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Biomass is carbon-neutral and has the carbon-negative potential if combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS). This study investigated the thermochemical conversion to high-purity hydrogen of a typical lignite (BYH) and seaweed biomass (BS) with carbon capture in a designed fixed-bed reactor at moderate conditions (1 atm, 873 K). High-purity hydrogen of 486.91–801.5 ml/g-blends with suppressed CO2 formation was produced in the alkaline gasification. The alkali can decompose the coal/biomass molecular structures, in-situ capture CO2 and control the gases to high-purity H2 (80.1%–93.2%). The synergistic effect of coal and biomass changes the gas evolution behaviors and impacts the chemical structures of the char. The abundant SiO2 and Al2O3 in the coal can inhibit the catalytic activities of earth alkali metals in the biomass, but not much. These results are significant to the future development of low-carbon renewable energy techniques.

A new nanoscale architecture of Fe3O4-carbon hybrid materials was developed by a vacuum incipient wetness procedure. The amount of Fe3O4 nanoparticles were controllably confined inside the cavity of the bowl-shaped hollow porous carbon nanocapsules (CNB). TEM images and TG curves proved that different loading of Fe3O4 small nanoparticles (NPs) with a diameter less than 50 nm were stored in CNB. Benefiting from the synergistic effect of the appropriate amount of uniformly dispersed Fe3O4 NPs and bowl-shaped carbon nano-capsules with high specific surface area, high conductivity and high amount of Nitrogen (N) and oxygen (O) elemental doping of Fe3O4@CNB, the new architecture provides good reversibility for the transport of electrolyte ions. When tested in supercapacitor devices, Fe3O4@CNB-2 (containing 40.3 wt% Fe3O4) exhibited the highest gravimetric (466 F g−1) and volumetric capacitance (624 F cm−3). The supercapacitors based on these materials also showed excellent cycling stability (92.4% capacitance retention after 5000 cycles). This class of Fe3O4-carbon hybrid materials has excellent electrochemical properties, and its synthesis strategy can be extended to construct other hybrid materials for various applications, such as biomedicine, catalysis, energy harvest, energy storage and so on.

In order to explore the high-temperature pyrolysis behavior and mechanism, two different rank coals (Shenhua bituminous coal and Baiyinhua lignite coal) were pyrolyzed in fixed-bed and drop tube furnace (DTF) reactors. Pyrolysis gas production was online quantified by a drainage method while the gas composition was detected by the gas chromatography. The physical and chemical characteristics of pyrolysis char were observed by N2 absorption and FTIR. Results show that pyrolysis gas release rate and total production increase with the higher temperature. The gas production of SH coal (618–749 ml/g) is always higher than that of BYH coal (418–510 ml/g) due to its higher volatile content. The main high-temperature pyrolysis gas products are H2 (∼50% vol), CO, CH4 and CO2. Carbon-reduction reaction at high temperatures can further form H2 and CO while the rupture of aromatic heterocyclic ring can generate CH4. High-temperature pyrolysis can greatly remove the coal moisture, develop their pore structures, crack the chemical functional groups (O–H, –CH3, C O, C–O, etc.) and upgrade the coal rank. Different coal structures and pyrolysis heating rates result in various gas evolution and char formation behaviors. Higher heating rate can help to quickly generate large amounts of free radicals and change the pyrolysis behaviors.

The transmission of mobile wound signals along the phloem pathway is essential to the activation of wound-induced systemic response/resistance, which requires an upsurge of jasmonic acid (JA) in the distal undamaged leaves. Among these mobile signals, the electrical signal mediated by the glutamate-dependent activation of several clade three GLUTAMATE RECEPTOR-LIKE (GLR3) proteins is involved in the stimulation of JA production in distal leaves. However, whether JA acts as a mobile wound signal and, if so, how it is transmitted and interacts with the electrical signal remain unclear. Here, we show that JA was translocated from the local to distal leaves in Arabidopsis, and this process was predominantly regulated by two phloem-expressed and plasma membrane-localized jasmonate transporters, AtJAT3 and AtJAT4. In addition to the cooperation between AtJAT3/4 and GLR3.3 in the regulation of long-distance JA translocation, our findings indicate that importer-mediated cell–cell JA transport is important for driving the loading and translocation of JA in the phloem pathway in a self-propagating manner.

