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A molecular tweezer

Despite their multifaceted advantages, inverted perovskite solar cells (PSCs) still suffer from lower power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) than their regular counterparts, which is largely due to recombination energy losses (

Knowledge distillation(KD) is a common approach to improve model performance in automatic speech recognition (ASR), where a student model is trained to imitate the output behaviour of a teacher model. However, traditional KD methods suffer from teacher label storage issue, especially when the training corpora are large. Although on-the-fly teacher label generation tackles this issue, the training speed is significantly slower as the teacher model has to be evaluated every batch. In this paper, we reformulate the generation of teacher label as a codec problem. We propose a novel Multi-codebook Vector Quantization (MVQ) approach that compresses teacher embeddings to codebook indexes (CI). Based on this, a KD training framework (MVQ-KD) is proposed where a student model predicts the CI generated from the embeddings of a self-supervised pre-trained teacher model. Experiments on the LibriSpeech clean-100 hour show that MVQ-KD framework achieves comparable performance as traditional KD methods (l1, l2), while requiring 256 times less storage. When the full LibriSpeech dataset is used, MVQ-KD framework results in 13.8% and 8.2% relative word error rate reductions (WERRs) for non -streaming transducer on test-clean and test-other and 4.0% and 4.9% for streaming transducer. The implementation of this work is already released as a part of the open-source project icefall., Comment: Submitted to ICASSP 2022

Rich secondary metabolites render black tea its unique flavor and health benefits, making it the most widely consumed tea in the world. Yet, few studies have investigated the differences in secondary metabolites between black-tea varieties and whether secondary metabolites have antidisease activity. Using gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry metabolomics and the Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine Systems Pharmacology Platform database, this study investigated differences in the secondary metabolites of varieties of black tea, including Fuding Dabai (FD), Golden Guanyin (JGY), Golden Peony (JMD), Qianmei 601 (Q601), and Qiancha 1 (Q). Then, the antidisease activity of their secondary metabolites was evaluated. A total of 657 secondary metabolites were identified in the different black-tea varieties. Among them, 183 metabolites had antidisease activity, 113 were key active ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), 73.22% had multiple antidisease activities, and all were mainly flavonoids and phenolic acids. The specific differential metabolites of FD vs JGY, FD vs JMD, FD vs Q, and FD vs Q601 and their disease-resistance activities were (67, 17), (24, 5), (26, 6), and (65, 8), respectively. The main enriched metabolic pathways were phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, flavonoid biosynthesis, and metabolic pathways, with four, four, six, and five key metabolites, respectively. Flavonoid and phenolic acid secondary metabolites were more correlated with antidisease activity and key active TCM ingredients. Conclusion: The types of secondary metabolites were consistent among the different black-tea varieties, while the relative contents differed significantly, with greater differences in secondary metabolites between JGY and Q601. Flavonoid and phenolic acid secondary metabolites were the main contributors to the differences in secondary metabolites and the disease-resistance activity of different black-tea varieties, followed by lignans with coumarins, alkaloids, and tannins also contributing to disease-resistance activity. These findings improve our understanding of the secondary metabolites and health benefits of different varieties of black tea.

The Phytophthora pathogen causes enormous damage to important agricultural plants. This group of filamentous pathogens is phylogenetically distant from fungi, making them difficult to control by most chemical fungicides. Lysobacter enzymogenes OH11 (OH11) is a biocontrol bacterium that secretes HSAF (Heat-Stable Antifungal Factor) as a broad-spectrum antifungal weapon. Here, we showed that OH11 could also control a variety of plant Phytophthora diseases caused by three major oomycetes (P. sojae, P. capsici and P. infestans). We provided abundant evidence to prove that OH11 protected host plants from Phytophthora pathogen infection by inhibiting mycelial growth, digesting cysts, suppressing cyst germination, and eliciting plant immune responses. Interestingly, the former two processes required the presence of HSAF, while the latter two did not. This suggested that L. enzymogenes could prevent Phytophthora infection via multiple previously unknown mechanisms. Therefore, this study showed that L. enzymogenes could serve as a promising alternative resource for promoting plant resistance to multiple Phytophthora pathogens.

