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Investigating the impact of train-induced vibration loads on soil hydraulic properties, this study conducted experiments using a self-designed indoor soil seepage platform that incorporates vibration loads. The experiments were complemented with scanning electron microscopy to analyze the influence of train-induced vibration loads on soil hydraulic conductivity and its evolutionary characteristics under different vibration frequencies. The experimental results indicated that as the vibration frequency increases from no vibration (0 Hz) to 20 Hz, the time required for the soil volumetric moisture content to reach its peak and stabilize decreases rapidly. However, after the vibration frequency exceeds 20 Hz, the rate at which the time required for the volumetric moisture content to reach its peak and stabilize decreases slows down. Furthermore, the soil pore water pressure increases with the increase in vibration frequency. At a vibration frequency of 80 Hz, the peak value of pore water pressure increases by 105% compared to the non-vibration state, suggesting that higher vibration frequencies promote the development and acceleration of soil pore moisture migration. Additionally, as the vibration frequency increases, the soil hydraulic conductivity initially experiences a rapid increase, with a growth rate ranging from 40.1 to 47.4%. However, after the frequency exceeds 20 Hz, this growth rate significantly decreases, settling to only 18.6% to 7.8%. When the soil was subjected to a vibration load, the scanning electron microscopy test revealed alterations in its pore structure. Micropores and small pores transformed into macropores and mesopores. Additionally, the microstructural parameters indicated that vibration load decreased the complexity of soil pores, thereby speeding up the hydraulic conduction process. This, in turn, affected the hydraulic properties of the soil and established a relationship between pore structure complexity and soil hydraulic properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revealing the energy transfer (ET) process from excitons to rare earth ions in halide perovskites has great guiding value for designing optoelectronic materials. Here, the multiple ET channels in multi‐exciton emissive Sb3+/Nd3+ co‐doped Cs2ZrCl6 are explored to comprehend the ET processes. Förster–Dexter ET theory reveals that the sensitizer concentration rather than the overlap integral of the spectra plays the leading function in the comparison of the ET efficiency among multiple ET channels from the host self‐trapped excitons (STEs) and dopant triplet STEs to Nd3+ ions. Besides, Sb3+/Nd3+ co‐doped Cs2ZrCl6 enables varied color delivery and has great potential as anti‐counterfeiting material. Under X‐ray irradiation, Sb3+/Nd3+ co‐doped Cs2ZrCl6 presents a high light yield of ≈13300 photons MeV−1 and promising X‐ray imaging ability. This work provides new insight for investigating the ET efficiency among multiple ET processes and presents great potentiality of multi‐exciton emissive perovskites in the fields of anti‐counterfeiting and X‐ray imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common clinical problem with high morbidity and mortality. The discovery of ferroptosis has provided novel insights into the mechanisms underlying AKI and paves the way for developing ferroptosis-based approaches to treat AKI. Glycyrol (GC) is a representative coumarin compound isolated from licorice that demonstrates various pharmacological activities. However, its potential for a protective effect against kidney injury remains unknown. We hypothesized that GC might be able to protect against AKI via suppression of ferroptosis. This hypothesis was tested in a cell-culture model of RSL3-induced nephrocyte ferroptosis and a mouse model of folic acid-induced AKI. The results showed that GC exerted a significant protective effect against nephrocyte ferroptosis in vitro and was effective against folic acid-induced AKI in vivo, where it was mechanistically associated with suppressing HO-1-mediated heme degradation. Collectively, the findings of the present study support the hypothesis that GC holds considerable potential to be developed as a novel agent for treating ferroptosis-related AKI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flavivirus remodels the host endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to generate replication compartments (RCs) as the fundamental structures to accommodate viral replication. Here, a centralized replication mode of flavivirus is reported, i.e., flavivirus concentrates host ER in perinuclear main replication compartments (MRCs) for efficient replication. Superresolution live‐cell imaging demonstrated that flavivirus MRCs formed via a series of events, including multisite ER clustering, growth and merging of ER clusters, directional movement, and convergence in the perinuclear region. The dynamic activities of viral RCs are driven by nonstructural (NS) proteins and are independent of microtubules and actin. Moreover, disrupting MRCs formation by small molecule compounds inhibited flavivirus replication. Overall, the findings reveal unprecedented insight into dynamic ER reorganization by flavivirus and identify a new inhibition strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: A previous study found that an indigenous endoparasitic wasp Cotesia ruficrus, has a good control effect on the invasive pest Spodoptera frugiperda. Understanding the molecular mechanism of host recognition of C. ruficrus would help improve its biological control effect. Chemoreceptor proteins (CSPs) play a crucial role in insect olfactory perception. The CrufCSP1 protein was obtained via prokaryotic expression, and its binding properties were evaluated using fluorescence binding assays. Molecular docking was used to verify the function of CrufCSP1. The findings revealed that CrufCSP1 has the ability to bind with seven host-related compounds. This information serves as a crucial reference for developing natural enemy attractants for pest control. Chemosensory proteins (CSPs) are a class of soluble proteins