Skeletal muscle is of great importance for human activity and quality of life, as its loss contributes greatly to immobilisation, especially for aged individuals. An increased dietary intake of antioxidant vitamins may be beneficial for muscle loss because of ageing. However, the quantitative relationship between total antioxidant capacity (TAC) of antioxidant vitamins and muscle mass is undetermined. Totally, 4009 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were included. Multivariate linear regression analysis was performed with demographic, lifestyle and dietary intake adjustment factors. The dose saturation effect was also determined by a saturation effect analysis. Subgroup analysis was performed for age and sex. In the fully adjusted model, per unit increase of dietary TAC was associated with an increase of 0·018 g/kg appendicular lean mass (95 % CI 0·007, 0·029), 0·014 g/kg trunk lean mass (95 % CI 0·004, 0·024) and 0·035 g/kg total lean mass (95 % CI 0·014, 0·055). TAC was associated with a decrease of 0·004 kg/kg total percent fat (95 % CI −0·006, −0·002), 0·005 kg/kg trunk percent fat (95 % CI −0·007, −0·002) and 0·003 kg/m2 BMI (95 % CI −0·006, −0·001) at the same time. Subgroup analysis indicated that women and adults < 50 years may experience the most significant association between TAC and skeletal muscle mass. We revealed a positive correlation between TAC and lean body mass and a negative association between TAC and body fat and BMI. Saturation values were found among people aged 40–59 years. Age and sex mediate these associations.

Programmable active matter (PAM) combines information processing and energy transduction. The physical embodiment of information could be the direction of magnetic spins, a sequence of molecules, the concentrations of ions, or the shape of materials. Energy transduction involves the transformation of chemical, magnetic, or electrical energies into mechanical energy. A major class of PAM consists of material systems with many interacting units. These units could be molecules, colloids, microorganisms, droplets, or robots. Because the interaction among units determines the properties and functions of PAMs, the programmability of PAMs is largely due to the programmable interactions. Here, we review PAMs across scales, from supramolecular systems to macroscopic robotic swarms. We focus on the interactions at different scales and describe how these (often local) interactions give rise to global properties and functions. The research on PAMs will contribute to the pursuit of generalised crystallography and the study of complexity and emergence. Finally, we ponder on the opportunities and challenges in using PAM to build a soft-matter brain.

Hepatitis E is an increasingly serious worldwide public health problem that has attracted extensive attention. It is necessary to accurately predict the incidence of hepatitis E to better plan ahead for future medical care. In this study, we developed a Bi-LSTM model that incorporated meteorological factors to predict the prevalence of hepatitis E. The hepatitis E data used in this study are collected from January 2005 to March 2017 by Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention. ARIMA, GBDT, SVM, LSTM and Bi-LSTM models are adopted in this study. The data from January 2009 to September 2014 are used as the training set to fit models, and data from October 2014 to March 2017 are used as the testing set to evaluate the predicting accuracy of different models. Selecting models and evaluating the effectiveness of the models are based on mean absolute per cent error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE). A total of 44 923 cases of hepatitis E are detected in Jiangsu Province from January 2005 to March 2017. The average monthly incidence rate is 0.35 per 100 000 persons in Jiangsu Province. Incorporating meteorological factors of temperature, water vapour pressure, and rainfall as a combination into the Bi-LSTM Model achieved the state-of-the-art performance in predicting the monthly incidence of hepatitis E, in which RMSE is 0.044, MAPE is 11.88%, and MAE is 0.0377. The Bi-LSTM model with the meteorological factors of temperature, water vapour pressure, and rainfall can fully extract the linear and non-linear information in the hepatitis E incidence data, and has significantly improved the interpretability, learning ability, generalisability and prediction accuracy.

As one of the research hotspots in the field of rehabilitation robotics, the upper limb exoskeleton robot has been widely used in the field of rehabilitation. However, the existing methods cannot comprehensively and accurately reflect the motion state of patients, which may lead to overtraining and secondary injury of patients in the process of rehabilitation training. In this paper, an upper limb exoskeleton control method based on mixed perception model of motion intention and intensity is proposed, which is based on the 6 degree-of-freedom upper limb rehabilitation exoskeleton in the laboratory. First, the kinematic information and heart rate information in the rehabilitation process of patients are collected, corresponding to patients’ motion intention and motion intensity, and fused to obtain the mixed perception vector. Second, the motion perception model based on long short-term memory neural network is established to realize the prediction of upper limb motion trajectory of patients and compared with back-propagation neural network to prove its effectiveness. Finally, the control system is built, and both offline and online test of the control method proposed are implemented. The experimental results show that the method can achieve comprehensive motion state perception of patients, realize real-time and accurate prediction trajectory according to human motion intention and intensity. The average prediction accuracy is 95.3%, and predicted joint angle error is less than 5 degrees. Therefore, the control method based on mixed perception model has good robustness and universality, which provides a new method for the active control of upper limb exoskeleton.

