Effects of solid nanolayers embedded in a near-critical density plasma on the laser-driven collisionless shock acceleration are investigated by using two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Due to the interaction of nanolayers and the incident laser, an additional number of hot electrons are generated and an inhomogeneous magnetic field is induced. As a result, the collisionless shock is reinforced within the nanolayer gaps compared to the target without the structured nanolayers. When the laser intensity is 9.8 × 1019 W/cm2, the amplitude of the electrostatic field is increased by 30% and the shock velocity is increased from 0.079c to 0.091c, leading to an enhancement of the peak energy and the cutoff energy of accelerated protons, from 6.9 MeV to 9.1 MeV and 12.2 MeV to 20.0 MeV, respectively. Furthermore, the effects of the width of the nanolayer gaps are studied, by adjusting the gap width of nanolayers, and optimal nanolayer setups for collisionless shock acceleration can be acquired.

Energy loss of protons with 90 and 100 keV energies penetrating through a hydrogen plasma target has been measured, where the electron density of the plasma is about 1016 cm−3 and the electron temperature is about 1-2 eV. It is found that the energy loss of protons in the plasma is obviously larger than that in cold gas and the experimental results based on the Bethe model calculations can be demonstrated by the variation of effective charge of protons in the hydrogen plasma. The effective charge remains 1 for 100 keV protons, while the value for 90 keV protons decreases to be about 0.92. Moreover, two empirical formulae are employed to extract the effective charge.

Among primary liver carcinoma cases, the proportion of liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC) cases is 75%–85%. Current treatments for LIHC include chemotherapy, surgical excision, and liver transplantation, which are effective for early LIHC treatment. Nevertheless, the early symptoms of liver carcinoma are atypical, so a large proportion of LIHC patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage. Histocompatibility minor 13 (HM13), located in the endoplasmic reticulum, is responsible for catalysing the hydrolysis of some signal peptides after cleavage from the precursor protein. Here, we studied the role of HM13 in LIHC development through bioinformatics analysis. Database analysis showed that HM13 was of great significance for LIHC tumorigenesis. Compared to normal liver tissues, HM13 expression was increased to a greater extent in LIHC tissues. After analysis of Kaplan‒Meier plotter and Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) datasets, we discovered that highly expressed HM13 exhibited an association with shorter overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), and disease-specific survival (DSS). We conducted Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses to analyse HM13-related genes, and the data indicated that these genes obviously participated in rRNA processing, ribosome biogenesis, spliceosome, Huntington's disease, and ATP-dependent helicase activity. The Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay and Transwell assay showed that reducing HM13 expression hindered LIHC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. In conclusion, these findings indicate that HM13 is a biomarker and is related to the poor prognosis of LIHC. Our results are conducive to discovering new targets for LIHC treatment.

We study the weak convergence of the extremes of supercritical branching Lévy processes $\{\mathbb{X}_t, t \ge0\}$ whose spatial motions are Lévy processes with regularly varying tails. The result is drastically different from the case of branching Brownian motions. We prove that, when properly renormalized, $\mathbb{X}_t$ converges weakly. As a consequence, we obtain a limit theorem for the order statistics of $\mathbb{X}_t$.

Pulse shaping is a powerful tool for mitigating implosion instabilities in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF). However, the high-dimensional and nonlinear nature of implosions makes the pulse optimization quite challenging. In this research, we develop a machine-learning pulse shape designer to achieve high compression density and stable implosion. The facility-specific laser imprint pattern is considered in the optimization, which makes the pulse design more relevant. The designer is applied to the novel double-cone ignition scheme, and simulation shows that the optimized pulse increases the areal density expectation by 16% in one dimension, and the clean-fuel thickness by a factor of four in two dimensions. This pulse shape designer could be a useful tool for direct-drive ICF instability control.

With the dangerous and troublesome nature of hollow defects inside building structures, hollowness inspection has always been a challenge in the field of construction quality assessment. Several methods have been proposed for inspecting hollowness inside concrete structures. These methods have shown great advantages compared to manual inspection but still lack autonomy and have several limitations. In this paper, we propose a range-point migration-based non-contact hollowness inspection system with sensor fusion of ultra-wide-band radar and laser-based depth camera to extract both outer surface and inner hollowness information accurately and efficiently. The simulation result evaluates the performance of the system based on the original range-point migration algorithm, and our proposed one and the result of our system show great competitiveness. Several simulation experiments of structures that are very common in reality are carried out to draw more convincing conclusions about the system. At the same time, a set of laboratory-made concrete components were used as experimental objects for the robotic system. Although still accompanied by some problems, these experiments demonstrate the availability of an automated hollow-core detection system.

Many protected areas worldwide have been established to protect the last natural refuges of flagship animal species. However, long-established protected areas do not always match the current distributions of target species under changing environmental conditions. Here we present a case study of the Asian elephant Elephas maximus in Xishuangbanna, south-west China, to evaluate whether the established protected areas match the species’ current distribution and to identify key habitat patches for Asian elephant conservation. Our results show that currently only 24.5% of the predicted Asian elephant distribution in Xishuangbanna is located within Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, which was established for elephant conservation. Based on the predicted Asian elephant distribution, we identified the most important habitat patches for elephant conservation in Xishuangbanna. The three most important patches were outside Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve and together they contained 43.3% of the estimated food resources for Asian elephants in all patches in Xishuangbanna. Thus, we identified a spatial mismatch between immobile protected areas and mobile animals. We recommend the inclusion of the three identified key habitat patches in a new national park currently being planned by the Chinese authorities for the conservation of the Asian elephant.

