Lithography-induced hydrophobic surfaces of silicon wafers with excellent anisotropic wetting properties

In recent years, hydrophobic surfaces have attracted more and more attentions from many researchers. In this paper, we comprehensively discussed the effects of specific parameters of microstructures on the wetting properties by using the theoretical models, the effects of microstructures on two-dimensional anisotropic properties and the water droplet impact experiment. Firstly, the relationships between the CAs and variable parameters were explored after the formula derivation for three various patterns. Then three different patterns were fabricated successfully on the silicon wafers by lithography technology and the effects of microstructures (including LWD parameters and interval parameters) on surface wettability were studied based on the theoretical research. After that, the effects of microstructures on two-dimensional anisotropic properties were also studied. Finally, the water droplet impact experiment was carried out and the viscoelastic properties were simply investigated. Our research proposed a potential method for fabricating hydrophobic surfaces with excellent anisotropic properties. This method may be widely used in a variety of academic and industrial applications in the future

Torsional properties of Boron Nitride nanocones with different cone heights, disclination angles and simulation temperatures

The torsional properties of single-walled boron nitride (BN) nanocones at different cone heights, disclination angles and simulation temperatures have been investigated using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The simulation results indicate that the torque and average potential energy decrease with the increasing cone height and disclination angle, and the failure torsion angle increases with the increasing cone height and disclination angle. For different simulation temperatures, the torsional behavior of BN nanocones at higher simulation temperature is more serious and earlier to reach a failure point, the maximum torque and average potential energy of the system decrease with the increasing simulation temperature. For different loading rates, the failure torsion angle decreases with the increasing loading rate, so the fracture of BN nanocone occurred earlier with higher loading rate. Therefore, the cone height, disclination angle, simulation temperature and loading rate are considered to be four main influencing factors for the torsional properties of the BN nanocones

Cognitive impairment in Chinese adult patients with type III spinal muscular atrophy without disease-modifying treatment

ObjectiveSpinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the degeneration of motor neurons in the spinal cord. It remains uncertain whether the cognitive performance of adult patients with SMA is impaired. The objective of this study was to assess the cognitive profile of adult Chinese patients with SMA and the association between clinical features and cognitive ability, particularly executive function.MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 22 untreated adult patients with type III SMA and 20 healthy subjects. The following variables were assessed: general intelligence, memory, attention, language, executive function, depression, anxiety, and other demographic and clinical parameters. In addition, physical function was evaluated using the Hammersmith Functional Motor Scale Expanded (HFMSE), the Revised Upper Limb Module (RULM), and the 6-Minute Walk Test (6MWT).ResultsSMA patients had lower scores than healthy subjects in the Verbal Fluency Test, Stroop effect, Total Errors, Perseverative Responses, Perseverative Errors, and Non-perseverative Errors in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, showing impaired abilities of SMA patients in executive function. In the Attention Network Test (ANT), the results indicated that the SMA patients also had selective deficits in their executive control networks. Ambulant patients had better executive function test performance than non-ambulant ones. Compromised executive abilities in patients with SMA were correlated with a younger age at onset, poorer motor function, and higher levels of anxiety and depression.ConclusionOur study presented the distribution of cognitive impairment in a Chinese cohort with SMA. Patients with type III SMA showed selective deficits in executive function, which may be associated with disease severity, physical impairment, depression and anxiety. Future cognitive studies, accounting for motor and emotional impairment, are needed to evaluate if executive impairment is driven by specific brain changes or by those confounding factors

The investigation of mechanical and thermal properties of super-hydrophobic nitinol surfaces fabricated by hybrid methods of laser irradiation and carbon ion implantation

Comparing with laser irradiation only, the laser ablation combined with chemical modification process is a widely used technique to obtain bio-inspired super-hydrophobic surface. However, the as-prepared surfaces may be polluted by toxic substance during chemical modification such as fluoroalkyl silane and stearic acid. The side effect of polluted functional surface on organisms and environment limited its application value. In this paper, a green and environmental-friendly super-hydrophobic surface was quickly fabricated on nitinol substrates through hybrid of nanosecond laser ablation and carbon ion implantation. The time that turning from super-hydrophilicity to super-hydrophobicity was only 16 hours exhibiting high efficiency compared with pure laser processing. Surface morphology and chemical component were systematically investigated to reveal the formation mechanism of super-hydrophobicity in such short time. The mechanical abrasion tests implied that the mechanical properties of surface microstructure could be heightened after carbon ion implantation, showing the superior structure stability. It is noted that chemical modified super-hydrophobicity could be hardly destroyed under high temperature, and the thermal stability of this ion implanted super-hydrophobic surface was on a par with it. This hybrid method of laser irradiation and carbon ion implantation paves a green way for rapid fabrication super-hydrophobic surface on nitinol, which would have great application value in biomedicine and industry

A high interferon gamma signature of CD8+ T cells predicts response to neoadjuvant immunotherapy plus chemotherapy in gastric cancer

