Bubble Lift-off Size in Forced Convective Subcooled Boiling Flow

Forced convective subcooled boiling flow experiments were conducted in a BWR-scaled vertical upward annular channel. Water was used as the testing fluid, and the tests were performed at atmospheric pressure. A high-speed digital video camera was applied to capture the dynamics of the bubble nucleation process. Bubble lift-off diameters were obtained from the images for a total of 91 test conditions. A force balance analysis of a growing bubble was performed to predict the bubble lift-off size. The dimensionless form of the bubble lift-off diameter was formulated to be a function of Jacob number and Prandtl number. The proposed model agreed well with the experimental data within the averaged relative deviation of ±35.2 %

Content adaptive sparse illumination for Fourier ptychography

Fourier Ptychography (FP) is a recently proposed technique for large field of view and high resolution imaging. Specifically, FP captures a set of low resolution images under angularly varying illuminations and stitches them together in Fourier domain. One of FP's main disadvantages is its long capturing process due to the requisite large number of incident illumination angles. In this letter, utilizing the sparsity of natural images in Fourier domain, we propose a highly efficient method termed as AFP, which applies content adaptive sparse illumination for Fourier ptychography by capturing the most informative parts of the scene's spatial spectrum. We validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the reported framework with both simulations and real experiments. Results show that the proposed AFP could shorten the acquisition time of conventional FP by around 30%-60%

Controlled bioactive compound delivery systems based on double polysaccharide film-coated microparticles for liquid products and their release behaviors

A new carrier system for controlled release of immunologic peptides based on double polysaccharide film-coated microparticles (PCMPs) used with liquid products was developed. The release behavior of PCMPs was shown dependent on the thicknesses of the outer chitosan film and the inner resistant starch acetate (RSA) film. The in-vitro release results indicated that, with optimized polysaccharide coating thickness (RSA: 4–5%; chitosan: 6–7%), the release rate of Thymopoietin (TP5) was less than 30% before the microparticles reached the colon, and was 50% in the colon. Besides, the bioavailability of PCMPs was evaluated based on the cell proliferation and protein expression. Compared with the intraperitoneal injection or oral administration, the immunodeficient rats that were orally administrated with the yogurt containing TP5-loaded PCMPs with different storage times possessed a good colon-targeting behavior, higher ratios of CD4/CD8 and IgG expression, indicating the improvement in the TP5 immunologic function

Exploring the Antibacterial Potential and Underlying Mechanisms of Prunella vulgaris L on Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Prunella vulgaris L. (PV) is a widely distributed plant species, known for its versatile applications in both traditional and contemporary medicine, as well as in functional food development. Despite its broad-spectrum antimicrobial utility, the specific mechanism of antibacterial action remains elusive. To fill this knowledge gap, the present study investigated the antibacterial properties of PV extracts against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and assessed their mechanistic impact on bacterial cells and cellular functions. The aqueous extract of PV demonstrated greater anti-MRSA activity compared to the ethanolic and methanolic extracts. UPLC-ESI-MS/MS tentatively identified 28 phytochemical components in the aqueous extract of PV. Exposure to an aqueous extract at ½ MIC and MIC for 5 h resulted in a significant release of intracellular nucleic acid (up to 6-fold) and protein (up to 10-fold) into the extracellular environment. Additionally, this treatment caused a notable decline in the activity of several crucial enzymes, including a 41.51% reduction in alkaline phosphatase (AKP), a 45.71% decrease in adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase), and a 48.99% drop in superoxide dismutase (SOD). Furthermore, there was a decrease of 24.17% at ½ MIC and 27.17% at MIC in tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle activity and energy transfer. Collectively, these findings indicate that the anti-MRSA properties of PV may stem from its ability to disrupt membrane and cell wall integrity, interfere with enzymatic activity, and impede bacterial cell metabolism and the transmission of information and energy that is essential for bacterial growth, ultimately resulting in bacterial apoptosis. The diverse range of characteristics exhibited by PV positions it as a promising antimicrobial agent with broad applications for enhancing health and improving food safety and quality

Towards Inclusive Video Commenting: Introducing Signmaku for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing

Previous research underscored the potential of danmaku--a text-based commenting feature on videos--in engaging hearing audiences. Yet, for many Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals, American Sign Language (ASL) takes precedence over English. To improve inclusivity, we introduce "Signmaku," a new commenting mechanism that uses ASL, serving as a sign language counterpart to danmaku. Through a need-finding study (N=12) and a within-subject experiment (N=20), we evaluated three design styles: real human faces, cartoon-like figures, and robotic representations. The results showed that cartoon-like signmaku not only entertained but also encouraged participants to create and share ASL comments, with fewer privacy concerns compared to the other designs. Conversely, the robotic representations faced challenges in accurately depicting hand movements and facial expressions, resulting in higher cognitive demands on users. Signmaku featuring real human faces elicited the lowest cognitive load and was the most comprehensible among all three types. Our findings offered novel design implications for leveraging generative AI to create signmaku comments, enriching co-learning experiences for DHH individuals.Comment: 14 pages, CHI 202

Malignant Transformation of Cultured Low Grade Glioma Cells: An Immunohistochemical and Ultrastructural Study

Using cultured glioma cell line, we demonstrated in vitro and in vivo that when low grade glioma was pass through glioma cell culture at 19th passage, these tumor cells were malignantly transformed. This cell line was established from tissue culture of neurosurgical specimen, pathologically diagnosed as glioma (low grade glioma; grade 1-11) with glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) positive but vimentin negative. When glioma cell cultured at 19th passage was injected into xenograft nude mice, histopathological and immunohistochemical analysis demonstrated that low grade glioma cells were transformed to high grade glioma (grade IV). High grade glioma cell can produce vimentin, laminin and fibronectin, but can not produce GFAP. It is suggested that vimentin and GFAP are useful and important marker in differentiating low grade glioma from high grade glioma. The mechanism of malignant transformation of low grade glioma cells is not clear. The possible explanation may be that the low grade glioma gene include malignant potential originally, as a result, low grade glioma cells change gradually to high grade glioma

Lensless complex amplitude demodulation based on deep learning in holographic data storage

To increase the storage capacity in holographic data storage (HDS), the information to be stored is encoded into a complex amplitude. Fast and accurate retrieval of amplitude and phase from the reconstructed beam is necessary during data readout in HDS. In this study, we proposed a complex amplitude demodulation method based on deep learning from a single-shot diffraction intensity image and verified it by a non-interferometric lensless experiment demodulating four-level amplitude and four-level phase. By analyzing the correlation between the diffraction intensity features and the amplitude and phase encoding data pages, the inverse problem was decomposed into two backward operators denoted by two convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to demodulate amplitude and phase respectively. The experimental system is simple, stable, and robust, and it only needs a single diffraction image to realize the direct demodulation of both amplitude and phase. To our investigation, this is the first time in HDS that multilevel complex amplitude demodulation is achieved experimentally from one diffraction intensity image without iterations