The laboratory generation and diagnosis of uniform near-critical-density (NCD) plasmas play critical roles in various studies and applications, such as fusion science, high energy density physics, astrophysics as well as relativistic electron beam generation. Here we successfully generated the quasistatic NCD plasma sample by heating a low-density tri-cellulose acetate (TCA) foam with the high-power-laser-driven hohlraum radiation. The temperature of the hohlraum is determined to be 20 eV by analyzing the spectra obtained with the transmission grating spectrometer. The single-order diffraction grating was employed to eliminate the high-order disturbance. The temperature of the heated foam is determined to be T = 16.8 ± 1.1 eV by analyzing the high-resolution spectra obtained with a flat-field grating spectrometer. The electron density of the heated foam is about $N_e=4.0\pm 0.3\times {10}^{20}{\text{cm}}^{-3}$ under the reasonable assumption of constant mass density.

Due to the lack of research between the inner layers in the structure of colonic mucous and the metabolism of fatty acid in the constipation model, we aim to determine the changes in the mucous phenotype of the colonic glycocalyx and the microbial community structure following treatment with Rhubarb extract in our research. The constipation and treatment models are generated using adult male C57BL/6N mice. We perform light microscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to detect a Muc2-rich inner mucus layer attached to mice colon under different conditions. In addition, 16S rDNA sequencing is performed to examine the intestinal flora. According to TEM images, we demonstrate that Rhubarb can promote mucin secretion and find direct evidence of dendritic structure-linked mucus structures with its assembly into a lamellar network in a pore size distribution in the isolated colon section. Moreover, the diversity of intestinal flora has noticeable changes in constipated mice. The present study characterizes a dendritic structure and persistent cross-links have significant changes accompanied by the alteration of intestinal flora in feces in models of constipation and pretreatment with Rhubarb extract.

Nutritional Risk Screening index is a standard tool to assess nutritional risk, but epidemiological data are scarce on controlling nutritional status (CONUT) as a prognostic marker in acute haemorrhagic stroke (AHS). We aimed to explore whether the CONUT may predict a 3-month functional outcome in AHS. In total, 349 Chinese patients with incident AHS were consecutively recruited, and their malnutrition risks were determined using a high CONUT score of ≥ 2. The cohort patients were divided into high-CONUT (≥ 2) and low-CONUT (< 2) groups, and primary outcomes were a poor functional prognosis defined as the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score of ≥ 3 at post-discharge for 3 months. Odds ratios (OR) with 95 % confidence intervals (CI) for the poor functional prognosis at post-discharge were estimated by using a logistic analysis with additional adjustments for unbalanced variables between the high-CONUT and low-CONUT groups. A total of 328 patients (60·38 ± 12·83 years; 66·77 % male) completed the mRS assessment at post-discharge for 3 months, with 172 patients at malnutrition risk at admission and 104 patients with a poor prognosis. The levels of total cholesterol and total lymphocyte counts were significantly lower in high-CONUT patients than low-CONUT patients (P = 0·012 and < 0·001, respectively). At 3-month post discharge, there was a greater risk for the poor outcome in the high-CONUT compared with the low-CONUT patients at admission (OR: 2·32, 95 % CI: 1·28, 4·17). High-CONUT scores independently predict a 3-month poor prognosis in AHS, which helps to identify those who need additional nutritional managements.

A highly active catalyst of cerium–tungsten–titanium mixed oxide was synthesized by introducing Ce4+ and H2O2 in the base sample of Ce20W10Ti100Oz–Ce3+. As a consequence, the NH3-SCR activity of Ce20W10Ti100Oz–Ce3+ is significantly improved as the additives of Ce4+ and H2O2 enlarge the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area by refining its pore size. Meanwhile, the introduction of Ce4+ increases the Lewis acid sites of Ce20W10Ti100Oz–Ce3+ and decreases its low-temperature Brønsted acid sites. The further addition of H2O2 improves the Brønsted acid sites and dispersion of cerium/tungsten species, and thereby enhances the concentrations of the adsorbed oxygen (Oα) and the adsorbed oxygen $\lpar {\rm {O}^{\prime}}_{\rm \alpha} \rpar$ due to the activation of chemisorbed water on the surface of the catalyst. The addition of Ce4+ and H2O2 shows a synergistic promotional effect, which is due to the largest BET surface area and the highest concentrations of Oα or/and ${\rm {O}^{\prime}}_{\rm \alpha}$. Ce20W10Ti100Oz–Ce3+:Ce4+ = 17.5:2.5 + H2O2 exhibits the highest catalytic activity compared with the conventional ones (Fig. 5).

Severe phase coarsening and separation in Sn–Bi alloys have brought increasing reliability concern in microelectronic packages. In this study, a phase field model is developed to simulate the microstructural evolution and evaluate the change in macroscopic physical properties of the flip chip Cu/Sn58Bi/Cu joint under the conditions of isothermal aging, as well as the coupled loads of elastic stress and electric current stressing. Results show that large-sized Bi-rich phase particles grow up at the expense of small-sized ones. Under the coupled loads, Bi atoms migrate along the electron flow direction, consequently Bi-rich phase segregates to form a Bi-rich phase layer at the anode. The current crowding ratio in the solder decreases rapidly first and then fluctuates slightly with time. Current density and von Mises stress exhibit inhomogeneous distribution, and both of them are higher in the Sn-rich phase than in the Bi-rich phase. Electric current transfers through the Sn-rich phase and detours the Bi-rich phase. As time proceeds, the resistance of the solder joint increases, and the average von Mises stress of the solder joint decreases. The Bi-rich phase coarsens much faster under the coupled loads than under the conditions of isothermal aging.