that facilitate the recognition of chemical signals in insects. While CSP genes have been identified in many insect species, studies investigating their function remain limited. Cotesia ruficrus (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) holds promise as an indigenous biological control agent for managing the invasive pest Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) in China. This study aimed to shed light on the gene expression, ligand binding, and molecular docking of CrufCSP1 in C. ruficrus. A RT-qPCR analysis revealed that the expression of CrufCSP1 was higher in the wings, with male adults exhibiting significantly higher relative expression levels than other developmental stages. A fluorescence competitive binding analysis further demonstrated that CrufCSP1 has a high binding ability with several host-related volatiles, with trans-2-hexenal, octanal, and benzaldehyde showing the strongest affinity to CrufCSP1. A molecular docking analysis indicated that specific amino acid residues (Phe24, Asp25, Thr53, and Lys81) of CrufCSP1 can bind to these specific ligands. Together, these findings suggest that CrufCSP1 may play a crucial role in the process of C. ruficrus locating hosts. This knowledge can contribute to the development of more efficient and eco-friendly strategies for protecting crops and managing pests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming to accurately predict the leakage rate of the sealing interface, this work proposes a two-dimensional finite element model of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell, which includes the microscopic surface morphology and the asperity contact process of the components. First of all, we constructed the surface morphology of the seal by the two-dimensional W-M (Weierstrass–Mandelbrot) fractal function and explored the influence of fractal dimension (D) and scale parameter (G) on the surface profile. Furthermore, the finite element method and Poiseuille fluid theory were adopted to obtain the deformation variables of the asperity under different clamping pressures and leakage rates. Moreover, we quantitatively analyzed the impact of surface roughness on the clamping pressure and leakage rate. It was found that both the surface amplitude and surface roughness are positively correlated with G and negatively correlated with D. Surface morphology is proportional to D but has no relationship with G. Additionally, the deformation asperity decreases exponentially with growing clamping pressure, and the leakage rate is consistent with the experimental values at a clamping pressure of 0.54 MPa. With the same leakage rate, when the seal surface roughness value is less than 1 μm, a doubled roughness value leads to an increase of 31% in the clamping pressure. In contrast, when the surface roughness of the seal is greater than 1 μm, a doubled roughness value induces an increase of 50% in the corresponding clamping pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is a highly complicated and dynamic organelle that actively changes its shape and communicates with other organelles. Visualization of ER in live cells is of great importance to understand cellular activities. Here, we designed a novel ER marker, RR‐mNeonGreen, which comprised an N‐terminal ER retention signal, a bright fluorescent protein (mNeonGreen), and a C‐terminal transmembrane region. Colocalization of RR‐mNeonGreen with mCherry‐KDEL verified that RR‐mNeonGreen perfectly labeled the ER. RR‐mNeonGreen showed better continuity of ER tubules when imaged by super‐resolution microscopy. Moreover, RR‐mNeonGreen is competent for live‐cell imaging of ER dynamics and tracing of the interaction between ER and mitochondria at high spatiotemporal resolution. In summary, RR‐mNeonGreen is a novel ER marker for super‐resolution live‐cell imaging with multiple merits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic biology tools for regulating gene expression have many useful biotechnology and therapeutic applications. Most tools developed for this purpose control gene expression at the level of transcription, and relatively few methods are available for regulating gene expression at the translational level. Here, we design and engineer split orthogonal aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (o-aaRS) as unique tools to control gene translation in bacteria and mammalian cells. Using chemically induced dimerization domains, we developed split o-aaRSs that mediate gene expression by conditionally suppressing stop codons in the presence of the small molecules rapamycin and abscisic acid. By activating o-aaRSs, these molecular switches induce stop codon suppression, and in their absence stop codon suppression is turned off. We demonstrate, in Escherichia coli and in human cells, that split o-aaRSs function as genetically encoded AND gates where stop codon suppression is controlled by two distinct molecular inputs. In addition, we show that split o-aaRSs can be used as versatile biosensors to detect therapeutically relevant protein-protein interactions, including those involved in cancer, and those that mediate severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inter-Satellite Links (ISLs) can effectively enhance the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) performance, such as communication and ranging performance. These performances would have been improved by disposing sparsely of ground stations and ISLs. Here, we demonstrate a topology scheduling strategy based on Signed Variance and Blossom algorithm (SV-Blossom) to promote the topology performance of GNSS. We also analyze the effect of this strategy on the robustness of the ranging information quality of the ISLs assignments system. For the domestic and overseas satellite communication Time Delay (TD) and Position Dilution of Precision (PDOP), by analyzing the relation of satellites, a set of the ISLs cost models is established, and the cost matrix is obtained. The final ISLs assignments result is obtained by processing the link cost matrix with the Blossom algorithm in the graph theory. In order to verify the rationality of the SV-Blossom strategy, a