Embryos undergo chaotic division and decrease in quality on day 3 with a reduction in the rates of subsequent blastocyst formation. Disordered cleavage causes a deterioration in embryonic quality, here we assessed the relationship between an cleavage model in first mitosis and the chromosomal status of human embryos, and discuss the potential biological and clinical implications for the cleavage model as a single parameter that can be used to assess embryonic quality. Thirty-two infertile couples, with normal karyotypes and who underwent their first IVF cycle were recruited to donate one normal two-cell-stage embryo each for this study between 2019 and 2020. Twenty-eight two-cell embryos underwent preimplantation genetic testing of each blastomere, and four chaotic-division embryos were stained with Hoechst and cultured in a confocal laser-scanning microscopy incubator system. This system showed high specificity and PPV but low sensitivity and NPV using the CM in the prediction of euploidy, indicating that CM could be considered a screening method for embryo selection; additional observational studies using the CM to select transferable embryos are needed before it can be used in clinical practice.

Drilling and sampling are the most direct and effective methods available to study Antarctic subglacial lakes. Based on the Philberth probe, a Recoverable Autonomous Sonde (RECAS) allows for in situ lake water measurement and sampling, through the addition of an upper thermal tip and a cable recoiling mechanism. RECAS-200, a prototype of RECAS, has a drilling depth of 200 m, a surface supply voltage of 800 VAC and a downhole power of ~9.6 kW during drilling. In this study, a heating control system for RECAS-200 was designed. The system avoids the need for high-power step-down converters, by separating heating power from control power, thereby reducing the overall weight of the probe and avoiding the need to increase cable diameter. We also introduce a self-developed, small, solid-state, 800 VAC power regulator and a fuzzy PID temperature control algorithm. Their purpose was to manage the power adjustment of each heating element and to provide closed-loop temperature control of certain heating elements which can easily burn out due to overheating. Test results indicated that the proposed RECAS-200 heating control system met all our design specifications and could be easily assembled into the RECAS-200 probe.

Subglacial lake exploration is of great interest to the science community. RECoverable Autonomous Sonde (RECAS) provides an exploration tool to measure and sample subglacial lake environments while the subglacial lake remains isolated from the glacier surface and atmosphere. This paper presents an electronic control system design of 200 m prototype of RECAS. The proposed electronic control system consists of a surface system, a downhole control system, and a power transfer and communication system. The downhole control system is the core element of RECAS, and is responsible for sonde status monitoring, sonde motion control, subglacial water sampling and in situ analysis. A custom RS485 temperature sensor was developed to cater for the limited size and depth requirements of the system. We adopted a humidity-based measurement to monitor for a housing leak. This condition is because standard leak detection monitoring of water conductivity may be inapplicable to pure ice in Antarctica. A water sampler control board was designed to control the samplers and monitor the on/off state. A high-definition camera system with built-in storage and self-heating ability was designed to perform the video recording in the subglacial lake. The proposed electronic control system is proven effective after a series of tests.

This study introduces a new real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning method which is suitable for baselines of different lengths. The method merges carrier-phase wide-lane, and ionosphere-free observation combinations (LWLC) instead of using pseudo-range, and carrier-phase ionosphere-free combination (PCLC), or single-frequency pseudo-range and phase combination (P1L1). In a first step, the double-differenced wide-lane ambiguities were calculated and fixed using the pseudo-range and carrier-phase wide-lane combination observations. Once the double-differenced wide-lane integer ambiguities were known, the wide-lane combined observations were regarded as accurate pseudo-range observations. Subsequently, the carrier-phase wide-lane, and ionosphere-free combined observations were used to fix the double-differenced carrier-phase integer ambiguities, achieving the final RTK positioning. The RTK positioning analysis was performed for short, medium, and long baselines, using the P1L1, PCLC, and LWLC methods, respectively. For a short baseline, the LWLC method demonstrated positioning accuracy similar to the P1L1 method, and performed better than the PCLC method. For medium and long baselines, the positioning accuracy of the LWLC method was slightly higher than those of the PCLC and P1L1 methods. In conclusion, the LWLC method provided high-precision RTK positioning results for baselines with different lengths, as it used high-precision carrier-phase observations with fixed ambiguities instead of low-precision pseudo-range observations.

Signal-in-space (SIS) continuity and availability are important indicators of performance assessment for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs). The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) Open Service Performance Standard (BDS-OS-PS-1.0) has been released, and the corresponding public performance indicators have been provided, but the actual SIS performance is uncertain to users. SIS continuity and availability are primarily related to unscheduled outages (failures). Therefore, based on the existing failure classification system and actual operation modes, four types of failure modes are first analysed: long-term failure related to satellite service period, maintenance failure related to satellite manoeuvring, short-term failure associated with random repairable anomalies and equivalent failure corresponding to a combination of the above three types of failures. Second, based on the failure classification and selected precise and broadcast ephemerides from 2015–2016, the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) of each failure type are obtained using appropriate detection methods. Finally, using a corresponding assessment model, the SIS continuity and availability of BeiDou are calculated for individual and equivalent failure cases, and these are compared with the provided index in the BDS Open Service Performance Standard.