Neural Transducer and connectionist temporal classification (CTC) are popular end-to-end automatic speech recognition systems. Due to their frame-synchronous design, blank symbols are introduced to address the length mismatch between acoustic frames and output tokens, which might bring redundant computation. Previous studies managed to accelerate the training and inference of neural Transducers by discarding frames based on the blank symbols predicted by a co-trained CTC. However, there is no guarantee that the co-trained CTC can maximize the ratio of blank symbols. This paper proposes two novel regularization methods to explicitly encourage more blanks by constraining the self-loop of non-blank symbols in the CTC. It is interesting to find that the frame reduction ratio of the neural Transducer can approach the theoretical boundary. Experiments on LibriSpeech corpus show that our proposed method accelerates the inference of neural Transducer by 4 times without sacrificing performance. Our work is open-sourced and publicly available https://github.com/k2-fsa/icefall., Comment: Accepted in INTERSPEECH 2023

Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) suffers from the latency problem when applied to streaming models. We argue that in CTC lattice, the alignments that can access more future context are preferred during training, thereby leading to higher symbol delay. In this work we propose the delay-penalized CTC which is augmented with latency penalty regularization. We devise a flexible and efficient implementation based on the differentiable Finite State Transducer (FST). Specifically, by attaching a binary attribute to CTC topology, we can locate the frames that firstly emit non-blank tokens on the resulting CTC lattice, and add the frame offsets to the log-probabilities. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed delay-penalized CTC, which is able to balance the delay-accuracy trade-off. Furthermore, combining the delay-penalized transducer enables the CTC model to achieve better performance and lower latency. Our work is open-sourced and publicly available https://github.com/k2-fsa/k2., Comment: Accepted in INTERSPEECH 2023

Verbascoside is a kind of phenylpropanoid glycoside derived from multiple medicinal plants, exerting anti-tumor effects in diverse human malignancies. However, the function of Verbascoside on the radiosensitivity of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells remains unknown. Human Huh7 and HepG2 cell lines were treated with Verbascosideis, and cell viability was detected with cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was applied to detect miR-101-3p expression, and Western blot was used to quantify the expression of WEE1 G2 checkpoint kinase (WEE1). Then, CCK-8 and flow cytometry assays were used to detect the proliferation and apoptosis of HCC cells after Verbascoside and X-ray combined treatment, and the expressions of WEE1 and apoptosis-related proteins Bax and Bcl-2 were detected by Western blot. Verbascoside could improve the radiosensitivity of HCC cells in a dose-dependent manner. Verbascoside increased the expression of miR-101-3p but reduced WEE1 expression in HCC cells. Additionally, WEE1 was identified as a target of miR-101-3p. MiR-101-3p inhibition or WEE1 overexpression could reverse the effect of Verbascoside on the viability and apoptosis of HCC cells. Verbascoside increases the radiosensitivity of hepatocellular carcinoma cells via modulating miR-101-3p/WEE1 axis.

Hundreds of C60 derivatives stand out as electrontransporting materials(ETMs), for example, in perovskite solar cells(PSCs), due to their properties on electron extraction or defect passivation. However, it still lacks of guidelines to update C60-based ETMs with excellent photoelectric properties. In this work, crystallographic data of eight C60-based ETMs, including pristine C60 and the well-known PCBM as well as six newly synthesized fullerenes, are analyzed to establish the connections between derivatized structures and photoelectric properties for the typical carbon cluster of C60. In terms of packing centroid-centroid distance between neighboring carbon cages, the crystallographic data are useful for probing photoelectric properties, such as electrochemical properties, electron mobility and photovoltaic performances, and therefore facilitate to design novel C60-based ETMs for PSCs with high performances.

Riboflavin is an essential micronutrient for normal cellular growth and function. Lack of dietary riboflavin is associated with an increased risk for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Previous studies have identified that the human riboflavin transporter SLC52A3a isoform (encoded by SLC52A3) plays a prominent role in esophageal cancer cell riboflavin transportation. Furthermore, SLC52A3 gene single nucleotide polymorphisms rs3746804 (T>C, L267P) and rs3746803 (C >T, T278M) are associated with ESCC risk. However, whether SLC52A3a (p.L267P) and (p.T278M) act in riboflavin transportation in esophageal cancer cell remains inconclusive. Here, we constructed the full-length SLC52A3a protein fused to green fluorescent protein (GFP-SLC52A3a-WT and mutants L267P, T278M, and L267P/T278M). It was confirmed by immunofluorescence-based confocal microscopy that SLC52A3a-WT, L267P, T278M, and L267P/T278M expressed in cell membrane, as well as in a variety of intracellular punctate structures. The live cell confocal imaging showed that SLC52A3a-L267P and L267P/T278M increased the intracellular trafficking of SLC52A3a in ESCC cells. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching of GFP-tagged SLC52A3a meant that intracellular trafficking of SLC52A3a-L267P and L267P/T278M was rapid dynamics process, leading to its stronger ability to transport riboflavin. Taken together, the above results indicated that the rs3746804 (p.L267P) polymorphism promoted intracellular trafficking of SLC52A3a and riboflavin transportation in ESCC cells.

