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The oncogenic potential of chromosome 8q22 copy number gain in liver cancer remains to be depicted. Here, we report that ZNF706, encoded by a gene mapped to chromosome 8q22, is a C2H2-type zinc finger protein. However, the biological function and mechanism of ZNF706 have been poorly investigated. Clinically, ZNF706 expression was elevated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and high ZNF706 expression was associated with unfavorable survival in HCC patients. Functional experiments revealed that ZNF706 knockdown inhibited HCC progression both in vitro and in vivo. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and chromatin immunoprecipitation-based deep sequencing (ChIP-seq) revealed that mechanistically, ZNF706 is a crucial ferroptosis regulator and that SLC7A11 is a critical target of ZNF706. In addition, ZNF706 knockdown inhibited SLC7A11 expression, increased lipid peroxidation, and promoted ferroptosis. Further analysis revealed that ZNF706 is a novel direct target transcriptionally activated by MYC in HCC cells. Importantly, MYC depletion reduced SLC7A11-mediated redox homeostasis, and this effect was reversed by ZNF706 reexpression. Collectively, our data demonstrate that ZNF706 is a potential oncogene in liver cancer and functions as a ferroptosis regulator by modulating SLC7A11 expression, constituting a potential therapeutic target for HCC.

Integrated CO2capture and utilization (ICCU) has been regarded as an innovative strategy to realize large-scale CO2emission reduction. The rational design of robust dual-function materials (DFMs) and the optimization of operating parameters are essential for the intensification of the ICCU process. In this work, Ni-CaO DFMs pellets with Ni loadings varying in the 1–20 wt % range are prepared for CO production via integrated CO2capture and reversed water gas shift (RWGS) reaction. The effect of Ni loading on the structure–reactivity relationships of the Ni-CaO DFMs pellets is investigated. CO2capture capacity decreases noticeably at higher loadings of 15 and 20 wt % due to reduced surface basicity. Increased Ni loading enhances reducibility but results in increased Ni particle size, decreased Ni specific surface area, and inferior Ni dispersion, and CO yield thus increases first and then declines. CO2conversion and CO selectivity are almost free from the Ni loading effect. The influences of operating parameters on the ICCU performance of the 5Ni-CaO-P DFMs pellets are investigated using an orthogonal experimental design. The influencing degree of the operating parameters on CO2capture capacity follows the order of H2concentration for catalyst reduction > reaction temperature > CO2concentration > weight hourly space velocity (WHSV). Reaction temperature and H2concentration in the RWGS stage represent the two primary factors affecting the CO2conversion performance. Multiple linear regression analyses are performed, and regression equations for describing the relationships between the various attributes and predictors are acquired. The optimal combination of the operating variables is identified as the reaction temperature of 650 °C, WHSV of 135 000 mL/(h·gcat), 25% H2for catalyst reduction, 10% CO2for capture, and 5% H2for in situ RWGS. The desired 5Ni-CaO-P sample exhibits a high CO2uptake of 16.05 mmol of CO2/g, a great CO yield of 5.77 mmol of CO/g, a remarkable CO2conversion of ∼99%, a great CO selectivity of ∼90%, and good stability in multiple cycles under optimized working conditions. These results will guide the rational design of DFMs pellets and lay the groundwork for their scale-up applications in ICCU.

Consumers' demand for fresh agricultural products (FAPs) and their quality requirements are increasing in the current agricultural-product consumption market. FAPs' unique perishability and short shelf-life features mean a high level of delivery efficiency is required to ensure their freshness and quality. However, consumers' demand for FAPs is contingent and geographically dispersed. Therefore, the conflicting relationship between the costs associated with the logistics distribution and the level of delivery quality is important to consider. In this paper, the authors consider a fresh agricultural-product distribution path planning problem with time windows (FAPDPPPTW). To address the FAPDPPPTW under demand uncertainty, a mixed-integer linear programming model based on robust optimization is proposed. Moreover, a particle swarm optimization algorithm combined with a variable neighborhood search is designed to solve the proposed mathematical model. The numerical experiment results show the robustness and fast convergence of the algorithm.

