Electrochemical Migration of Zincophilic Metals for Stress Mitigation and Uniform Zinc Deposition in Aqueous Zinc-Ion Batteries.

The propensity of zinc (Zn) to form irregular electrodeposits at liquid-solid interfaces emerges as a fundamental barrier to high-energy, rechargeable batteries that use zinc anodes. So far, tremendous efforts are devoted to tailoring interfaces, while atomic-scale reaction mechanisms and the related nanoscale strain at the electrochemical interface receive less attention. Here, the underlying atomic-scale reaction mechanisms and the associated nanoscale strain at the electrochemical alloy interface are investigate, using gold-zinc alloy protective layer as a model system.

Intestinal glucagon-like peptide-1: A new player associated with impaired counterregulatory responses to hypoglycaemia in type 1 diabetic mice.

Background: Impaired hypoglycaemic counterregulation has emerged as a critical concern for diabetic patients who may be hesitant to medically lower their blood glucose levels due to the fear of potential hypoglycaemic reactions. However, the patho-genesis of hypoglycaemic counterregulation is still unclear. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and its analogues have been used as adjunctive therapies for type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM).

Demonstration of negative refraction induced by synthetic gauge fields.

Negative refraction is a counterintuitive wave phenomenon that has inspired the development of metamaterials and metasurfaces with negative refractive indices and surface phase discontinuities, respectively. Recent theories have proposed an alternative mechanism for negative refraction: Synthetic gauge fields, induced by either dynamical modulation or motion, can shift a material’s dispersion in momentum space, forcing a positive refractive index medium to exhibit negative refraction above a certain threshold. However, this phenomenon has not previously been observed.

Existence, symmetry breaking bifurcation and stability of two-dimensional optical solitons supported by fractional diffraction.

We study existence, bifurcation and stability of two-dimensional optical solitons in the framework of fractional nonlinear Schrödinger equation, characterized by its Lévy index, with self-focusing and self-defocusing saturable nonlinearities. We demonstrate that the fractional diffraction system with different Lévy indexes, combined with saturable nonlinearity, supports two-dimensional symmetric, antisymmetric and asymmetric solitons, where the asymmetric solitons emerge by way of symmetry breaking bifurcation. Different scenarios of bifurcations emerge with the change of stability: the branches of asymmetric solitons split off the branches of unstable symmetric solitons with the increase of soliton power and form a supercritical type bifurcation for self-focusing saturable nonlinearity; the branches of asymmetric solitons bifurcates from the branches of unstable antisymmetric solitons for self-defocusing saturable nonlinearity, featuring a convex shape of the bifurcation loops: an antisymmetric soliton loses its stability via a supercritical bifurcation, which is followed by a reverse bifurcation that restores the stability of the symmetric soliton.

Ideal type-II Weyl points in topological circuits.

Weyl points (WPs), nodal degenerate points in three-dimensional (3D) momentum space, are said to be 'ideal' if they are symmetry-related and well-separated, and reside at the same energy and far from nontopological bands. Although type-II WPs have unique spectral characteristics compared with type-I counterparts, ideal type-II WPs have not yet been reported because of a lack of an experimental platform with enough flexibility to produce strongly tilted dispersion bands. Here, we experimentally realize a topological circuit that hosts only topological bands with a minimal number of four ideal type-II WPs.

Ultralow loss graphene-based hybrid plasmonic waveguide with deep-subwavelength confinement.

In this paper, we theoretically propose a novel graphene-based hybrid plasmonic waveguide (GHPW) consisting of a low-index rectangle waveguide between a high-index cylindrical dielectric waveguide and the substrate with coated graphene on the surface. The geometric dependence of the mode characteristics on the proposed structure is analyzed in detail, showing that the proposed GHPW has a low loss and consequently a relatively long propagation distance. For TM polarization, highly confined modes guided in the low-index gap region between the graphene and the high-index GaAs and the normalized modal area is as small as 0.

Symmetric and asymmetric solitons supported by a 𝒫𝒯-symmetric potential with saturable nonlinearity: bifurcation, stability and dynamics.