Hypertension represents one of the most common pre-existing conditions and comorbidities in Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. To explore whether hypertension serves as a risk factor for disease severity, a multi-centre, retrospective study was conducted in COVID-19 patients. A total of 498 consecutively hospitalised patients with lab-confirmed COVID-19 in China were enrolled in this cohort. Using logistic regression, we assessed the association between hypertension and the likelihood of severe illness with adjustment for confounders. We observed that more than 16% of the enrolled patients exhibited pre-existing hypertension on admission. More severe COVID-19 cases occurred in individuals with hypertension than those without hypertension (21% vs. 10%, P = 0.007). Hypertension associated with the increased risk of severe illness, which was not modified by other demographic factors, such as age, sex, hospital geological location and blood pressure levels on admission. More attention and treatment should be offered to patients with underlying hypertension, who usually are older, have more comorbidities and more susceptible to cardiac complications.

The docking simulators are significant ground test equipment for aerospace projects. The fidelity of docking simulation highly depends on the accuracy performance. This paper investigates the kinematic accuracy for the developed docking simulator. A novel kinematic calibration method which can reduce the number of parameters for error modeling is presented. The principle of parameters separation is studied. A simplified error model is derived based on Taylor series. This method can contribute to the simplification of the error model, fewer measurements, and easier convergence during the parameters identification. The calibration experiment validates this method for further accuracy enhancement.

Silicon nanowires (SiNWs) were fabricated in a metal-assisted chemical etching method with two steps including dipping silicon wafers in AgNO3/HF solutions and then in H2O2/HF solutions. Grazing incidence X-ray diffraction measurements with a set of incidence angles were carried out on the resulting samples to detect characteristics of silver nanoparticles in the etched silicon. Compared with the uniform size of silver nanoparticles on the surface, the silver nanoparticles in etched silicon were found with size increasing and content decreasing corresponding to the depths. Based on the silver size increasing phenomenon, a detailed supplementary hypothesis about SiNWs formation was proposed about silver disintegration and redeposition in the later stage of silicon etching. For 2, 3, 4, and 8 mM AgNO3 solutions used to study their effect on the SiNWs, it was found that a higher quantity of Ag+ concentration such as 8 mM were not beneficial for producing good quality SiNWs.

Varicella is an acute respiratory infectious diseases, with high transmissibility and quick dissemination. In this study, an SEIR (susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered) dynamic model was established to explore the optimal prevention and control measures according to the epidemiological characteristics about varicella outbreak in a school in a central city of China. Berkeley Madonna 8.3.18 and Microsoft Office Excel 2010 software were employed for the model simulation and data management, respectively. The result showed that the simulated result of SEIR model agreed well with the reported data when β (infected rate) equal to 0.067. Models showed that the cumulative number of cases was only 13 when isolation adopted when the infected individuals were identified (assuming isolation rate was up to 100%); the cumulative number of cases was only two and the TAR (total attack rate) was 0.56% when the vaccination coefficient reached 50%. The cumulative number of cases did not change significantly with the change of efficiency of ventilation and disinfection, but the peak time was delayed; when δ (vaccination coefficient) = 0.1, m (ventilation efficiency) = 0.7 or δ = 0.2, m = 0.5 or δ = 0.3, m = 0.1 or δ = 0.4 and above, the cumulative number of cases would reduce to one case and TAR would reduce to 0.28% with combined interventions. Varicella outbreak in school could be controlled through strict isolation or vaccination singly; combined interventions have been adopted when the vaccination coefficient was low.

In this paper, instabilities in the flow over a circular cylinder of diameter $D$ with dual splitter plates attached to its rear surface are numerically investigated using the spectral element method. The key parameters are the splitter plate length $L$, the attachment angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ and the Reynolds number $Re$. The presence of the plates was found to significantly modify the flow topology, leading to substantial changes in both the primary and secondary instabilities. The results showed that the three instability modes present in the bare circular cylinder wake still exist in the wake of the present configurations and that, in general, the occurrences of modes A and B are delayed, while the onset of mode QP is earlier in the presence of the splitter plates. Furthermore, two new synchronous modes, referred to as mode A$^{\prime }$ and mode B$^{\prime }$, are found to develop in the wake. Mode A$^{\prime }$ is similar to mode A but with a quite long critical wavelength. Mode B$^{\prime }$ shares the same spatio-temporal symmetries as mode B but has a distinct spatial structure. With the exception of the case of $L/D=0.25$, mode A$^{\prime }$ persists for all configurations investigated here and always precedes the transition through mode A. The onset of mode B$^{\prime }$ occurs for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}>20^{\circ }$ with $L/D=1.0$ and for $L/D>0.5$ with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}=60^{\circ }$. The characteristics of all the transition modes are analysed, and their similarities and differences are discussed in detail in comparison with the existing modes. In addition, the physical mechanism responsible for the instability mode B$^{\prime }$ is proposed. The weakly nonlinear feature of mode B$^{\prime }$, as well as that of mode A$^{\prime }$, is assessed by employing the Landau model. Finally, selected three-dimensional simulations are performed to confirm the existence of these two new modes and to investigate the nonlinear evolution of the three-dimensional modes.