Neural network-based computer vision is widely used in industrial image detection due to the outstanding performance of fast and accurate defect recognition, which can be applied to the healthy recognition of mini/micro LED chips. However, limited by optical imaging of industrial cameras and chip physical size, the following challenges exist for mini/micro LED chip defect recognition: 1) the difference between a healthy chip and a defective chip image is small due to the limited size of the chip image, low image resolution, and the few pixels occupied by the defect; 2) standardized mini/micro LED industrial manufacturing produces a limited number of defective products, resulting in an imbalance of positive and negative samples. To overcome these challenges, a dual entropy-controlled convolutional neural network (DENC-CNN) combining feature entropy consistency (FEC) and gradient contribution entropy (GCE) is proposed. FEC is proposed to improve feature enrichment and consistency of information transfer to enhance the learnable of samples, with a few fusion parameters. Global attention multi-scale low-resolution feature fusion (GAMLF) is constructed and combined with FEC to retain the detail of multiscale low-resolution features, enhancing the feature description capability of the model. To deal with the inevitable positive and negative sample imbalance, GCE is designed as part of the gradient weighting to guide the model to pay more attention to hard-to-classify samples, while avoiding over-focusing on hard-to-classify samples and over-fitting. We also construct a mini/micro LED dataset based on self-built image acquisition system to validate the proposed model. Experiments show that the proposed DENC-CNN achieves an accuracy of 99.12%, a G-mean of 97.86% and an F1-score of 97.87% for mini/micro LED chip defect recognition.

The development of high-content non-noble metal nanocatalysts is important for multiphase catalysis applications. However, it is a challenge to solve the agglomeration in the preparation of high-content metal catalysts. In this paper, a carbon-based catalyst (Co@CN-G-600) with 71.28 wt % cobalt metal content was prepared using a new strategy of gas-phase carbon coating assisted by glycerol. The core of this strategy is to maintain the spacing of metallic cobalt by continuous replenishment of dissociated ligands during pyrolysis over gas-phase glycerol. This approach is also applicable to other non-noble metals. When Co@CN-G-600 was further used as a catalyst for the selective hydrogenation of furfural (FF) to prepare furfuryl alcohol (FOL), the yield of FOL was >99.9% under mild conditions of 80 °C, compared to only 8.23% catalytic yield at up to 130 °C for Co@CN-600 without glycerol. The excellent catalytic performance mainly lies in the fact that the introduction of glycerol modulates the size effect, electronic effect, and acidic site intensity of the high-content Co catalyst, which promotes the activation of FF and hydrogen. Meanwhile, the optimized specific surface area and pore structure by glycerol improve the accessibility of high-density active sites and promote more efficient mass transfer. In addition, the introduction of glycerol produced a graphitic carbon layer encapsulation structure relative to Co@CN-600, which substantially improved the cycling stability of the catalyst. This study resolves the paradox of high content and high dispersion of non-noble metal catalysts in the synthesis process and provides a general pathway and example for the preparation of stable high-content metal catalysts.

As the people’s living condition improves, the energy demand in China’s transport sector has grown dramatically and will keep increasing in the short term. In this research, we adopted a bottom-up approach to conduct the energy conservation analysis in China’s transport sector during the 14th Five-Year Plan Period based on the LEAP model. This study aims to estimate the energy saving potential of the transport sector in China under three scenarios: the Business as Usual (BAU) scenario, the Energy Conservation (EC) scenario, and the Enhanced Energy Conservation (ECC) scenario. The results indicated that the total energy demand in China’s transport sector would continue to grow over the 14th Five-Year Plan Period, and it would come up to 665.29 million tons of coal equivalent (Mtce) by 2025 in the BAU scenario. The EC scenario and the EEC scenario would save 27.80 and 40.99 Mtce by 2025 compared to the total energy demand in the BAU scenario. Besides, the energy demand of freight transport, intercity passenger transport and urban passenger transport would reach 250.45, 60.75 and 353.89 Mtce by 2025 in the BAU scenario. The corresponding energy saving potential of freight transport, intercity passenger transport and urban passenger transport would be 20.45, 2.22 and 5.12 Mtce by 2025 in the EC scenario, and would be 27.64, 3.34 and 10.01 Mtce by 2025 in the EEC scenario. Considering the significant energy saving potential of the transport sector in China, several major tasks and policy recommendations were then proposed to further reduce the transportation energy consumption.

