Microscopic mechanism of tunable thermal conductivity in carbon nanotube-geopolymer nanocomposites

Geopolymer has been considered as a green and low-carbon material with great potential application due to its simple synthesis process, environmental protection, excellent mechanical properties, good chemical resistance and durability. In this work, the molecular dynamics simulation is employed to investigate the effect of the size, content and distribution of carbon nanotubes on the thermal conductivity of geopolymer nanocomposites, and the microscopic mechanism is analyzed by the phonon density of states, phonon participation ratio and spectral thermal conductivity, etc. The results show that there is a significant size effect in geopolymer nanocomposites system due to the carbon nanotubes. In addition, when the content of carbon nanotubes is 16.5%, the thermal conductivity in carbon nanotubes vertical axial direction (4.85 W/(mk)) increases 125.6% compared with the system without carbon nanotubes (2.15 W/(mk)). However, the thermal conductivity in carbon nanotubes vertical axial direction (1.25 W/(mk)) decreases 41.9%, which is mainly due to the interfacial thermal resistance and phonon scattering at the interfaces. The above results provide theoretical guidance for the tunable thermal conductivity in carbon nanotube-geopolymer nanocomposites

Bioactive polydimethylsiloxane surface for optimal human mesenchymal stem cell sheet culture

Human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) sheets hold great potential in engineering three-dimensional (3D) completely biological tissues for diverse applications. Conventional cell sheet culturing methods employing thermoresponsive surfaces are cost ineffective, and rely heavily on available facilities. In this study, a cost-effective method of layer-by-layer grafting was utilized for covalently binding a homogenous collagen I layer on a commonly used polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate surface in order to improve its cell adhesion as well as the uniformity of the resulting hMSC cell sheet. Results showed that a homogenous collagen I layer was obtained via this grafting method, which improved hMSC adhesion and attachment through reliable collagen I binding sites. By utilizing this low-cost method, a uniform hMSC sheet was generated. This technology potentially allows for mass production of hMSC sheets to fulfill the demand of thick hMSC constructs for tissue engineering and biomanufacturing applications

Engineering stem cell cardiac patch with microvascular features representative of native myocardium

The natural myocardium is a highly aligned tissue with an oriented vasculature. Its characteristic cellular as well as nanoscale extracellular matrix (ECM) organization along with an oriented vascular network ensures appropriate blood supply and functional performance. Although significant efforts have been made to develop anisotropic cardiac structure, currently neither an ideal biomaterial nor an effective vascularization strategy to engineer oriented and high-density capillary-like microvessels has been achieved for clinical cardiovascular therapies. A naturally derived oriented ECM nanofibrous scaffold mimics the physiological structure and components of tissue ECM and guides neovascular network formation. The objective of this study was to create an oriented and dense microvessel network with physiological myocardial microvascular features. Methods: Highly aligned decellularized human dermal fibroblast sheets were used as ECM scaffold to regulate physiological alignment of microvascular networks by co-culturing human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and endothelial cells (ECs). The influence of topographical features on hMSC and EC interaction was investigated to understand underlying mechanisms of neovasculature formation. Results: Results demonstrate that the ECM topography can be translated to ECs via CD166 tracks and significantly improved hMSC-EC crosstalk and vascular network formation. The aligned ECM nanofibers enhanced structure, length, and density of microvascular networks compared to randomly organized nanofibrous ECM. Moreover, hMSC-EC co-culture promoted secretion of pro-angiogenic growth factors and matrix remodeling via metalloprotease-2 (MMP-2) activation, which resulted in highly dense vascular network formation with intercapillary distance (20 μm) similar to the native myocardium. Conclusion: HMSC-EC co-culture on the highly aligned ECM generates physiologically oriented and dense microvascular network, which holds great potential for cardiac tissue engineering

Occlusion facial expression recognition based on feature fusion residual attention network

