HOIMotion: Forecasting Human Motion During Human-Object Interactions Using Egocentric 3D Object Bounding Boxes.

We present HOIMotion - a novel approach for human motion forecasting during human-object interactions that integrates information about past body poses and egocentric 3D object bounding boxes. Human motion forecasting is important in many augmented reality applications but most existing methods have only used past body poses to predict future motion. HOIMotion first uses an encoder-residual graph convolutional network (GCN) and multi-layer perceptrons to extract features from body poses and egocentric 3D object bounding boxes, respectively. Our method then fuses pose and object features into a novel pose-object graph and uses a residual-decoder GCN to forecast future body motion. We extensively evaluate our method on the Aria digital twin (ADT) and MoGaze datasets and show that HOIMotion consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods by a large margin of up to 8.7% on ADT and 7.2% on MoGaze in terms of mean per joint position error. Complementing these evaluations, we report a human study (N = 20) that shows that the improvements achieved by our method result in forecasted poses being perceived as both more precise and more realistic than those of existing methods. Taken together, these results reveal the significant information content available in egocentric 3D object bounding boxes for human motion forecasting and the effectiveness of our method in exploiting this information.

Intranasal vaccination with engineered BCG expressing CCL2 induces a stronger immune barrier against Mycobacterium tuberculosis than BCG.

Intradermal Mycobacterium bovis Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination is currently the only licensed strategy for preventing tuberculosis (TB). It provides limited protection against pulmonary TB. To enhance the efficacy of BCG, we developed a recombinant BCG expressing exogenous monocyte chemoattractant CC chemokine ligand 2 (CCL2), termed rBCG-CCL2. Co-culturing macrophages with rBCG-CCL2 enhances their abilities in migration, phagocytosis, and effector molecules expression. In the mouse model, intranasal vaccination with rBCG-CCL2 induced greater immune cells infiltration and a more extensive innate immune responses in lung compared to vaccination with parental BCG, as determined by multiparameter flow cytometry, transcriptomic analysis, and pathological assessments. Moreover, rBCG-CCL2 induced a high frequency of activated macrophages and antigen-specific Th1 and Th17 T cells in lungs. The enhanced immune microenvironment responded more effectively to intravenous challenge with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) H37Ra, leading to significant reductions in H37Ra burden and pathological damage to the lungs and spleen. Intranasal rBCG-CCL2 vaccinated mice rapidly initiated pro-inflammatory Th1 cytokine release and reduced pathological damage to the lungs and spleen during the early stage of H37Ra challenge. The finding that co-expression of CCL2 synergistically enhances the immune barrier induced by BCG provides a model for defining immune correlates and mechanisms of vaccine-elicited protection against TB.

Advances of immune-checkpoint inhibition of CTLA-4 in pancreatic cancer.

Targeting checkpoints for immune cell activation has been acknowledged known as one of the most effective way to activate anti-tumor immune responses. Among them, drugs targeting cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) are approved for clinical treatment though several more are in advanced stages of development, which demonstrated durable response rates and manageable safety profile. However, its therapy efficacy is unsatisfactory in pancreatic cancer (PC), which can be limited by the overall condition of patients, the pathological type of PC, the expression level of tumor related genes, etc. To improve clinical efficiency, various researches have been conducted, and the efficacy of combination therapy showed significantly improvement compared to monotherapy. This review analyzed current strategies based on anti-CTLA-4 combination immunotherapy, providing totally new idea for future research.

Morphological, Physiological, and Photosynthetic Differences of Tartary Buckwheat Induced by Post-Anthesis Drought.

Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum (L.) Gaertn) is a crop of significant interest due to its nutritional value and resilience to drought conditions. However, drought, particularly following flowering, is a major factor contributing to yield reduction. This research employed two distinct Tartary buckwheat genotypes to investigate the effects of post-anthesis drought on growth and physicochemical characteristics. The study aimed to elucidate the response of Tartary buckwheat to drought stress. The findings indicated that post-anthesis drought adversely impacted the growth, morphology, and biomass accumulation of Tartary buckwheat. Drought stress enhanced the maximum photosynthetic capacity (Fv/Fm) and light protection ability (NPQ) of the 'Xiqiao-2' genotype. In response to drought stress, 'Dingku-1' and 'Xiqiao-2' maintained osmotic balance by accumulating soluble sugars and proline, respectively. Notably, 'Xiqiao-2' exhibited elevated levels of flavonoids and polyphenols in its leaves, which helped mitigate oxidative damage caused by drought. Furthermore, rewatering after a brief drought period significantly improved plant height, stem diameter, and biomass accumulation in 'Dingku-1'. Overall, 'Xiqiao-2' demonstrated greater long-term tolerance to post-anthesis drought, while 'Dingku-1' was less adversely affected by short-term post-anthesis drought.

