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[en] The construction and characteristics of a new detection system are described in the paper. This new detector consists of five wire planes, two of which are anode planes and three of which are cathode planes. Because two MWPC's with different parameters are adopted, the Moessbauer spectra of the conversion electron, resonance scattering γ-ray, KX-ray and their coincidence spectrum can be recorded separately. The multiple Moessbauer spectra of the surface layer of several samples is shown. (Auth.)

[en] We present our experimental results supporting optical–electrical hybrid data storage by optical recording and electrical reading using Ge₂Sb₂Te₅as recording medium. The sheet resistance of laser-irradiated Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ films exhibits an abrupt change of four orders of magnitude (from 10⁷ to 10³ Ω/sq) with increasing laser power, current-voltage curves of the amorphous area and the laser-crystallized dots, measured by a conductive atomic force microscope (C-AFM), show that their resistivities are 2.725 and 3. 375 × 10^-3 Ω, respectively, the surface current distribution in the films also shows high and low resistance states. All these results suggest that the laser-recorded bit can be read electrically by measuring the change of electrical resistivity, thus making optical–electrical hybrid data storage possible. (fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications))

[en] We employ an aluminum (Al) film as a thermal conduction layer under the laser thermal lithography AgInSbTe phase-change film to improve the patterning resolution in laser thermal lithography. The patterns were fabricated by laser writing and wet-etching. The laser writing was conducted by a setup where the laser wavelength and the numerical aperture of the converging lens were 405 nm and 0.90, respectively. The wet-etching was carried out in a 17wt% ammonium sulfide solution. Experimental results indicate that the patterning resolution enhancement induced by an Al thermal conduction layer is more than 20% compared with that of the samples without an Al thermal conduction layer. The analysis reveals that the resolution-enhancing effect may be due to the changes of heat diffusion directions induced by the Al thermal conduction layer. (fundamental areas of phenomenology(including applications))

[en] Highlights: • NLGN3 deletion attenuates stress-induced depression-like phenotype. • NLGN3 deficiency ameliorates neuron injury and glial cell activation. • NLGN3 knockout reduces NLRP3 inflammasome and NF-κB activity in cortex, hippocampus and amygdala. • NLGN3 knockdown alleviates inflammation in LPS-stimulated AST through NLRP3 inflammasome. Depression, regulated by central nervous system (CNS), is a significant inflammatory disorder. Neuroligin3 (NLGN3) has been implicated in brain functions. In the study, a chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) model in wild type (WT) or NLGN3-knockout (KO) mice was established to explore the role of NLGN3 in regulating depression and to reveal the underlying molecular mechanism. The results indicated that NLGN3-knockout markedly reversed the loss of body weight, the reduction of sucrose consumption, the decrease of immobile time in the forced swimming tests (FST) and tail suspension tests (TST) induced by CUMS paradigm. CUMS up-regulated corticosterone (CORT) in serum, and down-regulated serotonin (5-HT), norepinephrine (NE) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in hippocampus of mice, which were significantly reversed by NLGN3 deficiency. The results further demonstrated that NLGN3-knockout improved the degenerative neurons in cortex and hippocampus of CUMS-treated mice, accompanied with a significant decrease of ionized calciumbinding adapter molecule 1 (Iba-1) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) expressions. Additionally, NLGN3-KO mice challenged with CUMS showed a significant reduction of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokine, including tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-18 (IL-18), interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β), interleukin-4 (IL-4), CC-chemokine ligand-1 (CCL-1) and CXC-chemokine ligand-1 (CXCL-1), in cortex, hippocampus and amygdala tissue samples. Western blot analysis suggested that NLGN3-knockout inhibited the activation of nod-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome and its adaptor of apoptosis-associated speck like protein (ASC), and reduced the expression of Caspase-1, along with the inactivation of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) in CUMS-challenged mice. The role of NLGN3 in regulating depression in mice was confirmed in vitro using astrocytes stimulated by LPS that NLGN3 knockdown reduced LPS-induced inflammation. Importantly, the suppressive effects of NLGN3-knockdown on inflammatory response were reversed by NLRP3 or ASC over-expression in AST exposed to LPS. In sum, our findings indicated that suppressing NLGN3 played a potential antidepressant role in CUMS animal model by inactivating NLRP3 inflammasome, providing a new therapeutic avenue for depression.