Due to the hugely important roles of neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) and amyloid-β (Aβ) in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the development of multi-target directed ligands (MTDLs) focused on cholinesterase (ChE) and Aβ becomes one of the most attractive strategies for combating AD. To date, numerous preclinical studies toward multifunctional conjugates bearing ChE inhibition and anti-Aβ aggregation have been reported. Noteworthily, most of the reported multifunctional cholinesterase inhibitors are carbamate-based compounds due to the initial properties of carbamate moiety. However, because their easy hydrolysis in vivo and the instability of the compound-enzyme conjugate, the mechanism of action of these compounds is rare. Thus, non-carbamate compounds are of great need for developing novel cholinesterase inhibitors. Besides, given that Aβ accumulation begins to occur 10-15 years before AD onset, modulating Aβ is ineffective only in inhibiting its aggregation but not eliminate the already accumulated Aβ if treatment is started when the patient has been diagnosed as AD. Considering the limitation of current Aβ accumulation modulators in ameliorating cognitive deficits and ineffectiveness of ChE inhibitors in blocking disease progression, the development of a practically valuable strategy with multiple pharmaceutical properties including ChE inhibition and Aβ modulation for treating AD is indispensable. In this review, we focus on summarizing the scaffold characteristics of reported non-carbamate cholinesterase inhibitors with Aβ modulation since 2020, and understanding the ingenious multifunctional drug design ideas to accelerate the pace of obtaining more efficient anti-AD drugs in the future.

In this work, we update the catalog of M-giant stars from the low-resolution spectra of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) Data Release 9. There are 58,076 M giants identified from the classification pipeline with seven temperature subtypes from M0 to M6. The 2471 misclassified non-M-giant stars are white dwarf binaries, early types, and M dwarfs. And the contamination rate is 4.2$\%$ in the M-giants sample. A total of 372 carbon stars were identified by CaH spectral indices, and were further confirmed by the LAMOST spectra. We update the correlation between the $(W1-W2)_0$ color and [M/H] from APOGEE DR17. We calculate the radial velocities of all M giants by applying cross-correlation to the spectra between 8000 and 8950 \AA with synthetic spectra from ATLAS9. Taking star distances less than 4 kpc from Gaia EDR3 as the standard, we refitted the photometric distance relation of M giants. And based on our M-giant stars, we select a group of Sagittarius stream members, whose sky and 3D velocity distributions are well consistent with K-giant Saggitarius stream members found in Yang et al. With our M giants, we find that the disk is asymmetric out to R = 25 kpc, which is 5 kpc further out than detected using K giants., Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1908.01128

A catalog of more than 43,000 M giant stars has been selected by Li et al. from the ninth data release of LAMOST. Using the data-driven method SLAM, we obtain the stellar parameters (Teff, logg, [M/H], [$\alpha$/M]) for all the M giant stars with uncertainties of 57 K, 0.25 dex, 0.16 dex and 0.06 dex at SNR > 100, respectively. With those stellar parameters, we constrain the absolute magnitude in K-band, which brings distance with relative uncertainties around 25% statistically. Radial velocities are also calculated by applying cross correlation on the spectra between 8000 A $\AA$ and 8950 A $\AA$ with synthetic spectra from ATLAS9, which covers the Ca II triplet. Comparison between our radial velocities and those from APOGEE DR17 and Gaia DR3 shows that our radial velocities have a system offset and dispersion around 1 and 4.6 km s$^{-1}$, respectively. With the distances and radial velocities combining with the astrometric data from Gaia DR3, we calculate the full 6D position and velocity information, which are able to be used for further chemo-dynamic studies on the disk and substructures in the halo, especially the Sagittarius Stream., Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, accepted by RAA