Underground Nuclear Astrophysics in China (JUNA) will take the advantage of the ultra-low background in Jinping underground lab. High current accelerator with an ECR source and detectors were commissioned. JUNA plans to study directly a number of nuclear reactions important to hydrostatic stellar evolution at their relevant stellar energies. At the first period, JUNA aims at the direct measurements of 25Mg(p,γ)26 Al, 19F(p,α) 16 O, 13C(α, n) 16O and 12C(α,γ) 16O near the Gamow window. The current progress of JUNA will be given.

Effective suppression of transverse stimulated Raman scattering (TSRS) in a large-aperture potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystal is an important scientific and technical problem in high-intensity laser research and applications. In this work, a method to suppress TSRS using pulse stacking is proposed. The method suppresses TSRS significantly, with greater numbers of subpulses producing more obvious suppression effects, and the threshold intensity growth rate of the 3ω laser in the KDP crystal reaches up to about 1.9 when the stacked pulse contains four subpulses. This suppression effect is attributed to the fact that the polarization directions of adjacent subpulses are perpendicular to each other. The method can be used to suppress other nonlinear effects, including transverse stimulated Brillouin scattering in large-aperture optical devices and stimulated rotational Raman scattering in long air paths.

Transverse stimulated Raman scattering (TSRS) is strongly generated in the third-harmonic-generation crystal potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) and can even damage the KDP crystal in inertial confinement fusion drivers. In this work, a method to suppress TSRS is proposed in which the polarization control plate (PCP) is moved to a new position in the existing optical path. The proposed method can suppress TSRS significantly and doubles the laser threshold intensity in KDP crystal when the order of the PCP is 16. This result is attributed to the reduction of the gain length for the Stokes radiation. The proposed method may also be used to suppress other nonlinear effects, including transverse stimulated Brillouin scattering in large-aperture optical components.

For underwater vehicle navigation sensors, the output signal periods are different and time-varying. This would result in the decline of precision, and even wrong results. To deal with the problem, this paper puts forward a multi-sensor, adjustable-period integrated navigation method based on multi-stage signal trigger. This method considers the valid signals of a Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) as the trigger signals of a Dead-Reckoning (DR) navigation program. It also considers the valid signals of an acoustic positioning sensor as the trigger signals of the integrated navigation program. In this method, it can adjust the filtering period in real time. According to the time label of signals, this method actualises the time-space alignment of sensors. Then it conducts DR navigation and integrated navigation. The method can not only utilise the valid signals of each sensor sufficiently but also fuses the data based on time-space alignment efficiently. Sea trial data shows that when the output signal periods are certain, navigation precision of the method in this paper is better than a non-adjustable-period filtering method. Moreover, in poor conditions, it can also attain a high precision.

Microtubule analysis is of significant value for a better understanding of normal and pathological cellular processes. Although immunofluorescence microscopic techniques have proven useful in the study of microtubules, comparative results commonly rely on a descriptive and subjective visual analysis. We developed an objective and quantitative method based on image processing and analysis of fluorescently labeled microtubular patterns in cultured cells. We used a multi-parameter approach by analyzing four quantifiable characteristics to compose our quantitative feature set. Then we interpreted specific changes in the parameters and revealed the contribution of each feature set using principal component analysis. In addition, we verified that different treatment groups could be clearly discriminated using principal components of the multi-parameter model. High predictive accuracy of four commonly used multi-classification methods confirmed our method. These results demonstrated the effectiveness and efficiency of our method in the analysis of microtubules in fluorescence images. Application of the analytical methods presented here provides information concerning the organization and modification of microtubules, and could aid in the further understanding of structural and functional aspects of microtubules under normal and pathological conditions.

Microtubules of cardiac myocytes depolymerize after a hypoxic insult or treatment with colchicine. However, little attention has been paid to quantifying changes in microtubule distribution when using fluorescent images. We converted fluorescence images of labeled microtubules in H9C2 cardiac myocytes to grayscale images, then filtered the images to remove any noise, and used grayscale histograms to quantify features of the images. The results show that parameters such as the mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis, energy, and entropy can be used to quantitatively describe the distribution of microtubules in cells. Quantitative characteristics of microtubule distribution were similar after culturing cells under hypoxic conditions or after treatment with colchicine. These results parallel those described for neonatal rat cardiac myocytes following ischemia and hypoxia. In addition, we provide a method for internal segmentation of the cells, which revealed that microtubular depolymerization was more evident near the cell membrane following hypoxia or colchicine treatment.