Customers' concerns about inappropriate use of personal information can create potential threats that jeopardize the proliferation of emerging markets. This study aims at investigating how the adaptive and maladaptive responses of consumers are driven by perceived threat and perceived efficacy of external cues theoretically and how consumers react to the reported misuse of personal data in privacy regulation in the emerging online market. Online experiments were conducted to test the research model. This study contributes to the extension of extended parallel process model by theoretically examining the relationships between perceived threat and perceived efficacy and offers insights into the improvement of privacy regulation from the consumer perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between digitalization, supply chain integration, and firm performance. Data are analyzed by the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that both digitalization in the supply chain and supply chain external integration positively affected company performance. Further, supply chain external integration partially mediated the relationship between supply chain digitalization and firm performance. In addition, it was found that financial performance is enhanced through different paths for large enterprises and SMEs. Large enterprises improve financial performance through supply chain integration after efforts spent on the digitalization of their supply chain, while SMEs improve financial performance directly through supply chain digitalization. These findings provide insights for managers and policymakers of large enterprises and SMEs in formulating appropriate implementation strategies for digital transformation.

A series of CoZn catalysts supported on N-doped porous carbon (CoxZny@NPC-T) with controlled Zn content prepared at different calcination temperatures are studied for catalytic hydrogenation of biomass-based ethyl levulinate to γ-valerolactone, in which Zn is introduced as a regulator. The catalytic activity of optimum Co3Zn1@NPC-600 is 13 times higher than that of Co@NPC-600. The high activity of the catalyst is attributed to the Zn content: the amount of Zn not only regulates the content of active Co(0) and promotes the activation of hydrogen, but also affects the content of acidic sites and optimizes the adsorption of intermediates. Meanwhile, the content of Zn will also optimize the structural characteristics of the catalyst, thereby increasing the dispersion of active sites and mass transfer of the substrate. The regulated function of the Zn content, including electronic effects, acid site effects and size effects, is discussed in detail. In addition, the doping of Zn also helps to improve the stability of cycling performance. The strategy of adjusting the catalytic performance by the doping content provides support and examples for the rational design of highly active and stable catalysts.

Motivated by the fact that the product remanufacturing operations are increasingly performed as firms’ competitive advantage and may also play an important role in the choice of channel structure, we construct game-theoretical models to examine the manufacturer’s optimal sales channel strategy in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC), in which the manufacturer is responsible for used product recycling and remanufacturing and the retailer operates a traditional retail channel. We show that the manufacturer’s optimal sales channel selection depends on the customers’ acceptance of the direct channel and the remanufacturing efficiency. Specifically, in the centralized system, the manufacturer would prefer the dual-channel strategy rather than either the exclusive direct or retail channel, and becomes more willing to introduce a direct channel as the remanufacturing cost savings increase. However, in a decentralized system, there exists a Pareto improvement zone where both the manufacturer and the retailer are better off in the dual-channel format, and the increasing remanufacturing efficiency spills over to the retailer via a lower wholesale price and thus a higher retail demand. Moreover, we extend the study to the retailer-collecting mode and demonstrate that the main results of the original model remain robust.

As a collection of various IoT devices, smart classroom can record various forms of teaching data and provide rich data for recognizing teachers' emotions. Recognizing and analyzing teachers' emotions can promote teachers' professional development. Nowadays, most of the automatic emotion recognition methods for teachers in smart classroom are based on facial expressions. However, since teachers usually keep smiling to mobilize the classroom atmosphere, the recognition results may not reflect the real mental state of teachers. By observing teaching videos, it is found that the prosody and text in the teachers' speech can reflect the implicit emotion of the teacher. Therefore, a multimodal teacher emotion dataset (MTED) was built based on teaching videos recorded by IoT cameras and microphones in smart classroom. A neural network combining multiple prosodic features and text content for teacher speech emotion recognition is proposed. The proposed method fills the gap in teacher speech emotion recognition, our proposed method has higher accuracy. Experimental results show that ProsodyBERT achieves 78.6 % UA4and 66.2 % UA6on IEMOCAP and MELD, respectively, surpassing the existing methods. The proposed method reached 82.1% UA6on MTED self-built dataset, which is 9.6 %-21.4 % higher than that of unimodal method in teacher emotion recognition. An ablation experiment is designed and implemented on MTED dataset to explore the influence of each module in ProsodyBERT on teacher speech emotion recognition task. The experimental results in the smart classroom record show that ProsodyBERT has higher accuracy and stronger robustness than unimodal methods.