To describe and predict the creep deformation of Changsha red loam (including sandy soil and silty clay) in China, an empirical creep model was proposed based on a laboratory consolidation compression test. Two classical soil layers were sampled from the deep foundation pit site and fourteen samples were designed for tests under different loading conditions. Results show that the deformation process illustrates deceleration and stabilization creep with its vertical load lower than 500 kPa, while it may illustrate acceleration with its vertical load higher than 500 kPa. By analyzing the experimental results, the empirical creep model of the red loam was established. Adopting the model to predict the deformation of red loam shows the prediction curves match the actual situation, proving that the model plays a significant role in predicting the creep deformation of Changsha red loam.

Objective: To assess the immunogenicity and safety of the enterovirus 71 vaccine (Vero cell) (EV71 vaccine) and trivalent split-virion influenza vaccine (IIV3). Methods: Healthy infants aged 6–7 months were recruited from Zhejiang Province, Henan Province, and Guizhou Province and randomly assigned to the simultaneous vaccination group, EV71 group, and IIV3 group at a ratio of 1:1:1. Then, 3 mL blood samples were collected before vaccination and 28 days after the second dose of vaccine. Cytopathic effect inhibition assay was used to detect EV71 neutralization antibody, and cytopathic effect inhibition assay was used to detect influenza virus antibody. Results: A total of 378 infants were enrolled and received the first dose of vaccine and were included in the safety analysis, and 350 infants were involved in the immunogenicity analysis. The adverse events rates were 31.75%, 28.57%, and 34.13% in the simultaneous vaccination group, EV71 group, and IIV3 group (p > 0.05), respectively. No vaccine-related serious adverse events were reported. After two doses of EV71 vaccine, the seroconversion rates of EV71 neutralizing antibody were 98.26% and 97.37% in the simultaneous vaccination group and the EV71 group, respectively. After two doses of IIV3, the simultaneous vaccination group and the IIV3 group, respectively, had seroconversion rates of 80.00% and 86.78% for H1N1 antibody, 99.13% and 98.35% for H3N2 antibody, and 76.52% and 80.99% for B antibody. There was no statistically significant difference in the seroconversion rates of influenza virus antibodies between groups (p > 0.05). Conclusions: The coadministration of EV71 vaccine and IIV3 has good safety and immunogenicity in infants aged 6–7 months.

Ecosystem structure determines material circulation, energy flow, and system function. Based on field investigation data in the Sanmen Bay, East China Sea from 2017 to 2018, ecological channel model was constructed by Ecopath, describing energy flow routes and functional characteristics of the Sanmen Bay ecosystem. Results showed that grazing food chain was the main energy circulation channel, and the trophic level of each functional group ranged from 1 to 3.80. Energy flow of the system was mainly concentrated in the first five levels, with an average energy conversion efficiency of 13.0%. Energy conversion efficiency was 12.8% and 14.5% from primary producers and debris, respectively. Connectance index (CI) and system omnivory index (SOI) were 0.40 and 0.24 respectively. Finn's cycling index (FIC) was 0.40, and Finn's mean path length (MPL) was 2.06. The ratio of total primary productivity to total respiration was 13.59. In conclusion, Sanmen Bay ecosystem was immature in material circulation and energy flow. This work is helpful to understand the structural and functional traits of coastal ecosystems in China.生态系统的结构决定生态系统的物质循环、能量流动和系统功能。本研究采用Ecopath模型,根据2017—2018年中国东海三门湾海洋生态实地调查数据,构建了三门湾生态系统的生态通道模型,描述了三门湾生态系统的能流结构,分析了其功能特征。结果显示: 三门湾生态系统营养级范围在1~3.80,能流渠道主要表现为牧食食物链,系统能流结构主要集中在前5个等级,系统平均能量传递效率为13.0%,系统初级生产者的能量传递效率为12.8%,系统碎屑的能量转换效率为14.5%。系统连接指数与系统杂食性指数分别为0.40和0.24,Finn循环指数为0.40,系统的Finn平均路径长度为2.06,总初级生产量与总呼吸量之比为13.59,表明当前三门湾生态系统处于不成熟阶段。本研究有助于理解中国近海港湾生态系统的结构特征和功能特点。.

