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During aircraft, ship, and automobile manufacturing, lap structures are frequently produced among Al alloy skins, wall panels, and stiffeners. The occurrence of welding defects severely decreases mechanical properties during friction stir lap welding (FSLW). This study focuses on investigating the effects of rotation rate, multipass welding, and cooling methods on lap defect formation, microstructural evolution, and mechanical properties. Hook defects were eliminated by decreasing welding speed, applying two-pass FLSW with a small welding tool, and introducing additional water cooling, thus leading to a remarkable increase in effective sheet thickness and lap width. This above strategy yielded defect-free joints with an ultrafine-grained microstructure and increased tensile shear force from 298 to 551 N/mm. The fracture behavior of FSLW joints was systematically studied, and a fracture factor of lap joints was proposed to predict their fracture mode. By reducing the rotation rate, using two-pass welding, and employing additional water cooling strategies, an enlarged, strengthened, and defect-free lap zone with refined ultrafine grains was achieved with a quality comparable to that of lap welds based on 7xxx Al alloys. Importantly, this study provides a valuable FSLW method for eliminating hook defects and improving joint performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogel stands out as one of the most attractive wound dressings due to its excellent moisturizing properties and capacity to absorb wound exudates. However, conventional hydrogel dressings often lack responsiveness to the microenvironment, merely acting as protective barriers for the wound. Consequently, they exhibit limited effectiveness in preventing infection and facilitating wound repair. To address these problems, we have developed a multifunctional injectable hydrogel, CF/MS@HG, based on peroxidase-like nanozymes, aiming at rapidly healing bacterial-infected wounds. The hydrogel is mainly composed of oxidized sodium alginate, aminated gelatin, and polylysine, encapsulating MIL-101(CuFe) NPs (CF) and manganese selenide nanoparticles (MnSe2 NPs, or MS NPs). After injection, the complex rapidly gelatinizes at the infected wound site through a Schiff base reaction. In vitro experiments have demonstrated the hydrogel's strong adhesion and self-healing capabilities. Moreover, CF exhibiting peroxidase (POD)-like activity, catalyzes in situ hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to generate highly toxic hydroxyl radicals (·OH) within the wound microenvironment, inducing oxidative damage to bacteria. Meanwhile, MS decomposes into H2Se in the slightly acidic wound microenvironment, disrupting bacterial metabolism and inhibiting proliferation. The addition of polylysine further enhances the hydrogel's antibacterial properties. In vivo experiments have shown that the hydrogel exhibits excellent biological safety and significantly promotes wound healing. This multifunctional smart hydrogel holds great promise for the treatment of bacterial-infected wounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly scattering media, such as milk, skin, and clouds, are common in the real world. Rendering participating media is challenging, especially for high-order scattering dominant media, because the light may undergo a large number of scattering events before leaving the surface. Monte Carlo-based methods typically require a long time to produce noise-free results. Based on the observation that low-albedo media contain less noise than high-albedo media, we propose reducing the variance of the rendered results using differentiable regularization. We first render an image with low-albedo participating media together with the gradient with respect to the albedo, and then predict the final rendered image with a low-albedo image and gradient image via a novel prediction function. To achieve high quality, we also consider the gradients of neighboring frames to provide a noise-free gradient image. Ultimately, our method can produce results with much less overall error than equal-time path tracing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global illumination (GI) plays a crucial role in rendering realistic results for virtual exhibitions, such as virtual car exhibitions. These scenarios usually include all-frequency bidirectional reflectance distribution functions (BRDFs), although their geometries and light configurations may be static. Rendering all-frequency BRDFs in real time remains challenging due to the complex light transport. Existing approaches, including precomputed radiance transfer, light probes, and the most recent path-tracing-based approaches (ReSTIR PT), cannot satisfy both quality and performance requirements simultaneously. Herein, we propose a practical hybrid global illumination approach that combines ray tracing and cached GI by caching the incoming radiance with wavelets. Our approach can produce results close to those of offline renderers at the cost of only approximately 17 ms at runtime and is robust over all-frequency BRDFs. Our approach is designed for applications involving static lighting and geometries, such as virtual exhibitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Altered cholesterol metabolism has been linked to a poor prognosis in various types of cancer. Cholesterol oxidation can lead to lipid peroxidation, membrane damage, and cell death. Ferroptosis is a regulated form of cell death characterized by the accumulation of lipid peroxides, which significantly inhibits the growth of ovarian cancer cells. SQLE is the primary enzyme responsible for catalyzing cholesterol lipid synthesis and is notably expressed in ovarian cancer tissues and cells. This study aims to investigate the role of squalene monooxygenase (SQLE) in ferroptosis in ovarian cancer. The protein and mRNA expression of SQLE was assessed using qRT-PCR, Western Blot, and immunohistochemistry. The association between SQLE and ferroptosis was demonstrated through analysis of TCGA and GTEx databases, TMT protein sequencing, as well as validation by qRT-PCR, Western Blot, immunofluorescence, ROS detection, and lipid peroxide detection. Animal experiments further confirmed the relationship between SQLE and ferroptosis in ovarian cancer. The protein and mRNA expression of SQLE was found to be upregulated in both ovarian cancer tissues and cell lines. Decreased SQLE expression led to ferroptosis in ovarian cancer cells, thereby increasing their sensitivity to ferroptosis inducers. Our research demonstrates that SQLE is significantly upregulated in both ovarian cancer tissues and cells. The overexpression of SQLE in ovarian cancer may facilitate tumorigenesis by conferring resistance to ferroptosis, thus shedding light on potential novel therapeutic strategies for ovarian cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hand pose estimation is a fundamental task in computer vision with applications in virtual reality, gesture recognition, autonomous driving, and virtual surgery. Keypoint detection often relies on deep learning methods and high-resolution feature map representations to achieve accurate detection. The HRNet framework serves as the basis, but it presents challenges in terms of extensive parameter count and demanding computational complexity due to high-resolution representations. To mitigate these challenges, we propose a lightweight keypoint detection network called LGCANet (Lightweight Ghost-Coordinate Attention Network). This network primarily consists of a lightweight feature extraction head for initial feature extraction and multiple lightweight foundational network modules called GCAblocks. GCAblocks introduce linear transformations to generate redundant feature maps while concurrently considering inter-channel relationships and long-range positional information using a coordinate attention mechanism. Validation on the RHD dataset and the COCO-WholeBody-Hand dataset shows that LGCANet reduces the number of parameters by 65.9% and GFLOPs by 72.6% while preserving the accuracy and improves the detection speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mitochondrial transcription factor A (TFAM) is a mitochondrial protein encoded by nuclear genes and transported from the cytoplasm to the mitochondria. TFAM is essential