Bypassing the Resistance Mechanisms of the Tumor Ecosystem by Targeting the Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress Pathway Using Ruthenium- and Osmium-Based Organometallic Compounds: An Exciting Long-Term Collaboration with Dr. Michel Pfeffer

Metal complexes have been used to treat cancer since the discovery of cisplatin and its interaction with DNA in the 1960’s. Facing the resistance mechanisms against platinum salts and their side effects, safer therapeutic approaches have been sought through other metals, including ruthenium. In the early 2000s, Michel Pfeffer and his collaborators started to investigate the biological activity of organo-ruthenium/osmium complexes, demonstrating their ability to interfere with the activity of purified redox enzymes. Then, they discovered that these organo-ruthenium/osmium complexes could act independently of DNA damage and bypass the requirement for the tumor suppressor gene TP53 to induce the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress pathway, which is an original cell death pathway. They showed that other types of ruthenium complexes—as well complexes with other metals (osmium, iron, platinum)—can induce this pathway as well. They also demonstrated that ruthenium complexes accumulate in the ER after entering the cell using passive and active mechanisms. These particular physico-chemical properties of the organometallic complexes designed by Dr. Pfeffer contribute to their ability to reduce tumor growth and angiogenesis. Taken together, the pioneering work of Dr. Michel Pfeffer over his career provides us with a legacy that we have yet to fully embrace.     

Precisely optical material parameter determination by time domain waveform rebuilding with THz time-domain spectroscopy

We offer an innovative optical material parameter extraction algorithm for Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS). Unlike previously reported extraction algorithms in frequency domain, which have to be compromised between amplitude and phase, or the real part and imaginary part of the transfer function, we calculate material parameters by minimizing the difference between the measured sample waveform and the rebuilt one in time domain. The new method is effectively verified by different samples, and can be used either in transmission mode or in reflection mode for THz-TDS.     

A Cation‐Exchange Approach for the Fabrication of Efficient Methylammonium Tin Iodide Perovskite Solar Cells

Tin‐based halide perovskite materials have been successfully employed in lead‐free perovskite solar cells, but the overall power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) have been limited by the high carrier concentration from the facile oxidation of Sn²⁺ to Sn⁴⁺. Now a chemical route is developed for fabrication of high‐quality methylammonium tin iodide perovskite (MASnI₃) films: hydrazinium tin iodide (HASnI₃) perovskite film is first solution‐deposited using presursors hydrazinium iodide (HAI) and tin iodide (SnI₂), and then transformed into MASnI₃ via a cation displacement approach. With the two‐step process, a dense and uniform MASnI₃ film is obtained with large grain sizes and high crystallization. Detrimental oxidation is suppressed by the hydrazine released from the film during the transformation. With the MASnI₃ as light harvester, mesoporous perovskite solar cells were prepared, and a maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 7.13 % is delivered with good reproducibility.     

Optomechanical soft metamaterials

We present a new type of optomechanical soft metamaterials, which is different from conventional mechan-ical metamaterials, in that they are simple isotropic and homogenous materials without resorting to any complex nano/microstructures. This metamaterial is unique in the sense that its responses to uniaxial forcing can be tailored by programmed laser inputs to manifest different nonlinear con-stitutive behaviors, such as monotonic, S-shape, plateau, and non-monotonic snapping performance. To demonstrate the novel metamaterial, a thin sheet of soft material impinged by two counterpropagating lasers along its thickness direction and stretched by an in-plane tensile mechanical force is con-sidered. A theoretical model is formulated to characterize the resulting optomechanical behavior of the thin sheet by com-bining the nonlinear elasticity theory of soft materials and the optical radiation stress theory. The optical radiation stresses predicted by the proposed model are validated by simula-tions based on the method of finite elements. Programmed optomechanical behaviors are subsequently explored using the validated model under different initial sheet thicknesses and different optical inputs, and the first-and second-order tangential stiffness of the metamaterial are used to plot the phase diagram of its nonlinear constitutive behaviors. The proposed optomechanical soft metamaterial shows great potential in biological medicine, microfluidic manipulation, and other fields.     

A new chaotic system with fractional order and its projective synchronization

Based on Rikitake system, a new chaotic system is discussed. Some basic dynamical properties, such as equilibrium points, Lyapunov exponents, fractal dimension, Poincaré map, bifurcation diagrams and chaotic dynamical behaviors of the new chaotic system are studied, either numerically or analytically. The obtained results show clearly that the system discussed is a new chaotic system. By utilizing the fractional calculus theory and computer simulations, it is found that chaos exists in the new fractional-order three-dimensional system with order less than 3. The lowest order to yield chaos in this system is 2.733. The results are validated by the existence of one positive Lyapunov exponent and some phase diagrams. Further, based on the stability theory of the fractional-order system, projective synchronization of the new fractional-order chaotic system through designing the suitable nonlinear controller is investigated. The proposed method is rather simple and need not compute the conditional Lyapunov exponents. Numerical results are performed to verify the effectiveness of the presented synchronization scheme.     

基于特征角点的目标跟踪和快速识别算法研究

提出了一种基于特征角点的目标跟踪、识别方法,其运算效率较高,且角点不易丢失。从对基于灰度的角点提取方法和基于边缘的角点提取方法的比较入手,提出建立新特征模型的必要性。随后给出了一种既能提高运算效率又能简化跟踪模型的特征角点法。选取了飞行速度为300m/s的某战机序列共11帧连续图像作为处理对象,通过在主要配置为Pentium 4、80G内存计算机的、Matlab2006a软件的环境中进行仿真,算法的运算速度可达0.7s,与其他跟踪算法相比跟踪速度较快,表明该方法是一种简洁有效的目标跟踪识别方法。     

16×10Gb/s啁啾光纤光栅色散补偿系统性能研究

运用啁啾光纤光栅法对在G.652光纤传输的16×10 Gb/s信号实现色散补偿数值模拟和研究,分析了入纤光功率、色散斜率以及啁啾光纤光栅色散补偿带宽对系统误码率的影响,结论是:入纤光功率在8～16 dBm之间时系统的性能较好;啁啾光纤光栅的色散补偿带宽对系统的影响较大;光纤的色散斜率对系统误码率有一定的影响.     

An Efficient Improved Greedy Harris Hawks Optimizer and Its Application to Feature Selection

To overcome the lack of flexibility of Harris Hawks Optimization (HHO) in switching between exploration and exploitation, and the low efficiency of its exploitation phase, an efficient improved greedy Harris Hawks Optimizer (IGHHO) is proposed and applied to the feature selection (FS) problem. IGHHO uses a new transformation strategy that enables flexible switching between search and development, enabling it to jump out of local optima. We replace the original HHO exploitation process with improved differential perturbation and a greedy strategy to improve its global search capability. We tested it in experiments against seven algorithms using single-peaked, multi-peaked, hybrid, and composite CEC2017 benchmark functions, and IGHHO outperformed them on optimization problems with different feature functions. We propose new objective functions for the problem of data imbalance in FS and apply IGHHO to it. IGHHO outperformed comparison algorithms in terms of classification accuracy and feature subset length. The results show that IGHHO applies not only to global optimization of different feature functions but also to practical optimization problems.