When a droplet coalesces with a flat liquid–air interface, a secondary drop may be left behind resulting in only a partial coalescence rather than complete coalescence. In this paper, we employ an arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian method to demonstrate that applying an electric field favours the occurrence of partial coalescence. To understand this phenomenon, we systematically study the effect of an external electric field on the coalescence process between a droplet and a liquid–air interface. In an electric field, the induced electric stresses can overcome the downward flow of the droplet, thus lifting it upwards. As a result, the positive Laplace pressure in the neck region squeezes the droplet towards pinch-off. We observe that both the initial neck expansion and neck shrinkage are suppressed by the electric field. These effects become weaker as the Ohnesorge number $Oh$ increases. Based on the scaling analysis, we report a critical Ohnesorge number $O{h_c} = 14.39{\varGamma ^{3/2}} + 0.029$ to quantify the transition from partial coalescence to complete coalescence in the presence of an electric field, where $\varGamma $ represents the dimensionless electric Bond number. Finally, a relationship between the secondary droplet size and the two key dimensionless numbers of $Oh$ and $\varGamma $ has been developed, which could be useful for producing droplets of desired sizes in microfluidic applications.

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and aggressive adult primary brain malignancy. Clinically, GBM is refractory to T cell immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), in part due to its dense immune suppressive myeloid stroma. Here we show that myeloid-targeting STING agonists can repolarize the GBM microenvironment to cure ICB-refractory GBM models. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Using the synthetic cyclic di-nucleotide STING agonist IACS-8803 (8803) we treated orthotopic ICB-refractory QPP8 orthotopic murine GBM tumors intratumorally. We then analyzed survival and performed high parameter flow cytometry profiling of the tumor immune microenvironment following STING agonist treatment. To assess the contribution of adaptive immunity to STING agonist therapeutic efficacy, we treated orthotopic QPP8 tumors implanted in RAG1 KO mice and monitored survival. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: We found that STING agonist therapy cured murine orthotopic QPP8 tumors, in contrast to ICB that showed no survival benefit. In RAG1-/- mice bearing QPP8 tumors STING agonist therapy extended survival, however, the curative effect observed in wild-type mice was lost in the absence of adaptive immunity. STING agonist-treated QPP8 tumors displayed increased counts of CD8 T cells and NK cells, and decreased CD8 T cell PD1 expression. Infiltration of STING-treated gliomas by Ly6C+ F4/80+ Mono-MDSC substantially increased; however, these cells expressed reduced CD206 and CD163, suggestive of reduced immuno-suppression. Finally, in the cervical LN of QPP8-treated mice the frequency and CD80/CD86 expression of cDC1 cells increased.​ DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: ICB has failed in GBM, and the suppressive myeloid stroma remains a major barrier to generating anti-GBM T cell responses. Our work shows that STING activation, which primarily targets innate immunity myeloid cells 'upstream' of T cells in the antitumor immunity cycle, can cure ICB-refractory GBM tumors in an adaptive immunity-dependent manner.

A high image rejection 38 GHz demodulator in TSMC 65-nm CMOS process is presented. To achieve better than −40 dBc image rejection ratio (IRR), a low I/Q mismatch 45° LO power splitter of sub-harmonic mixer is proposed. In this design, the 45° LO power splitter is composed of a Wilkinson divider, a series delay line with electrical length of 45° on one side of the divider, and a shunt 90° transmission line on the other side. This configuration is attractive because of its design simplicity and easy fabrication. Compared with the conventional techniques that utilize capacitors and inductors instead of the shunt 90° transmission line, the proposed LO power splitter can alleviate the issue of process variation. The demodulator demonstrates an IRR lower than −40 dBc from 37.5 to 41.5 GHz. In addition, conversion gain is 1.3 ± 0.9 dB from 33 to 41 GHz with 6 dBm LO power. The total direct current power consumption is 78 mW from 1.0 V supply voltage. At the modulation scheme of 4096-QAM, the proposed demodulator demonstrates 1.7% (−35.1 dB) error vector magnitude (EVM), which is very close to the EVM measurement floor 1.6% (−36 dB) of our millimeter-wave signal analyzer.

