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Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a brain–gut interaction disorder located in the stomach and duodenum, which has complex pathophysiological mechanisms, and there is no effective treatment for FD. Acupuncture and moxibustion have been proven to have definite and significant efficacy on FD. Focusing on the affected area and combined with the potential pathophysiology of FD, here we discuss the possible mechanisms of acupuncture and moxibustion in treating FD to guide future clinical and experimental research. We argue that the pathological causes of FD can be roughly divided into gastrointestinal dysfunction, duodenal low-grade inflammation, visceral hypersensitivity, and duodenal intestinal barrier and microbial imbalance. Correspondingly, the possible mechanisms of acupuncture and moxibustion in treating FD are elucidated from the perspective of how they improve gastric accommodation, regulate gastrointestinal motility, reduce gastric visceral sensitivity, regulate eosinophil–mast cell axis, inhibit low-grade inflammatory responses, and possibly regulate intestinal microbial homeostasis and duodenal barrier function through the microbiota–gut–brain axis. Although some evidence is still lacking, acupuncture remains a promising treatment for FD. In the future, it is necessary to conduct additional clinical and experimental research on acupuncture and moxibustion in treating FD to further explore their effects and mechanisms.

Abstract Repeated sprint exercise (RSE) is a popular training modality for a wide variety of athletic activities. The purpose of this study was to assess the combined effects of systemic hypoxia and blood flow restriction (BFR) on muscle deoxygenation and RSE performance. Twelve healthy young men performed a standard RSE training modality (five sets of 10 s maximal sprint with a 60 s rest) under four different conditions: (1) normoxic control (NC), normoxia (N, 20.9%) + control BFR (C, 0 mmHg); (2) normoxic BFR (NB), normoxia (N, 20.9%) + BFR (B, 140 mmHg); (3) hypoxic control (HC), hypoxia (H, 13.7%) + control BFR (C, 0 mmHg); and (4) hypoxic BFR (HB): hypoxia (H, 13.7%) + BFR (B, 140 mmHg). BFR was only administered during the rest period of the respective RSE trials. In the local exercising muscles, muscle oxygen saturation (SmO2) and neuromuscular activity were measured using near‐infrared spectroscopy and surface electromyography, respectively. SmO2 was lower in systemic hypoxia conditions relative to normoxia conditions (P 0.05). Interestingly, an elevated neuromuscular activity was seen in response to the BFR, particularly during conditions of systemic hypoxia (P

Hyperthermia impairs physical performance and, when prolonged, results in heat stroke or other illnesses. While extensive research has investigated the effectiveness of various cooling strategies, including cold water immersion and ice-suit, there has been little work focused on overcoming the cutaneous vasoconstriction response to external cold stimulation, which can reduce the effectiveness of these treatments. Over-the-counter (OTC) topical analgesics have been utilized for the treatment of muscle pain for decades; however, to date no research has examined the possibility of taking advantage of their vasodilatory functions in the context of skin cooling. We tested whether an OTC analgesic cream containing 20% methyl salicylate and 6% L-menthol, known cutaneous vasodilators, applied to the skin during skin cooling accelerates heat loss in exercise-induced hyperthermia. Firstly, we found that cutaneous application of OTC topical analgesic cream can attenuate cold-induced vasoconstriction and enhance heat loss during local skin cooling. We also revealed that core body heat loss, as measured by an ingestible telemetry sensor, could be accelerated by cutaneous application of analgesic cream during ice-suit cooling in exercise-induced hyperthermia. A blunted blood pressure response was observed during cooling with the analgesic cream application. Given the safety profile and affordability of topical cutaneous analgesics containing vasodilatory agents, our results suggest that they can be an effective and practical tool for enhancing the cooling effects of skin cooling for hyperthermia.

Inferring the three-dimensional structure of objects from monocular images has far-reaching applications in the field of 3D perception. In this paper, we propose a self-supervised network (SSL-Net) to generate 3D point clouds from a single RGB image, unlike the existing work which requires multiple views of the same object to recover the full 3D geometry. To provide the extra self-supervisory signal, the generated 3D model is simultaneously rendered into an image and compared with the input image. In addition, a pose estimation network is integrated into the 3D point cloud generation network to eliminate the pose ambiguity of the input image, and the estimated pose is also used for rendering the 2D image with the same pose as input image from 3D point clouds. The extensive experiments on both real and synthetic datasets show that our method not only qualitatively generates point clouds with more details but also quantitatively outperforms the state-of-the-art in accuracy.