Programmed cell death (PCD), including apoptosis, apoptotic necrosis, and pyroptosis, is involved in various organ dysfunction syndromes. Recent studies have revealed that a substrate of caspase-3, gasdermin E (GSDME), functions as an effector for pyroptosis; however, few inhibitors have been reported to prevent pyroptosis mediated by GSDME. Here, we developed a class of GSDME-derived inhibitors containing the core structure of DMPD or DMLD. Ac-DMPD-CMK and Ac-DMLD-CMK could directly bind to the catalytic domains of caspase-3 and specifically inhibit caspase-3 activity, exhibiting a lower IC50than that of Z-DEVD-FMK. Functionally, Ac-DMPD/DMLD-CMK substantially inhibited both GSDME and PARP cleavage by caspase-3, preventing apoptotic and pyroptotic events in hepatocytes and macrophages. Furthermore, in a mouse model of bile duct ligation that mimics intrahepatic cholestasis-related acute hepatic failure, Ac-DMPD/DMLD-CMK significantly alleviated liver injury. Together, this study not only identified two specific inhibitors of caspase-3 for investigating PCD but also, more importantly, shed light on novel lead compounds for treating liver failure and organ dysfunctions caused by PCD.

Upregulation of pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)-6 is observed in gastric cancer tissue, and high IL-6 serum levels predict a poor prognosis of gastric cancer patients. The IL-6/STAT3 pathway has been confirmed to play essential roles in the process of carcinogenesis, including gastric cancer. Thus, blockade of the IL-6/STAT3 pathway may be a potentially effective therapeutic option for gastric cancer. Micheliolide (MCL), a guaianolide sesquiterpene lactone, possesses anti-inflamma tory properties and can attenuate the IL-6 level. In addition, MCL has been widely reported to possess anti-tumor activity. But the anti-cancer effect of MCL on gastric cancer is unclear. In this study, we detected the effects of MCL on gastric cancer cell proliferation and apoptosis by performing MTT, colony formation, TUNEL and western blot assays, and found that MCL inhibited gastric cancer cell proliferation and promoted apoptosis in vitro.We further investigated the molecular mechanism by which MCL played an efficient role against gastric cancer, and found that the IL-6/STAT3 pathway is involved in the anti-cancer effect of MCL on gastric cancer. In vivoexperiments further confirmed this conclusion. Taken together, MCL inhibits gastric cancer growth in vitroand in vivovia blockade of IL-6/STAT3 pathway.

The recent discovery of reversible chemical modifications on mRNA has opened a new era of post-transcriptional gene regulation in eukaryotes. Among the 15 types of modifications identified in mRNA of eukaryotes, N7-methylguanosine (m7G) is unique owing to its presence in the 5′ cap structure. It remains unknown whether m7G is also present internally in mRNA, and this is largely attributed to the lack of an appropriate analytical method to differentiate internal m7G in mRNA from that in the 5′ cap. To address this analytical challenge, we developed a novel strategy of combining differential enzymatic digestion with liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry analysis to quantify the levels of these two types of m7G modifications in mRNA. In particular, we found that S1 nuclease and phosphodiesterase I exhibit differential activities toward internal and 5′-terminal m7G. By using this method, we found that internal m7G was present in mRNA of cultured human cells as well as plants and rat tissue. In addition, our results showed that plants contain higher levels of internal m7G in mRNA than mammals. We also observed that exposure of rice to cadmium (Cd) stimulated marked diminution in the levels of m7G at both the 5′ cap and internal positions of mRNA, which was correlated with the Cd-induced elevated expression of m7G-decapping enzymes. Taken together, we reported here a strategy to distinguish internal and 5′-terminal m7G in mRNA, and by using this method, we demonstrated the prevalence of internal m7G modification in mRNA, which we believe will stimulate future functional studies of m7G on post-transcriptional gene regulation in eukaryotes.

