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Cellulose has been widely used in papermaking, textile, and chemical industries due to its diverse sources, environmental friendliness, and renewability. Recently, much more attention has been paid to converting cellulose into high-value-added products. Therefore, the extraction of nanocellulose, the dissolution of cellulose, and their applications are some of the most important research topics currently. However, cellulose’s dense hydrogen bond network poses challenges for efficient extraction and dissolution, limiting its potential for functional material development. This review discusses the mechanisms of hydrogen bond disruption and weak interactions during nanocellulose extraction and cellulose dissolution. Key challenges and future research directions are highlighted, emphasizing developing efficient, ecofriendly, and cost-effective methods. Additionally, this review provides theoretical insights for constructing high-performance cellulose-based materials.

Bone metastasis is a lethal consequence of breast cancer. Here we used single-cell transcriptomics to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying bone metastasis colonization—the rate-limiting step in the metastatic cascade. We identified that lymphotoxin-β (LTβ) is highly expressed in tumour cells within the bone microenvironment and this expression is associated with poor bone metastasis-free survival. LTβ promotes tumour cell colonization and outgrowth in multiple breast cancer models. Mechanistically, tumour-derived LTβ activates osteoblasts through nuclear factor-κB2 signalling to secrete CCL2/5, which facilitates tumour cell adhesion to osteoblasts and accelerates osteoclastogenesis, leading to bone metastasis progression. Blocking LTβ signalling with a decoy receptor significantly suppressed bone metastasis in vivo, whereas clinical sample analysis revealed significantly higher LTβ expression in bone metastases than in primary tumours. Our findings highlight LTβ as a bone niche-induced factor that promotes tumour cell colonization and osteolytic outgrowth and underscore its potential as a therapeutic target for patients with bone metastatic disease.

Agrochemical residues and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions have caused considerable threats to agricultural soil ecology. Nanoscale zerovalent iron (nZVI) and nitrification inhibitors might be complementary to each other to diminish soil agrochemical residues and N2O emissions and enhance soil bacterial community diversities. Compared to the control, the nZVI application declined soil paclobutrazol residues by 5.9% but also decreased the bacterial community co-occurrence network node. Combined nZVI and Dicyandiamide applications significantly decreased soil N2O emission rates and paclobutrazol residues but promoted Shannon diversity of the bacterial community. The increased soil pH, ammonium nitrogen, and Actinobacteriotacould promote soil paclobutrazol dissipation. The nZVI generated double-edged sword effects of positively decreasing paclobutrazol residues and N2O emissions but negatively influencing soil multifunctionalities. The nZVI and Dicyandiamide could be complementary to each other in diminishing soil agrochemical residues and N2O emission rates but promoting soil bacterial community diversities simultaneously.

Confined spaces such as polar regions, deep earth and deep ocean are crucial navigation scenarios where traditional navigation techniques have difficulty in obtaining external signals for positioning. The cosmic ray muons, which carry the spatial and energetic information, are easy to penetrate these confined spaces. Therefore, the unique muon characteristic provides a new perspective to estimate detector position, which can be considered using in confined spaces navigation. In this paper, a well-developed theory of muon navigation is established by combining a muon pseudorange measurement method. Moreover, an Equivalent Velocity Calculation Model (EVCM) and a Muon Sequence Matching Technology (MSMT) are proposed. The first model corrects flight pseudorange error caused by the relativistic energy loss and the second technology compensates the random error in pseudorange measurement. Further, a series of simulations are performed to analyze the muon events number which can be received by detector in different scenarios with the variations of zenith angle, detector area, varied detector plates gap, and muon flight distance. Meanwhile, the simulation results demonstrate that the muon navigation update rate every 10 minutes can reach 5.989 in confined spaces at 100 m, and further pseudorange error analysis indicates that the meter-level positioning accuracy can be acquired. Finally, we construct a muon coincidence measurement scheme and verify that the laws of the muon positioning system for high-energy muons are consistent with the simulation results.

A celestial navigation system (CNS) can be integrated in vehicles to suppress the diverging error of the inertial navigation system (INS). However, the CNS is subjected to aero-thermo-optic effects in hypersonic environments that introduce large-scale centroiding errors in star sensor images and greatly reduce the star sample size, limiting the usefulness of the CNS for hypersonic vehicles. In this study, these difficulties were addressed by the development of a statistical model for measurement noise based on the angular distance so that the standard deviation (SD) of the measurement noise can be correlated with the star sample size. To compensate for the centroiding error, a variable-dimension pseudo-transient adaptive filter was designed where the initial R matrix is set according to the star sample size. A semi-physical experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, and the results indicated that stable centroiding error compensation was achieved for extremely small star sample sizes. In particular, the proposed method compensated for up to 66.24% of random positioning error, which is a performance improvement of about 10% compared with conventional compensation methods.

Autoreactive B cells are silenced through receptor editing, clonal deletion and anergy induction. Additional autoreactive B cells are ignorant because of physical segregation from their cognate autoantigen. Unexpectedly, we find that follicular B cell-derived autoantigen, including cell surface molecules such as FcγRIIB, is a class of homeostatic autoantigen that can induce spontaneous germinal centers (GCs) and B cell-reactive autoantibodies in non-autoimmune animals with intact T and B cell repertoires. These B cell-reactive B cells form GCs in a manner dependent on spontaneous follicular helper T (TFH) cells, which preferentially recognize B cell-derived autoantigen, and in a manner constrained by spontaneous follicular regulatory T (TFR) cells, which also carry specificities for B cell-derived autoantigen. B cell-reactive GC cells are continuously generated and, following immunization or infection, become intermixed with foreign antigen-induced GCs. Production of plasma cells and antibodies derived from B cell-reactive GC cells are markedly enhanced by viral infection, potentially increasing the chance for autoimmunity. Consequently, immune homeostasis in healthy animals not only involves classical tolerance of silencing and ignoring autoreactive B cells but also entails a reactive equilibrium attained by a spontaneous B cell-reactive triad of B cells, TFHcells and TFRcells.

