Search

Nitrite-dependent anaerobic methane oxidation (N-damo) is a key bioprocess coupling global carbon and nitrogen cycles and is mediated by NC10 bacteria. So far, the distribution of N-damo bacteria in marine sediments has rarely been reported. In this study, the sediments from the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea and East China Sea were taken as the research objects, and the ecological distribution of N-damo bacteria was investigated by quantitative PCR and amplicon sequencing. Quantitative PCR results demonstrated that the highest average copy number of N-damo bacterial 16S rRNA gene was in the Bohai Sea, followed by the East China Sea, while the lowest was observed in the Yellow Sea. Based on the OTU numbers, the N-damo bacterial diversity was highest in East China Sea, followed by the Bohai Sea, while lowest in the Yellow Sea. The N-damo bacterial community structure exhibited an obvious spatial distribution among the three seas. Sediment nitrite nitrogen content is the key environmental factor affecting the abundance and diversity of N-damo bacteria, and sediment ammonia nitrogen content is the key environmental factor affecting the community structure of N-damo bacteria.

Background: Collagen in the tumour microenvironment is recognized as a potential biomarker for predicting treatment response. This study investigated whether the collagen features are associated with pathological complete response (pCR) in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) patients receiving neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) and develop and validate a prediction model for individualized prediction of pCR. Methods: The prediction model was developed in a primary cohort (353 consecutive patients). In total, 142 collagen features were extracted from the multiphoton image of pretreatment biopsy, and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) regression was applied for feature selection and collagen signature building. A nomogram was developed by multivariable analysis. The performance of the nomogram was assessed with respect to its discrimination, calibration, and clinical utility. An independent cohort (153 consecutive patients) was used to validate the model. Findings: The collagen signature comprised 4 collagen features significantly associated with pCR both in the two cohorts (P

Liquid–solid fluidized bed electrodes (FBEs) are an important technical route for the preparation of composite powders because of their large activation area and fast mass transfer rate. In this work, the reaction mechanism of 3D electrode prepared from composite powder in liquid–solid fluidized bed was studied in the Cu/Ni system, and two reaction paths were proposed, namely, particle electrodes (main reaction) and cathode feeder electrode (side reaction). Mathematical model with voltage drop as the main parameter was determined. Key conductivity test was conducted to support the measurement of voltage drop data. The sum of the voltage drop of bed particle reaction and bed particle intrinsic was successfully less than that of the voltage drop of bed solution phase and cathode feeder electrode reaction. Therefore, FBEs can be used to prepare Ni-coated copper composite powders with different particle sizes. When the bed height is 2 cm with 100 µm copper powder as the particle electrodes, the voltage of the FBE reaction path is reduced by approximately 0.55 V. These results showed that the FBEs have achieved the reaction path for preparing composite powder and thus are of great importance for large-scale preparation.

In this work, we developed a simple, economical and forthright strategy for synthesis of polyethylene glycol functionalized CQDs (PEG@CQDs) through a one-pot thiol-ene click reaction using mercapto polyethylene glycol and green tea ash. These PEG@CQDs displayed excellent water dispersibility and intense blue-green fluorescence. The fluorescence emission wavelengths of these PEG@CQDs are depended on the excitation wavelengths. Furthermore, cell viability and cell internalization of PEG@CQDs were examined by MTT assay and confocal laser scanning microscopy. The results demonstrated that PEG@CQDs showed low cytotoxicity towards HepG2 cells and strong green fluorescence could be detected after HepG2 cells were excited with a 405 nm laser. All the above results demonstrated that PEG@CQDs possess small size, high water dispersibility and fluorescence properties and could be potentially utilized for cell fluorescent imaging. We hope the method will provide some novel ideas for preparation of functional CQDs and inspired the biomedical applications of these functional CQDs.

Three-dimensional (3D) electrocatalytic oxidation technology is an effective organic wastewater treatment method. Given the strong demand for environmental protection and the universality of 3D electrode degradation of pollutants, this field has great development prospects, and a large number of research results have been published in recent years. In this paper, several studies on patents in the field of 3D electrolytic treatment of organic wastewater were discussed to conduct a comprehensive review and analysis of this field from the perspective of patents. The structures of the reactor, the electrode plate material, the particle electrode, the catalyst, the main process parameters (initial pH, aeration, electrode spacing, particle electrode filling amount, particle electrode size, electrolyte, and electrolysis time), and energy consumption were presented. The effects of process parameters, power supply, current, and voltage on degradation efficiency were also discussed. The research status of the reactor and electrode materials was mainly explored, and the current problems and related development suggestions for 3D electrocatalytic oxidation of organic wastewater were elucidated.

The structure and performance characteristics of nickel-coated graphite composite powder (NCG) are outlined. Several commonly used methods for preparing NCG, including hydrogenation reduction, electroless plating, electrodeposition, and chemical vapor deposition methods, are described. The principles, advantages, and disadvantages of each preparation method are studied. The application and development prospects of NCG in electromagnetic shielding, battery field, coatings, and conductive fillers are discussed. This paper speculates on the future application potential of NCG to better develop and apply high quality, industrialized, and practical NCG and lays a certain theoretical basis.

This paper proposes a new stacked pruning sparse denoising autoencoder (sPSDAE) model for intelligent fault diagnosis of rolling bearings. Different from the traditional autoencoder, the proposed sPSDAE model, including a fully connected autoencoder network, uses the superior features extracted in all the previous layers to participate in the subsequent layers. This means that some new channels are created to connect the front layers and the back layers, which reduces information loss. To improve the training efficiency and precision of the sPSDAE model, a pruning operation is added into the sPSDAE model so as to prohibit non-superior units from participating in all the subsequent layers. Meanwhile, a feature fusion mechanism is introduced to ensure the uniqueness of the feature dimensions. After that, the sparse expression of the sPSDAE model is strengthened, thereby improving the generalization ability. The proposed method is evaluated by using a public bearing dataset and is compared with other popular fault diagnosis models. The results show that the ability of the sPSDAE model to extract features is significantly enhanced and the phenomenon of gradient disappearance is further reduced. The proposed model achieves higher diagnostic accuracy than other popular fault diagnosis models.