The sulfur–iodine (SI) cycle is deemed to be one of the most promising alternative methods for large-scale hydrogen production by water splitting, free of CO2 emissions. Decomposition of hydrogen iodide is a pivotal reaction that produces hydrogen. The homogeneous conversion of hydrogen iodide is only 2.2% even at 773 K [1]. A suitable catalyst should be selected to reduce the decomposition temperature of HI and attain reaction yields approaching to the thermodynamic equilibrium conversion. However, residual H2SO4 could not be avoided in the SI cycle because of incomplete purification. The H2SO4 present in the HI feeding stream may lead to the poisoning of HI decomposition catalysts. In this study, the activity and sulfur poisoning of Ru and Ni catalysts loaded on carbon and alumina, respectively, were investigated at 773 K. HI conversion efficiency markedly decreased from 21% to 10% with H2SO4 (3000 ppm) present, which was reversible when H2SO4 was withdrawn in the case of Ru/C. In the case of Ru/C and Ni/Al2O3, catalyst deactivation depends on the concentration of H2SO4; the higher the concentration of H2SO4, the greater the severity of deactivation. Catalysts before and after sulfur poisoning were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy-dispersive X-Ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Experimental results and characterization of poisoned and fresh catalysts indicate that the catalyst deactivation could be ascribed to the competitive adsorption of sulfur species and change in its surface properties.

Sulfur-iodine thermochemical water splitting cycle is a promising and carbon dioxide-free method for hydrogen production. Among the reactions in this cycle, hydrogen iodide catalytic decomposition is the rate-determining step. In this study, catalytic reactivity test combined with characterizations of nitrogen physisorption, X-Ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy provide evidences that hydrofluoric acid modified semi-coke is a promising catalyst candidate for hydrogen iodide decomposition because of its high active and low cost. The raw semi-coke enhanced the hydrogen iodide conversion rate. After modification of hydrofluoric acid, the catalytic activity of semi-coke increased largely. Semi-coke modified by 40 wt% hydrofluoric acid showed better performance than commercial activated carbon catalyst. Combine the characterization results and catalytic reactivity, the graphitic edge carbon atoms in semi-coke are the active sites for hydrogen iodide decomposition. This finding pointed out the direction of carbon material catalyst design for hydrogen iodide decomposition.

The effect of several catalyst supports with large specific surface area (such as SiC, Al2O3, SiC–Al2O3–ball, and SiC–Al2O3) on catalytic activity was evaluated in this study. CuO–CeO2 supported on SiC–Al2O3 exhibited high stability and activity, which was considerably close to the thermodynamic equilibrium curve at 625 °C during the stability test for 50 h. The SO3 decomposition temperature decreased from 750 °C to 625 °C. SiC–Al2O3contained numerous micropores and mesopores and had a large specific area, indicating strong adsorption, as determined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and nitrogen adsorption measurement. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) revealed that the surface of SiC–Al2O3consisted of Al2O3, SiC, and SiO2 and that the cerium oxide surface had the largest number of defects. Temperature-programmed reduction (H2-TPR) results indicated that the cerium–copper oxides on the surface of powdered SiC–Al2O3 had the strongest redox potential and that CuO had the lowest reduction temperature.

