909 research outputs found
STUDY ON THE COUPLING AND COORDINATION BETWEEN CONSUMER ANXIETY AND HIGH-QUALITY DEVELOPMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMY
Valley and spin splittings in a valley-layer-locked monolayer via atomic adsorption
To date, a number of valley materials have been discovered with the
spin-valley or valley-layer couplings. It is highly desirable to realize the
interplay of more electronic degrees of freedom in a valley material. Based on
the first-principles calculations, we demonstrate the valley and spin
degeneracy liftings in the band structure of a TiSiCO monolayer, with the help
of the selective expression of the layer pseudospin via atomic adsorption. The
introduction of the transition-metal adatoms provides an effective electric
field and magnetic proximity effect, giving rise to the valley and spin
splittings. These splittings can be further tuned by applying an external
electric field. According to the modified band structure, various interlayer
excitons with different combinations of spins and electric dipoles are
selectively created, under the optical field of appropriate frequencies. The
tunable spin and valley splittings in atom adsorbed TiSiCO monolayer offer
opportunities for exploring the interactions between spin, valley and layer
pseudospin, and designing advanced optoelectronic devices.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
A Bioinspired Bidirectional Stiffening Soft Actuator for Multimodal, Compliant, and Robust Grasping
The stiffness modulation mechanism for soft robotics has gained considerable
attention to improve deformability, controllability, and stability. However,
for the existing stiffness soft actuator, high lateral stiffness and a wide
range of bending stiffness are hard to be provided at the same time. This paper
presents a bioinspired bidirectional stiffening soft actuator (BISA) combining
the air-tendon hybrid actuation (ATA) and a bone-like structure (BLS). The ATA
is the main actuation of the BISA, and the bending stiffness can be modulated
with a maximum stiffness of about 0.7 N/mm and a maximum magnification of 3
times when the bending angle is 45 deg. Inspired by the morphological structure
of the phalanx, the lateral stiffness can be modulated by changing the pulling
force of the BLS. The lateral stiffness can be modulated by changing the
pulling force to it. The actuator with BLSs can improve the lateral stiffness
about 3.9 times compared to the one without BLSs. The maximum lateral stiffness
can reach 0.46 N/mm. And the lateral stiffness can be modulated decoupling
about 1.3 times (e.g., from 0.35 N/mm to 0.46 when the bending angle is 45
deg). The test results show the influence of the rigid structures on bending is
small with about 1.5 mm maximum position errors of the distal point of actuator
bending in different pulling forces. The advantages brought by the proposed
method enable a soft four-finger gripper to operate in three modes: normal
grasping, inverse grasping, and horizontal lifting. The performance of this
gripper is further characterized and versatile grasping on various objects is
conducted, proving the robust performance and potential application of the
proposed design method
Social health assistance schemes: the case of Medical Financial Assistance for the rural poor in four counties of China
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Economic transition which took place in China over the last three decades, has led to a rapid marketization of the health care sector. Today inequity in health and poverty resulting from major illness has become a serious problem in rural areas of China. Medical Financial Assistance (MFA) is a health assistance scheme that helps rural poor people cope with major illness and alleviate their financial burden from major illness, which will definitely play a significant role in the process of rebuilding Chinese new rural health system. It mainly provides assistance to cover medical expenditure for inpatient services or the treatment of major illnesses, with joint funding from the central and local government. The purpose of this paper is to review the design, funding, implementation and to explore the preliminary effects of four counties' MFA in Hubei and Sichuan province of China.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We used an analytical framework built around the main objective of any social assistance scheme. The framework contains six 'targeting' procedural 'steps' which may explain why a specific group does not receive the assistance it ought to receive. More specifically, we explored to what extent the targeting, a key component of social assistance programs, is successful, based on the qualitative and quantitative data collected from four representative counties in central and western China.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the study sites, the budget of MFA ranged from 0.8 million Yuan to 1.646 million Yuan in each county and the budget per eligible person ranged from 32.67 Yuan to 149.09 Yuan. The preliminary effects of MFA were quite modest because of the scarcity of funds dedicated to the scheme. The coverage rate of MFA ranged from 17.8% to 24.1% among the four counties. MFA in the four counties used several ways to ration a restricted budget and provided only limited assistance. Substantial problems remained in terms of eligibility and identification of the beneficiaries, utilization and management of funds.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>MFA needs to be improved further although it evidences the concern of the government for the poor rural people with major illness. Some ideas on how to improve MFA are put forward for future policy making.</p
Motion Mappings for Continuous Bilateral Teleoperation
Mapping operator motions to a robot is a key problem in teleoperation. Due to
differences between workspaces, such as object locations, it is particularly
challenging to derive smooth motion mappings that fulfill different goals (e.g.
