For the Visual Internet of Things (VIoT), terminal devices need to preliminarily screen and tag data for enabling efficient indexing and allocation of sensing data to dedicated edge nodes or cloud data centers for further processing. VIoT terminal devices often face a challenge, where collected data are contaminated by noise or contain partial observed information, which can adversely affect the accuracy and reliability of tagged results. In view of such, this study proposes resilient and perceptual data signature generation for robustly tagging captured data based on low-rank semidefinite relaxation. Such signatures can represent data in a compact way while embedding label information inside at the same time. To increase the robustness and effectiveness of data tagging in the proposed method, nonconvex loss called leaky-minimax concave penalty function is studied. This loss function effectively tackles the challenges posed by partially observed data and instance-pairwise label-space mapping, subsequently improving the reliability and accuracy of the tagging process in the terminal devices. To solve the challenges associated with nonconvex loss functions, this study employs the majorization-minimization technique, which helps conquer the nonconvex optimization problem efficiently. Additionally, low-rank semidefinite relaxation is applied to the formation of data signatures to avoid discrete variable optimization problems caused by Laplacian graph embedding, where data locality learning is performed. The relaxation helps simplify the optimization process and improve the applicability of the method. Experimental evaluations conducted on open datasets have demonstrated the superior performance of the proposed method compared with the baselines, particularly under different data corruption conditions. The results showed an improvement of 19.45%, 8.97%, and 5.45% in F1 scores, with respect to impulse noise, continuous occlusion, and missing values. This validated the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed model in handling VIoT data challenges

Herein, we described the rational drug design and synthesis of a series of 5-amino-4-fluoro-1H-benzo[d]imidazole-6-carboxamide derivatives that inhibit MEK and RAF kinases. The detailed screening cascades revealed that 16b was a preferred compound, which might act like a “clamp” to stabilize the MEK/RAF complex, thereby effectively inhibiting MEK1, BRAF, and BRAFV600E with IC50 values of 28, 3, and 3 nM, respectively. 16b possessed an excellent selectivity over other 312 human-related kinases at 1 μM. In vitro, 16b showed potent antiproliferative activities against MIA PaCa-2 (G12C KRAS), HCT116 (G13D KRAS), and C26 (G12D KRAS) cells with IC50 values of 0.011, 0.079, and 0.096 μM, respectively. CoIP experiments demonstrated that 16b could induce MEK/RAF complex formation. Most importantly, in the C26 syngeneic colorectal and HCT116 mice xenograft tumor models, 16b demonstrated tumor growth inhibition of 70 and 93%, respectively, suggesting that 16b may be a promising MEK/RAF complex inhibitor and worthy of further development.

In this work, a novel g-C3N4 filled, phosphoric-crosslinked chitosan gel bead (P-CS@CN) was successfully pre-pared to adsorb U(VI) from water. The separation performance of chitosan was improved by introducing more functional groups. At pH 5 and 298 K, the adsorption efficiency and adsorption capacity could reach 98.0 % and 416.7 mg g  1, respectively. After adsorption, the morphological structure of P-CS@CN did not change and adsorption efficiency remained above 90 % after 5 cycles. P-CS@CN exhibited an excellent applicability in water environment based on dynamic adsorption experiments. Thermodynamic analyses demonstrated the value of & UDelta;G, manifesting the spontaneity of U(VI) adsorption process on P-CS@CN. The positive values of & UDelta;H and & UDelta;S showed that the U(VI) removal behavior of P-CS@CN was an endothermic reaction, indicating that the increase of temperature was great benefit to the removal. The adsorption mechanism of P-CS@CN gel bead could be summarized as the complexation reaction with the surface functional groups. This study not only developed an efficient adsorbent for the treatment of radioactive pollutants, but also provided a simple and feasible strategy for the modification of chitosan-based adsorption materials.

A hybrid hierarchically porous indole-based aerogel (HINFA) was successfully fabricated and modified with hydroxyl groups. The HINFA with hierarchically porous exhibited satisfactorily adsorptive properties to 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) in water in light of synergistic effect of hydrogen bonding and dipole-pi interaction. Several factors such as pH, adsorbent dosage, contact time, initial TNT concentration and temperature were systematically discussed. Adsorption kinetics, isotherms and thermodynamic parameters had been calculated from experimental results. The HINFA demonstrated significantly fast equilibrium time (1.5 h) to TNT in particular. The maximum adsorption capacity was 117.5 mg g(-1) calculated by Langmuir model at 293 K. The adsorption-desorption cyclic results revealed that HINFA could be effectively regenerated by acetone, and the regenerated HINFA could be employed for repeated use without significant deterioration after 7 cycles. The excellent adsorption performance of HINFA may be in virtue of the interweave meso- and macroporous structures which can enhance mass transport and easier accessibility for TNT to the adsorption sites. Therefore, the HINFA can be used potentially to remove TNT from water samples in practical applications for environmental remediation. Furthermore, the proposed synergy is expected to be a new rationale for design of TNT adsorbent materials.

