Effect of deformation of a flat plate specimen under in-plane blasting loading on 2D and 3D digital image correlation measurement.

In combination with high-speed photography, a 3D digital image correlation (DIC) experimental system suitable for an in-plane blasting experiment is established to effectively explore the mechanism of blasting. The dynamic response of the specimen under in-plane blasting loading is analyzed on the basis of the model experiment, and the effect of out-of-plane deformation on the 2D-DIC measurement under a blasting stress wave is studied. First, the out-of-plane displacement and strain evolution law of the specimen under blasting load are studied by using a 3D-DIC system. Second, an analytical model of the effect of out-of-plane curved displacement on 2D-DIC measurement under the blasting load is proposed on the basis of pinhole imaging theory. Finally, the specific error value and error percentage of out-of-plane displacement to the 2D-DIC measurement results are quantitatively analyzed on the basis of the established theoretical method. Results show that the theoretical error of out-of-plane curved displacement to 2D-DIC accounts for 10.8% of the measured vertical strain. In the polycarbonate plate specimen, the effect of out-of-plane displacement caused by the blasting experiment on 2D-DIC measurements cannot be ignored. This novel, to the best of our knowledge, experimental system provides a wealth of experimental data, including in-plane full-field strain evolution and out-of-plane displacement changes.

FPGA-based LDPC-coded APSK for optical communication systems.

In this paper, with the aid of mutual information and generalized mutual information (GMI) capacity analyses, it is shown that the geometrically shaped APSK that mimics an optimal Gaussian distribution with equiprobable signaling together with the corresponding gray-mapping rules can approach the Shannon limit closer than conventional quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) at certain range of FEC overhead for both 16-APSK and 64-APSK. The field programmable gate array (FPGA) based LDPC-coded APSK emulation is conducted on block interleaver-based and bit interleaver-based systems; the results verify a significant improvement in hardware efficient bit interleaver-based systems. In bit interleaver-based emulation, the LDPC-coded 64-APSK outperforms 64-QAM, in terms of symbol signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), by 0.1 dB, 0.2 dB, and 0.3 dB at spectral efficiencies of 4.8, 4.5, and 4.2 b/s/Hz, respectively. It is found by emulation that LDPC-coded 64-APSK for spectral efficiencies of 4.8, 4.5, and 4.2 b/s/Hz is 1.6 dB, 1.7 dB, and 2.2 dB away from the GMI capacity.

Advanced GF(32) nonbinary LDPC coded modulation with non-uniform 9-QAM outperforming star 8-QAM.

In this paper, we first describe a 9-symbol non-uniform signaling scheme based on Huffman code, in which different symbols are transmitted with different probabilities. By using the Huffman procedure, prefix code is designed to approach the optimal performance. Then, we introduce an algorithm to determine the optimal signal constellation sets for our proposed non-uniform scheme with the criterion of maximizing constellation figure of merit (CFM). The proposed nonuniform polarization multiplexed signaling 9-QAM scheme has the same spectral efficiency as the conventional 8-QAM. Additionally, we propose a specially designed GF(32) nonbinary quasi-cyclic LDPC code for the coded modulation system based on the 9-QAM non-uniform scheme. Further, we study the efficiency of our proposed non-uniform 9-QAM, combined with nonbinary LDPC coding, and demonstrate by Monte Carlo simulation that the proposed GF(23) nonbinary LDPC coded 9-QAM scheme outperforms nonbinary LDPC coded uniform 8-QAM by at least 0.8dB.

Capacity achieving nonbinary LDPC coded non-uniform shaping modulation for adaptive optical communications.

A mutual information inspired nonbinary coded modulation design with non-uniform shaping is proposed. Instead of traditional power of two signal constellation sizes, we design 5-QAM, 7-QAM and 9-QAM constellations, which can be used in adaptive optical networks. The non-uniform shaping and LDPC code rate are jointly considered in the design, which results in a better performance scheme for the same SNR values. The matched nonbinary (NB) LDPC code is used for this scheme, which further improves the coding gain and the overall performance. We analyze both coding performance and system SNR performance. We show that the proposed NB LDPC-coded 9-QAM has more than 2dB gain in symbol SNR compared to traditional LDPC-coded star-8-QAM. On the other hand, the proposed NB LDPC-coded 5-QAM and 7-QAM have even better performance than LDPC-coded QPSK.

Development of an FPW Biosensor with Low Insertion Loss and High Fabrication Yield for Detection of Carcinoembryonic Antigen.

In the last two decades, various flexural plate-wave (FPW)-based biosensors with low phase velocity, low operation frequency, high sensitivity, and short response time, have been developed. However, conventional FPW transducers have low fabrication yield because controlling the thickness of silicon/isolation/metal/piezoelectric multilayer floating thin-plate is difficult. Additionally, conventional FPW devices usually have high insertion loss because of wave energy dissipation to the silicon substrate or outside area of the output interdigital transducers (IDTs). These two disadvantages hinder the application of FPW devices. To reduce the high insertion loss of FPW devices, we designed two focus-type IDTs (fan-shaped and circular, respectively) that can effectively confine the launched wave energy, and adopted a focus-type silicon-grooved reflective grating structure (RGS) that can reduce the wave propagation loss. To accurately control the thickness of the silicon thin-plate and substantially improve the fabrication yield of FPW transducers, a 60 °C/27 °C two-step anisotropic wet etching process was developed. Compared with conventional FPW devices (with parallel-type IDTs and without RGS), the proposed FPW devices have lower insertion loss (36.04 dB) and higher fabrication yield (63.88%). Furthermore, by using cystamine-based self-assembled monolayer (SAM) nanotechnology, we used the improved FPW device to develop a novel FPW-based carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) biosensor for detection of colorectal cancer, and this FPW-CEA biosensor has a low detection limit (5 ng/mL), short response time (<10 min), high sensitivity (60.16-70.06 cm²/g), and high sensing linearity (R-square = 0.859-0.980).

