Search

A novel CoMoO 4 -RuO 2 heterogeneous catalyst with flower-liked morphology was developed as a highly efficient bifunctional oxygen electrocatalyst for Zn-air battery. [Display omitted] Constructing heterogeneous catalysts can significantly boost the electrocatalytic activity due to the improved intrinsic catalytic activity induced by tailored electronic structure and optimized chemisorption to the reaction intermediates. RuO 2 based electrocatalysts are especially attractive due to the high catalytic activity of RuO 2. To reduce the usage of noble metal and improve the catalytic activity of catalyst, CoMoO 4 -RuO 2 micro-flower was synthesized using a facile hydrothermal-calcination method in this work. CoMoO 4 -RuO 2 exhibits a low overpotential of 177 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and a high half-wave potential of 0.858 V for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Moreover, the Zn-air battery assembled using CoMoO 4 -RuO 2 exhibit shows a high maximum discharge power density of 149 mW cm−2 and a large open circuit voltage of 1.38 V. The good performance can be attributed to the incorporation of RuO 2 , which not only induces extra catalytic active sites, but also forms heterojunction with CoMoO 4 to optimize the electronic structure of CoMoO 4 -RuO 2 , thereby achieving a better equilibrium of absorption and desorption of intermediates. The work provides insights into designing RuO 2 based electrocatalysts for advanced electrocatalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is an important half-reaction in rechargeable metal–air batteries and water splitting devices, and it suffers from slow kinetics due to the multiple step proton-electron coupled process. Therefore, the major challenge for the OER is to develop durable and low-cost electrocatalysts with high catalytic performance. Herein, a ternary metal CoNiFe subacetate nano prism (CoNiFe NP) was synthesized by a one-step hydrothermal method, with the aim of accelerating the water dissociation and improving the reaction rate using the synergy of the ternary metal. The results show that the electrocatalytic performance of the ternary metal CoNiFe layered double hydroxide is significantly improved compared with the binary metal and single metal catalysts. In particular, the overpotential of the prepared CoNiFe NP for the OER at 10 mA cm−2 is as low as 292 mV, and the Tafel slope is 75.6 mV dec−1. This work provides a new platform for the design of medium-entropy electrocatalysts using the interaction of polymetallic components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This study endeavored to investigate the role of DOCK8 in modulating the immune function triggered by sepsis. Methods: Expression of DOCK8 in the whole blood of sepsis patients and its enrichment pathways were assayed by bioinformatics. Pearson analysis was used to predict the relationship between glycolytic signaling pathway and its relevance to neutrophil function in sepsis. A sepsis mouse model was then built by performing cecal ligation and puncture treatment on male mice. Neutrophils were isolated, and their purity was tested by flow cytometry. Neutrophils were then stimulated by lipopolysaccharide to build a sepsis cell model. Next, quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and CCK‐8 were applied to test the expression of DOCK8 and cell viability, western blot to assay the expression of HK‐2, PKM2, and LDHA proteins, ELISA to measure the concentrations of TNF‐α, IL‐1β, and IL‐6, Transwell to detect the chemotaxis of neutrophils and flow cytometry to detect the phagocytic activity of neutrophils. Finally, in different treatment groups, we used Seahorse XF 96 to analyze the extracellular acidification rate (ECAR) of sepsis cells and used enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay to detect the contents of pyruvic acid, lactic acid, and ATP in sepsis cells. Results: DOCK8 was downregulated in sepsis blood and activated neutrophils. Aerobic glycolysis was positively correlated with sepsis. Activated neutrophils promoted the expression of inflammatory factors TNF‐α, IL‐1β, and IL‐6. Low expression of DOCK8 facilitated the proliferation, chemotaxis, and phagocytic activity of sepsis cells and promoted the expression of inflammatory factors. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that DOCK8 was enriched in the glycolytic signaling pathway. Low expression of DOCK8 induced ECAR, promoted the protein expression of HK‐2, PKM2 and LDHA, and favored the increase of pyruvate, lactate, and ATP contents. While 2‐DG treatment could restore these effects. Conclusion: DOCK8 may inhibit sepsis‐induced neutrophil immune function by regulating aerobic glycolysis and causing excessive inflammation, which helps to explore potential therapeutic targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the acceleration of industrialization, Cd pollution has emerged as a major threat to soil ecosystem health and food safety. Hyperaccumulating plants like Sedum alfredii Hance are considered to be used as part of an effective strategy for the ecological remediation of Cd polluted soils. This study delved deeply into the physiological, transcriptomic, and metabolomic responses of S. alfredii under cadmium (Cd) stress when treated with exogenous salicylic acid (SA). We found that SA notably enhanced the growth of S. alfredii and thereby increased absorption and accumulation of Cd, effectively alleviating the oxidative