A Pd/UiO-66 catalyst was synthesized with well-dispersed Pd nanoparticles. The obtained catalyst was tested in the hydrogenation of furfural to tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol in various solvents, Water was found to be the most suitable solvent. Pd/UiO-66 exhibited much higher activity than Pd/SiO2 and Pd/γ-Al2O3, completely converting furfural to tetrahydrofurfuryl alcohol with 100% selectivity under mild conditions. The hydrogenation of CO moiety in tetrahydrofurfural was rate-determining step. Static adsorption measurement indicated that the adsorption of furfural on UiO-66 was significantly stronger than that on SiO2 or γ-Al2O3, suggesting that the adsorption play an important role in the gas-liquid-solid furfural hydrogenation reaction.

3-D vision plays an important role in intelligent perception of robot, while it requires extra 3-D sensors. Depth estimation from monocular videos provides an alternative mechanism to recover the 3-D information. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised learning framework that uses the perceptual loss for depth estimation. Depth and pose networks are first trained to estimate the depth and the camera motion of the video sequence, respectively. With the estimated depth and pose of the original frame, the adjacent frame can be reconstructed. The pixel-wise differences between the constructed frame and the original frame are used as per-pixel loss. Meanwhile, reconstructed views and original views can be used to extract advanced features from a pre-trained network to define and optimize perceptual loss functions to assess the quality of reconstructions. We combine the respective advantages of these two methods and present an approach of generating a depth map by training the feed-forward network with per-pixel loss function and perceptual loss function. The experimental results show that our method can significantly improve the estimation accuracy of depth map.

Upgrading furfural (FAL) to cyclopentanone (CPO) is of great importance for the synthesis of high-value chemicals and biomass utilization. The hydrogenative ring-rearrangement of FAL is catalyzed by metal-acid bifunctional catalysts. The Lewis acidity is a key factor in promoting the rearrangement of furan rings and achieving a high selectivity to CPO. In this work, highly dispersed Pd nanoparticles were successfully encapsulated into the cavities of a Zr based MOF, UiO-66-NO2, by impregnation using a double-solvent method (DSM) followed by H2 reduction. The obtained Pd/UiO-66-NO2 catalyst showed a significantly better catalytic performance in the aforementioned reaction than the Pd/UiO-66 catalyst due to the higher Lewis acidity of the support. Moreover, by using a thermal treatment. The Lewis acidity can be further increased through the creating of missing-linker defects. The resulting defective Pd/UiO-66-NO2 exhibited the highest CPO selectivity and FAL conversion of 96.6% and 98.9%, respectively. In addition, the catalyst was able to maintain a high activity and stability after four consecutive runs. The current study not only provides an efficient catalytic reaction system for the hydrogenative ring-rearrangement of furfural to cyclopentanone but also emphasizes the importance of defect sites.

In this work, a series of modified metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been prepared by pre- and post-treatment with transition metal oxodiperoxo complexes (MoO(O2)2, WO(O2)2, and KVO(O2)2). The obtained materials are characterized by XRD, FTIR, SEM, TEM, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), as well as by N2 adsorption/desorption measurement. The characterization results show that transition metal oxodiperoxo complexes are uniformly incorporated into the MOF materials without changing the basic structures. The performance of cyclohexane oxidation on metal oxodiperoxo complex modified MOFs are evaluated. UiO-67-KVO(O2)2 shows the best performance for cyclohexane oxidation, with 78% selectivity to KA oil (KA oil refers to a cyclohexanol and cyclohexanone mixture) at 9.4% conversion. The KA selectivity is found to depend on reaction time, while hot-filtration experiments indicates that the catalytic process is heterogeneous with no leaching of metal species.

Biochar is typically made via pyrolysis of organic materials under anoxic conditions, due to its high surface area and significant negative charge. It also has the ability to minimize the mass or volume of waste items. As a result, biochar is frequently used in the remediation of environmental contamination. To overcome the shortcoming of biochar in the application, the magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar from walnut shells were prepared. The magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar from walnut shells is used to study the adsorption of U(VI) in the solution. SEM, XRD, and FT-IR are used to determine the properties of magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar. The results revealed that magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar has a fragmented and irregular form. On the surface of magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar, several functional groups can aid in the adsorption of pollutants. The adsorption capacity of U(VI) by magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar is influenced by the contact time and initial concentration of U(VI). For the adsorption of U(VI) in solution by magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar, the pseudo-first-order kinetic equation and the Langmuir isotherm equation can be fitted. The adsorption of the process is chemical adsorption and monolayer adsorption. The chemical stability of magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar is very well.