for the maintenance, expression, and delivery of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and can regulate the replication and transcription of mtDNA. TFAM is associated with the formation of mtDNA nucleomimetic structures, mtDNA repair, and mtDNA stability. However, the mechanism by which TFAM protects mtDNA is still being studied. This review provides a summary of the protective mechanism of TFAM on mtDNA including the discrete regulatory effects of TFAM acetylation and phosphorylation on mtDNA, the regulation of Ca2+ levels by TFAM to activate transcription in mitochondria, and the increased binding of TFAM to mtDNA damage hot spots. This review also discusses the association between TFAM and some neurodegenerative diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the fabrication of fuel tanks by adopting friction stir welding (FSW), welding defects were almost unavoidable. The multi-pass repair FSW is the preferred repair welding technique for fuel tanks. However, the effect of muti-pass repair FSW on the microstructure and mechanical properties of dissimilar FSW 2219Al/2195Al joints lacks of investigation. In the present study, 2219Al-T8/2195Al-T8 plates were subjected to 1 ~ 3 passes repair FSW under 600 rpm–200 mm min−1 based on the initial joint 800 rpm–200 mm min−1 with placing 2219Al-T8 plates on the advancing side (AS). The results showed that, sound 1–3 passes repair FSW joints were obtained. The low hardness zone (LHZ) on the 2219Al-T8 side, characterized by the dissolution/coarsening of θ′ (Al2Cu) precipitates, showed the minimum hardness in the initial joint. Compared to the initial joint, the 1–3 passes repair FSW resulted in the moving of the location of LHZs far away from the weld center and coarser θ precipitates with higher density, and the hardness of the LHZ therefore decreased on the 2219Al-T8 side. The joint strength at − 196 °C was much higher than that at room temperature for both the initial and repair FSW joints. The 1 pass repair FSW weakened the joint strength at both the room temperature and − 196 °C. When increasing the repair pass from 1 to 2 and 3, the joint strength further decreased at room temperature but was unchanged at − 196 °C. The enlarged hardness gap between the nugget zone (NZ) and LHZ caused the narrowing of the necking zone at the LHZ on the 2219Al-T8 side for the multi-pass repair FSW joints. The material flow uniformity at the top of the NZ was improved by the 1 ~ 3 passes repair FSW, making the up bending failure location changing from the "S" line for the initial joint to the HAZ on the 2195Al-T8 side for the repair FSW joints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biochar can improve soil health and fix CO2 by altering soil microenvironment, thus impacting the global carbon cycle and the change of soil ecological environment. Recent studies show that cotton byproduct-derived biochar is a potential effective amendment for soil improvement so that it could play an important role in agricultural and environmental conservation. In this work, research topics on cotton byproduct-derived biochar in soil in last decade and so are systematically reviewed for better understanding of the progresses of cotton byproduct-derived biochar in (i) the morphologic and physicochemical characterization, (ii) latest research hotspots and trends, (iii) the roles in soil reclamation, and (iv) relevant carbon sequestration mechanisms. Finally, the future research directions regarding cotton byproduct-derived biochar mingled to soil environment are discussed. Insight derived from this work would provide scientific basis for promoting more applications of cotton byproduct-derived biochar in soil ecological restoration and carbon fixation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phase unwrapping is used to establish the mapping relationship between camera and projector, which is one of the key technologies in fringe projection profilometry (FPP) based three-dimensional (3D) measurement. Although complementary Gray code assisted phase unwrapping technology can get a good result on the periodic boundary, it needs more coded images to obtain a high frequency fringe. Aiming at this problem, a complementary binary code assisted phase unwrapping method is proposed in this paper. According to the periodic consistency between the wrapping phase and binary codes, the coded patterns are generated. Then the connected domain strategy is performed to calculate the fringe orders using the positive and negative image binaryzation. To avoid the mistake near the periodic boundary, complementary binary code inspired by the complementary Gray code is proposed. The fringe order correction is also discussed for different situations in the first measured period. Only two binary images are needed in the proposed method, and the fringe frequency is not limited. Both the simulation and experiment have verified the feasibility of proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disposable consumer electronics become electronic waste at the end of their life, which can cause serious environmental pollution if discarded in the ground. Here, we have developed an all-wood-based flexible electronic device. The substrate is used to prepare self-densification wood-derived paper (SWP) at room temperature through the natural balsa wood (NW) self-densification process. Chemical treatment removed lignin and hemicellulose from NW, and the cell wall structure collapsed under the action of elastic capillary force generated by water evaporation. The hydrogen bonds between the cellulose fibers are further strengthened, and the arrangement of the cellulose fibers is maintained. The obtained SWP exhibits an excellent tensile strength of 229.4 ± 10.4 MPa in the fiber direction, which is 8.3–8.6 times (27.1 ± 1.7 MPa) and 4.2–4.8 times (51.2 ± 5.6 MPa) higher than NW and cellulose paper, respectively, and higher than some commercial plastics. In addition, it also exhibits excellent wetting performance and a certain degree of transparency. Finally, conductive wood carbon ink prepared from carbonized NW can be directly written on SWP using a Chinese brush to obtain customized patterns. We have demonstrated the application of an all-wood-based flexible electronic device in flexible sensors that can stably monitor finger movements. This newly developed all-wood-based composite can return to the carbon cycle of nature after its service life, providing a new way to replace traditional electronic products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial-temporal distribution, source, and potential ecological risk of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in surface seawater from Laizhou Bay were investigated. The total PAH (ΣPAH) concentrations ranged from 277 to 4393 ng/L with an average of 1178 ng/L, thereby suggesting a relatively moderate to high PAH exposure level in Laizhou Bay in comparison to other bays in the world. The composition patterns and source apportionment results revealed that the coal, biomass burning, diesel emissions, and petroleum combustion as well as the combination of these processes were the dominant sources of PAHs in the surface water, which were closely associated with sail process and sewage effluents. The ecological risk assessment indicated that benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), phenanthrene (Phe), luoranthene (Flua), and naphthalene (Nap) would exist ecological risks in most of surface seawater sites, but the probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) results showed that the current level of risk is not as severe as the risk quotient (RQ) results revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the cornerstone of enterprises, employees have played a pivotal role in navigating the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuring the survival and growth of businesses. The global wave of unemployment triggered by the pandemic has given rise to innovative work engagements, including remote work and employee sharing. This shift prompts employees to reconsider their relationship with the organization, the extent of their collaboration, and their commitment to sustaining the enterprise's viability and development. Amidst the diverse performance level of employees, the question arises: will they redouble their efforts to showcase their value or succumb