This paper presents an 8-bit 1.25GS/s folding-subrange ADC, implemented in 65nm CMOS technology. We design a coarse comparator to relieve critical metastability issue. A latch sharing technique in fine comparator can further reduce area overhead. Operating at 1.25GHz sampling rate with low input frequency, the measured SFDR and SNDR are 56.5dB and 43.4dB, respectively. When split-then-share buffer turns on, ERBW achieves up to 2.5GHz within +/- 1dB bandwidth flatness. Peak DNL and INL are 0.71LSB and 0.72LSB, respectively. Setting at error magnitude of 4LSB and 32LSB, the bit error rate (BER) can achieve 5.4x10(-6) and 5x10(-10) errors/conversion, respectively. The ADC core consumes 20mW at 1.2V supply and occupies an active area of 0.14mm(2).

We propose a new approach to train a variational information bottleneck (VIB) that improves its robustness to adversarial perturbations. Unlike the traditional methods where the hard labels are usually used for the classification task, we refine the categorical class information in the training phase with soft labels which are obtained from a pre-trained reference neural network and can reflect the likelihood of the original class labels. We also relax the Gaussian posterior assumption in the VIB implementation by using the mutual information neural estimation. Extensive experiments have been performed with the MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets, and the results show that our proposed approach significantly outperforms the benchmarked models.

This work investigated the effects of Fe3+, H+ and adsorbed leaching bacteria on the bioleaching of pentlandite. Collectively, an integrated model for the oxidation and decomposition of pentlandite was built to describe the behaviors of different components in a bioleaching system. Proton ions and ferric ions could promote the break and oxidation of Ni-S and Fe-S bonds. The iron-oxidizing microorganisms could regenerate ferric ions and maintain a high Eh value. The sulfur-oxidizing microorganisms showed significant importance in the oxidation of polysulfide and elemental sulfur. The atoms in pentlandite show different modification pathways during the bioleaching process: iron transformed through a (Ni,Fe)9S8 → Fe2+ → Fe3+ → KFe3(SO4)2(OH)6 pathway; nickel experienced a transformation of (Ni,Fe)9S8 → NiS → Ni2+; sulfur modified through the pathway of S2−/S22− → Sn2− → S0 → SO32− → SO42−. During bioleaching, a sulfur-rich layer and jarosite layer formed on the mineral surface, and the rise of pH value accelerated the process. However, no evidence for the inhibition of the layers was shown in the bioleaching of pentlandite at pH 3.00. This study provides a novel method for the extraction of nickel from pentlandite by bioleaching at elevated pH values.

This article describes how swarm intelligence can be applied to an array of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for strategic deployment. In emergency or disaster-stricken areas, telecommunications and geospatial surveillance are strictly critical for situational control. Base stations may fail to work due to natural disasters. To be rapidly deployed, lightweight drones with multirotors that provide stability are used as mobile stations. An autonomous learning approach, "self-organizing maps (SOMs)," which can automatically and adaptively coordinate a large array of autonomous drones-self-organizing UAV array-based on requests from end users (EUs) is embedded inside the array. The size and the topology of a UAV array can be dynamically changed in response to various terrains and relocation of EUs. Moreover, with swarm intelligence, the UAV array is capable of reconfiguring its planar topology into a hierarchical one. Such a hierarchical topology divides the entire UAV array into subarrays and creates isolated heterogeneous networks. Thus, the UAV array can cope with diverse situations across geographical barriers by forming a flying ad hoc network.

The crystal field energy levels of Cr3+-doped Gd3Sc2Ga3O12 (GSGG) garnet crystals are calculated from the complete diagonalization (of energy matrix) method based on the two-spin-orbit-parameter model, where the contributions due to both the spin-orbit parameter of central dn ion and that of ligand ions are contained. The calculated results indicate that the seven crystal field energy levels available in experiments are rationally explained by this method with only three adjustable parameters. On account of the calculations, the defect structure (specifically, the angular distortion) of the trigonal Cr3+ impurity center in GSGG crystals is also evaluated. The results are discussed.

The effects of mechanical tensile and compressive stress on dual‐gate amorphous InGaZnO thin‐film transistors (a‐IGZO TFTs) on a flexible substrate were investigated. Both the tensile and compressive stresses led to increases in free electrons and deep states in a‐IGZO. Strong tensile stress tends to form more deep defects than compressive stress, resulting in severe deterioration in performance. Small compressive stress seems to repair defects in the relatively poor quality etch‐stop layer (ESL), resulting in increased mobility in the top‐gate‐controlled performance.

