Towards Cyber Security for Low-Carbon Transportation: Overview, Challenges and Future Directions

In recent years, low-carbon transportation has become an indispensable part as sustainable development strategies of various countries, and plays a very important responsibility in promoting low-carbon cities. However, the security of low-carbon transportation has been threatened from various ways. For example, denial of service attacks pose a great threat to the electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid networks. To minimize these threats, several methods have been proposed to defense against them. Yet, these methods are only for certain types of scenarios or attacks. Therefore, this review addresses security aspect from holistic view, provides the overview, challenges and future directions of cyber security technologies in low-carbon transportation. Firstly, based on the concept and importance of low-carbon transportation, this review positions the low-carbon transportation services. Then, with the perspective of network architecture and communication mode, this review classifies its typical attack risks. The corresponding defense technologies and relevant security suggestions are further reviewed from perspective of data security, network management security and network application security. Finally, in view of the long term development of low-carbon transportation, future research directions have been concerned.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures, accepted by journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Review

High-frequency rTMS over bilateral primary motor cortex improves freezing of gait and emotion regulation in patients with Parkinson’s disease: a randomized controlled trial

BackgroundFreezing of gait (FOG) is a common and disabling phenomenon in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), but effective treatment approach remains inconclusive. Dysfunctional emotional factors play a key role in FOG. Since primary motor cortex (M1) connects with prefrontal areas via the frontal longitudinal system, where are responsible for emotional regulation, we hypothesized M1 may be a potential neuromodulation target for FOG therapy. The purpose of this study is to explore whether high-frequency rTMS over bilateral M1 could relieve FOG and emotional dysregulation in patients with PD.MethodsThis study is a single-center, randomized double-blind clinical trial. Forty-eight patients with PD and FOG from the Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University were randomly assigned to receive 10 sessions of either active (N = 24) or sham (N = 24) 10 Hz rTMS over the bilateral M1. Patients were evaluated at baseline (T0), after the last session of treatment (T1) and 30 days after the last session (T2). The primary outcomes were Freezing of Gait Questionnaire (FOGQ) scores, with Timed Up and Go Test (TUG) time, Standing-Start 180° Turn (SS-180) time, SS-180 steps, United Parkinson Disease Rating Scales (UPDRS) III, Hamilton Depression scale (HAMD)-24 and Hamilton Anxiety scale (HAMA)-14 as secondary outcomes.ResultsTwo patients in each group dropped out at T2 and no serious adverse events were reported by any subject. Two-way repeated ANOVAs revealed significant group × time interactions in FOGQ, TUG, SS-180 turn time, SS-180 turning steps, UPDRS III, HAMD-24 and HAMA-14. Post-hoc analyses showed that compared to T0, the active group exhibited remarkable improvements in FOGQ, TUG, SS-180 turn time, SS-180 turning steps, UPDRS III, HAMD-24 and HAMA-14 at T1 and T2. No significant improvement was found in the sham group. The Spearman correlation analysis revealed a significantly positive association between the changes in HAMD-24 and HAMA-14 scores and FOGQ scores at T1.ConclusionHigh-frequency rTMS over bilateral M1 can improve FOG and reduce depression and anxiety in patients with PD

High Levels of Zinc Affect Nitrogen and Phosphorus Transformation in Rice Rhizosphere Soil by Modifying Microbial Communities

Due to global industrialization in recent decades, large areas have been threatened by heavy metal contamination. Research about the impact of excessive Zn on N and P transformation in farmland has received little attention, and its mechanism is still not completely known. In this study, we planted rice in soils with toxic levels of Zn, and analyzed the plant growth and nutrient uptake, the N and P transformation, enzyme activities and microbial communities in rhizosphere soil to reveal the underlying mechanism. Results showed high levels of Zn severely repressed the plant growth and uptake of N and P, but improved the N availability and promoted the conversion of organic P into inorganic forms in rice rhizosphere soil. Moreover, high levels of Zn significantly elevated the activities of hydrolases including urease, protease, acid phosphatase, sucrase and cellulose, and dehydrogenase, as well as the abundances of Flavisolibacter, Sphingomonas, Gemmatirosa, and subgroup_6, which contributed to the mineralization of organic matter in soil. Additionally, toxic level of Zn repressed the nitrifying process by decreasing the abundance of nitrosifying bacteria Ellin6067 and promoted denitrification by increasing the abundance of Noviherbaspirillum, which resulted in decreased NO3− concentration in rice rhizosphere soil under VHZn condition

Fabrication Technology and Characteristics Research of a Monolithically-Integrated 2D Magnetic Field Sensor Based on Silicon Magnetic Sensitive Transistors

A monolithically-integrated two-dimensional (2D) magnetic field sensor consisting of two difference structures (DSІ and DSII) is proposed in this paper. The DSІ and DSII are composed of four silicon magnetic sensitive transistors (SMST1, SMST2, SMST3 and SMST4) and four collector load resistors (RL1, RL2, RL3 and RL4). Based on the magnetic sensitive principle of SMST, the integrated difference structure can detect magnetic fields’ component (Bx and By) along the x-axis and y-axis, respectively. By adopting micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and packaging technology, the chips were fabricated on a p-type <100> orientation silicon wafer with high resistivity and were packaged on printed circuit boards (PCBs). At room temperature, when the VCE = 5.0 V and IB = 8.0 mA, the magnetic sensitivities (Sxx and Syy) along the x-axis and the y-axis were 223 mV/T and 218 mV/T, respectively. The results show that the proposed sensor can not only detect the 2D magnetic field vector (B) in the xy plane, but also that Sxx and Syy exhibit good uniformity