The symmetry breaking bifurcation of solitons in an optical waveguide with focusing saturable nonlinearity and parity-time (𝒫𝒯)-symmetric complex-valued external potentials is investigated. As the soliton power increases, it is found that the branches of asymmetric solitons split off from the base branches of 𝒫𝒯-symmetric fundamental soliton. The bifurcation diagrams, consisting essentially of the propagation constants of optical solitons, indicate that symmetric fundamental and multipole solitons, as well as asymmetric solitons can exist.

Dynamical manipulation of Cosine-Gauss beams in a graphene plasmonic waveguide.

In this paper, we theoretically propose for the first time that graphene monolayer can be used to manipulate the Cosine-Gauss beams (CGBs). We show that both the transverse oscillation period and propagation length of a CGB can be dynamically manipulated by utilizing the tunability of the graphene's chemical potential. The graphene-based planar plasmonic waveguide provides a good platform to investigate the propagation properties of CGBs, which is potentially compatible to the microelectronic technology.

Hyperbolic-polaritons-enabled dark-field lens for sensitive detection.

Sensitive detection of features in a nanostructure may sometimes be puzzled in the presence of significant background noise. In this regard, background suppression and super-resolution are substantively important for detecting weakly scattering nanoscale features. Here, we present a lens design, termed hyperbolic-polaritons-enabled dark-field lens (HPEDL), which has the ability to accomplish straightforward sensitive detection.

Bistable scattering in graphene-coated dielectric nanowires.

In nonlinear plasmonics, the switching threshold of optical bistability is limited by the weak nonlinear responses from the conventional Kerr dielectric media. Considering the giant nonlinear susceptibility of graphene, here we develop a nonlinear scattering model under the mean field approximation and study the bistable scattering in graphene-coated dielectric nanowires based on the semi-analytical solutions. We find that the switching intensities of bistable scattering can be smaller than 1 MW cm at the working frequency.

The impact of exposure to environmental contaminant on hepatocellular lipid metabolism.

Increasing evidences show that ubiquitous perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a representative environmental pollutant, is found to be linked to lipid dysmetabolism. However, the biological mechanism behind this outcome remains uninvestigated. In the present study, we established the PFOA-injured liver in mice to explore the underlying mechanism associated with PFOA-induced lipid disturbance in the liver via a group of biochemical and molecular assays.

Observing the transient buildup of a superscatterer in the time domain.

Superscatterer is an intriguing electromagnetic device, which can enhance the wave scattering of a given object with an arbitrary magnification factor in principle. However, observing the transient buildup of a superscatterer in numerical time domain still has not been investigated yet. In this paper, by using the dispersive finite difference time domain method, the transient response of a dispersive superscatterer created with monotonic optical transformation function is studied.

Magnetic Fano resonances by design in symmetry broken THz meta-foils.

Magnetic Fano resonances in there-dimensional symmetry broken meta-foils at THz frequencies are theoretically and experimentally studied. Sharp Fano resonances occur due to the interference between different resonances and can be designed by choosing geometric parameters of the meta-foil. At the Fano resonances, the meta-foil supports antisymmetric modes, whereas, at the main resonance, only a symmetric mode exists.

Unidirectional invisibility induced by parity-time symmetric circuit.

Parity-time (PT) symmetric structures present the unidirectional invisibility at the spontaneous PT-symmetry breaking point. In this paper, we propose a PT-symmetric circuit consisting of a resistor and a microwave tunnel diode (TD) which represent the attenuation and amplification, respectively. Based on the scattering matrix method, the circuit can exhibit an ideal unidirectional performance at the spontaneous PT-symmetry breaking point by tuning the transmission lines between the lumped elements.

Panoramic lens designed with transformation optics.

The panoramic lens is a special kind of lens, which is applied to observe full view. In this letter, we theoretically present a panoramic lens (PL) using transformation optics method. The lens is designed with inhomogeneous and anisotropic constitutive parameters, which has the ability to gather light from all directions and confine light within the visual angle of observer.

Hybrid Airy plasmons with dynamically steerable trajectories.

With their intriguing diffraction-free, self-accelerating, and self-healing properties, Airy plasmons show promise for use in the trapping, transporting, and sorting of micro-objects, imaging, and chip scale signal processing. However, high dissipative loss and lack of dynamical steerability restrict the implementation of Airy plasmons in these applications. Here we reveal hybrid Airy plasmons for the first time by taking a hybrid graphene-based plasmonic waveguide in the terahertz (THz) domain as an example.

