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In this study, three kinds of thermal treatments were applied to sweet potatoes: steaming (100 °C, 20 min), frying (150 °C, 10 min), and baking (200 °C, 30 min). We analyzed the changes in the physicochemical structure, antioxidant properties, and hypoglycemic activities of sweet potato polysaccharides between untreated and heat-treated samples. The results showed that the polysaccharides of all sweet potatoes (untreated and heat-treated) were composed of pyranose structures, had low protein content, and shared the same monosaccharide composition. Infrared spectra showed that the three thermal processing treatments had no significant effect on the functional groups or chemical bonding of sweet potato polysaccharides. In addition, all four polysaccharides exhibited dose-dependent antioxidant and hypoglycemic activities. The above experimental results suggest that thermal processing did not affect the physicochemical, antioxidant, or hypoglycemic activities of sweet potato polysaccharides.

Synaptic transistors with low-temperature, solution-processed dielectric films have demonstrated programmable conductance, and therefore potential applications in hardware artificial neural networks for recognizing noisy images. Here, we engineered AlOx/InOx synaptic transistors via a solution process to instantiate neural networks. The transistors show long-term potentiation under appropriate gate voltage pulses. The artificial neural network, consisting of one input layer and one output layer, was constructed using 9 × 3 synaptic transistors. By programming the calculated weight, the hardware network can recognize 3 × 3 pixel images of characters z, v and n with a high accuracy of 85%, even with 40% noise. This work demonstrates that metal-oxide transistors, which exhibit significant long-term potentiation of conductance, can be used for the accurate recognition of noisy images.

Leveraging poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) [(PVDF-TrFE)] as the dielectric, we fabricated organic ferroelectric field-effect transistors (OFe-FETs). These devices demonstrate quasi-static transfer characteristics that include a hysteresis window alongside transient phenomena that bear resemblance to synaptic plasticity-encapsulating excitatory postsynaptic current (EPSC) as well as both short-term and long-term potentiation (STP/LTP). We also explore and elucidate other aspects such as the subthreshold swing and the hysteresis window under dynamic state by varying the pace of voltage sweeps. In addition, we developed an analytical model that describes the electrical properties of OFe-FETs, which melds an empirical formula for ferroelectric polarization with a compact model. This model agrees well with the experimental data concerning quasi-static transfer characteristics, potentially serving as a quantitative tool to improve the understanding and design of OFe-FETs.

A drug nanocrystal self-stabilized Pickering emulsion (DNSPE) is a novel Pickering emulsion with drug nanocrystals as the stabilizer. As a promising drug delivery system, DNSPEs have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to their high drug loading capacity and ability to reduce potential safety hazards posed by surfactants or specific solid particles. This paper comprehensively reviews the progress of research on DNSPEs, with an emphasis on the main factors influencing their construction, characteristics and measurement methods in vitro, and fate in vivo, and puts forward issues that need to be studied further. The review contributes to the advancement of DNSPE research and the promotion of their application in the field of drug delivery.

Background: Most studies have primarily focused on assessing the association between diet or exercise patterns and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). This study adopted a more comprehensive approach by introducing the oxidative balance score (OBS) to evaluate the combined effects of diet and lifestyle on the body’s antioxidant ability. Our main objective was to investigate the association between OBS and the burden of MASLD in the United States. Methods: Participants with complete information from 2001 to 2018 were included. In the absence of other definite liver injury factors, the United States fatty liver index (us-FLI) ≥ 30 was used as the diagnostic criterion for MASLD. We first calculated the weighted prevalence for each cycle and stratified it according to demographic and metabolic-related disease characteristics. Subsequently, weighted multiple logistic regression was used to evaluate the relationship between OBS and MASLD. In addition, we explored the body’s inflammatory state and the level of insulin resistance (IR) in mediating OBS and MASLD. Results: From 2001 to 2018, the prevalence of MASLD in the U.S. population as a whole increased from 29.76% to 36.04%, and the rate was higher in people with metabolic-related diseases. Notably, OBS exhibited a negative correlation with MASLD. Participants in the highest tertile of OBS had a significantly lower prevalence of MASLD compared to those in the lowest tertile [OR: 0.72, 95%CI: (0.57, 0.92), p < 0.001]. Moreover, a high OBS is associated with a lower inflammatory state and level of IR. The body’s inflammatory state and IR level mediated the association between OBS and MASLD by 5.2% and 39.7%, respectively (both p < 0.001). Conclusions: In this study, we observed an increasing prevalence of MASLD over the years. A higher OBS was associated with a lower risk of MASLD, especially when OBS ≥ 25. The body’s inflammatory state and IR level mediate the association between OBS and MASLD, but the mechanism needs to be further investigated.

