Tribology and corrosion properties investigation of a pulse electrodeposition duplex hard-particle-reinforced Ni Mo nanocomposite coating

In this work, Ni-Mo-SiC-TiN composite coatings were prepared by pulse electrodeposition. Through analyzing the effect of particle content on the phase structure and morphology of NiMo coatings, the relationship between nanoparticles co-deposition amount and the mechanical properties and corrosion resistance of Ni matrix composite coatings was evaluated. The results show that the coating prepared at an electrolyte concentration of 20 g/L is flat and dense presenting the highest particle content. The crystallite size ranging from 28.27 nm to 11.85 nm is affected by different nanoparticle concentrations. As shown by the Tafel polarization and wear test, the incorporation of two hard particles improved the coating performance, and the corrosion current density was reduced by 74% to 1.84 μA/cm2. The wear rate decreased from 10.196 × 10−4 mm3/N·m to 2.65 × 10−4 mm3/N·m, and the average friction coefficient decreased to 0.11. The duplex hard particles play a bearing and hindering role during friction and corrosion. Based on the co-deposition kinetic model, a five-step pulse deposition model referring to nanoparticles was established. It is found that SiC/TiN particles co-deposited to the preferential Ni (111) crystal face and subordinate Ni (200) face. And the good binding ability between the matrix and the nanoparticles results in a high load transfer effect, thus enhancing the tribological properties of the coating. Moreover, the interaction between the duplex nanoparticles was further discussed

FetusMapV2: Enhanced Fetal Pose Estimation in 3D Ultrasound

Fetal pose estimation in 3D ultrasound (US) involves identifying a set of associated fetal anatomical landmarks. Its primary objective is to provide comprehensive information about the fetus through landmark connections, thus benefiting various critical applications, such as biometric measurements, plane localization, and fetal movement monitoring. However, accurately estimating the 3D fetal pose in US volume has several challenges, including poor image quality, limited GPU memory for tackling high dimensional data, symmetrical or ambiguous anatomical structures, and considerable variations in fetal poses. In this study, we propose a novel 3D fetal pose estimation framework (called FetusMapV2) to overcome the above challenges. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we propose a heuristic scheme that explores the complementary network structure-unconstrained and activation-unreserved GPU memory management approaches, which can enlarge the input image resolution for better results under limited GPU memory. Second, we design a novel Pair Loss to mitigate confusion caused by symmetrical and similar anatomical structures. It separates the hidden classification task from the landmark localization task and thus progressively eases model learning. Last, we propose a shape priors-based self-supervised learning by selecting the relatively stable landmarks to refine the pose online. Extensive experiments and diverse applications on a large-scale fetal US dataset including 1000 volumes with 22 landmarks per volume demonstrate that our method outperforms other strong competitors.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, accepted by Medical Image Analysis(2023

Responses of sequential and hierarchical phenological events to warming and cooling in alpine meadows

Organisms' life cycles consist of hierarchical stages, from a single phenological stage (for example, flowering within a season), to vegetative and reproductive phases, to the total lifespan of the individual. Yet phenological events are typically studied in isolation, limiting our understanding of life history responses to climate change. Here, we reciprocally transfer plant communities along an elevation gradient to investigate plastic changes in the duration of sequential phenological events for six alpine species. We show that prolonged flowering leads to longer reproductive phases and activity periods when plants are moved to warmer locations. In contrast, shorter post-fruiting leaf and flowering stages led to shorter vegetative and reproductive phases, respectively, which resulted in shorter activity periods when plants were moved to cooler conditions. Therefore, phenological responses to warming and cooling do not simply mirror one another in the opposite direction, and low temperature may limit reproductive allocation in the alpine region

Interplay between Interferon-Mediated Innate Immunity and Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus

Innate immunity is the first line of defense against viral infection, and in turn, viruses have evolved to evade host immune surveillance. As a result, viruses may persist in host and develop chronic infections. Type I interferons (IFN-α/β) are among the most potent antiviral cytokines triggered by viral infections. Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a disease of pigs that is characterized by negligible induction of type I IFNs and viral persistence for an extended period. For IFN production, RIG-I/MDA5 and JAK-STAT pathways are two major signaling pathways, and recent studies indicate that PRRS virus is armed to modulate type I IFN responses during infection. This review describes the viral strategies for modulation of type I IFN responses. At least three non–structural proteins (Nsp1, Nsp2, and Nsp11) and a structural protein (N nucleocapsid protein) have been identified and characterized to play roles in the IFN suppression and NF-κB pathways. Nsp’s are early proteins while N is a late protein, suggesting that additional signaling pathways may be involved in addition to the IFN pathway. The understanding of molecular bases for virus-mediated modulation of host innate immune signaling will help us design new generation vaccines and control PRRS

Composition-induced antiferroelectric phase and giant strain in lead-free (Na y ,Bi z )Ti 1- x O 3(1- x ) -xBaTiO 3 ceramics

(Nay,Biz)Ti1-xO3(1-x)- xBaTiO3 ceramics with an excess in Bi3+ and/or a deficiency in Na+ were prepared and investigated. It is found that an antiferroelectric phase can be induced through a modulation of the mole ratio of Na+ and Bi3+. A phase boundary between ferroelectric and antiferroelectric phases can be observed at ambient temperature. A modulated phase, which is the origin of relaxor antiferroelectric behavior, should be attributed to a compositional modulation. The antiferroelectric phase can be induced to the ferroelectric phase by an applied electric field. The stability of the induced ferroelectric phase strongly depends on the mole ratio of Na+ and Bi3+. A recoverable giant strain of 0.48% comparable to PbZrO3-based antiferroelectrics as well as electrostrictive coefficients (0.026 C4m-2) much higher than lead-based relaxor ferroelectrics with low-temperature dependence was achieved in (Nay,Biz)Ti1-xO3(1-x)-xBaTiO3 antiferroelectrics. Our results show there is a high possibility that the novel lead-free antiferroelectrics will replace the PbZrO3-based ones