Crystalline symmetries have played a central role in the identification and understanding of quantum materials. Here we investigate whether an amorphous analogue of a well known three-dimensional strong topological insulator has topological properties in the solid state. We show that amorphous Bi₂Se₃ thin films host a number of two-dimensional surface conduction channels. Our angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy data are consistent with a dispersive two-dimensional surface state that crosses the bulk gap. Spin-resolved photoemission spectroscopy shows this state has an anti-symmetric spin texture, confirming the existence of spin-momentum locked surface states. We discuss these experimental results in light of theoretical photoemission spectra obtained with an amorphous topological insulator tight-binding model, contrasting it with alternative explanations. The discovery of spin-momentum locked surface states in amorphous materials opens a new avenue to characterize amorphous matter, and triggers the search for an overlooked subset of quantum materials outside of current classification schemes.

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Recurrent major depressive disorder (rMDD) is a relapsing-remitting disease with high morbidity and a 5-year risk of recurrence of up to 80%. This was a prospective pilot study to examine the potential diagnostic and prognostic value of targeted plasma metabolomics in the care of patients with rMDD in remission. We used an established LC-MS/MS platform to measure 399 metabolites in 68 subjects with rMDD (n = 45 females and 23 males) in antidepressant-free remission and 59 age- and sex-matched controls (n = 40 females and 19 males). Patients were then followed prospectively for 2.5 years. Metabolomics explained up to 43% of the phenotypic variance. The strongest biomarkers were gender specific. 80% of the metabolic predictors of recurrence in both males and females belonged to 6 pathways: (1) phospholipids, (2) sphingomyelins, (3) glycosphingolipids, (4) eicosanoids, (5) microbiome, and (6) purines. These changes traced to altered mitochondrial regulation of cellular redox, signaling, energy, and lipid metabolism. Metabolomics identified a chemical endophenotype that could be used to stratify rrMDD patients at greatest risk for recurrence with an accuracy over 0.90 (95%CI = 0.69–1.0). Power calculations suggest that a validation study of at least 198 females and 198 males (99 cases and 99 controls each) will be needed to confirm these results. Although a small study, these results are the first to show the potential utility of metabolomics in assisting with the important clinical challenge of prospectively identifying the patients at greatest risk of recurrence of a depressive episode and those who are at lower risk.@en

Currently, the offshore wind turbine has become a hot research area in the wind energy industry. Among different offshore wind turbines, floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) can harvest abundant wind energy in deepwater areas. However, the harsh working environment will dramatically increase the maintenance cost and downtime of FOWTs. Wind turbine fault diagnosis is being regarded as an indispensable system for maintenance issues. Owing to the complexity of FOWT, it imposes an enormous challenge for effective fault diagnosis. This paper develops a novel FOWT fault diagnosis method based on a stacked denoising autoencoder (SDAE). First, a sliding window technique is adopted for time-series data to preserve temporal information. Then, SDAE is employed to extract the features from high-dimensional data. Based on the extracted features from SDAE, a classifier using multilayer perceptrons (MLP) is developed to determine the health status of the FOWT. To verify the performance of the proposed method, a FOWT simulation benchmark based on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) FAST simulator is employed. Results show the superior performance of the proposed method by comparison with other relevant methods.

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The densification of mono-sized regular octahedral particles under vibration is simulated by a DEM model. The model is validated by physical experiments. The effects of operating parameters including vibration amplitude and frequency are investigated. The obtained packing structures are characterized, and corresponding densification mechanisms are identified. The results indicate that vibration amplitude is more critical for densification compared to frequency, where a wide range of suitable amplitudes exists to realize the dense packing structures. Ordered packing structure exists in boundary region. The central region possesses good particle position randomness and orientation randomness, and the packing density for poured packing (initial loose packing) and vibrated packing (dense packing) in the central region are 0.670 and 0.684, respectively. During densification, contacts and constraints between particles decrease, and the stress within the structure becomes larger. The typical arrangement of neighboring particles is close to but not perfect face to face (F–F) contact. Particles in the boundary region experience more rotations and can form local ordered structures. These structures prevent the relative movement of individual particles but favor their movement as a whole. Particles in the central region have relatively little movement and rotation. The ordered structures formed at boundary is difficult to extend to the central region due to the restricted change of particle contact conditions.

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Xe is only produced by cryogenic distillation of air, and its availability is limited by the extremely low abundance. Therefore, Xe recovery after usage is the only way to guarantee sufficient supply and broad application. Herein we demonstrate DD3R zeolite as a benchmark membrane material for CO₂/Xe separation. The CO₂ permeance after an optimized membrane synthesis is one order magnitude higher than for conventional membranes and is less susceptible to water vapour. The overall membrane performance is dominated by diffusivity selectivity of CO₂ over Xe in DD3R zeolite membranes, whereby rigidity of the zeolite structure plays a key role. For relevant anaesthetic composition (<5 % CO₂) and condition (humid), CO₂ permeance and CO₂/Xe selectivity stabilized at 2.0×10⁻⁸ mol m⁻² s⁻¹ Pa⁻¹ and 67, respectively, during long-term operation (>320 h). This endows DD3R zeolite membranes great potential for on-stream CO₂ removal from the Xe-based closed-circuit anesthesia system. The large cost reduction of up to 4 orders of magnitude by membrane Xe-recycling (>99+%) allows the use of the precious Xe as anaesthetics gas a viable general option in surgery.