Recent studies have discovered that functional connections are impaired in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) accompanied by hallucinations (PD-H), even at the preclinical stage. The cerebellum has been implicated in playing a role in cognitive processes. However, the functional connectivity (FC) between the cognitive sub-regions of the cerebellum in PD patients with hallucinations needs further clarification. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data were collected from three groups (17 PD-H patients, 13 patients with Parkinson’s disease not accompanied by hallucinations (PD-NH), and 26 healthy controls (HC)). The data were collected in this study to investigate the impact of cerebellar FC changes on cognitive performance. Additionally, we define cerebellar FC as a training feature for classifying all subjects using Support Vector Machines (SVMs). We found that in the PD-H patients, there was an increase in FC within the left side of the precuneus (PCUN) compared to the HC. Additionally, there was an increase in FC within the bilateral opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFGoprec) and triangular part of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFCtriang), as well as the left side of the postcentral gyrus (PoCG), inferior parietal lobe (IPL), and PCUN compared to the PD-NH patients. In the machine learning training results, cerebellar FC has also been proven to be an effective biomarker feature, achieving a recognition rate of over 90% for PD-H. These findings indicate that the cortico-cerebellar FC in PD-H and PD-NH patients was significantly disrupted, with different patterns of distribution. The proposed pipeline offers a promising, low-cost alternative for diagnosing preclinical PD-H and may also be beneficial for other degenerative brain disorders.

Aims: This study aimed to analyze the related research on the influence of dietary patterns on IBD carried out over the past 30 years to obtain the context of the research field and to provide a scientific basis and guidance for the prevention and treatment of IBD. Methods: The literature on the effects of dietary patterns on inflammatory bowel disease published over the past three decades was retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database. CiteSpace, VOSviewer, the R software (version 4.3.0) bibliometrix package, the OALM platform, and other tools were used for the analyses. Results: The growth of scientific papers related to this topic can be divided into two stages: before and after 2006. Overall, the growth of the relevant literature was in line with Price’s literature growth curve. Subrata Ghosh and Antonio Gasbarrini are the authors with the highest academic influence in the field, and Lee D.’s research results are widely recognized by researchers in this field. Among the 72 countries involved in the study, the United States contributed the most, while China developed rapidly with regard to research being carried out in this area. From a regional perspective, countries and institutions in North America, Europe, and East Asia have made the most significant contributions to this field and have the closest cooperation. Among the 1074 articles included in the study, the most influential ones tended to consider the mechanism of the effect of dietary patterns on IBD from the perspective of the microbiome. Multiple tools were used for keyword analysis and mutual verification. The results showed that NF-κB, the Mediterranean diet, fatty acids, fecal microbiota, etc., are the focus and trends of current research. Conclusions: A Mediterranean-like dietary pattern may be a good dietary habit for IBD patients. Carbohydrates, fatty acids, and inulin-type fructans are closely related to IBD. Fatty acid, gut microbiota, NF-κB, oxidative stress, and endoplasmic reticulum stress are the hot topics in the study of the effects of dietary patterns on IBD and will be emerging research trends.

The virtual power plant is one of the key technologies for the integration of various distributed energy resources into the power grid. To enable its smooth and reliable operation, the network infrastructure that connects the components for critical communications becomes a research challenge. Current communication networks based on the traditional Ethernet and long-term evolution cannot provide the required deterministic low latency or reliable communication services. This paper presents a three-layer virtual power plant communication architecture with 5G and time-sensitive networking integrated networks for both determinism and mobility. The service types and traffic requirements of the virtual power plant are analyzed and mapped between 5G and time-sensitive networking to guarantee their quality of service. This paper proposes a semi-persistent scheduling with reserved bandwidth sharing and a pre-emption mechanism for time-critical traffic to guarantee its bounded latency and reliability while improving the bandwidth utilization. The performance evaluation results show that the proposed mechanism effectively reduces the end-to-end delay for both time-triggered traffic and event-triggered traffic compared with the dynamic scheduling method. For event-triggered traffic, the proposed mechanism has comparable end-to-end delay performance to the static scheduling method. It largely improves the resource utilization compared to the static scheduling method when the network load becomes heavy. It achieves an optimum performance tradeoff between delay and resource utilization when the percentage of the reserved resource blocks is 30% in the simulation.

