Abruptly Autofocusing Beams Based on Phase Modulated Zone Plate

2022 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC), 29 November 2022 - 02 December 2022, Yokohama, JapanIn this paper, we introduce a phase modulated zone plate to generate the circular symmetric Airy beam (CSAB) with abruptly autofocusing characteristic at 30GHz. This phase modulated zone plate is a phase combination form of a radial phase plate and a lens, which would make the conventional generation system of CSAB more compact. Based on full wave simulation, the unique abruptly autofocusing is explored in the field of millimeter wave. Even if the metal plate is placed in front of the phase modulated zone plate, the focusing can still be well obtained, which provides a potential advantage in millimeter-wave sensing

Aperture-Coupled Beam-Scanning Patch Array With Parasitic Elements Using a Reconfigurable Series-Fed Phase-Shifting Structure

In this letter, we propose a reconfigurable series-fed phase-shifting structure with movable metal plate for active millimeter wave beam-scanning application. The proposed phase-shifting structure can be equivalent to a certain number of phase shifters in the series-fed network. It can be easily controlled with only one metal plate, which further simplify the design of control system for phase shifters and reduce the cost. A prototype of 1-D aperture-coupled patch array with parasitic elements at 28GHz is designed, fabricated and measured for verifying the performance of the proposed phase-shifting structure. The measurement results at 28 GHz show 1-D beam-steering capability with maximum steering angle of ∼22 deg at H-plane can be achieved, revealing great potentials for developing the simple control and cost-effective active phased array for millimeter wave wireless power transmission application

TNF-α Promotes IFN-γ-Induced CD40 Expression and Antigen Process in Myb-Transformed Hematological Cells

Tumour necrosis factor-α, interferon-γ and interleukin-4 are critical cytokines in regulating the immune responses against infections and tumours. In this study, we investigated the effects of three cytokines on CD40 expression in Myb-transformed hematological cells and their regulatory roles in promoting these cells into dendritic cells. We observed that both interleukin-4 and interferon-γ increased CD40 expression in these hematological cells in a dose-dependent manner, although the concentration required for interleukin-4 was significantly higher than that for interferon-γ. We found that tumour necrosis factor-α promoted CD40 expression induced by interferon-γ, but not by interleukin-4. Our data showed that tumour necrosis factor-α plus interferon-γ-treated Myb-transformed hematological cells had the greatest ability to take up and process the model antigen DQ-Ovalbumin. Tumour necrosis factor-α also increased the ability of interferon-γ to produce the mixed lymphocyte reaction to allogenic T cells. Furthermore, only cotreatment with tumour necrosis factor-α and interferon-γ induced Myb-transformed hematological cells to express interleukin-6. These results suggest that tumour necrosis factor-α plays a key regulatory role in the development of dendritic cells from hematological progenitor cells induced by interferon-γ

3D Transient Thermal Modelling and Experimental Validation of the Temperature Distribution During Laser Heating of Ti6Al4V Alloy

Abstract. A three 3D transient finite element model has been developed to predict the temperature distribution in Ti6Al4V alloy plate workpiece. It is found that the temperature profile is strongly dependent on the parameters of the laser beam and material properties. Also the thermal model results were compared with results produced by experimental work and these show close agreement

Image-Guided Autonomous Guidewire Navigation in Robot-Assisted Endovascular Interventions using Reinforcement Learning

Autonomous robots in endovascular interventions possess the potential to navigate guidewires with safety and reliability, while reducing human error and shortening surgical time. However, current methods of guidewire navigation based on Reinforcement Learning (RL) depend on manual demonstration data or magnetic guidance. In this work, we propose an Image-guided Autonomous Guidewire Navigation (IAGN) method. Specifically, we introduce BDA-star, a path planning algorithm with boundary distance constraints, for the trajectory planning of guidewire navigation. We established an IAGN-RL environment where the observations are real-time guidewire feeding images highlighting the position of the guidewire tip and the planned path. We proposed a reward function based on the distances from both the guidewire tip to the planned path and the target to evaluate the agent's actions. Furthermore, in policy network, we employ a pre-trained convolutional neural network to extract features, mitigating stability issues and slow convergence rates associated with direct learning from raw pixels. Experiments conducted on the aortic simulation IAGN platform demonstrated that the proposed method, targeting the left subclavian artery and the brachiocephalic artery, achieved a 100% guidewire navigation success rate, along with reduced movement and retraction distances and trajectories tend to the center of the vessels