stress caused by Cd through upregulation of the antioxidant system. Transcriptomic and metabolomic data further unveiled the influence of SA on photosynthesis, antioxidant defensive mechanisms, and metal absorption enrichment pathways. Notably, the interactions between SA and other plant hormones, especially IAA and JA, played a central role in these processes. These findings offer us a comprehensive perspective on understanding how to enhance the growth and heavy metal absorption capabilities of hyperaccumulator plants by regulating plant hormones, providing invaluable strategies for future environmental remediation efforts. • Exogenous SA significantly enhances the growth, stress tolerance, and Cd uptake/accumulation in S. alfredii. • S. alfredii exhibited the best Cd remediation when treated with 100 μmol/L SA. • SA upregulated genes related to photosynthesis, antioxidant systems, and Cd uptake/accumulation. • The interaction of plant hormones is crucial for the growth, stress resilience, and Cd uptake in S. alfredii. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lineaments refer to the natural lines on the remote sensing images, which may reflect geological structure elements. However, the linear traces on the optical satellite images taken by the same sensor at different time phases vary significantly. This paper analyzed the characteristics differences of the lineaments extracted from two OLI5 near-infrared (NIR) images taken in May and October in the Huize mining area through the fractal model. When wavelet transformation reaches Level 3, lots of interferences has been effectively filtered out, and fractal dimension value decreases obviously, then the remaining line segments with good connectivity begin to appear in a specific shape. Since the solar azimuth angle of the October OLI during imaging was almost perpendicular to the general strike of the geological structures (NE-strike), and the vegetation growth state was relatively consistent, the lineaments of Level 3 are mainly NE-strike and contain few boundaries that are derived from vegetation differential growth, which makes the morphological structure of the lineaments greatly different from those extracted from the May OLI image. Although these differences are difficult to be reflected in the fractal dimension contour maps of lineaments and NE-strike lineaments, the pattern of high-value anomaly areas in the fractal dimension ratio contour map of NE-strike lineaments (October) correspond well in space with the main faults and the geomorphic characteristics of the sharp turn section of Niulan River. The research results show that the potentialities for lineaments extraction from the optical images taken at different time phases are obviously different, and it depends on illumination condition and vegetation phenological characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen serves as a potent and environment friendly energy source, and developing high performance hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalysts is crucial for water splitting. In this work, Pt nanoparticles incorporated NiO nanoflower (Pt-NiO) is synthesized using an ethylene glycol reduction method. The incorporation of Pt not only introduces extra high active sites, but also induces strong interaction between NiO and Pt. Meanwhile, the NiO nanoflower support enables the dispersion of Pt and ensure high electrochemically surface area as well as fast mass transport, which greatly improves catalytic activity of Pt-NiO. Pt-NiO-3 only requires a small overpotential of 26 mV to reach 10 mA cm−2 and the Tafel slope is only 19.49 mV dec−1. In addition, the mass activity can achieve 2000 mA mg Pt −1 at an overpotential of 63 mV. Moreover, obvious bubbles can be observed in the assembled H-type for overall water splitting, and the Faraday efficiency is close to 100 %, highlighting the superiority of Pt-NiO-3. This work provides insights for designing high effective electrocatalysts for HER. [Display omitted] • Pt nanoparticles incorporated NiO nanoflower is synthesized using an ethylene glycol reduction method. • The incorporation of Pt induces strong interaction between NiO and Pt. • NiO nanoflower enables high electrochemically surface area and fast mass transport. • Pt-NiO-3 only requires a small overpotential of 26 mV to reach 10 mA cm−2. • The mass activity of Pt-NiO-3 is 2000 mA mg Pt −1 at an overpotential of 63 mV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lineaments whose dominant azimuth reflects the basic framework of regional structure are mainly related to faults, but their spatial morphology and characteristics are different at different scales. The changing characteristics of multi-scale lineaments extracted by wavelet edge detection are quantitatively analyzed through image characteristics, azimuth characteristics, histogram, box-plot and paired-samples T test. As the result, the difference of "proportion of NE structure" in different areas becomes more and more significant with the increasing of wavelet transformation scale. Three geological variables extracted based on wavelet edge image of Level 3, "proportion of NE structure", "density of NE structure" and "entropy", are synthesize by factor analysis, then the results show that the distribution of the values referring to the "dominance of NE structure" are basically consistent with the structure framework of Huize lead-zinc mine area, that is, the dominant position of NE lineaments in the