Background: Dietary fiber is a functional substance with strong antioxidant activity that plays an important role in human health. Dietary fiber has been shown to reduce the risks of many types of cancers, but whether it can reduce the risk of death in cancer survivors remains undetermined. Methods: This study included the dietary data of cancer survivors who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 2001 to 2018. Firstly, the relationship between fiber intake and composite dietary antioxidant index (CDAI) was explored by weighted multiple regression and smooth curve. Subsequently, multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to explore the effects of dietary fiber intake and CDAI level on the risks of all-cause, tumor, and cardiovascular death among cancer survivors. Results: A total of 2077 participants were included in the study, representing approximately 11,854,509 cancer survivors in the United States. The dietary fiber intake of tumor survivors had a nonlinear positive relationship with CDAI levels (β = 0.24, 95% CI: 0.08–0.40, p = 0.004). Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models showed that high dietary fiber intake and CDAI levels were associated with reduced risks of all-cause and tumor death in tumor survivors, but were not associated with the risk of cardiovascular death. Conclusion: An increased dietary fiber intake can enhance the body’s antioxidant capacity. A higher dietary fiber intake and CDAI level may reduce the risk of all-cause and tumor death in tumor survivors.

Most of the previous studies exploring the changing patterns of wetland in the Yellow River Delta (YRD) were conducted based on sparse time-series images, which ignored its severe environmental gradient and rapid evolution process of the wetland. The changes in the dominant factors in the evolution of the wetland in the YRD are not clear. This study used the dense time-series Sentinel-2 images to establish a wetland database of the YRD, and then analyzed the spatial distribution characteristics of, and temporal changes in, the wetland during 2015–2022. Finally, the dominant factors of the spatio-temporal evolutions of the wetland were explored and revealed. The results showed the following. (1) During 2015–2022, the wetland in the YRD was dominated by artificial wetland, accounting for 54.02% of the total wetland area in the study area. In 2015–2022, the total wetland area increased by 309.90 km2, including an increase of 222.63 km2 in natural wetlands and 87.27 km2 in artificial wetlands. In the conversion between wetland types, 218.73 km2 of artificial wetlands were converted into natural wetlands, and 75.18 km2 of natural wetlands were converted into artificial wetlands. The patch density of rivers, swamps, and salt pans increased, showing a trend of fragmentation. However, the overall degree of landscape fragmentation in wetlands weakened. The trend of changes in the number of patches and landscape shape index was the same, while the trend of changes in Shannon’s diversity index and Contagion index was completely opposite. (2) Natural factors, such as precipitation (0.51, 2015; 0.65, 2016), DEM (0.57, 2017; 0.47, 2018; 0.49, 2020; 0.46, 2021), vegetation coverage (0.59, 2019), and temperature (0.48, 2022), were the dominant influencing factors of wetland changes in the YRD. The dominant single factor causing the changes in artificial wetlands was vegetation coverage, while socio-economic factors had lower explanatory power, with the average q value of 0.18. (3) During 2015–2022, the interactions between the natural and artificial factors of the wetland changes were mostly nonlinear and showed double-factor enhancement. The interactions between temperature and sunshine hours had the largest explanatory power for natural wetland change, while interactions between precipitation and vegetation coverage, and between temperature and vegetation coverage, had large contribution rates for artificial wetland change. The interactions among natural factors had the greatest impacts on wetland change, followed by interactions between natural factors and socio-economic factors, while interactions among socio-economic factors had more slight impacts on wetland change. The results can provide a scientific basis for regional wetland protection and management.