Hierarchical structured ‘0D+ 2D+ 2D’ multidimensional nano carbon bowl (CB)-Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2)-Graphene (CB@MoS2/Graphene) hybrid is a promising electrode material for high-performance energy storage. The semiconcave hollow carbon bowl (CB) with a high specific surface area can increase more active sites for uniform growth of MoS2 nanosheets. The unique bowl-shaped structure also helps to increase the contact area between adjacent particles, shorten the transmission distance of electrolyte ions and improve the rapid charge and discharge performance of the material. To further overcome the poor conductivity of pure MoS2 and efficiently display its energy storage performance, the hierarchical CB@MoS2/Graphene ‘0D+ 2D+ 2D’ multidimensional structured electrodes were synthesized by the hydrothermal method. As a ‘conductive bridge’, graphene was wrapped outside the surface of the CB@MoS2 to form a continuous conductive network channel in the GO-MoS2-CB hierarchical structure for better charge and ion transport. Moreover, the CB@MoS2 can also be used as a ‘spacer’ for graphene, alleviating the agglomeration of graphene sheets and providing part of the electric double-layer capacitance. When was used as the electrode material for supercapacitors, CB@MoS2/Graphene can obtain a better electrochemical property than CB@MoS2 and CB. The specific capacitance of CB@MoS2/Graphene can reach 588 F g−1 at a current density of 0.2 A g−1 and 398 F g−1 at high current density of 10 A g−1, respectively. In addition, the 2D graphene nanosheets can not only improve the electrical conductivity, but also can be used as a buffer to alleviate structural changes during the long-term charging and discharging process, improving the cycling performance. The capacitance retention of CB@MoS2/Graphene is enhanced to 83.9% after 5000 cycles.

W70Cu30(W-30 wt.% Cu) alloys were fabricated using cold pressing and infiltration sintering methods from two types of powders, i.e., mixed copper-tungsten (M-Cu-W) powders and our newly developed copper-coated tungsten composite (Cu@W) powders. Microstructure, mechanical and arc-ablation properties of the W70Cu30 alloys were investigated, and the mechanism of enhanced physical/mechanical properties and arc-erosion resistance of the W70Cu30 alloys was discussed. For the W70Cu30 alloys prepared using the Cu@W powders, their physical properties, including hardness, electrical conductivity and relative density were much better than those prepared from the M-Cu-W powders. The W70Cu30 alloys fabricated from the Cu@W powders were free of cracks, and showed homogenous distributions of W and Cu network structures. Whereas for the alloys prepared from the M-Cu-W powders, segregation of Cu was observed and the segregation size was about 40–100 μm. Characterization of arc-erosion morphologies of the W70Cu30 alloys prepared with the Cu@W powders revealed the occurrence of evaporation of Cu phase; whereas that of W70Cu30 alloys prepared with the M-Cu-W powders revealed the occurrence of the sputtering of Cu. After arc breakdown for 200 times, mass loss of alloys made using the mixed powders was twice as much as those made using the coated composite powders. Based on the experimental results and theoretical analysis, an arc breakdown mechanism of the WCu-C alloys using the composite powders was proposed which is attributed to the formation of a homogeneous Cu-Cu network structure to uniformly disperse arc energy and dissipate the generated heat, thus prolonging the service life of the WCu alloy contacts.

Surface defect recognition is important to improve the surface quality of end products. In this area, there were many convolutional neural network (CNN)-based methods because CNN can extract features automatically. The extracted features determine the performance of recognition, so it is important for CNN-based methods to extract effective and sufficient features. However, feature extraction needs a large-scale dataset, which is hard to obtain. To save the cost of collecting samples and extract effective features, ensemble methods were proposed to make full use of the features extracted by CNN in order to guarantee good performance with limited samples. However, the methods are confined to utilize one sample – they extracted multi-level features from one individual sample – but ignore the vast information in a dataset. Due to the limit information in one sample, this paper turns the attention to the training dataset and attempts to mine the multi-level information in the dataset for predicting. The proposed method is named as Prototype vectors fusion-based CNN (ProtoCNN), which utilizes the prototype information in the training dataset. In training process, it trains a VGG11 as the base model, and meanwhile prototype vectors corresponding to each defect class are generated in multiple feature layers of VGG11. Then, in predicting process, the prototype vectors are fused to predict unknown samples. The experiments on three famous datasets, including NEU-CLS, wood dataset, and textile dataset indicate that the proposed ProtoCNN outperforms conventional ensemble models and other models for surface defect recognition. In these datasets, ProtoCNN has achieved the accuracy of 99.86%, 90.01%, and 81.28% respectively, which increase 1.05%, 4.07%, 19.53% compared to its base model respectively. Finally, this paper analyzes the effectiveness and practicality of prototype vectors, showing that the proposed ProtoCNN is practical for real world application.

