Objective: Lokomat and wearable exoskeleton-assisted walking (EAW) have not been directly compared previously. To conduct a network meta-analysis of randomized and non-randomized controlled trials to assess locomotor abilities achieved with two different types of robotic-assisted gait training (RAGT) program in persons with spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods: Three electronic databases, namely, PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library, were systematically searched for randomized and non-randomized controlled trials published before August 2021, which assessed locomotor abilities after RAGT. Results: Of 319 studies identified for this review, 12 studies were eligible and included in our analysis. Studies from 2013 to 2021 were covered and contained 353 valid data points (N-353) on patients with SCI receiving wearable EWA and Lokomat training. In the case of wearable EAW, the 10-m walk test (10-MWT) distance and speed scores significantly increased [distance: 0.85 (95% CI = 0.35, 1.34); speed: −1.76 (95% CI = −2.79, −0.73)]. The 6-min walk test (6-MWT) distance [−1.39 (95% CI = −2.01, −0.77)] and the timed up and go (TUG) test significantly increased [(1.19 (95% CI = 0.74, 1.64)], but no significant difference was observed in the walking index for spinal cord injury (WISCI-II) [−0.33 (95% CI = −0.79, 0.13)]. Among the patients using Lokomat, the 10-MWT-distance score significantly increased [−0.08 (95% CI = −0.14, −0.03)] and a significant increase in the WISCI-II was found [1.77 (95% CI = 0.23, 3.31)]. The result of network meta-analysis showed that the probability of wearable EAW to rank first and that of Lokomat to rank second was 89 and 47%, respectively, in the 10-MWT speed score, while that of Lokomat to rank first and wearable EAW to rank second was 73 and 63% in the WISCI-II scores. Conclusion: Lokomat and wearable EAW had effects on the performance of locomotion abilities, namely, distance, speed, and function. Wearable EAW might lead to better outcomes in walking speed compared with that in the case of Lokomat.

A high-resolution radar ranging scheme is proposed and demonstrated based on the ultra-wideband chaotic optoelectronic oscillator (OEO). Through biasing the electro-optic intensity modulator near its minimum transmission point, high-dimensional chaotic signals with flat spectra and low time-delayed signatures can be generated in the OEO, which are favorable for increasing the ranging resolution and the confidentiality. In the experiment, the optimized broadband OEO generates a high-dimensional chaotic signal with a flat spectrum in the frequency range of 2 GHz to 16 GHz and a high permutation entropy of 0.9754. This chaotic signal is used to achieve multiple target ranging, where a ranging resolution of 1.4 cm is realized.

Oxysterol-binding protein like protein 3 (OSBPL3) has been shown involving in the development of several human cancers. However, the relationship between OSBPL3 and colorectal cancer (CRC), particularly the role of OSBPL3 in the proliferation, invasion and metastasis of CRC remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the role of OSBPL3 in CRC and found that its expression was significantly higher in CRC tissues than that in normal tissues. In addition, high expression of OSBPL3 was closely related to poor differentiation, advanced TNM stage and poor prognosis of CRC. Further experiments showed that over-expression of OSBPL3 promoted the proliferation, invasion and metastasis of CRC in vitro and in vivo models. Moreover, we revealed that OSBPL3 promoted CRC progression through activation of RAS signaling pathway. Furthermore, we demonstrated that hypoxia induced factor 1 (HIF-1A) can regulate the expression of OSBPL3 via binding to the hypoxia response element (HRE) in the promoter of OSBPL3. In summary, Upregulation of OSBPL3 by HIF1A promotes colorectal cancer progression through activation of RAS signaling pathway. This novel mechanism provides a comprehensive understanding of both OSBPL3 and the RAS signaling pathway in the progression of CRC and indicates that the HIF1A–OSBPL3–RAS axis is a potential target for early therapeutic intervention in CRC progression.

A Fourier domain mode locking (FDML) optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is proposed to generate complementary linearly chirped microwave waveform (LCMW) pairs with flexibly-reconfigurable frequency sweep range and excellent frequency sweep linearity. The FDML OEO involves an SBS-based dual-passband microwave photonic filter with its two passbands linearly and fast scanning in the opposite direction at an identical frequency sweep rate, which is realized by using a single laser source to obtain a fast frequency sweep probe light and a two-tone pump light through electro-optic modulation. A proof-of-concept experiment is carried out to demonstrate the proposed scheme. In the experiment, frequency-sweep-range-reconfigurable complementary LCMW pairs with period of 20.5 's are generated in the range of 5 GHz to 18 GHz, where the maximum time-bandwidth product and chirp rate are 82000 and ±0.195 GHz/μs, respectively. Most importantly, the frequency sweep linearity is measured to be 1.76%, which is much better than the results obtained in the existing FDML OEOs.

An approach to generating periodic spiking and spiking cluster in a broadband nonlinear opto-electronic oscillator (OEO) is proposed and demonstrated. Through injecting a long-duration square-wave pulse train with a repetition frequency equal to an integral multiple of the free spectral range into the OEO with a high net gain, controllable spiking and spiking cluster oscillation can be achieved when the dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DDMZM) in the OEO is biased far away from its quadrature point. The proposed scheme is verified by both numerical simulation and experiment. The results indicate that, when the DDMZM in the OEO cavity is biased near its minimum transmission point, positive spiking train with nanosecond-level pulse width is excited by the rising edge of the injected square-wave pulse train. Through further enhancing the injection strength, uniformly-spaced positive spiking fills the high-level voltage duration of each injected square-wave pulse. Hence, spiking cluster oscillation is achieved. Benefiting from its controllability, this approach can be applied in ultra-wideband (UWB) communications, electronic countermeasures, spiking coding and high-speed neuromorphic computing.

A novel approach to generating tunable Costas-coded linear frequency modulation waveforms (LFMWs) from an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The OEO works under Fourier domain mode locking, where the oscillation modes are selected by using a fast-scanning microwave bandpass filter based on phase-modulation-to-intensity-modulation conversion via stimulated Brillouin scattering. Costas coding is realized by using an open-loop voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with a fast tuning speed to generate an agile fast-scanning probe light via electro-optic frequency shift. The bandwidth of the generated Costas-coded LFMWs can be tuned by varying the voltage range of the low-frequency waveform applied to the VCO, and the center frequency can be finely tuned by varying the electro-optic frequency shift of the pump light. In the experiment, Costas-coded LFMWs with a 12-bit Costas code sequence of [9 5 7 12 6 4 1 8 11 10 2 3], a period of 20.39 µs and tunable frequency range are generated. The cross-correlation result with a time delay of 102.5 µs indicates that the generated Costas-coded LFMWs have excellent pulse-to-pulse coherence. In addition, the bad phase noise performance of the open-loop VCO has a negligible influence on the generated Costas-coded LFMWs. Benefited from employing an open-loop VCO with a fast tuning speed and a broad operation bandwidth, this approach has potential in generating agile broadband multi-format radar waveforms with low phase noise and excellent pulse-to-pulse coherence directly from an OEO.