According to the public data collected from the Health Commission of Gansu Province, China, regarding the COVID-19 pandemic during the summer epidemic cycle in 2022, the epidemiological analysis showed that the pandemic spread stability and the symptom rate (the number of confirmed cases divided by the sum of the number of asymptomatic cases and the number of confirmed cases) of COVID-19 were different among 3 main epidemic regions, Lanzhou, Linxia, and Gannan; both the symptom rate and the daily instantaneous symptom rate (daily number of confirmed cases divided by the sum of daily number of asymptomatic cases and daily number of confirmed cases) in Lanzhou were substantially higher than those in Linxia and Gannan. The difference in the food sources due to the high difference of the population ethnic composition in the 3 regions was probably the main driver for the difference of the symptom rates among the 3 regions. This work provides potential values for prevention and control of COVID-19 in different regions.

Cap-shaped skeletal fossils are the earliest undisputed body fossils of mollusks appearing in the basal Cambrian. A study on the morphometry of cap-shaped fossils from the Nanjiang area (North Sichuan, China) is undertaken to understand the origin and evolution of the early mollusks. The distribution of these fossil cap-shaped mollusks indicates a stepwise increase in their diversity during the early Cambrian. Maikhanella Zhegallo in Voronin et al., 1982 co-occuring with the spinose sclerites of siphogonuchitids, is regarded as the earliest scleritized mollusk. It is followed by other maikhanellids, e.g., Purella Missarzhevsky, 1974 and Yunnanopleura Yu, 1987, which co-occur with the earliest univalved helcionellids, e.g., Igorella Missarzhevsky in Rozanov et al., 1969. Cluster analysis of their morphometric characteristics shows that the Maikhanella group is similar to the Purella and Yunnanopleura groups, but is less comparable with univalved helcionellids. The maikhanellids are interpreted as representatives of the stem group Aculifera, although it remains uncertain if one or two larger cap-shaped shell plates were present on the elongate slug-like body, comparable to those of Halkieria Poulsen, 1967 or Orthrozanclus Conway Morris and Caron, 2007. Maikhanellids are characterized by the prominent protrusions or scales on the cap-shaped shell plates arranged in a concentric pattern around the shell apex. Evolutionarily, the protrusions or scales are reduced in younger strata, whereas subsequently a typically concentric ornament developed, the cap-shaped shell plates developed higher profiles, and the apical region became increasingly bare of scales. Meanwhile, the cap-shaped shell plates gradually evolved into a helcionellid-like appearance with an anteroposteriorly inclined apex. The morphological evolution of the earliest sclerotized mollusks reflects biotic evolution and environmental adaption among the stem-group mollusks during the early Cambrian.

The wheat aphid Sitobion miscanthi (CWA) is an important harmful pest in wheat fields. Insecticide application is the main method to effectively control wheat aphids. However, CWA has developed resistance to some insecticides due to its extensive application, and understanding resistance mechanisms is crucial for the management of CWA. In our study, a new P450 gene, CYP4CJ6, was identified from CWA and showed a positive response to imidacloprid and thiamethoxam. Transcription of CYP4CJ6 was significantly induced by both imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, and overexpression of CYP4CJ6 in the imidacloprid-resistant strain was also observed. The sensitivity of CWA to these two insecticides was increased after the knockdown of CYP4CJ6. These results indicated that CYP4CJ6 could be associated with CWA resistance to imidacloprid and thiamethoxam. Subsequently, the posttranscriptional regulatory mechanism was assessed, and miR-316 was confirmed to participate in the posttranscriptional regulation of CYP4CJ6. These results are crucial for clarifying the roles of P450 in the resistance of CWA to insecticides.

Thermal convection of fluid is a more efficient way than diffusion to carry heat from hot sources to cold places. Here, we experimentally study the Rayleigh–Bénard convection of aqueous glycerol solution in a cubic cell with suspensions of rod-like particles made of polydimethylsiloxane. The particles are inertial due to their large thermal expansion coefficient and finite sizes. The thermal expansion coefficient of the particles is three times larger than that of the background fluid. This contrast makes the suspended particles lighter than the local fluid in hot regions and heavier in cold regions. The heat transport is enhanced at relatively large Rayleigh number ($\textit {Ra}$) but reduced at small $\textit {Ra}$. We demonstrate that the increase of Nusselt number arises from the particle–boundary layer interactions: the particles act as ‘active’ mixers of the flow and temperature fields across the boundary layers.

