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Background: Radix Paeoniae Alba is a traditional Chinese herbal medicine. It can accelerate salivary secretion and alleviate the dry mouth of patients with Sjogren’s syndrome (SS). Although it is widely used in clinical treatment, its target and mechanism remain unclear. Objective: This study aims to analyze the main components of Radix Paeoniae Alba, explore the target genes, and propose the possible mechanism for Radix Paeoniae Alba’s acceleration of salivary secretion. Methods: The main active components and potential targets of Radix Paeoniae Alba were searched through the TCMSP database. Efforts were made to search for the related genes of Sjogren’s syndrome in OMIM and GeneCards databases. Cytoscape v3.8.0 software was used to link target genes of active components and key genes of the disease. The software Autodock vina1.1.2. was adopted to simulate the interaction between active components and target genes. Human submandibular gland (HSG) cells were used in vitro experiments to verify the results of our analysis. Results: β-Sitosterol, the main component of Radix Paeoniae Alba, may intervene in the disease through CHRM3. Molecular docking shows β-Sitosterol has a high affinity with CHRM3, and the interaction between CHRM3 and β-Sitosterol is the basis of biological activity. The in vitro experiments showed that β-Sitosterol could significantly up-regulate the mRNA and protein expression levels of both CHRM3 and secretion-related genes in HSG cells. Conclusion: Our study shows that the chemical components of Radix Paeoniae Alba have a positive effect on the related mechanism of salivary secretion. We found that β-Sitosterol can promote the expression of CHRM3, stimulate salivary secretion, treat Sjogren’s syndrome and potentially improve its prognosis.

The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is an all-weather, high-precision space geodetic technique that can solve positioning results while providing high-precision tropospheric products. Abundant studies have demonstrated the positive impact of traditional ground-based GNSS on numerical weather prediction using data assimilation tools. As tropospheric profile information is promisingly to satisfy the increasing data demand for improving short-range forecast accuracy, it is very important to obtain and assimilate high accuracy, high spatial and temporal resolution, and three-dimensional GNSS tropospheric products. Fortunately, the aerial vehicle market is booming and represented by unmanned aerial vehicle, providing convenient platforms for obtaining richer GNSS tropospheric products at different position and heights. However, there are still some key challenges in processing and assimilating GNSS tropospheric products from such highly dynamic platforms. In our study, we firstly improve the accuracy of aerial-based GNSS tropospheric products up to millimeter level by applying a new data processing method which optimizes the stochastic constraint for GNSS zenith wet delay. Thereafter, we evaluate the impact of those high spatial and temporal tropospheric products on meteorological application by assimilating them into numerical weather models. Experiments are conducted to prove the feasibility of aerial-based GNSS meteorology and point out some topics for further investigation.

Homogenized atmospheric water vapor is an important prerequisite for climate analysis. Compared with other techniques, GPS has inherent homogeneity advantage, but it still requires reprocessing and homogenization to eliminate impacts of applied strategy and observation environmental changes where a selection of proper processing strategies is critical. This paper comprehensively investigates an influence of the mapping function, the elevation cut-off angle and homogenization on long-term reprocessing results, in particular for Zenith Tropospheric Delays (ZTD) products, by using GPS observations at 46 IGS stations during 1995 to 2014. In the analysis, for the first time, we included the latest mapping function (VMF3) and exploited homogenized radiosonde data as a reference for ZTD trend evaluations. Our analysis shows that both site position and ZTD solutions achieved the best accuracy when using VMF3 and 3° elevation cut-off angle. Regarding the long-term ZTD trends, results show that the impact of mapping functions is very small, with a maximum difference of 0.3 mm/yr. On the other hand, the discrepancy can reach 2.5 mm/yr by using different elevation cut-off angles. Contrary to recommendations by previous studies, the low elevation cut-off angles (3° or 7°) are suggested for the best estimates of ZTD reprocessing time series when compared to homogenized radiosonde data or ERA5 reference time series. This conclusion has great significance by eliminating the conflict of different optimal elevation cut-off angles for climate analysis and other applications from GNSS data reprocessing.

The Au/CaNb2O6 electrospun NFs exhibited ∼100.9-fold enhancement of the photocatalytic activity for water splitting as compared to the traditional CaNb2O6 NPs due to the unique nanostructure property and plasmon-mediated hot electron transfer.