typical BDS-3 simulation scene with 10080 min is built to test these performances of ISLs. The final results show that the ranging information quality of the SV-Blossom strategy is greatly improved compared with recently published strategies, and the proposed links assignments mechanism has good robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communication networks have become an important means to provide internet access services for areas with limited infrastructure. Compared with the Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, the LEO satellites have limited on-board communication caching and calculating resources. Furthermore, the distribution of traffic requests is dynamically changing and uneven due to the relative movement between the LEO satellites and the ground. Therefore, how to schedule the multi-dimensional resources is an important issue for the LEO satellite communication networks. Beam-hopping is an efficient approach to improve the resource utilization by dynamically allocating time, power, and frequency according to the traffic requests. This paper proposes an efficient multi-dimensional resource allocation mechanism for beam-hopping in LEO satellite networks, which simultaneously satisfies the GEO interference avoidance. First, we construct the beam-hopping model of LEO satellites, and formulate the resource optimization problem. Second, we provide the weighted greedy strategy to determine the illumination pattern. In order to reduce the search space, the cells are clustered to non-interference clusters. Then, an improved genetic algorithm is provided to jointly allocate the communication resources. Finally, we construct various simulations to evaluate our proposed mechanism. Compared with the random-BH, polling-BH and traditional genetic algorithm, our algorithm achieves better performance in terms of both system throughput, access success rate, average delay and fairness between cells. The performance improvement is more significant in scenarios where traffic demand is unevenly distributed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces versatile filters to construct efficient convolutional neural networks that are widely used in various visual recognition tasks. Considering the demands of efficient deep learning techniques running on cost-effective hardware, a number of methods have been developed to learn compact neural networks. Most of these works aim to slim down filters in different ways, e.g., investigating small, sparse or quantized filters. In contrast, we treat filters from an additive perspective. A series of secondary filters can be derived from a primary filter with the help of binary masks. These secondary filters all inherit in the primary filter without occupying more storage, but once been unfolded in computation they could significantly enhance the capability of the filter by integrating information extracted from different receptive fields. Besides spatial versatile filters, we additionally investigate versatile filters from the channel perspective. Binary masks can be further customized for different primary filters under orthogonal constraints. We conduct theoretical analysis on network complexity and an efficient convolution scheme is introduced. Experimental results on benchmark datasets and neural networks demonstrate that our versatile filters are able to achieve comparable accuracy as that of original filters, but require less memory and computation cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tackle the problem of discovering novel classes in an image collection given labelled examples of other classes. We present a new approach called AutoNovel to address this problem by combining three ideas: (1) we suggest that the common approach of bootstrapping an image representation using the labelled data only introduces an unwanted bias, and that this can be avoided by using self-supervised learning to train the representation from scratch on the union of labelled and unlabelled data; (2) we use ranking statistics to transfer the model’s knowledge of the labelled classes to the problem of clustering the unlabelled images; and, (3) we train the data representation by optimizing a joint objective function on the labelled and unlabelled subsets of the data, improving both the supervised classification of the labelled data, and the clustering of the unlabelled data. Moreover, we propose a method to estimate the number of classes for the case where the number of new categories is not known a priori. We evaluate AutoNovel on standard classification benchmarks and substantially outperform current methods for novel category discovery. In addition, we also show that AutoNovel can be used for fully unsupervised image clustering, achieving promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polymeric ultrafiltration technology, crucial in water treatment and desalination, faces challenges of membrane fouling that compromise performance and shorten the operational lifetime. Traditional polymer ultrafiltration membrane modifications, such as surface adsorption, grafting, and physical blending, have notable limitations including reduced permeability, structural instability, poor compatibility, and additive leakage. To overcome these shortcomings, we present a novel approach based on copolymerization, integrating click chemistry and sol-gel techniques for the preparation of copolymer ultrafiltration membranes. The active sites of sol-gel reaction were introduced into the PVC copolymer backbone through suspension copolymerization. Subsequently, an in-situ modification of resveratrol was carried out within the copolymer casting solution to facilitate sol-gel reaction with PVC skeleton, forming a crosslinking structure during the film-forming process. This approach enhances membrane properties like hydrophilicity, thermal stability, permeability, antifouling capability, and antibacterial adhesion without compromising structural integrity or causing additive leakage. Importantly, the hydrophilicity and permeability are sustained even after prolonged exposure to deionized water and bacterial conditions, respectively. Our