Transient response of a signal through a dispersive invisibility cloak.

The transient response of the invisibility cloak has long been an interesting research topic, since it is valuable to further understand the steady-state process and to design more effective cloaks. Here we investigate the transient response of a set of dispersive invisibility cloaks impinged on by a sinusoidal signal or a modulated Gaussian pulse using the finite difference time domain method. Cylindrical cloaks with linear, convex, and concave transformation functions are studied.

Analysis and modeling of Fano resonances using equivalent circuit elements.

Fano resonance presents an asymmetric line shape formed by an interference of a continuum coupled with a discrete autoionized state. In this paper, we show several simple circuits for Fano resonances from the stable-input impedance mechanism, where the elements consisting of inductors and capacitors are formulated for various resonant modes, and the resistor represents the damping of the oscillators. By tuning the pole-zero of the input impedance, a simple circuit with only three passive components e.

Loss induced amplification of graphene plasmons.

This Letter introduces a new mechanism to reverse and control the effect of losses in the plasmonic systems by using a coupled parity-time symmetric graphene waveguide with complex potentials. In order to explore the uncharted properties of parity-time symmetric graphene plasmons, this Letter analytically shows the plasmonic parity-time symmetry breaking in the coupled graphene waveguide by Sommerfeld integration. This phase transition leads to the distinct spatial propagation behaviors of graphene plasmons in the exact or broken parity-time symmetric phase driven by a point source.

Atomically thin spherical shell-shaped superscatterers based on a Bohr model.

Graphene monolayers can be used for atomically thin three-dimensional shell-shaped superscatterer designs. Due to the excitation of the first-order resonance of transverse magnetic (TM) graphene plasmons, the scattering cross section of the bare subwavelength dielectric particle is enhanced significantly by five orders of magnitude. The superscattering phenomenon can be intuitively understood and interpreted with a Bohr model.

Effect of 3,4-dihydroxyacetophenone on endothelial dysfunction in obese rats.

Context: 3,4-Dihydroxyacetophenone (DHAP) has been reported to possess cardiovascular pharmacological effects.

Objective: This study was designed to determine whether DHAP could improve endothelial function in obese rats.

Materials And Methods: Wistar rats were randomly divided into control, obesity, and DHAP groups and fed a normal, high-fat, and high-fat plus DHAP (10 mg kg(-1) d(-1)) diet, respectively, for 8 weeks.

[The change of alpha cell mass and its mechanism with diabetic progress].

Objective: To explore the change of a cell mass and its mechanism with diabetic progress.

Methods: Diabetic mice were killed by exsanguinations after 4, 12 and 20 weeks of diabetes, respectively. Indirect double immunofluorescences for Insulin/Ki67, or BrdU, Cleaved-Caspase 3, TUNEL were used to evaluate pancreatic alpha cell mass, regeneration and apoptosis of a cells.

[Diabetes induced by multiple low doses of STZ can be spontaneously recovered in adult mice].

In a previous study, we observed that multiple low doses of streptozotocin (STZ) can induce spontaneous restoration of normoglycemia in adult mouse diabetes models. In the present study, we sought to identify when spontaneous recovery from diabetes occurs and to disclose the changes in the diabetic data of diabetic mice induced by multiple low doses of streptozotocin (MLD-STZ mice). After inducing type 1 diabetes mellitus, radioimmunoassay, indirect immunofluorescence and hematoxylin-eosin staining were used to determine the diabetic data of MLD-STZ mice.

Androgen receptor: a new player associated with apoptosis and proliferation of pancreatic beta-cell in type 1 diabetes mellitus.

Androgen receptor (AR) mediates a wide range of cellular processes, such as proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis. Here we sought to identify whether AR was located in pancreatic beta-cells and investigate its functions in type 1 diabetes induced by multiple low doses of streptozotocin. Double/triple immunofluorescence, Western blot and semi-quantitative RT-PCR were carried out to determine variances of AR expression in beta-cells and correlation between AR and apoptosis/proliferation of beta-cells with progress of diabetes.