Majorana corner modes and tunable patterns in an altermagnet heterostructure

The mutual competition and synergy of magnetism and superconductivity provide us with a very valuable opportunity to access topological superconductivity and Majorana Fermions. Here, we devise a heterostructure consisting of an $s$-wave superconductor, a 2D topological insulator and an altermagnet, which is classified as the third magnet and featured by zero magnetization but spin polarization in both real and reciprocal spaces. We find that the altermagnet can induce mass terms at the edges that compete with electron pairing, and mass domains are formed at the corners of sample, resulting in zero-energy Majorana corner modes (MCMs). The presence or absence of MCMs can be engineered by only changing the direction of the N\'{e}el vector. Moreover, uniaxial strain can effectively manipulate the patterns of the MCMs, such as moving and interchanging MCMs. Experimental realization, remarkable advantages of our proposal and possible braiding are discussed.Comment: Accepted by PRB, 5 pages main text + 13 pages S

Healing effect of Shaoshang Yuhe yihao on burns in rats

Purpose: To investigate the healing effect of Shaoshang Yuhe yihao (SYY) in a deep second-degree burns model in rats.Methods: Female Wistar rats, weighing 200 - 220 g, were subjected to deep second-degree skin burns by electrical scald instrument. The animals were divided into three groups as follows: (1) second-degree burns model (control) group, (2) moist exposed burns ointment-treated group (positive control drug), and (3) SYY groups. The rats were treated with SYY for 21 consecutive days. The rate of healing, scabs dropped time and re-epithelialization time were observed every three days for 21 days after burns injury. Samples were collected from treated rats after sacrificing the animals on the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 9th, 14th, and 21st day post-burn creation, respectively. Plasma interleukin-1 (IL-1) levels were evaluated, and the tissue expressions of transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) were determined along with skin histopathology. The burned tissues were examined histologically to confirm the degree of burns and healing condition.Results: The results showed that the scabs drop time decreased (p < 0.05), and healing accelerated after treatment with SYY in the burns injury rats (94.6 ± 2.6 %, p < 0.05). Furthermore, the expressions of TGF-β significantly increased in the tissue (329.4 ± 8.2 pg/mL, p < 0.05) at day 14; However, the levels of inflammatory factors in plasma decreased (11.3 ± 1.7 pg/mL, p < 0.05). On the 21st day after burns injury, the injured tissue treated with SYY was almost (> 90 %) covered with healthy epithelial tissue and new epidermis, and showed complete epithelialization of the burns injury area.Conclusion: The results confirm the curative effects of SYY on burns injuries in rats. Thus, the herbal preparation has potentials to be developed for clinical application in burns cases.Keywords: Shaoshang Yuhe yihao, Second-degree burns, Healing, Scabs drop time, Moist exposed burns ointmen

Green transformational leadership and employee organizational citizenship behavior for the environment in the manufacturing industry: A social information processing perspective

The employee organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE) contributes to the improvement of the organization’s environment, its study is increasing in number. However, the psychological mechanism of promoting employee OCBE is still a missing link. Drawing on the theory of social information processing, this study seeks to establish the impact of green transformational leadership on employee OCBE and the mediating role of green organizational climate in this nexus. In addition, we have integrated environmental concerns to better explain the impact of this differentiation. The results show that: green transformational leadership has a significant positive impact on employee OCBE, and green organizational climate has a mediating effect on the impact of green transformational leadership on employee OCBE. Furthermore, environmental concern not only has a positive moderating effect on the influence of green transformational leadership on green organizational climate, but also positively moderates the impact of the influence of green transformational leadership on employee OCBE. This paper reveals the internal psychological mechanism of improving employee OCBE and provides ideas for promoting the sustainable development of enterprises

Solving the comfort-retrofit conundrum through post-occupancy evaluation and multi-objective optimisation

Developing appropriate building retrofit strategies is a challenging task. This case study presents a multi-criteria decision-supporting method that suggests optimal solutions and alternative design references with a range of diversity at the early exploration stage in building retrofit. This method employs a practical two-step method to identify critical comfort and energy issues and generate optimised design options with multi-objective optimisation based on a genetic algorithm. The first step is based on a post-occupancy evaluation, which cross-refers benchmarking and correlation and integrates them with non-linear satisfaction theory to extract critical comfort factors. The second step parameterises previous outputs as objectives to conduct building simulation practice. The case study is a typical post-war highly glazed open-plan office in London. The post-occupancy evaluation result identifies direct sunlight glare, indoor temperature, and noise from other occupants as critical comfort factors. The simulation and optimisation extract the optimal retrofit strategies by analysing 480 generated Pareto fronts. The proposed method provides retrofit solutions with a criteria-based filtering method and considers the trade-off between the energy and comfort objectives. The method can be transformed into a design-supporting tool to identify the key comfort factors for built environment optimisation and create sustainability in building retrofit. Practical application : This study suggested that statistical analysis could be integrated with parametric design tools and multi-objective optimisation. It directly links users’ subjective opinions to the final design solutions, suggesting a new method for data-driven generative design. As a quantitative process, the proposed framework could be automated with a program, reducing the human effort in the optimisation process and reducing the reliance on human experience in the design question defining and analysis process. It might also avoid human mistakes, e.g. overlooking some critical factors. During the multi-objective optimisation process, large numbers of design options are generated, and many of them are optimised at the Pareto front. Exploring these options could be a less human effort-intensive process than designing completely new options, especially in the early design exploration phase. Overall, this might be a potential direction for future study in generative design, which greatly reduce the technical obstacle of sustainable design for high building performance.</p