Phytoliths and biomolecular components extracted from ancient plant remains from Chang’an (Xi’an, the city where the Silk Road begins) and Ngari (Ali) in western Tibet, China, show that the tea was grown 2100 years ago to cater for the drinking habits of the Western Han Dynasty (207BCE-9CE), and then carried toward central Asia by ca.200CE, several hundred years earlier than previously recorded. The earliest physical evidence of tea from both the Chang’an and Ngari regions suggests that a branch of the Silk Road across the Tibetan Plateau, was established by the second to third century CE.

The peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) problem is a main challenge for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems. In this paper, the proposed scheme reduces the PAPR with low complexity, by utilizing the time-domain kernel matrix to generate the peak reduction signals. With the time-domain kernel generated only once or offline, there are no IFFT/FFT operations in the peak reduction iterations. Also, we performed simulations and results indicated that the algorithm converges to the threshold in about three iterations, so the hardware complexity and time complexity of this scheme are relatively low to achieve a comparable peak reduction as some other tone reservation schemes.Index Terms-Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), time-domain kernel, tone reservation (TR).

The weak symmetry relationship between the relative error and solution norm holds in our developed nonnegative least-squares truncated singular value decomposition method. By using this relationship to specify the optimal regularization parameters, we applied the proposed algorithm to recover particle size distribution from dynamic light scattering (DLS) data. Simulated results and experimental validity demonstrate that the proposed method, which compliments the CONTIN algorithm, might serve as a powerful and simple approach to the inverse problem in DLS.

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Sensitivity is an important performance index for evaluating surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensors. Sensitivity enhancement has always been a hot topic. It is found that the different refractive indices of samples require different combinations of prism and metal film for better sensitivity. Furthermore, the sensitivity can be enhanced by coating two-dimensional (2D) materials with appropriate layers on the metal film. At this time, it is necessary to choose the best film configuration to enhance sensitivity. With the emergence of more and more 2D materials, selecting the best configuration manually is becoming more complicated. Compared with the traditional manual method of selecting materials and layers, this paper proposes an optimization method based on a genetic algorithm to quickly and effectively find the optimal film configuration that enhances sensitivity. By using this method, not only can the optimal number of layers of 2D materials be determined quickly, but also the optimal configuration can be conveniently found when many materials are available. The maximum sensitivity can reach 400°/RIU after optimization. The method provided application value for the relevant researchers seeking to enhance sensitivity.

Wavelength calibration is an important step in charge-coupled device (CCD) spectrometers. In this paper, an accurate calibration method is proposed. A model of a line profile spectrum is built at the beginning, followed by noise reduction, bandwidth correction, and automatic peak-seeking treatment. Experimental tests are conducted on the USB4000 spectrometer with a mercury-argon calibration light source. Compared with the traditional method, the results show that this wavelength calibration procedure obtains higher accuracy and the deviations are within 0.1 nm.

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