An experiment was conducted to characterise N use efficiency and quantify urea fluxes in yaks offered four levels of dietary N (1.43%, 1.97%, 2.45% and 2.90% of diet DM) in a 4 · 4 Latin square design. The incremental increase in N intake linearly increased N retention (P = 0.003) and the excretion of urinary N (P < 0.001), but no difference (P > 0.05) in faecal N excretion was observed in growing yaks fed any of the four diets. Microbial N production had quadratic (P < 0.001) responses to dietary N, characterised by the highest microbial N production occurring in the 1.97% N diet (P < 0.05). As the N content of the diet increased, the urinary excretion of urea increased from 13% to 27% of urea entry rate (quadratic, P < 0.001), whereas gastrointestinal entry urea returned to ornithine cycling decreased from 46% to 40% (linear, P < 0.001), and the gastrointestinal entry urea used for anabolism increased from 50% to 56% (linear, P < 0.001). Gastrointestinal entry urea incorporated into bacterial N decreased linearly (P < 0.001) with incremental increase in N intake, and the greatest concentration (23.5%) of bacterial N originating from plasma urea N was in yaks fed the 1.43% N diet. As much as 87% of the urea synthesised in the liver was returned to the gastrointestinal tract when the yaks were fed a diet with 1.43% N (1.1 times the maintenance N level). Moreover, constantly greater urea production than the intake of digestible N, and the gastrointestinal-urea clearance than the kidney-urea clearance were observed, respectively, in the growing yaks, regardless of the level of N intake. These results suggest that yaks might be more efficient at utilising N under harsh environment than are cattle.

In this work, we design a novel polarization converter based on a metasurface with double w-shaped unit cells. The proposed polarization converter can convert linearly polarized incident waves into its cross polarized reflective counterparts in a very wide band with high efficiency. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed polarization converter can achieve a 90° polarization rotation, while the polarization conversion ratio (PCR) is above 90% in the frequency range from 8.44 GHz to 24.96 GHz, and the relative bandwidth can be up to 99%. The measured results agree well with simulation results. The designed double w-shaped metasurface has a very simple geometry, and can realize a highly-efficient and broadband polarization rotation. Therefore, it has practical applications in wireless communication systems, imaging, radar stealth technology, and other fields.

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In this paper, we propose an ultra-broadband metamaterial absorber based on the connected cylindrical holes (CCHs). The designed structure can achieve more than 90% absorptivity under normal incidence, ranging from ultraviolet to near-infrared (i.e. from 300 nm to 1260 nm), and the peak absorption is up to 99.73%. The excitation of surface plasmon resonance combined with air-slots modes leads to this broadband absorption. For both the TE and TM polarizations, the polarization insensitivity and angle insensitivity are discussed. In order to clearly figure out the physical absorption mechanism, the distribution of electric and magnetic fields is analyzed. In addition, we also demonstrate that the nanostructures absorption performance can be turned by structural parameters. This ultra-broadband metamaterial absorber has application prospects in solar cells, infrared detection and conversion of photovolatics.

A full-spectrum near-unity solar absorber has attracted substantial attention in recent years, and exhibited broad application prospects in solar thermal energy conversion. In this paper, an all-metal titanium (Ti) pyramid structured metamaterial absorber (MMA) is proposed to achieve broadband absorption from the near-infrared to ultraviolet, exhibiting efficient solar-selective absorption. The simulation results show that the average absorption rate in the wavelength range of 200–2620 nm reached more than 98.68%, and the solar irradiation absorption efficiency in the entire solar spectrum reached 98.27%. The photothermal conversion efficiency (PTCE) reached 95.88% in the entire solar spectrum at a temperature of 700 °C. In addition, the strong and broadband absorption of the MMA are due to the strong absorption of local surface plasmon polariton (LSPP), coupled results of multiple plasmons and the strong loss of the refractory titanium material itself. Additionally, the analysis of the results show that the MMA has wide-angle incidence and polarization insensitivity, and has a great processing accuracy tolerance. This broadband MMA paves the way for selective high-temperature photothermal conversion devices for solar energy harvesting and seawater desalination applications.