A closed‐loop “smart” insulin delivery system with the capability to mimic pancreatic cells will be highly desirable for diabetes treatment. This study reports a multiple stimuli‐responsive insulin ...delivery platform based on an explicit supramolecular strategy. Self‐assembled from a well‐designed amphiphilic host–guest complex formed by pillar5arene and a diphenylboronic acid derivative and loaded with insulin and glucose oxidase, the obtained insulin‐GOx‐loaded supramolecular vesicles can selectively recognize glucose, accompanied by the structure disruption and efficient release of the entrapped insulin triggered by the high glucose concentration as well as the in situ generated H2O2 and acid microenvironment during the GOx‐promoted specific oxidation of glucose into gluconic acid. Moreover, such a “smart” supramolecular theranostic nanoplatform is able to function as both a glucose sensor and a controlled insulin delivery actuator. In vivo experiments further demonstrate that this smart supramolecular nanocarrier shows fast response to hyperglycemic circumstances and can effectively regulate the glucose levels in a mouse model of type I diabetes.
A closed‐loop insulin delivery platform is developed based on a supramolecular strategy. This multiple stimuli‐responsive system can respond to glucose, as well as the in situ generated H2O2 and acidic microenvironment. Moreover, such a “smart” theranostic nanoplatform can simultaneously realize blood glucose monitoring and controlled insulin delivery.
We propose a novel random triggering-based modulated wideband compressive sampling (RT-MWCS) method to facilitate efficient realization of sub-Nyquist rate compressive sampling systems for sparse ...wideband signals. Under the assumption that the signal is repetitively (not necessarily periodically) triggered, RT-MWCS uses random modulation to obtain measurements of the signal at randomly chosen positions. It uses multiple measurement vector method to estimate the nonzero supports of the signal in the frequency domain. Then, the signal spectrum is solved using least square estimation. The distinct ability of estimating sparse multiband signal is facilitated with the use of level triggering and time-to-digital converter devices previously used in random equivalent sampling scheme. Compared to the existing compressive sampling (CS) techniques, such as modulated wideband converter (MWC), RT-MWCS is with simple system architecture and can be implemented with one channel at the cost of more sampling time. Experimental results indicate that, for sparse multiband signal with unknown spectral support, RT-MWCS requires a sampling rate much lower than Nyquist rate, while giving great quality of signal reconstruction.
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia. However, the development of preventative therapies for AF has been disappointing. The infiltration of immune cells and proteins that ...mediate the inflammatory response in cardiac tissue and circulatory processes is associated with AF. Furthermore, the presence of inflammation in the heart or systemic circulation can predict the onset of AF and recurrence in the general population, as well as in patients after cardiac surgery, cardioversion, and catheter ablation. Mediators of the inflammatory response can alter atrial electrophysiology and structural substrates, thereby leading to increased vulnerability to AF. Inflammation also modulates calcium homeostasis and connexins, which are associated with triggers of AF and heterogeneous atrial conduction. Myolysis, cardiomyocyte apoptosis, and the activation of fibrotic pathways via fibroblasts, transforming growth factor-β and matrix metalloproteases are also mediated by inflammatory pathways, which can all contribute to structural remodelling of the atria. The development of thromboembolism, a detrimental complication of AF, is also associated with inflammatory activity. Understanding the complex pathophysiological processes and dynamic changes of AF-associated inflammation might help to identify specific anti-inflammatory strategies for the prevention of AF.
We unveil an unexpected non-Hermitian phenomenon, dubbed edge burst, in non-Hermitian quantum dynamics. Specifically, in a class of non-Hermitian quantum walk in periodic lattices with open boundary ...condition, an exceptionally large portion of loss occurs at the system boundary. The physical origin of this edge burst is found to be an interplay between two unique non-Hermitian phenomena: non-Hermitian skin effect and imaginary gap closing. Furthermore, we establish a universal bulk-edge scaling relation underlying the non-Hermitian edge burst. Our predictions are experimentally accessible in various non-Hermitian systems including quantum-optical and cold-atom platforms.
The multibillion-dollar online advertising industry continues to debate whether to use the cost per click (CPC) or cost per action (CPA) pricing model as an industry standard. This paper applies the ...economic framework of incentive contracts to study how these pricing models can lead to risk sharing between the publisher and the advertiser and incentivize them to make efforts that improve the performance of online ads. We find that, compared with the CPC model, the CPA model can better incentivize the publisher to make efforts that can improve the purchase rate. However, the CPA model can cause an adverse selection problem: the winning advertiser tends to have a lower profit margin under the CPA model than under the CPC model. We identify the conditions under which the CPA model leads to higher publisher (or advertiser) payoffs than the CPC model. Whether publishers (or advertisers) prefer the CPA model over the CPC model depends on the advertisers’ risk aversion, uncertainty in the product market, and the presence of advertisers with low immediate sales ratios. Our findings indicate a conflict of interest between publishers and advertisers in their preferences for these two pricing models. We further consider which pricing model offers greater social welfare.
This paper was accepted by J. Miguel Villas-Boas, marketing
.