The application scopes of two different reductive perturbation methods to derive the Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equation and coupled KdV (CKdV) equation in two-temperature-ion dusty plasma are given by using the particle-in-cell (PIC) numerical method in the present paper. It suggests that the reductive perturbation method (RPM) is valid if the amplitude of the CKdV solitary wave is small enough. However, for the KdV solitary wave, RPM is valid not only if the amplitude of the KdV solitary wave is small enough, but also if the nonlinear coefficient of the KdV equation is not tending to zero.

This meta-analytic study explores the overall effectiveness of automatic speech recognition (ASR) on ESL/EFL student pronunciation performance. Data with 15 studies representing 38 effect sizes found from 2008 to 2021 were meta-analyzed. The findings of the meta-analysis indicated that ASR has a medium overall effect size (g = 0.69). Results from moderator analyses suggest that (1) ASR with explicit corrective feedback is largely effective, while ASR with indirect feedback (e.g. ASR dictation) is moderately effective; (2) ASR has a large effect on segmental pronunciation but a small effect on suprasegmental pronunciation; (3) medium to long treatment duration of ASR results in higher learning outcomes, but short duration offers no differential effect compared to a non-ASR condition; (4) practicing pronunciation with peers in an ASR condition produces a large effect, but the effect is small when practicing alone; (5) ASR is largely effective for adult (i.e. 18 years old and above) and intermediate English learners. Overall, ASR is a beneficial application and is recommended for assisting L2 student pronunciation development.

Trematodes of the genus Ogmocotyle are intestinal flukes that can infect a variety of definitive hosts, resulting in significant economic losses worldwide. However, there are few studies on molecular data of these trematodes. In this study, the mitochondrial (mt) genome of Ogmocotyle ailuri isolated from red panda (Ailurus fulgens) was determined and compared with those from Pronocephalata to investigate the mt genome content, genetic distance, gene rearrangements and phylogeny. The complete mt genome of O. ailuri is a typical closed circular molecule of 14 642 base pairs, comprising 12 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes and 2 non-coding regions. All genes are transcribed in the same direction. In addition, 23 intergenic spacers and 2 locations with gene overlaps were determined. Sequence identities and sliding window analysis indicated that cox1 is the most conserved gene among 12 PCGs in O. ailuri mt genome. The sequenced mt genomes of the 48 Plagiorchiida trematodes showed 5 types of gene arrangement based on all mt genome genes, with the gene arrangement of O. ailuri being type I. Phylogenetic analysis using concatenated amino acid sequences of 12 PCGs revealed that O. ailuri was closer to Ogmocotyle sikae than to Notocotylus intestinalis. These data enhance the Ogmocotyle mt genome database and provide molecular resources for further studies of Pronocephalata taxonomy, population genetics and systematics.

Zn is an important trace element involved in various biochemical processes in aquatic species. An 8-week rearing trial was thus conducted to investigate the effects of Zn on juvenile largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) by feeding seven diets, respectively, supplemented with no Zn (Con), 60 and 120 mg/kg inorganic Zn (Sul60 and Sul120), and 30, 60, 90 and 120 mg/kg organic Zn (Bio30, Bio60, Bio90 and Bio120). Sul120 and Bio120 groups showed significantly higher weight gain and specific growth rate than Con group, with Bio60 group obtaining the lowest viscerosomatic index and hepatosomatic index. 60 or 90 mg/kg organic Zn significantly facilitated whole body Zn retention. Up-regulation of hepatic superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and catalase activities and decline of malondialdehyde contents indicated augmented antioxidant capacities by organic Zn. Zn treatment also lowered plasma aminotransferase levels while promoting acid phosphatase activity and hepatic transcription levels of alp1, acp1 and lyz-c than deprivation of Zn. The alterations in whole body and liver crude lipid and plasma TAG contents illustrated the regulatory effect of Zn on lipid metabolism, which could be possibly attributed to the changes in hepatic expressions of acc1, pparγ, atgl and cpt1. These findings demonstrated the capabilities of Zn in potentiating growth and morphological performance, antioxidant capacity, immunity as well as regulating lipid metabolism in M. salmoides. Organic Zn could perform comparable effects at same or lower supplementation levels than inorganic Zn, suggesting its higher efficiency. 60 mg/kg supplementation of organic Zn could effectively cover the requirements of M. salmoides.

