Haiqing Hao

Imaging flow cytometry allows image-activated cell sorting (IACS) with enhanced feature dimensions in cellular morphology, structure, and composition. However, existing IACS frameworks suffer from the challenges of 3D information loss and processing latency dilemma in real-time sorting operation. Herein, we establish a neuromorphic-enabled video-activated cell sorter (NEVACS) framework, designed to achieve high-dimensional spatiotemporal characterization content alongside high-throughput sorting of particles in wide field of view. NEVACS adopts event camera, CPU, spiking neural networks deployed on a neuromorphic chip, and achieves sorting throughput of 1000 cells/s with relatively economic hybrid hardware solution (~$10 K for control) and simple-to-make-and-use microfluidic infrastructures. Particularly, the application of NEVACS in classifying regular red blood cells and blood-disease-relevant spherocytes highlights the accuracy of using video over a single frame (i.e., average error of 0.99% vs 19.93%), indicating NEVACS’ potential in cell morphology screening and disease diagnosis. Existing image-activated cell sorting tools suffer from the challenges of 3D information loss and processing latency in real-time sorting operations. Here, the authors propose a neuromorphic-enabled video-activated cell sorter (NEVACS) framework, which achieves high-dimensional spatiotemporal characterization content and high-throughput sorting of particles.

A RF (radio frequency) plasma pyrolysis reactor was presented in this paper. Application of this reactor to the pyrolysis treatment of biomass at different operating pressures (3000-8000Pa), with various input powers (1600-2000W) was investigated. Interest was focused on the effect of the pyrolysis conditions on the yield of gas and char, the gas composition as well as the quality of the char. On average, the gas yield can reach 66 wt% of the biomass feed at the input power 1800W and operating pressure 5000 Pa. The total content of CO and H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> in the gas product reached 76 vol.% on a nitrogen-free basis. Thus the utilization efficiency is increased after the biomass is converted into gaseous fuel, which has wider applications such as city gas, burning in utility boilers, gas turbines or gas engines to generate electricity.

Pyrolysis of waste tires in thermal plasma is studied for the purpose of power generation and recovering carbon black filler. The results of a series of experiments have shown that the main components of the gaseous product are H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> , CO, C <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> , CH <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> , and C <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> ; the heat value of the gas is about 5-9 MJ/Nm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> , therefore, it can be used as an efficient fuel source for industrial processes such as power generation. The solid product contains more than 80 wt% elemental carbon, has a surface area of about 65 m <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> /g, and is referred to as pyrolytic carbon black (CBp). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis has revealed that the CBp has mainly graphitic carbon structure similar to those of commercial carbon black. Thus thermal plasma pyrolysis is potentially a useful way of treating waste tires for power generation and carbon black recovery.

China is an agricultural country with fertile land, plenty of water resources, livestock, forestry resources, and agricultural residues. This paper analyses the potential biomass supply in the China as (1) agricultural residues, (2) fuelwood saving: (3)animal manure. The objective of this study is to make a more detailed assessment of the potential in China than previously undertaken. Year 2007 will be the base year for the assessment. The result indicated that China had abundant biomass resource and biomass is found to be one of the promising area.