Based on the data mining technology, the main indications and compatibility rules of Ciliao (BL 32) were analyzed and summarized. The relevant literature was retrieved from the databases of CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, Cochrane Library, SinoMed, Scopus, Web of Science, EMbase and PubMed, from the date of establishment to September 8, 2021. Using the software of SPSS Modeler 18.0 and Gephi0.9.2, the included literature was analyzed by data mining. A total of 218 articles were included, of them, there were 36 articles using single-acupoint prescriptions and 182 articles using compound prescriptions. Acupuncture was the most frequently used intervention of Ciliao (BL 32), followed by electroacupuncture. Dysmenorrhea and labor analgesia were the dominant indications of single-acupoint prescriptions of Ciliao (BL 32), and 9 diseases i.e. dysmenorrhea, urinary incontinence, urinary retention, chronic pelvic inflammatory disease, chronic prostatitis and lumbar disc herniation were the dominant indications of compound prescriptions. The main indications of Ciliao (BL 32) involved diseases of reproductive system, urinary system and waist. There were 92 acupoints in compatibility with Ciliao (BL 32), which were main belonged to the bladder meridian, the conception vessel and the spleen meridian, the most frequently used acupoints were Sanyinjiao (SP 6), Guanyuan (CV 4), Shenshu (BL 23) and Zhongji (CV 3).运用数据挖掘技术分析总结次髎穴的主治病症及腧穴配伍规律。检索自建库至2021年9月8日中国期刊全文数据库（CNKI）、万方数据知识服务平台（Wangfang）、维普资讯中文期刊服务平台（VIP）、Cochrane Library、中国生物医学文献数据库（SinoMed）、Scopus、Web of Science、EMbase及PubMed有关文献资料，运用SPSS Modeler 18.0和Gephi0.9.2软件对纳入文献进行数据挖掘分析。共纳入随机对照试验文献218篇，其中次髎单穴应用文献36篇，配伍他穴应用文献182篇。次髎穴的干预方式以针刺最多，电针次之。单穴主治的优势病症为痛经、分娩镇痛；配伍腧穴主治的优势病症为痛经、尿失禁、尿潴留、慢性盆腔炎、慢性前列腺炎、腰椎间盘突出症等；主治生殖系统疾病、泌尿系统疾病及腰部疾患。次髎配伍腧穴92个，多配伍膀胱经、任脉和脾经的腧穴；其高频配穴为三阴交、关元、肾俞、中极。.

The rate-dependent mechanical properties of a specific geomaterial play a crucial role in engineering design and application. However, there have been very few studies involving rate-dependent mechanical properties of calcareous sand particles. This present investigation aims to study the rate-dependent breakage behavior of calcareous sand particles experimentally and numerically. Experimental tests were conducted under various loading rates. Moreover, the discrete element method was utilized in particle crushing tests to assess the breakage sub-processes. The experimental results reveal that the particle crushing strengths conform to the Weibull distribution. As the loading rates increase, the fragmentation mode changes from primary splitting and successive breaking to severe disintegration, corresponding to the three types of axial force-displacement curves, namely, the quasi-hardening, the slight quasi-softening, and the obvious quasi-softening. The simulation results show that the fractures initiate in the vicinity of contact point between the particle and loading walls, eventually penetrating through the particle along the vertical section of the sample. A higher loading rate may lead to a greater extent of particle breakage. The findings presented in this study may advance the understanding of the rate-dependent mechanical properties of calcareous sands.

Ras-related associated with diabetes (RRAD), a member of the Ras-related GTPase superfamily, is primarily a cytosolic protein that actives in the plasma membrane. RRAD is highly expressed in type 2 diabetes patients and as a biomarker of congestive heart failure. Mounting evidence showed that RRAD is important for the progression and metastasis of tumor cells, which play opposite roles as an oncogene or tumor suppressor gene depending on cancer and cell type. These findings are of great significance, especially given that relevant molecular mechanisms are being discovered. Being regulated in various pathways, RRAD plays wide spectrum cellular activity including tumor cell division, motility, apoptosis, and energy metabolism by modulating tumor-related gene expression and interacting with multiple downstream effectors. Additionally, RRAD in senescence may contribute to its role in cancer. Despite the twofold characters of RRAD, targeted therapies are becoming a potential therapeutic strategy to combat cancers. This review will discuss the dual identity of RRAD in specific cancer type, provides an overview of the regulation and downstream effectors of RRAD to offer valuable insights for readers, explore the intracellular role of RRAD in cancer, and give a reference for future mechanistic studies.