Video_1_Case report: Right coronary artery rupture—A rare complication of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.MP4

An 8-month-old female experienced a life-threatening right coronary artery rupture resulting from cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) 1 week after corrective surgery for Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF). Emergency exploratory thoracotomy was performed due to uncorrectable hemorrhagic shock. During exploration, active bleeding was detected in the anterior branch of the right ventricular coronary artery. After the repair, the patient's condition improved. Coronary artery rupture is an extremely rare complication of CPR. Here, we present a case that provides new reflections and warnings to clinicians.</p

The Evolutions of Microstructure, Texture and Hardness of A1050 Deformed by HPT at the Transition Area

High-pressure torsion (HPT) is an effective severe plastic deformation method to produce ultrafine-grained (UFG) and nanocrystalline (NC) materials. In the past, most studies have focused on the evolutions in the microstructure, texture and mechanical properties of HPT-deformed materials at peripheral regions. The corresponding evolutions at a special area were observed in this study to reveal the potential plastic deformation mechanism for face-centred cubic (FCC) material with high stacking fault energy. A decreasing trend was found in grain size, and the final grain size was less than 1 μm. However, close observation revealed that the general trend could be divided into different sub-stages, in which grain elongation and grain fragmentation were dominant, respectively. Additionally, microhardness demonstrated a non-linear increase with the development of plastic deformation. Finally, the microhardness reached a high level of ~64 HV. At the early stages of HPT, the C component was transformed into a cube component, suggesting the material flows around the shear plane normal (SPN) axis at these stages. However, finally they will be replaced by ideal simple shear orientations

Enhancing the Data Reliability of Multilevel Storage in Phase Change Memory with 2T2R Cell Structure

Multilevel storage and the continuing scaling down of technology have significantly improved the storage density of phase change memory, but have also brought about a challenge, in that data reliability can degrade due to the resistance drift. To ensure data reliability, many read and write operation technologies have been proposed. However, they only mitigate the influence on data through read and write operations after resistance drift occurs. In this paper, we consider the working principle of multilevel storage for PCM and present a novel 2T2R structure circuit to increase the storage density and reduce the influence of resistance drift fundamentally. To realize 3-bit per cell storage, a wide range of resistances were selected as different states of phase change memory. Then, we proposed a 4:3 compressing encoding scheme to transform the output data into binary data states. Therefore, the designed 2T2R was proven to have optimized storage density and data reliability by monitoring the conductance distribution at four time points (1 ms, 1 s, 6 h, 12 h) in 4000 devices. Simulation results showed that the resistance drift of our proposed 2T2R structure can significantly improve the storage density of multilevel storage and increase the data reliability of phase change memory

Complete mitochondrial genome of the hybrid loach of Paramisgurnus dabryanus ssp. (female) and Misgurnus bipartitus (male)

The hybrid loach of Paramisgurnus dabryanus ssp. (female) and Macropharyngodon bipartitus (male) have the desirable trait of growth performance. There is no report of the complete genome of this hybrid. In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome of this hybrid loach was obtained, and the genome is 16,569 bp in length, including 2 ribosomal RNA genes. 13 proteins-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, and a non-coding control region, the gene composition and order of which was similar to most reported from other vertebrates. Sequence analysis showed that the overall base composition is 29.4% for A, 27.5% for T, 26.4% for C, and 16.7% for G. The sequence is a slight A + T bias of 56.9%. The phylogenetic tree showed the hybrid loach to be one of the Paramisgurnus. Also, the mitochondrial genome sequence of loach were aligned by BLAST, when compared with Cobitinae the sequence similarity could reach >90%, and the similarity to Paramisgurnus was >99%. Mitogenome information from this study could be a useful basis for conservation and phylogenetics of this hybrid loach

Efficacy and safety of awake prone positioning in the treatment of non-intubated spontaneously breathing patients with COVID-19-related acute respiratory failure: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Since the beginning of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, prone positioning has been widely applied for non-intubated, spontaneously breathing patients. However, the efficacy and safety of prone positioning in non-intubated patients with COVID-19-related acute hypoxemic respiratory failure remain unclear. We aimed to systematically analyze the outcomes associated with awake prone positioning (APP). Methods: We conducted a systematic literature search of PubMed/MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science from January 1, 2020, to June 3, 2022. This study included adult patients with acute respiratory failure caused by COVID-19. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed, and the study quality was assessed using the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. The primary outcome was the reported cumulative intubation risk across randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and the effect estimates were calculated as risk ratios (RRs; 95% confidence interval [CI]). Results: A total of 495 studies were identified, of which 10 fulfilled the selection criteria, and 2294 patients were included. In comparison to supine positioning, APP significantly reduced the need for intubation in the overall population (RR=0.84, 95% CI: 0.74–0.95). The two groups showed no significant differences in the incidence of adverse events (RR=1.16, 95% CI: 0.48–2.76). The meta-analysis revealed no difference in mortality between the groups (RR=0.93, 95% CI: 0.77–1.11). Conclusions: APP was safe and reduced the need for intubation in patients with respiratory failure associated with COVID-19. However, it did not significantly reduce mortality in comparison to usual care without prone positioning