The objective was to evaluate the association between serum carotenoid levels and respiratory morbidity and mortality in a nationally representative sample of US adults. We assessed the association of serum carotenoid levels with respiratory morbidity and mortality using logistic regression and proportional hazards regression models. Meanwhile, a series of confounders were controlled in regression models and restricted cubic spline, which included age, sex, race, marriage, education, income, drinking, smoking, regular exercise, BMI, daily energy intake, vitamin E, vitamin C, fruit intake, vegetable intake, diabetes, hypertension, asthma, emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Compared with participants in the lowest tertiles, participants in the highest tertiles of serum total carotenoids, β-cryptoxanthin and lutein/zeaxanthin levels had a significantly lower prevalence of emphysema (ORtotal carotenoids = 0·61, 95% CI: 0·41–0·89, OR β-cryptoxanthin = 0·67, 95% CI: 0·49–0·92), chronic bronchitis (OR β-cryptoxanthin = 0·66, 95% CI: 0·50–0·87) and asthma (Q2: ORlutein/zeaxanthin = 0·78, 95% CI: 0·62–0·97); participants in the highest tertiles of total carotenoids, α-carotene, lutein/zeaxanthin and lycopene had a lower risk of respiratory mortality (hazard ratio (HR)total carotenoids = 0·62, 95% CI: 0·42–0·90, HR α-carotene = 0·54, 95% CI: 0·36–0·82, HRlutein/zeaxanthin = 0·48, 95% CI: 0·33–0·71, HRlycopene = 0·66, 95% CI: 0·45–0·96) than those in the lowest tertiles. Higher serum total carotenoids and β-cryptoxanthin levels is associated with decreased prevalence of emphysema and chronic bronchitis, and higher serum total carotenoids, α-carotene, lutein/zeaxanthin and lycopene levels had a lower mortality of respiratory disease.

Customer preference modelling has been widely used to aid engineering design decisions on the selection and configuration of design attributes. Recently, network analysis approaches, such as the exponential random graph model (ERGM), have been increasingly used in this field. While the ERGM-based approach has the new capability of modelling the effects of interactions and interdependencies (e.g., social relationships among customers) on customers’ decisions via network structures (e.g., using triangles to model peer influence), existing research can only model customers’ consideration decisions, and it cannot predict individual customer’s choices, as what the traditional utility-based discrete choice models (DCMs) do. However, the ability to make choice predictions is essential to predicting market demand, which forms the basis of decision-based design (DBD). This paper fills this gap by developing a novel ERGM-based approach for choice prediction. This is the first time that a network-based model can explicitly compute the probability of an alternative being chosen from a choice set. Using a large-scale customer-revealed choice database, this research studies the customer preferences estimated from the ERGM-based choice models with and without network structures and evaluates their predictive performance of market demand, benchmarking the multinomial logit (MNL) model, a traditional DCM. The results show that the proposed ERGM-based choice modelling achieves higher accuracy in predicting both individual choice behaviours and market share ranking than the MNL model, which is mathematically equivalent to ERGM when no network structures are included. The insights obtained from this study further extend the DBD framework by allowing explicit modelling of interactions among entities (i.e., customers and products) using network representations.

With the use of springs, a method to balance the constant forces in arbitrary directions on a planar serial manipulator is developed in this study. Gravity balancing has been discussed a lot in the past. However, manipulators usually bear forces from various directions rather than only a fixed one as gravity. For instance, an industrial manipulator would bear forces from everywhere during the working process. Therefore, a method to balance these forces in arbitrary directions with springs is proposed. Based on the representation of energy, spring energy is the function of springs’ attachment points. Two spring systems with different attachment angles are needed to balance respectively forces in arbitrary directions and gravity. The spring installations of the above systems on 3-DoF manipulators are proposed. Finally, a resistive force-balanced manipulator with/without gravity balance in the grinding process is shown. In sum, this paper for the first time develops the balancing method for forces in arbitrary directions, expanding the spring balance theory to a broader application.