A highly stable copper-oxo cluster was constructed from the conjugated macromolecule anthracene-9-carboxylic acid templated by bromine anion as highly efficient heterogeneous catalyst for chemical fixation of carbon dioxide.

IntroductionCrops are affected by various abiotic stresses, among which heat (HT) and drought (DR) stresses are the most common in summer. Many studies have been conducted on HT and DR, but relatively little is known about how drought and heat combination (DH) affects plants at molecular level.MethodsHere, we investigated the responses of sweetpotato to HT, DR, and DH stresses by RNA-seq and data-independent acquisition (DIA) technologies, using controlled experiments and the quantification of both gene and protein levels in paired samples.ResultsTwelve cDNA libraries were created under HT, DR, and DH conditions and controls. We identified 536, 389, and 907 DEGs in response to HT, DR, and DH stresses, respectively. Of these, 147 genes were common and 447 were specifically associated with DH stress. Proteomic analysis identified 1609, 1168, and 1535 DEPs under HT, DR, and DH treatments, respectively, compared with the control, of which 656 were common and 358 were exclusive to DH stress. Further analysis revealed the DEGs/DEPs were associated with heat shock proteins, carbon metabolism, phenylalanine metabolism, starch and cellulose metabolism, and plant defense, amongst others. Correlation analysis identified 6465, 6607, and 6435 co-expressed genes and proteins under HT, DR, and DH stresses respectively. In addition, a combined analysis of the transcriptomic and proteomic data identified 59, 35, and 86 significantly co-expressed DEGs and DEPs under HT, DR, and DH stresses, respectively. Especially, top 5 up-regulated co-expressed DEGs and DEPs (At5g58770, C24B11.05, Os04g0679100, BACOVA_02659 and HSP70-5) and down-regulated co-expressed DEGs and DEPs (AN3, PMT2, TUBB5, FL and CYP98A3) were identified under DH stress.DiscussionThis is the first study of differential genes and proteins in sweetpotato under DH stress, and it is hoped that the findings will assist in clarifying the molecular mechanisms involved in sweetpotato resistance to heat and drought stress.

Background and purposeWeight loss and muscle mass loss are common in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Muscle density and fat infiltration based on CT images may be more sensitive than muscle mass by DXA in the assessment of sarcopenia for COPD patients. However, the age-related changes of cross-sectional trunk muscle compositions based on lung CT scans are still unknown. Thus, we aimed to investigate over time the change in muscle density, size, and fat deposition of L1-level trunk muscles in patients with COPD.Materials and methods129 male COPD patients with a second chest CT scan (from 2013-2019 to 2014-2020) were enrolled. The CT images at first and second CT scans are analyzed by OsiriX software. Trunk muscles at the level of the 1st lumbar vertebrae were selected for analysis. Attenuation of lumbar vertebrae 1 was also measured from chest CT images. The pulmonary function values were calculated based on forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC).ResultsThe mean age of the 129 patients with COPD was 69.7 years. The durations of COPD of this cohort were from 8-17 years. The mean area and density of L1 trunk muscles were 85.5 cm2 and 36.4 HU. At baseline, muscle area and density and vertebral density were negatively associated with age (p0.05). The per-year loss of trunk muscle area was 2.83 cm2 (p2 (p=0.006) which accounts for 11.1% increase per year. The bone density loss was 5.63 HU/per year (pConclusionMen with COPD had accelerated muscle loss as well as increased fat infiltration. Compared to muscle quantity loss, the decline in muscle quality is much larger, indicating the importance of relevant interventions focusing on improving muscle quality.

Engineering lattice defects in two-dimensional (2D) sulfide semiconductors has been accepted as an effective strategy to enhance the efficiency of the solar-to-fuels conversion. Although many researches have proven the lattice defect-mediated photocatalytic activity of ZnIn2S4, the artificial control of S-defects for optimizing the charge-carrier kinetics process in ZnIn2S4 has long been a challenging task. Herein, we report a facile one-step method to modulate the lattice S-content of ZnIn2S4 microflowers (MFs) only through adjusting the used amount of S-precursor in the hydrothermal solution that contains the metal precursors with a fixed Zn/In stoichiometric ratio at 1:2. We also demonstrated that the S-vacancies at the In facets were the main type of lattice defects in the formed ZnIn2S4 MFs, which could enhance both the separation and migration processes of the photoinduced charge-carriers due to the existence of discrete defect energy-levels (DELs) and the reduced effective mass of electrons, as evidenced by the first-principles calculations and the electron spectra analyses. The ZnIn2S4 MFs with the optimal content of S-vacancy obtained by a hydrothermal treatment of the precursors with the Zn/In/S stoichiometric ratio of 1:2:8 possessed the long-lived photoinduced electron (~94.64 ns) for contributing to the photo-physical and -chemical processes. Thus, upon visible light irradiation, the H2-evolution rate of this sample reached ~ 2.40 mmol h−1 g−1 with an apparent quantum efficiency of ~ 0.16% at 420 nm even though only using 5 mg of photocatalysts without any cocatalysts.