picking objects with different poses on the two sides or passing through key
points). Indeed, most state-of-the-art methods rely on mode switches, leading
to a discontinuous, low-transparency experience. In this paper, we propose a
unified formulation for position, orientation and velocity mappings based on
the poses of objects of interest in the operator and robot workspaces. We apply
it in the context of bilateral teleoperation. Two possible implementations to
achieve the proposed mappings are studied: an iterative approach based on
locally-weighted translations and rotations, and a neural network approach.
Evaluations are conducted both in simulation and using two torque-controlled
Franka Emika Panda robots. Our results show that, despite longer training
times, the neural network approach provides faster mapping evaluations and
lower interaction forces for the operator, which are crucial for continuous,
real-time teleoperation.Comment: Accepted for publication at the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
(RA-L
Tunable valley and spin splittings in bilayer
The control and manipulation of the valley and spin degrees of freedom have
received great interests in fundamental studies and advanced information
technologies. Compared with magnetic means, it is highly desirable to realize
more energy-efficient electric control of valley and spin. Using the
first-principles calculations, we demonstrate tunable valley and spin
degeneracy splittings in bilayers, with the aid of the layered
structure and associated electric control. Depending on different interlayer
magnetic couplings and stacking orders, the bilayers exhibit a
variety of combinations of valley and spin degeneracies. Under the action of a
vertical electric field, the degeneracy splittings become highly tunable for
both the sign and magnitude. As a result, a series of anomalous Hall currents
can be selectively realized with varied indices of valley and spin. These
intriguing features offer a practical way for designing energy-efficient
devices based on the couplings between multiple electronic degrees of freedom.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
Image-based quantitative analysis of gold immunochromatographic strip via cellular neural network approach
"(c) 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works."Gold immunochromatographic strip assay provides a rapid, simple, single-copy and on-site way to detect the presence or absence of the target analyte. This paper aims to develop a method for accurately segmenting the test line and control line of the gold immunochromatographic strip (GICS) image for quantitatively determining the trace concentrations in the specimen, which can lead to more functional information than the traditional qualitative or semi-quantitative strip assay. The canny operator as well as the mathematical morphology method is used to detect and extract the GICS reading-window. Then, the test line and control line of the GICS reading-window are segmented by the cellular neural network (CNN) algorithm, where the template parameters of the CNN are designed by the switching particle swarm optimization (SPSO) algorithm for improving the performance of the CNN. It is shown that the SPSO-based CNN offers a robust method for accurately segmenting the test and control lines, and therefore serves as a novel image methodology for the interpretation of GICS. Furthermore, quantitative comparison is carried out among four algorithms in terms of the peak signal-to-noise ratio. It is concluded that the proposed CNN algorithm gives higher accuracy and the CNN is capable of parallelism and analog very-large-scale integration implementation within a remarkably efficient time
Magnetically and electrically controllable valley splittings in MXene monolayers
The modulation of the valley structure in two-dimensional valley materials is
vital in the field of valleytronics. The multiferroicity provides possibility
for multiple modulations of the valley, including the magnetic and electric
means. Based on the first-principle calculations, we study the valley
properties and associated manipulations of multiferroic CoCF monolayers
with different stacking patterns. Our calculations show that the CoCF
monolayer in the H phase is a ferrovalley material, with sizable
valley splittings. By rotating the magnetization direction, the valley
splittings can be tuned for both the magnitude and sign. The electric field,
driving the reversal of the electric polarization, can also change the
magnitude of the valley splittings. Besides, a metastable T phase
exhibits valley splittings as well, of which the magnitude and sign can be
simultaneously controlled by applied magnetic and electric fields. These
findings offer a practical way for realizing highly tunable valleys by
multiferroic couplings.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
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