This study explores the effects of social psychological factors on suicidal intent among suicide attempters in rural China. Suicide attempters were identified by the county-level Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCs) and interviewed by the research team. A path analysis was conducted with physical illness, social support, and negative life events as exogenous variables, and life satisfaction, depressive emotions, and suicidal intent as endogenous variables. Beginning with a saturation model, a best model was obtained after removing the paths that were not significant. In the final model, depressive emotions and life satisfaction were directly associated with suicidal intent, and the standardized effect estimates were 0.3007 (p< 0.001) and −0.1182 (p= 0.0368). Physical illness, social support, and negative life events did not directly affect suicidal intent but had indirect effect. Depressive emotions may be the most important and direct predictor of suicidal intent; physical illness, negative life events, and social support affect suicidal intent through life satisfaction and depressive emotions.

As k-out-of-nsystems have widespread applications in engineering practices, their reliability modeling and evaluation are a great concern of reliability community. However, most reported works on k-out-of-nreliability modeling and evaluation are based on the premise that all the components are s-independent. Such simplified treatment may not be realistic as components in a system often suffer the same working or environmental conditions and/or interact with one another, resulting in dependency between their failure processes. To characterize such dependency in reliability modeling and evaluation, a copula-based reliability modeling for dependent multi-state k-out-of-nsystems is developed in this work using copula functions and minimal paths of system states. The state probability and reliability functions of dependent multi-state k-out-of-nsystems with identical components, nonidentical components, and partially dependent components are formulated. Two illustrative examples and a port oil transportation system are presented to demonstrate the implementation of the proposed method, and a sensitivity analysis is also conducted to examine how sensitive the reliability measures are with respect to the degree of dependency.

Glycosylation of small molecules is one of the most widespread modifications which involve various physiological functions in plants. However, the determination of glycosylated small molecules is still challenging due to their low abundance and serious matrix interference in biological samples. Here, we developed a strategy for comprehensive profiling of glycosylated small molecules in rice using magnetic zirconium dioxide (ZrO2)-based solid-phase extraction combined with liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (MSPE-LC-HRMS) analysis. Optimization of several experimental parameters was carried out on standard glycosylated compounds. Our results showed that magnetic ZrO2exhibited high specificity toward 1,2-cis-diol and 1,3-cis-diol glycosyl-containing compounds. With the developed MSPE-LC-HRMS strategy, we successfully identified 27 glycosylated small molecules in rice samples, and a significant content change was observed in 6 glycosylated small molecules between cadmium (Cd)-free and Cd-stressed rice.

Firewall plays an important role in today's network security, and its rule configuration is reasonable or not directly related to the security of network environment. With the increasing size of the network, firewall configurations are becoming increasingly complex, and the firewall policy audit should be born in order to better play the protective properties of the firewall. Firstly, this paper studies the relationship between firewall rules in detail, analyzes some common types of rules abnormal of audit programs and reviews existing policies. Next, this paper proposes a improved audit program based on the tree structure, discusses and achieves the audit process of the program in detail. Finally, this paper shows a graphical reports and detailed audit findings of the prototype system, and does a comparison and verification between the results of the improved audit program and the traditional strategy tree.

Herein, the rheological and mechanical performance generated by the incorporation of construction wastes on the photocatalytic mortar were investigated. Construction wastes referred to recycled clay brick sands (RCBS) and recycled clay brick powder (RCBP). First, the RCBP was used as supplementary cementitious material to replace cement by weight percentages of 0, 10, 20, and 30 at fixed water to cement ratio of 0.6. Then, an optimal combination (20% RCBP and 80% cement) considering the yield stress, plastic viscosity, and mechanical performance was used to bind three types of fine aggregates, viz. 100% silica sands, 80% silica sands plus 20% RCBS, and 80% silica sands plus 20% RCBS based composite photocatalysts (RCBS/TiO2). The recycled glass cullet (RGC) and the RGC based composite photocatalyst (RGC/TiO2) were also used as the fine aggregate. Results revealed that the yield stress and the plastic viscosity of RCBS/TiO2were higher than silica sands and pure RCBSs. Besides, compared with pure RCBS/TiO2, the combination of RCBS/TiO2and RGC/TiO2reduced both the yield stress and the plastic viscosity of the mortar. In addition, either RCBS or RCBS/TiO2with a blending ratio no higher than 20% caused a little effect on the mechanical performance of the mortar.