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/sodium alginate (SA) solution was electrospun to form fiber membranes. PVA/SA fiber membranes were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDX), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Thermal Gravimetric analysis (TGA). The hydrogen-bonding interaction between PVA and SA were demonstrated by FTIR, XRD, DSC. The preparation of fibers during electrospinning process involved various parameters such as SA content, electric voltage, receiving distance and the nozzle velocity that were optimized via Box-Behnken design (BBD) method. The findings revealed that the SA content had a major effect on the diameter of the fibers made, achieving a minimum fiber diameter of 242.12 nm under optimum production conditions. The effect of various PVA/SA contents on diameter, morphology, mechanical property, and liquid absorption property of the membranes were studied via scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis, mechanical measurement and contact angle testing. The optimal physical properties of PVA/SA fiber membrane at 7:3 proportion were verified, which was close to the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) result.

Genetic selection for meat production performance of broilers concomitantly causes excessive abdominal fat deposition, accompanied by several adverse effects, such as the reduction of feed conversion efficiency and reproduction performance. Our previous studies have identified important genes regulating chicken fat deposition, using the Northeast Agricultural University broiler lines divergently selected for abdominal fat content (NEAUHLF) as an animal model. However, the molecular mechanism underlying fat deposition differences between fat and lean broilers remains largely unknown. Here, we integrated the transcriptome (RNA-Seq) and quantitative proteome (isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation, iTRAQ) profiling analyses on abdominal fat tissues from NEAUHLF chicken lines. Differentially expressed genes (2167 DEGs, corrected p-value 0.01) and differentially abundant proteins (199 DAPs, corrected p-value 0.05) were identified in lean line compared to fat line. Down-regulated DEGs and DAPs mainly enriched in pathways related to fatty acid metabolism, fatty acid biosynthesis, and PPAR signaling, and interestingly, up-regulated DEGs and DAPs enriched both in lysosome pathway. Moreover, numerous key DEGs and DAPs involved in long-chain fatty acid uptake, in situ lipogenesis (fatty acid and cholesterol synthesis), and lipid droplet accumulation were discovered after integrated transcriptome and proteome analysis. SIGNIFICANCE: Excessive abdominal fat deposition critically affects the health of broilers and causes economic loss to broiler producers, but the molecular mechanism of abdominal fat deposition is still unclear in chicken. We identified key DEGs/DAPs and potential pathways through an integration of chicken abdominal fat tissues transcriptome and proteome analyses. Our findings will facilitate a better revealing the mechanism and provide a novel insight into abdominal fat content discrepancy between the fat and lean chicken lines.

To control gene expression by directly responding to hormone concentrations, both animal and plant cells have exploited comparable mechanisms to sense small-molecule hormones in nucleus. Whether nuclear entry of these hormones is actively transported or passively diffused, as conventionally postulated, through the nuclear pore complex, remains enigmatic. Here, we identified and characterized a jasmonate transporter in Arabidopsis thaliana, AtJAT1/AtABCG16, which exhibits an unexpected dual localization at the nuclear envelope and plasma membrane. We show that AtJAT1/AtABCG16 controls the cytoplasmic and nuclear partition of jasmonate phytohormones by mediating both cellular efflux of jasmonic acid (JA) and nuclear influx of jasmonoyl-isoleucine (JA-Ile), and is essential for maintaining a critical nuclear JA-Ile concentration to activate JA signaling. These results illustrate that transporter-mediated nuclear entry of small hormone molecules is a new mechanism to regulate nuclear hormone signaling. Our findings provide an avenue to develop pharmaceutical agents targeting the nuclear entry of small molecules.