Under the strong influence of climate change and human activities, the frequency and intensity of disturbance events in the forest ecosystem both show significant increasing trends. Pine wood nematode (Bursapherenchus xylophilus, PWN) is one of the major alien invasive species in China, which has rapidly infected the forest and spread. In recent years, its tendency has been to spread from south to north, causing serious losses to Pinus and non-Pinus coniferous forests. It is urgent to carry out remote sensing monitoring and prediction of pine wilt disease (PWD). Taking Anhui Province as the study area, we applied ground survey, satellite-borne optical remote sensing imagery and environmental factor statistics, relying on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform to build a new vegetation index NDFI based on time-series Landsat images to extract coniferous forest information and used a random forest classification algorithm to build a monitoring model of the PWD infection stage. The results show that the proposed NDFI differentiation threshold classification method can accurately extract the coniferous forest range, with the overall accuracy of 87.75%. The overall accuracy of the PWD monitoring model based on random forest classification reaches 81.67%, and the kappa coefficient is 0.622. High temperature and low humidity are conducive to the survival of PWN, which aggravates the occurrence of PWD. Under the background of global warming, the degree of PWD in Anhui Province has gradually increased, and has transferred from the southwest and south to the middle and northeast. Our results show that PWD monitoring and prediction at a regional scale can be realized by using long time-series multi-source remote sensing data, NDFI index can accurately extract coniferous forest information and grasp disease information in a timely manner, which is crucial for effective monitoring and control of PWD.

Background Breast cancer (BC) is the leading cause of tumor-related death in women worldwide, but its pathogenesis is not clear. The efficient screening of new therapeutic targets for BC through bioinformatics and biological experimental techniques has become a hot topic in BC research. Methods The bioinformatics method was used to analyze the gene chips and obtain the hub genes, playing an important role in the development of BC. The biological processes (BP) involved in the hub genes were analyzed by Bingo, and the impact of each hub gene on disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in BC patients was evaluated in the Kaplan-Meier Plotter database. The expression of DNAJB4, the hub gene with the greatest degree and having an effect on the prognosis of BC patients, was detected in BC cell lines and clinicopathological specimens. And DNAJB4 was selected for further biological experiments and clinical prognosis verification. Results Ten hub genes including DNAJB4, the greatest degree genes, were found by bioinformatics analysis of BC gene chips. DNAJB4 expressions in both BC cell lines and clinicopathological specimens were detected and the results showed that DNAJB4 was significantly down-regulated in BC cell lines and tissues. After interfering with the expression of DNAJB4, it was found that the invasion and migration ability of MDA-MB-231 cell line was significantly enhanced in vitro. The clinical survival data of BC patients showed that patients with high DNAJB4 expression had longer DFS. Conclusions DNAJB4 may be a tumor suppressor gene in BC as it could regulate invasion and migration of BC cells and its expression level is related to the prognosis of BC patients. Nevertheless, further researches are still necessary to verify its role in BC so as to provide evidences for clinical guidance regarding diagnosis and treatment.

Plasma can be used to effectively remove coke from a metal surface. The plasma etching conditions of coke and emission spectrum characteristics on the metal surface in a complex structure can be determined in real-time using the flexible optical fiber of an emission spectrometer. In this study, the glow discharge hydrogen plasma etching characteristics of a graphite sheet covering Cu and Fe electrodes were investigated. Methane plasma and a bare Cu electrode without graphite were used to conduct experiments for comparison. The cathode was heavily etched owing to the chemical and physical reactions of abundant H and other active species. Many hydrocarbon particle shells with fuzzy boundaries of multilayer graphite were observed on the ground electrode as black dots with diameters less than 1 micron. The cracking reaction of etching process in the case of hydrogen plasma with graphite electrodes plays a leading role, but polymerization reaction is dominant for the methane plasma with bare Cu electrodes. Significant excitation peaks of the emission spectrum are observed in regions centered at 388 and 776 nm for the etching of carbon-rich electrodes in hydrogen-rich plasma. Different hydrocarbon and metal substrate bonds can exist even under strong etching conditions.