With the emergence of social media and Web 2.0, broadcasting in the online environment has evolved into a new form of marketing due to the much broader reach enabled by information technology. This ...paper quantifies the effect of artists’ broadcasting activities on a well-known social media site for music, MySpace, on music sales. We employ a panel vector autoregression model to investigate the interrelationship between broadcasting promotions in social media and music sales, while controlling for influential factors such as advertising in traditional media channels, album prices, new music releases, user-generated content, and artist popularity. We characterize two types of broadcast messages in the MySpace context,
personal
and
automated
. We find that broadcasting in social media has a significant effect on sales even after controlling for the aforementioned factors, and more important, the effect mainly comes from personal messages rather than automated messages. We also show that the timing and content of personal messages play a role in affecting sales. Our findings point to the importance of conducting captivating conversations with customers in social media marketing.
Gesture recognition in non-intrusive muscle-computer interfaces is usually based on windowed descriptive and discriminatory surface electromyography (sEMG) features because the recorded amplitude of ...a myoelectric signal may rapidly fluctuate between voltages above and below zero. Here, we present that the patterns inside the instantaneous values of high-density sEMG enables gesture recognition to be performed merely with sEMG signals at a specific instant. We introduce the concept of an sEMG image spatially composed from high-density sEMG and verify our findings from a computational perspective with experiments on gesture recognition based on sEMG images with a classification scheme of a deep convolutional network. Without any windowed features, the resultant recognition accuracy of an 8-gesture within-subject test reached 89.3% on a single frame of sEMG image and reached 99.0% using simple majority voting over 40 frames with a 1,000 Hz sampling rate. Experiments on the recognition of 52 gestures of NinaPro database and 27 gestures of CSL-HDEMG database also validated that our approach outperforms state-of-the-arts methods. Our findings are a starting point for the development of more fluid and natural muscle-computer interfaces with very little observational latency. For example, active prostheses and exoskeletons based on high-density electrodes could be controlled with instantaneous responses.
A maximum likelihood (ML) acoustic source location estimation method is presented for the application in a wireless ad hoc sensor network. This method uses acoustic signal energy measurements taken ...at individual sensors of an ad hoc wireless sensor network to estimate the locations of multiple acoustic sources. Compared to the existing acoustic energy based source localization methods, this proposed ML method delivers more accurate results and offers the enhanced capability of multiple source localization. A multiresolution search algorithm and an expectation-maximization (EM) like iterative algorithm are proposed to expedite the computation of source locations. The Crame/spl acute/r-Rao Bound (CRB) of the ML source location estimate has been derived. The CRB is used to analyze the impacts of sensor placement to the accuracy of location estimates for single target scenario. Extensive simulations have been conducted. It is observed that the proposed ML method consistently outperforms existing acoustic energy based source localization methods. An example applying this method to track military vehicles using real world experiment data also demonstrates the performance advantage of this proposed method over a previously proposed acoustic energy source localization method.
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•The methane yield at TS 10% and 15% could reach 83% and 75% of TS 5% methane.•Hydrolysis rate of poorly biodegradable organics was poor.•The acetate utilizing pathway was decreased ...with increasing solid content.•H2 and methanol utilizing pathways increased in high solid anaerobic digestion.
High solid anaerobic digestion has become the mainstream technology for sustainable on-farm treatment of solid wastes but has not been optimized with respect to increasing solid content in cow manure (CM). In the present study, CM was batch digested at total solid (TS) of 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% and microbial communities were investigated. The process remained stable up to 15% TS. The biomethane production rate at TS of 10% and 15% was reported to be 352.2 mL g−1 VS and 318.6 mL g−1 VS, reaching up to 83% and 75% of TS 5% biomethane, respectively. Kinetics results disclosed that the biodegradable organics could be utilized at increasing solid content with decreasing hydrolysis rate. The abundances of hydrogenotrophic and methylotrophic methanogens increased significantly with increasing solid content. This study is of great importance for understanding and application of high solid anaerobic digestion of cow manure.
Abstract The C ii 157.74 μ m fine-structure transition is one of the brightest and most well-studied emission lines in the far-infrared, produced in the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies. We ...study its properties in subparsec-resolution hydrodynamical simulations for an ISM patch with gas surface density of Σ g = 10 M ⊙ pc −2 , coupled with time-dependent chemistry, far-ultraviolet dust and gas shielding, star formation, photoionization and supernova feedback, and full line radiative transfer. We find a C ii -to-H 2 conversion factor that scales weakly with metallicity X C II = 6.31 × 10 19 Z ′ 0.17 cm − 2 ( K km s − 1 ) − 1 , where Z ′ is the normalized metallicity relative to solar. The majority of C ii originates from atomic gas with hydrogen number density n ∼ 10 cm −3 . The C ii line intensity positively correlates with the star formation rate (SFR), with a normalization factor that scales linearly with metallicity. We find that this is broadly consistent with z ∼ 0 observations. As such, C ii is a good SFR tracer even in metal-poor environments where molecular lines might be undetectable. Resolving the clumpy structure of the dense ( n = 10−10 3 cm −3 ) ISM is important, as it dominates C ii 157.74 μ m emission. We compare our full radiative transfer computation with the optically thin limit and find that the C ii line becomes marginally optically thick only at supersolar metallicity for our assumed gas surface density.
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