The effect and mechanism of myofibrillar protein (MP) gelation influenced by konjac glucomannan (KG) addition were studied. The KG addition significantly improved gel strength and water holding capability (WHC) of MP-KG composite gel, but it had additive limitation at 1.0%. The SEM showed that KG (1.0%) reduced the appearance of moisture channels and promoted the formation of an integral MP gel network. Raman spectroscopy showed that KG addition (1.0%) promoted the protein unfolding and the interaction of hydrophobic groups during thermal processing. However, the KG (1.0%) would form continuous viscous hydrogel and interpenetrate with the MP solution, which hindered the interaction of hydrophobic groups during thermal process, and the MP formed a loose and degraded final structure. Hence, MP gels produced with the addition of KG underwent a transformation from a loose structure to a compact structure to an unaggregated structure, which was influenced by moisture stability and phase separation behavior.

Whether the pension system transition is successful is closely related to the accurately accounted IPD amount and rationally solved scheme. China faces the problem of IPD with no exception. This paper uses individual cost method theory, combining Chinese pension system and its operation, builds up the implicit pension debt calculation model, then it measures the Chinese IPD quantity by statistical data. The paper finds out that the average IPD per-year is 39.404 billion Yuan in 2013–2050, the maximum is 185.053 in 2022, the minimum is 0.150 in 2050, and the accumulative IPD will sustain growth with annual growth rate of 7.06% in 2013–2050, from 119.787 billion Yuan to 1497.337 billion Yuan. Finally, this paper proposes the government to raise the legal retirement age, reduce the pension substitution rate, expand the coverage of endowment insurance, improve the investment yield of the pension fund, and so on, to compensate the IPD in China.

Hand gesture recognition is an emerging field of technology in robotics and human-computer interaction. It has tremendous applications in daily life activities and intelligent workplaces. In this study, a system which could help people to work and operate without directly using hands or contacting by hands, is proposed and demonstrated. This system composed of a glove with flexible force sensors and a 3D printed robotic forearm. The user wearing the glove could control the action of the 3D printed robotic forearm. The 3D printed forearm simultaneously acted following the motion of the glove. The 3D printed forearm was composed of 46 individual parts that were printed with white biodegradable polylactic acid (PLA). Electronic components in the system are five flex sensors, a master Arduino Nano, a slave Arduino Nano, a wireless NRF24L01 transmitter module banding on the glove, a second wireless NRF24L01 receiver module in the forearm and five motors. The five flex sensors on the fingers of the glove detected and collected the signals reflecting the movements of the hands. The Arduino Nano processed the signals from the flex sensors and sent them through the wireless transmitter module to the slave Arduino Nano. In order to control the action of the robotic forearm, it was embedded with a slave Arduino Nano as a control kernel, a wireless NRF24L01 receiver module and five actuators. The slave Arduino Nano received and processed the signals through the wireless receiver module. After that, the signals were sent to the actuators- servo motors. The fingers’ action in the robotics arm was executed with the actuators. After carefully testing the system, the robotic arm followed the action correctly with a maximum 0.133 ms time delay all the time. This system could be really useful for the users who work in dangerous conditions, hazardous environment or require remote operation for safety reasons.

Porous ceramsites were prepared using the high silicon iron tailings as the matrix. The specific surface area, bulk density and porosity of the obtained porous ceramsites are 5.54 m2/g, 0.78 g/cm3 and 49.8 %, respectively. Subsequently, biofilm was inoculated and domesticated on the surface of ceramsites in a biological aerated filter (BAF) for the removal of organic pollution in water. The removal rates of chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia (NH3-N), and total phosphorus (T-P) in the organic wastewater were 91 %, 85 %, and 80 % respectively. It was found out that during the maturation diffusion period, the pore size between ceramsites had a significant impact on the biofilm adhesion growth and the effect of degradation organic matter. In addition, in order to better understand the removal mechanism of biofilm for COD, NH3-N and T-P, an analytical model for the flow field and resistance characteristics between pores of biofilm was established, which may provide more valuable references for the practical utilization of porous ceramsites.

