The rise of three-dimensional (3D) printing technology has changed the face of dentistry over the past decade. 3D printing is a versatile technique that allows the fabrication of fully automated, tailor-made treatment plans, thereby delivering personalized dental devices and aids to the patients. It is highly efficient, reproducible, and provides fast and accurate results in an affordable manner. With persistent efforts among dentists for refining their practice, dental clinics are now acclimatizing from conventional treatment methods to a fully digital workflow to treat their patients. Apart from its clinical success, 3D printing techniques are now employed in developing haptic simulators, precise models for dental education, including patient awareness. In this narrative review, we discuss the evolution and current trends in 3D printing applications among various areas of dentistry. We aim to focus on the process of the digital workflow used in the clinical diagnosis of different dental conditions and how they are transferred from laboratories to clinics. A brief outlook on the most recent manufacturing methods of 3D printed objects and their current and future implications are also discussed.

Data center interconnect has stimulated the research on the short-reach communications with data rate beyond 100G per wavelength and transmission distance of hundreds of kilometers. Aiming at the high-speed short-reach communications, we recently proposed the Stokes vector direct detection (SV-DD) that realizes a linear complex optical channel similar to the coherent detection. In SV-DD, the transmitter places the signal and the carrier onto the orthogonal polarizations, while the receiver achieves the polarization insensitive 3-D detection in the Stokes space with the digital signal processing enabled polarization acquisition. SV-DD achieves 100% spectral efficiency with reference to the single-polarization coherent detection, and simultaneously attains the receiver phase diversity and the cancellation of photo-detection nonlinearity. We experimentally demonstrate the SV-DD signal transmission over 160-km standard single-mode fiber at data rates of both 80 and 160-Gb/s. SV-DD significantly decreases both the system hardware and DSP complexity compared with the polarization multiplexed coherent detection, while increases the system spectrum efficiency compared with the conventional intensity modulation direct detection. Therefore, SV-DD offers a cost-effective solution for the 100G per wavelength and beyond metropolitan area network (MAN). It also owns the potentials to be deployed in the future high-speed passive optical network (PON).

The explosive growth of the traffic between data centers has led to an urgent demand for high-performance short-reach optical interconnects with data rate beyond 100G per wavelength and transmission distance over hundreds of kilometers. Since direct detection (DD) provides a cost-efficient solution for short-reach interconnects, various advanced modulation formats have been intensively studied to improve the performance of DD for high-performance short-reach optical interconnects. In this paper, we report the recent progress on the advanced DD modulation formats that provide superior electrical spectral efficiency (SE) and transmission reach beyond that of simple direct modulation (DM) based direct detection (DM/DD). We first provide a review of the current advanced modulation formats for high-performance short-reach optical interconnects. Among these formats, Stokes vector direct detection (SV-DD) achieves the highest electrical spectrum efficiency, presenting itself as a promising candidate for future short-reach networks. We then expound some novel algorithms to achieve high-performance SV-DD systems under severe impairments of either polarization mode dispersion (PMD) or polarization dependent loss (PDL).

Along with massive applications of power electronic equipment and non-linear loads, harmonic pollutions are becoming more serious than ever. This paper describes a novel electromagnetic coupling reactor based passive power filter with dynamic tuning to quickly eliminate harmony. Firstly, the structure and mathematic model of electromagnetic coupling reactor are presented; secondly, the employed parameters, including electromagnetic coupling reactance converter, primary winding coil, and secondary winding coil are designed based on a stable structure of data; then, the test plat of passive dynamic tunable filter is introduced, as well as the performance test. According to the experimental results, the newly designed electromagnetic coupling reactor can effectively eliminate the harmonies generated by the nonlinear load, greatly reducing the harm caused by harmonics on the grid. By fine-tuning the electromagnetic coupling reactor, the dissonance caused by the change of capacitance and other issues can be effectively solved. Finally, the detailed discussion of this paper is presented, and challenges and new future research are discussed.