Herein, the study conducted an experimental investigation on a green building material containing construction and demolition wastes (C&DWs), nano-titanium dioxides (NT), and nano-tourmaline powder (TP). C&DWs indicated recycled clay bricks that were further divided into recycled clay brick sand (RCBS) and recycled clay brick powder (RCBP). RCBS was used as the carrier to support NT and to prepare the composite photocatalyst by a soaking method, with the final product denoted as NT@RCBS. NT@RCBS was then used to replace nature river sands in the mortar by weight ratios of 0, 50, 100%; whilst the TP was blended into the mortar with dosages of 0, 1, 5, 10, 15 wt%. The compressive strength, the concentration of negative ions, and the NOx degradation of prepared mortars were determined. The research is aiming to prepare a functional mortar that can both degrade existing air pollution and actively purify air quality. Experimental results revealed that TP increased the compressive strength when the content was no higher than 15 wt%. Besides, 15 wt% TP, coupled with 100 wt% NT@RCBS was optimal in generating negative ions of 950 ion/(s·cc) equivalent to that in the fresh air defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). By a 3-d surface map plotted by the respond surface methodology (RSM), the NT@RCBS content and the humidity were both positively related to the concentration of negative ions. At last, the coexistence of TP and NT@RCBS boosted the NOx removal, with the highest value of c.a. 250 μmol/(h·m2). The prepared C&DWs based air purifying mortar is expected to provide a feasible approach to concurrently alleviate the solid waste disposal problem and the air pollution problem in megacities.

Electronic systems are vulnerable in electromagnetic interference environment. Although many solutions are adopted to solve this problem, for example shielding, filtering and grounding, noise is still introduced into the circuit inevitably. What impresses us is the biological nervous system with a vital property of robustness in noisy environment. Some mechanisms, such as neuron population coding, degeneracy and parallel distributed processing, are believed to partly explain how the nervous system counters the noise and component failure. This paper proposes a novel concept of bio-inspired electromagnetic protection making reference to the characteristic of neural information processing. A bionic model is presented here to mimic neuron populations to transform the input signal into neural pulse signal. In the proposed model, neuron provides a dynamic feedback to the adjacent one according to the concept of synaptic plasticity. A simple neural circuitry is designed to verify the rationality of the bio-inspired model for electromagnetic protection. The experiment results display that bio-inspired electromagnetic protection model has more power to counter the interference and component failure.

Electronic systems are vulnerable in electromagnetic interference environment. Although many solutions are adopted to solve this problem, for example shielding, filtering and grounding, noise is still introduced into the circuit inevitably. What impresses us is the biological nervous system with a vital property of robustness in noisy environment. Some mechanisms, such as neuron population coding, degeneracy and parallel distributed processing, are believed to partly explain how the nervous system counters the noise and component failure. This paper proposes a novel concept of bio-inspired electromagnetic protection making reference to the characteristic of neural information processing. A bionic model is presented here to mimic neuron populations to transform the input signal into neural pulse signal. In the proposed model, neuron provides a dynamic feedback to the adjacent one according to the concept of synaptic plasticity. A simple neural circuitry is designed to verify the rationality of the bio-inspired model for electromagnetic protection. The experiment results display that bio-inspired electromagnetic protection model has more power to counter the interference and component failure.

Introduce typical embedded device in power transmission line monitoring system and its update requirements. Analyze the drawback of traditional embedded system update mechanism over the air. Propose a security enhanced update approach with light-weight authentication protocol and recovery mechanism.

In this paper, the adsorption of heavy metals by biomass, namely dry garlic stem, an environmentally-friendly and natural adsorbent, were studied．The efficiency of the adsorbent was studied under different experimental conditions by varying parameters such as pH, initial concentration and contact time using batch adsorption technique. The results show that at pH 5.50, room temperature, the adsorption time 90 min and the amount of garlic stem 0.5 g, Co2+ have the maximum adsorption capacity. The maximum adsorption capacity of the Co2+ on garlic stem is 14.9 mg/g. At pH 9.50, the adsorption time 90 min and the amount of garlic stem 0.7g, Cd2+ have the maximum adsorption at the same temperature. The maximum adsorption of the Cd2+ is 20.90 mg/g. At pH 10.0, the adsorption time 150 min and the amount of garlic stem 0.3g, Ni2+ have the maximum adsorption at the same temperature. The dry garlic stem is a efficient adsorbent in removing cobalt, cadmium and nickel from aqueous solution.