The liver plays a central role in regulating fat metabolism; however, it is not clear how the liver distributes the synthesized triglycerides (TGs) to storage and to the plasma.We have measured the relative distribution of TGs produced in the liver to storage and the plasma by means of U-(13)C(16)-palmitate infusion in anesthetized rabbits after an overnight fast.The fractional synthesis rates of TGs stored in the liver and secreted into the plasma were not significantly different (stored vs. secreted: 31.9 ± 0.8 vs. 27.7 ± 2.6%∙h(-1), p0.05). However, the absolute synthesis rates of hepatic stored and secreted TGs were 543 ± 158 and 27 ± 7 nmol∙kg(-1)∙min(-1) respectively, indicating that in fasting rabbits the TGs produced in the liver were predominately stored (92 ± 3%) rather than secreted (8 ± 3%) into the plasma. This large difference was mainly due to the larger pool size of the hepatic TGs which was 21 ± 9-fold that of plasma TGs. Plasma free fatty acids (FFAs) contributed 47 ± 1% of the FA precursor for hepatic TG synthesis, and the remaining 53 ± 1% was derived from hepatic lipid breakdown and possibly plasma TGs depending on the activity of hepatic lipase. Plasma palmitate concentration significantly correlated with hepatic palmitoyl-CoA and TG synthesis.In rabbits, after an overnight fast, the absolute synthesis rate of hepatic stored TGs was significantly higher than that of secreted due to the larger pool size of hepatic TGs. The net synthesis rate of TG was approximately half the absolute rate. Plasma FFA is a major determinant of hepatic TG synthesis, and therefore hepatic TG storage.

The paper reports on the quantitative study of the relationship between minority carrier diffusion length ( L D ) and electrical property of cast monocrystalline silicon (Si) solar cell. The cast monocrystalline Si cells were fabricated using a conventional Al back surface field (BSF) cell structure. L D , internal quantum efficiency and morphology of cells were characterize utilizing WT-2000PVN, QEX7 and SEM. The fitted expression of conversion efficiency as a natural logarithmic function of L D was extracted. The open circuit voltage ( V oc ) and short circuit current ( I sc ) can be both given as natural logarithmic functions of L D , while the series resistance and shunt resistance are almost independent of L D . The material quality of cast monocrystalline Si mainly impacts on I sc and V oc .

In order to determine the location and type of rice chalkiness accurately, image processing techniques were adopted to process acquired rice kernel images. Connected rice kernels were separated from each other using a convex point matching method. Chalkiness was extracted according to the differences in grayscale levels between chalky and normal regions in the rice kernel and chalky rice kernels were classified by a support vector machine (SVM). The results showed that 2–5 connected rice kernels could be separated accurately using this method and chalky areas could be extracted. The classification accuracy for indica rice and japonica rice reached 98.5% and 97.6%, respectively, by using SVM. Hence, the measurement results are accurate and reliable, and the presented work provides a theoretical and practical basis for the further application of computer vision technology to chalkiness detection.

Free air CO 2 enrichment (FACE) and nitrogen (N) have marked effects on rice root growth, and numerical simulation can explain these effects. To further define the effects of FACE on root growth of rice, an experiment was performed, using the hybrid indica cultivar Xianyou 63. The effects of increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentration [CO 2 ], 200 μmol mol − 1 higher than ambient, on the growth of rice adventitious roots were evaluated, with two levels of N: low (LN, 125 kg ha − 1 ) and normal (NN, 250 kg ha − 1 ). The results showed a significant increase in both adventitious root number (ARN) and adventitious root length (ARL) under FACE treatment. The application of nitrogen also increased ARN and ARL, but these increases were smaller than that under FACE treatment. On the basis of the FACE experiment, numerical models for rice adventitious root number and length were constructed with time as the driving factor. The models illustrated the dynamic development of rice adventitious root number and length after transplanting, regulated either by atmospheric [CO 2 ] or by N application. The simulation result was supported by statistical tests comparing experimental data from different years, and the model yields realistic predictions of root growth. These results suggest that the models have strong predictive potential under conditions of atmospheric [CO 2 ] rises in the future.