Halogenated organic compounds in wastewater are persistent and bioaccumulative contaminants of great concern, but few are known at the molecular level. Herein, we focus on nontarget screening of halogenated dissolved organic matter (DOM) in highly concentrated organic matrices of waste leachates and their concentrates. Solid-phase extraction (SPE) was optimized before capturing halogenated signatures via HaloSeeker 2.0 software on mining full-scan high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) fingerprints. This study identified 438 Cl-/Br-containing DOM formulas in 21 leachates and membrane concentrates. Among them, 334 formulas were achieved via SPE with mixed-sorbent cartridges (mixed-SPE), surpassing the 164 formulas achieved through Bond Elut PPL cartridges (PPL-SPE). Herein, only four samples identified via PPL-SPE exhibited a resolution of >50% for extracted Cl-/Br-containing DOM by either SPE. The halogenated DOM constituted 6.87% of the total DOM mass features. Nevertheless, more abundant adsorbable organic halogens deciphered waste leachates and highly concentrated waste streams as reservoirs for halogenated contaminants. Remarkably, 75.7–98.1% of Cl-/Br-containing DOM in primary membrane concentrates remained stable through the secondary membrane treatment, indicating the persistence of these unknown contaminants even post-treatment.

Time–frequency (TF) analysis can improve the performance of direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation by only utilizing the valid TF points in the TF plane. However, when instantaneous frequencies (IFs) interact with each other in a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the DOA estimation performance will degrade because of the difficulty in extracting valid TF points or IF ridges. We propose a novel method that adopts the unified general parameterized TF transform (GPTFT) with multiple sensors considering the sparseness of the signal in the angle domain to deal with severe situations in this article. First, a unified parameterized TF representation is proposed to enhance the ability to extract the IFs. Based on the sparseness of the signal in the angle domain, an evaluation of IF candidates is employed to select the most reliable IF candidate in GPTFT, which makes it more robust and accurate. With a specific IF, intrinsic chirp component decomposition (ICCD) in multiple channels is employed to derive the single-source signal and DOA can be estimated at last. The proposed method can solve the situation where IFs are complex in the TF plane and sources are close-spaced. Compared with the short-time Fourier transform and GPTFT, the energy ratio of the proposed method in the real IF band is increased by 12.17% and 6.79%, respectively. The proposed method exhibits a higher accuracy in DOA estimation in comparison with conventional methods when dealing with close-spaced and nonstationary sources. Simulations in different configurations of parameters are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Green wheat protein is rich in nutritional value and is a high-quality vegetable protein. In this paper, the composition, structure and functional properties of green wheat protein were investigated. Albumin (60.1%), globulin (3.7%), gliadin (2.9%) and glutenin (33.3%) were isolated from green wheat. The content of essential amino acids in all four proteins was hig her than the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recommended value for adults. The results of circular dichroism spectroscopy indicated that β-sheet was the main ordered structure in green wheat protein isolates, gliadin had the highest content of ordered structure. In addition, albumin and gliadin had relatively compact structures and high thermal stability. The glutenin and globulin had poor thermal stability due to their loose and porous structure, but the cross-linking and aggregation between glutenins were beneficial to improve thermal stability. The rheological results showed that the four protein isolate solutions exhibited typical shear thinning behavior in the shear rate range, the apparent viscosity was lower at high shear rate and low temperature (< 40 °C), while shear rate and temperature had relatively weak effects on the fluidity of gliadin solution. This study provided a theoretical basis for the development of green wheat protein as a new type of plant-derived protein.

Aging has often been characterized by progressive cognitive decline in memory and especially executive function. Yet some adults, aged 80 years or older, are “super-agers” that exhibit cognitive performance like younger adults. It is unknown if there are adults in mid-life with similar superior cognitive performance (“positive-aging”) versus cognitive decline over time and if there are blood biomarkers that can distinguish between these groups. Among 1303 participants in UK Biobank, latent growth curve models classified participants into different cognitive groups based on longitudinal fluid intelligence (FI) scores over 7–9 years. Random Forest (RF) classification was then used to predict cognitive trajectory types using longitudinal predictors including demographic, vascular, bioenergetic, and immune factors. Feature ranking importance and performance metrics of the model were reported. Despite model complexity, we achieved a precision of 77% when determining who would be in the “positive-aging” group (n= 563) vs. cognitive decline group (n= 380). Among the top fifteen features, an equal number were related to either vascular health or cellular bioenergetics but not demographics like age, sex, or socioeconomic status. Sensitivity analyses showed worse model results when combining a cognitive maintainer group (n= 360) with the positive-aging or cognitive decline group. Our results suggest that optimal cognitive aging may not be related to age per se but biological factors that may be amenable to lifestyle or pharmacological changes.

Vibration signals of the planetary transmission system usually contain excitation responses from different structures. The fault characteristic of the planet bearing cage is weak, which is often overwhelmed by strong noise and other irrelevant vibration components. Therefore, fault feature extraction of the planet bearing cage is a challenging topic. In this article, a novel fault feature extraction method is proposed to extract the weak fault features of the planet bearing cage. The general parameterized time–frequency transform is employed to accurately extract instantaneous rotational speed information from the planet bearing vibration signal for resampling. It can obtain the accurate rotational speed result even though under power frequency interference conditions. The influence of the deterministic components excited by the gear can be reduced by using the spectral prewhitening, and the interference of noise and random impact can be reduced in the selection of the optimal resonance frequency band by using autogram analysis. The fault characteristic components of the planet bearing cage can be extracted from the square envelop spectrum. The neighborhood power density ratio index is further constructed to distinguish the health bearing state from the cage fault bearing state and evaluate the degree of faults. Experiments designed in a planetary transmission system test rig of an armored vehicle have verified the potential and effectiveness of the proposed fault feature extraction method in exhibiting planet bearing cage fault features.

