Correlation of personality with individual reproductive success in shrub-nesting birds depends on their life history style

Two questions in the research of animal personality—whether there is a correlation between a personality trait and individual reproductive success,and what is the genetic basis underlying a personality trait—remain unresolved.We addressed these two questions in three shrub-nesting birds,the Azure-winged Magpie(Cyanopica cyanus,AM),White-collared Blackbird(Turdus albocinctus,WB),and Brown-cheeked Laughingthrush(Trochalopteron henrici,BL).The personality type of an individual was first identified according to its response to a territorial intruder.Then,we compared the fleeing distance,breeding parameters,and differential expressed genes(DEGs) in the brain transcriptome between bold and shy breeders.In the three species,bold breeders exhibited more aggressiveness towards an intruder of their territory than did shy breeders.The reproductive success of bold breeders was significantly higher than that of shy breeders in AM but not in WB and BL.The three species shared one DEG,crabp1,which was up-regulated in bold relative to in shy individuals.By regulating the expression of corticotropin-releasing hormone,higher crabp1 gene expression can decrease cellular response to retinoic acid.Therefore,bold individuals are insensitive to external stresses and able to exhibit more aggressiveness to intruders than their shier counterparts.Aggressiveness is beneficial to bold individuals in AM but not in WB and BL because the former could evoke neighbors to make the same response of defending against intruders but the latter could not.Although a personality trait may have the same genetic basis across species,its correlation with reproductive success depends largely on the life history style of a species.

Mass transfer techniques for large-scaleand high-density microLED arrays

Inorganic-based micro light-emitting diodes (microLEDs) offer more fascinating properties and unique demands in next-generation displays. However, the small size of the microLED chip (1–100 µm) makes it extremely challenging for high efficiency and low cost to accurately, selectively, integrate millions of microLED chips. Recent impressive technological advances have overcome the drawbacks of traditional pick-and-place techniques when they were utilized in the assembly of microLED display, including the most broadly recognized laser lift-off technique, contact micro-transfer printing (µTP) technique, laser non-contact µTP technique, and self-assembly technique. Herein, we firstly review the key developments in mass transfer technique and highlight their potential value, covering both the state-of-the-art devices and requirements for mass transfer in the assembly of the ultra-large-area display and virtual reality glasses. We begin with the significant challenges and the brief history of mass transfer technique, and expand that mass transfer technique is composed of two major techniques, namely, the epitaxial Lift-off technique and the pick-and-place technique. The basic concept and transfer effects for each representative epitaxial Lift-off and pick-and-place technique in mass transfer are then overviewed separately. Finally, the potential challenges and future research directions of mass transfer are discussed.

A High-Accuracy Single Patch Representation of Multi-Patch Geometries with Applications to Isogeometric Analysis

This paper presents a novel approximating method to construct highprecision single-patch representation of B-spline surface from a multi-patch representation for isogeometric applications.In isogeometric analysis,multi-patch structure is not easy to achieve high continuity between neighboring patches which will reduce the advantage of isogeometric analysis in a sense.The proposed method can achieve high continuity at surface stitching region with low geometric error,and this technique exploits constructing the approximate surface with several control points are from original surfaces,which guarantees the local feature of the surface can be well-preserved with high precision.With the proposed approximating method,isogeometric analysis results using the new single-patch can be obtained efficiently compared with the original multi-patch structure.Several examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness,accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.

Adult tiger beetles Cicindela gemmata modify their foraging strategy in different hunting contexts

Predator–prey interaction has long been an interesting item in the research of animal behaviors.Given that live prey can damage their predators,predators must trade foraging efficiency for safety while hunting,but the extent of this trade-off is not yet clear.Tiger beetles display diversity in their diets and hunting strategies,and hence,they become an ideal system to address how self-security affects foraging efficiency.We addressed this question in captive adult tiger beetles Cicindela gemmata.By offering several types of arthropod and plant foods,we confirmed that C.gemmata is carnivorous.We found that C.gemmata hunt by either ambushing or chasing their prey,and that they switch between strategies based on differences in the number of prey,the prey status and encounter rate,and the number of predators.Ambushing success increased with the number of prey but decreased with prey encounter rate.Chasing success decreased as prey body size and encounter rate increased.Foraging Cicindela gemmata often gave up an attack when it was nonfatal.This active giving up of hunting may be a consequence of a trade-off between foraging efficiency and self-security.Therefore,it is an adaptive response to the risk of injury when hunting for larger live prey.

Atomically precise coreless AuCu bimetallic nanoclusters for Ullmann C-O coupling

Bimetallic nanocluster with atomic precision has gained widespread attention due to its unique synergism.The coreless Au_(4)Cu_(5)bimetallic nanoclusters were selected as models to explore the relationship between their microstructure and performance,and compare with the coreless monometallic nanoclusters,core–shell nanoclusters,and single atom catalyst(SAC).The experimental results show that the coreless bimetallic nanocluster catalyst Au_(4)Cu_(5)/activated carbon(AC)exhibits high activity and stability in the Ullmann C–O coupling reaction,much higher than coreless monometallic nanoclusters(Au_(11)/AC and Cu_(11)/AC),core–shell nanoclusters(Au_(25)/AC,Cu_(25)/AC,and Au_(1)Cu_(24)/AC),and single atom catalysts(Au SAC and Cu SAC).Moreover,the coreless Au_(4)Cu_(5)/AC catalyst efficiently catalyzed the Ullmann C–O coupling of benzyl alcohol for the first time.This structure–activity relationship was successfully extended to other coreless bimetallic systems,such as Au_(4)Cu_(4)/AC nanocluster,and it is expected to provide new insights for the design of bimetallic catalysts with well-defined performance.

