Chemical composition and insecticidal properties of essential oil from aerial parts of Mosla soochowensis against two grain storage insects

Purpose: To determine the insecticidal properties of essential oil from Mosla soochowensis aerial parts against two insect pests, Sitophilus zeamais and Tribolium castaneum.Methods: Hydro-distillation of M. soochowensis was used to extract the essential oil. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis was performed, and the contact (topical application) and fumigant toxicity (sealed space) of the essential oil were evaluated.Results: Thirty-nine chemical compounds were identified by GC-MS analysis of M. soochowensis essential oil. The major components are β-caryophyllene (12.82 %), spatulenol (6.34 %), β-eudesmol (6.26 %), carvone (6.12 %), α-thujone (5.12 %), γ-eudesmol (4.86 %), α-cedrol (4.23 %), and α- caryophyllene (4.04 %). The plant essential oil exerted contact toxicity against adults of S. zeamais and T. castaneum (median lethal concentration (LC50), 25.45 and 10.23 μg/adult, respectively). Moreover, the essential oil exhibited pronounced fumigant toxicity towards adults of both species (LC50 12.19 and 10.26 mg/L air, respectively).Conclusion: These results show that M. soochowensis essential oil can be used in development of safer and more natural and effective fumigants/insecticides for stored products.Keywords: Mosla soochowensis, Contact toxicity, Sitophilus zeamais, Fumigant, Insecticide, Essential oil, Tribolium castaneu

Periodically driven four-dimensional topological insulator with tunable second Chern number

In recent years, Floquet engineering has attracted considerable attention as a promising approach for tuning topological phase transitions. In this work, we investigate the effects of high-frequency time-periodic driving in a four-dimensional (4D) topological insulator, focusing on topological phase transitions at the off-resonant quasienergy gap. The 4D topological insulator hosts gapless three-dimensional boundary states characterized by the second Chern number $C_{2}$. We demonstrate that the second Chern number of 4D topological insulators can be modulated by tuning the amplitude of time-periodic driving. This includes transitions from a topological phase with $C_{2}=\pm3$ to another topological phase with $C_{2}=\pm1$, or to a topological phase with an even second Chern number $C_{2}=\pm2$ which is absent in the 4D static system. Finally, the approximation theory in the high-frequency limit further confirms the numerical conclusions.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2312.1601

3D Imaging of a Phase Object from a Single Sample Orientation Using an Optical Laser

Ankylography is a new 3D imaging technique, which, under certain circumstances, enables reconstruction of a 3D object from a single sample orientation. Here, we provide a matrix rank analysis to explain the principle of ankylography. We then present an ankylography experiment on a microscale phase object using an optical laser. Coherent diffraction patterns are acquired from the phase object using a planar CCD detector and are projected onto a spherical shell. The 3D structure of the object is directly reconstructed from the spherical diffraction pattern. This work may potentially open the door to a new method for 3D imaging of phase objects in the visible light region. Finally, the extension of ankylography to more complicated and larger objects is suggested.Comment: 22 pages 5 figure

Spectrum Comparative Study of Commutation Failure and Short-Circuit Fault in UHVDC Transmission System

When commutation failure occurs in UHVDC transmission system, the transient process of DC voltage and current are similar to grounding short-circuit fault. In order to differentiate them effectively, the paper introduces mathematical morphology methods to analysis the spectrum of transient current. Base on Yunnan-Guangzhou kV UHVDC transmission system, the paper simulates the commutation failure and DC line short-circuit fault under different fault conditions in PSCAD/EMTDC.  By modified morphology filter, the transient signal of DC () is decomposed into six scales, and morphological characteristics of aerial mode component of  is analyzed under different scales. The simulation results show that when DC line short-circuit faults occurs, wherever in the rectifier side, in the DC transmission line midpoint or in the inverter side, the aerial mode component of  have more high frequency weight in ~ and decays gradually; When commutation failures, which are caused by the inverter side AC system single-phase grounding fault, phase to phase fault, three phase grounding fault or the inverter side transformer ratio increased,  the aerial mode component of  have less frequency weight in