Bacillus subtilis is one of the commonly used industrial strains for riboflavin production. High-throughput screening is useful in biotechnology, but there are still an insufficient number of articles focusing on improving the riboflavin production of B. subtilis by this powerful tool. With droplet-based microfluidics technology, single cells can be encapsulated in droplets. The screening can be carried out by detecting the fluorescence intensity of secreted riboflavin. Thus, an efficient and high-throughput screening method suitable for riboflavin production strain improvement could be established. In this study, droplet-based microfluidics screening was applied, and a more competitive riboflavin producer U3 was selected from the random mutation library of strain S1. The riboflavin production and biomass of U3 were higher than that of S1 in flask fermentation. In addition, the results of fed-batch fermentation showed that the riboflavin production of U3 was 24.3 g/L, an 18% increase compared with the parent strain S1 (20.6 g/L), and the yield (g riboflavin/100 g glucose) increased by 19%, from 7.3 (S1) to 8.7 (U3). Two mutations of U3 (sinRG89R and icdD28E) were identified through whole genome sequencing and comparison. Then they were introduced into BS168DR (parent of S1) for further analysis, which also caused riboflavin production to increase. This paper provides protocols for screening riboflavin-producing B. subtilis with droplet-based microfluidics technology and reveals mutations in riboflavin overproduction strains.

With the depletion of fossil fuel energy and both the slow development and low utilization rate of new eco-friendly energy, finding new ways to efficiently store energy has become a research hotspot. Presently, polyethylene glycol (PEG) is an excellent heat storage material, but it is a typical solid-liquid phase change material (PCM) with a risk of leakage during phase transition. A combination of wood flour (WF) and PEG can effectively eliminate the risk of leakage after the melting of PEG. However, WF and PEG are both flammable materials, which impedes their application. Therefore, it is of great significance to expand their application by forming composites from among PEG, supporting mediums, and flame-retardant additives. This will improve both their flame retardancy and phase change energy storage performance, and will also lead to the preparation of excellent flame-retardant phase change composite materials with solid-solid phase change characteristics. To address this issue, ammonium polyphosphate (APP), organic modified montmorillonite (OMMT), and WF were blended into PEG in specific proportions to prepare a series of PEG/WF-based composites. Both thermal cycling tests and thermogravimetric analysis results demonstrated that the as-prepared composites had good thermal reliability and chemical stability. In addition, during differential scanning calorimetry tests, the PEG/WF/8.0APP@2.0OMMT composite presented the highest melting latent heat (176.6 J/g), and its enthalpy efficiency reached more than 98.3%. The PEG/WF/8.0APP@2.0OMMT composite also exhibited superior thermal insulation performance when compared to the pure PEG/WF composite. Furthermore, the PEG/WF/8.0APP@2.0OMMT composite exhibited a significant 50% reduction in peak heat release rate as a result of the synergistic effect between OMMT and APP in the gas and condensed phases. This work offers a useful strategy for the fabrication of multifunctional phase-change material, which is expected to broaden its industrial applications.

The opposed-power reciprocating pump has the characteristics of high pressure, large flow, and high efficiency and energy saving. However, due to the special structure of the opposed-power reciprocating pump, existing theoretical methods cannot analyze its dynamic performance. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of analyzing the power end of the opposed-power reciprocating pump. Firstly, according to the working principle and structural characteristics of the traditional plunger pump, the novel and complex structure of the opposed-power reciprocating pump is analyzed by analogy, and the force analysis model of the crankshaft is established. The dynamic analysis model of the Matlab program is used to solve the dynamic load and section stress in the working process, and the variation law of crankshaft load is obtained. The 25 most critical working conditions are selected for analysis, and the most critical station and section of the crankshaft are obtained. With the connection between ANSYS Workbench and Solidworks, the model is imported into ANSYS Workbench, the load on the crank pin is loaded by APDL command flow, and the static analysis of the crankshaft is carried out to obtain the stress and strain of the crankshaft. Finally, the static and fatigue strength of the dangerous section is checked, and it is proven that the strength and stiffness of the crankshaft meet the design requirements. The results show that the dynamic analysis results of the crankshaft under critical working conditions are consistent with the finite element analysis, verifying the rationality of the method and providing a reference for the improvement and optimized design of the crankshaft of the opposed-power reciprocating pump.

