Developing Comprehensive Competences of College Students through Sports: The Role of Slow Pitch Softball Training

The cultivation of comprehensive competencies is crucial to college students’ development. It is a primary goal of higher education and a need for social development. Currently, issues such as unhealthy mental tendencies, insufficient social skills, and weak social adaptability exist among some Chinese college students. Against the backdrop of promoting college students’ holistic development through physical education, this study analyzed the roles of slow pitch softball in boosting college students’ key competencies based on the features of this sport and proposed suggestions for optimizing slow pitch softball training in college physical education

How Does Culture Appear in Interviews?: Focus on "Treating" in Korea and "Going Dutch" in Japan

研究ノー

Surface functionalization with polyethylene glycol and polyethyleneimine improves the performance of graphene-based materials for safe and efficient intracellular delivery by laser-induced photoporation

Nanoparticle mediated laser-induced photoporation is a physical cell membrane disruption approach to directly deliver extrinsic molecules into living cells, which is particularly promising in applications for both adherent and suspension cells. In this work, we explored surface modifications of graphene quantum dots (GQD) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) with polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polyethyleneimine (PEI) to enhance colloidal stability while retaining photoporation functionality. After photoporation with FITC-dextran 10 kDa (FD10), the percentage of positive HeLa cells (81% for GQD-PEG, 74% for rGO-PEG and 90% for rGO-PEI) increased approximately two-fold compared to the bare nanomaterials. While for Jurkat suspension cells, the photoporation efficiency with polymer-modified graphene-based nanomaterial reached as high as 80%. Cell viability was >80% in all these cases. In addition, polymer functionalization proved to be beneficial for the delivery of larger macromolecules (FD70 and FD500) as well. Finally, we show that rGO is suitable for photoporation using a near-infrared laser to reach 80% FD10 positive HeLa cells at 80% cell viability. We conclude that modification of graphene-based nanoparticles with PEG and especially PEI provide better colloidal stability in cell medium, resulting in more uniform transfection and overall increased efficiency

MoSS: Monocular Shape Sensing for Continuum Robots

Continuum robots are promising candidates for interactive tasks in medical and industrial applications due to their unique shape, compliance, and miniaturization capability. Accurate and real-time shape sensing is essential for such tasks yet remains a challenge. Embedded shape sensing has high hardware complexity and cost, while vision-based methods require stereo setup and struggle to achieve real-time performance. This paper proposes the first eye-to-hand monocular approach to continuum robot shape sensing. Utilizing a deep encoder-decoder network, our method, MoSSNet, eliminates the computation cost of stereo matching and reduces requirements on sensing hardware. In particular, MoSSNet comprises an encoder and three parallel decoders to uncover spatial, length, and contour information from a single RGB image, and then obtains the 3D shape through curve fitting. A two-segment tendon-driven continuum robot is used for data collection and testing, demonstrating accurate (mean shape error of 0.91 mm, or 0.36% of robot length) and real-time (70 fps) shape sensing on real-world data. Additionally, the method is optimized end-to-end and does not require fiducial markers, manual segmentation, or camera calibration. Code and datasets will be made available at https://github.com/ContinuumRoboticsLab/MoSSNet.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, submitted to RA-

Open continuum robotics–one actuation module to create them all

Experiments on physical continuum robot are the gold standard for evaluations. Currently, as no commercial continuum robot platform is available, a large variety of early-stage prototypes exists. These prototypes are developed by individual research groups and are often used for a single publication. Thus, a significant amount of time is devoted to creating proprietary hardware and software hindering the development of a common platform, and shifting away scarce time and efforts from the main research challenges. We address this problem by proposing an open-source actuation module, which can be used to build different types of continuum robots. It consists of a high-torque brushless electric motor, a high resolution optical encoder, and a low-gear-ratio transmission. For this article, we create three different types of continuum robots. In addition, we illustrate, for the first time, that continuum robots built with our actuation module can proprioceptively detect external forces. Consequently, our approach opens untapped and under-investigated research directions related to the dynamics and advanced control of continuum robots, where sensing the generalized flow and effort is mandatory. Besides that, we democratize continuum robots research by providing open-source software and hardware with our initiative called the Open Continuum Robotics Project, to increase the accessibility and reproducibility of advanced methods

