In this paper, the bilayer polymer-dispersed liquid crystals possessing a PDLC-PVA-PDLC structure were prepared by integrating two monolayer PDLCs. The effect of the polymer mesh size on the ...electro-optical properties of a bilayer PDLC was investigated by comparing the micro-morphology and electro-optical curves under different polymerization conditions. In addition, the impact of doping MoO
nanoparticles with surface modification on the comprehensive performance of the bilayer PDLC was further researched. The contrast ratio of the bilayer PDLC prepared under the optimal conditions was improved by more than 90% and still maintained excellent progressive driving performance. Therefore, the development of a bilayer PDLC with optimal electro-optical properties will significantly enhance the technological prospects for the application of PDLC-based devices in smart windows, displays, and flexible devices.
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Spiking neural P systems (SN P systems for short) realize the high abstraction and simulation of the working mechanism of the human brain, and adopts spikes for information encoding and processing, ...which are regarded as one of the third-generation neural network models. In the nervous system, the conduction of excitation depends on the presence of membrane potential (also known as the transmembrane potential difference), and the conduction of excitation on neurons is the conduction of action potentials. On the basis of the SN P systems with polarizations, in which the neuron-associated polarization is the trigger condition of the rule, the concept of neuronal membrane potential is introduced into systems. The obtained variant of the SN P system features charge accumulation and computation within neurons in quantity, as well as transmission between neurons. In addition, there are inhibitory synapses between neurons that inhibit excitatory transmission, and as such, synapses cause postsynaptic neurons to generate inhibitory postsynaptic potentials. Therefore, to make the model better fit the biological facts, inhibitory rules and anti-spikes are also adopted to obtain the spiking neural P systems with membrane potentials, inhibitory rules, and anti-spikes (referred to as the MPAIRSN P systems). The Turing universality of the MPAIRSN P systems as number generating and accepting devices is demonstrated. On the basis of the above working mechanism of the system, a small universal MPAIRSN P system with 95 neurons for computing functions is designed. The comparisons with other SN P models conclude that fewer neurons are required by the MPAIRSN P systems to realize universality.
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Spiking neural P systems are a new candidate in spiking neural network models. By using neuron division and budding, such systems can generate/produce exponential working space in linear ...computational steps, thus provide a way to solve computational hard problems in feasible (linear or polynomial) time with a "time-space trade-off" strategy. In this work, a new mechanism called neuron dissolution is introduced, by which redundant neurons produced during the computation can be removed. As applications, uniform solutions to two NP-hard problems: SAT problem and Subset Sum problem are constructed in linear time, working in a deterministic way. The neuron dissolution strategy is used to eliminate invalid solutions, and all answers to these two problems are encoded as indices of output neurons. Our results improve the one obtained in Science China Information Sciences, 2011, 1596-1607 by Pan et al.
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Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common chronic liver disease in children and adolescents. The gut microbiota plays an important role in the pathophysiology of NAFLD through the ...gut-liver axis. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the genus and species of gut microbiota and their functions in children and adolescents with NAFLD. From May 2017 to July 2018, a total of 58 children and adolescents, including 27 abnormal weight (AW) (obese) NAFLD patients, 16 AW non-NAFLD children, and 15 healthy children, were enrolled in this study at Shenzhen Children's Hospital. All of them underwent magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to quantify the liver fat fraction. Stool samples were collected and analysed with metagenomics. According to body mass index (BMI) and MRS proton density fat fraction (MRS-PDFF), we divided the participants into BMI groups, including the AW group (n = 43) and the Lean group (n = 15); MRS groups, including the NAFLD group (n = 27) and the Control group (n = 31); and BMI-MRS 3 groups, including NAFLD_AW (AW children with NAFLD) (n = 27), Ctrl_AW (n = 16) (AW children without NAFLD) and Ctrl_Lean (n = 15). There was no difference in sex or age among those groups (p > 0.05). In the BMI groups, at the genus level, Dialister, Akkermansia, Odoribacter, and Alistipes exhibited a significant decrease in AW children compared with the Lean group. At the species level, Megamonas hypermegale was increased in the AW group, while Akkermansia muciniphila, Dialister invisus, Alistipes putredinis, Bacteroides massiliensis, Odoribacter splanchnicus, and Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron were decreased in AW children, compared to the Lean group. Compared with the Control group, the genus Megamonas, the species of Megamonas hypermegale and Megamonas rupellensis, increased in the NAFLD group. Furthermore, the genus Megamonas was enriched in the NAFLD_AW group, while Odoribacter, Alistipes, Dialister, and Akkermansia were depleted compared with the Ctrl_Lean or Ctrl_AW group at the genus level. Megamonas hypermegale and Megamonas rupellensis exhibited a significant increase in NAFLD_AW children compared with the Ctrl_Lean or Ctrl_AW group at the species level. Compared with healthy children, the pathways of P461-PWY contributed by the genus Megamonas were significantly increased in NAFLD_AW. We found that compared to healthy children, the genus Megamonas was enriched, while Megamonas hypermegale and Megamonas rupellensis were enriched at the species level in children and adolescents with NAFLD. This indicates that the NAFLD status and/or diet associated with NAFLD patients might lead to the enrichment of the genus Megamonas or Megamonas species.