Treatment options are limited after the failure of first-and second-line treatments in patients with HER2A total of 59 HER2The median progression-free survival (PFS) was 5.2 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.9-6.5), and the median overall survival (OS) was 8.2 months (95% CI, 6.6-9.8) Furthermore, forward stepwise multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that a higher Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status score and multiple metastases were independently correlated with decreased PFS and OS (both P0.05). The main adverse events were leukopenia (45.8%), hypertension (44.1%), thrombocytopenia (39.0%), hand-foot syndrome (37.3%), and elevated transaminase (33.9%). Grade 3 adverse events mainly included hypertension (5.1%) and neutropenia (5.1%); grade 4 adverse events did not occur.Apatinib is efficient and well tolerated in patients with HER2

Metal–organic framework (MOF) materials have been extensively incorporated with inorganic semiconductor photocatalysts to improve their photocatalytic activity through an efficient charge transfer process across their heterointerface. In this work, octahedral UiO-66-NH2 MOFs with edge-lengths of 110–330 nm are uniformly decorated on the surface of TiO2 electrospun nanofibers by a traditional solvothermal method combined with activation pretreatment. Before the solvothermal growth of UiO-66-NH2, the TiO2 electrospun nanofibers were activated in NaOH solution to etch the TiO2 surface for allowing the exposure of lattice oxygen. The exposed lattice oxygen on the TiO2 surface could interact with the MOF precursor of Zr4+ ions, thus enabling octahedral UiO-66-NH2 to grow uniformly on the surface of TiO2 nanofibers with an intimate Ti–O–Zr hetero-interface. Such an intimate hetero-interface provides an effective channel for boosting the electron transfer between UiO-66-NH2 and TiO2 in their heterostructure. Thus, the UiO-66-NH2/TiO2(anatase) heterostructures exhibited enhanced photocatalytic activity for H2 production as compared to either TiO2(anatase) nanofibers or UiO-66-NH2 nanooctahedra in the presence of Rhodamine B (RhB) as a sensitizer under visible light irradiation. In particular, the decoration of UiO-66-NH2 nanooctahedra on anatase/rutile mixed TiO2 nanofibers could induce further enhancement of the photocatalytic H2 production. The enhanced photocatalytic activity is attributed to the multi-step continuous interfacial transfer of photoinduced electrons with the way of RhB → UiO-66-NH2 → TiO2(anatase) → TiO2(rutile).

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A self-embedding watermarking algorithm based on a reference sharing mechanism that has recovery ability under high tampering rates is proposed in this paper. In existing methods, the image recover...

This paper experimentally investigated the internal temperature and the facade flame for compartment fires involving circular openings. A series of experiments were carried out by using a reduced-scale model which composed of a cube compartment with various circular openings and a vertical fireproofing board (used as building facade). A porous burner with propane fuel was set inside the compartment as fire source. The internal temperature profile was measured by vertical thermocouple arrays at the inner and outer corners, and the facade flame was captured by a CCD camera from a side view. This paper revealed that: (1) With the same area, maximum heat release rate inside the compartment with circular opening is larger than that with square opening. (2) For relatively larger circular openings, facade flames tend to ceiling jet flame extension. With the increasing of heat release rate, facade flame induced by ceiling jet flame extension will convert to spill fire plume. (3) A dimensionless number R, which represents the ratio of total heat release rate to internal maximum heat release rate, is proposed to distinguish spill fire plume and ceiling jet flame extension when facade flames appear at exterior. (4) A non-dimensional correlation is developed to characterize the facade flame heights for both ceiling jet flame extension and spill fire plume. These findings and results can provide fundamental knowledge for understanding compartment fire with a circular opening.