This paper focuses on improving concurrent performance of a practical SSL VPN server program. Several common technologies were been used to achieve this, including processing network flow effectively by using readiness notification mechanism, using appropriate data structure to deal with I/O buffers, and implementing timers management module by priority queue. Through combining these technologies properly, the performance of the SSL VPN server program has been improved dramatically.

With the rapid development of semiconductor technology and the increasing proliferation of emission sources, digital circuits are frequently used in harsh and hostile electromagnetic environments. Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) interferences are gradually gaining prominence, resulting in performance degradations, malfunctions and disturbances in component and/or system level applications. Conventional solutions to such problems are shielding, filtering and grounding. This paper proposes a novel Evolvable Digital Circuit (EDC) for intrinsic immunity. The key idea is motivated by the noise-robustness and fault-tolerance of the biological system. First, the architecture of the EDC is designed based on the cell structure. Then, ESD immunity tests are carried out on the most fragile element of the EDC in operation. Based on the results, fault models are also presented to simulate different functional disturbances. Finally, the immunity of the EDC is evaluated while it is exposed to a variety of simulated environments. The results which demonstrate a graceful immunity to ESD interference are presented.

This study reported the feasibility of adsorption of heavy metals using dry garlic stem, an environmentally-friendly and natural adsorbent．Using batch adsorption technique, the efficiency of the adsorbent was studied under different experimental conditions by varying parameters such as pH, initial concentration and contact time. The results show that at pH 2.03, adsorption temperature 35℃, the adsorption time 90 min and the amount of garlic stem 1.0 g, Pb2+ have the maximum adsorption capacity. The maximum adsorption capacity of the Pb2+ on garlic stem is 28.42 mg/g and the adsorption rate is 94.74%. At pH 4.05, the adsorption time 120 min and the amount of garlic stem 1.0, Cu2+ have the maximum adsorption at the same temperature. The maximum adsorption of the Cu2+ is 20.90 mg/g and the adsorption rate is 69.75%. The dry garlic stem was found to be efficient in removing lead and copper from aqueous solution as compared to other adsorbents already used for the removal of these ions.

Organic lightweight aggregate concrete (OAC) is produced by replacing normal aggregate with organic aggregate in concrete or mortar either partially or fully, depending on the requirements of the strength and density. The study aims to investigate the compressive strength of OAC containing virgin EPS beads, recycled EPS granules and rubber granules with diameter 3-5 mm, and the influence of cement matrix on compressive strength of OAC. The results show that compressive strength of OAC decreases as organic aggregate content increases; furthermore, the decreasing rate of the strength is slowing down. The dimensionless compress strength-density relationship of EPS lightweight aggregate concrete (PAC) containing virgin EPS, recycled EPS and different cement matrix has uniform law. It can be modeled as σ*pl /σs=0.916(ρ*/ρs)3.04. The experimental compressive strength of ultra-lightweight EPS concrete with density lower than 900 kg/m3 is much higher than the value calculated by Gibson formula. The larger the relative density is, the greater the difference between the two is. The dimensionless compressive strength-density relationship of rubcrete can be modeled as σ*pl /σs=0.956(ρ*/ρs)8.66. The compressive strength of rubcrete, compared with PAC, is more sensitive to the relative density.

With 2-pyrrolyltrichloroacetone as major starting material, unreported 1H-3,4-dihydropyrrolo- [1,2-a]pyrazin-1-one was prepared successively by its monoesterification with ethylene glycol, bromine displacement of hydroxy group, cyclization to lactone and its amidation. Unreported 7-aroyl-1H-3,4-dihydropyrrolo[1,2-c][1,4]oxazin-1-one compounds were also synthesized in turn by 2-pyrrolyl-trichloroacetone’s Friedel-Crafts acylation and cyclization. Their structures were characterized by IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR, MS, HRMS, etc.