triangular region enclosed by the large main faults such as Kuangshanchang Fault and Qilinchang Fault is the most obvious. The potential relation between remote sensing lineaments and actual geological structure can be found through multi-scale edge detection and characteristics analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lineaments refer to the linear or curvilinear textures on remote sensing image, whose general spatial distribution characteristics are often the response of deep geological sturcture at the surface. Firstly, we use wavelet modulus maximum transformation to detect the edges with 4 scales on Landsat – 8 OLI B5 image and analyze their multi-scale characteristics. As the result, it is determined that the optimal scale of edge detection is 4, and the outline that consist of the edge pixels is roughly corresponding to the geological structure of mine area. Thus the incomplete lineaments have been extracted by using the 2D otsu algorithm. Secondly, the hillshade map generated based on DEM is processed to generate binarized linear shadow. Finally, the linear shadow is superimposed on the lineaments preliminarily extracted to obtain the optimized lineaments. Experiment results show that, based on the method, there are some deformation and displacement between the lineaments extracted and the actual geological structure, and it fail to effectively extract Qilinchang Fault, but lineaments are in good correspondence with Kuangshanchang Fault, Dongtou Fault and Niulan River Fault, which are basically in accord with the geological structure framework of the mine area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Hollow CoVO x /Ag heterojunction was synthesized for OER. • The interaction of CoVO x and Ag nanoparticles regulated the electronic structure. • The extrinsic catalytic activity of CoVO x /Ag is enhanced due to the hollow structure. • The OER overpotential for CoVO x /Ag-5 at 10 mA cm−2 is only 247 mV. • The catalyst can enable full water splitting with 100% Faraday efficiency. Developing high-active and inexpensive electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is very important in the field of water splitting. The catalytic performance of electrocatalysts can be significantly improved by optimizing the electronic structure and designing suitable nanostructure. In this work, we represent the synthesis of hollow CoVO x /Ag-5 for OER. Due to the interaction of CoVO x and Ag nanoparticles, the electronic structure is optimized to improve the intrinsic catalytic activity. Additionally, the extrinsic catalytic activity of CoVO x /Ag is enhanced by the abundant active sites from the hollow structure. As a result, the CoVO x /Ag-5 demonstrates significantly enhanced OER catalytic activity with a low overpotential of 247 mV at 10 mA cm−2. In addition, it also exhibits excellent durability, without obvious attenuation in performance after continuous operation for 60 h. Furthermore, the catalyst can enable full water splitting with appropriate 100 % Faraday efficiency, demonstrating its practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to exploit the thermal inertia model to assess the shallow groundwater level distribution, as an attempt to address agricultural water shortage and ecological degradation in arid and semi-arid regions. Apparent thermal inertia (ATI) model is one of the most commonly used and successfully implemented models, whereas in some cases, the scales of the results achieved on different dates are inconsistent, which poses a serious difficulty when monitoring soil moisture over time. To address this restriction, we introduce a soil moisture indicator, called RTI, which derives an approximation of soil thermal inertia, from flexible multi-temporal MODIS observations covering a 2-year period. Taking the Ejina Basin in arid area as an example, to more accurately assess the shallow groundwater level distribution, ATI and RTI models were adopted based on the long time series MODIS data to assess the multi-temporal soil moisture content in the study area. The data of groundwater level measured by observation well and thermal inertia were employed to generate scatter diagrams. Subsequently, a nonlinear equation was developed. Based on the thermal inertia, the temporal and spatial distribution map of the shallow groundwater level in the whole study area was generated with the inverse calculation of the nonlinear equation. It was found that the shallow groundwater level distribution in Ejina Basin tended to be shallower from south to north, as well as from summer to winter. As revealed from the results, both ATI and RTI models can effectively assess the shallow groundwater level in arid areas. The RTI model could better reflect the seasonal changes of soil moisture content and groundwater level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the detection direction on the quality of spectral data was not taken into account, which is catastrophic for some samples where the reflectivity direction was very different. To explore the directional characteristics of mixed pixels reflectivity, we used an ASD FieldSpec3 spectroradiometer to carry out multi-angle spectral measurement experiments in the laboratory, and the direction error model is established. As a result, the proportions of black area (PBA) and the observed azimuths (Φ) will affect the reflectivity of the mixed pixel in the visible light band. It is found that when the PBA is close to 0, the reflectivity