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Lavandula angustifolia(English lavender) is commercially important not only as an ornamental species but also as a major source of fragrances. To better understand the genomic basis of chemical diversity in lavender, we sequenced, assembled, and annotated the ‘Munstead’ cultivar ofL. angustifolia.

A total of 80 Gb of Oxford Nanopore Technologies reads was used to assemble the ‘Munstead’ genome using the Canu genome assembler software. Following multiple rounds of error correction and scaffolding using Hi-C data, the final chromosome-scale assembly represents 795,075,733 bp across 25 chromosomes with an N50 scaffold length of 31,371,815 bp. Benchmarking Universal Single Copy Orthologs analysis revealed 98.0% complete orthologs, indicative of a high-quality assembly representative of genic space. Annotation of protein-coding sequences revealed 58,702 high-confidence genes encoding 88,528 gene models. Access to the ‘Munstead’ genome will permit comparative analyses within and among lavender accessions and provides a pivotal species for comparative analyses within Lamiaceae.

 

Nonverbal communication, such as body language, facial expressions, and hand gestures, is crucial to human communication as it conveys more information about emotions and attitudes than spoken words. However, individuals who are blind or have low-vision (BLV) may not have access to this method of communication, leading to asymmetry in conversations. Developing systems to recognize nonverbal communication cues (NVCs) for the BLV community would enhance communication and understanding for both parties. This paper focuses on developing a multimodal computer vision system to recognize and detect NVCs. To accomplish our objective, we are collecting a dataset focused on nonverbal communication cues. Here, we propose a baseline model for recognizing NVCs and present initial results on the Aff-Wild2 dataset. Our baseline model achieved an accuracy of 68% and a F1-Score of 64% on the Aff-Wild2 validation set, making it comparable with previous state of the art results. Furthermore, we discuss the various challenges associated with NVC recognition as well as the limitations of our current work. 

Colloidal Ag particles decorated with Fe 3 O 4 islands can be electrochemically or photochemically activated as inverse catalysts for C(sp 2 )–H heteroarylation. The silver–iron oxide (SIO) particles are reduced into redox-active forms by cathodic charging at mild potentials or by short-term light exposure, and can be reused multiple times by magnetic cycling without further activation. A negative shift in the reduction peak is attributed to an overpotential produced by surface Fe 3 O 4 which separates residual Ag ions or clusters from bulk silver. The catalytic efficiency of SIO is maintained even with acid degradation, which can be countered simply by adding water to the reaction medium. 

Highly promising performance for future computing applications is achieved based on a new materials design. 

Metamaterials present great potential in the applications of solar cells and nanophotonics, such as super lenses and other meta devices, owing to their superior optical properties. In particular, hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) with exceptional optical anisotropy offer improved manipulation of light–matter interactions as well as a divergence in the density of states and thus show enhanced performances in related fields. Recently, the emerging field of oxide–metal vertically aligned nanocomposites (VANs) suggests a new approach to realize HMMs with flexible microstructural modulations. In this work, a new oxide–metal metamaterial system, CeO 2 –Au, has been demonstrated with variable Au phase morphologies from nanoparticle-in-matrix (PIM), nanoantenna-in-matrix, to VAN. The effective morphology tuning through deposition background pressure, and the corresponding highly tunable optical performance of three distinctive morphologies, were systematically explored and analyzed. A hyperbolic dispersion at high wavelength has been confirmed in the nano-antenna CeO 2 –Au thin film, proving this system as a promising candidate for HMM applications. More interestingly, a new and abnormal in-plane epitaxy of Au nanopillars following the large mismatched CeO 2 matrix instead of the well-matched SrTiO 3 substrate, was discovered. Additionally, the tilting angle of Au nanopillars, α , has been found to be a quantitative measure of the balance between kinetics and thermodynamics during the depositions of VANs. All these findings provide valuable information in the understanding of the VAN formation mechanisms and related morphology tuning. 

Heterogenous deformation enables exceptional plasticity in a strong and ductile gradient nanostructured steel. 

Hyperbolic metamaterials (HMM) possess significant anisotropic physical properties and tunability and thus find many applications in integrated photonic devices. HMMs consisting of metal and dielectric phases in either multilayer or vertically aligned nanocomposites (VAN) form are demonstrated with different hyperbolic properties. Herein, self‐assembled HfO₂‐Au/TiN‐Au multilayer thin films, combining both the multilayer and VAN designs, are demonstrated. Specifically, Au nanopillars embedded in HfO₂and TiN layers forming the alternative layers of HfO₂‐Au VAN and TiN‐Au VAN. The HfO₂and TiN layer thickness is carefully controlled by varying laser pulses during pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Interestingly, tunable anisotropic physical properties can be achieved by adjusting the bi‐layer thickness and the number of the bi‐layers. Type II optical hyperbolic dispersion can be obtained from high layer thickness structure (e.g., 20 nm), while it can be transformed into Type I optical hyperbolic dispersion by reducing the thickness to a proper value (e.g., 4 nm). This new nanoscale hybrid metamaterial structure with the three‐phase VAN design shows great potential for tailorable optical components in future integrated devices.