Numerous nanocarriers have been developed to deliver drugs for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. However, the lack of specific targeting ability, the low administration efficiency, and insufficient absorption by hepatocellular carcinoma cells, severely limits the therapeutic effect of the current drugs. Therefore, it is still of great clinical significance to develop highly efficient therapies with few side effects for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. Herein, we developed a highly effective nanocarrier, cyclic RGD peptide-conjugated magnetic mesoporous nanoparticles (RGDSPIO@MSN NPs), to deliver the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin (DOX) to human hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells, and further explored their synergistic apoptosis-promoting effects. The results showed that the prepared RGDSPIO@MSN NPs had good stability, biosafety and drug-loading capacity, and significantly improved the absorption of DOX by HepG2 cells, and that the RGDSPIO@MSN@DOX NPs could synergistically promote the apoptosis of HepG2 cells. Thus, this cyclic RGD peptide-modified magnetic mesoporous silicon therapeutic nanosystem can be regarded as a potentially effective strategy for the targeted treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Eutectic structures in Ag-based brazing filler metals play an important role in improving the properties of alloys and brazed joints. The typical microstructures and morphological evolution of Ag-Cu eutectic structures in Ag-based brazing filler metals solidified at various cooling rates and with the addition of different Sn contents were investigated. The formation mechanisms of anomalous eutectic structure (AES) and the morphological transition from lamellar eutectic structure (LES) to AES were elucidated. The microstructures in alloys solidified at a slow cooling rate and with low Sn content consisted of the full AES, which was attributed to the remelting of the LES during recalescence. Increasing the Sn content and cooling rate promoted the formation of developed Ag dendrite, eutectic dendrite with branches, and AES with large dimensions. The AES in rapidly solidified filler metals with a high Sn content was ascribed to the decomposition of the Ag-rich dendrite skeleton and the growth of Cu-rich between the ternary dendrite arms.

The smelting slag obtained through iron collection from waste automobile three-way catalysts was used as a raw material to prepare microcrystalline glass through a one-step crystallization heat treatment. The phase composition and microstructure of the prepared glass were analyzed through X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy–energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, respectively. Single-factor experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of crystallization temperature from 900 to 950 °C and crystallization time from 0.5 to 4 h on the physical and chemical properties of the microcrystalline glass. The results indicated that the optimum crystallization temperature and time for preparing microcrystalline glass with glass smelting slag through the proposed one-step crystallization heat treatment process were 950 °C and 3 h, respectively. Under these experimental conditions, the number of crystalline phases of the microcrystalline glass was high, the grains were mainly spherical and columnar particles, the sample structure was dense, and the best results were obtained: the density was 2.72 g/cm3, the water absorption was 1.55%, the porosity was 4.2%, the Vickers hardness was 618 HV, the acid resistance was 2.6%, and the alkali resistance was 0.04%. In addition, the results of the toxicity characteristic leaching procedure indicated that the leaching concentrations of heavy metals such as Zn, Cr, and Pb in the microcrystalline glass were lower than those in the base glass and were considerably lower than the acceptable limits. The microcrystalline glass obtained from final smelting slag through heat treatment can enhance the stabilization of harmful elements. The findings of this study can be applied to the treatment of bulk solid waste.

Local chronicles are a kind of historical record in China that are written in detail and play an important role in the transmission of local history and culture. Due to the single-text-carrier form of local chronicles, people have limited access to information on urban characteristics and culture; therefore, based on the cultural gene theory and Hofstede model, also known as the cultural onion model, this paper develops a “Spirit–Sign” content framework with the themes of urban characteristics and culture. Based on this framework, we map the urban characteristics and culture (visualization strategy and map design) of local chronicles. Taking the historic city of Dengfeng in the Central Plains as an example, the spatial information of the four historical city characteristics of Dengfeng was mined for the map design using the content framework of the city characteristics proposed in this study. The results of the study found that (1) there is a certain overlap in the spatial distribution of the four characteristic cultures of Dengfeng, indicating that the spiritual (traditional customs and famous people and events) and material (famous buildings and products) are complementary and mutually reinforcing to a certain extent; and (2) with the iterative development of Chinese dynasties, the material characteristic cultures of Dengfeng show strong temporal and spatial differences, which laterally reflect the changes in human activities and urban changes of each dynasty and also reflect the very important historical position occupied by Dengfeng in China. Compared with the traditional text-carrier form of local chronicles, the content construction and map visualization of the city’s historical and cultural information proposed in this study can effectively explore more potential cultural characteristics, as well as spatial and temporal connections of Dengfeng and thus help people better understand the historical characteristics of the city.