The effective fault diagnosis of bearing can guarantee the safety of rotating machinery and is very important for its stable operation. The information fusion of multisensor data has been a feasible method to enhance the performance of fault diagnosis. However, how to fuse the joint information from different channels or even different kinds of sensors is still an important challenge. This study proposes a novel multisensor information coupling network (MICN) for bearing fault diagnosis, which handles the signals from the same or different types of sensors, and the deeper features can be extracted from multisensors independently and simultaneously fused layer by layer. Especially, during the multilayer feature fusion process, a novel feature-level information coupling model is developed based on the mutual attention mechanism. Finally, to validate the efficiency of the proposed method, several different experiments are designed, and the results show the validity and superiority.

Although oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) in orthodontic patients has been assessed in the past, to date, no study has compared the OHRQoL between two nations. We aimed to compare the OHRQoL between Chinese and American orthodontic patients.

Pro-angiogenic factors are key regulators of angiogenesis. Here we report that highly migratory cells patrol the area of capillary formation in chick embryo chorioallantoic membrane. These cells deposit migrasomes on their migration tracks, creating migrasome-enriched areas. Single-cell sequencing identified these cells as monocytes. Depletion of monocytes impairs capillary formation. Quantitative mass spectrometry analysis reveals that monocyte migrasomes are enriched with pro-angiogenic factors. Purified migrasomes promote capillary formation and monocyte recruitment in vivo, and endothelial cell tube formation and monocyte chemotaxis in vitro. Knockdown or knockout of TSPAN4reduces migrasome formation and impairs capillary formation and monocyte recruitment. Mechanistically, monocytes promote angiogenesis via VEGFA and CXCL12 in migrasomes. In summary, monocytes deposit migrasomes enriched in pro-angiogenic factors to promote angiogenesis.

A 4-set Venn diagram model oriented to high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) data was developed to decipher the fate of dissolved organic matters (DOM) in three-stage continuous wastewater treatment processes. In total, 24 typical wastewater treatment modes conceptualized into a combination of three stages were generalized so that this model can be applied to all common types of actual wastewater treatment processes. As a result, eight kinds of native DOM and seven kinds of wastewater-produced (WW-produced) DOM separately represented by each proper subset of the 4-set Venn diagram could be identified so as to offer a molecular profile of DOM transformation. The 15 proper subsets of the 4-set Venn diagram could then explain how different wastewater treatment units work. Transformation rates of each DOM molecular formula can be estimated as a semiquantitative result. We further discussed the relationship between the transformation rates and proper subsets. As a proof of concept, the 4-set Venn diagram model was successfully applied in a complicated full-scale mature leachate treatment process with nine treatment units. This model can help to overcome the challenging task of data mining when applying HRMS and reduce the workload of data screening in the subsequent structural annotation.

This paper discusses the effects of the construction of urban expressway on accessibility and further investigates the relationship between changes in accessibility and house prices caused by expressway construction. Taking the Qiushi Highway Phase III project in China as an example, a hedonic price model and difference-in-difference method are used to analyze the impact. The main innovation of the study is how it considers the improvement of the overall traffic conditions brought about by the construction of the expressway. In addition, three distance impedance parameters—namely Euclidean distance, road network distance, and actual transit time—are used to estimate the value of traffic accessibility during the process. The main research conclusions are as follows: (1) The opening of the Qiushi Highway Phase III project can significantly improve the accessibility of the surrounding areas to the city center. Additionally, this improvement can be extended to further sites through the urban expressway network; (2) The results of the difference-in-difference method show that the premium effect of the city expressway on house prices will not be directly generated by the expressway’s geographical proximity to the project. In fact, the expressway will increase accessibility in some related areas and will also have a further positive impact on housing prices; (3) Among the three types of traffic impedance parameters, accessibility calculated on the basis of actual transit time has the strongest connection to house prices.

