valley ratio. However, the ion feedback can be inhibited significantly for MCPs with curved-channels. Based on the Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation framework, we investigate how the geometrical parameters of curved-channel MCP influence the gain and get the optimum pore diameter for the maximum gain with a fixed thickness and applied voltage. Additionally, the track-by-track simulation reveals that the average acceleration distance of a secondary electron inside the curved-channel is approximately 20~$\mu$m with a voltage of 950~V, a length-to-diameter ratio of 100:1, and a pore diameter of 20~$\mu$m.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figure

Impact of Clay Stabilizer on the Methane Desorption Kinetics and Isotherms of Longmaxi Shale, China

Knowing methane desorption characteristics is essential to define the contribution of adsorbed gas to gas well production. To evaluate the synthetic effect of a clay stabilizer solution on methane desorption kinetics and isotherms pertaining to Longmaxi shale, an experimental setup was designed based on the volumetric method. The objective was to conduct experiments on methane adsorption and desorption kinetics and isotherms before and after clay stabilizer treatments. The experimental data were a good fit for both the intraparticle diffusion model and the Freundlich isotherm model. We analyzed the effect of the clay stabilizer on desorption kinetics and isotherms. Results show that clay stabilizer can obviously improve the diffusion rate constant and reduce the methane adsorption amount. Moreover, we analyzed the desorption efficiency before and after treatment as well as the adsorbed methane content. The results show that a higher desorption efficiency after treatment can be observed when the pressure is higher than 6.84 MPa. Meanwhile, the adsorbed methane content before and after treatment all increase when the pressure decreases, and clay stabilizer can obviously promote the adsorbed methane to free gas when the pressure is lower than 19 MPa. This can also be applied to the optimization formulation of slickwater and the design of gas well production

Design of multifunctional color routers with Kerker switching using generative adversarial networks

To achieve optoelectronic devices with high resolution and efficiency, there is a pressing need for optical structural units that possess an ultrasmall footprint yet exhibit strong controllability in both the frequency and spatial domains. For dielectric nanoparticles, the overlap of electric and magnetic dipole moments can scatter light completely forward or backward, which is called Kerker theory. This effect can expand to any multipoles and any directions, re-named as generalized Kerker effect, and realize controllable light manipulation at full space and full spectrum using well-designed dielectric structures. However, the complex situations of multipole couplings make it difficult to achieve structural design. Here, generative artificial intelligence (AI) is utilized to facilitate multi-objective-oriented structural design, wherein we leverage the concept of "combined spectra" that consider both spectra and direction ratios as labels. The proposed generative adversarial network (GAN) is named as DDGAN (double-discriminator GAN) which discriminates both images and spectral labels. Using trained networks, we achieve the simultaneous design for scattering color and directivities, RGB color routers, as well as narrowband light routers. Notably, all generated structures possess a footprint less than 600x600 nm indicating their potential applications in optoelectronic devices with ultrahigh resolution

PUBLIC OPINION ANALYSIS BASED ON PROBABILISTIC TOPIC MODELING AND DEEP LEARNING

With the rapid development of Internet, especially the social media technologies, the public have gradually published their perception of social events online through social media. In Web2.0 era, with the concept of extensive participation of public in social-event-related information sharing, the effective content analysis and better results presentation for these media published online thus possesses significant importance for public opinion analysis and monitoring. In view of this, this paper proposes a novel method for public opinion analysis on social media website. First, the probabilistic topic model of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is adopted to extract the public ideas about the distinct topics of certain event, and then the deep learning model named word2vec is used to calculate the emotional intensity for each text. Next, the underlying themes in the whole as well as the events of emotional intensity are investigated, and the variation trend of public’s emotion intensities is tracked based on time series analysis. Finally, the rationality and effectiveness of the method are verified with the analysis of a real case

