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Infant emotional stimuli can preferentially engage adults’ attention and provide valuable information essential for successful interaction between adults and infants. Exploring the neural processes of recognizing infant stimuli promotes better understandings of the mother-infant attachment mechanisms. Here, combining task-functional magnetic resonance imaging (Task-fMRI) and resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI), we investigated the effects of infants’ faces on the brain activity of adults. Two groups including 26 women and 25 men were recruited to participate in the current study. During the task-fMRI, subjects were exposed to images of infant emotional faces (including happy, neutral, and sad) randomly. We found that the brains of women and men reacted differently to infants’ faces, and these differential areas are in facial processing, attention, and empathetic networks. The rs-fMRI further showed that the connectivity of the default-mode network-related regions increased in women than in men. Additionally, brain activations in regions related to emotional networks were associated with the empathetic abilities of women. These differences in women might facilitate them to more effective and quick adjustments in behaviors and emotions during the nurturing infant period. The findings provide special implications and insights for understanding the neural processing of reacting to infant cues in adults.

The pristine attapulgite (Atta) was pretreated by thermal and acid activation process in order to improve the loading capacity of phase change material (PCM). A series of pretreated Atta-based composite PCM was prepared combined with different kind of fatty acids. The XRD, FT-IR and XRF results shown that the pretreated process increased the purity of Atta as well as the SEM micrographs and BET results indicated that the porosity of Atta slightly increased after pretreating. What`s more, XRD and FT-IR results of the composites PCMs shown good chemical compatibility. DSC results indicated that the composite PCMs of AH-Atta/Lauric acid (LA), AH-Atta/Palmitic acid (SA) and AH-Atta/Docosanoic acid (DA) melted at 42.8 °C, 1.4 °C and 75.2 °C with the latent heat of 94.6 J g−1, 107.5 J g−1 and 84.6 J g−1 at the maximum loading of 51.0%, 50.8% and 51.3%, respectively. In addition, TGA results and 200 thermal cycles test results proved the good thermal stability and reliability of the samples. Based all above results, the prepared composite PCMs have good potential application in energy conservation buildings at different function temperature.

This paper presents a numerical study of erosion–slippage failure of soil between piles caused by underground pipe leaking using the coupled CFD–DEM (computational fluid dynamics–discrete element method) approach. By tracking the change in particles migration and flow fluid during numerical simulation, the development mechanism of erosion–slippage failure is clarified on both microscopic and macroscopic scale. Three stages during this failure (initial, developing and failing) are proposed, and the definition of critical water pressure at leaking hole is confirmed by the comparison of particles and fluid field. Four crucial factors for soil to resist erosion–slippage failure are discussed: pile spacing, degree of density, soil–pile friction coefficient and soil gradation. Pile spacing has the most obvious influence on anti-erosion ability of soil. The degree of density determines whether the erosion–slippage failure happens in an instantaneous way or a continuous way. The increase in friction coefficient can enhance the resistance of soil to erosion to small extent. Soil gradation shows a great influence on migration of fine particles and strength of soil structure.

High-performance electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding material that that can function properly under extreme working conditions is critical for their practical applications. Herein, flexible and highly conductive meta-aramid (PMIA) nonwoven fabrics were fabricated by combining polydopamine (PDA) modification and electroless silver plating. The PDA modification greatly enhanced the efficient deposition of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and the interfacial cohesion between the AgNPs and the PMIA fibers. The silver-coated PMIA nonwoven fabric exhibited an electrical conductivity as high as 0.29 Ω/sq, an excellent EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) of 92.6 dB and a high absolute EMI SE of 8194.7 dB cm2 g−1. In addition, the silver-coated PMIA nonwoven fabric maintained high electrical conductivity and EMI SE after being subjected to washing, bending and torsion deformations, high/low temperature, strong acidic/alkaline solutions and different organic solvents. These results have clearly demonstrated that PMIA nonwoven fabric can be made highly electrically conductive by using a simple and highly scalable method. It holds great promise for the applications in EMI shielding materials that can be used in various harsh conditions.

In this study, ZnCl2, H3PO4, and FeCl3 were used as activating agents to prepare porous carbons (PC-ZnCl2, PC-H3PO4, and PC-FeCl3) from cotton textile wastes at a relativity low temperature. The morphology and structure of carbons were characterized by SEM and XRD demonstrating that carbons with porous property were successfully obtained. Textural properties showed that the PC-ZnCl2 possessed the largest specific surface area of 1854.70 m2 g−1 with mesopores domination. Both of micropores and mesopores existed in PC-H3PO4. Micropores were well developed in PC-FeCl3, and the proportion of which was the highest. The FTIR and pHpzc analysis indicated that all the carbons had acidic characteristics, and more acid functional groups were appeared on the PC-FeCl3 than others. The different pyrolysis activation paths were proposed by the thermogravimetric analysis, which proved that the addition of activating agents promoted the formation of pores, lowered the pyrolysis temperature of cotton textile wastes, and inhibited the production of volatiles. The results of adsorption kinetics and isotherm revealed that PC-ZnCl2 exhibited the best adsorption capacity of Cr(VI), and chemical adsorption played a significant role. Meanwhile, surface functional groups of porous carbons also participated in the Cr(VI) adsorption via electrostatic interaction and reduction reaction.