We report here the first hundred-watt continuous wave fiber gas laser in H2-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) by stimulated Raman scattering. The pump source is a homemade narrow-linewidth fiber oscillator with a 3 dB linewidth of 0.15 nm at the maximum output power of 380 W. To efficiently and stably couple several-hundred-watt pump power into the hollow core and seal the gas, a hollow-core fiber end-cap is fabricated and used at the input end. A maximum power of 110 W at 1153 nm is obtained in a 5 m long hollow-core PCF filled with 36 bar H2, and the conversion efficiency of the first Stokes power is around 48.9%. This work paves the way for high-power fiber gas Raman lasers.

Coastal eutrophication and hypoxia remain a persistent environmental crisis despite the great efforts to reduce nutrient loading and mitigate associated environmental damages. Symptoms of this crisis have appeared to spread rapidly, reaching developing countries in Asia with emergences in Southern America and Africa. The pace of changes and the underlying drivers remain not so clear. To address the gap, we review the up-to-date status and mechanisms of eutrophication and hypoxia in global coastal oceans, upon which we examine the trajectories of changes over the 40 years or longer in six model coastal systems with varying socio-economic development statuses and different levels and histories of eutrophication. Although these coastal systems share common features of eutrophication, site-specific characteristics are also substantial, depending on the regional environmental setting and level of social-economic development along with policy implementation and management. Nevertheless, ecosystem recovery generally needs greater reduction in pressures compared to that initiated degradation and becomes less feasible to achieve past norms with a longer time anthropogenic pressures on the ecosystems. While the qualitative causality between drivers and consequences is well established, quantitative attribution of these drivers to eutrophication and hypoxia remains difficult especially when we consider the social economic drivers because the changes in coastal ecosystems are subject to multiple influences and the cause–effect relationship is often non-linear. Such relationships are further complicated by climate changes that have been accelerating over the past few decades. The knowledge gaps that limit our quantitative and mechanistic understanding of the human-coastal ocean nexus are identified, which is essential for science-based policy making. Recognizing lessons from past management practices, we advocate for a better, more efficient indexing system of coastal eutrophication and an advanced regional earth system modeling framework with optimal modules of human dimensions to facilitate the development and evaluation of effective policy and restoration actions.

The study presents an adaptive robust control method for the Pendubot subjects to matched and mismatched uncertainty. First, the control task is formatted as a reduced-dimension equality constraint of the system states. To handle the matched and mismatched uncertainties, an orthogonal decomposition method is employed to make the mismatched part disappear after decomposition. Based on the above, an adaptive robust control law based on constraint-following is devised. By the Lyapunov approach, it is rigorously proven that the proposed approach ensures the uniform boundedness and uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop control system and thus renders approximate constraint-following, regardless of uncertainty. Simulation and experimental results are provided and discussed, demonstrating the good performance of the proposed approach.

The Qieganbulake deposit associated with a mafic–ultramafic–carbonatite complex in the Kuluketage block is not only the world’s second-largest vermiculite deposit, but also a medium-size carbonatite-related phosphate deposit. Field observations, radiometric dating results and Sr–Nd–Hf isotopes reveal that the parental magmas of the carbonatite and mafic–ultramafic rocks are cogenetic and formed synchronously at c. 810 Ma. Geochemical characteristics and Sr–Nd–Hf–S isotopes ((87Sr/86Sr)i = 0.70581–0.70710; ϵNd(t) = −0.20 to −11.80; ϵHf(t) = −7.5 to −10.3; δ34S = +0.7 ‰ to +3.0 ‰ (some sulfides with high δ34S values (+3.2 to +6.6) were formed by late hydrothermal sulfur)), in combination with mineral compositions and previous research, strongly indicate that the Qieganbulake mafic–ultramafic–carbonatite complex formed via extensive crystal fractionation/cumulation and liquid immiscibility of a carbonated tholeiitic magma, possibly derived from partial melting of an enriched subcontinental lithospheric mantle previously modified by slab-released fluids and sediment input in a continental rift setting. The coupled enriched Sr–Nd isotopic signatures, in combination with previous research, suggest that the enriched subcontinental lithospheric mantle could have been metasomatized by asthenospheric mantle melts to different degrees. The Qieganbulake carbonatite-related phosphate ores were the products of normal fractional crystallization/cumulation of P–Fe3+ complex enriched carbonatite magma in high oxygen fugacity conditions, which was generated by liquid immiscibility of CO2–Fe–Ti–P-rich residual magma undergoing high differentiation.