To understand the characteristics and influencing factors related to cluster infections in Jiangsu Province, China, we investigated case reports to explore transmission dynamics and influencing factors of scales of cluster infection. The effectiveness of interventions was assessed by changes in the time-dependent reproductive number (Rt). From 25th January to 29th February, Jiangsu Province reported a total of 134 clusters involving 617 cases. Household clusters accounted for 79.85% of the total. The time interval from onset to report of index cases was 8 days, which was longer than that of secondary cases (4 days) (χ2 = 22.763, P < 0.001) and had a relationship with the number of secondary cases (the correlation coefficient (r) = 0.193, P = 0.040). The average interval from onset to report was different between family cluster cases (4 days) and community cluster cases (7 days) (χ2 = 28.072, P < 0.001). The average time interval from onset to isolation of patients with secondary infection (5 days) was longer than that of patients without secondary infection (3 days) (F = 9.761, P = 0.002). Asymptomatic patients and non-familial clusters had impacts on the size of the clusters. The average reduction in the Rt value in family clusters (26.00%, 0.26 ± 0.22) was lower than that in other clusters (37.00%, 0.37 ± 0.26) (F = 4.400, P = 0.039). Early detection of asymptomatic patients and early reports of non-family clusters can effectively weaken cluster infections.

A comparison of microstructure, mechanical properties and fracture behavior of Mg–9Gd–3Y–xZn–0.5Zr (x = 0, 0.2, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5) (wt%) alloys under different thermal treatment conditions was investigated in this study. The results showed that the as-cast alloys were comprised of Mg matrix, eutectic compounds and cuboid-shaped phases. The eutectics were Mg24(Gd, Y)5 in the alloys of Zn content ≤0.2 wt%, while (Mg, Zn)3RE in the other three alloys. Fine lamellar long period stacking ordered structure formed inside of matrix of the as-cast Zn-containing alloys and its quantity increases with raising Zn content. Mg12(Gd, Y)Zn was observed at grain boundary of Mg matrix after solution treatment in the alloys of Zn content ≥0.5 wt%. Peak-aged Mg–9Gd–3Y–0.5Zn–0.5Zr alloy exhibited a desirable combination of strength and elongation with 244 MPa in yield strength, 371 MPa in ultimate tensile strength and 3.8% in EL. Meanwhile, the fracture behavior of the studied alloys was also investigated.

Mg–3.0Y–2.5Nd–1.0Gd–xZn–0.5Zr (x = 0, 0.2, 0.5, and 1.0) (wt%) alloys were produced by metallic and sand mold casting to study the microstructure and mechanical properties of the alloys. The as-cast Zn-free alloys consist of α-Mg and eutectics, whereas the Zn-containing alloys contain additional long-period stacking ordered (LPSO) structures. With a higher solidification, the cooling rate brought by metallic mold casting, grains, and eutectics are refined, which enhances the elongation of the alloys, accompanied by a decrease of area fraction of the LPSO structure. Some residual eutectics in the Mg–3.0Y–2.5Nd–1.0Gd–1.0Zn–0.5Zr alloys act as obstacles to grain boundary migration during solution treatment, which make the average grain size 15–20 μm smaller than that of the other alloys and hence improve the elongation of the alloys. The Zn addition brings notable enhancements to mechanical properties of the alloys due to solid solution strengthening of Zn. Especially, the peak-aged Mg–3.0Y–2.5Nd–1.0Gd–0.5Zn–0.5Zr alloys perform with the highest overall tensile properties.

The reversible switching between the amorphous and crystalline phases of Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) is investigated with ab initio molecular dynamics. We apply different quench rates (-16 K/ps, -5 K/ps, -2 K/ps, and -0.45 K/ps) and different annealing temperatures (500 K, 600 K, 700 K, and 800 K) to amorphize and crystallize GST respectively. Results show that the generated amorphous is strongly dependent on the quench rate. For -16 K/ps and -5 K/ps, generated amorphous samples have different density of crystal seeds, higher in the later. The amorphous structure formed at -2 K/ps contains a single crystalline cluster, while that formed at the quench rate of -0.45 K/ps had sufficient time to completely crystallize the amorphous phase. Annealing the amorphous systems formed at different rates shows that crystallization depends both on the annealing temperature and on the structure of the initial system (i.e., whether or not it contains crystalline clusters or crystal seeds). At 500 K, formation of crystalline clusters occurs readily within a few ps while the rate at which they grow is slow, taking 0.9 ns to complete the crystallization. In contrast, crystalline cluster formation is inhibited at 800 K. In the intermediate temperature range, both crystalline cluster formation and growth occur within a few hundred ps indicating that these temperatures leads to the fastest crystallization. The crystallization of a 63-atom at ∼900 K resulted in a highly relaxed crystal structure showing a clear tendency for separation of Ge and Sb species in layers. This model also indicates a tendency of segregation of vacancies, suggesting that vacancy layering may play a key role in the crystallization process.

Gd2O3 and HfO2 films exhibit photovoltaic charging that depends on temperature. The dielectric properties of the surface and concomitant photovoltaic surface charging increases following oxygen exposure under ultrahigh vacuum conditions suggesting that the surface conductivity plays a role in the surface photovoltage charging.

Antimony oxide nanoparticles were synthesized in the presence of the polyvinyl alcohol in water solution through the reaction between SbCl3 and NaOH. The size of the particle ranges from 10 to 80 nm, and the largest one can even reach 200 nm, which may begin to grow in the initial stage of the reflux. Transmission electron microscopy and high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM) were used to characterize the microstructure of these nanoparticles. Using silicon single crystals as internal standards, the polycrystalline diffraction pattern analysis shows only presence of cubic Sb2O3 phase. The bright-field micrograph displays that the particles may have various polyhedral configurations. HREM results show that the particles are crystallographically perfect. Moreover, the formation mechanism of nanoparticles is discussed.