A Chinese expert consensus on thoracic endovascular aortic repair of type B aortic dissection with a single-branched stent graft for revascularization of the left subclavian artery

Thoracic endovascular repair (TEVAR) is currently the recommended and most widely used treatment for type B aortic dissection. A major challenge is revascularization of the left subclavian artery in order to extend the landing zone to zone 2 (Ishimaru classification). Various strategies have been used for revascularization, including branched stent graft, fenestrated stent graft, the chimney technique, the parallel technique, and bypass surgery. Single-branched stent graft is one of the most promising strategies, and several products have recently been reported as potential candidates for use with this approach. The Castor single-branched stent graft is the only off-the-shelf product available; this product has been developed through collaboration between Chinese corporations and clinicians. In this Perspective article, clinical experience and data obtained from TEVAR with the Castor single-branched stent graft are summarized by experienced Chinese experts

Charge sharing non-binary SAR ADC

This paper presents a non-binary passive charge sharing SAR ADC and an optimization method for non-binary successive approximation algorithm. The passive charge sharing ADC is designed. The optimization method suggests that the non-binary SAR ADC with lower standard deviation DAC capacitance values will show better static performance. The SAR ADCs with different standard deviation value of DAC capacitor array are designed and simulated using a commercial 65nm CMOS technology. The simulation result shows that the static performance improvement trend is in accordance with the proposed optimization method. In addition, the optimized non-binary charge sharing SAR ADC shows better performance than conventional binary SAR ADC

Visual-Inertial Odometry of Smartphone under Manhattan World

Based on the hypothesis of the Manhattan world, we propose a tightly-coupled monocular visual-inertial odometry (VIO) system that combines structural features with point features and can run on a mobile phone in real-time. The back-end optimization is based on the sliding window method to improve computing efficiency. As the Manhattan world is abundant in the man-made environment, this regular world can use structural features to encode the orthogonality and parallelism concealed in the building to eliminate the accumulated rotation error. We define a structural feature as an orthogonal basis composed of three orthogonal vanishing points in the Manhattan world. Meanwhile, to extract structural features in real-time on the mobile phone, we propose a fast structural feature extraction method based on the known vertical dominant direction. Our experiments on the public datasets and self-collected dataset show that our system is superior to most existing open-source systems, especially in the situations where the images are texture-less, dark, and blurry

Carrier Phase Ranging with DTMB Signals for Urban Pedestrian Localization and GNSS Aiding

China developed its Digital Television (DTV) standard in 2006, known as Digital Television Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcasting (DTMB), which employs time-domain synchronous orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (TDS-OFDM) as the modulation method. In contrast to Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs), DTV signals have higher transmitting power, wider coverage, larger bandwidth, and fixed transmitter location. This paper explores the positioning performance of DTMB signals, and the potential to improve GNSS positioning accuracy in urban environments. Specifically, a solution is proposed, and a software-defined radio receiver is developed for wireless localization. Without changing the current signal structure, the pseudorandom noise (PN) sequences in the signal are used for signal acquisition and carrier phase ranging. The carrier phase of the first arrived path is extracted by the least squares matching pursuit method. Both static and dynamic field tests were conducted to verify the proposed ranging and positioning method. Centimeter-level ranging accuracy was achieved in the static scenario, while meter-level ranging accuracy was achieved in the dynamic scenario. As one possible application, the proposed ranging method was combined with GPS pseudorange measurements to achieve higher accuracy position results in an urban pedestrian scenario, especially when there is only a limited number of visible satellites

Separation-and-Recovery Technology for Organic Waste Liquid with a High Concentration of Inorganic Particles

The environmentally friendly and resourceful utilization of organic waste liquid is one of the frontiers of environmental engineering. With the increasing demand for chemicals, the problem of organic waste liquid with a high concentration of inorganic pollutants in the processing of petroleum, coal, and natural gas is becoming more serious. In this study, the high-speed self-rotation and flipping of particles in a three-dimensional cyclonic turbulent field was examined using a synchronous high-speed camera technique; the self-rotation speed was found to reach 2000–6000 rad·s−1. Based on these findings, a cyclonic gas-stripping method for the removal of organic matter from the pores of particles was invented. A technological process was developed to recover organic matter from waste liquid by cyclonic gas stripping and classifying inorganic particles by means of airflow acceleration classification. A demonstration device was built in Sinopec’s first ebullated-bed hydro-treatment unit for residual oil. Compared with the T-STAR fixed-bed gas-stripping technology designed in the United States, the maximum liquid-removal efficiency of the catalyst particles in this new process is 44.9% greater at the same temperature, and the time required to realize 95% liquid-removal efficiency is decreased from 1956.5 to 8.4 s. In addition, we achieved the classification and reuse of the catalyst particles contained in waste liquid according to their activity. A proposal to use this new technology was put forward regarding the control of organic waste liquid and the classification recovery of inorganic particles in an ebullated-bed hydro-treatment process for residual oil with a processing capacity of 2 × 106 t·a−1. It is estimated that the use of this new technology will lead to the recovery of 3100 t·a−1 of diesel fuel and 647 t·a−1 of high-activity catalyst; in addition, it will reduce the consumption of fresh catalyst by 518 t·a−1. The direct economic benefits of this process will be as high as 37.28 million CNY per year. Keywords: Organic waste liquid, Inorganic particles, Cyclonic gas stripping, Particle self-rotation, Airflow acceleration classificatio