环流、直流电流波动和直流侧故障电流抑制问题是模块化多电平换流器(MMC)发展过程中面临的重要难点,为增强系统对三者的抑制效果,提出一种基于桥臂耦合电感的自然限流型多电平换流器(ACINCL-MMC).首先分析ACINCL-MMC的工作原理,在建立其交直流侧数学模型的基础上,研究桥臂电感耦合程度与环流、直流电流波动和直流侧故障电流的关系,详细地剖析桥臂耦合电感的自然限流作用,并进一步探讨桥臂耦合电感取代直流平波电抗的可行性.最后,仿真和实验结果验证了所提理论的有效性.

This investigation considers a method to ameliorate drain induced barrier lowing behavior in amorphous-indium-gallium-zinc-oxide thin-film transistors. The Vth is found to shift negatively when increasing the ID-VG measurement condition VD from 0.1 to 15 V. The current-voltage curves show that this degradation is caused by the effective channel length (Leff) being shorter than the mask channel length (L). Using the transmission line method to extract Leff, we discover that the degradation will be completely suppressed by an annealing treatment. As a result, the degradation mechanism of shorter channel length a-IGZO thin film transistors is due to oxygen-vacancies which are located between the channel and the source/drain junction.

This paper utilizes electrical analyses and a study of physical mechanisms to investigate metal gate structure-dependent performance in amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors. The effects of different shielding areas between the IGZO layer and metal gate are investigated. In devices with shorter metal gate lengths, an abnormal rise in capacitance at the off-state in capacitance- voltage (C-V) characteristic curves can be observed. This can be attributed to the stronger electric field induced by the edge of the metal gate under bias sweep when the metal gate length is shorter than the IGZO layer length. Light illumination measurements indicate a negative shift in threshold voltage and an increase in subthreshold-leakage current regardless of relative metal gate length. Moreover, negative threshold voltage shift becomes more severe with a more obvious hump in C-V characteristic curves under backlight illumination of a shorter width device, a phenomenon which has been verified by simulation.

The complete diagonalization (of the energy matrix) method is applied in this paper for the unified calculation of optical and EPR spectral data of the trigonal (CrO6)9− octahedral clusters in Y3Al5O12 (YAG) crystal. The method is based on the two-spin–orbit-parameter model where, besides the contributions from the spin–orbit parameter of central dn ion in the traditional crystal-field theory, those from the spin–orbit parameter of ligand ions via the covalence effect are considered. The computed 32 spectroscopic data values (29 crystal field energy levels and three spin-Hamiltonian parameters, namely the g factors g// and g⊥, and the zero-field splitting D) are in reasonable agreement with the experimental values, despite using only four adjustable parameters. This suggests that the method is valid in the uniform calculation of optical and EPR spectral data for d3 ions in crystals. The impurity-induced angular distortion of the (CrO6)9− clusters in YAG crystal was also evaluated.

This letter investigates repeated uniaxial mechanical stress-induced degradation behavior in flexible amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O thin-film transistors (TFTs) of different geometric structures. Two types of via-contact structure TFTs are investigated: symmetrical and UI structure (TFTs with I- and U-shaped asymmetric electrodes). After repeated mechanical stress, I-V curves for the symmetrical structure show a significant negative threshold voltage (VT) shift, due to mechanical stress-induced oxygen vacancy generation. However, degradation in the UI structure TFTs after stress is a negative VT shift along with the parasitic transistor characteristic in the forward-operation mode, with this hump not evident in the reverse-operation mode. This asymmetrical degradation is clarified by the mechanical strain simulation of the UI TFTs.

Amorphous InGaZnO thin film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs) with an etching-stop layer (ESL) exhibit an anomalous negative shift of threshold voltage (Vth) under positive bias temperature stress. TFTs with wider and shorter channels show a clear hump phenomenon, resulting from the existence of both main channels and parasitic channels. The electrons trapped in the gate insulator are responsible for the positive shift in the main channel characteristics. The electrons trapped near the IGZO edges and the holes injected into the ESL layer above InGaZnO (IGZO) jointly determine the shift of the parasitic TFT performance.

The hump phenomenon along with a negative shift of threshold voltage emerging in the transfer characteristics of amorphous InGaZnO thin-film transistors under negative bias stress was investigated. Higher measurement temperature and larger bias voltage can induce more and faster hole injection, thus leading to the increased parasitic ON-state current and more negative shift of the threshold voltage. Nevertheless, the parasitic current is independent of the channel width, illustrating that the parasitic channel originates from the hole trapping near the IGZO edges along the channel length. Integrated Systems Engineering Technology Computer-aided Design simulation confirms that the electric field near the IGZO edge is relatively dense, and the direction is more conducive for the holes in IGZO to inject into passivation (PV), to gate insulator (GI), or at PV/GI interface.