Changes of Microorganisms and Flavor Compounds in the Fourth Round Jiupei of Sauce-flavored Baijiu in Beijing

Sauce-flavor Baijiu shows a typical sauce flavor, with a delicate mouthfeel. Its fermentation process consists of seven cycles, and each cycle produces one kind of base liquor. The fourth cycle liquor has a rich flavor and excellent quality. During the fermentation process, microorganisms are in a dynamic state, while flavor substances differ. This study investigated the microbial changes of Jiupei in the fourth cycle and their impact on flavor substances. Species diversity analysis was conducted on the fourth cycle Jiupei sample using high-throughput sequencing. Flavor substances were analyzed using headspace solid-phase microextraction combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Results showed that the dominant bacteria in the Jiupei were Lactobacillus, Virgibacillus, and Kroppenstedtia, while dominant fungi were Thermoascus, Aspergillus, and Issatchenkia. The microbial community in the Jiupei showed significant dynamic changes during the later stage of fermentation. The Jiupei showed the richest variety of alcohol and ester substances at the beginning of fermentation, with the relative content of alcohol, ester, and acid compounds showing a pattern of increasing firstly and then gradually decreased during fermentation. This study conducted a correlation analysis between fungi and bacteria at the genus level and flavor substances, revealing that Monascus, Lactobacillus, and Wickerhamomyces were positively correlated with key flavor substances, such as ethyl acetate, ethyl lactate, and ethyl hexanoate, respectively. The data provided a basis for comparing the microorganisms and flavor substances in the fourth cycle of sauce-flavor Baijiu, and offered a theoretical basis for improving the quality of Baijiu

Exploring Light-Sensitive Nanocarriers for Simultaneous Triggered Antibiotic Release and Disruption of Biofilms Upon Generation of Laser-Induced Vapor Nanobubbles

Impaired penetration of antibiotics through bacterial biofilms is one of the reasons for failure of antimicrobial therapy. Hindered drug diffusion is caused on the one hand by interactions with the sticky biofilm matrix and on the other hand by the fact that bacterial cells are organized in densely packed clusters of cells. Binding interactions with the biofilm matrix can be avoided by encapsulating the antibiotics into nanocarriers, while interfering with the integrity of the dense cell clusters can enhance drug transport deep into the biofilm. Vapor nanobubbles (VNB), generated from laser irradiated nanoparticles, are a recently reported effective way to loosen up the biofilm structure in order to enhance drug transport and efficacy. In the present study, we explored if the disruptive force of VNB can be used simultaneously to interfere with the biofilm structure and trigger antibiotic release from light-responsive nanocarriers. The antibiotic tobramycin was incorporated in two types of light-responsive nanocarriers—liposomes functionalized with gold nanoparticles (Lip-AuNP) and graphene quantum dots (GQD)—and their efficacy was evaluated on Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms. Even though the anti-biofilm efficacy of tobramycin was improved by liposomal encapsulation, electrostatic functionalization with 70 nm AuNP unfortunately resulted in premature leakage of tobramycin in a matter of hours. Laser-irradiation consequently did not further improve P. aeruginosa biofilm eradication. Adsorption of tobramycin to GQD, on the other hand, did result in a stable formulation with high encapsulation efficiency, without burst release of tobramycin from the nanocarriers. However, even though laser-induced VNB formation from GQD resulted in biofilm disruption, an enhanced anti-biofilm effect was not achieved due to tobramycin not being efficiently released from GQD. Even though this study was unsuccessful in designing suitable nanocarriers for simultaneous biofilm disruption and light-triggered release of tobramycin, it provides insights into the difficulties and challenges that need to be considered for future developments in this regard