Background: The monthly regeneration of human endometrial tissue is maintained by the presence of human endometrial mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (eMSC), a cell population co-expressing the perivascular markers CD140b and CD146. Endometrial regeneration is impaired in the presence of intrauterine adhesions, leading to infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss and placental abnormalities. Several types of somatic stem cells have been used to repair the damaged endometrium in animal models, reporting successful pregnancy. However, the ability of endometrial stem cells to repair the damaged endometrium remains unknown. Methods: Electrocoagulation was applied to the left uterine horn of NOD/SCID mice causing endometrial injury. Human eMSC or PBS was then injected into the left injured horn while the right normal horn served as controls. Mice were sacrificed at different timepoints (Day 3, 7 and 14) and the endometrial morphological changes as well as the degree of endometrial injury and repair were observed by histological staining. Gene expression of various inflammatory markers was assessed using qPCR. The functionality of the repaired endometrium was evaluated by fertility test. Results: Human eMSC successfully incorporated into the injured uterine horn, which displayed significant morphological restoration. Also, endometrium in the eMSC group showed better cell proliferation and glands formation than the PBS group. Although the number of blood vessels were similar between the two groups, gene expression of VEGF-α significantly increased in the eMSC group. Moreover, eMSC had a positive impact on the regeneration of both stromal and epithelial components of the mouse endometrium, indicated by significantly higher vimentin and CK19 protein expression. Reduced endometrial fibrosis and down-regulation of fibrosis markers were also observed in the eMSC group. The eMSC group had a significantly higher gene expression of anti-inflammatory factor Il-10and lower mRNA level of pro-inflammatory factors Ifngand Il-2, indicating the role of eMSC in regulation of inflammatory reactions. The eMSC group showed higher implantation sites than the PBS group, suggesting better endometrial receptivity with the presence of newly emerged endometrial lining. Conclusions: Our findings suggest eMSC improves regeneration of injured endometrium in mice.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non‐coding RNAs that play a fundamental role in enabling miRNA‐mediated target repression, a post‐transcriptional gene regulatory mechanism preserved across metazoans. Loss of certain animal miRNA genes can lead to developmental abnormalities, disease, and various degrees of embryonic lethality. These short RNAs normally guide Argonaute (AGO) proteins to target RNAs, which are in turn translationally repressed and destabilized, silencing the target to fine‐tune gene expression and maintain cellular homeostasis. Delineating miRNA‐mediated target decay has been thoroughly examined in thousands of studies, yet despite these exhaustive studies, comparatively less is known about how and why miRNAs are directed for decay. Several key observations over the years have noted instances of rapid miRNA turnover, suggesting endogenous means for animals to induce miRNA degradation. Recently, it was revealed that certain targets, so‐called target‐directed miRNA degradation (TDMD) triggers, can “trigger” miRNA decay through inducing proteolysis of AGO and thereby the bound miRNA. This process is mediated in animals via the ZSWIM8 ubiquitin ligase complex, which is recruited to AGO during engagement with triggers. Since its discovery, several studies have identified that ZSWIM8 and TDMD are indispensable for proper animal development. Given the rapid expansion of this field of study, here, we summarize the key findings that have led to and followed the discovery of ZSWIM8‐dependent TDMD. This article is categorized under:Regulatory RNAs/RNAi/Riboswitches > Regulatory RNAsRNA Turnover and Surveillance > Turnover/Surveillance MechanismsRNA in Disease and Development > RNA in Development A model of the current ZSWIM8‐dependent target‐directed miRNA degradation (TDMD) mechanism. A trigger RNA (maroon) bearing extensive complementarity to an AGO‐loaded miRNA (cyan, black), will direct AGO for turnover via recruitment of the ZSWIM8 ubiquitin ligase complex (green), leading to its proteasomal decay and exposing the miRNA to RNases.

Here, Li et al. systematically analyzed Argonaute-CLASH (cross-linking, ligation, and sequencing of miRNA–target RNA hybrids) data and identified numerous candidate target RNA-directed miRNA degradation (TDMD) triggers, focusing on their ability to induce nontemplated nucleotide addition at the miRNA 3′ end. They uncovered widespread TDMD triggers in target RNAs and demonstrated that they could functionally cooperate with the encoded proteins.

In this work, the effect of cold rolling on the wear performance of GCr15 bearing steel with multiphase microstructure has been investigated. The microstructural observation shows that prior cold rolling facilitates to the dissolution of carbides during austenitization. With the increase of cold rolling reduction, the residual austenite content is increased after multiphase heat treatment. The wear results indicate that friction coefficient as well as wear rate distinctly decreases with the increase of rolling reduction. It is also found that the transformation of martensite from residual austenite induced by wear stress increases the surface compressive stress and hardness for the rolled specimens, thereby leading to the enhancement of dry wear resistance.

Food packaging plays an important role in protecting the safety and quality of food products and enables communication with consumers. With the improved consumers’ awareness of safety and quality of food products, the changes in consumers’ lifestyle, and the growing demand for transparency of food products along the supply chain, food packaging technologies have evolved from only providing the four fundamental functions (i.e., protection and preservation, containment, communication and marketing, and convenience) to possessing additional functions including active modification of the inside microenvironment (i.e., active packaging) and monitoring the safety and quality of products in real-time (i.e., intelligent packaging). A variety of active and intelligent packaging systems have been developed to better protect and monitor the quality and safety of food products during the past several decades. Recently, advanced versions of smart packaging technologies, such as smart active packaging and smart intelligent packaging technologies have also been developed to enhance the effectiveness of conventional smart packaging systems. Additionally, smart packaging systems that harvest the advantages of both active packaging and intelligent packaging have also been developed. In this chapter, a brief overview of smart packaging technologies was provided. Specific technologies being covered include conventional smart packaging technologies and advanced smart packaging technologies, such as smart active packaging, smart intelligent packaging and dual-function smart packaging.

Human endometrium undergoes cycles of proliferation and differentiation throughout the reproductive years of women. The endometrial stem/progenitor cells contribute to this regenerative process. They lie in the basalis layer of the endometrium next to the myometrium. We hypothesized that human myometrial cells provide niche signals regulating the activities of endometrial mesenchymal stem‐like cells (eMSCs). In vitro coculture of myometrial cells enhanced the colony‐forming and self‐renewal ability of eMSCs. The cocultured eMSCs retained their multipotent characteristic and exhibited a greater total cell output when compared with medium alone culture. The expression of active β‐catenin in eMSCs increased significantly after coculture with myometrial cells, suggesting activation of WNT/β‐catenin signaling. Secretory factors in spent medium from myometrial cell culture produced the same stimulatory effects on eMSCs. The involvement of WNT/β‐catenin signaling in self‐renewal of eMSCs was confirmed with the use of WNT activator (Wnt3A conditioned medium) and WNT inhibitors (XAV939 and inhibitor of Wnt Production‐2 [IWP‐2]). The myometrial cells expressed more WNT5A than other WNT ligands. Recombinant WNT5A stimulated whereas anti‐WNT5A antibody suppressed the colony formation, self‐renewal, and T‐cell factor/lymphoid enhancer‐binding factor (TCF/LEF) transcriptional activities of eMSCs. Moreover, eMSCs expressed FZD4 and LRP5. WNT5A is known to activate the canonical WNT signaling in the presence of these receptor components. WNT antagonist, DKK1, binds to LRP5/6. Consistently, DKK1 treatment nullified the stimulatory effect of myometrial cell coculture. In conclusion, our findings show that the myometrial cells are niche components of eMSCs, modulating the self‐renewal activity of eMSCs by WNT5A‐dependent activation of WNT/β‐catenin signaling. Stem Cells2019;37:1455–1466 Myometrial cells are niche cells of endometrial mesenchymal stem cells. The myometrial cells secrete WNT5A that interacts with WNT receptors FZD4 and LRP5, resulting in activation of the WNT/β‐catenin signaling, enhancement of the self‐renewal and proliferation activities of the endometrial mesenchymal stem cells. Thus, WNT5A plays a pivotal role in expansion and repopulation of stem/progenitor cells in human endometrium.