In recent years, climate change and the intervention of anthropogenic activities have altered the seasonal features of Asian dust storms. This may also cause seasonal variations (including dust occurrence frequency and optical/microphysical properties) in dust aerosols transported to downstream regions. The Jianghan Plain is dramatically influenced by multiple dust sources due to its geographical location in central China. In this study, we focused on the climatology of dust aerosols over the Jianghan Plain based on the 15-year (2006–2021) continuous space-borne observations of the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) as well as Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) reanalysis data. A typical dust event that intrudes the Jianghan Plain was studied in detail. According to the statistical results, dust aerosols frequently intrude into the Jianghan Plain in spring and winter, with occurrence frequencies (under cloud free condition hereafter) exceeding 0.70 and higher altitudes of 4–6 km. The dust occurrence frequency declined to approximately 0.40 in autumn and nearly zero in summer, while the dust plumes were generally located at lower altitudes of 1–3 km. The dust plumes observed in the Jianghan Plain were simultaneously linked to the Taklimakan Desert and Gobi Desert in spring and mainly originated from the Taklimakan Desert in winter and autumn. The dust particles were mainly distributed below 4-km altitude, with the largest dust extinction coefficients and dust mass concentrations in spring. In all seasons, the particle depolarization ratios are 0.1–0.2 below 4-km altitude, suggesting a possible mix with local anthropogenic aerosols. The mean dust column mass concentrations in spring showed an evident declining trend from 210 µg m−2 in 2006 to 100 µg m−2 in 2021 in the Jianghan Plain, attributed to the reduced dust activity in the source regions of Asian dust.

Nanoporous gold (NPG) plays an important role in high-performance electronic devices, including sensors, electrocatalysis, and energy storage systems. However, the traditional fabricating methods of NPG, dealloying technique or electrochemical reduction technique, usually require complex experimental procedures and sophisticated equipment. In this work, we reported a unique and simple method to prepare the NPG through a low-temperature solution process. More importantly, the structure of the NPG-based electrode can be further controlled by using the post-treatment process, such as thermal treatment and plasma treatment. Additionally, we also demonstrate the application of the resulting NPG electrodes in flexible photodetectors, which performs a higher sensitivity than common planar photodetectors. We believe that our work opens a possibility for the nanoporous metal in future electronics that is flexible, large scale, with facile fabrication, and low cost.

Co-treatment for two kinds of hazardous solid waste is an effective method to reduce cost and increase recycle efficiency of value resource. This work developed an integrated process based on capture of red mud (RM) and a one-step heat-treatment process to efficiently recover PGMs from spent auto-catalysts (SAC) and reuse RM simultaneously. Firstly, the iron oxide in RM was reduced to metallic iron to capture PGMs by the reduction process, without the addition of an extra reducing agent, since SAC contained abundant organic volatiles. Then, the mixed waste of SAC and RM was melted under high temperature with additives of CaO and H3BO3. More than 99% of PGMs can be extracted under the optimal conditions of 40–50 wt% of RM addition, 14 wt% of H3BO3 addition, 0.7–0.8 of basicity, 1500 °C of temperature, and 40 min of holding time. In addition, PGM content in obtained glassy slag was less than 1 g/t. The mechanism of iron trapping PGMs was also discussed in detailed, which mainly contained two stages: migration of PGMs and separation of PGM-bearing alloy and slag phases. Besides, the obtained glassy slag was further prepared into glass-ceramic by a one-step heat-treatment process. It was found that the prepared glass-ceramic has good thermostability and an excellent stabilizing effect on heavy metals. Overall, the results indicated that the developed integrated smelting–collection process is an efficient and promising method for the reutilization of SAC and RM.