BackgroundWhile the tumor microenvironment (TME) affects immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) efficacy, ICB also reshapes the characteristics of TME. Thus far, studies have focused on the TME evolution during neoadjuvant or adjuvant ICB therapy in gastric cancer (GC). However, the interaction between TME characteristics and neoadjuvant immunotherapy plus chemotherapy remains to be elucidated.MethodsWe performed single-cell RNA sequencing on ten GC specimens pre- and post-neoadjuvant camrelizumab plus mFOLFOX6 to determine the impact of the TME on the efficacy of the combination therapy and the remodeling of TME by the therapy.ResultsA high baseline interferon gamma (IFN-γ) signature in CD8+ T cells predicts better responses to the combination therapy. We also observed that the IFN-γ signature significantly decreased in multiple cell types, and the exhausted signature of CD8+ T cells was significantly suppressed during the neoadjuvant therapy.ConclusionsOur data reveal interactions between the TME and neoadjuvant immunotherapy plus chemotherapy in GC. Importantly, it also highlights the signature of CD8+ T cells in predicting response to the combination therapy in GC

Strategies of soil microbial N-cycling in different cadmium contaminated soil with wheat straw return

Cadmium contamination inevitably affects the microbially mediated transformation of nitrogen in soils with wheat straw return. The responses of nitrogen functional microorganisms to cadmium in acidic and alkaline soils under wheat straw returned are still unclear. In this study, quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and sequencing of nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria were performed to investigate the effects of wheat straw application on nitrogen conversion in different Cd-contaminated soils during an incubation experiment. Results showed that the presence of Cd decreased the abundance of hao gene catalyzing nitrification and norB gene catalyzing denitrification process, resulting the accumulation of NH4+-N and reduction of NO3--N in the acidic soils. Additionally, Cd-contamination stimulates the nitrification catalyzed by bacterial amoA gene and thus reduced the NH4+-N content in the alkaline soils. Meanwhile, Cd dominated the decrease of NO3--N content by promoting denitrification process catalyzed by nirS gene. Among all nitrifying and denitrifying microorganisms, Nitrosospira are tolerant to Cd stress under alkaline condition but sensitive to acidic condition, which dominantly harbored hao gene in the acidic soils and bacterial amoA gene in the alkaline soils. This study aimed to provide reasonable information for the rational adoption of wheat straw returning strategies to realize nitrogen regulation in Cd-contaminated farmland soil

Bidirectional Face Aging Synthesis Based on Improved Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks

The use of computers to simulate facial aging or rejuvenation has long been a hot research topic in the field of computer vision, and this technology can be applied in many fields, such as customs security, public places, and business entertainment. With the rapid increase in computing speeds, complex neural network algorithms can be implemented in an acceptable amount of time. In this paper, an optimized face-aging method based on a Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (DCGAN) is proposed. In this method, an original face image is initially mapped to a personal latent vector by an encoder, and then the personal potential vector is combined with the age condition vector and the gender condition vector through a connector. The output of the connector is the input of the generator. A stable and photo-realistic facial image is then generated by maintaining personalized facial features and changing age conditions. With regard to the objective function, the single adversarial loss of the Generated Adversarial Network (GAN) with the perceptual similarity loss is replaced by the perceptual similarity loss function, which is the weighted sum of adversarial loss, feature space loss, pixel space loss, and age loss. The experimental results show that the proposed method can synthesize an aging face with rich texture and visual reality and outperform similar work

Local Deep Descriptor for Remote Sensing Image Feature Matching

Feature matching via local descriptors is one of the most fundamental problems in many computer vision tasks, as well as in the remote sensing image processing community. For example, in terms of remote sensing image registration based on the feature, feature matching is a vital process to determine the quality of transform model. While in the process of feature matching, the quality of feature descriptor determines the matching result directly. At present, the most commonly used descriptor is hand-crafted by the designer’s expertise or intuition. However, it is hard to cover all the different cases, especially for remote sensing images with nonlinear grayscale deformation. Recently, deep learning shows explosive growth and improves the performance of tasks in various fields, especially in the computer vision community. Here, we created remote sensing image training patch samples, named Invar-Dataset in a novel and automatic way, then trained a deep learning convolutional neural network, named DescNet to generate a robust feature descriptor for feature matching. A special experiment was carried out to illustrate that our created training dataset was more helpful to train a network to generate a good feature descriptor. A qualitative experiment was then performed to show that feature descriptor vector learned by the DescNet could be used to register remote sensing images with large gray scale difference successfully. A quantitative experiment was then carried out to illustrate that the feature vector generated by the DescNet could acquire more matched points than those generated by hand-crafted feature Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) descriptor and other networks. On average, the matched points acquired by DescNet was almost twice those acquired by other methods. Finally, we analyzed the advantages of our created training dataset Invar-Dataset and DescNet and gave the possible development of training deep descriptor network

Oxidation and refreshing behaviors of P-containing Fe-based amorphous ribbons

Oxidation behaviors of Fe78B13Si9 - xPx (x = 0, 1, 3, 5 and 7) amorphous ribbons were investigated and a refreshing method by annealing in reductive atmosphere were successfully developed by considering the changes of magnetic properties and P content. It is found that the amorphous ribbons with high P content are prone to be oxidized at the beginning of a traditional annealing process. When the annealing process was under reductive atmosphere, however, not only the oxidation can be avoided but also the oxidized ribbon can be refreshed. It is found that, although the color is changed, the amorphous structure for both the oxidized and refreshed ribbons is not changed with the annealing conditions. The refreshing can recover the excellent soft magnetic properties of the alloys with P content lower than 5 at%. The magnetization process characterized by magnetic domains has revealed the effect of refreshing ability to the oxidized ribbon. It is further confirmed that the refreshing mechanism of the oxidized layer is the valence state change of iron ions from high to low through the seriously oxidized Fe78Si2B13P7 amorphous ribbon