to a state of inertia? Additionally, the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has brought about adverse impacts, making enterprises think about how to inhibit employees' social loafing, stimulate their enthusiasm, and to rely on collective strength to overcome the crisis. During the pandemic, uncertainty of the work environment was elevated, and the factors influecing employees' social loafing, perception of organizational justice, and organizational commitment became more significant. Based on the social exchange theory, this paper conducts research on how employees' perception of organizational justice level weakens their social loafing and incorporates organizational commitment into the research framework in order to explore new presentations of relationships between these variables in the context of the epidemic. Through the data analysis of 276 questionnaires, the study found that: (1) the organizational justice has a negative impact on the social loafing of employees; (2) the organizational commitment plays a complete mediating role between the organizational justice and employees' social loafing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the microwave absorbing performance, SiCN/MWCNT nanocomposites with different carboxylic functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT-COOH) contents (0 wt%, 2 wt%, 4 wt% and 8 wt%) were synthesized by single-source-precursor poly(methylvinyl)silazane (HTT1800) and polymer-derived ceramics method. The microwave absorbing performance of SiCN/MWCNT nanocomposites were investigated in the frequency range of 8.2–12.4 GHz with the thickness varied from 3.0 to 5.0 mm. The results showed that the minimum reflection loss (RLmin) of the sample of 10 wt% SiCN/MWCNT-8 mixed with paraffin wax reached − 30.34 dB with the thickness of 4.5 mm in the frequency of 11.45 GHz. The reason was that the introduction of MWCNT-COOH increased the interfacial polarization loss and the conduction loss of nanocomposites, improving microwave absorbing performance. The findings demonstrated that the synthesized SiCN/MWCNT nanocomposites possessed promising prospects as microwave absorbing materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dietary exposure to heavy metals and metalloids [metal(loid)s] deserves increased attention; however, there is a lack of a comprehensive understanding of the risks of dietary exposure from multi-type food intake and multi-metal(loid) exposure using a bioaccessibility-corrected method. Here, we determined the concentration and bioaccessibility of six toxic metal(loid)s in six major food groups in an industrial city with intensive smelting activity. By incorporating children's dietary patterns, the probability distribution of health risks from dietary metal(loid)s exposure was assessed. Marked differences were observed in the dietary exposure characteristics within metal(loid)s and major food groups. Cereal and vegetables were the major food groups local children intake. Cereals, meat, beans, and aquatic products had the highest concentrations of Cu and Cd, Pb and Cr, Ni, and As, respectively. Generally, meat, eggs, and aquatic products exhibited higher bioaccessibility than cereals, beans, and vegetables. The bioaccessibility of metal(loid)s decreased in the following order: Pb > Cr > Cu > Ni > As > Cd. For non-carcinogenic risks, the average hazard index was 7.3, with 99.6% exceeding acceptable levels. Arsenic was the dominant risk element and aquatic product was the main risk source. The aggregated carcinogenic risk was 3.4 × 10–3, with Cr the major risk contributor and cereals and meat the dominant food sources. The findings demonstrated that (1) the metal(loid) dietary exposure risk of children from areas with intensive smelting activities should be taken seriously, and (2) it is necessary to identify the specific food category and metal(loid) based on a comprehensive analysis of the metal(loid) concentration and bioaccessibility, and dietary habits of the population to effectively reduce risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of multi-model incorporated by radiomics, deep learning, and transcriptomics features for predicting pathological grade and survival in patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Methods: In this study, data were collected from 177 ccRCC patients, including radiomics features, deep learning (DL) features, and RNA sequencing data. Diagnostic models were then created using these data through least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) analysis. Additionally, a multi-model was developed by combining radiomics, DL, and transcriptomics features. The prognostic performance of the multi-model was evaluated based on progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) outcomes, assessed using Harrell's concordance index (C-index). Furthermore, we conducted an analysis to investigate the relationship between the multi-model and immune cell infiltration. Results: The multi-model demonstrated favorable performance in discriminating pathological grade, with area under the ROC curve (AUC) values of 0.946 (95% CI: 0.912–0.980) and 0.864 (95% CI: 0.734–0.994) in the training and testing cohorts, respectively. Additionally, it exhibited statistically significant prognostic performance for predicting PFS and OS. Furthermore, the high-grade group displayed a higher abundance of immune cells compared to the low-grade group. Conclusions: The multi-model incorporated radiomics, DL, and transcriptomics features demonstrated promising performance in predicting pathological grade and prognosis in patients with ccRCC. Critical relevance statement: We developed a multi-model to predict the grade and survival in clear cell renal cell carcinoma and explored the molecular biological significance of the multi-model of different histological grades. Key points: 1. The multi-model achieved an AUC of 0.864 for assessing pathological grade. 2. The multi-model exhibited an association with survival in ccRCC patients. 3. The high-grade group demonstrated a greater abundance of immune cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel Z-scheme ZnFe2O4/BiVO4 heterojunction photocatalyst was successfully synthesized using a convenient solvothermal method and applied in the visible light photocatalytic degradation of ciprofloxacin, which is a typical antibiotic contaminant in wastewater. The heterostructure of as-synthesized catalysts was confirmed using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy characterizations. Compared with the single-phase counterparts, ZnFe2O4/BiVO4 demonstrated considerably enhanced photogenerated charge separation efficiencies because of the Z-scheme transfer mechanism of electrons between the composite photocatalysts. Consequently, the 30% ZnFe2O4/BiVO4 catalyst afforded a degradation rate of up to 97% of 20 mg/L ciprofloxacin under 30 min of visible light irradiation with a total organic carbon removal rate of 50%, which is an excellent activity compared with ever reported BiVO4-based catalysts. In addition, the liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and quantitative structure-activity relationships model analyses demonstrated that the toxicity of the intermediates was lower than that of the parent ciprofloxacin. Moreover, the as-synthesized ZnFe2O4/BiVO4 heterojunctions were quite stable and could be reused at least four times. This study thus provides a promising Z-scheme heterojunction photocatalyst for the efficient removal and detoxication of antibiotic pollutants from wastewater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant diseases and pest infections are major factors that undermine the growth of plants along with their life cycle. Optical image-based plant disease detection provides an efficient and low cost way for real-time plant growth monitoring and management. In recent years, the thriving development of deep learning techniques in a variety of communities has validated its great performance in image interpretation and understanding. Existing deep learning-based methods for plant disease classification mostly adopt convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that have been originally developed for general image classification purposes. These CNN architectures consist of a very large volume of training parameters, which severely hinders its applicability