In order to explore highly efficient flame-retardant rigid polyurethane foam (RPUF), phosphorus/nitrogen compounds and expandable graphite (EG) were successfully incorporated into RPUF by a free one-spot method. The combustion results showed that the fire safety of the RPUF samples was remarkably improved by the addition of phosphoric/nitrogen compounds and EG. With the incorporation of 22.4 wt.% phosphorus/nitrogen compounds and 3.2 wt.% EG, the RPUF composites achieved UL-94 V-0 rating. Besides, the total heat release and total smoke release of RPUF composites were reduced by 29.6% and 32.4% respectively, compared to those of the pure RPUF sample. PO• and PO2• together with nonflammable gaseous products were evolved from phosphoric/nitrogen compounds in the gas phase, which quenched the flammable free radicals in the matrix and diluted the concentration of combustible gaseous products generated from PRUF during combustion. The compact char residues which acted as excellent physical barriers were formed by catalysis of EG and phosphoric/nitrogen compounds in the condense phase. The fire hazard of RPUF was significantly reduced by the synergistic effect of phosphorus-nitrogen compounds and EG. This work provides a promising strategy to enhance the fire safety of RPUF.

Beclin 1 is an autophagy-associated protein involved in apoptosis and drug resistance, as well as various malignancies. We investigated the expression of Beclin 1 protein in ovarian epithelial tissues and correlated it with the prognosis of ovarian cancer. Beclin 1 protein expression was determined using immunohistochemistry in 148 patients with ovarian epithelial cancer, 26 with ovarian borderline tumor, 25 with benign ovarian tumor, and 30 with normal ovarian tissue. The relationships between Beclin 1 protein expression and ovarian cancer pathological characteristics were analyzed. The risk factors for ovarian cancer prognosis were analyzed using Cox’s regression model. A survival curve was plotted from the follow-up data of 93 patients with ovarian cancer to analyze the effects of Beclin 1 expression on the prognosis of ovarian cancer. The positive rates of Beclin 1 were significantly higher in ovarian epithelial cancer (148) and borderline tumor (26) than in benign ovarian tumor (25) or normal ovarian tissue (30) (all p < 0.001). The surgical stage and Beclin 1 expression were both independent risk factors for ovarian cancer prognosis (both p < 0.05). Patients with high Beclin 1 levels showed better survival than those with low Beclin 1 levels (p = 0.009). Beclin 1 protein is upregulated in ovarian epithelial cancer and is a prognostic factor of ovarian cancer.

The extemporaneous combustion of coal remains a major threat to safety in coal mines because such fire accidents result in casualties and significant property loss, as well as serious environmental pollution. This work proposed the fabrication of flame-retardant rigid polyurethane foam (RPUF) containing expandable graphite as char expander/sealant with melamine phosphosphate and 2-carboxyethyl (phenyl)phosphinic acid as char inducer and radical trapping agents. The as-prepared RPUF successfully inhibited coal combustion by forming thermally stable high graphitic content expandable intumescent char sealing over the coal. The RPUF achieved UL-94 V-0 rating in addition to significant reductions in peak heat release, total heat release, and CO and CO2 yields. The external and the internal residual char structure was studied by X-ray photoelectron spectra, Raman spectroscopy, and real-time Fourier transform infrared spectra techniques, and a flame-retardant mode of action has been proposed. This work provides important insight into a facile fabrication of highly efficient and economical flame-retardant RPUF to inhibit the spontaneous combustion of coal.

Automobile surface defects like scratches or dents occur during the process of manufacturing and cross-border transportation. This will affect consumers’ first impression and the service life of the car itself. In most worldwide automobile industries, the inspection process is mainly performed by human vision, which is unstable and insufficient. The combination of artificial intelligence and the automobile industry shows promise nowadays. However, it is a challenge to inspect such defects in a computer system because of imbalanced illumination, specular highlight reflection, various reflection modes and limited defect features. This paper presents the design and implementation of a novel automatic inspection system (AIS) for automobile surface defects which are the located in or close to style lines, edges and handles. The system consists of image acquisition and image processing devices, operating in a closed environment and noncontact way with four LED light sources. Specifically, we use five plane-array Charge Coupled Device (CCD) cameras to collect images of the five sides of the automobile synchronously. Then the AIS extracts candidate defect regions from the vehicle body image by a multi-scale Hessian matrix fusion method. Finally, candidate defect regions are classified into pseudo-defects, dents and scratches by feature extraction (shape, size, statistics and divergence features) and a support vector machine algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that automatic inspection system can effectively reduce false detection of pseudo-defects produced by image noise and achieve accuracies of 95.6% in dent defects and 97.1% in scratch defects, which is suitable for customs inspection of imported vehicles.