In the current experiment, the integrated techniques of salting-out extraction followed by cation exchange chromatographic separation were used to purify lactoperoxidase (LP) from milk whey. In order to optimize the purification condition of LP, the different conditions of salting out extraction as well as chromatographic separation were tried and the efficiency of these conditions were evaluated in terms of activity recovery and purification fold. LP extracted with ammonium sulphate for 8 h at pH 6.5, followed by centrifugation at 7000 rpm was revealed as optimum salting condition due to maximum value activity recovery (85.74%) and purification fold (3.13%). LP from this optimum salting out extraction process were furthermore separated in 100 GigaCap S-650M strong cation chromatographic column (20 cm × 1.6 cm, 50–100 µm) by using phosphate buffer (0.03M, pH 7.2) with flow rate of 2 mL/min which was shown highest activity recovery (82.62%) and purification fold (126.65 times). It was also verified that there was a single band presence and the molecular weight of LP was approximately 85 kDa by SDS-PAGE analysis. Therefore, it is suggested that combination of salting-out and GigaCap S-650M strong cation exchange chromatography could be an efficient and practical method to purify bovine LP.

The fabrication of shape memory polymers that are mechanically robust and capable of being induced by near-infrared (NIR) light and healing mechanical damage and the fatigued shape memory function remains a challenge. In this study, thermally and NIR-light-induced shape memory polymers with self-healing ability and satisfactory mechanical robustness are fabricated by dispersing poly(acrylic acid) (PAA)-grafted graphene oxide (GO) (PAA-GO) into poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) matrix. The PVA/PAA-GO3%films with a PAA-GO content of 3.0 wt % have a fracture stress of ∼70.4 MPa and a Young’s modulus of ∼2.8 GPa. The PVA/PAA-GO3%films exhibit an excellent shape memory performance because PVA and PAA-GO form a stable network through hydrogen-bonding interaction between them. Meanwhile, the PVA/PAA-GO3%films are capable of recovering from temporary shape to permanent shape under NIR light irradiation because of excellent photothermal conversion property of the GO nanosheets. More importantly, benefiting from the reversibility of hydrogen-bonding interactions between PVA and PAA-GO nanosheets, the shape memory PVA/PAA-GO3%films are capable of healing physical damage and the fatigued shape memory function with the assistance of water, which greatly enhance their reliability as shape memory materials and prolong their service life.

Hyperlipidemia is one of the main causes of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and atherosclerosis. The adenosine derivative, 2?,3?,5?-triacetyl-N6-(3-hydroxylaniline) adenosine (IMM-H007) is an effective lipid-lowering compound that has important implications for the development of lipid-lowering drugs. Metabolomic analysis based on 1H NMR was used to monitor dynamic changes in diverse biological media including serum, liver, urine, and feces in response to high-fat diet (HFD) and IMM-H007 treatments. Ultraperformance liquid chromatography?tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC?MS/MS) and gas chromatography (GC) analyses were performed to quantify the bile acids and fatty acids in the liver and feces. Fecal microbiome profiling was performed using Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA (16S rRNA) gene. IMM-H007 improved the metabolism of carbohydrate, ketone bodies, fatty acids, amino acids, and bile acids in hyperlipidemic hamsters. The correlation between metabolite changes was explored in different biological media. Significant changes in gut microbiota were observed in the HFD and IMM-H007 treatment groups. In the HFD group at the phylum level, we found high levels of the Firmicutes genus and low levels of Bacteroidetes. In contrast, the administration of IMM-H007 reversed the levels of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. This reversal suggested that IMM-H007 may have the ability to regulate the composition of the gut flora. We also analyzed the correlation between the gut flora and the metabolites. Our results indicate that IMM-H007 treatment improves the hyperlipidemic metabolism and the structure of the gut microbiota in hyperlipidemic hamsters.

Collecting strong enough and repeatable signals from laser-induced plasmas is the primary goal of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy optical detection systems. Typically, the light emitted from the plasma is refracted by the lens, collected by the fiber, and measured by the spectrometer. In the present work, we established a three-dimensional model to systematically evaluate the overall emission collected from different positions of the plasma for a typical optical collection system composed of a focus lens and a collection fiber, and sensitivity analyses were further performed. In addition, experiments were conducted and partially validated the model. Results showed that for the collection system with an optical fiber located on the focal point of the collection lens, the collection efficiency distribution is almost constant within a large cylindrical-shaped area, while for that located off the focal point, there is a rhombus-shaped area with higher collection efficiency than other areas. This much higher collection efficiency area is small in size but has a large impact on the detected spectral intensity. The spatially distributed collection efficiency on the lens parameters, such as size and position, was further discussed to clarify the impacts of the collection system. Furthermore, sensitivity analyses were performed to evaluate the impact of the collection system on the signal repeatability. Based on these calculations, recommendations for the design of the collection for optimized spectral intensity and stability were proposed.

