Observation of self-accelerating Bessel-like optical beams along arbitrary trajectories

We experimentally demonstrate self-accelerating Bessel-like optical beams propagating along arbitrary trajectories in free space. With computer generated holography, such beams are designed to follow different controllable trajectories while their main lobe transverse profiles remain nearly invariant and symmetric. Examples include parabolic, snake-like, hyperbolic, hyperbolic secant, and even three-dimensional spiraling trajectories. The self-healing property of such beams is also demonstrated. This new class of optical beams can be considered as a hybrid between accelerating and non-accelerating nondiffracting beams that may find a variety of applications

Farmers' landslide risk perceptions and willingness for restoration and conservation of world heritage site of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, China

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Maternal and fetal/neonatal outcomes of pregnancies complicated by pulmonary hypertension: a retrospective study of 154 patients

Objectives: To determine the main clinical and demographic outcomes related to Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) and adverse obstetric and fetal/neonatal outcomes. Methods: This study retrospectively analyzed the medical record data of 154 patients with PH who were admitted to the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University between January 2011 and December 2020. Results: According to the severity of elevated Pulmonary Artery Systolic Pressure (PASP), 82 women (53.2%) were included in the mild PH group, 34 (22.1%) were included in the moderate PH group, and 38 (24.7%) were included in the severe PH group. There were significant differences in the incidence of heart failure, premature delivery, Very-Low-Birth-Weight (VLBW) infants, and Small-for-Gestational-Age (SGA) infants among the three PH groups (p < 0.05). Five (3.2%) women died within 7-days after delivery, 7 (4.5%) fetuses died in utero, and 3 (1.9%) neonates died. The authors found that PASP was an independent risk factor for maternal mortality. After adjustment for age, gestational weeks, systolic blood pressure, Body Mass Index (BMI), mode of delivery, and anesthesia, the risk of maternal mortality in the severe PH group was 20.21 times higher than that in the mild-moderate PH group (OR = 21.21 [95% CI 1.7∼264.17]), p < 0.05. All 131 (85.1%) patients were followed up for 12 months postpartum. Conclusions: The authors found that the risk of maternal mortality in the severe PH group was significantly higher than that in the mild-moderate group, highlighting the importance of pulmonary artery pressure screening before pregnancy, early advice on contraception, and multidisciplinary care

Anti-parity-time topologically undefined state

We constructed an anti-parity-time-symmetric photonic lattice by using perturbations. The results show the topological state will appear when the waveguide coupling constants $\kappa_1<\kappa_2$; Interestingly, a state with undefined winding numbers occurs when $\kappa_1=\kappa_2$, in which the light distributes only in the wide waveguides with equal magnitude distribution. Further studies show that the edge state will be strengthened by introducing defect for the topologically non-trivial case, while it will not affect the equal intensity transmission for the topologically undefined state. Our work provides a new way to realize the topological state and equally divided light transmission and might be applicable in optical circuits and optical interconnect

A pyroptosis-related gene signature for prognosis prediction in hepatocellular carcinoma

IntroductionHepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most invasive cancers with a low 5-year survival rate. Pyroptosis, a specialized form of cell death, has shown its association with cancer progression. However, its role in the prognosis of HCC has not been fully understood.MethodsIn our study, clinical information and mRNA expression for 1076 patients with HCC were obtained from the five public cohorts. Pyroptotic clusters were generated by unsupervised clustering based on 40 pyroptosis-related genes (PRGs) in the TCGA and ICGC cohort. A pyroptosis-related signature was constructed using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression according to differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of pyroptotic clusters. The signature was then tested in the validation cohorts (GES10142 and GSE14520) and subsequently validated in the CPTAC cohort (n=159) at both mRNA and protein levels. Response to sorafenib was explored in GSE109211.ResultsThree clusters were identified based on the 40 PRGs in the TCGA cohort. A total of 24 genes were selected based on DEGs of the above three pyroptotic clusters to construct the pyroptotic risk score. Patients with the high-risk score showed shorter overall survival (OS) compared to those with the low-risk score in the training set (P&lt;0.001; HR, 3.06; 95% CI, 2.22-4.24) and the test set (P=0.008; HR, 1.61; 95% CI, 1.13-2.28). The predictive ability of the risk score was further confirmed in the CPTAC cohort at both mRNAs (P&lt;0.001; HR, 2.99; 95% CI, 1.67-5.36) and protein levels (P&lt;0.001; HR, 2.97; 95% CI 1.66-5.31). The expression of the model genes was correlated with immune cell infiltration, angiogenesis-related genes, and sensitivity to antiangiogenic therapy (P&lt;0.05).DiscussionIn conclusion, we established a prognostic signature of 24 genes based on pyroptosis clusters for HCC patients, providing insight into the risk stratification of HCC

Bayesian Game-Theoretic Bidding Optimization for Aggregators Considering the Breach of Demand Response Resource

Demand response (DR) aggregator controlling and aggregating flexible resource of residential users to participate in DR market will contribute the performance of DR project. However, DR aggregator has to face the risk that users may break the contract signed with aggregator and refuse to be controlled by aggregator due to the uncertainty factors of electricity consumption. Therefore, in this paper, community operator (i.e., DR aggregator) is proposed to equip auxiliary equipment, such as energy storage and gas boiler, to compensate for power shortage caused by users&#8217; breach behavior. DR aggregated resource with different auxiliary equipment will have different characteristics, such as breach rate of DR resource. In the proposed DR framework, for selling the aggregated resource, community operator has to compete the market share with other operators in day-ahead DR market. In the competition, each operator will try its best to make the optimal bidding strategy by knowing as much information of its opponents as possible. But, some information of community operator (e.g., DR resource&#8217;s characteristic) belongs to privacy information, which is unknown to other operators. Accordingly, this paper focuses on the application of incomplete information game-theoretic framework to model the competition among community operators in DR bidding market. To optimize bidding strategy for the high profit with incomplete information, a Bayesian game approach is formulated. And, an effective iterative algorithm is also presented to search the equilibrium for the proposed Bayesian game model. Finally, a case study is performed to show the effectiveness of the proposed framework and Bayesian game approach

Light wave propagation and diffraction inhibition in three-dimensional photonic quasicrystal lattices

We have investigated the linear propagation of light wave in three-dimensional photonic quasicrystal lattices by numerical simulation. The diffraction characteristics of the light waves in the longitudinal non-modulated, in-phase modulated and out-of-phase modulated quasicrystal lattices have been compared and discussed. We have demonstrated the diffraction inhibition of light wave in three-dimensional photonic quasicrystals. Linear transverse light localization has been realized in the longitudinal out-of-phase modulated three-dimensional quasicrystal lattices by adjusting the structural parameters appropriately. Furthermore, the results also show that the longitudinal out-of-phase modulated photonic quasicrystals are easier to produce diffraction inhibition than the longitudinal out-of-phase modulated periodic lattices under low transverse refractive index contrast. Distortionless dot image transmission has numerically demonstrated in out-of-phase modulated photonic quasicrystals array. It provides a new way for distortion-free image transmission, which has promising applications in optical information transmission and all-optical signal processing