Biochar is typically made via pyrolysis of organic materials under anoxic conditions, due to its high surface area and significant negative charge. It also has the ability to minimize the mass or volume of waste items. As a result, biochar is frequently used in the remediation of environmental contamination. To overcome the shortcoming of biochar in the application, the magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar from walnut shells were prepared. The magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar from walnut shells is used to study the adsorption of U(VI) in the solution. SEM, XRD, and FT-IR are used to determine the properties of magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar. The results revealed that magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar has a fragmented and irregular form. On the surface of magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar, several functional groups can aid in the adsorption of pollutants. The adsorption capacity of U(VI) by magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar is influenced by the contact time and initial concentration of U(VI). For the adsorption of U(VI) in solution by magnetic Fe3O4@ Biochar, the pseudo-first-order kinetic equation and the Langmuir isotherm equation can be fitted. The adsorption of the process is chemical adsorption and monolayer adsorption. The chemical stability of magnetic Fe3O4@Biochar is very well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uranium (U) is a common radionuclide in soil and groundwater. Uranium contamination often results from uranium mining and processing, nuclear energy power plants, nuclear weapon tests and nuclear accidents. Due to its toxicity and bioaccumulation, it was necessary to treat it effectively. Biochar and FeS nanoparticles were prepared for the treatment of U(VI) in solution. The characteristics of biochar and FeS nanoparticles were determined by Scanning Electron Microscopy, Energy Dispersive Spectrum and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and BET adsorption method. The results showed that a large number of functional groups were present on the surface of biochar and FeS nanoparticles. The influencing factors, such as contact time, pH of the solution, initial concentration U(VI) and solution temperature, had an important influence on the adsorption capacity of U(VI) by biochar and FeS nanoparticles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a simple solubility-induced self-assembly of iron(III) meso-5,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrin (FeCPP) on carbon black (BP2000) combined with subsequent pyrolysis, leading to the synthesis of new types of non-precious metal electrocatalysts (NPMEs). In both alkaline and acidic media, the obtained NPMEs demonstrate oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity comparable to that of commercial 20% Pt/C and much better than that synthesized by pyrolysis of mechanically blended FeCPP and carbon without self-assembly. Especially, the half-wave potential of our electrocatalyst is 0.79 V (vs. RHE) in 0.1 M HClO4 aq., representing a highly active NPME in acid. Additionally, our electrocatalysts are superior to commercial Pt/C in terms of durability during accelerated durability test (ADT) in both acidic and alkaline media. The H2O2 and HO2 - yield of the electrocatalyst is less than 6.5% and 0.8%, respectively, in acidic and alkaline media. The high ORR activity should be closely correlated with the self-assembly process, allowing well dispersion of FeCPP on carbon and forming a relatively high density of ORR active sites after pyrolysis. Interestingly, it appears that Fe-N-C sites and iron oxides should be the major contributor of the ORR activity in acidic media based on electrochemical SCN- poisoning and acid-treatment experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new strategy is reported for the synthesis of supported metal sulfides with high dispersion by sulfidation in dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma under ambient conditions. According to the characterization data obtained by XRD, BET, UV-vis, TEM, XPS, ICP, and elemental analysis, the DBD plasma method not only reduces the preparation time but also achieves an increased dispersion, small particle size and uniform distribution compared to the traditional thermal method. These results prove that the plasma preparation method is a facile and flexible approach for the synthesis of metal sulfides. The plasmaprepared CdS/Al2O3 and ZnS/Al2O3 catalysts exhibited high performances for hydrogen production from H2S with reduced energy costs. The enhancement might be attributable to the smaller particle size, higher surface area and dispersion, which enhances the semiconductor catalytic efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a low cost and practical approach to integrate 3D ordered macroporous polyfluoropolyether (PFPE) patterns into a microchannel by a series of porous pattern fabrication processes and subsequent photolithography in a site- and shape-selective manner. The 3D ordered macroporous patterns with high-resolution edges were firstly fabricated by microtransfer molding (μ-TM) of the sacrificial polystyrene (PS) template infiltrated with PFPE as a non-adhesive and solvent-resistant skeletal material. The resulting robust PFPE porous structures with high solvent resistance on a silicon wafer can easily