Although active flow control based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has been demonstrated extensively in numerical environments, practical implementation of real-time DRL control in experiments remains challenging, largely because of the critical time requirement imposed on data acquisition and neural-network computation. In this study, a high-speed field-programmable gate array (FPGA) -based experimental DRL (FeDRL) control framework is developed, capable of achieving a control frequency of 1–10 kHz, two orders higher than that of the existing CPU-based framework (10 Hz). The feasibility of the FeDRL framework is tested in a rather challenging case of supersonic backward-facing step flow at Mach 2, with an array of plasma synthetic jets and a hot-wire acting as the actuator and sensor, respectively. The closed-loop control law is represented by a radial basis function network and optimised by a classical value-based algorithm (i.e. deep Q-network). Results show that, with only ten seconds of training, the agent is able to find a satisfying control law that increases the mixing in the shear layer by 21.2 %. Such a high training efficiency has never been reported in previous experiments (typical time cost: hours).

Objectives/Goals: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly aggressive and prevalent breast cancer subtype that lacks targeted therapies. This study aims to investigate whether the niclosamide derivative HJC0152 can modulate tumor-derived PD-L1 expression and enhance the effectiveness of anti-PD-1 immunotherapy in treating TNBC. Methods/Study Population: Niclosamide derivative HJC0152 was developed as a novel cancer therapeutic and immunomodulating agent. Human TNBC cell line (MDA-MB-231) was treated with HJC0152, and activation of the STAT3 signaling pathway was evaluated using Western blotting. RNA-Seq was employed to analyze the expression of protein-coding genes, particularly those related to immune response. To study therapeutic potential in vivo, TNBC mouse models will be treated with single agent treatments as well as a combination therapy of HJC0152 and anti-PD-1. Tumor volume and mass will be measured over time to determine growth inhibition. Results/Anticipated Results: Preliminary studies indicate that HJC0152 exhibits enhanced solubility compared to Niclosamide, along with high anticancer potency both in vitro and in vivo. HJC0152 was found to effectively inhibit the activation of phosphorylated STAT3 (p-STAT3) in MDA-MB-231 cells, a key signaling pathway associated with cancer progression and immune evasion. RNA-Seq analysis of HJC0152-treated MDA-MB-231 cells revealed a decrease in PD-L1 expression, an essential immune checkpoint protein involved in tumor immune suppression. These findings suggest that HJC0152 is a promising immune modulator that may enhance the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade therapy for TNBC. Discussion/Significance of Impact: This study explores an innovative immunotherapy for TNBC using the Niclosamide derivative HJC0152, which inhibits STAT3 signaling and downregulates PD-L1. Results from this study will provide a foundation for HJC0152’s inclusion in clinical trials and potentially offer a new and promising therapeutic option for TNBC treatment.

Triceps skinfold thickness (TSF) is a surrogate marker of subcutaneous fat. Evidence is limited about the association of sex-specific TSF with the risk of all-cause mortality among maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients. We aimed to investigate the longitudinal relationship of TSF with all-cause mortality among MHD patients. A multicenter prospective cohort study was performed in 1034 patients undergoing MHD. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models were used to evaluate the association of TSF with the risk of mortality. The mean (standard deviation) age of the study population was 54.1 (15.1) years. 599 (57.9%) of the participants were male. The median (interquartile range) of TSF was 9.7 (6.3–13.3 mm) in males and 12.7 (10.0–18.0 mm) in females. Over a median follow up of 4.4 years (interquartile range, 2.4-7.9 years), there were 548 (53.0%) deaths. When TSF was assessed as sex-specific quartiles, compared with those in quartile 1, the adjusted HRs (95%CIs) of all-cause mortality in quartile 2, quartile 3 and quartile 4 were 0.93 (0.73, 1.19), 0.75 (0.58, 0.97) and 0.69 (0.52, 0.92), respectively (P for trend =0.005). Moreover, when analyzed by sex, increased TSF (≥9.7 mm for males and ≥18mm for females) was significantly associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality (quartile 3-4 vs. quartile 1-2; HR, 0.70; 95%CI: 0.55, 0.90 in males; quartile 4 vs. Quartile 1-3; HR, 0.69; 95%CI: 0.48, 1.00 in females). In conclusion, high TSF was significantly associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality in MHD patients.