Recognizing occluded facial expressions in the wild poses a significant challenge. However, most previous approaches rely solely on either global or local feature-based methods, leading to the loss of relevant expression features. To address these issues, a feature fusion residual attention network (FFRA-Net) is proposed. FFRA-Net consists of a multi-scale module, a local attention module, and a feature fusion module. The multi-scale module divides the intermediate feature map into several sub-feature maps in an equal manner along the channel dimension. Then, a convolution operation is applied to each of these feature maps to obtain diverse global features. The local attention module divides the intermediate feature map into several sub-feature maps along the spatial dimension. Subsequently, a convolution operation is applied to each of these feature maps, resulting in the extraction of local key features through the attention mechanism. The feature fusion module plays a crucial role in integrating global and local expression features while also establishing residual links between inputs and outputs to compensate for the loss of fine-grained features. Last, two occlusion expression datasets (FM_RAF-DB and SG_RAF-DB) were constructed based on the RAF-DB dataset. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed FFRA-Net achieves excellent results on four datasets: FM_RAF-DB, SG_RAF-DB, RAF-DB, and FERPLUS, with accuracies of 77.87%, 79.50%, 88.66%, and 88.97%, respectively. Thus, the approach presented in this paper demonstrates strong applicability in the context of occluded facial expression recognition (FER)

Transfer Robustness Optimization for Urban Rail Transit Timetables

A good timetable is required to not only be efficient, but also yield effectiveness in preventing and counteracting delays. When travelling via urban rail transit networks, transferring passengers may miss their scheduled connecting train because of a feeder train delay that results in them experiencing increased travel costs. Considering that running time supplements and transfer buffer times yield different effects on the travel plans of transferring and nontransferring passengers, we formulate an expected extra travel cost (EETC) function to appropriately balance efficiency and robustness, which is then implemented in the construction of a robust transfer optimization model with the objective of minimizing the total EETC. Next, to improve the computational efficiency, we propose an approximate linearization approach for the EETC function and introduce two types of binary variables and auxiliary substitution variables to convert the nonlinear model to a mixed-integer linear model. Experimental results show that our proposed method can yield practically applicable solutions with significant reductions in both EETC and probability of missing a transfer. Document type: Articl

Probing electronic-vibrational dynamics of N2+ induced by strong-field ionization

The coupled electronic-vibrational dynamics of nitrogen ions induced by strong-field ionization is investigated theoretically to corroborate the recent transient X-ray K-edge absorption experiment [PRL 129, 123002 (2022)], where the population distribution of three electronic states in air lasing of N2+ was determined for the first time. By extending the ionization-coupling model to include the transient absorption, we successfully reproduce the time-resolved X-ray absorption spectra of nitrogen ions observed in the experiment. By identifying the contributions from different electronic states, the study provides different interpretation revealing the significant role of excited state A arising from the strong coupling between vibrational states in strong laser fields. It indicates that the electronic population inversion occurs at least for certain alignment of nitrogen molecules. The theory helps uncovering new features of absorption from forbidden transitions during ionization and confirming that the vibration coherence at each electronic channel induces the modulation of absorbance after strong field ionization. A new scheme is proposed to determine the population transfer at different probing geometry to avoid the spectral overlap. This work offers valuable insights into the intricate interplay between electronic and vibrational dynamics and helps to resolve the debate on nitrogen air lasing

Polydopamine and collagen coated micro-grated polydimethylsiloxane for human mesenchymal stem cell culture

Natural tissues contain highly organized cellular architecture. One of the major challenges in tissue engineering is to develop engineered tissue constructs that promote cellular growth in physiological directionality. To address this issue, micro-patterned polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates have been widely used in cell sheet engineering due to their low microfabrication cost, higher stability, excellent biocompatibility, and most importantly, ability to guide cellular growth and patterning. However, the current methods for PDMS surface modification either require a complicated procedure or generate a non-uniform surface coating, leading to the production of poor-quality cell layers. A simple and efficient surface coating method is critically needed to improve the uniformity and quality of the generated cell layers. Herein, a fast, simple and inexpensive surface coating method was analyzed for its ability to uniformly coat polydopamine (PD) with or without collagen on micro-grated PDMS substrates without altering essential surface topographical features. Topographical feature, stiffness and cytotoxicity of these PD and/or collagen based surface coatings were further analyzed. Results showed that the PD-based coating method facilitated aligned and uniform cell growth, therefore holds great promise for cell sheet engineering as well as completely biological tissue biomanufacturing