This paper presents a method to improve the speed and accuracy rate for space robot visual target recognition based on illumination and affine invariant feature extraction. The method takes illumination changes, strong nonlinear light due to refraction and reflection, target affine transformation and occlusion into consideration, all of which occur on the cabin target surface and affect the target recognition accuracy seriously. In this paper, a method is proposed to capture a same target at multi-viewpoints to establish feature library for high recognition accuracy and speed at any viewpoint. By using an analysis of the light intensity and gray level transformation, we obtain the corrected image which reduce the influence of illumination change. Then the affine moment invariants features of the correction images at multi-viewpoints were extracted and the average feature datum were stored in the library. To verify the validity of the method, a robot vision system provided images, followed by image preprocessing, dynamic local threshold segmentation and feature extraction. These methods were verified on a target recognition system of space robot built for this research. The experimental results showed that the methods were feasible and effective.

Enhancing the pinning force in high-Tc superconductors can be achieved by externally introduced periodic magnetic dots. We use a novel nano-technique to deposit periodic sub-micon Ni dots on YBa2Cu3O7 thin films. The current versus voltage characteristics of an YBa2Cu3O7 thin film strip with uniform Ni dots are measured at various temperatures and magnetic fields. They are compared with the current versus voltage characteristics of a bare YBa2Cu3O7 thin film strip without magnetic dots. It is found the critical current value of the strip with Ni dots reduces with a much slower pace as the magnetic field strength increases in comparison with the value of the bare sample.

Co-based brazing alloy CoFeNi(Si, B)CrTi was designed for SiC joining. The periodic banded reaction structure that existed at the interface between SiC and the traditional Ni-based or Co-based braze has been eliminated by the new brazing alloy. The maximum room-temperature four-point bend strength of 161 MPa was achieved for SiC/SiC joint under the optimum brazing condition of brazing filler thickness of 120 μm, brazing temperature of 1150 °C, and brazing time of 10 min. The corresponding reaction layer of the SiC/SiC joint is composed of multilayer silicides and TiC band, and many small TiC particles are scattered throughout the matrix of the central part of the joint. The joints thus exhibit stable high-temperature strength. It is believed that the formation of TiC in the joint contributes not only to the elimination of the periodic banded reaction structure, but also to the high joint strength and the high-temperature stability.

To increase our understanding of the relationships of trunk fat mass (FMtrunk) and four anthropometric indices in Chinese males, 1090 males aged 20–40 years were randomly recruited from the city of Changsha, China. Waist circumference (WC) and hip circumference (HC) were measured using standardized equipment, and three other anthropometric indices of BMI, waist:hip ratio (WHR) and conicity index (CoI) were calculated using weight, height, HC and WC. FMtrunk (in kg) was measured using a Hologic QDR 4500 W dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scanner. There was an increasing trend of FMtrunk, %FMtrunk (percentage of FMtrunk) and BMI, WC, WHR, CoI in successively older age groups (e.g. the mean FMtrunk values were 4·63 (sd 2·58), 5·39 (sd 2·74), 5·93 (sd 2·82), 6·57 (sd 2·94) in four 5-year age groups, respectively). FMtrunk and %FMtrunk were significantly correlated with four anthropometric indices with the Pearson's correlation coefficients ranging from 0·25 to 0·86. Principal component analysis was performed to form three principal components that interpreted over 99·5% of the total variation of four related anthropometric indices in all age groups, with over 65% of the total variation accounted by principal component 1. Multiple regression analyses showed that three principal components explained a greater variance (R2 70·0–80·1%) in FMtrunk than did BMI or WC alone (R2 57·8–74·1%). The present results suggest that there is an increasing trend of FMtrunk and four anthropometric indices in successively older age groups; that age has important effects on the relationships of FMtrunk and studied anthropometric indices; and that the accuracy of predicting FMtrunk using four anthropometric indices is higher than using BMI or WC alone.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the probabilistic structure for a rather general class of bilinear models systematically. First, the sufficient and necessary conditions for stationarity are given with a concise expression. Then both the autocovariance function and the spectral density function are obtained. The Yule–Walker-type difference equations for autocovariances are derived by means of the spectral density function. Concerning the second-order probabilistic structure, the model is similar to an ARMA model. The third-order probabilistic structure for the model is discussed and a group of Yule–Walker-type difference equations for third-order cumulants are discovered.

We have studied the influence of interface roughness scattering on the mobility of two-dimensional electron gas(2DEG) in GaAs-AlGaAs modulation-doped heterostructures(MDH) both experimentally and theoretically. When the background ionized impurity concentration in the GaAs layer is smaller than 2.5×1015cm-3, our investigation shows that interface roughness scattering is the dominant scattering mechanism in the high 2DEG density(Nş ≥5× 1011cm2) GaAs-AlGaAs MDH. We also demonstrate that interface roughness scattering is about an order of magnitude stronger than alloy disorder scattering in GaAs-AlGaAs MDH if the AlGaAs/GaAs interface fluctuation is only one monolayer of GaAs.