The defense mechanism that nacre (mother-of-pearl) uses to protect its living organism against high-speed predatory attack can provide lessons for engineered armor design. However, the underlying physics responsible for nacre's dynamic energy dissipation has hitherto remained a mystery to be uncovered. Here we demonstrate a new energy dissipation mechanism hidden in nacre and activated only upon dynamic loading, where the crack terminates its propagation along nacre's biopolymer interlayers but straightly impinges the aragonite platelets (95 vol%) in a transgranular manner. This intergranular–transgranular transition promotes the fracture energy dissipation, far exceeding that of the currently-used engineered ceramics. The mechanistic origin accounting for the enhancement of fracture energy dissipation is attributed to the unique nanoparticle architectured aragonite platelets. The dynamic manifestation in nacre can inspire a new route to design stronger-and-tougher engineered ceramic armors.

In order to reconstruct past changes in penguin populations we performed geochemical analyses on a penguin ornithogenic sediment core DG4 retrieved from a lake catchment on Gardner Island, Vestfold Hills. P, Se, F, S, As, Sr and Cu in DG4 were identified as the bio-element assemblage by R-clustering analyses on the elemental concentrations and comparisons with those in bedrock and fresh penguin guano. Factor analysis on the levels of these bio-elements in the core permitted a reconstruction of variations in historical penguin populations at Gardner Island spanning the past 8500 years. The penguin population showed significant fluctuations, reaching its highest density between 4700–2400 calibrated years before present. This coincides with evidence for a late Holocene warm period in the Vestfold Hills, similar to that associated with the late Holocene penguin optimum recorded in the Ross Sea and Antarctic Peninsula regions.

A facile electrophoretic deposition method was successfully applied to achieve novel nanoclay-reinforced polyacrylamide nanocomposite thin films. A special curled architecture of the re-aggregated nanoclay-platelets was identified, providing a possible source for realizing the interlocking mechanism in the nanocomposites. The curled architecture could be the result from strain releasing when the thin films were peeled off from the substrates. Through micro-/nano-indentation and in situ observation of the deformation during tensile test with an atomic force microscope (AFM), the localized deformation mechanism of the synthesized materials was investigated in further details. The results implied that a localized crack diversion mechanism worked in the synthesized nanocomposite thin films, which resembled its nature counterpart-nacre. The deformation behavior and fracture mechanism were discussed with reference to lamellar structure, interfacial strength between the nanoclays and the polyacrylamide matrix, and nanoclay agglomeration.

An ionic ferrofluid is prepared using coprecipitation and acid treatment techniques. In the ferrofluid, Co3+ and Fe2+ dissolved from CoFe2O4 nanoparticles via suitable acid attack, are absorbed on the surface of the magnetic particles and thus prevent them from aggregating. We call this self-formed ferrofluid. The colloidal particles in the ferrofluid are constructed with a magnetic core and a nonmagnetic surface layer about 2 nm. The size and the volume fraction of particles in the ferrofluid are described with geometric diameter d and volume fraction ϕv, as well as magnetic diameter dm and magnetic volume fraction ϕm. The viscous and magnetic properties of this ferrofluid depend on these parameters. The viscosity can be tunable for any volume fraction of particles by adding poly(ethylene glycol) into the carrier liquid.

The in situ reduction method was used to prepare nanocrystalline PbSe in a poly(acrylic acid-co-styrene) matrix. Metal precursor-doped polymer film was treated with selenium and reducing reagent (NaBH4) in ethylenediamine, leading to the formation of assemblies of crystalline semiconductive PbSe in polymer. The preparation was done at room temperature and ambient pressure. X-ray diffraction, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, infrared, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and ultraviolet-visible spectra were used to characterize the as-prepared materials. The key factor for successful preparation of this composite was also discussed.

In this paper, we report on the experiment results of wet oxidation of Si1-xGex on SiO2. AES and XPS measurements were performed to study the effect of the oxidation on the Si1-xGex layer. A possible mechanism was proposed.

SiH4 and GeH4 Deposition and In-Situ Doping of SiGe/Si Strained Heterostructures by Rapid Thermal Process Very Low Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition method have been studied in this paper. Ge incorporation rate increases to a maximum value and then decreases as temperature increases, the growth rate of SiGe alloy reaches its maximum value and then decreases as Ge composition increases. Ge incorporation also enhances Si deposition rate in SiGe alloy. The Boron and Phosphorus doping would change thegrowth rate of SiGe layers and the sharp doping interfaces in SiGe/Si heterostructures have been obtained.