Ionic titanium is expected to improve the nutritional quality of Tartary buckwheat sprouts through flavonoids and amino acid metabolism.

Tartary buckwheat sprouts are highly valued by consumers for their superior nutritional content. Ionic titanium (Ti) has been shown to enhance crop growth and improve nutritional quality. However, there is limited research on the impact of ionic Ti on the nutritional quality of Tartary buckwheat sprouts. This study cultivated Tartary buckwheat sprouts with ionic Ti and found that the high concentration of ionic Ti significantly increased the contents of chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and carotenoids (increased by 25.5%, 27.57%, and 15.11%, respectively). The lower concentration of ionic Ti has a higher accumulation of total flavonoids and total polyphenols. Metabolomics analysis by LC-MS revealed 589 differentially expressed metabolites and 54 significantly different metabolites, enriching 82 metabolic pathways, especially including amino acid biosynthesis and flavonoid biosynthesis. This study shows that ionic Ti can promote the growth of Tartary buckwheat sprouts, improve nutritional quality, and have huge development potential in food production.

Identification of a circadian-based prognostic signature predicting cancer-associated fibroblasts infiltration and immunotherapy response in bladder cancer.

Circadian rhythm disruption impacts the efficiency of both chemotherapy and immunotherapy, yet identifying the key factors involved remains challenging. Circadian rhythm disruption can trigger aberrant fibroblasts activation, suggesting potential roles of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in addressing this issue. In this paper, TCGA-BLCA patients were classified into two subgroups based on the expression of core circadian rhythm genes (CCRGs). The CCRG-based subgroups showed distinct fibroblast-related signals, from which a risk model composed of five fibroblast-related genes was finally established with excellent survival prognostic value in both TCGA and GEO datasets. The risk model was positively associated with the infiltration of CAFs and can efficiently predict the immunotherapy response in BLCA. Besides, high-risk score was associated with reduced sensitivity to a majority of traditional chemotherapeutic drugs such as oxaliplatin and gemcitabine. Further, the correlation between CCRGs and the risk genes was analyzed. Among the five risk genes, FAM20C displayed the most extensive correlation with the CCRGs and exhibited the strongest connection with CAFs infiltration. Moreover, FAM20C independently served as a predictor for the response to immunotherapy in BLCA. In conclusion, this study has identified a circadian-based signature for evaluating CAFs infiltration and predicting the efficacy of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. The central gene FAM20C has emerged as a promising candidate which merits further investigations.

A Novel Quality Control Strategy for the Preparation of High-Quality Recombinant Allergens in Escherichia coli: A Case Study of Der f 2.

INTRODUCTION: Recombinant allergens produced by Escherichia coli (E. coli) system play an important role in the component-resolved diagnostics of allergy and vaccine development. However, incorrect folding of recombinant allergens may affect their application. Therefore, it is very important to monitor the correct folding of recombinant allergens. Currently, there is still a lack of a quality control strategy to solve this problem. In this study, a mite allergen, Der f 2, was taken as an example to establish a novel quality control strategy, which was based on chromatography to isolate the allergen, and on enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to verify the IgE reactivity of the isolated allergen. METHODS: The nucleotide sequence encoding Der f 2 was codon-optimized and cloned into pET-28a (+) plasmid. Best conditions for the expression of Der f 2 in E. coli were sought. The inclusion body of Der f 2 was denatured and purified by nickel affinity chromatography. Refolding processes were compared using glutathione redox system. The fully and partially folded proteins were separated by anion exchange chromatography, and the IgE reactivity of the isolated proteins was verified by indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS: An optimized 387 bp segment of the Der f 2 coding gene was successfully expressed in E. coli. Best induction conditions included preinduction bacterial density with absorbance value at 600 nm was 0.6, 1 mM isopropyl beta-d-thiogalactopyranoside at 28°C for 4 h. The Der f 2 protein after refolding was separated by chromatography and two fractions were obtained. The first fraction was identified as monomer protein and the second as aggregate by size-exclusion chromatography. Indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay also confirmed that the first fraction showed higher IgE reactivity. CONCLUSION: In this study, a novel quality control strategy based on chromatographic separation and IgE reactivity monitoring was established in the case of mite Der f 2, which systematically evaluated the effectiveness of multiple preparation methods for the first time. It is faster and more convenient when compared with the existing methods such as size-exclusion chromatography. This strategy laid a foundation for the stable application of recombinant allergens produced by E. coli in component-resolved diagnostics and the development of molecular vaccines in the future.