Dietary habits play an important role in the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes. However, evidence on association between diet frequency and type 2 diabetes was limited and inconclusive. We aimed to examine the association between meal frequency and risk of type 2 diabetes. The cohort study used data from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study of 8874 community-dwelling people aged over 45 years. Participants were classified as eating two meals per day, three meals per day and four meals per day. Multiple Poisson regression models were used to examine risk of 4-year incident type 2 diabetes among people who ate more or less than three meals per day compared with people who ate three meals per day. We documented 706 type 2 diabetes cases during follow-up. After adjustment for known risk factors for type 2 diabetes, except for BMI, participants who ate four meals per day were at a lower risk of type 2 diabetes than those who ate three meals per day (relative risk(RR) = 0·73 (0·58, 0·92)). After further adjustment for baseline BMI, the association was slightly attenuated but remained statistically significant (RR = 0·76 (0·60, 0·97)). Subgroup analysis showed that the fully adjusted RR of type 2 diabetes for people eating four meals per day were 0·66 (0·48, 0·91) and 0·93 (0·65, 1·34) among those had a BMI < 25 and ≥ 25 kg/m2, respectively. Eating four meals per day, compared with eating three meals per day was associated with lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes in a Chinese population, particularly in those with a BMI < 25 kg/m2.

We propose a novel Fabry–Pérot (FP) antenna consisting of a checkered polarization-conversion metasurface (PCM), corner-cut square patch antennas, and sandwiched compounds. The proposed antenna achieves low radar-cross-section (RCS), high gain, and wideband circular polarization (CP). The corner-cut square patch antennas facilitate high reflectivity, satisfactory transmission magnitude, and the desired phase difference. An embedded metal between two rings of substrate contributes to reducing cross-polarization, improving transmission efficiency, enhancing bandwidth, and reducing RCS. Following simulations, we fabricated a prototype of the proposed antenna and tested its performance. Measurements from the simulation and prototype tests were similar within a reasonable margin of error. Compared with alternative antennas, our proposed FP antenna offers high gain, wideband CP, low cost, a low RCS, and a lower profile.

Video monitoring is an important means of ship traffic supervision. In practice, regulators often need to use an electronic chart platform to determine basic information concerning ships passing through a video feed. To enrich the information in the surveillance video and to effectively use multimodal maritime data, this paper proposes a novel ship multi-object tracking technology based on improved single shot multibox detector (SSD) and DeepSORT algorithms. In addition, a night contrast enhancement algorithm is used to enhance the ship identification performance in night scenes and a multimodal data fusion algorithm is used to incorporate the ship automatic identification system (AIS) information into the video display. The experimental results indicate that the ship information tracking accuracies in the day and night scenes are 78⋅2% and 70⋅4%, respectively. Our method can effectively help regulators to quickly obtain ship information from a video feed and improve the supervision of a waterway.

A 1178 J near diffraction limited 527 nm laser is realized in a complete closed-loop adaptive optics (AO) controlled off-axis multi-pass amplification laser system. Generated from a fiber laser and amplified by the pre-amplifier and the main amplifier, a 1053 nm laser beam with the energy of 1900 J is obtained and converted into a 527 nm laser beam by a KDP crystal with 62% conversion efficiency, 1178 J and beam quality of 7.93 times the diffraction limit (DL). By using a complete closed-loop AO configuration, the static and dynamic wavefront distortions of the laser system are measured and compensated. After correction, the diameter of the circle enclosing 80% energy is improved remarkably from 7.93DL to 1.29DL. The focal spot is highly concentrated and the 1178 J, 527 nm near diffraction limited laser is achieved.

Global warming will directly influence agricultural production and present new challenges for food security in semiarid regions of China. A warming experiment was conducted in Guyuan, China using infrared ray radiators to study the impact of warming on crop growth, yield and quality of a potato–broad bean–winter wheat crop rotation system. Warming significantly affected the crop photosynthesis rates of the potato–broad bean–winter wheat rotation system. In the podding stage of broad bean and the heading, blooming and booting stages of winter wheat, the photosynthesis rate was significantly decreased when the temperature increased by 0.5–2.0°C. The growing period of the potato–broad bean–winter wheat rotation system was shortened by 20–40 days per 3-year-period, and the fallow period was prolonged by 4–13 days per 3-year-period. The water use efficiency of the potato–broad bean–winter wheat rotation decreased by 8.6% when the temperature increased by 1.02.0°C. The yield of the potato–broad bean–winter wheat rotation increased by 6.1–7.7% when the temperature increased by 0.5–1.0°C. However, yield decreased 12.9–13.4% when temperature increased by 1.0–2.0°C. Potato protein significantly decreased by 9.3–17.6% and the winter wheat fat significantly decreased by 6.7% when the temperature increased by 0.5–2.0°C. The results indicate that global warming could seriously affect the crop growth, yield and water use of the potato–broad bean–winter wheat rotation in semiarid regions of China.