We present phase-sensitive measurement of optical rotation using spectral-domain and time-domain low-coherence interferometry. The method utilizes two decorrelated polarization states and simultaneous dual-channel detection provided by polarization-maintaining fiber-based implementation. The sample is placed between polarization optics to control and switch left- and right-handed circular states that experience the sample in forward and backward directions. Phase difference between two interferometric signals yields the optical rotation. Results from glucose and fructose samples are presented for validation.

Decahedron BiVO4 with {040} dominant crystal facets was synthesized for BiVO4/FTO photoelectrodes, where the {040} facets improve the charge carrier mobility. The dechlorinating cocatalyst Pd and the oxidation cocatalyst MnOx (x = 1.5-2.0) were photodeposited selectively on the {040} and {110} facets, respectively, of the decahedron BiVO4. In the linear potential sweep data, the 0.5% mass ratio of the double-deposition precursor (0.5 wt% Pd/MnOx/BiVO4) electrode attained the highest photocurrent density (0.992 mA/cm2) under 450 nm light irradiation. The presence of cocatalysts of Pd and MnOx synergistically suppressed the radiative photocharge recombination and caused the redshift of the corresponding visible light to the highest wavelength of 543 nm. Notably, the decahedron BiVO4 with {040} exposed crystal facets exhibited significantly higher photocurrent than irregular BiVO4. Irradiation was the main exciting force of free charge, and the applied potential indispensably yielded additional hydroxyl radicals (*OH). This finding was confirmed by the 2.77 times higher degradation efficiency of 4-chlorophenol (4-CP) by photoelectrocatalysis than that by photocatalysis. The 4-CP decomposition and mineralization rates reached 96.5% and 91.9%, respectively. Hence, a photoelectrocatalytic system containing multifunctional BiVO4 for chlorophenol degradation was constructed.

Pollution treatment, a problem our world is being deeply puzzled by, has required large amounts of energy during enrichment and degradation. However, some pollutants, for instance organics in wastewater, could offer an energy supply but instead are wasted. Here we report an energy harvesting galvanic cell, built by using a Pt foil as an anode and 2D K+-intercalated MnO2as a cathode, which combines both dye degradation in wastewater and energy harvesting during the degradation process. Owing to the galvanic effect, this cell could accelerate the degradation rate and indicate the progress of degradation. Different kinds of organics could be degraded and produce energy in this cell with a stable open-circuit voltage (0.45 V). Magnification and imitation of this strategy offer a new chance to harvest waste energy in other exothermic reactions.

It is challenging to develop healable elastomers with combined high mechanical strength and good elasticity. Herein, a simple strategy to develop high-performance elastomers that integrate high mechanical strength, enormous stretchability, good resilience, and healability is reported. Through simply complexing poly(acrylic acid) and poly(ethylene oxide) based on hydrogen-bonding interactions, transparent composite materials that perform as elastomers are generated. The as-prepared elastomers exhibit mechanical strength (true strength at break) and toughness (fracture energy) as high as 61 MPa and 22.9 kJ/m2, respectively, and they can be stretched to >35 times their initial length and are able to return to their original dimensions following the removal of stress. Further, the elastomers are capable of healing from physical cuts/damages in a humid environment because of reformation of the reversible hydrogen bonds between the polymer components. The high mechanical strength of the elastomers is ascribed to the high degree of polymer chain entanglements and multiple hydrogen-bonding interactions in the composites. The reversible hydrogen bonds, which act as cross-linkages, facilitate the unfolding and sliding of the polymer chains in the composites, thereby endowing the elastomers with good elasticity and healability. Furthermore, flexible conductors with water-enabled healability were developed by drop-casting Ag nanowires on top of the elastomers.

Two-dimensional (2D) transition-metal nitrides just recently entered the research arena, but already offer a potential for high-rate energy storage, which is needed for portable/wearable electronics and many other applications. However, a lack of efficient and high-yield synthesis methods for 2D metal nitrides has been a major bottleneck for the manufacturing of those potentially very important materials, and only MoN, Ti4N3, and GaN have been reported so far. Here we report a scalable method that uses reduction of 2D hexagonal oxides in ammonia to produce 2D nitrides, such as MoN. MoN nanosheets with subnanometer thickness have been studied in depth. Both theoretical calculation and experiments demonstrate the metallic nature of 2D MoN. The hydrophilic restacked 2D MoN film exhibits a very high volumetric capacitance of 928 F cm–3in sulfuric acid electrolyte with an excellent rate performance. We expect that the synthesis of metallic 2D MoN and two other nitrides (W2N and V2N) demonstrated here will provide an efficient way to expand the family of 2D materials and add many members with attractive properties.

Gully erosion is the frequent and main form of soil erosion in the black soil area of the northeastern China, which is one of the most important commodity grain production bases in China. It is encroaching upon the fertile farmland there. Regionalization of gully erosion can reveal the spatial distribution and regularity of the development of gully erosion. Based on the eco-geographical regional background features of the black soil area, this study combined the regionalization with influencing factors of the development of gully erosion. GIS spatial analysis, geostatistical analysis, spatial statistics, reclassification, debris polygon processing and map algebra methods were employed. As a result, the black soil area was divided into 12 subregions. The field survey data on type, length, volume and other characteristics indicators of gully erosion were used to calibrate the results. Then the features of every subregion, such as where the gully erosion is, how serious it is, and why it happens and develops, were expounded. The result is not only an essential prerequisite for gully erosion surveys and monitoring, but also an important basis for gully erosion prevention.