Pose2Gaze: Eye-Body Coordination During Daily Activities for Gaze Prediction From Full-Body Poses.

Human eye gaze plays a significant role in many virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) applications, such as gaze-contingent rendering, gaze-based interaction, or eye-based activity recognition. However, prior works on gaze analysis and prediction have only explored eye-head coordination and were limited to human-object interactions. We first report a comprehensive analysis of eye-body coordination in various human-object and human-human interaction activities based on four public datasets collected in real-world (MoGaze), VR (ADT), as well as AR (GIMO and EgoBody) environments. We show that in human-object interactions, e.g. pick and place, eye gaze exhibits strong correlations with full-body motion while in human-human interactions, e.g. chat and teach, a person's gaze direction is correlated with the body orientation towards the interaction partner. Informed by these analyses we then present Pose2Gaze - a novel eye-body coordination model that uses a convolutional neural network and a spatio-temporal graph convolutional neural network to extract features from head direction and full-body poses, respectively, and then uses a convolutional neural network to predict eye gaze. We compare our method with state-of-the-art methods that predict eye gaze only from head movements and show that Pose2Gaze outperforms these baselines with an average improvement of 24.0% on MoGaze, 10.1% on ADT, 21.3% on GIMO, and 28.6% on EgoBody in mean angular error, respectively. We also show that our method significantly outperforms prior methods in the sample downstream task of eye-based activity recognition. These results underline the significant information content available in eye-body coordination during daily activities and open up a new direction for gaze prediction.

Adaptive nanotube networks enabling omnidirectionally deformable electro-driven liquid crystal elastomers towards artificial muscles.

Artificial muscles that can convert electrical energy into mechanical energy promise broad scientific and technological applications. However, existing electro-driven artificial muscles have been plagued with problems that hinder their practical applications: large electro-mechanical attenuation during deformation, high-driving voltages, small actuation strain, and low power density. Here, we design and create novel electro-thermal-driven artificial muscles rationally composited by hierarchically structured carbon nanotube (HS-CNT) networks and liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs), which possess adaptive sandwiched nanotube networks with angulated-scissor-like microstructures, thus effectively addressing above problems. These HS-CNT/LCE artificial muscles demonstrate not only large strain (>40%), but also remarkable conductive robustness (R/R0 < 1.03 under actuation), excellent Joule heating efficiency (≈ 233 °C at 4 V), and high load-bearing capacity (R/R0 < 1.15 at 4000 times its weight loaded). In addition, our artificial muscles exhibit real-muscle-like morphing intelligence that enables preventing mechanical damage in response to excessively heavyweight loading. These high-performance artificial muscles uniquely combining omnidirectional stretchability, robust electrothermal actuation, low driving voltage, and powerful mechanical output would exert significant technological impacts on engineering applications such as soft robotics and wearable flexible electronics.

Aggregated parameter update schemes for monitoring binary profiles.

Profile monitoring is one of the most important topics for statistical process control. Traditional self-starting profile monitoring schemes generally use all historical observations to estimate parameters. Because of the rapid increase in the complexity of modern statistical processes, the practitioners often need to deal with massive datasets in process monitoring. However, when observations of each period are of large sample size and the computation is of high complexity, the traditional method is not economical and urgently needs a parameter update strategy. Under the framework of binary profile monitoring, this paper proposes a novel recursive update strategy based on the aggregated estimation equation (AEE) for massive datasets and designs a self-starting control chart accordingly. Numerical simulation verifies that the proposed method performs better in parameter estimation and process monitoring. In addition, we give the asymptotic property of the proposed monitoring statistic and illustrate our method's superiority by a real-data example.

Trophic transfer of heavy metals across four trophic levels based on muscle tissue residuals: a case study of Dachen Fishing Grounds, the East China Sea.