Optimization of energy storage properties in(1−x)Na_(0.5)Bi_(0.5)TiO_(3)-xSr_(0.7)La_(0.2)TiO_(3)-relaxed ferroelectric ceramics

Ferroelectric materials are considered to be the most competitive energy storage materials for applications in pulsed power elec­tronics due to excellent charge-discharge properties.However,the low energy storage density is the primary problem limiting their practical application.In this study,(1−x)Na_(0.5)Bi_(0.5)TiO_(3)-xSr_(0.7)La_(0.2)TiO_(3)[(1−x)NBT-xSLT]ferroelectric ceramics are found to exhibit excellent energy storage performances through a synergistic strategy.As the SLT concentration increases,the relaxation characteristic increases significantly and the breakdown strength increases dramatically from 150 kV/cm to 220 kV/cm.The recoverable energy storage density of the _0.55NBT-0.45SLT ceramic is 2.86 J/cm^(3) with an energy storage efficiency of 88%under an electric field of 220 kV/cm.Furthermore,the ceramic with x=0.45 mol exhibited excellent energy storage stability in the ranges of 20-180℃(temperature)and 1-125 Hz(frequency).These excellent properties demonstrate the potential of(1−x)NBT-xSLT ceramics when used as dielectric capacitors in pulsed power systems.

Divergent Protein Engineering of Transaminase for the Synthesis of Chiral Rivastigmine and Apremilast Precursors

Comprehensive Summary The implementation of divergent protein engineering on the natural transaminase Vf-ω-TA led to the development of two effective mutants(M2 and M8),enabling the enzymatic synthesis of chiral amine precursors of Rivastigmine and Apremilast,respectively.The evolution of the enzymes was guided by crystal structures and a focused mutagenesis strategy,allowing them to effectively address the challenging ketone substrates with significant steric hindrance.Under the optimized reaction parameters,transamination proceeded smoothly in good conversions and with perfect stereochemical control(>99%ee).These processes utilize inexpensiveα-methylbenzylamine as an amine donor and avoid the continuous acetone removal and costly LDH/GDH/NADH systems.

Flexible multilayer lead-free film capacitor with high energy storage performances via heterostructure engineering

The immense potential of flexible energy storage materials applied in wearable electronic devices hasstimulated a lot of science researches on manufacturing technology and performance optimization.Herein, an all-inorganic flexible ferroelectric film with multilayer heterostructure is prepared based onMn doped Bi0.5Na0.5TiO_(3)eBiNi0.5Zr0.5O_(3) (Mn:BNT-BNZ) and Bi0.5Na0.5TiO_(3)eBiZn0.5Zr0.5O_(3) (BNT-BZZ)relaxor ferroelectrics. A win-win situation of breakdown strength and polarization is achieved in theMn:BNT-BNZ/BNT-BZZ multilayer film with the stacking period N - 3, of which energy density and ef-ficiency reach 80.4 J/cm3 and 62.0% respectively. It is proposed that the excellent energy storage per-formances are attributed to the synergistic effect of the electric field amplification effect, interfaceblocking effect and the polarization coupling effect based on the multilayer heterostructure. Moreover,the flexible ferroelectric film exhibits outstanding temperature (25e205 - C), frequency (0.5e5 kHz)stability and antifatigue property (1 108 cycles), and can well maintain stable performance at differenttensile/compressive bending radii (10e5 mm) and even after 104 bending cycles with a fixed bendingradius of 3 mm. This work opens up a promising route to the development of flexible energy storagematerials.

PT-symmetry berry phases,topology and PT-symmetry breaking

We study the complex Berry phases in non-Hermitian systems with parity-and time-reversal(PT)symmetry.We investigate a kind of two-level system with PT symmetry.We find that the real part of the the complex Berry phases have two quantized values and they are equal to either 0 orΠ,which originates from the topology of the Hermitian eigenstates.We also find that if we change the relative parameters of the Hamiltonian from the unbroken-PT-symmetry phase to the broken-PT-symmetry phase,the imaginary part of the complex Berry phases are divergent at the exceptional points.We exhibit two concrete examples in this work,one is a two-level toys model,which has nontrivial Berry phases;the other is the generalized Su-Schrieffer-Heeger(SSH)model that has physical loss and gain in every sublattice.Our results explicitly demonstrate the relation between complex Berry phases,topology and PT-symmetry breaking and enrich the field of the non-Hermitian physics.

Effects of thickness on the microstructure and energy-storage performance of PLZT antiferroelectric thick films

The typical antiferroelectric(AFE)thick films Pb_(0.94)La_(0.04)(Zr_(0.98)Ti_(0.02))O_(3)(PLZT 4/98/2)with different thicknesses of 2,4,6 and 10μm were successfully deposited on Pt(111)/TiO_(2)/SiO_(2)/Si(100)substrates from polyvinylpyrrolidone(PVP)-modified chemical solution.The effects of thickness on the crystalline structure,electrical properties and the energy-storage performance were investigated in detail.X-Ray diffraction analysis and scanning electron microscopy pictures indicated that AFE films with a thickness less than 4
m showed a(111)-preferred orientation with uniform surface microstructure.The electrical measurement results illustrated that,as the thickness increased,the saturation polarization,remnant polarization,dielectric constant and leakage current of AFE thick films were enhanced gradually,while the capacitive density and the critical breakdown fields were decreased.Moreover,all the PLZT 4/98/2 AFE films shared the same Curie temperature of about 224℃.As a result,the AFE thick films showed good energy-storage stability in a wide temperature range.The maximum energy-storage density of 47.4 J/cm^(3) was obtained in the 2-μm-thick PLZT 4/98/2 films measured at 3699 kV/cm.