be embedded into the microchannel with the aid of conventional photolithography, leading to a microfluidic system with a built-in microstructure. Moreover, catalytic Pd nanoparticles implanted on the surface of the porous structure were obtained by use of Pd nanoparticle deposited PS spheres, the porous structure embedded channel was utilized to perform a Suzuki coupling reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different types of NiMoS/Al2O3 catalysts were prepared by a combination of sonochemical synthesis and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) methods. The performance of the prepared catalysts in the hydrodesulfurization (HDS) of dibenzothiophene (DBT) and 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (4,6-DMDBT) was compared with that of catalysts prepared using the impregnation method. Ni that was selectively added to the MoS2 surface by CVD promoted the HDS activity to a greater extent than Ni added by impregnation, particularly for the direct-desulfurization (DDS) route of the reaction. This was attributed to the former method allowing an intimate interaction between the added Ni and the MoS2 surface, as confirmed by the XPS analysis of the catalysts. NiMoS/Al2O3 prepared by a combination of two methods, sonochemical and CVD, showed improvement in activity over the catalyst prepared by impregnation. Moreover, the hydrogenation (HYD) activity of the former catalyst was significantly higher than that of the latter due to the dominant effect of sonochemical synthesis on the activity. The improvement in activity was greater for the HDS of 4,6-DMDBT than for the HDS of DBT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly ordered mesoporous SiC materials were prepared by infiltrating viscous liquid preceramic polymer, allylhydridopolycarbosilane, into two types of surface modified nanoporous silica templates:  mesoporous silica SBA-15 and mesocellular siliceous foam. The silica templates were subsequently etched off after pyrolysis at 1000 °C under nitrogen atmosphere with the resultant formation of ordered mesoporous structures. The mesoporous SiC materials, synthesized from both types of templates possessed high Brunauer−Emmett−Teller (BET) surface areas in the range of 250−260 m2/g with pore sizes of 3.4−3.6 nm. The ordered structures of mesoporous SiC were exact inverse replicas of their respective silica templates, as characterized by small angle X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM) images, and the adsorption−desorption isotherm of nitrogen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WO3/γ-Al2O3 exhibited a lower activity than WO3/SiO2 in oxidative desulfurization (ODS) of dibenzothiophene using cumene hydroperoxide as the oxidant. This could be a result of the strong interaction between WO3 and γ-Al2O3. The crystalline WO3 was more active than the tetrahedrally coordinated tungsten oxide species bound on the surface of γ-Al2O3. The loss of WO3 was negligible for WO3/SiO2 after the reaction. These features make SiO2 a promising support for the supported WO3 ODS catalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hydrodesulfurization (HDS) of 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (4,6-DMDBT) and its hydrogenated intermediates 1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (TH-4,6-DMDBT) and 1,2,3,4,4a,9b-hexahydro-4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (HH-4,6-DMDBT) over a bulk Ni2P catalyst was studied at 340 °C and 4.0 MPa in the presence and absence of piperidine. The rate constants of all steps in the network of the HDS of 4,6-DMDBT were measured. The HDS of 4,6-DMDBT occurred predominantly through the hydrogenation (HYD) pathway, and the HYD and direct desulfurization pathways were about equally inhibited by piperidine. Piperidine inhibited the desulfurization of TH-4,6-DMDBT and 4,6-DMDBT in the same way, but did not affect that of HH-4,6-DMDBT. In contrast to the HDS of TH-4,6-DMDBT over metal sulfide catalysts and to the HDS of TH-DBT, a fast dehydrogenation of TH-4,6-DMDBT to 4,6-DMDBT was observed. Besides 4,6-DMDBT, a small amount of the methyl-migration isomers was detected in the dehydrogenation product of TH-4,6-DMDBT, which is ascribed to the metallic character of Ni2P. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alumina-supported ruthenium–cesium catalysts were presulfided using [35S]H2S pulse tracer method to evaluate their sulfidation state. Subsequently, using these previously 35S-labeled catalysts, HDS reactions of dibenzothiophene (DBT) were performed and the mobility of 35S introduced during the presulfidation stage was investigated. The results showed that the amount of labile sulfur (S0) was much smaller than the total amount of sulfur accommodated on the catalyst (Stotal). DBT conversion and Stotal increased linearly with Ru content. In a second part, labile sulfur amount was also determined under the catalyst working conditions and different results were obtained. Indeed, when the catalysts were marked with [35S] and with [35S]DBT under HDS reaction conditions, the obtained labile sulfur quantities (S0A) were significantly higher than the ones measured during the presulfidation stage (S0). These results showed that the labile sulfur is not formed on RuCs catalysts until the HDS reaction proceeds, which is quite different from that reported before for Mo, Pt, or Pd systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]