under scenarios requiring fast and flexible deployment on compact devices with limited computation powers. In this paper, an ultra-lightweight efficient network (ULEN) is proposed targeting image-based plant disease and pest infection detection. The proposed network consists of two parts, a deep feature extraction module that adopts residual depth-wise convolution and a classification module receiving multi-scale features enhanced by a spatial pyramid pooling layer. The network is constructed in a very compact design with approximately only 100 000 parameters, which greatly favors the demand for a lightweight model for practical needs. Two publicly available plant datasets collected at the indoor and outdoor environments were tested on two compact devices to validate its applicability under different scenarios. Compared with the state-of-the-art architectures, the proposed network showed superior performance with the least computation complexity and compelling classification accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent trend of fusing complementary data from LiDARs and cameras for more accurate perception has made the extrinsic calibration between the two sensors critically important. Indeed, to align the sensors spatially for proper data fusion, the calibration process usually involves estimating the extrinsic parameters between them. Traditional LiDAR–camera calibration methods often depend on explicit targets or human intervention, which can be prohibitively expensive and cumbersome. Recognizing these weaknesses, recent methods usually adopt the autonomic targetless calibration approach, which can be conducted at a much lower cost. This paper presents a thorough review of these automatic targetless LiDAR–camera calibration methods. Specifically, based on how the potential cues in the environment are retrieved and utilized in the calibration process, we divide the methods into four categories: information theory based, feature based, ego-motion based, and learning based methods. For each category, we provide an in-depth overview with insights we have gathered, hoping to serve as a potential guidance for researchers in the related fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulsars with the Gigahertz-Peaked Spectra (GPS) are named GPS pulsars, which means that spectra of the pulsars in the radio band turn over near 1 GHz. These pulsars are also called high-frequency inversion spectra pulsars. There are total 33 GPS pulsars discovered so far. The reason causing the turned-over spectra may be due to the free–free absorption of radio emission by the interstellar medium. We carry out the statistical research on the peak frequencies of inversion spectra, spectral indices, dispersion measure, and magnetic fields of these GPS pulsars. We find that the peak frequencies of most GPS pulsars are mainly in 0.5–1.0 GHz, the spectral indices of these GPS pulsars seems to have a bimodal distribution, which means that these GPS pulsars are possibly composed by two types of pulsars. A strong positive correlation between the periods and dispersion measure (DM) of GPS pulsars is first found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel fluorescent strategy has been developed by using an enzymatic reaction modulated DNA assembly on graphitic carbon nitride nanosheets (CNNS) for the detection of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity and its inhibitors. The two-dimensional and ultrathin-layer CNNS-material was successfully synthesized through a chemical oxidation and ultrasound exfoliation method. Because of its excellent adsorption selectivity to ssDNA over dsDNA and superior quenching ability toward the fluorophore labels, CNNS were employed to construct a sensitive fluorescence sensing platform for the detection of AChE activity and inhibition. The detection was based on enzymatic reaction modulated DNA assembly on CNNS, which involved the specific AChE-catalyzed reaction-mediated DNA/Hg2+ conformational change and subsequent signal transduction and amplification via hybridization chain reaction (HCR). Under the excitation at 485 nm, the fluorescence signal from 500 to 650 nm (λmax = 518 nm) of the developed sensing system was gradually increased with increasing concentration of AChE. The quantitative determination range of AChE is from 0.02 to 1 mU/mL and the detection limit was 0.006 mU/mL. The developed strategy was successfully applied to the assay of AChE in human serum samples, and can also be used to effectively screen AChE inhibitors, showing great promise providing a robust and effective platform for AChE-related diagnosis, drug screening, and therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for 2219 aluminum alloy and 2195 Al–Li alloy dissimilar friction stir welding (FSW) arises as the conventional 2219Al alloy was gradually replaced by the novel 2195Al alloy in fabrication of fuel tanks. However, the systematic investigation about the effect of welding parameters and material positioning on the microstructure evolution and mechanical properties of dissimilar FSW 2219Al/2195Al joints is lacking. In the present study, 2219Al-T8/2195Al-T8 plates were subjected to FSW under rotation rates of 800–1200 rpm and welding speeds of 200–800 mm min−1 with placing 2219Al-T8 alloys on the advancing side (AS) and retreating side (RS), respectively. The results showed that sound FSW joints were obtained under all the welding conditions. Welding parameters and material positioning affected the joint strength and fracture failure behavior. The FSW thermal cycle resulted in low hardness zones (LHZs) on both the 2219Al-T8 and 2195Al-T8 sides. The LHZ on the 2219Al-T8 side, characterized by partial coarsening of θ′ (Al2Cu) precipitates and dissolution of the residual precipitates, showed the minimum hardness in the entire FSW joints. When 2219Al-T8 alloy was placed on the AS, the LHZ on the 2219Al-T8 side experienced higher peak temperature, and therefore more dissolution of θ′ than that on the RS, thereby obtaining higher tensile strength. The tensile strength of the FSW joints at room temperature and − 196 °C largely increased as the welding speed increased from 200 to 400 mm min−1. The FSW joints presented much higher tensile strength at − 196 °C than that at room temperature under the identical welding parameters and material position. The FSW joints fractured along the LHZ on the 2219Al-T8 side during tension. For the bending testing, the up and down bending failure angles were about 91–117° and 88–109°, respectively, with the weak zone appearing in "S" line or HAZ on the 2195Al-T8 side. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affine invariant features play an important role in many computer vision tasks. But shearing brings inconveniences for the extraction of affine invariant features with conventional inner product (CIP). Affine invariants constructed by moment are sensitive to noise, and affine covariant points other than centroid can hardly be constructed. These inconveniences are caused by difficulties for the elimination of an angular factor with CIP. In order to facilitate the elimination of this angular factor, a general function and a transformation are introduced to the integral along radial direction, and quasi inner product (QIP) is proposed. In terms of QIP, generalized polar coordinate moment (GPCM) is defined. A method is developed for the construction of affine invariants with the proposed GPCM. Almost all the existing moment-based affine invariants are special cases of affine invariants constructed by GPCM. Quasi centroid (QC), which keeps affine covariance, is also derived by GPCM. Experimental results show that affine invariants with better performance can be constructed. QC is also employed for the estimation of parameters in affine transform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to develop a modulation strategy for converting red mud (RM) into cementitious material based on elucidating the phase transformation of hydrogarnet. The results show that cementitious minerals 2CaO·SiO2 (C2S), 12CaO·7Al2O3 (C12A7), and 4CaO·Al2O3·Fe2O3 (C4AF), as well as the free iron minerals Fe and FeO, are formed by integrating calcification dealkalization and reduction roasting treatment of RM. During the reduction roasting process, CaO is preferentially combined with SiO2 and Al2O3 to form cementitious