Non-contact human-computer interactions (HCI) based on hand gestures have been widely investigated. Here, we present a novel method to locate the real-time position of the hand using the electrostatics of the human body. This method has many advantages, including a delay of less than one millisecond, low cost, and does not require a camera or wearable devices. A formula is first created to sense array signals with five spherical electrodes. Next, a solving algorithm for the real-time measured hand position is introduced and solving equations for three-dimensional coordinates of hand position are obtained. A non-contact real-time hand position sensing system was established to perform verification experiments, and the principle error of the algorithm and the systematic noise were also analyzed. The results show that this novel technology can determine the dynamic parameters of hand movements with good robustness to meet the requirements of complicated HCI.

We propose a scheme for a direct-detection optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system based on blockwise signal-phase-switching (SPS). Experimental demonstration of 61 Gbits/s SPS direct-detection optical OFDM signal transmission over 80 km standard single-mode-fiber was successfully achieved with single polarization and a single photodetector.

This paper reports a computational demonstration and analysis of an innovative counter-flowbased microfluidic unit and its upscaling network, which is compatible with previously developed dual-electrolyte protocols and numerous other electrochemical applications. This design consists of multidimensional T-shaped microchannels that allow the effective formation of primary and secondary counter-flow patterns, which are beneficial for both high-performance regenerative H2/O2 redox cells and flow batteries at a low electrolyte flow-rate operation. This novel design demonstrates the potential to achieve high overall energy throughput and reactivity because of the full utilization of all available reaction sites. A computational study on energy and pressure loss mechanism during scale-out is also examined, thereby advancing the realization of an economical electrolyte-recycling scheme. 1 The short version of the paper was presented at ICAE2017, Aug 21-24, Cardiff, UK. This paper is a substantial extension of the short version of the conference paper. a anode p parasitic reaction c cathode ref reference i species i Other efforts, such as two-cell planar array [15], vertical stack [16], and multiplexing flow distribution [17], have suffered from low applicability to practical situations, where the fluid maldistribution is far more complex. Therefore, a new upscaling path needs to be developed for mass production and industrial applications. This could be achieved based on the above-mentioned microfluidic platform; our group [18] and others [19] have demonstrated its capability for efficient system scale-out.Based on these genetic mechanisms, a microfluidic multidimensional modularization design will be proposed. Performance losses during the scale-out will be minimized by an effective liquid-redistribution strategy. A two-dimensional shunt serpentine (Figure 1(b)) and upscaling networks (Figure 1(c)) will then be numerically established. 6 The system is isothermal and in a steady state. This is a reasonable assumption for an electrochemical cell with flowing electrolytes; The electrolyte is an incompressible Newtonian fluid, and the flow is laminar; The gas is weakly compressible, and the flow in the gas channel is laminar; The side walls of the cell are impermeable, and the slip is zero; A zero-concentration gradient along the cell cross-section, as the no-slip condition and zero species flux at the left and right walls of the cell, is assumed; The fluid's properties, including density and viscosity, are not influenced by the solute concentration.It should be noted that in a microfluidic scenario, the Knudsen number is less than 0.001 [20], hence the validity of a non-slip condition should be applied. The structured quadrilateral grid was

Power electronics-based apparatuses absorb non-sinusoidal currents. These are considered non-linear and non-symmetrical loads for the power grid, and they generate a harmonic current. The dynamic tuning passive filter (DTPF) is one of the best solutions for improving power quality and filtering out harmonic currents to get a symmetrical current waveform. The electrical parameters of DTPF can influence its absorbing harmonic current, tuning performance, and cost. In this paper, a method for designing and optimizing the electrical parameters of dynamic tuning passive filter is proposed in order to improve the effectiveness of DTPF and the symmetry level of the power source. First, according to the characteristics of the harmonic source, the design technical indicators of DTPF, and its topology, the design procedure for the electrical parameters of DTPF is proposed. Second, based on detailed analysis of the test results, the range of the harmonic current absorption coefficient is determined. Third, the range of the relationship coefficient is determined by analyzing the impact of the filter capacitor’s capacity on the filter performance. Fourth, the calculation method for the electrical parameters of DTPF is devised. Finally, the validity of this method is verified by several engineering cases, and the electrical parameters of the filter capacitor and electromagnetic coupling reactance converter (ECRC) under the lowest total cost are simulated and optimized. Our approach can optimize the electrical parameters of DTPF and improve the harmonic suppression effectiveness, thus leading to a more symmetrical waveform and successfully avoiding power grid problems. The research results of this study not only provide a basis for the design of ECRC, but also lay a foundation for the machining DTPF.