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have been widely adopted in single image super-resolution (SISR) recently with great success. As a network goes deeper, intermediate features become hierarchical. However, most SISR methods based on DNNs do not make full use of the hierarchical features. The features cannot be read directly by the subsequent layers, therefore, the previous hierarchical information has little influence on the subsequent layer output, and the performance is relatively poor. To address this issue, a novel global dense feature fusion convolutional network (DFFNet) is proposed, which can take full advantage of global intermediate features. Especially, a feature fusion block (FFblock) is introduced as the basic module. Each block can directly read raw global features from previous ones and then learns the feature spatial correlation and channel correlation between features in a holistic way, leading to a continuous global information memory mechanism. Experiments on the benchmark tests show that the proposed method DFFNet achieves favorable performance against the state-of-art methods.

Objective: To measure Lewis y and integrin α5β1 expression in epithelial ovarian carcinoma and to correlate the levels of these molecules with ovarian carcinoma chemotherapy and prognosis. Methods: The study population included 34 ovarian carcinoma patients with chemotherapeutic drug-resistance, six partially drug-sensitive cases, and 52 drug-sensitive cases (92 total). Immunochemistry was used to determine expression of Lewis y antigen and integrin α5β1 in ovarian carcinoma tissues, and correlation of these molecules with chemotherapy resistance was further investigated, Multi-factor logistic regression analysis was applied to investigate: age, surgical stage, grade, subtype of patient cases, metastasis of lymph nodes, residual tumor size, expression levels of Lewis y antigen and integrin α5β1 correlation with ovarian carcinoma chemotherapy resistance. Results: The expression rates of Lewis y antigen and integrins α5 and β1 were significantly greater in the drug-resistant group (91.17%, 85.29%, 88.24%) than the partially sensitive (50.00%, 33.33%, 50.00%) or sensitive groups (61.54%, 57.69%, 55.77%). Binary logistic regression analysis revealed that surgical stage, residual tumor size, and expression of integrin α5 and Lewis y in ovarian carcinoma tissues were independent risk factors for chemotherapeutic drug resistance. Conclusions: Overexpression of Lewis y and integrin α5 are strong risk factors for chemotherapeutic drug resistance in ovarian carcinoma patients.

Lewis (y) antigen is a difucosylated oligosaccharide present on the plasma membrane, and its overexpression is frequently found in human cancers and has been shown to be associated with poor prognosis. Our previous studies have shown that Lewis (y) antigen plays a positive role in the process of invasion and metastasis of ovarian cancer cells. However, the mechanisms by which Lewis (y) antigen enhances the invasion and tumor metastasis are still unknown. In this study, we established a stable cell line constitutively expressing Lewis (y) antigen (RMG-1-hFUT) by transfecting the cDNA encoding part of the human α1,2-fucosyltransferase (α1,2-FUT) gene into the ovarian cancer cell line RMG-1, and investigated whether Lewis (y) antigen regulates the expression of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and MMP-9, and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMP-1) and TIMP-2. We found that RMG-1-hFUT cells exhibited higher invasive capacities than their control cells. In addition, expression of TIMP-1 and TIMP-2 was down-regulated and expression of MMP-2 and MMP-9 was up-regulated. Anti-Lewis (y) antigen antibody treatment significantly reversed the expression of TIMP-1, TIMP-2, MMP-2 and MMP-9. Taken together, we provide the first evidence that down-regulation of TIMP-1 and TIMP-2 and up-regulation of MMP-2 and MMP-9 represents one of the mechanisms by which Lewis (y) antigen promotes cell invasion.

The stress distributions in a thick welded specimen with a partial repair weld were measured with the three-cut contour method. The longitudinal stress maps in the original weld and the repair weld were obtained and the transverse stress map at the weld centerline in the original weld was acquired. The difference between the longitudinal stress in the partial repair weld and that in the original weld was investigated. Results show that the longitudinal stress increases significantly within the entire repair region with a peak tensile longitudinal stress close to the yield strength of weld material; and the longitudinal stress in the region above the repair weld decreases distinctly after repair; the introduction of the partial repair weld does not affect the stress distribution trend in the original weld (whether it is beyond or above the repair weld), and it has a slight effect on the tensile stress distribution width in the repair region.