In this study, we collected 56 species of fishery organisms (including fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, gastropods, and bivalves) from four seasonal survey cruises at the Dachen fishery grounds. We measured the concentrations of seven heavy metals (Cd, Zn, Cu, Pb, Cr, As, and Hg) in these fisheries organisms. We determined their trophic levels using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope techniques. We analyzed the characteristics of heavy metal transfer in the food chain. The results showed significant differences in heavy metal concentrations among different species. Among all biological groups, bivalves and gastropods exhibited higher levels of heavy metal enrichment than other biological groups, while fish had the lowest levels of heavy metal enrichment. Heavy metals exhibited different patterns of nutritional transfer in the food chain. While Hg showed a biomagnification phenomenon in the food chain, it was not significant. Cd, Zn, Cu, Pb, Cr, and As exhibited a trend of biodilution with increasing nutritional levels, except for As, which showed no significant correlation with δ15N.

Artificial intelligence-driven design of the assembled major cat allergen Fel d 1 to improve its spatial folding and IgE-reactivity.

BACKGROUND: Cat-derived allergens are considered as one of the most common causes of allergic diseases worldwide. Fel d 1 is a major cat allergen and plays an important role in immunoglobulin E (IgE)-reaction diagnosis. However, the two separate chains of Fel d 1 exhibited lower IgE-reactivity than its complete molecule of an assembled form, which makes it difficult to efficiently prepare and limits the application of Fel d 1 in molecular diagnosis of cat allergy. METHODS: We first applied artificial intelligence (AI) based tool AlphaFold2 to build the 3-dimensional structures of Fel d 1 with different connection modes between two chains, which were evaluated by ERRAT program and were expressed in Escherichia coli. We then calculated the expression ratios of soluble form/inclusion bodies form of optimized Fel d 1. The Circular Dichroism (CD), High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Size Exclusion Chromatography (HPLC-SEC) and reducing/non-reducing SDS-PAGE were performed to characterize the folding status and dimerization of the optimized fusion Fel d 1. The improvement of specific-IgE reactivity to optimized fusion Fel d 1 was investigated by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). RESULTS: Among several linkers, 2 × GGGGS got the highest scores, with an overall quality factor of 100. The error value of the residues around the junction of 2 × GGGGS was lower than others. It exhibited highest proportion of soluble protein than other Fel d 1 constructs with ERRAT (GGGGS, KK as well as direct fusion Fel d 1). The results of CD and HPLC-SEC showed the consistent folding and dimerization of two fused subunits between the optimized fusion Fel d 1 and previously well-defined direct fusion Fel d 1. The overall IgE-binding absorbance of optimized fusion Fel d 1 tested by ELISA was improved compared with that of the direct fusion Fel d 1. CONCLUSION: We firstly provided an AI-design strategy to optimize the Fel d 1, which could spontaneously fold into its native-like structure without additional refolding process or eukaryotic folding factors. The improved IgE-binding activity and simplified preparation method could greatly facilitate it to be a robust allergen material for molecular diagnosis of cat allergy.

Shale Matrix Petrophysical Evolution due to Spontaneous Water Imbibition.

Shale matrix alteration resulting from fracturing water-rock interactions has become a major concern. It significantly affects economic production from shale gas formation. Previous studies mostly failed to investigate the thickness of the water intrusion zone and quantified its effects on shale geophysical alteration. As a result, we present a one-dimensional countercurrent water imbibition model in which capillary pressure and chemical osmosis stress are included. This model is used to predict water front movement with respect to soaking durations. Based on the simulation results and theory derivations, the matrix porosity-permeability and mechanical alteration models are set up to reveal shale geophysical variables change due to shale-water interactions. Our results show that during the water imbibition process, capillary pressure plays a more crucial role than osmosis pressure. Furthermore, both core-scaled porosity and permeability are negatively associated with water saturation, the extent of which depends on different driving forces and penetration depth. Finally, water soaking is quantitatively demonstrated to induce an increase in compressive strength and stress sensitivity but a reduction in the elastic modulus. These findings will provide efficient insights into driving mechanisms involved in the water-rock interactions. The study is useful to be incorporated into production models for predicting hydrocarbon production from shale reservoirs.

Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio and Early Tumor Shrinkage as Predictive Biomarkers in Unresectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients Treated With Lenvatinib, PD-1 Inhibitors, in Combination With TACE.