Porous crystalline materials, such as porous organic cages (POCs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs), are important for a wide range of applications such as gas storage/separation, sensing and catalysis. A conventional synthetic approach for imine-based POCs and COFs usually involves the use of organic solvents/acid catalysts (such as AcOH or TFA). However, synthesizing and growing POC crystals and COF crystallites with enhanced crystallinity is not an easy-to-perform process, in which many reaction parameters need to be screened. To overcome these problems, we have proposed herein a facile and green synthetic strategy by adopting H2O/organic solvents/MOH (M = Na, K, and Cs) as reaction media to produce a series of phenol-based POCs and COFs. X-ray crystallography and molecular simulations have been used to confirm their structures in addition to NMR, mass and FT-IR spectra, and gas sorption experiments reveal their porosity and sorption properties. This new approach provides not only an efficient and alternative route to synthesize highly crystalline POCs and even COFs, but also insight into the crystallization process of these two kinds of porous materials, especially in the hydrous media.

In this paper, the composition of human decision-making process in human-robot interaction is analyzed and the human decision-making behavior is modeled. The human decision-making process is divided into data-processing station and human cognitive system. By combining with the null-space-based control (NSBC) method, the traditional drift diffusion model (DDM) is applied for for human decision-making behavior modeling in human-robot interaction (HRI). In addition, HRI is studied for a platoon of autonomous robots in an unknown environment with multiple obstacles. Moreover, the human intervention task is designed to help robots achieve tasks successfully. Finally, simulation examples are given to demonstrate the satisfactory performance of the proposed method.

Wuhan University has joined the E-GVAP program as one of the analysis centers (ACs) since 2019. Data at about 300 global GNSS stations are routinely processed in near-real-time at Wuhan University for tropospheric delay product. Both the single GPS solution and the recent multi-GNSS (GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/BDS) solution have been delivered to E-GVAP. Besides the near-real-time processing, we also work on the long-term historical data reprocessing for climate research and on the real-time processing for atmospheric monitoring. In the reprocessing work, by taking the recent ERA5 and homogenized radiosonde data as reference, we have made comprehensive investigations on the impacts of different models (e.g., the mapping function) and settings (e.g., the cut-off elevation angle) using global data of more than two decades. The long-term water vapor product was used for climate analysis and for inter-comparisons among different techniques (GNSS, radiosonde, reanalysis, MODIS, etc.). In the real-time processing work, we have carried out a four-month real-time water vapor retrieval campaign in three cities of China in 2021 by including the latest BeiDou-3 satellites and by using the high-accuracy satellite product transmitted by BeiDou-3 GEO satellites on the B2b signal. The data processing work in reprocessing, near-real-time and real-time modes at Wuhan University will be systematically introduced and some applications in climate research and atmospheric monitoring will be presented.

Plasmonic nanostructures have tremendous potential to be applied in photocatalytic CO

With the global spread of the novel coronavirus, avoiding human-to-human contact has become an effective way to cut off the spread of the virus. Therefore, contactless gesture recognition becomes an effective means to reduce the risk of contact infection in outbreak prevention and control. However, the recognition of everyday behavioral sign language of a certain population of deaf people presents a challenge to sensing technology. Ubiquitous acoustics offer new ideas on how to perceive everyday behavior. The advantages of a low sampling rate, slow propagation speed, and easy access to the equipment have led to the widespread use of acoustic signal-based gesture recognition sensing technology. Therefore, this paper proposed a contactless gesture and sign language behavior sensing method based on ultrasonic signals—UltrasonicGS. The method used Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-based data augmentation techniques to expand the dataset without human intervention and improve the performance of the behavior recognition model. In addition, to solve the problem of inconsistent length and difficult alignment of input and output sequences of continuous gestures and sign language gestures, we added the Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) algorithm after the CRNN network. Additionally, the architecture can achieve better recognition of sign language behaviors of certain people, filling the gap of acoustic-based perception of Chinese sign language. We have conducted extensive experiments and evaluations of UltrasonicGS in a variety of real scenarios. The experimental results showed that UltrasonicGS achieved a combined recognition rate of 98.8% for 15 single gestures and an average correct recognition rate of 92.4% and 86.3% for six sets of continuous gestures and sign language gestures, respectively. As a result, our proposed method provided a low-cost and highly robust solution for avoiding human-to-human contact.