research contributes to the advancement of durable and functional ultrafiltration membranes through copolymerization techniques, offering valuable insights to enrich membrane modification strategies for water treatment. [Display omitted] • Sol-gel reactive sites were introduced into PVC backbone by copolymerization. • Click chemistry and Sol-gel in situ integration for improved membrane properties. • Copolymer membrane solves the problems of additive leakage and poor compatibility. • Copolymer membranes have superior antifouling and antibacterial adhesion properties. • Copolymer membrane with excellent durability and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • The capping agent glycinamide imparts multiple hydrogen bonds to WPU. • A hard but reversible Zr-O-Si network is constructed. • The chemical bonding between A-ZrO 2 and WPU enhances the interfacial combination. • The soft/hard hybrid structure endows the coating with robust mechanical property. Robust, self-healing waterborne coatings have become the preferred choice in the field of flexible electronic devices owing to their outstanding compliance, restorability, and environmental friendliness. Nevertheless, most of the existing self-healing waterborne polymers exhibit viscoelasticity, irreversible fatigue damage, and the challenge of reconciling self-healing functions with mechanical properties, all stemming from inherent molecular structure contradictions between flexibility and rigidity. Here, we propose a novel strategy that utilizes a nanofiller with dynamic reversible bonds to overcome the self-healing limitations that theoretically demand flexible chain, for achieving both mechanical robustness and self-healing ability in the waterborne polyurethane (WPU) hybrid coating system. We modified tetrapropyl zirconate (TPOZ) with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) to enhance compatibility between the matrix and inorganic particles, while the formation of dynamic reversible bonds through both condensation hydrolysis endows the self-healing abilities. The WPU hybrid coating was designed by covalently incorporating amino-modified TPOZ (A-ZrO 2) into a glycinamide-functionalized WPU network, conferring excellent fracture energy (50.3 kJ/m2), elastic recovery, along with antistatic capability to the coating. Furthermore, the hybrid coating maintains a robust mechanical performance alongside 92.58 % of healing efficiency, exhibiting a potential for flexible electronics application. The hybridization strategy via incorporation of the nanofillers with hard but reversible covalent bond resolves the inherent robustness-healing trade-off, providing exciting thoughts to expand WPU applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deploying convolutional neural networks (CNNs) on mobile devices is difficult due to the limited memory and computation resources. We aim to design efficient neural networks for heterogeneous devices including CPU and GPU, by exploiting the redundancy in feature maps, which has rarely been investigated in neural architecture design. For CPU-like devices, we propose a novel CPU-efficient Ghost (C-Ghost) module to generate more feature maps from cheap operations. Based on a set of intrinsic feature maps, we apply a series of linear transformations with cheap cost to generate many ghost feature maps that could fully reveal information underlying intrinsic features. The proposed C-Ghost module can be taken as a plug-and-play component to upgrade existing convolutional neural networks. C-Ghost bottlenecks are designed to stack C-Ghost modules, and then the lightweight C-GhostNet can be easily established. We further consider the efficient networks for GPU devices. Without involving too many GPU-inefficient operations (e.g., depth-wise convolution) in a building stage, we propose to utilize the stage-wise feature redundancy to formulate GPU-efficient Ghost (G-Ghost) stage structure. The features in a stage are split into two parts where the first part is processed using the original block with fewer output channels for generating intrinsic features, and the other are generated using cheap operations by exploiting stage-wise redundancy. Experiments conducted on benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed C-Ghost module and the G-Ghost stage. C-GhostNet and G-GhostNet can achieve the optimal trade-off of accuracy and latency for CPU and GPU, respectively. MindSpore code is available at https://gitee.com/mindspore/models/pulls/1809, and PyTorch code is available at https://github.com/huawei-noah/CV-Backbones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] Tissue adhesives have received much attention for their effectiveness in sealing wounds or incisions in clinical surgery, especially in minimally invasive surgery. To meet the safe and smart wound management requirements, ideal tissue adhesives are expected to have high biocompatibility, and be able to accelerate wound closing and healing, and monitor wound healing process. However, few adhesives fit all of the above descriptions. It has been demonstrated that inorganic nanoparticles can directly glue biological tissue based on nano-bridging effect. In this study, self-luminescence porous silicon (LPSi) particles were prepared with degradable and biocompatible properties. In addition, the self-luminescence property of LPSi particles was discovered by In Vivo Imaging System (IVIS) for the first time, which can avoid the limitations of photoluminescence imaging. Due to the oxidation and degradation reaction, LPSi particles not only can be degraded completely in several days, but also showed satisfactory biocompatibility. And their degradation product could promote tube formation of HUVECs. Moreover, owing to the high specific surface area and the outer oxide layer of LPSi particles, LPSi tissue adhesive exhibited strong adhesive strength to pig livers. Furthermore, this adhesive closed wound rapidly, promoted angiogenesis and epidermal regeneration, and facilitated wound healing in a mouse skin incision model. Importantly, the wound healing ratio can be monitored by measuring the self-luminescence intensity of LPSi