Purpose: The purpose of this prospective observational study was to investigate the relationship between pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and posttreatment early tumor shrinkage (ETS), and clinical outcomes in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (uHCC) who received lenvatinib, programmed death-1 inhibitors plus transcatheter arterial chemoembolization. Patients and Methods: A total of 63 uHCC patients were treated with this triple combination. Multivariate analyses to determine the independent factors associated with overall survival (OS) were employed. The link between NLR and clinical results was further analyzed. Furthermore, the predictive value of combining NLR with ETS should be investigated to stratify patients receiving treatment for survival benefits. Results: Progression-free survival and OS were 9.8 and 23.0 months, respectively, with a median follow-up of 20.8 months. On a multivariate analysis of OS, NLR was the only independent prognostic factor. Patients with NLR low (NLR < 3.2) had longer progression-free survival (19.3 vs 7.3 months, P < 0.001) and OS (28.9 vs 16.9 months, P < 0.001), higher objective response rate (86.7% vs 39.4%, P < 0.001), and a higher chance of achieving ETS ≥ 10% (ETS high) (73.3% vs 21.1%, P < 0.001) compared with patients with NLR high (NLR ≥ 3.2). The Spearman correlation analysis also showed the strong consistency between NLR and ETS (R2 = 0.6751). In the subgroup analysis, greater OS benefit was found in the NLR low/ETS high group than the NLR high/ETS low group (χ2 = 31.258, P < 0.001), while there was no survival difference for patients in the NLR low/ETS low group compared with in the NLR high/ETS high group (χ2 = 0.046, P = 0.830). Conclusion: NLR has the potential to identify which patients would benefit from this triple therapy, and when combined with ETS, it has the potential to provide greater predictive power in selecting the appropriate candidates for this combination treatment.

NIR diagnostic imaging of triple-negative breast cancer and its lymph node metastasis for high-efficiency hypoxia-activated multimodal therapy.

BACKGROUND: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) possesses special biological behavior and clinicopathological characteristics, which is highly invasive and propensity to metastasize to lymph nodes, leading to a worse prognosis than other types of breast cancer. Thus, the development of an effective therapeutic method is significant to improve the survival rate of TNBC patients. RESULTS: In this work, a liposome-based theranostic nanosystem (ILA@Lip) was successfully prepared by simultaneously encapsulating IR 780 as the photosensitizer and lenvatinib as an anti-angiogenic agent, together with banoxantrone (AQ4N) molecule as the hypoxia-activated prodrug. The ILA@Lip can be applied for the near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence diagnostic imaging of TNBC and its lymph node metastasis for multimodal therapy. Lenvatinib in ILA@Lip can inhibit angiogenesis by cutting oxygen supply, thereby leading to enhanced hypoxia levels. Meanwhile, large amounts of reactive oxygen species (ROS) were produced while IR 780 was irradiated by an 808 nm laser, which also rapidly exhausted oxygen in tumor cells to worsen tumor hypoxia. Through creating an extremely hypoxic in TNBC, the conversion of non-toxic AQ4N to toxic AQ4 was much more efficiency for hypoxia-activated chemotherapy. Cytotoxicity assay of ILA@Lip indicated excellent biocompatibility with normal cells and tissues, but showed high toxicity in hypoxic breast cancer cells. Also, the in vivo tumors treated by the ILA@Lip with laser irradiation were admirably suppressed in both subcutaneous tumor model and orthotopic tumor models. CONCLUSION: Utilizing ILA@Lip is a profound strategy to create an extremely hypoxic tumor microenvironment for higher therapeutic efficacy of hypoxia-activated chemotherapy, which realized collective suppression of tumor growth and has promising potential for clinical translation.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering of a gold core-silver shell-sponge substrate for detection of thiram and diquat.

Aiming at the difficulty of traditional pesticide sampling, a low-cost and convenient flexible surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) gold core-silver shell-sponge (Au-Ag-sponge) substrate was synthesized by chemical reduction. The SERS substrate consisted of Au-AgNPs and a melamine sponge. The sponge had a rich open pore structure, which could well "capture" Au-AgNPs, generating a large number of "hot spots". The SERS enhancement activity of the flexible substrate was characterized with rhodamine 6G (R6G) Raman probe molecules. The substrate showed good activity to 10-12 M rhodamine 6G with an enhancement factor (EF) of 7.72 × 106. Applying this substrate to the qualitative and quantitative detection of pesticide residues, the results showed that the Raman intensity was well related to the concentration of pesticide solution with the range of 0.1-10 mg L-1 of thiram and 1-10 mg L-1 of diquat. Furthermore, the substrate was analyzed by finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulation and the results were in good agreement with the experimental results. The reason for the difference in Raman signals of pesticide molecules on the same substrate was the different binding modes of Au-AgNPs on the sponge. Finally, we pointed out the advantages of flexible substrates in the field of pesticide residues, as well as future opportunities and challenges.