Density-driven higher-order topological phase transitions in amorphous solids

Amorphous topological states, which are independent of the specific spatial distribution of microscopic constructions, have gained much attention. Recently, higher-order topological insulators, which are a new class of topological phases of matter, have been proposed in amorphous systems. Here, we propose a density-driven higher-order topological phase transition in a two-dimensional amorphous system. We demonstrate that the amorphous system hosts a topological trivial phase at low density. With an increase in the density of lattice sites, the topological trivial phase converts to a higher-order topological phase characterized by a quantized quadrupole moment and the existence of topological corner states. Furthermore, we confirm that the density-driven higher-order topological phase transition is size dependent. In addition, our results should be general and equally applicable to three-dimensional amorphous systems. Our findings may greatly enrich the study of higher-order topological states in amorphous systems

Prevalence and risk factors for diabetic retinopathy in a high-risk Chinese population

BACKGROUND: Lifestyle plays an important role in the development of diabetic retinopathy. The lifestyle in Guangzhou is different from other cities in China as the Cantonese prefer eating rice porridge, but not spicy foods. The objectives of this study were to investigate the prevalence and determinants of diabetic retinopathy in a high-risk population of Guangzhou. METHODS: Subjects (619 totals) aged over 45 years old, without known diabetes were recruited from five randomly selected Guangzhou communities in 2009–2010. All participants were invited to complete the Finnish Diabetes Risk Score (FINDRISC) questionnaire. Subjects with FINDRISC score ≥ 9 were included in the study, and underwent an investigation of demographic data, a standardized physical examination, ocular fundus examination, and laboratory analyses. The minimum criterion for diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy was the presence of at least one microaneurysm. RESULTS: Of 619 subjects, 208 eligible subjects (122 women) with FINDRISC score ≥ 9 were included in the study. The mean age was 69.2 ± 8.5 years. Diabetic retinopathy was detected in 31 subjects, and the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in subjects with high risk for diabetes was 14.9%. In binary logistic regression analysis, risk factors associated with diabetic retinopathy were history of impaired glucose regulation [odds ratio (OR), 7.194; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.083, 47.810], higher hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c; OR, 2.912; 95% CI: 1.009, 8.402), higher two-hour postprandial plasma glucose level (OR, 1.014; 95% CI: 1.003, 1.025), and presence of microalbuminuria (OR, 5.387; 95% CI: 1.255, 23.129). CONCLUSIONS: Diabetic retinopathy was prevalent in a high-risk Chinese population from Guangzhou. Histories of impaired glucose regulation and microalbuminuria were strong risk factors for diabetic retinopathy

Finite-key analysis for quantum key distribution with discrete phase randomization

Quantum key distribution(QKD) allows two remote parties to share information-theoretic secret keys. Many QKD protocols assume the phase of encoding state can be continuous randomized from 0 to 2 pi, which, however, may be questionable in experiment. This is particularly the case in the recently proposed twin-field(TF) QKD, which has received a lot of attention, since it can increase key rate significantly and even beat some theoretical rate-loss limits. As an intuitive solution, one may introduce discrete phase-randomization instead of continuous one. However, a security proof for a QKD protocol with discrete phase-randomization in finite-key region is still missing. Here we develop a technique based on conjugate measurement and quantum state distinguishment to ana-lyze the security in this case. Our result shows that TF-QKD with reasonable number of discrete random phases, e.g. 8 phases from {0, pi/4, pi/2, ..., 7pi/4}, can achieve satisfactory performance. More importantly, as a the first proof for TF-QKD with discrete phase-randomization in finite-key region, our method is also applicable in other QKD protocols.Comment: 1 figures,20 page

Orthogonal Subspace Learning for Language Model Continual Learning

Benefiting from massive corpora and advanced hardware, large language models (LLMs) exhibit remarkable capabilities in language understanding and generation. However, their performance degrades in scenarios where multiple tasks are encountered sequentially, also known as catastrophic forgetting. In this paper, we propose orthogonal low-rank adaptation (O-LoRA), a simple and efficient approach for continual learning in language models, effectively mitigating catastrophic forgetting while learning new tasks. Specifically, O-LoRA learns tasks in different (low-rank) vector subspaces that are kept orthogonal to each other in order to minimize interference. Our method induces only marginal additional parameter costs and requires no user data storage for replay. Experimental results on continual learning benchmarks show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, compared to previous approaches, our method excels in preserving the generalization ability of LLMs on unseen tasks.Comment: EMNLP 2023 finding