particles in the wound site. This study reveals that LPSi particles could be employed as a safe and smart wound management tissue adhesive for wound closure, as well as accelerating and monitoring wound healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of photometric stereo, in both calibrated and uncalibrated scenarios, for non-Lambertian surfaces based on deep learning. We first introduce a fully convolutional deep network for calibrated photometric stereo, which we call PS-FCN. Unlike traditional approaches that adopt simplified reflectance models to make the problem tractable, our method directly learns the mapping from reflectance observations to surface normal, and is able to handle surfaces with general and unknown isotropic reflectance. At test time, PS-FCN takes an arbitrary number of images and their associated light directions as input and predicts a surface normal map of the scene in a fast feed-forward pass. To deal with the uncalibrated scenario where light directions are unknown, we introduce a new convolutional network, named LCNet, to estimate light directions from input images. The estimated light directions and the input images are then fed to PS-FCN to determine the surface normals. Our method does not require a pre-defined set of light directions and can handle multiple images in an order-agnostic manner. Thorough evaluation of our approach on both synthetic and real datasets shows that it outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both calibrated and uncalibrated scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep learning has recently demonstrated considerable promise for a variety of computer vision tasks. However, in many practical applications, large-scale labeled datasets are not available, which limits the deployment of deep learning. To address this problem, semi-supervised learning has attracted a lot of attention in the computer vision community, especially in the field of medical image analysis. This paper analyzes existing deep semi-supervised medical image segmentation studies and categories them into five main categories (i.e., pseudo-labeling, consistency regularization, GAN-based methods, contrastive learning-based methods, and hybrid methods). Afterward, we empirically analyze several representative methods by conducting experiments on two common datasets. Besides, we also point out several promising directions for future research. In summary, this paper provides a comprehensive introduction to deep semi-supervised medical image segmentation, aiming to provide a reference and comparison of methods for researchers in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are more than 100 species of American didelphid marsupials (opossums and mouse opossums). Limited genomic resources for didelphids exists, with only two publicly available genome assemblies compared with dozens in the case of their Australasian counterparts. This discrepancy impedes evolutionary and ecological research. To address this gap, we assembled a high-quality chromosome-level genome of the agile gracile mouse opossum (Gracilinanus agilis) using a combination of stLFR sequencing, polishing with mate-pair data, and anchoring onto pseudochromosomes using Hi-C. This species employs a rare life-history strategy, semelparity, and all G. agilis males and most females die at the end of their first breeding season after succumbing to stress and exhaustion. The 3.7-Gb chromosome-level assembly, with 92.6% anchored onto pseudochromosomes, has a scaffold N50 of 683.5 Mb and a contig N50 of 56.9 kb. The genome assembly shows high completeness, with a mammalian BUSCO score of 88.1%. Around 49.7% of the genome contains repetitive elements. Gene annotation yielded 24,425 genes, of which 83.9% were functionally annotated. The G. agilis genome is an important resource for future studies of marsupial biology, evolution, and conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of mirror surface reconstruction, and proposes a solution based on observing the reflections of a moving reference plane on the mirror surface. Unlike previous approaches which require tedious calibration, our method can recover the camera intrinsics, the poses of the reference plane, as well as the mirror surface from the observed reflections of the reference plane under at least three unknown distinct poses. We first show that the 3D poses of the reference plane can be estimated from the reflection correspondences established between the images and the reference plane. We then form a bunch of 3D lines from the reflection correspondences, and derive an analytical solution to recover the line projection matrix. We transform the line projection matrix to its equivalent camera projection matrix, and propose a cross-ratio based formulation to optimize the camera projection matrix by minimizing reprojection errors. The mirror surface is then reconstructed based on the optimized cross-ratio constraint. Experimental results on both synthetic and real data are presented, which demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To prevent outbursts and extract the gas, it is necessary to investigate the structure of the key layer and the evolution of cracks during coal mining over a large height. A physical similarity model with a geometric similarity ratio of 1:100 and a strike length of 2 m was established on the basis of prevailing geological and mining conditions. Stress sensors and microseismic equipment were adopted to monitor the collapse characteristics of different key layers through variations in stress and energy. The research results showed that: The displacement of the overlying strata exhibited group motion characteristics marked by the key layer and there was zone of rapidly increasing stress in the goaf behind the working face before and after the fracture of the key layer. Through the analysis of microseismic events, fissure density, and fractal dimension, we found that: before and after the primary key layer fractured, the energy loss in the microseismic event accounted for 27% of the total, the fissure density also changed abruptly from 8 cracks/m to 10 cracks/m and the slope of the fractal dimension curves changed from 0.00243 to 9.94801 × 10−4. Then a gas drainage model suitable for this condition was constructed. When the primary key layer had not fractured, the cracks below fully developed to form a gas migration channel and a gas enrichment area, and gas boreholes could be arranged therein. After the primary key layer had been fractured, the rate of crack development decreased, the permeability would increase, and the gas concentration would increase. The boreholes could still be arranged in the gas migration channel. This study elucidated the control role of the primary key layer from multiple angles and provided experimental guidance for gas drainage over large‐mining heights and during complex key layer mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased drastically; however, information regarding the impact of this disease on the occurrence of arrhythmias is scarce. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of COVID-19 on arrhythmia occurrence. This prospective study included patients with COVID-19 treated at the Leishenshan Temporary Hospital of Wuhan City, China, from February 24 to April 5, 2020. Demographic, comorbidity, and arrhythmias data were collected from patients with COVID-19 (n = 84) and compared with control data from patients with bacterial pneumonia (n = 84) infection. Furthermore, comparisons were made between patients with severe and nonsevere COVID-19 and between older and younger patients. Compared with patients with bacterial pneumonia, those with COVID-19 had higher total, mean, and minimum heart rates (all P < 0.01). Patients with severe COVID-19 (severe and critical type diseases) developed more atrial arrhythmias compared with those with nonsevere symptoms. Plasma creatine kinase isoenzyme (CKMB) levels (P = 0.01) were higher in the severe group than in the nonsevere group, and there were more deaths in the severe group than in the nonsevere group (6 (15%) vs. 3 (2.30%); P = 0.05). Premature atrial contractions (PAC) and nonsustained atrial tachycardia (NSAT) were significantly positively correlated with plasma CKMB levels but not with high-sensitive cardiac troponin I or myoglobin levels. Our data demonstrate that COVID-19 patients have higher total, mean, and minimum heart rates compared with those with bacterial pneumonia. Patients with severe or critical disease had more frequent atrial arrhythmias (including PAC and AF) and higher CKMB levels and mortality than those with nonsevere symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the min-cost seed selection problem in online social networks for viral marketing, where the goal is to select a set of seed nodes with the minimum total cost such that the expected number of influenced nodes in the network exceeds a predefined threshold. We propose several algorithms that outperform the previous studies both on the theoretical approximation ratio and on the experimental performance. In the case where the nodes have heterogeneous costs, our algorithms are the first bi-criteria approximation algorithms with polynomial running time and provable approximation ratio. In the case where the users have uniform costs, our algorithms achieve logarithmic approximation ratio and provable time complexity which is smaller than that of the existing algorithms in orders of magnitude. We conduct extensive experiments using real social networks. The experimental results show that, our algorithms significantly outperform the existing algorithms both on the total cost and on the running time, and also scale well to billion-scale networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A one-pot synthesis of Pt-containing TiO 2 materials has been developed. • The Pt precursor is incorporated prior to the rolling up of layered titanates. • After thermal treatment the resulting Pt-TiO 2 materials contain small and well-dispersed Pt nanoparticles. • The materials exhibit efficient and stable photocatalytic activity for photo-reforming of methanol to produce H 2. • The stability is attributed to limited Pt leaching likely due to preferable interactions between Pt and TiO 2. Functionalization of semiconductors by metallic nanoparticle is considered to be one of the most effective procedure to improve photocatalytic hydrogen production. Photodeposition is frequently used for functionalization but particle sizes and dispersions are still difficult to control. Here, Pt functionalization is achieved in a one-pot synthesis. The as-prepared samples are compared to reference materials prepared by conventional photodeposition and our results confirm that small and well-dispersed nanoparticles with superior stability are obtained by one-pot synthesis. The enhanced stability is attributed to a limited leaching of Pt nanoparticles during illumination likely caused by the preferable interaction of small, well dispersed Pt nanoparticles with the TiO 2 support material. In addition, our results demonstrate that Na-residues are detrimental for the photocatalytic performance and washing in acidic solution is mandatory to effectively reduce the sodium contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose the first budget-limited multi-armed bandit (BMAB) algorithm subject to a union of matroid constraints in arm pulling, while at the same time achieving differential privacy. Our model generalizes the arm-pulling models studied in prior BMAB schemes, and it can be used to address many practical problems such as network backbone construction and dynamic pricing in crowdsourcing. We handle the exploitation versus exploration tradeoff in our BMAB problem by exploiting the combinatorial structures of matroids, and reduce the searching complexity of arm selection based on a divide-and-conquer approach. Our algorithm achieves a uniform logarithmic regret bound with respect to B and ɛ-differential privacy, where B is the budget for pulling the arms with random costs. Without differential privacy, our algorithm achieves a uniform logarithmic regret bound with respect to B, which advances the asymptotic regret bounds achieved by prior BMAB algorithms. We performed side-by-side comparisons with