In this paper, a novel reinforcement learning mission supervisor (RLMS) with memory is proposed for human-multi-robot coordination systems (HMRCS). The existing HMRCS are known to suffer from long decision waiting time and large mission error caused by repeated human intervention, restricting the autonomy of multi-robot systems. The proposed supervisor elaborately integrates deep-Q-network (DQN) and long-short-term memory (LSTM) knowledge base within the null-space based behavioral control (NSBC) framework, so as to achieve optimal adjustment strategy of the behavioral priority in the presence of mission conflicts, and to reduce the frequency of human intervention. In particular, the proposed RLMS with memory first memorize human intervention history when robot systems are not confident in decision making when encountering emergencies, and then reload the history information when encountering the same situation that have been tackled by human previously. Simulation demonstrates the effectiveness of proposed RLMS with memory.

In-band network telemetry task orchestration is to study how to reasonably select business flows to carry in-band network telemetry tasks to cover all necessary switches and ports. An inappropriate orchestration scheme not only fails to meet the requirements, but may reduce the performance of network telemetry. This paper proposes a multi-objective optimization-based in-band network telemetry task orchestration algorithm, while taking into account both the aspects of telemetry: freshness and intrusion. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme outperforms in terms of freshness and intrusion.

The accuracy of the tropospheric mapping functions is greatly influenced by the mapping function modeling methods. In the past decades, the ‘fast’ method rather than the rigorous least-squares methods was dominantly used for the development of mapping functions, such as Vienna Mapping Functions 1 (VMF1), considering the convergence issue and computation efficiency. In this study, we reconsider the suitability of the rigorous least-squares methods in operational mapping function development and present a new mapping function modeling method where the number of to-be-estimated coefficients in the mapping function continued fraction is adaptively determined according to the convergence in the least-squares fitting. The modeling accuracy of the new method is evaluated during 40 days spanning four seasons in 2020 at globally distributed 905 Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) stations. Significant improvement of the new method to the ‘fast’ method is found, with hydrostatic and wet mapping function modeling mean absolute errors (MAEs) of 1.6 and 1.3 mm for the new method and of 3.6 and 3.0 mm for the ‘fast’ method, respectively. Multi-GNSS Precise Point Positioning (PPP) of the new method is conducted at 107 International GNSS Service (IGS) Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) stations. Effectiveness of the new method is also found for the PPP station height and zenith total delay estimation.

The health of the pile foundation of a high-rise building is related to the safety of the entire building and even the life safety of personnel. Therefore, it is very necessary to carry out strain detection for the pile foundation. In order to solve the shortcomings of traditional detection methods, a strain detection method based on distributed optical fiber sensors is proposed. When light propagates in an optical fiber, Brillouin scattering will occur. In addition, temperature and fiber strain will cause linear movement of the Brillouin frequency. Based on the above principles, a strain detection system is designed, which uses optical time domain reflection (OTDR) technology to measure and monitor the spatial distribution and time-varying information along the optical fiber transmission path. Based on the system, strain monitoring was performed on two pressure-bearing piles of a high-rise building, and the detection data were analyzed. The results verified the effectiveness of the system.

Mo-doped BiVO4 microcrystals with tetragonal structures were prepared by a hydrothermal method. The phase transformation from monoclinic to tetragonal was observed as the concentration of molybdenum ions increased up to 10 mol%. Accordingly, the morphology of the as-preparation samples evolved from plate-shaped (molybdenum-free BiVO4) to pie-like (BiVO4:Mo). The photocatalytic activity of BiVO4:Mo with a tetragonal structure was much higher than that of the pure BiVO4 host with a monoclinic phase by using RhB as the simulated pollutants under sun-like irradiation. The degradation rate of RhB was increased from 40% with molybdenum-free BiVO4 to 97.8% with the Mo-doped BiVO4 materials.