•Performance of a bloch surface wave sensor with mono or double absentee layers is investigated.•With increasing refractive index of absentee layer, sensitivity and full width at half maximum both decrease.•Figure of merit can be improved when inserting mono absentee layer at proper position.•9.39% improvement of figure of merit is obtained by using double absentee layers.

Atherosclerosis (AS) is a progressive disease that contributes to cardiovascular disease and shows a complex etiology, including genetic and environmental factors. To understand systemic metabolic changes and to identify potential biomarkers correlated with the occurrence and perpetuation of diet-induced AS, we applied 1H NMR-based metabolomics to detect the time-related metabolic profiles of plasma, urine, and liver extracts from male hamsters fed a high fat and high cholesterol (HFHC) diet. Conventional biochemical assays and histopathological examinations as well as protein expression analyses were performed to provide complementary information. We found that diet treatment caused obvious aortic lesions, lipid accumulation, and inflammatory infiltration in hamsters. Downregulation of proteins related to cholesterol metabolism, including hepatic SREBP2, LDL-R, CYP7A1, SR-BI, HMGCR, LCAT, and SOAT1 was detected, which elucidated the perturbation of cholesterol homeostasis during the HFHC diet challenge. Using “targeted analysis”, we quantified 40 plasma, 80 urine, and 60 liver hydrophilic extract metabolites. Multivariate analyses of the identified metabolites elucidated sophisticated metabolic disturbances in multiple matrices, including energy homeostasis, intestinal microbiota functions, inflammation, and oxidative stress coupled with the metabolisms of cholesterol, fatty acids, saccharides, choline, amino acids, and nucleotides. For the first time, our results demonstrate a time-dependent metabolic progression of multiple biological matrices in hamsters from physiological status to early AS and further to late-stage AS, demonstrating that 1H NMR-based metabolomics is a reliable tool for early diagnosis and monitoring of the process of AS.

Orthorhombic molybdenum trioxide (α-MoO3) is a layered oxide with promising performance as electrode material for Li-ion capacitors. In this study, we show that expansion of the interlayer spacing (by ~0.32Å) of the structure along the b-axis, introduced by partial reduction of α-MoO3and formation of MoO3−x(x=0.06–0.43), results in enhanced diffusion of Li ions. Binder-free hybrid electrodes made of MoO3−xnanobelts and carbon nanotubes show excellent electrical conductivity. The combination of increased interlayer spacing and enhanced electron transport leads to high gravimetric and volumetric capacitances of about 420F/g or F/cm3and excellent cycle life of binder-free MoO3−xelectrodes.

Gully erosion is one of the major causes of land degradation in most areas and attracts increasing attention from researchers. We monitored gullies in the Kebai region in Heilongjiang Province of China by using remote sensing data and found that gully density increased with the increase in slope when the slope was less than 3°. Gully density in sunny slopes or windward slopes was greater than in shady slopes or leeward slopes because of the impacts of freezing and thawing, wind and solar radiation. Specifically, the gully density in northeast slope was the greatest and in southwest was the smallest. Gully density was reduced with increasing slope length and the longer the slope length, the less the gully density changed between 1965 and 2005. Affected by runoff, gullies most easily to occur in concave slopes and the critical elevation for gully erosion was 250–275 m. Moreover, hilly regions had the greatest gully density, followed by tableland regions, whereas the gully density in flatlands was the lowest. However, the gully density of these three types of landforms all increased between 1945 and 2000, and the portion of increase was 57.45% (hill), 52.91% (mesa) and 25.32% (plain), respectively.

Flexible, cross-linked N-doped carbon nanofiber network (CLCF) is successfully prepared via electrospinning and carbonization process. CLCF shows a specific capacitance of 175F/g at the current density of 50A/g with an excellent rate capability of 78.5% of its initial capacitance from 0.5A/g to 50A/g under the mass loading of 1.2mg/cm2. Supercapacitor device based on CLCF exhibits high energy density of 5.9Wh/kg with a power density of 1200W/kg, as well as excellent cycling stability which achieves 106% capacitance retention after 20,000 charge–discharge cycles. Solid-state supercapacitor device displays outstanding mechanical flexibility and no obvious capacitance loss can be observed even when the device was bended to 180°. Moreover, as scaffold for supporting PANi, capacitance retention of CLCF/PANi can reach 72% with the current density range from 0.5 to 50A/g. All the results suggest that CLCF has great potential for application not only as supercapacitor electrode but also as scaffold for supporting capacitive materials.

Different from living organisms, artificial materials can only undergo a limited number of damage/healing processes and cannot heal severe damage. As an alternative to solve this problem, we report in this study the fabrication of erasable, optically transparent and healable films by exponential layer-by-layer assembly of poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) and poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO). The hydrogen-bonded PAA/PEO films are highly transparent, capable of conveniently healing damages and being erased under external stimuli. The PAA/PEO films can heal damages such as scratches and deep cuts for multiple times in the same location by exposure to pH 2.5 water or humid N2flow. The healability of the PAA/PEO films originates from the reversibility of the hydrogen bonding interaction between PAA and PEO, and the tendency of films to flow upon adsorption of water. When the damage exceeds the capability of the films to repair, the damaged films can be conveniently erased from substrates to facilitate the replacement of the damaged films with new ones. The combination of healability and erasibility provides a new way to the design of transparent films with enhanced reliability and extended service life.

In this article, several EMI characterization and reduction techniques have been investigated and their effectiveness is demonstrated using the developed test boards. The sum and difference outputs of the hybrid (expressed in dBm), that is placed at the output of the TEM cell, are be used to make relative comparisons between the electric and magnetic far field emissions. This data is used to compare the effectiveness of the EMI reduction techniques.