prior schemes in our experiments. Experimental results show that our purely-combinatorial algorithm not only achieves significantly better regret performance, but also is more than 20 times faster than prior BMAB schemes, which use time-consuming LP-solving techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mangroves are a group of plant species that occupy the coastal intertidal zone and are major components of this ecologically important ecosystem. Mangroves belong to about twenty diverse families. Here, we sequenced and assembled chloroplast genomes of 14 mangrove species from eight families spanning five rosid orders and one asterid order: Fabales (Pongamia pinnata), Lamiales (Avicennia marina), Malpighiales (Excoecaria agallocha, Bruguiera sexangula, Kandelia obovata, Rhizophora stylosa, and Ceriops tagal), Malvales (Hibiscus tiliaceus, Heritiera littoralis, and Thespesia populnea), Myrtales (Laguncularia racemosa, Sonneratia ovata, and Pemphis acidula), and Sapindales (Xylocarpus moluccensis). These chloroplast genomes range from 149 kb to 168 kb in length. A conserved structure of two inverted repeats (IRa and IRb, ~25.8 kb), one large single-copy region (LSC, ~89.0 kb), and one short single-copy region (SSC, ~18.9 kb) as well as ~130 genes (85 protein-coding, 37 tRNAs, and 8 rRNAs) was observed. We found the lowest divergence in the IR regions among the four regions. We also identified simple sequence repeats (SSRs), which were found to be variable in numbers. Most chloroplast genes are highly conserved, with only four genes under positive selection or relaxed pressure. Combined with publicly available chloroplast genomes, we carried out phylogenetic analysis and confirmed the previously reported phylogeny within rosids, including the positioning of obscure families in Malpighiales. Our study reports 14 mangrove chloroplast genomes and illustrates their genome features and evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Metastasis causes the vast majority of colorectal carcinoma (CRC)-related deaths. However, little is known about the specific traits and underlying mechanisms of metastasis-initiating cells in primary CRC. And whether or not circular RNAs (circRNAs) take part in this particular event remain not adequately stated yet. Methods: A screening method based on Transwell assay was first applied to build CRC subgroups with different metastatic potential. High throughput RNA sequencing was used to find out novel metastatic drivers in CRC metastasis-initiating step. A series of in vitro and in vivo assays were further applied to elucidate the functions and underlying molecular mechanisms of circRNAs in CRC metastasis. Results: A circRNA consisting of exon 8–11 of LONP2, termed as circLONP2, was upregulated in metastasis-initiating CRC subgroups. Aberrant higher expression of circLONP2 was observed in primary CRC tissues with established metastasis, and along the invasive margin in metastatic site. High expression of circLONP2 predicted unfavorable overall survival. Functional studies revealed that circLONP2 could enhance the invasiveness of CRC cells in vitro, and targeting circLONP2 through anti-sense oligonucleotide (ASO) dramatically reduced the penetrance of metastasis to foreign organs in vivo. Mechanically, circLONP2 directly interacted with and promoted the processing of primary microRNA-17 (pri-miR-17), through recruiting DiGeorge syndrome critical region gene 8 (DGCR8) and Drosha complex in DDX1-dependent manner. Meanwhile, upregulated mature miR-17-5p could be assembled into exosomes and internalized by neighboring cells to enhance their aggressiveness. Conclusions: Our data indicate that circLONP2 acts as key metastasis-initiating molecule during CRC progression through modulating the intracellular maturation and intercellular transfer of miR-17, resulting in dissemination of metastasis-initiating ability in primary site and acceleration of metastasis formation in foreign organs. circLONP2 could serve as an effective prognostic predictor and/or novel anti-metastasis therapeutic target in CRC treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) has received increasing attention with its advantages of economy and flexibility for small batch sheet metal parts. However, the excessive thinning may be resulted at large forming angles for complex parts, which cannot meet the design requirements and seriously impedes the industrial application of ISF. Although the multistage incremental sheet forming (MISF) has been proposed to overcome the dilemma of excessive thinning in ISF, the design of the optimal strategy which can control material flow and improve thickness distribution is a critical issue. In this paper, three promising multistage two point incremental sheet forming (MTPIF) path strategies, i.e., parallel line strategy, variable angle strategy, and stretch-bend-assisted strategy, are selected to investigate the influence of tool paths on thickness distributions, material flow, and geometric error. Firstly, experimental thickness distributions of truncated pyramids formed with three path strategies and single-stage TPIF strategy are compared. Meanwhile, the theoretical models are introduced to illustrate the difference of thickness distributions both at the wall and the corner. Compared with single-stage TPIF strategy, MTPIF path strategies studied in this paper are effective to improve the thickness distribution of truncated pyramids at both the component wall and the corner. Through the theoretical analysis, it is found that the thickness distribution at the wall can be controlled by adjusting intermediate forming angles. Meanwhile, the intermediate shape in circumferential direction has significant influence on the thickness distribution for complex parts. Then, the material flows of three path strategies at different forming stages are analyzed. It is found that the materials at the flange as well as transition arcs are deformed into wall to increase the thickness distribution. Finally, considering both thickness distributions and geometric errors, the variable angle strategy is found as the effective MTPIF strategy for the studied