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To identify the dense packing of cylinder–sphere binary mixtures (spheres as filling objects), the densification process of such binary mixtures subjected to three-dimensional (3D) mechanical vibrations was experimentally studied. Various influential factors including vibration parameters (such as vibration time t, vibration amplitude A, frequency ω, vibration acceleration Γ) as well as particle size ratio r (small sphere vs. large cylinder), composition of the binary mixtures X_L (volume fraction of cylinders), and container size D (container diameter) on the packing density ρ were systematically investigated. The results show that the optimal vibration parameters for different binary cylinder–sphere mixtures are different. The smaller the size ratio, the less vibration acceleration is needed to form a stable dense packing. For each binary mixture, high packing density can be obtained when the volume fraction of large cylindrical particles is dominant. Meanwhile, increasing the container size can decrease the container wall effect and get higher packing density. The proposed analytical model has been proved to be valid in predicting the packing densification of current cylinder–sphere binary mixtures.

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The dynamic crystallization of cubic granular particles under three-dimensional mechanical vibration is numerically investigated by the discrete element method. The effects of operational conditions (vibration, container shape and system size) and particle properties (gravity and friction) on the formation of crystals and defects are discussed. The results show that the formation and growth of clusters with face-to-face aligned cubic particles can be easily realized under vibrations. Especially, a single crystal with both translational and orientational ordering can be reproduced in a rectangular container under appropriate vibrations. It is also found that the gravitational effect is beneficial for the ordering of a packing; the ordering of frictional particles can be improved significantly with an enlarged gravitational acceleration. The flat walls of a rectangular container facilitate the formation of orderly layered structures. The curved walls of a cylindrical container contribute to the formation of ring-like structures, whereas they also cause distortions and defects in the packing centers. Finally, it is shown that the crystallization of inelastic particles is basically accomplished by the pursuit of a better mechanical stability of the system, with decreasing kinetic and potential energies.

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The packing densification of mono-sized equilateral cylindrical particles under mechanical vibration is numerically reproduced using discrete element method (DEM). The influences of vibration frequency, amplitude and container size on the macro property (e.g. packing density) of each packing are studied. Meanwhile, various micro-properties including coordination number (CN), radial distribution function (RDF), local structures, contact types, particle position/orientation distributions, forces/stresses of the vibrated dense packing are characterized and compared with those of the loose initial poured packing. The results show that properly controlling vibration conditions can realize the transition of equilateral cylindrical particles from random loose packing (RLP) to random close packing (RCP). The maximum packing density without wall effects can reach about 0.7166, which agrees with experimental and numerical results in literature. Micro property analyses demonstrate that the average CN increases slightly after vibration. The RDF curves indicate three obvious peaks for both poured and vibrated packings. The distributions of intersection angles imply that the perpendicular arrangements of the cylindrical particles are common in both packing structures. From RLP to RCP, the probability of side-edge, bottom-edge and edge-edge contacts between two particles decreases, while that of side-side, side-bottom and bottom-bottom contacts increases. Both particle position and orientation distributions illustrate that the structure in the center of the vibrated packing is disordered. The distribution of strong forces follows the exponential law, while that of weak forces follows the power law. The static vertical stresses in both packings can be predicted by Janssen model. After vibration, a much denser and more stable structure with a larger saturation stress is obtained due to the reducing inter-particle friction effects.

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Densification of cubic particles under three-dimensional (3D) mechanical vibration was studied experimentally. Effects of vibration time (t), frequency (f), vibration amplitude (A), vibration acceleration (Г), container size (D) and particle sphericity (φ) on packing density (ρ) were comprehensively analyzed. To identify the effects of particle shape, the packing densification of cuboid 1 (12 mm × 12 mm × 28 mm) and cuboid 2 (4 mm × 8 mm × 16 mm) were systematically studied under the same conditions. The results show that the structure of cubic particles can be first densified from random loose packing (RLP) to random close packing (RCP) and then to ordered packing (OP) gradually. In comparison, cuboid 1 and cuboid 2 particles can only form RCP structure, but cannot achieve OP even under further vibration. Vibration parameters (t, f, A and Г) are shown to be important to the packing densification. Based on the results of varying f and A, A - f phase diagrams are established for choosing the optimal vibration parameters to achieve the desired dense packing structures. Besides, it is shown the size of container (wall effect) has monotonic influence on packing density, i.e., the larger container size corresponds to the less wall effect and higher packing density. Cubic particles can form ordered packing because of the geometrical symmetry with aspect ratio of 1. After eliminating the wall effect by extrapolating the packing densities in different sized containers, typical packing densities of the three types of particles are obtained with ρ_RLP = 0.658, ρ_RCP = 0.830 and ρ_OP = 0.965 for cubic particles; ρ_RLP = 0.625 and ρ_RCP = 0.740 for cuboid 1 particles; ρ_RLP = 0.591 and ρ_RCP = 0.731 for cuboid 2 particles. These findings indicate cubic particles are efficient in densification which can be readily realized through proper 3D mechanical vibration.

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Systematic physical experiments examining the packing densification of mono-sized cylindrical particles subject to 3D mechanical vibration were carried out. The influence of vibration conditions such as vibration time, frequency, amplitude, vibration strength, container size, and the aspect ratio and sphericity of the particle on the packing density were analyzed and discussed. For each initial packing density with a certain aspect ratio, operating parameters were optimized to achieve much denser packing. The results indicate that the packing density initially increases with vibration time and then remains constant. The effects of vibration frequency and amplitude on the packing densification have similar trends, i.e. the packing density first increases with the vibration frequency or amplitude to a high value and then decreases; too large or small frequency or amplitude does not enhance densification. Increasing the container size can reduce container wall effects and help achieve a high packing density. Varying the particle aspect ratio and sphericity can lead to different dense random packing structures. Overall, based on results of the examined systems, the highest random packing density obtained in an infinite sized container can reach 0.73, which agrees well with corresponding numerical and analytical results in the literature.

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