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of EPS content on failure mode, stress-strain relationship and elastic modulus of expanded polystyrene aggregate concrete (PAC) with density lower than 900 kg/m3 under uniaxial loading. The results show that PAC performs a good compressibility in the compression failure process. Apparent oblique crack appears in the case of uniaxial compression specimen damage; the lower the density is, the smaller the tilt angle of oblique cracks will be. Stress-strain curve of PAC with density larger than 422 kg/m3 maintains a straight line relationship on ascending segment but varies with the density on the descent segment. The lower the density is, the larger PAC residual relative stress will become. Elastic modulus of PAC is proportional to 5.85 times index of relative density.

The numerical simulation method has been used to projectile penetrating concrete for many years. However, most previous research work has concentrated on the cuboids concrete model. Very few studies have been conducted to investigate the penetration process of complex concrete model. In this paper, numerical simulations of laboratory tests are conducted to show the penetration process of wedge concrete model. A double scalar damage model based on the concept of continuum damage mechanics is applied to modeling the failure of concrete. In the numerical model of wedge concrete, the wedges with different angles are modeled.

The shock Hugoniot relationship of concrete was studied based on concrete test subjected to the high-velocity impacting loading by one stage gas gun. The P-U(pressure-partical speed) shock Hugoniot relationship curve of concrete was gained from the D-U(shocking wave speed-partical speed) curve of concrete, and the equation of volume pressure P and volume strain v was put forward according to the example analysis. Moreover, based on the polynomial Grьneisen equation, the parameters of high-pressure equation of state of concrete were got by fitting the test date, and the theoretical values from the equation matched well with the experimental ones.

The reducing, reusing, and recycling of construction and demolition wastes (C&DWs) is an imperative aspect of sustainable development. Recycled aggregates (RAs) originated from C&DWs therefrom are applied to the field of building materials for preparing new constructions. The study herein aims to by the photocatalytic technology endow RAs with the photocatalysis and by that achieves the upcycling of RAs with high-added value. Three typical types of RAs were used, which are respectively recycled clay brick sands (RCBS), recycled glass sands (RGS), and recycled fine concrete aggregates (RFA). The sulfur dioxide was identified as the target pollutant; whilst the degradation of sulfur dioxide was the specific embodiment of the photocatalytic performance. RAs were used as carriers to load and absorb nanoscale titanium dioxide (NT), preparing composite photocatalysts (CPs). The CPs were subsequently used as fine aggregates in substituting natural fine aggregates, resulting in the photocatalytic mortar. The particle size of RCBS, the color of RGS, and the origin of RFA were identified as emblematic characteristics that affected the photocatalytic performance of produced photocatalytic mortar. Results unveiled that: (1) RCBS with a smaller particle size absorbs more NT and possesses a higher sulfur dioxide degradation; whilst the utility of per gram NT of 2.36-4.75mm RCBS is c.a. 2 times than that of 0.6-1.18mm RCBS. (2) RGS that is black has the lowest sulfur dioxide degradation; whilst the RGS that is transparent has the highest value. RGS with other colors at varying extents exhibited a reduced degradation, with no discernible rules to follow. (3) RFA derived from recycled concrete with normal strength has a better performance. The paper at the end also in an attempt probed into the enhancement mechanisms of photocatalytic efficiency triggered by RA-based CPs.

Growing evidence indicates that N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is the most pervasive RNA modification in eukaryotic cells. However, the specific role of METTL3 in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) initiation and development remains elusive. Here we found that downregulation of METTL3 was correlated with malignant progression and poor prognosis in PTC. A variety of gain- and loss-of-function studies clarified the effect of METTL3 on regulation of growth and metastasis of PTC cells in vitroand in vivo. By combining RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and methylated RNA immunoprecipitation sequencing (meRIP-seq), our mechanistic studies pinpointed c-Rel and RelA as downstream m6A targets of METTL3. Disruption of METTL3 elicited secretion of interleukin-8 (IL-8), and elevated concentrations of IL-8 promoted recruitment of tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) in chemotaxis assays and mouse models. Administration of the IL-8 antagonist SB225002 substantially retarded tumor growth and abolished TAN accumulation in immunodeficient mice. Our findings revealed that METTL3 played a pivotal tumor-suppressor role in PTC carcinogenesis through c-Rel and RelA inactivation of the nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) pathway by cooperating with YTHDF2 and altered TAN infiltration to regulate tumor growth, which extends our understanding of the relationship between m6A modification and plasticity of the tumor microenvironment.