The most populous country in the world, China faces immense socio-economic challenges providing adequate pensions to its growing elderly population. In that country, pensions available to older people vary considerably across the country's various pension schemes. This paper calculates the fairness coefficients of these pensions based on pension income, contributions, demand, and generational gap. The analysis shows that the pension fairness coefficients are 0.53, 0.38, 0.95, and 0.82, respectively. Synthesizing pension income, contributions, demand, and generational gap, the paper suggests that, in China, old-age pensions across different schemes are absolutely unfair. Finally, it analyzes the superficial and deeper factors behind pension unfairness in China before providing policy recommendations for improving the fairness of the country's pension system.

In this paper, we report the shape-controlled synthesis of MnWO 4 nanocrystals by a simple hydrothermal method without any surfactants and templates. The as-prepared powders were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It is found that MnWO 4 nanofibers, nanorods, nanoflakes, and nanoparticles can be selectively prepared by tuning the experimental conditions such as the pH values and precursors. This green chemistry method is simple and highly reproducible, which can be extended to the shape-controlled synthesis of other metal oxide nanocrystals.

PbWO 4 dendrites have been successfully synthesized by a simple sonochemical method without any surfactants at room temperature. The as-prepared powders were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction (ED), and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The effect of pH value, molar ratio of [WO 4 2− ]/[Pb 2+ ], reaction time, and the initial concentration of the starting solution on the formation of PbWO 4 dendrites was investigated. Experimental results indicate that the molar ratio of [WO 4 2− ]/[Pb 2+ ] played a crucial role in the formation of PbWO 4 dendrites. A growth mechanism of PbWO 4 dendrites was also discussed. The present process is proved to be environment-friendly, and can be extended to the controllable synthesis of other tungstates.

Copper and manganese based catalysts with different supports were prepared by impregnation method for toluene oxidation in the presence of water vapor. Their catalytic activity was tested in the absence and presence of water vapor. The results showed that the activity of catalysts CuMn(y)Ox/γ-Al2O3 was higher than that of catalysts CuOx/γ-Al2O3 and MnOx/γ-Al2O3. The presence of water vapor had a negative effect on catalytic activity due to the competition of water molecules with toluene molecules for adsorption on surface active sites. The durability to water vapor followed the order: CuMn(1)Ox/Cordierite > CuMn(1)Ox/TiO2 > CuMn(1)Ox/γ-Al2O3.

To improve the performance of the adsorption refrigeration of CaCl2–ammonia adsorption system, activated carbon has been distributed uniformly in the mass of CaCl2, thereby helping to enhance mass transfer and uplift the cooling power density. A multifunctional heat pipe adsorption refrigerator, in which activated carbon-CaCl2 is used as compound adsorbent and ammonia as refrigerant, is designed. Water and acetone are used as working liquids for the heat pipe. This paper presents a study on the adsorption refrigeration performances of this adsorption refrigerator under two different working conditions, ice-maker for fishing boat driven by the waste heat from exhaust gases, and solar ice-maker driven by solar water heating. The obtained average SCP (specific cooling power) and the COP (coefficient of performance) of the refrigerator were measured to be 770.4 W/kg and 0.39 at about � 20 C of evaporating temperature for the former working condition, and they were 161.2 W/kg and 0.12 at about � 15 C of evaporating temperature for the later working condition.

Oxide precipitation behavior in heavily doped silicon after rapid thermal process (RTP) in Ar ambient was investigated. The samples were heavily B-, As- and Sb-doped wafers with a diameter of 150 mm, the concentration of interstitial oxygen was between 6 and 26 ppm. RTP temperatures were changed from 1200 to 1260 °C. The experiment showed that (1) High-density oxygen precipitates (above 10 5 /cm 2 ) were found in heavily B-doped wafer, denuded zone was found only at 1260 °C, (2) compared to the heavily B-doped wafers, the densities of oxygen precipitates in heavily As- and Sb-doped wafers were rather low. The formation of oxygen precipitates was restrained. The reason is discussed in this paper.