minerals, and the Fe(III) compounds in hydrogarnet and hematite can be directly reduced to free iron minerals without intermediate ferrites. By optimizing the reduction roasting parameters and eliminating the useless minerals 2CaO·Al2O3·SiO2 (C2AS), and FeO, the reduction roasting product is mainly composed of C2S, C12A7, C4AF, and Fe. Therefore, cementitious material is obtained after the magnetic separation of Fe, which possesses both early and late hydration properties. In addition, 75% Fe in RM can be recovered, and the reduced iron powder (RIP) is also useful in the cement clinker production or steel smelting process. The findings in this work lay the foundations for understanding the phase transformation of RM-derived hydrogarnet in the reduction roasting process and also provide a new reference for the modulation and utilization of RM in the cement and concrete field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wood is a great natural material with good energy storage and temperature adjustment for the energy crisis. In this study, wood was delignified, and the PEG-based eutectic polymer (PGMA) was impregnated into the delignified wood, and styrene (SM) grafted AlN was selected as thermal conductive filler to synthesize a stable phase change heat storage wood. The result shows that the styrene (SM) polymerized on the surface of AlN to form polystyrene (PS), and the dispersion of AlN was enhanced. The thermal stability and loss resistance of PCES-Wood are improved for the penetration of PS-AlN into the cavities, which is attributed to the PS-AlN playing a "limiting" role in the crystallization of PGMA. When the content of PS-AlN is 6%, the thermal conductivity of PCES-Wood reaches 0.5148 W/(m·K). 4% PS-AlN-PCES@Balsa has the lowest undercooling and heat loss rate, and the melting enthalpy and solidification enthalpy reach 125.60 J/g and 120.30 J/g, respectively. The phase change temperature range is between 19.59 and 33.87 °C, which is in the comfortable temperature range for humans. Under the illumination of the simulated solar light source, the surface temperature of PS-AlN-PCES@Balsa rises rapidly and shows a lasting heat storage capacity at low temperatures compared with the original wood. After 200 cold and hot cycle tests, the phase change enthalpy of PS-AlN-PCES@Balsa is still high, and there is a slight leakage phenomenon. The phase change wood prepared in this study shows that it is a potential material to store and release solar energy in practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Halide double perovskites have recently emerged as an environmentally green candidate toward electronic and optoelectronic applications owing to their non-toxicity and versatile physical merits, whereas study on high-temperature antiferroelectric (AFE) with excellent anti-breakdown property remains a huge blank in this booming family. Herein, we present the first high-temperature AFE of the lead-free halide double perovskites, (CHMA)2CsAgBiBr7 (1, where CHMA+ is cyclohexylmethylammonium), by incorporating a flexible organic spacer cation. The typical double P-E hysteresis loops and J-E curves reveal its concrete high-temperature AFE behaviors, giving large polarizations of ~4.2 μC/cm2 and a high Curie temperature of 378 K. Such merits are on the highest level of molecular AFE materials. Particularly, the dynamic motional ordering of CHMA+ cation contributes to the formation of antipolar alignment and high electric breakdown field strength up to ~205 kV/cm with fatigue endurance over 104 cycles, almost outperforming the vast majority of molecule counterparts. This is the first demonstration of high-temperature AFE properties in the halide double perovskites, which will promote the exploration of new "green" candidates for anti-breakdown energy storage capacitor. Antiferroelectric (AFE) materials are emerging as a remarkable candidate for efficient energy-storage applications. Here, the authors report on a high-temperature, lead-free, AFE perovskite, (CHMA)2CsAgBiBr7 (where CHMA is cyclohexylmethylammonium) with high fatigue endurance at a high electric breakdown field strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the development of deep learning, image super-resolution (SR) has made great progress, and become the focus of academic research. Because high-level features are more informative for the reconstruction, most SR networks have a large number of layers and parameters, which restrict their application in resource-constrained devices. Recently, lightweight networks got a lot attention for their broad application prospect. To improve the performance of lightweight networks by informative high-level features, we introduce feedback mechanism into our method, which can feed back high-level features to refine low-level ones. In this paper, we propose a closed-loop feedback network with cross back-projection for lightweight image super-resolution (CCFN), which uses feedback mechanism in three manners. First, based on error feedback, we propose a cross back-projection feedback block (CFB). CFB uses error feedback to correct the features of multi-scale fusion, which also can be viewed as two cross-learning back-projection units. Second, CFB works in a self-feedback manner, which feeds back the output high-level features to refine the low-level ones of the input. Third, we propose a global feedback, which feeds back the degradation results of SR to LR, to guide the learning of mapping functions from LR to HR. Finally, we use attention-based model as the basic block in CFB, and since our method works in an iterative manner, recursive concatenation is more suitable than multi-reconstruction. The final experimental results show that our CCFN has a competitive performance with few parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: Nitrogen (N) acquisition is an important factor regulating plant growth and community composition in riparian zones. However, it is not well understood how plants adjust their N uptake in response to variation in different N forms or how plants change their N uptake preferences in response to seasonal water table fluctuations and the consequent change in the vertical distribution of N within the soil profile. Methods: Using the in-situ 15 N labelling method, we conducted an experiment on uptake of two forms of N (15 N-NH4+ and 15 N-NO3−) by Carex thunbergii in two seasons (late autumn and early spring) at two soil depths (0–5 and 5–15 cm) along a soil water content (SWC) gradient in a subtropical wetland ecosystem. Results: N uptake rates differed between seasons with generally greater uptake rates in autumn than in spring, and this variation was strongly dependent on SWC. While C. thunbergii generally preferred topsoil N, it could also effectively take up N from the subsoil, indicating the importance of the deep soil as a N source for subtropical wetland plants. Plant N uptake preference was mainly observed at low SWC, which occurred in both of the two seasons sampled, with NO3− being preferred in autumn and NH4+ being preferred in spring. We also observed that 15 N was mainly recovered from the belowground tissues, and a smaller proportion of 15 N being was found in the shoots in autumn, compared to spring. This pattern indicates that C. thunbergii growth in the early spring might largely rely on stored N that was acquired in the previous autumn. In addition, the belowground biomass of C. thunbergii was significantly greater than the aboveground biomass regardless of SWC. Conclusions: Overall, our results indicate that C. thunbergii growth in the early spring might largely rely on use of internal stored N that was acquired during the previous autumn. The capacity of C. thunbergii to invest in large root biomass and to effectively exploit N pulses, especially in autumn, might help the species compete with microbes and co-occurring species for N and may be a factor allowing the species to be dominant in riparian zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrospray ionization (ESI) is essential for application of mass spectrometry in biological systems, as it prevents the analyte being split into fragments. However, due to lack of a clear understanding of the mechanism of ESI, the interpretation of mass spectra is often ambiguous. This is a particular challenge for complex biological systems. Here, we focus on systems that