Plasmonic coupling between two or more metal nanostructures has attracted significant interest, since this fascinating near-field interaction is more effective for the aggregation/magnification of the incident light intensity compared to normal surface-plasmon-resonance (SPR) of single nanostructures. Herein, we report, for the first time, an IR-driven strong plasmonic coupling in an unusual metal/non-metal heterostructure system. This system is fabricated through random assemblage of Ag nanorices (NRs) onto W18O49 nanowires (NWs) film with F-doped SnO2 glass as substrate. Through the 3D-finite element simulation, we demonstrate that the plasmonic coupling between Ag NRs and W18O49 NWs significantly enhances the localized electric fields at the “hot spots”. This achieved magnitudes of 101-104 times of that of incident light, thus leading to the promoted generation of plasmonic “hot-electrons”. Moreover, the resonance excitation of plasmonic coupling on the heterostructures not only induces ultrafast electron transfer from W18O49 to Ag hetero-components, but also the photothermal effect to increase the localized temperature. Upon SPR-coupling excitation, the Ag/W18O49 heterostructures film exhibits a remarkable enhancement of the photo/thermal catalytic activity for H2 evolution from ammonia borane compared to that of either the Ag NRs (˜8.2 × ) or W18O49 NWs (˜9.0 × ) films. Notably, we observed an obvious H2 evolution over the Ag/W18O49 heterostructures film under natural sunlight irradiation.

In this study, a novel carbon nanotube (CNT)-supported CuCo catalyst was successfully synthesized by wet impregnation. Experimental and theoretical results on catalytic deoxygenation of stearic acid, a model compound of microalgal bio-oil, revealed that the CuCo catalyst can effectively inhibit cracking reactions and promote production of diesel-like hydrocarbons. CuCo particles in the pores of CNTs were conducive to conversion of stearic acid to long-chain alkanes, featuring a high selectivity of 94.82% at 100% conversion. CuCo catalyst in oxidation state underwent fast in-situ reduction at the beginning of deoxygenation reaction, and its catalytic performance was comparable to that of reduced CuCo catalyst. The improved catalytic conversion of stearic acid to diesel-like hydrocarbons can be achieved at a high ratio of Cu0/(Cu++Cu0) and lattice Co atoms. In addition, the reduced H2 pressure and amounts of catalysts show potential for large-scale industrial applications.

It is becoming increasingly urgent to investigate the partition coefficients (expressed as log KDOC values) of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) present in wastewater. In the current study, after 72 h of equilibration, the concentrations of four common PBDEs were measured in the presence of four DOC solutions from two laboratories and two full-scale anaerobic digestion plants. Sixteen log KDOCs were determined by calculation and unit conversion. The results for the laboratory samples, such as log KDOCs for 2,2′,4,4′,5,5′-hexabromodiphenyl ether being 6.38 and 5.46 at different reaction temperatures during the cultivate procedure, suggest that a thermophilic environment promotes the solubility of PBDEs to a greater extent than mesophilic conditions. DOC composition directly influences the solubility of PBDEs, even at the same cultivating temperature: the highest log KDOCs for 2,2′,4,4′,5,6′-hexabromodiphenyl ether were 6.71 and 6.33 in different full-scale plant digestates. A linear regression with an R2 of 0.9863 was used to construct a model describing the potential relationship between log KDOC and the composition of DOC, which includes proteins, polysaccharides and lipids, and which takes into account the positions of bromine atoms, for use in predicting the log KDOC values of PBDEs in different water systems.

Summary 90Sr2+ remediation from acidic nuclear waste solution and contaminated seawater attracts great public attention but is very challenging because the removal performance toward soft Sr2+ by traditional oxidic ion-exchange materials are greatly affected by hard cations including H+, Na+, and Ca2+. We report a layered oxidic coordination polymer [(CH3)2NH2][ZrCH2(PO3)2F] (SZ-4) showing a notable advance over existing ion-exchange materials in 90Sr removal efficiencies with elevated distribution coefficients and record-high uptake capacities under acidic conditions. Moreover, the removal of Sr2+ is not significantly affected by the presence of a large excess of hard cations, leading to the successful cleanup of 90Sr-contaminated seawater samples. Such superior capabilities are directly visualized by well-refined single-crystal structures during in situ Sr2+ sorption process, revealing a distinctive two-step intercalation mechanism and a unique soft cation uptake selectivity achieved through collaborative coordination by the host layer and the interlayer dimethylamine (DMA) as a soft N-donor ligand.

