The mumps resurgence has frequently been reported around the world in recent years, especially in many counties mumps vaccines have been widely used. This study aimed to describe the spatial epidemiological characteristics of mumps in Jiangsu, and provide a scientific basis for the implementation and adjustment of strategies to prevent and control mumps. The epidemiological characteristics were described with ratio or proportion. Spatial autocorrelation, Tango's flexible spatial scan statistics, and Kulldorff's elliptic spatiotemporal scan statistics were applied to identify the spatial autocorrelation, detect hot and cold spots of mumps incidence, and aggregation areas. A total of 172 775 cases were reported from 2004 to 2020 in Jiangsu. The general trend of mumps incidence is declining with a bimodal seasonal distribution identified mainly in summer and winter, respectively. Children aged 5–10 years old are the main risk group. A migration trend of hot spots from southeast to northwest over time was found. Similar high-risk aggregations were detected in the northwestern parts through spatial-temporal analysis with the most likely cluster time frame around 2019. Local medical and health administrations should formulate and implement targeted health care policies and allocate health resources more appropriately corresponding to the epidemiological characteristics of mumps.

Parabronema skrjabini is one of the most harmful nematodes to camels and is responsible for economic losses in animal husbandry industry. There is an urgent need for in-depth studies of potential vectors of the nematode due to its scant regarding information. As previous studies indicated that flies may be the vectors of P. skrjabini, we captured flies in the main camel-producing areas of Inner Mongolia. After autopsy of the specimens of two species of horn flies, we observed the morphology of the suspected nematode larvae found in them. Internal transcribed spacer ribosomal-DNA gene sequences were considered the best candidate to confirm the species of the larvae found. Our results showed that the homology compared with P. skrjabini was 99.5% in GenBank. Subsequently, we preliminarily identified two species of horn flies through morphological observation and then sequenced the mitochondrial-DNA-gene cytochrome oxidase subunit I obtained from two species of horn flies, with 100 and 99.2% similarity to sequences deposited in GenBank, respectively. Thus, we identified Haematobia titillans and Haematobia irritans and provided evidence for their potential role as vectors of parabronemosis. Our study provides reference for future research on the life history of the nematode and the vectors of parabronemosis.

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) has been widely applied in humans, mice, and some domestic animals to cure human infertility, or produce genetically superior or genetically engineered animals. However, the production efficiency of ICSI in pigs remains quite low. In this study, we developed a new sperm pretreatment method to improve production efficiency of ICSI in pigs. Experiment 1 revealed that pretreating porcine sperm with 2.5 mg/ml lipase before ICSI operation, not only can reduce the adhesion between sperm and the injection pipette without adding polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) in the operating medium, but also significantly improve male pronuclei (MPN) formation rate (55.56% vs. 40.00% (0 mg/ml), 42.59% (5.0 mg/ml), 40.00% (10.0 mg/ml), P < 0.05) and enhance developmental competence of ICSI embryos (26.03% vs. 10.87% (0 mg/ml), 10.00% (5.0 mg/ml), 10.13% (10.0 mg/ml), P < 0.05). Experiment 2 showed that this method has a higher MPN formation rate (50.47% vs. 30.78%, P < 0.05) and blastocyst rate (18.81% vs. 7.41%, P < 0.05) than the PVP method, and was better than the Triton X-100 treatment method (50.47% vs. 46.23%, 18.81% vs. 12.75%). Therefore, pretreating porcine sperm with 2.5 mg/ml lipase before ICSI operation is highly recommended, instead of adding PVP in the operating medium.

It is important to know the detailed DNA structure on carbonaceous surfaces for further application of DNA-functionalized carbonaceous materials in diverse research areas. In this study, the topographic and structural characteristics of the separated single DNA molecules and their assembly on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surfaces have been investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM results indicate that both circular and linear DNA molecules tend to form hexagonal patterns along with some unusual structures that include node, protrusion, cruciform, parallel single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), and compact zigzag. Furthermore, parallel ssDNA patterns and their crossed structures have been obtained under high-temperature conditions. Our AFM results reveal that a bare HOPG surface can induce DNA molecules to form various unusual structures. This finding is helpful for understanding the adsorption behavior of DNA on other carbonaceous surfaces such as carbon nanotubes and graphene. In addition, the hexagonal DNA patterns in this study are similar to those formed on the alkylamine-modified HOPG surface, which implies that a bare HOPG, without any chemical modification, has a strong ability to align biomolecules. This study could expand our knowledge of the diversities of DNA structures and the aligning ability of carbonaceous surfaces.