In situ cross-linking encapsulation has been demonstrated to be an efficient strategy for enhancing the humidity stability of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). In this study, a novel cross-linkable fullerene derivative, namely 1-(p-benzoate-(p-methylvinylbenzene)-indolino[2,3][60] fullerene (FPPS), was readily synthesized from commercially available building blocks in two steps. This FPPS was employed as an interfacial modifier on perovskite surfaces in inverted planar p–i–n PSCs. Owing to the fast interfacial charge extraction and efficient trap passivation, PSCs based on the cross-linked FPPS (C-FPPS) exhibited excellent performance. The PSCs had a top-performing power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 17.82% with negligible hysteresis, compared to the control devices without C-PFFS (16.99%). Moreover, the strong water resistance of the C-FPPS interfacial layer distinctly enhances the ambient stability of PSC devices, exhibiting a t80 (the time required to reach 80% of the initial PCE) of 300 h under high-humidity conditions. This significantly surpasses the control devices, whose t80 was only 130 h. These results demonstrate that cross-linkable fullerene derivatives can be promising interfacial materials for designing high-efficiency, hysteresis-free, air-stable PSCs.

Due to the partially reduced π-conjugation of the fullerene cage, multi-functionalized fullerene derivatives exhibit remarkable fluorescent properties compared to pristine fullerenes, which have high potential for application in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). In this study two multi-functionalized C

Oesophageal replacement by colonic interposition remains a major challenge due to its complexity and high incidence of complications; here we applied the two-stage operation strategy to oesophageal replacement by colonic interposition in high-risk oesophageal cancer patients following gastrectomy.We performed a retrospective analysis on the data of patients with a history of distal gastrectomy who underwent one-stage and two-stage oesophageal replacement by colonic interposition from February 2012 to February 2020, and explored the relationship between the staging strategy and postoperative outcomes.The clinical data of 93 patients were collected and analysed. There were no significant differences in the patients' characteristics between the two groups (all p 0.05), except for comorbidities and Charlson Comorbidity Index (all p 0.05). The Clavien-Dindo score between the two groups was also not significantly different (p 0.05). The logistic regression models revealed that patients who had received preoperative therapy had a higher Clavien-Dindo score (p 0.05), but the stage strategy did not (p 0.05).The two-stage operation is feasible in high-risk patients who need to undergo colonic interposition for oesophageal replacement. At the same time, it lowers the technical threshold of colonic interposition for oesophageal replacement, increasing this surgical technique's acceptability.

Lancang Lahu autonomous county, where the Lancang-Mekong River flows by, was selected as the case site to investigate the traditional medicinal knowledge(TMK). A comparison of TMK between Lancang county and other places in the Lancang-Mekong sub-region was conducted. Research on TMK has been seldom reported although there are abundant medicinal resources in this sub-region. The key informant interview and other methods have been adopted in the field surveys in the past six years. The investigation revealed that there was rich TMK and various herbal medicine resources in Lancang county. A total of 220 folk prescriptions have been collected, which were normally simple with easy processing methods and usages, and most raw materials were freshly used. As for medicinal plants, 121 species in 67 families have been documented. Other findings included that TMK in Lancang county was remained at the level of medication based on experience only. The processing methods of herbal medicines were simple and the bioactive ingredients were not clear. Without text and cultural support for self-teaching, coupled with conservative inheritance, it resulted in massive losses of TMK. The folk doctors have accumulated their factions based on self-study or ancestral experience. There was different treatment experience among folk doctors, but the safety and effectiveness should be paid attention to. The folk doctors used various herbal medicines, but there was a lack of standards or specifications for quality control. Given the problems existing in inheritance and development, conservation strategies were proposed in the present study.

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This paper uses the discrete element method to model the size and cushion effects during single-particle crushing tests. We propose simplified numerical modeling to examine the effects of particle size and coordination number on particle breakage behavior. We validate the proposed modeling by comparing the numerical results with the experimental data reported in the literature, in terms of the variability of particle tensile strength and axial force–displacement responses. Based on the numerical results, it is clear that a larger particle size entails a higher tensile strength with a larger discreteness. In addition, the characteristic tensile strength increases linearly with an increasing coordination number. Moreover, smaller particles are more susceptible to the cushion effect than larger particles. The numerical results also indicate that an increasing coordination number induces a more ductile mode of failure. Based on these results, we propose an empirical equation for calculating tensile strength, incorporating both the cushion effect and the size effect.