include nanodiscs as membrane environment, which are essential for membrane proteins. We performed microsecond atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to study the release of nanodiscs from highly charged nano-droplets into the gas phase, the late stage of ESI. We observed two distinct major scenarios, highlighting the diversity of morphologies of gaseous product ions. Our simulations are in reasonable agreement with experimental results. Our work provides a detailed atomistic view of the ESI process of a heterogeneous system (lipid nanodisc), which may give insights into the interpretation of mass spectra of all lipid-protein systems. Electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry is invaluable for studying complex biological systems, and although lipid nanodiscs are a powerful tool for the study of membrane proteins, a lack of clear understanding of the ESI mechanism presents a challenge for spectral interpretation and assignments. Here, the authors study the release behavior of lipid nanodiscs from charged nano-droplets in the ESI process using microsecond atomistic molecular dynamics simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B4C@CNT nanowires were synthesized on the carbon fiber fabric (CFs) surface to form CFs-B4C-CNT hybrid materials via thermal growth method for improving the microwave absorption performance. The microwave absorption property of the CFs-B4C-CNT hybrid materials were studied in the frequency range of 8.2–12.4 GHz. The results exhibited that B4C@CNT nanowires were decorated on CFs surface successfully. The minimum reflection loss (RLmin) value of 2 wt% CFs-B4C-CNT hybrid material was − 19.7 dB at 8.2 GHz with a layer thickness of 2.9 mm. And the maximum effective absorption bandwidth (RL < − 10 dB) was obtained over the frequency range of 8.4–12.1 GHz with a layer thickness of 2.5 mm. Furthermore, the microwave absorption mechanism of the CFs-B4C-CNT hybrid materials were discussed. This work demonstrated that CFs-B4C-CNT hybrid materials possessed high potential as microwave absorbers with good microwave absorption performance, which provided a new idea for the development of nano-hybrid materials to improve electromagnetic microwave absorption performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between time restricted feeding (TRF) and different areas of cognitive function in the elderly in Chinese communities. This study consisted of 1353 community-dwelling Chinese older adults aged 60 years and older in Chongming area, Shanghai (563 males; the mean age, 73.38 ± 6.16 years). Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and six different cognitive domains was assessed by the Chinese-version of Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). Recording the eating time of each meal through oral inquiry to calculate the time window between the first meal and the last meal of the average day. Participants with an eating time window duration of more than 10 h were then identified, as well as those with eating time restricted to less than 10 h (TRF). Our study found that TRF may be associated with a higher incidence rate of cognitive impairment. TRF only limited the eating time window and did not change the frequency of participants' dietary intake. We used a linear regression model to study the association of TRF with cognitive function. After adjusting for confounding variables, the results showed that TRF was related to MMSE score (P < 0.001), "Orientation to place" (P < 0.001) and "Attention/calculation" (P < 0.001) functions. Among Chinese older community-dwellers, TRF was associated with a higher prevalence of CI and negatively correlated with the "Orientation to place" and "attention/calculation" functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copper-based metal–organic frameworks (MOF) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (HKUST-1-MWCNTs) composite were synthesized by one-step hydrothermal method, and PDA-enzyme-HKUST-1-MWCNTs composite was prepared by one-pot method for the construction of glucose biosensors, which realized the sensitive amperometric detection of glucose at 0.7 V (vs. SCE). The sensitivity of the sensor for glucose detection was 178 μA mM−1cm−2 in the wide linear range of 0.005 ~ 7.05 mM, the detection limit was 0.12 μM and the corresponding RSD was 3.8%. Its high performance is mainly benefitted from the high porosity and large specific surface area of HKUST-1, the good conductivity of MWCNTs, and the excellent adhesion and dispersion of PDA. The strategy of combining PDA and MWCNTs to improve the dispersion and conductivity of MOF is expected to achieve a wider application of MOF-based materials in the electrochemical biosensing field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The MOR supported cobalt complex materials were synthesized by ion exchange method and used to catalyze the epoxidation reaction of α-pinene with air. The liquid phase batch mode of epoxidation reaction was carried out under atmospheric pressure and aerobic conditions. Among the supported [Co(NH3)6]3+-zeolites catalysts, [Co(NH3)6]3+-MOR exhibited the best catalytic efficiency for the titled reaction, and high reaction conversion as well as epoxidation product selectivity were obtained for α-pinene and α-epoxypinane. Parametric studies were performed to examine the effect factors like the Co content, the solvent, the initiator, the substrate amount and the catalyst amount. The catalyst can be reused at least nine cycles without significant loss in activity towards epoxidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new strategy is proposed for ultrasensitive detection of chlorogenic acid (CGA) by fabricating an electrochemiluminescence resonance energy transfer (ECL-RET) sensing platform. The novel system designed by introducing ruthenium-based 2D metal–organic framework nanosheets (Ru@Zn-MOF) as ECL acceptor and L-cysteine capped CdS quantum dots (L-CdS QDs) as ECL donor, exhibited good ECL response. The possible mechanism of the modified electrode surface reaction was discussed. Modifying of the electrode surface by application of L-CdS QDs directly on ultrathin MOF nanosheets greatly shortened the electron-transfer distance and reduce energy loss, therefore significantly improving the ECL efficiency. The prepared sensor demonstrated good stability and highly selective detection of the target molecule. Under optimal conditions, the constructed sensor for the detection of CGA exhibited a wide linear range from 1.0 × 10−10 to 1.0 × 10−4 mol·L−1 and a low detection limit of 3.2 × 10−11 mol·L−1 with a correction coefficient of 0.995. The recovery for spiked samples was calculated to be 94.4–109% and the RSD was 1.07–1.72% in real samples. The obtained sensor is considered to be a promising platform for CGA detection. Electrochemiluminescence resonance energy transfer (ECL-RET) sensing platform is used for the detection for chlorogenic acid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The epoxy compounds are useful intermediates and precursors in the production of fine chemicals and drugs. In the epoxidation reaction system, Co-MOF, a kind of cobalt-based heterogeneous catalytic material, has been widely studied for its simple synthesis, stable structure and excellent ability of molecular oxygen activation. For the first time, we used potassium persulfate as the initiator for the efficient air epoxidation reaction catalyzed by Co-MOF materials, which had better catalytic effects than aldehydes or peroxy compounds. As a new initiator, potassium persulfate reduces the reaction temperature and increased the amount of substrate olefins. In addition, potassium persulfate reduced the activation energy of the reaction, so that the ratio of olefin to initiator was further reduced, showing a better efficiency than initiators of aldehydes or peroxy compounds. Moreover, the application of potassium persulfate to the epoxidation reaction of other catalysts has also achieved good results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participating media are frequent in real-world scenes, whether they contain milk, fruit juice, oil, or muddy water in a river or the ocean. Incoming light interacts with these participating media in complex ways: refraction at boundaries and scattering and absorption inside volumes. The radiative transfer equation is the key to