The multilayered films-based charge trap flash memory cells were fabricated by incorporating high-k ZrO2/Al2O3 nanolaminates as charge trapping layer and amorphous Al2O3 as tunneling and blocking layers. The thickness of high-k ZrO2 or Al2O3 film in charge trapping layer after annealing treatment was about 1.5 nm for each layer. The charge storage characteristics of such memory cells were measured, and the results demonstrated that they had a large hysteresis memory window of 3.85 V at a sweeping gate voltage of ±8 V, an excellent endurance up to 105 write/erase cycles and a small charge loss of 9.6% after 10 years.

In shipborne Transfer Alignment (TA) applications, partial observability is one of the most important factors limiting convergence velocity. This paper proposes a new method of attributing weak observable states and lever-arm variables to a group of constraints in order to improve the observability of TA model. This yields the so-called Constrained Transfer Alignment (CTA) model which is uniformly observable even under zero-manoeuvre conditions. Within this framework, the Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) and its stability analysis are also addressed. Finally, comparative simulation results are given to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approach.

The adsorption of humic acid (HA) onto highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surfaces at different concentrations has been studied by atomic force microscopy. When HA concentration was increased from 10 to 1,000 mg/L, HA can sequentially form spherical particles, layered structures, and connected blocks on HOPG surfaces. The findings of the layer structures and small amount of fine chains have been verified and discussed. When HA was acidified by addition of acetic acid, it changed into small rigid particles. These results indicated that HA can be considered as supramolecular associations of self-assembling heterogeneous and relatively small molecules, and a small amount of polymers. The present results are important for understanding HA molecular structures and their adsorption characteristic on carbonaceous surfaces.

Compositionally graded (Ba1−xSrx)TiO3 (BST) thin films (with 0.0 ⩽ x ⩽ 0.25) were grown by pulsed laser deposition on the (100)MgO single-crystal substrates covered with a conductive La0.5Sr0.5CoO3 (LSCO) layer as a bottom electrode. Their epitaxial growth, dielectric response, and microstructure were characterized. The epitaxial relationships between the BST, LSCO, and MgO can be determined as [001]BST//[001]LSCO//[001]MgO and (100)BST//(100)LSCO//(100)MgO, from the x-ray diffraction (rocking curve, ϕ scans) and electron-diffraction patterns. Dielectric data showed that the room temperature values of the dielectric constant and dielectric loss of the graded BST films were 630 and 0.017 at 100 kHz, respectively. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images reveal that both the BST films and the LSCO bottom electrode grow with a columnar structure, and they have flat interfaces and overall uniform thickness across the entire specimen. Cross-sectional high-resolution TEM images reveal that at the LSCO/MgO(100) interface, an interfacial reaction is not seen, whereas edge-type interfacial dislocations with their extra half-planes residing in the LSCO side are observed with an average interval of 2.20 nm, close to the theoretical value of 2.15 nm. At/near the LSCO/BST interface, the graded BST films grow perfectly and coherently on the LSCO lattice because they have the same type of crystal structure and almost same lattice constants, and no interfacial dislocations are observed. Planar TEM images show that the graded films exhibit granular and/or polyhedral morphologies with an average grain size of 50 nm, and the aligned rectangular-shaped voids were also observed. High-resolution TEM images show that the length sizes of voids vary from 8 to 15 nm, and with width of 5 to 10 nm along the 〈001〉 direction in the (100) plane.

Thin films of lanthanum substituted bismuth titanate, Bi4−xLaxTi3O12 (BLTx), were prepared by chemical solution deposition. Crystallized BLTx films were obtained by rapid thermal annealing at a temperature as low as 650 °C. Structural and electrical characteristics of crystalline BLTx films were studied as functions of La composition. Structure characterization was conducted by x-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. The lowest lattice vibration mode around 116 cm−1 showed softening with increasing lanthanum composition. Surface morphology of BLTx films were recorded by scanning electron microscopy. BLTx films have saturated hysteresis loops with remnant polarization of 9.7, 12.3, and 4.5 μC/cm2, respectively, for x = 0.50, 0.75, and 1.00 films. BLT0.75 films showed fatigue-free behavior over 250 kV/cm, 50 kHz cycling, which could be compared with that of SrBi2Ta2O9 thin films. Fatigue resistance decrease at lower cycling field. The field dependence of fatigue property was discussed briefly in terms of competition between domain pinning and field-assisted unpinning.

The patterned nc-Si/a-SiNx:H superlattices were fabricated by using laser interference crystallization method and investigated with atomic force microscope (AFM), micro-Raman spectroscope, cross-section transmission electron microscope (TEM) and high resolution electron microscope (HREM). We found that after laser irradiation, self-assembled Si nanocrystallites (nc-Si) are formed within the initial a-Si:H sublayers, moreover, in the plane parallel to the surface of the films, these nc-Si orderly distribute in the certain regions with the same periodicity of 2.0 µm as phase shifting mask grating. Based on the structural analyses, the crystallization mechanism and the origin of the self-assembled phenomena are briefly discussed.