Curcumin is a natural active constituent with a great variety of beneficial biological and pharmacological activities, is a practically water-insoluble component. The scope of the present work was to prepare a solid dispersion (SD) formulation to enhance the dissolution rate of curcumin. The SD was prepared using curcumin and β-cyclodextrin (CD)/HA via a classical ethanol-based solvent evaporation method. The as-prepared β-CD/HA and SDs were selectively characterised by various analytical techniques including X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, specific surface area/pore size analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and high-performance liquid chromatography. According to the dissolution tests, it was confirmed that β-CD/HA–curcumin SD can significantly enhance the dissolution of curcumin. In addition, an increasing trend was seen between the β-CD weight ratio and the dissolution rate of curcumin, and β-CD/HA–curcumin (9:1) SD was shown to be the best formulation among all tested samples with over 90% curcumin dissolved in 180 min. Besides, β-CD/HA–curcumin (9:1) SD exhibited pH and medium-dependent curcumin release behaviours. The antioxidant activity of released curcumin showed no difference to original curcumin. These results clearly demonstrated β-CD/HA can be a promising SD carrier to improve the dissolution of curcumin.

Engineering semiconductor-based homo- (hetero-) junctions in hierarchical nanostructures is a promising way to achieve the high performance and recyclable photocatalysts toward pollutants degradation in water. Herein, we develop a kind of hierarchical p–n heterojunctions photocatalysts through controllable decoration of ultrathin p-BiOBr nanosheets onto n-TiO2 electrospun nanofibers by using a traditional solvothermal method. Structural characterization results indicate that the BiOBr nanosheets are assembled uniformly onto the TiO2 nanofibers. This well-designed hierarchical p–n heterojunctions in the p-BiOBr/n-TiO2 nanofibers photocatalyst lead to not only the improved generation/separation of photoinduced charges-carriers, but also the increased amount of redox sites. Benefiting to these advantages, the optimal p-BiOBr/n-TiO2 nanofibers exhibited the apparent rate constant of 0.1 and 0.15 min−1 for photocatalytic RhB and MO degradation under UV-light irradiation, which is twice and three times higher than that of mechanically mixtured BiOBr nanosheets and TiO2 nanofibers, respectively. Control experiments demonstrate that both the photoinduced electrons and the oxygen free radicals play the major roles on the enhancement of photocatalytic activity. Moreover, the p-BiOBr/n-TiO2 nanofibers photocatalysts with the unique nonwoven structure can be easily recycled without secondary pollution, in particular, still maintaining almost the initial photocatalytic activity during the wastewater treatment.

Herein, an interesting electron-donating strategy is proposed to guide the construction of novel CdS-based MOFs for co-catalyst-free photocatalytic H2 evolution in the presence of triethanolamine as the hole-scavenger. The optimally designed CdS-based MOF exhibits an exceptional H2-evolution rate of 26.1 mmol g−1 h−1 which is almost the highest rate among the reported co-catalyst-free MOF systems.

The NaYF4:Yb,Er/W18O49 heterostructure is an excellent photocatalyst that can promote H2 evolution by hydrolyzing BH3NH3 under near-infrared (NIR) light irradiation. At the same time, the photothermal effect can be produced in photocatalytic reactions, which will cause the luminescence efficiency and photocatalytic activity to decrease. Determining how to take advantage of that photothermal effect becomes a major problem. Moreover, the energy transfer (ET) process from Er ions to Nd ions in NaYF4 co-doped with Yb/Er/Nd ions (NaYF4:Yb,Er,Nd) occurred at high temperature. Herein, the NaYF4:Yb,Er,Nd/W18O49 quasi-core–shell heterostructure was designed to achieve better H2 production capacity; this heterostructure exhibits a 1.5-fold enhancement of photocatalytic activity for H2 evolution as compared with the NaYF4:Yb,Er/W18O49 heterostructure. This study provides a new way to explore the catalytic activities in the NIR field for application in the development of a sustainable energy source.

Flexible and environment-responsive materials are essential for a large number of applications from artificial skin to wearable devices. The present study develops a flexible, ultra-low cost conductive hybrid elastomer (CHE), which possesses high responsive capabilities to stress/strain and humidity. CHE was composed of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and starch hydrogel (SH), enabling great elasticity (56 kPa), high conductivity (10−2 S/m) and high sensitivity to external stimuli (gauge factor of CHE under stress and strain are 0.71 and 2.22, respectively, and sensitivity to humidity is 1.2 × 10−6 S/m per RH%). These properties render CHE a promising candidate for artificial skin and wearable electronics applications of continuously monitoring environmental information.