solving this problem. There are several categories of rendering methods which are all based on this equation, but using different solutions. In this paper, we introduce these groups, which include volume density estimation based approaches, virtual point/ray/beam lights, point based approaches, Monte Carlo based approaches, acceleration techniques, accurate single scattering methods, neural network based methods, and spatially-correlated participating media related methods. As well as discussing these methods, we consider the challenges and open problems in this research area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children (n = 240) between the ages of 2 and 17 years were randomly selected from three cities in China. The total amount of soil and dust (SD) on their hands was measured and ranged from 3.50–187.39 mg (median = 19.49 mg). We screened for seven elements (Ce, V, Y, Al, Ba, Sc, and Mn), and Ce levels were used to calculate hand SD by variability and soil elements. The main factors affecting SD amount were location and age group, as identified using a conditional inference tree. Hand SD and the hand SD intake rate were highest in Gansu Province, followed by Guangdong and Hubei provinces, respectively. Hand SD and the hand SD intake rate were highest among children in primary school, followed by kindergarten and secondary school, respectively. The hand SD intake rate of the three typical areas was 11.9 mg/d, which was about 26.6% of the children's soil intake rate (44.8 mg/d), indicating that hand-to-mouth contact is not the main route for children's soil intake in the three areas of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phase change materials (PCMs) with high heat recovery and high energy density were introduced to the wood-plastic composites (WPCs) to regulate the indoor temperature, achieving the purpose of reducing building energy consumption. However, the interface compatibility between PCMs and WPCs seriously restricts its applications. To improve the utilization efficiency and expand the application fields, novel thermal storage wood-plastic composites (WPCs) were synthesized based on poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) encapsulated by organic montmorillonite (OMMT) and WPC matrix. The leakage of PEG in PCMs were effectively solved. WPCs were successfully prepared since the peaks of the C–O bond and Si–O bond in WPC-3 are significantly more intense than WPC-0. The phase change temperature range of WPCs (17–26 °C) was similar to PCM3 (17–23 °C), which was caused by the restriction on crystal arrangement and orientation of PEG molecular chains in the wood-plastic matrix. The value of latent heat for PCM3 was 108.97 J/g, while the enthalpy value of WPCs reached 47.53 J/g when the loading percentage of PCM3 was 40%. Based on the good thermal properties, both PCMs and WPCs could effectively regulate the indoor temperature. The results of TG show that the fabrication of the organic network enhanced the thermal stability of PCMs, and the high-temperature resistance of the MMT reduced the degradation rate of WPCs. The thermal storage WPCs possess excellent thermal reliability and stability, good interface interaction and combustion performance, which are potential in the application of building energy-saving and indoor air-conditioning systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pineapple-banana rotation was studied as a model system to investigate the potential emergence of a fungal-mediated disease-suppression in a soil highly infested with the pathogen Fusarium oxysporum causing the banana wilt disease. By using both field and pot experiments, the pineapple-banana rotation system resulted in a significant decrease of the pathogen number and next-stubble banana disease incidence (P < 0.05). This pathogen-suppression phenomenon was linked with detectable shifts in the soil resident fungal taxa tracked in the pineapple season. Most importantly, taxa affiliated with Talaromyces pinophilus and Clonostachys rossmaniae were found to be significantly enriched in the bulk soils due to the pineapple cultivation (P < 0.05). The taxon T. pinophilus was also significantly enriched in the rhizosphere of banana after the rotation (P < 0.05). Later, we used fungal isolation and pot inoculation to validate that both T. pinophilus and C. rossmaniae taxa are able to significantly decrease the pathogen number in the banana rhizosphere soil (P < 0.05), thus confirming their biocontrol effects suppressing the disease. Taken together, this study provides evidence on how crop rotation affects the resident soil microbiome and the development of disease suppressiveness. Besides, this study highlights the importance of understanding the dynamic changes in soil biology mediated by crop rotation and validates the mechanisms underpinning suppression toward promoting practical and directed manipulation of protective microbiomes in agroecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface electromyography (sEMG) is a kind of valuable bioelectric signal and very potential in the field of human–machine interaction. Ideal interactions require sEMG based patterns recognition not only with high accuracy but also with good rapidity. However, too much real-time feature-related computation will greatly slow down the interaction, especially for multichannel sEMG. To decrease the feature-related time consumption, the paper formulates the feature reduction as an optimization problem, and develops a double-phases particle swarm optimization (PSO) with hybrid coding to solve the problem. In the research, the initial feature data set with 31 kinds of feature is built firstly based on eight subjects' 16 channels forearm sEMG signals, then PSO is introduced to conduct the feature reduction of 31 × 16 dimensions through the feature and channel optimization in double phases. During the optimization, two improved k-nearest neighbor (KNN) methods such as weighted representation based KNN (WRKNN) and weighted local mean representation based KNN (WLMRKNN) are introduced to classify the gestures, and the classification accuracy is used to evaluate the particles of PSO. Experimental results and comparison analysis show that PSO based feature reduction methods outperform genetic algorithm (GA), ant colony optimization (ACO) and principal component analysis (PCA) based feature reduction methods. With the optimized feature data subset by PSO, WRKNN and WLMRKNN are superior to KNN, quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), and naive bayes (NB) greatly. The proposed method can be applied in the pattern recognition of high dimensional sEMG with multichannel or high-density channels for the purpose of rapidity and without a decline of accuracy in real-time control. Further, it can be used to reduce the economic cost of the personalized customization equipment through the optimal channels for any subjects in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanical behavior of 2D materials such as MoS2 can be tuned by the ancient art of kirigami. Experiments and atomistic simulations show that 2D materials can be stretched more than 50% by strategic insertion of cuts. However, designing kirigami structures with desired mechanical properties is highly sensitive to the pattern and location of kirigami cuts. We use reinforcement learning (RL) to generate a wide range of highly stretchable MoS2 kirigami structures. The RL agent is trained by a small fraction (1.45%) of molecular dynamics simulation data, randomly sampled from a search space of over 4 million candidates for MoS2 kirigami structures with 6 cuts. After training, the RL agent not only proposes 6-cut kirigami structures that have stretchability above 45%, but also gains mechanistic insight to propose highly stretchable (above 40%) kirigami structures consisting of 8 and 10 cuts from a search space of billion candidates as zero-shot predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photocatalysis of dye degradation is one of green and cheap technologies for solving environmental pollution. Whereas it is rarely concerned that the degradation process varied with the change of solution condition, this work studied the influence of hydrion in the solution on the photodegradation process of Rhodamine B (RhB) over g-C3N4. The photocatalytic activity of RhB degradation was enhanced gradually