This study investigates the effects of fat emulsion-based early parenteral nutrition in patients following hemihepatectomy, addressing a critical gap in clinical knowledge regarding parenteral nutrition after hemihepatectomy. We retrospectively analysed clinical data from 274 patients who received non-fat emulsion-based parenteral nutrition (non-fatty nutrition group) and 297 patients who received fat emulsion-based parenteral nutrition (fatty nutrition group) after hemihepatectomy. Fat emulsion-based early parenteral nutrition significantly reduced levels of post-operative aspartate aminotransferase, total bilirubin and direct bilirubin, while minor decreases in red blood cell and platelet counts were observed in the fatty nutrition group. Importantly, fat emulsion-based early parenteral nutrition shortened lengths of post-operative hospital stay and fasting duration, but did not affect the incidence of short-term post-operative complications. Subgroup analyses revealed that the supplement of n-3 fish oil emulsions was significantly associated with a reduced inflammatory response and risk of post-operative infections. These findings indicate that fat emulsion-based early parenteral nutrition enhances short-term post-operative recovery in patients undergoing hemihepatectomy.

An advanced deformable Kirkpatrick–Baez (K-B) mirror system was developed, equipped with high-speed piezoelectric actuators, and designed to induce beam decoherence and significantly enhance the quality of X-ray imaging by minimizing undesirable speckles in synchrotron radiation or free-electron laser facilities. Each individual mirror is engineered with 36 independent piezoelectric actuators that operate in a randomized manner, orchestrating the mirror surface to oscillate at a high frequency up to 100 kHz. Through in situ imaging single-slit diffraction measurement, it has been demonstrated that this high-frequency-vibration mirror system is pivotal in disrupting the coherent nature, thereby diminishing speckle formation. The impact of the K-B mirror system is profound, with the capability to reduce the image contrast to as low as 0.04, signifying a substantial reduction in speckle visibility. Moreover, the coherence of the X-ray beam is significantly lowered from an initial value exceeding 80% to 13%.

Conservation agriculture (CA), as a key component of sustainable intensification, has been widely promoted across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to address low crop productivity. However, the focus has mainly been on improving cereal grain yields, with less focus to its impact on nutritional outcomes. This study sought to assess the productivity potential of CA crop diversification systems and associated crop establishment techniques in terms of grain, protein, and energy yields. An on-station trial was implemented in Malawi for four cropping seasons (2014/15 to 2017/18). Four crop establishment techniques (ridge and furrow, jab planter, dibble sticks, and CA basins) were tested, while cropping systems included conventional cropping system (Conv), CA sole cropping (CaSole), CA intercropping (CA-intercropping), and CA rotations (CA-rotation). In 2014/15 and 2015/16 cropping seasons, characterised by medium and low rainfall, respectively, planting basins and ridge-furrow systems produced higher maize yields compared to jab planter and dibble stick systems. In 2015/16, big and small basins yielded 5061 and 3969 kg ha–1, while jab planter and dibble stick yielded 3476 and 3213 kg ha–1. When there was high and persistent rainfall (2016/17 and 2017/18), direct seeding (jab planter and dibble stick) outperformed basins and ridge-furrow systems. Therefore, the choice of planting basin sizes and whether or not to use dibble stick and jab planter needs to be guided by location or site-specific seasonal forecasts for best results. Grain yield in maize-legume rotation systems consistently outperformed other systems, with maize-groundnut rotations surpassing maize-cowpea intercrops by 987–2700 kg ha–1 over four cropping seasons. In intercropping systems, maize-pigeon pea outperformed maize-cowpea by 4–45% during the same period, while maize-cowpea rotation consistently out yielded maize-cowpea intercropping. Intercropping systems, however, provided substantial protein benefits, with maize-pigeon yielding +9.5% (2015/2016), +29.1% (2016/2017) over CA sole, and +2.2% (2017/2018) over cowpea intercropping. Sole systems (conventional and CA sole) yielded the highest caloric energy, while maize-cowpea rotation consistently reduced energy yield by 35% to 54% compared to the highest-yielding systems. Overall intercropping systems can outperform rotation systems in nutritional security but when focus is on maize grain yield alone, intercropping may reduce maize yield when compared to both cereal sole and maize-legume rotation systems.

Laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF) diagnostics play a crucial role in understanding the complex physical processes governing ICF and enabling ignition. During the ICF process, the interaction between the high-power laser and ablation material leads to the formation of a plasma critical surface, which reflects a significant portion of the driving laser, reducing the efficiency of laser energy conversion into implosive kinetic energy. Effective diagnostic methods for the critical surface remain elusive. In this work, we propose a novel optical diagnostic approach to investigate the plasma critical surface. This method has been experimentally validated, providing new insights into the critical surface morphology and dynamics. This advancement represents a significant step forward in ICF diagnostic capabilities, with the potential to inform strategies for enhancing the uniformity of the driving laser and target surface, ultimately improving the efficiency of converting laser energy into implosion kinetic energy and enabling ignition.