The asymmetric delay has a considerable impact on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) applications. In GNSS analyses, the impacts of the asymmetric delay are commonly compensated by using the classical methods with considering the north-south and east-west horizontal gradients. In this paper, we have initiatively proposed an extended method where the north-south and east-west horizontal gradients as well as the second-order horizontal gradients are included to better fit the asymmetric delay. The modeling accuracy of the extended method was evaluated at globally distributed 905 GNSS stations during 40 days in 2020. Significant performance of the extended method respect to the classical method was found, where the hydrostatic and wet modeling accuracy at 4° elevation angle was improved from 5.3 and 10.6 mm to 1.6 and 4.9 mm by 70% and 54%, respectively. The GNSS Precise Point Positioning (PPP) performance using the extended method was also validated at 107 Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) stations. The superior performance on the coordinate repeatability and significant effectiveness on the coordinate and Zenith Total Delay (ZTD) estimations were also found, and the maximal vertical (U) coordinate and ZTD difference biases reached 8.6 and −4.5 mm. The extended method is therefore recommended to substitute the classical methods in the GNSS analyses, especially under severe atmospheric conditions.

Metal-organic framework (MOF) materials have been extensively incorporated with inorganic semiconductor photocatalysts to improve their photocatalytic activity through an efficient charge transfer process across their heterointerface. In this work, octahedral UiO-66-NH2 MOFs with edge-lengths of 110-330 nm are uniformly decorated on the surface of TiO2 electrospun nanofibers by a traditional solvothermal method combined with activation pretreatment. Before the solvothermal growth of UiO-66-NH2, the TiO2 electrospun nanofibers were activated in NaOH solution to etch the TiO2 surface for allowing the exposure of lattice oxygen. The exposed lattice oxygen on the TiO2 surface could interact with the MOF precursor of Zr4+ ions, thus enabling octahedral UiO-66-NH2 to grow uniformly on the surface of TiO2 nanofibers with an intimate Ti-O-Zr hetero-interface. Such an intimate hetero-interface provides an effective channel for boosting the electron transfer between UiO-66-NH2 and TiO2 in their heterostructure. Thus, the UiO-66-NH2/TiO2(anatase) heterostructures exhibited enhanced photocatalytic activity for H2 production as compared to either TiO2(anatase) nanofibers or UiO-66-NH2 nanooctahedra in the presence of Rhodamine B (RhB) as a sensitizer under visible light irradiation. In particular, the decoration of UiO-66-NH2 nanooctahedra on anatase/rutile mixed TiO2 nanofibers could induce further enhancement of the photocatalytic H2 production. The enhanced photocatalytic activity is attributed to the multi-step continuous interfacial transfer of photoinduced electrons with the way of RhB → UiO-66-NH2 → TiO2(anatase) → TiO2(rutile).

Background: Gut ecosystem has profound effects on host physiology and health. Gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms were frequently observed in patients with COVID-19. Compared with other organs, gut antiviral response can result in more complicated immune responses because of the interactions between the gut microbiota and host immunity. However, there are still large knowledge gaps in the impact of COVID-19 on gut molecular profiles and commensal microbiome, hindering our comprehensive understanding of the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 and the treatment of COVID-19.Results: We performed longitudinal stool multi-omics profiling to systemically investigate the molecular phenomics alterations of gut ecosystem in COVID-19. Gut proteomes of COVID-19 were characterized by disturbed immune, proteolysis and redox homeostasis. The expression and glycosylation of proteins involved in neutrophil degranulation and migration were suppressed, while those of proteases were upregulated. The variable domains of Ig heavy chains were downregulated and the overall glycosylation of IgA heavy chain constant regions, IgGFc-binding protein, and J chain were suppressed with glycan-specific variations. There was a reduction of beneficial gut bacteria and an enrichment of bacteria derived deleterious metabolites potentially associated with multiple types of diseases (such as ethyl glucuronide). The reduction of Ig heave chain variable domains may contribute to the increase of some Bacteroidetes species. Many bacteria ceramide lipids with a C17-sphingoid based were downregulated in COVID-19. In many cases, the gut phenome did not restore two months after symptom onset.Conclusions: Our study indicates widely disturbed gut molecular profiles which may play a role in the development of symptoms in COVID-19. Our findings also emphasis the need for ongoing investigation of the long-term gut molecular and microbial alterations during COVID-19 recovery process. Considering the gut ecosystem as a potential target could offer a valuable approach in managing the disease.