Research on a three-dimensional SERS substrate based on a CNTs/Ag@Au/SiO2 composite for detection of fipronil and imidacloprid pesticides.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has a unique fingerprint spectrum, which allows for rapid, highly sensitive, and non-destructive detection without the need for sample pretreatment. However, SERS substrates have disadvantages such as short storage time and poor reproducibility. In this study, carbon nanotubes, gold, and silver were combined to take advantage of their inherent structural and characteristic properties that enhance the Raman effect. A new type of SERS composite substrate, CNTs/Ag@Au/SiO2, was prepared using a hydrothermal method and seed growth method. The substrate was characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and the average distance between the core-shell nanoparticles was found to be 3.1 nm, which is more suitable than other gold-silver combined core-shell structures and significantly improves the SERS enhancement factor. The substrate demonstrated high sensitivity even at low concentrations of probe molecules and good uniformity at five randomly selected locations. After storage for 45 days, the substrate still exhibited good stability. In most gold-silver combined core-shell structures, the detection limit for Rhodamine 6G (R6G) is 10-9 mol L-1, while in this substrate, the detection limit for R6G is 10-11 mol L-1. Furthermore, the contribution of the substrate's enhancement was deeply investigated using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD), which revealed that the substrate's hotspots were present in two forms: the "hotspots generated between Ag@Au nanoparticles" and the "hotspots generated between Ag@Au nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes". These two forms of hotspots also demonstrated that the performance brought about by the preparation of the substrate structure was reliable. The simulation results were compared with the experimental results, and the analysis showed that the real environment would have an impact on the substrate's structure during the actual substrate preparation process. Finally, the substrate was used for detecting the pesticide fipronil, and the results showed clear peaks even at a concentration of 0.1 mg L-1. The results indicated that the Raman intensity was linearly exponential with the fipronil solution concentration, with a determination coefficient of R2 = 0.991. This study provides a new SERS substrate for pesticide residue detection and further explores the improvement of pesticide detection limits.

Experimental and numerical study on gas production decline trend under ultralong-production-cycle from shale gas wells.

It is of engineering interest to explore recovered shale gas composition and its effects on total gas production trend over a long-term extraction period. However, there are previous experimental studies mostly focused on short term development for small scaled cores, which is less convincing to mimic reservoir-scaled shale production process. In addition, the previous production models mostly failed to account for comprehensive gas nonlinear effects. As a result, in this paper, to illustrate the full-life-cycle production decline phenomenon for shale gas reservoir, dynamic physical simulation was performed for more than 3433 days to simulate shale gas transport out of the formations over a relatively long production period. Moreover, a five-region seepage mathematical model was then developed and was subsequently validated by the experimental results and shale well production data. Our findings show that for physical simulation, both the pressure and production declined steadily at an annual rate of less than 5%, and 67% of the total gas in the core was recovered. These test data supported earlier finding that shale gas is of low flow ability and slow pressure decline in the shale matrices. The production model indicated that free gas accounts for the majority of recovered shale gas at the initial stage. Based on a shale gas well example, free gas extraction makes up 90% of produced total gas. The adsorbed gas constitutes a primary gas source during the later stage. Adsorbed gas contributes more than 50% of the gas produced in the seventh year. The 20-year-cumulative adsorbed gas makes up 21% of the EUR for a single shale gas well. The results of this study can provide a reference for optimizing production systems and adjusting development techniques for shale gas wells throughout the combinations of mathematical modeling and experimental approaches.

Bioinspired helical-artificial fibrous muscle structured tubular soft actuators.

Biological tubular actuators show diverse deformations, which allow for sophisticated deformations with well-defined degrees of freedom (DOF). Nonetheless, synthetic active tubular soft actuators largely only exhibit few simple deformations with limited and undesignable DOF. Inspired by 3D fibrous architectures of tubular muscular hydrostats, we devised conceptually new helical-artificial fibrous muscle structured tubular soft actuators (HAFMS-TSAs) with locally tunable molecular orientations, materials, mechanics, and actuation via a modular fabrication platform using a programmable filament winding technique. Unprecedentedly, HAFMS-TSAs can be endowed with 11 different morphing modes through programmable regulation of their 3D helical fibrous architectures. We demonstrate a single "living" artificial plant rationally structured by HAFMS-TSAs exhibiting diverse photoresponsive behaviors that enable adaptive omnidirectional reorientation of its hierarchical 3D structures in the response to environmental irradiation, resembling morphing intelligence of living plants in reacting to changing environments. Our methodology would be significantly beneficial for developing sophisticated soft actuators with designable and tunable DOF.