Achievable information rates calculation for optical OFDM few-mode fiber long-haul transmission systems.

We propose a method to estimate the lower bound of achievable information rates (AIRs) of high speed orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) in spatial division multiplexing (SDM) optical long-haul transmission systems. The estimation of AIR is based on the forward recursion of multidimensional super-symbol efficient sliding-window Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (BCJR) algorithm. We consider most of the degradations of fiber links including nonlinear effects in few-mode fiber (FMF). This method does not consider the SDM as a simple multiplexer of independent data streams, but provides a super-symbol version for AIR calculation over spatial channels. This super-symbol version of AIR calculation algorithm, in principle, can be used for arbitrary multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO)-SDM system with channel memory consideration. We illustrate this method by performing Monte Carlo simulations in a complete FMF model. Both channel model and algorithm for calculation of the AIRs are described in details. We also compare the AIRs results for QPSK/16QAM in both single mode fiber (SMF)- and FMF-based optical OFDM transmission.

Temperature-adaptive radiative coating for all-season household thermal regulation.

The sky is a natural heat sink that has been extensively used for passive radiative cooling of households. A lot of focus has been on maximizing the radiative cooling power of roof coating in the hot daytime using static, cooling-optimized material properties. However, the resultant overcooling in cold night or winter times exacerbates the heating cost, especially in climates where heating dominates energy consumption. We approached thermal regulation from an all-season perspective by developing a mechanically flexible coating that adapts its thermal emittance to different ambient temperatures. The fabricated temperature-adaptive radiative coating (TARC) optimally absorbs the solar energy and automatically switches thermal emittance from 0.20 for ambient temperatures lower than 15°C to 0.90 for temperatures above 30°C, driven by a photonically amplified metal-insulator transition. Simulations show that this system outperforms existing roof coatings for energy saving in most climates, especially those with substantial seasonal variations.

Ginsenoside Rg1 supplementation clears senescence-associated ß-galactosidase in exercising human skeletal muscle.

BACKGROUND: Ginsenoside Rg1 has been shown to clear senescence-associated beta-galactosidase (SA-ß-gal) in cultured cells. It remains unknown whether Rg1 can influence SA-ß-gal in exercising human skeletal muscle. METHODS: To examine SA-ß-gal change, 12 young men (age 21 ± 0.2 years) were enrolled in a randomized double-blind placebo controlled crossover study, under two occasions: placebo (PLA) and Rg1 (5 mg) supplementations 1 h prior to a high-intensity cycling (70% VO2max). Muscle samples were collected by multiple biopsies before and after cycling exercise (0 h and 3 h). To avoid potential effect of muscle biopsy on performance assessment, cycling time to exhaustion test (80% VO2max) was conducted on another 12 participants (age 23 ± 0.5 years) with the same experimental design. RESULTS: No changes of SA-ß-gal were observed after cycling in the PLA trial. On the contrary, nine of the 12 participants showed complete elimination of SA-ß-gal in exercised muscle after cycling in the Rg1 trial (p < 0.05). Increases in apoptotic DNA fragmentation (PLA: +87% vs. Rg1: +133%, p < 0.05) and CD68+ (PLA: +78% vs. Rg1: +121%, p = 0.17) occurred immediately after cycling in both trials. During the 3-h recovery, reverses in apoptotic nuclei content (PLA: +5% vs. Rg1: -32%, p < 0.01) and increases in inducible nitrate oxide synthase and interleukin 6 mRNA levels of exercised muscle were observed only in the Rg1 trial (p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Rg1 supplementation effectively eliminates senescent cells in exercising human skeletal muscle and improves high-intensity endurance performance.

Effect of amino-modified silica nanoparticles on the corrosion protection properties of epoxy resin-silica hybrid materials.

In this paper, a series of organic-inorganic hybrid materials consisting of epoxy resin frameworks and dispersed nanoparticles of amino-modified silica (AMS) were successfully prepared. First of all, the AMS nanoparticles were synthesized by carrying out the conventional acid-catalyzed sol-gel reactions of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) in the presence of (3-aminopropyl)-trimethoxysilane (APTES) molecules. The as-prepared AMS nanoparticles were then characterized by FTIR, 13C-NMR and 29Si-NMR spectroscopy. Subsequently, a series of hybrid materials were prepared by performing in-situ thermal ring-opening polymerization reactions of epoxy resin in the presence of as-prepared AMS nanoparticles and raw silica (RS) particles. The as-prepared epoxy-silica hybrid materials with AMS nanoparticles were found to show better dispersion capability than that of RS particles existed in hybrid materials based on the morphological observation of transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The hybrid materials containing AMS nanoparticles in the form of coating on cold-rolled steel (CRS) were found to be much superior in corrosion protection over those of hybrid materials with RS particles when tested by a series of electrochemical measurements of potentiodynamic and impedance spectroscopy in 5 wt% aqueous NaCI electrolyte. The increase of corrosion protection effect of hybrid coatings may have probably resulted from the enhancement of the adhesion strength of the hybrid coatings on CRS coupons, which may be attributed to the formation of Fe-O-Si covalent bond at the interface of coating/CRS system based on the FTIR-RAS (reflection absorption spectroscopy) studies. The better dispersion capability of AMS nanoparticles in hybrid materials were found to lead more effectively enhanced molecular barrier property, mechanical strength, surface hydrophobicity and optical clarity as compared to that of RS particles, in the form of coating and membrane, based on the measurements of molecular permeability analysis, dynamic mechanical analysis, contact angle measurements and ultraviolet-visible transmission spectra, respectively.