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Spiking neural P systems (SNP systems), as computational models abstracted by the biological nervous system, have been a major research topic in biological computing. In conventional SNP systems, the ...rules in a neuron remain unchanged during the computation. In the biological nervous system, however, the biochemical reactions in a neuron are also influenced by factors such as the substances contained in it. Based on this motivation, this paper proposes SNP systems with rules dynamic generation and removal (RDGRSNP systems). In RDGRSNP systems, the application of rules leads to changes of the substances in neurons, which leads to changes of the rules in neurons. The Turing universality of RDGRSNP systems is demonstrated as a number-generating device and a number-accepting device, respectively. Finally, a small universal RDGRSNP system for function computation using 68 neurons is given. It is demonstrated that the variant we proposed requires fewer neurons by comparing it with five variants of SNP systems.
A DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid) algorithm is proposed to solve the job shop scheduling problem. An encoding scheme for the problem is developed and DNA computing operations are proposed for the ...algorithm. After an initial solution is constructed, all possible solutions are generated. DNA computing operations are then used to find an optimal schedule. The DNA algorithm is proved to have an O(n2) complexity and the length of the final strand of the optimal schedule is within appropriate range. Experiment with 58 benchmark instances show that the proposed DNA algorithm outperforms other comparative heuristics.
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Density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) algorithm can find clusters of arbitrary shape, while the noise points can be removed. Membrane computing is a novel research ...branch of bio-inspired computing, which seeks to discover new computational models/framework from biological cells. The obtained parallel and distributed computing models are usually called P systems. In this work, DBSCAN algorithm is improved by using parallel evolution mechanism and hierarchical membrane structure in cell-like P systems with promoters and inhibitors, where promoters and inhibitors are utilized to regulate parallelism of objects evolution. Experiment results show that the proposed algorithm performs well in big cluster analysis. The time complexity is improved to O(n), in comparison with conventional DBSCAN of O(n2). The results give some hints to improve conventional algorithms by using the hierarchical framework and parallel evolution mechanism in membrane computing models.
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•Ordered mesoporous M-TiPO materials are gotten from EISA method.•The P/Ti ratios in the materials can be accurately adjusted.•The Ti and P species are homogeneously dispersed in the ...skeleton of materials.•The introduced P species successfully improve the textural and acidic properties.•The M-TiPO exhibits excellent activity and reusability in acetalization of glycerol.
In the present work, a series of ordered mesoporous titanium phosphate (M-TiPO) materials with controllable composition are prepared by a simple one-pot method. The introduced Ti and P species are homogeneously dispersed in the skeleton of M-TiPO. Moreover, the influence of P content in mesoporous structure and existing states of Ti species is detailedly discussed. The result shows that the mesoporous structure is successfully improved by the introduction of P species. The M-TiPO-0.5 material (P/Ti = 0.5) exhibits outstanding textural properties (specific surface area (215 m2·g−1), pore size (6.6 nm) and volume (0.34 cm3·g−1)). Also, with the increasing of P species, the crystalline structure of mesoporous skeleton gradually changes from anatase TiO2 to amorphous phase, and the bonds in the materials transfer from Ti–O–Ti to Ti–O–P. The electron density of Ti decreases, and the acidic property is gradually enhanced. The gotten M-TiPO samples are utilized as catalyst for acetalization of glycerol with acetone. The M-TiPO-0.75 with excellent textural and acidic properties exhibits the best catalytic effect (the glycerol conversion is 91.3% and the acetal selectivity is 94.7%). More importantly, the M-TiPO-0.75 solid acid catalyst shows attractive reusability, and there is no decline in catalytic activity even after ten cycles. Consequently, M-TiPO material is a promising catalyst for the acetalization of glycerol.
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In this paper, inorganic oxide MgO nanoparticles-doped polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films were made from a mixture of the prepolymer, SLC1717 liquid crystal, and MgO nanoparticles by the ...polymerization induced phase separation (PIPS) process. To observe the effect of MgO concentration, PDLC was dispersed with 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, and 0.8 wt.% MgO. Electro-optical properties of the films have been investigated using LCD parameter meter and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) at room temperature. It is established that MgO nanoparticles affect the microstructure of PDLC films significantly because of the formed agglomerates of MgO nanoparticles. Results show an improvement in the electro-optical properties and a decrease in the driving voltage for doped systems with MgO nanoparticles. When the doping amount of MgO is 0.8 wt.%, the threshold voltage (Vth) is reduced to about 7.5 V. Therefore, MgO-doped PDLC is expected to become an excellent choice in the field of energy-saving.
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Electromagnetic shielding materials are special materials that can effectively absorb and shield electromagnetic waves and protect electronic devices and electronic circuits from interference and ...damage by electromagnetic radiation. This paper presents the research progress of intrinsically conductive polymer materials and conductive polymer-based composites for electromagnetic shielding as well as an introduction to lightweight polymer composites with multicomponent systems. These materials have excellent electromagnetic interference shielding properties and have the advantages of electromagnetic wave absorption and higher electromagnetic shielding effectiveness compared with conventional electromagnetic shielding materials, but these materials still have their own shortcomings. Finally, the paper also discusses the future opportunities and challenges of intrinsically conductive polymers and composites containing a conductive polymer matrix for electromagnetic shielding applications.
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