The T cell receptor (TCR)-cluster of differentiation 3 (CD3) signaling complex plays an important role in initiation of adaptive immune responses, but weak interactions have obstructed delineation of the individual TCR-CD3 subunit interactions during T cell signaling. Here, we demonstrate that unnatural amino acids (UAA) can be used to photo-cross-link subunits of TCR-CD3 on the cell surface. Incorporating UAA in mammalian cells is usually a low efficiency process. In addition, TCR-CD3 is composed of eight subunits and both TCR and CD3 chains are required for expression on the cell surface. Photo-cross-linking of UAAs for studying protein complexes such as TCR-CD3 is challenging due to the difficulty of transfecting and expressing multisubunit protein complexes in cells combined with the low efficiency of UAA incorporation. Here, we demonstrate that by systematic optimization, we can incorporate UAA in TCR-CD3 with high efficiency. Accordingly, the incorporated UAA can be used for site-specific photo-cross-linking experiments to pinpoint protein interaction sites, as well as to confirm interaction sites identified by X-ray crystallography. We systemically compared two different photo-cross-linkersp-azido-phenylalanine (pAzpa) and H-p-Bz-Phe-OH (pBpa)for their ability to map protein subunit interactions in the 2B4 TCR. pAzpa was found to have higher cross-linking efficiency, indicating that optimization of the selection of the most optimal cross-linker is important for correct identification of protein–protein interactions. This method is therefore suitable for studying interaction sites of large, dynamic heteromeric protein complexes associated with various cellular membrane systems.

Recently, many attempts have been made to increase the specific capacitance of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Chemical enhancement by adding redox active functional groups on CNTs increases the specific capacitance, while excessive oxidation decreases conductivity and leads to poor cycle life. Here we report the electrochemical enhancement methods followed by annealing at different temperatures in air to add and adjust the redox active functional groups on freestanding CNT films. Functionalized freestanding CNT films were used as positive electrodes, assembled with freestanding CNT/MoO3−xnegative electrodes to fabricate carbon nanotube-based solid-state asymmetric supercapacitors (ASCs). The whole device showed a high volumetric capacitance of 3.0Fcm−3, energy and power density of 1.5mWhcm−3and 4.2Wcm−3, respectively. We also fabricated a SCs pack to drive a homemade wireless transport system successfully, demonstrating the potential applications of this solid-state system for portable/wearable electronics.

Accurate diagnosis is a significant step in cancer treatment. Machine learning can support doctors in prognosis decision-making, and its performance is always weakened by the high dimension and small quantity of genetic data. Fortunately, deep learning can effectively process the high dimensional data with growing. However, the problem of inadequate data remains unsolved and has lowered the performance of deep learning. To end it, we propose a generative adversarial model that uses non target cancer data to help target generator training. We use the reconstruction loss to further stabilize model training and improve the quality of generated samples. We also present a cancer classification model to optimize classification performance. Experimental results prove that mean absolute error of cancer gene made by our model is 19.3% lower than DC-GAN, and the classification accuracy rate of our produced data is higher than the data created by GAN. As for the classification model, the classification accuracy of our model reaches 92.6%, which is 7.6% higher than the model without any generated data.

The northeastern China, the United States, and the western Europe are important agricultural regions both on the global and regional scales. The western Europe has a longer history of agricultural land development than the eastern United States. These two regions have changed from the deforestation and reclamation phase in the past to the current land abandonment and reforestation phase. Compared with the two regions, large-scale land exploitation has only been practiced in the northeastern China during the last century. After a short high-intensity deforestation and reclamation period, agricultural and forest lands are basically in a dynamic steady state. By comparing domestic and international agro-forestry development and considering the ecological environment and socio-economic benefits that can be derived from agro-forestry, this paper suggests that large area of reforestation would be inevitable in future though persistent and large agricultural demand in coming decades even more. And local reforestation at slope farmland with ecological vulnerability should be imperative at present to avoid severer damage. At the same time, from the perspective of Land Change Science, the results demonstrate that the research on land use change in the agro-forestry ecotone is typical and critical, particularly those dealing with the analysis of spatial and temporal characteristics and the simulation of climate, hydrology, and other environmental effects.

Although MnO2is a promising material for supercapacitors (SCs) due to its excellent electrochemical performance and natural abundance, its wide application is limited by poor electrical conductivity. Inspired by our results that the electrochemical activity and electrical conductivity of ZnO nanowires were greatly improved after hydrogenation, we designed and fabricated hydrogenated single-crystal ZnO@amorphous ZnO-doped MnO2core–shell nanocables (HZM) on carbon cloth as SC electrodes, showing excellent performance such as areal capacitance of 138.7 mF/cm2and specific capacitance of 1260.9 F/g. Highly flexible all-solid-state SCs were subsequently assembled with these novel HZM electrodes using polyvinyl alcohol/LiCl electrolyte. The working devices achieved very high total areal capacitance of 26 mF/cm2and retained 87.5% of the original capacitance even after 10 000 charge/discharge cycles. An integrated power pack incorporating series-wound SCs and dye-sensitized solar cells was demonstrated for stand-alone self-powered systems.

PbS quantum dots modified WO3 nanoflowers were synthesized on conductive glass through a low-temperature hydrothermal process and a dip coating method. The photoelectrochenical properties of the structure were intensively studied. The results indicated that the structures exhibited an excellent photoelectrochemical performance with a maximum photocurrent density of ~1.8 mA/cm2 and a maximum photoconversion efficiency of ~1.3% under solar light (AM 1.5, 100 mW/cm2) illumination, highlighting its enormous potential in hydrogen generation.