Continuous hBN films have been grown by means of a radio-frequency-sputtering technology, and their material properties have been investigated. The prepared hBN films can achieve good smoothness in a large area. The surface morphologies and compositions of the hBN films on Si substrate and Al film have been characterized, indicating that there is no difference. The 101-phase peak of hBN film is the strongest, and the optical band gap of the fabricated film is 5.84 eV. An attempt on the fabrication of the hBN based resistive switching (RS) device has been made by using an Ag/hBN/Al structure, leading to the observation of a clear and stable RS behavior. The device exhibits a resistance window (high-resistivity state/low-resistivity state) of around 102, and the RS behaviors of hBN film prepared by sputtering were first observed. It has been found that the opening voltage for the device is changed when a different cycle voltage is applied because of the built-in electric field increasing with the increase of applied cycle voltage. The mechanism of the RS behavior has been analyzed, which lay a foundation for the application of hBN as RS material in resistive random access memory to improve the storage density.

This paper studies the parameter estimation for Ornstein–Uhlenbeck stochastic volatility models driven by Lévy processes. We propose computationally efficient estimators based on the method of moments that are robust to model misspecification. We develop an analytical framework that enables closed-form representation of model parameters in terms of the moments and autocorrelations of observed underlying processes. Under moderate assumptions, which are typically much weaker than those for likelihood methods, we prove large-sample behaviors for our proposed estimators, including strong consistency and asymptotic normality. Our estimators obtain the canonical square-root convergence rate and are shown through numerical experiments to outperform likelihood-based methods.

Iron carbide (Fe1−xCx) thin films were successfully grown by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) using bis(N,N′-di-tert-butylacetamidinato)iron(II) as a precursor and H2 plasma as a reactant. Smooth and pure Fe1−xCx thin films were obtained by the PEALD process in a layer-by-layer film growth fashion, and the x in the nominal formula of Fe1−xCx is approximately 0.26. For the wide PEALD temperature window from 80 to 210 °C, a saturated film growth rate of 0.04 nm/cycle was achieved. X-ray diffraction and transition electron microscope measurements show that the films grown at deposition temperature 80–170 °C are amorphous; however, at 210 °C, the crystal structure of Fe7C3 is formed. The conformality and resistivity of the deposited films have also been studied. At last, the PEALD Fe1−xCx on carbon cloth shows excellent electrocatalytic performance for hydrogen evolution.

A supercapacitor electrode featured with a voltage self-stabilizing capability is demonstrated by growing indium tin oxide (ITO) nanowires on Ni foam. The ITO nanowires with a single crystal structure are prepared by using magnetron sputtering technique, and they can act as an active electrode material. Charging–discharging experiments are performed under different current densities, demonstrating a good rate capability. Using properly designing top and bottom double connection circuits, part of the electrode can be used as a resistance switch. An electrode that can function as a supercapacitor and a resistance switch is fabricated. Detailed characteristics confirm that the device not only exhibits high performance as a supercapacitor but also has good characteristics of resistance switching (RS). The specific capacitance is 956 F/g at the scanning rate of 10 mV/s, and the switching ratio as a bipolar resistance switch is as high as 102. The stabilization time of discharging voltage is nearly doubled longer than that without any RS function, revealing the potential application of our devices, which can be used as a supercapacitor with voltage self-stabilizing.

Laser pulses of 200 ps with extremely high intensities and high energies are sufficient to satisfy the demand of shock ignition, which is an alternative path to ignition in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). This paper reports a type of Brillouin scheme to obtain high-intensity 200-ps laser pulses, where the pulse durations are a challenge for conventional pulsed laser amplification systems. In the amplification process, excited Brillouin acoustic waves fulfill the nonlinear optical effect through which the high energy of a long pump pulse is entirely transferred to a 200-ps laser pulse. This method was introduced and achieved within the SG-III prototype system in China. Compared favorably with the intensity of $2~\text{GW}/\text{cm}^{2}$ in existing ICF laser drivers, a 6.96-$\text{GW}/\text{cm}^{2}$ pulse with a width of 170 ps was obtained in our experiment. The practical scalability of the results to larger ICF laser drivers is discussed.

Monosized spherical Cu–20% Sn (wt%) alloy particles with diameter ranging from 70.6 to 334.0 μm were prepared by the pulsated orifice ejection method (termed “POEM”). Fully dense without pores and bulk inclusions, the cross-sectional micrographs of the spherical alloy particles indicate an even distribution of Cu and Sn. These spherical Cu–Sn alloy particles exhibit a good spherical shape and a narrow size distribution, suggesting that the liquid Cu–Sn alloy can completely break the balance between the surface tension and the liquid static pressure in the crucible micropores and accurately control the volume of the droplets. Furthermore, the cooling rate of spherical Cu–20% Sn alloy particles is estimated by a Newton’s cooling model. The cooling rate of the Cu–20% Sn alloy particle decreases gradually with the particle diameter increasing. Smaller particles have higher cooling rates and when the particle diameter is less than 70 μm, the cooling rate of particles can reach more than 3.3 × 104 K/s. The secondary dendrite arm spacing has strong dependence on particle diameter which increases gradually with the increase of particle diameter. The results demonstrate that POEM is an effective route for fabrication of high-quality monosized Cu–20% Sn alloy particles.