with increased hydrion content in the system. The efficiency for RhB degradation over g-C3N4 in weak acidic system with interference of multiple metal-ions still reached near 95% after 30 min of natural sunlight irradiation. A large amount of oxidation species and the hydroxylation mineralization process were induced by increasing the hydrion concentration. Two degradation processes for deethylation of four ethyl groups and the direct chromophoric degradation were discovered and proved by multifarious intermediates in different systems using the ESR technique, LC/MS and GC/MS analysis. In addition, the photosensitization played a critical role in the RhB degradation. A feasible degradation mechanism was proposed for the RhB degradation based on the experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CoSx nanoparticles-modified g-C3N4 nanosheets are fabricated via a simple continuous hydrothermal-annealed method; there, the g-C3N4 nanosheets are prepared by a hydrothermal-annealed method; and the CoSx nanoparticles are deposited on the surface of g-C3N4 nanosheets by a secondary hydrothermal method. Evaluated by the hydrogen production, the photocatalytic performance of the g-C3N4/CoSx(~ 1596.01 μmol/g h) exhibits an obvious enhancement of about ~ 70-folds than the unmodified g-C3N4 and a decent photocatalytic stability during 24 h cycle. The main reasons for the HER enhancement can be ascribed to that the Pt-like behavior CoSx nanoparticles with partial-charge transfer activation can promote the excited photoelectron transferring/diffusing into the water for H+ ions reduction quickly, including the extra charge carriers induction of Co2+/Co3+ mixed state, the small size of CoSx nanoparticles can provide abundant specific surface areas and HER-active sites, which can be supported by series of electrochemical measurements. In addition, the nanoparticles can shorten the photoelectron transferring time to restrain the photocorrosion for improving stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the influence of outdoor climate and indoor human activities, the moisture accumulation of building enclosure structure will lead to the growth of mould on the interior surface of the wall, damage the building structure and endanger human health. Taking an office building in Dachangshan Island of Dalian, a cold area in North China, as an example, the outdoor relative humidity is high, and the temperature difference between indoor and outdoor is large during the heating period, which is easy to cause the increase of moisture content of the enclosure structure and the growth of mould. This study focuses on the influence of the heat and moisture transfer characteristics of the office building wall on the growth process of mould on the interior surface of the building. The dominant fungi of indoor air and wall surface were Penicillium and Cladosporium. WUFI software was used to simulate the heat and moisture transfer and the growth process of mould on the inner surface of the wall. The results show that the relative humidity of the air micro layer on the inner wall surface of the office building reaches more than 80% at the beginning of heating period in November every year, the mould hypha grows significantly in December and brings pollution risk. Finally, the relative humidity drops below 70% after the heating period is over in April, and the mould stops growing. The main reason for this phenomenon is that the condensation interface in the wall structure during the heating period leads to the accumulation of water in the wall, which is then transmitted to the wall surface through the wall pores, thus increasing the moisture content. This method provides a r eliable way for the numerical simulation of indoor mould growth risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The epsin family of endocytic adapter proteins are widely expressed, and interact with both proteins and lipids to regulate a variety of cell functions. However, the role of epsins in atherosclerosis is poorly understood. Here, we show that deletion of endothelial epsin proteins reduces inflammation and attenuates atherosclerosis using both cell culture and mouse models of this disease. In atherogenic cholesterol-treated murine aortic endothelial cells, epsins interact with the ubiquitinated endoplasmic reticulum protein inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor type 1 (IP3R1), which triggers proteasomal degradation of this calcium release channel. Epsins potentiate its degradation via this interaction. Genetic reduction of endothelial IP3R1 accelerates atherosclerosis, whereas deletion of endothelial epsins stabilizes IP3R1 and mitigates inflammation. Reduction of IP3R1 in epsin-deficient mice restores atherosclerotic progression. Taken together, epsin-mediated degradation of IP3R1 represents a previously undiscovered biological role for epsin proteins and may provide new therapeutic targets for the treatment of atherosclerosis and other diseases. Endothelial cell (EC) dysfunction and inflammation contribute to plaque destabilization in atherosclerosis, increasing the risk of thrombotic events. Here, the authors show that epsin promotes EC inflammation via a mechanism involving IP3R1 degradation, and that deletion of epsin in the endothelium prevents EC dysfunctoin and atherosclerosis in mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Particulate matter (PM) is an environmental pollutant closely associated with human airway inflammation. However, the molecular mechanisms of PM-related airway inflammation remains to be fully elucidated. It is known that COX-2/PGE2 play key roles in the pathogenesis of airway inflammation. Filaggrin is a transmembrane protein contributing to tight junction barrier function. As such, Filaggrin prevents leakage of transported solutes and is therefore necessary for the maintenance of epithelial integrity. The objective of the present study was to investigate the regulatory mechanisms of COX-2/PGE2 and Filaggrin upon PM exposure both in vivo and in vitro. C57BL/6 mice received intratracheal instillation of PM for two consecutive days. In parallel, human bronchial epithelial cells (HBECs) were exposed to PM for 24 h. PM exposure resulted in airway inflammation together with upregulation of COX-2/PGE2 and downregulation of Filaggrin in mouse lungs. Corresponding dysregulation of COX-2/PGE2 and Filaggrin was also observed in HBECs subjected to PM. PM exposure led to the phosphorylation of ERK, JNK, and PI3K signaling pathways in a time-dependent manner, while blockade of PI3K with the specific molecular inhibitor LY294002 partially reversed the dysregulation of COX-2/PGE2 and Filaggrin. Moreover, pretreatment of HBECs with NS398, a specific molecular inhibitor of COX-2, and AH6809, a downstream PGE2 receptor inhibitor, reversed the downregulation of Filaggrin upon PM exposure. Taken together, these data demonstrated that the PI3K signaling pathway upregulated COX-2 as well as PGE2 and acted as a pivotal mediator in the downregulation of Filaggrin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(B4C+Al2O3)/Al composite designed for the dry storage of spent nuclear fuels was fabricated and then subjected to friction stir welding, at a welding speed of 100 mm/min and rotation rates of 400–800 r/min. Sound joints were obtained under all welding parameters; however, significant softening occurred in the nugget zone (NZ) for all the joints. Therefore, all the joints exhibited significantly decreased strength at both room temperature and high temperature compared with the base metal, with the joints fracturing in the NZs. Rotation rate exhibited no obvious effect on the tensile strength of the joints, but led to increased elongation as the result of the broadened NZs. The detailed microstructural examinations indicated that the welding thermo-mechanical effect broke up the near 3D amorphous Al2O3 netlike structure distributed at the Al grain boundaries, caused the coarsening of Al grains, and the agglomeration and crystallization of amorphous Al2O3, thereby resulting in the softening of the NZs and the reduction in the joint strength. Consequently, inhibiting the breakup and crystallization of 3D amorphous Al2O3 netlike structure is the key factor to improve the joint strength of the (B4C+Al2O3)/Al composite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]