distribution of mixed pixels is characterized by the reflected energy reflecting uniformly around the entire hemisphere space. When PBA is close to 1, there is a significant difference in the reflectivity of mixed pixels in 2π space. The direction error model better reflects the reflectivity changes caused by PBA and observed azimuth. The mean absolute error of the estimated reflectivity compared with the measured value is only 0.047. When the PBA is large, the estimation accuracy of the model is higher. When the PBA is small, and the observed azimuth is large, the accuracy of the model is slightly worse. The "two-block" mixed pixel is an ideal sample to satisfy the direction error model, while a dispersed "multi-block" mixed pixel is not applicable to the correction model. When conducting mixed pixel spectral measurement experiment, the influence of the detection azimuth on the spectral reflectivity should be fully considered, which is beneficial to improve the reliability of experiments on multi-angle spectral measurements of mixed pixels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Longchuan River Basin is located in Chuxiong (central Yunnan province, China) that is subject to severe drought. Agriculture is critical to local economy, which can lead to intense agricultural activity. Accordingly, delineating groundwater potential zones and developing usable groundwater resources are required to meet potable and irrigating water demands in the zone. Remote sensing (RS), geographic information system (GIS) and improved fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) were adopted to delineate the groundwater potential zones to assess the groundwater availability in Longchuan River Basin. The surveys of China geological map, Landsat 8 OLI and GDEM Aster satellite images were employed to generate eight thematic layers, i.e., lithology, land use/land cover (LULC), lineaments density, rainfall, slope, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), drainage density and elevation; subsequently, the mentioned layers were converted into raster data in ArcGIS. According to the ability of thematic layer to impact groundwater potential, the mentioned criteria were weighted differently by improved FAHP. Next, a map based on weighted linear combination (WLC) model was generated. Lastly, the groundwater potential zones of study area fell into 'poor' zone, 'moderate' zone and 'good' zone. As revealed from the results of the study, nearly 31.22% of the area exhibited 'good' groundwater potential, approximately 36.46% was terrain exhibiting 'moderate' groundwater potential, and the residual 32.23% were considered to exhibit 'poor' groundwater potential. The results provide more insights, and the groundwater potential zones map can be exploited by local governments for groundwater resources management and exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown that sepsis is implicated in a reduction in the number and function of CD4+ T cells. TCF7 and LEF-1 facilitate early T cell development and lineage selection of CD4+ T cells. However, the function and mechanism of TCF7 and LEF-1 in sepsis are uncharacterized. This study intended to delineate effect of TCF7 and LEF-1 on sepsis and the impact on proliferation of CD4+ T cells in sepsis. A mouse sepsis model was constructed by cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) method. Expression of TCF7 and LEF-1 in sepsis was investigated using bioinformatics analysis and molecular experiments. We then constructed TCF7 and LEF-1 overexpression cell lines to investigate their effects on proliferation, apoptosis, effector activation, and immunosuppressive molecules of CD4+ T cells in sepsis. TCF7 and LEF-1 were downregulated in sepsis. As the duration of sepsis induction increased, the levels of TCF7 and LEF-1 gradually decreased, as did the number of CD4+ T cells. Cell experiments showed that overexpression of TCF7 and LEF-1 enhanced proliferation and effector activation of CD4+ T cells, reduced apoptosis, decreased PD-1 and LAG3 expression, and promoted immune response in sepsis. In conclusion, this study confirmed that downregulation of TCF7 and LEF-1 expression in sepsis inhibited proliferation of CD4+ T cells, leading to immune suppression. This finding suggested that TCF7 and LEF-1 were potential biological targets for sepsis and indicated that immunotherapy aimed at improving CD4+ T cell proliferation may be a new strategy for immune therapy in sepsis patients. • TCF7 and LEF-1 are downregulated in sepsis. • TCF7 and LEF-1 inhibited CD4+T cells activity. • TCF7 and LEF-1 reduced immune response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A kind of Ti–Fe–Ni–C compound powder was prepared by a novel precursor pyrolysis process using ferro-titanium, carbonyl nickel powder and sucrose as raw materials. The powder had a very compact structure and was uniform in particle size. The TiC–Fe36Ni composite coatings were simultaneously in-situ synthesized by Reactive Detonation-gun Spraying (RDS) using these Ti-Fe-Ni-C compound powders. The coatings presented typical morphology of thermal spraying coatings with two different areas: one was the area of TiC distribution where the round fine TiC particles (from 300nm to 1μm) were dispersed in the Fe36Ni alloy matrix; the other was the area of TiC accumulation (from 2 to 4μm). The surface hardness of the composite coating reached about 94 ± 2(HR15N). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]