Graphene oxide has great potential for use as an adsorbent due to the high specific surface area, high negative charges, and abundant oxygen-containing functional groups. However, the difficulty of graphene oxide to separate from water renders it impractical for real water treatment. In the present study, a novel graphene oxide/hexadecyltrimethylammonium composite sponge (GO/HDTMA) was prepared and investigated for use as a filtration material for the removal of Cu(II) from water. The formed porous GO/HDTMA sponge was highly stable in water. The adsorption was spontaneous and exothermic, increasing with decreasing temperatures. The material showed good ability to remove Cu(II) with competing cations (K+, Na+, Ca2+, and Mg2+) present. Five cycles of adsorption-desorption-regeneration studies showed that, after adsorption, the material could be successfully regenerated for repeated use by using a 1-M HCl solution as the desorption reagent. At a sufficiently high dose, GO/HDTMA showed an excellent performance for Cu(II) removal from river water containing different coexisting solutes. Finally, our 30-day column study revealed that the GO/HDTMA sponge is a good filtering material for the removal of Cu(II) from river water. In conclusion, the GO/HDTMA sponge is an excellent adsorbent material for use in flow-through water treatment applications for Cu(II) removal.

Seasonal drought is a common phenomenon in many forests predominated by monsoon climate. The impact of seasonal drought, however, may vary with elevations, and tree species of forests hence may differ in their response to elevations. In this study, we monitored the seasonal variation of seedling species composition, and their relative growth rate (RGR) along an elevational transect in tropical forests of southwest China for two years. We found tree seedling species richness declined with rising elevation. Seedling abundance and species richness increased significantly from dry season to rainy season. In dry season, RGR declined progressively from low to high elevational bands, while positive RGR occurred in each elevation in rainy season. We grouped seedling species into low and high elevation specialists based on their elevational distributions. Seasonal variance in soil moisture may lead to seasonal dynamics of seedling community in this area. Our results suggest that the observed change in local climate over the last 40 years tends to allow the tree species from high elevation to expand their distribution to the lower elevation, while the ranges of those at low elevations could be compressed or at the risk of extinction.

Porous polymer supported palladium catalyst for cross coupling reactions with high activity has been successfully prepared by coordination of Pd2+ species with Schiff bases functionalized porous polymer. The catalyst has been systemically investigated by a series of characterizations such as TEM, N-2 adsorption, NMR, IR, XPS, etc. TEM and N-2 isotherms show that the sample maintains the nanoporous structure after the modification and coordination. XPS results show that chemical state of palladium species in the catalyst is mainly +2. More importantly, the catalyst shows very high activities and excellent recyclability in a series of coupling reactions including Suzuki, Sonogashira, and Heck reactions. Hot filtration and poison of catalysts experiments have also been performed and the results indicate that soluble active species (mainly Pd(0) species) in-situ generated from the catalyst under the reaction conditions are the active intermediates, which would redeposit to the supporter after the reactions.

This article presents an analysis of tree species abundance and its association with climatic variables along elevation gradient in the Gaoligong Mountains in west Yunnan, China. Data from scientific papers and books in the Gaoligong Mountains area were collected and extrapolated to elucidate a mechanistic understanding of elevation patterns and the relationship between the elevation range and elevation mid-point of tree species along the gradient by examining climatic variables. Tree species abundance showed a unimodal pattern with a peak at mid-elevation (about 2000 m) and species with a narrow elevation range occurred at higher or lower elevation, while a wider elevation range was found at the middle of the gradient. Tree species abundance was the highest where both temperature and water availability were moderate. The relationship between the climatic variables affecting species appear to be due to both direct and indirect factors, and the effect of these effects varied at different gradients.

Catalytic epoxidation of styrene by molecular oxygen over a novel copper hydroxyphosphate catalyst, Cu2(OH)PO4, was studied. Catalytic data show that the catalyst Cu2(OH)PO4 is very active, and the main products are benzaldehyde and styrene epoxide. Some important factors associated with the catalytic activity and selectivity have been investigated extensively.

Three pairs of polyimide/polyimide blends (50/50 wt%) with different molecular structures were prepared by two ways, i.e. mixing of the polyamic acid precursors with subsequent imidization, and direct solution mixing of the polyimides. The blends were studied with DMA technique. The results obtained show that all the blends prepared with these two different ways are miscible, as there existed only one glass transition temperature (Tg) for all the blends. It is suggested that the miscibility of these polyimide/polyimide blends is a result of the strong inter-molecular charge-transfer interaction between the chains of their components.

Fractal behaviour of ramified domains in the late stage of spinodal phase separation in a binary polymer blend of poly(vinyl acetate) with poly(methyl methacrylate) was investigated by optical microscopic method. In the late stage of the spinodal decomposition, the fractal dimension D is about 1.64. It implies that some anomalous properties of irregular structure probably may be explained by fractal concepts.