Observation of Full-Parameter Jones Matrix in Bilayer Metasurface

Metasurfaces, artificial 2D structures, have been widely used for the design of various functionalities in optics. Jones matrix, a 2*2 matrix with eight parameters, provides the most complete characterization of the metasurface structures in linear optics, and the number of free parameters (i.e., degrees of freedom, DOFs) in the Jones matrix determines the limit to what functionalities we can realize. Great efforts have been made to continuously expand the number of DOFs, and a maximal number of six has been achieved recently. However, the realization of 'holy grail' goal with eight DOFs (full free parameters) has been proven as a great challenge so far. Here, we show that by cascading two layer metasurfaces and utilizing the gradient descent optimization algorithm, a spatially varying Jones matrix with eight DOFs is constructed and verified numerically and experimentally in optical frequencies. Such ultimate control unlocks new opportunities to design optical functionalities that are unattainable with previously known methodologies and may find wide potential applications in optical fields.Comment: 53 paegs, 4 figure

Molecular Packing Control Enables Excellent Performance and Mechanical Property of Blade-Cast All-Polymer Solar Cells

All-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs) are the most promising power generators for flexible and portable devices due to excellent morphology stability and outstanding mechanical property. Previous work indicates high crystallinity is beneficial to device performance but detrimental to mechanical property, therefore identifying the optimized ratio between crystalline and amorphous domains becomes important. In this work, we demonstrated highly efficient and mechanically robust all-PSCs by blade-coating technology in ambient environment based on PTzBI:N2200 system. By controlling the aggregation in solution state and ultrafast film formation process, a weakly ordered molecular packing morphology as well as small phase separation is obtained, which leads to not only the good photovoltaic performance (8.36%-one of the best blade-cast device in air) but also prominent mechanical characteristic. The controlled film shows a remarkable elongation with the crack onset strain of 15.6%, which is the highest result in organic solar cells without adding elastomers. These observations indicate the great promise of the developed all-PSCs for practical applications toward large-area processing technology

Improving Performance of All-Polymer Solar Cells Through Backbone Engineering of Both Donors and Acceptors

All-polymer solar cells (APSCs), composed of semiconducting donor and acceptor polymers, have attracted considerable attention due to their unique advantages compared to polymer-fullerene-based devices in terms of enhanced light absorption and morphological stability. To improve the performance of APSCs, the morphology of the active layer must be optimized. By employing a random copolymerization strategy to control the regularity of the backbone of the donor polymers (PTAZ-TPDx) and acceptor polymers (PNDI-Tx) the morphology can be systematically optimized by tuning the polymer packing and crystallinity. To minimize effects of molecular weight, both donor and acceptor polymers have number-average molecular weights in narrow ranges. Experimental and coarse-grained modeling results disclose that systematic backbone engineering greatly affects the polymer crystallinity and ultimately the phase separation and morphology of the all-polymer blends. Decreasing the backbone regularity of either the donor or the acceptor polymer reduces the local crystallinity of the individual phase in blend films, affording reduced short-circuit current densities and fill factors. This two-dimensional crystallinity optimization strategy locates a PCE maximum at highest crystallinity for both donor and acceptor polymers. Overall, this study demonstrates that proper control of both donor and acceptor polymer crystallinity simultaneously is essential to optimize APSC performance

Neuroform EZ Stenting for Symptomatic Intracranial Artery Stenosis: 30 Days Outcomes in a High-Volume Stroke Center

Objective: To test whether Neuroform EZ stent placement combined with the modified techniques in symptomatic severe intracranial stenosis (ICAS) would result in lower rates of peri-procedural complications of intracranial stenting.Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the clinical data from 71 consecutive patients who underwent Neuroform EZ stent placement combined with the modified techniques for symptomatic severe ICAS at our institute between January 2016 and October 2017. The primary outcomes were ipsi-lateral ischemic stroke, intra-cerebral hemorrhage, or death within 30 days after stenting. The secondary outcome was technical success.Results: The technical success rate was 100%. The mean pre and post-stent stenoses were 84.2% ± 9.1% (median 85%, IQR75% to 90%) and 16.9% ± 10.2 % (median 15%, IQR 10% to 25%). The frequency of ipsi-lateral stroke, intra-cerebral hemorrhage, or death within 30 days was 0%.Conclusions: The combined use of Neuroform EZ stent placement and the modified techniques for symptomatic severe ICAS is technically feasible and safe, with very low peri-procedural complications. Further studies are required to assess the long-term results of this approach