[en] Four-component Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations are applied to study the tunnelling conductance spectra G(E) of half-metallic ferromagnet/ferromagnet/s-wave superconductor tunnel junctions. It is found that only for noncollinear magnetizations, there exists nonzero G(E) structure within the energy gap, which is a signature of appearance of the novel Andreev reflection and spin-triplet pairing correlations

[en] Sb–Bi alloy films are proposed as a new kind of super-resolution mask layer with low readout threshold power. Using the Sb–Bi alloy film as a mask layer and SiN as a protective layer in a read-only memory disc, the super-resolution pits with diameters of 380 nm are read out by a dynamic setup, the laser wavelength is 780 nm and the numerical aperture of pickup lens is 0.45. The effects of the Sb–Bi thin film thickness, laser readout power and disc rotating velocity on the readout signal are investigated. The results show that the threshold laser power of super-resolution readout of the Sb–Bi mask layer is about 0.5 mW, and the corresponding carrier-to-noise ratio is about 20 dB at the film thickness of 50 nm. The super-resolution mechanism of the Sb–Bi alloy mask layer is discussed based on its temperature dependence of reflection

[en] Four different states of Si₁₅Sb₈₅ and Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ phase change memory thin films are obtained by crystallization degree modulation through laser initialization at different powers or annealing at different temperatures. The polarization characteristics of these two four-level phase change recording media are analyzed systematically. A simple and effective readout scheme is then proposed, and the readout signal is numerically simulated. The results show that a high-contrast polarization readout can be obtained in an extensive wavelength range for the four-level phase change recording media using common phase change materials. This study will help in-depth understanding of the physical mechanisms and provide technical approaches to multilevel phase change recording. (electromagnetism, optics, acoustics, heat transfer, classical mechanics, and fluid dynamics)

[en] Aerobic granular sludge was considered as a leading wastewater technology in the next century. However, the loss of granule stability limited the application of this promising biotechnology. Increasing aeration intensity and height to diameter (H/D) ratio were conventional strategies to enhance granule stability. In this study, hydraulic effects of aeration intensity and H/D ratio were explored basing on bubble behavior analysis. However, results revealed that due to viscous resistance, increasing aeration intensity and H/D ratio had limited effects on enhancing hydraulic shear stress, not to mention the extra operation and construction cost. A deflector component was further applied to regulate hydraulic shear stress on large granules under low aeration intensity and H/D ratio. Hydraulic shear stress of large granules was constantly around 3.0 times higher than that in the conventional reactor, resulting in higher percentage of granules within optimal size range (81.95 ± 5.13%). A high abundance of denitrifying bacteria was observed in reactors, which led to high TN removal efficiency of 88.6 ± 3.8%.

[en] In this study, the V–I transmission matrix formalism (V–I method) is proposed to analyze the spectrum characteristics of the uniform fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based acousto—optic modulators (UFBG-AOM). The simulation results demonstrate that both the amplitude of the acoustically induced strain and the frequency of the acoustic wave (AW) have an effect on the spectrum. Additionally, the wavelength spacing between the primary reflectivity peak and the secondary reflectivity peak is proportional to the acoustic frequency with the ratio 0.1425 nm/MHz. Meanwhile, we compare the amount of calculation. For the FBG whose period is M, the calculation of the V–I method is 4 × (2M–1) in addition/subtraction, 8 × (2M – 1) in multiply/division and 2M in exponent arithmetic, which is almost a quarter of the multi-film method and transfer matrix (TM) method. The detailed analysis indicates that, compared with the conventional multi-film method and transfer matrix (TM) method, the V–I method is faster and less complex. (general)