This work investigates the spatio-temporal evolution of coherent structures in the wake of a generic high-speed train, based on a three-dimensional database from large eddy simulation. Spectral proper orthogonal decomposition (SPOD) is used to extract energy spectra and energy ranked empirical modes for both symmetric and antisymmetric components of the fluctuating flow field. The spectrum of the symmetric component shows overall higher energy and more pronounced low-rank behaviour compared with the antisymmetric one. The most dominant symmetric mode features periodic vortex shedding in the near wake, and wave-like structures with constant streamwise wavenumber in the far wake. The mode bispectrum further reveals the dominant role of self-interaction of the symmetric component, leading to first harmonic and subharmonic triads of the fundamental frequency, with remarkable deformation of the mean field. Then, the stability of the three-dimensional wake flow is analysed based on two-dimensional local linear stability analysis combined with a non-parallelism approximation approach. Temporal stability analysis is first performed for both the near-wake and the far-wake regions, showing a more unstable condition in the near-wake region. The absolute frequency of the near-wake eigenmode is determined based on spatio-temporal analysis, then tracked along the streamwise direction to find out the global mode growth rate and frequency, which indicate a marginally stable global mode oscillating at a frequency very close to the most dominant SPOD mode. The global mode wavemaker is then located, and the structural sensitivity is calculated based on the direct and adjoint modes derived from a local spatial analysis, with the maximum value localized within the recirculation region close to the train tail. Finally, the global mode shape is computed by tracking the most spatially unstable eigenmode in the far wake, and the alignment with the SPOD mode is computed as a function of streamwise location. By combining data-driven and theoretical approaches, the mechanisms of coherent structures in complex wake flows are well identified and isolated.

This paper presents a three-stage E-band low-noise amplifier (LNA) fabricated in a 28-nm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor High-Performance Compact Plus process. The proposed E-band LNA achieves a peak gain of 16.8 dB, exhibiting a gain variation of less than ±0.5 dB across the frequency range of 67.8–90.4 GHz. The measured 3-dB gain bandwidth spans from 64 to 93.8 GHz, and the minimum measured noise figure (NF) is 3.8 dB. By employing a one-stage common-source with a two-stage cascode topology, the proposed E-band LNA demonstrates competitiveness in terms of gain flatness and NF when compared to recently published E-band CMOS LNAs.

Placing an inertial measurement unit (IMU) at the 5th lumbar vertebra (L5) is a frequently employed method to assess the whole-body center of mass (CoM) motion during walking. However, such a fixed position approach does not account for instantaneous changes in body segment positions that change the CoM. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the congruence between CoM accelerations obtained from these two methods. The CoM positions were calculated based on trajectory data from 49 markers placed on bony landmarks, and its accelerations were computed using the finite-difference algorithm. Concurrently, accelerations were obtained with an IMU placed at L5, a proxy CoM position. Data were collected from 16 participants. Bland–Altman Limits of Agreement and Statistical Parametric Mapping approaches were used to examine the similarity and differences between accelerations directly obtained from the IMU and those derived from position data of the L5 marker (ML5) and whole-body CoM during a gait cycle. The correlation was moderate between IMU and CoM accelerations (r = 0.58) and was strong between IMU and ML5 or between CoM and ML5 accelerations (r = 0.76). There were significant differences in magnitudes between CoM and ML5 and between CoM and IMU accelerations along the anteroposterior and mediolateral directions during the early loading response, mid-stance, and terminal stance to pre-swing. Such comprehensive understanding of the similarity or discrepancy between CoM accelerations acquired by a single IMU and a camera-based motion capture system could further improve the development of wearable sensor technology for human movement analysis.

In response to the complex and challenging task of long-distance inspection of small-diameter and variable-diameter mine holes, this paper presents a design for an adaptive small-sized mine hole robot. First, focusing on the environment of small-diameter mine holes, the paper analyzes the robot’s functions and overall structural framework. A two-wheeled wall-pressing robot with good mobility, arranged in a straight line, is designed. Furthermore, an adaptive variable-diameter method is devised, which involves constructing an adaptive variable-diameter model and proposing a control method based on position and force estimators, enabling the robot to perceive external forces. Lastly, to verify the feasibility of the structural design and adaptive variable-diameter method, performance tests and analyses are conducted on the robot’s mobility and adaptive variable-diameter capabilities. Experimental results demonstrate that the robot can move within small-diameter mine holes at any inclination angle, with a maximum horizontal crawling speed of 3.96 m/min. By employing the adaptive variable-diameter method, the robot can smoothly navigate convex platform obstacles and slope obstacles in mine holes with diameters ranging from 70 mm to 100 mm, achieving the function of adaptive variable-diameter within 2 s. Thus, it can meet the requirements of moving inside mine holes under complex conditions such as steep slopes and small and variable diameters.