process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We reported the successful treatment with oral methylprednisolone and cyclosporine in combination with topical wound care on a boy with pyoderma gangrenosum presenting as huge and deep ulceration on buttocks and legs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the proliferation of event-based social services has made it possible for organizing personalized offline events through the users’ information shared online. In this paper, we study the budget-constrained influential social event organization problem, where the goal is to select a group of influential users with required features to organize a social event under a budget $B$ B . We show that our problem is NP-hard and can be formulated as a submodular maximization problem with mixed packing and covering constraints. We then propose several polynomial time algorithms for our problem with provable approximation ratios, which adopt a novel “surrogate optimization” approach and the method of reverse-reachable set sampling. Moreover, we also consider the case where the influence spread function is unknown and can be arbitrarily selected from a set of candidate submodular functions, and extend our algorithms to address a “robust influential event organization” problem under this case. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments using real social networks to test the performance of our algorithms, and the experimental results demonstrate that our algorithms significantly outperform the prior studies both on the running time and on the influence spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of image matting for transparent objects. Existing approaches often require tedious capturing procedures and long processing time, which limit their practical use. In this paper, we formulate transparent object matting as a refractive flow estimation problem, and propose a deep learning framework, called TOM-Net, for learning the refractive flow. Our framework comprises two parts, namely a multi-scale encoder-decoder network for producing a coarse prediction, and a residual network for refinement. At test time, TOM-Net takes a single image as input, and outputs a matte (consisting of an object mask, an attenuation mask and a refractive flow field) in a fast feed-forward pass. As no off-the-shelf dataset is available for transparent object matting, we create a large-scale synthetic dataset consisting of 178 K images of transparent objects rendered in front of images sampled from the Microsoft COCO dataset. We also capture a real dataset consisting of 876 samples using 14 transparent objects and 60 background images. Besides, we show that our method can be easily extended to handle the cases where a trimap or a background image is available. Promising experimental results have been achieved on both synthetic and real data, which clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A calibrated Hill48 yield function is proposed to improve prediction accuracy. • The blank experiences bending-unbending deformation in straight flanging by ISF. • The elastic moment in the reverse loading mode is a major cause of geometric error. The geometric accuracy is a key quality indicator for the application of flanging by incremental sheet forming (ISF), namely incremental flanging (IF). As a local loading forming process, the deformation process in IF is different from that in conventional flanging formed by press-working operation in which considerable geometric error can be introduced. Thereby, the deformation process of straight flanging by ISF is investigated through both experimental and numerical simulation approaches. First, the effects of different yield functions (Mises and Hill48) and hardening models (A–F, isotropic and kinematic) on the prediction accuracy are investigated. In particular, the Hill48 yield function is not only solved by r -values, but also calibrated by material properties of strain states corresponding to the actual deformation condition of straight flanging by ISF. Among different yield functions, calibrated methods and hardening models, a A–F hardening model with the calibrated Hill48 yield function is found to have the best performance in terms of prediction accuracy of both forming force and cross-section profile. Then, based on this model, the deformation process of the straight flanging by ISF is analyzed. The results show that the strain states of straight flanging by ISF are plane and uniaxial tension strain states. In the forming process of straight flanging by ISF, the whole blank experiences bending-unbending deformation in which the material contacting with the die undergoes reverse loading. In addition, the main deformation modes of straight flanging are bending and stretch deformation through internal energy analysis. Finally, the deformation process of the straight flanging by ISF is theoretical analyzed. It is found that the elastic moment in the reverse loading mode is the main source for geometric error of the straight wall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmentally benign lead‐free bulk ceramics with high recoverable energy density (Wrec) are very attractive in advanced pulsed power capacitors. In this work, composition engineering was adopted by La3+ modification to improve the energy storage performance of Ag1−3xLaxNbO3 ceramics. It was found that the antiferroelectric (AFE) phase was stabilized after La3+ substitution, as a result of the reduced tolerance factor t. Significant improvement of Wrec and energy storage efficiency (η) were achieved with value of 3.12 J/cm3 and 0.63 for x = 0.02 at an electric field of 230 kV/cm, more than 1.5 times the value of pure AgNbO3 (Wrec = 1.9 J/cm3, η = 0.40). The excellent energy storage properties are resulted from the increased antiferroelectric‐ferroelectric phase transition electric field (EF), ferroelectric‐antiferroelectric phase transition electric field (EA), and breakdown electric field (Eb). The enhanced Eb was ascribed to the decreased grain size and increased electrical resistivity upon La3+ modification. The feature makes Ag1−3xLaxNbO3 a potential candidate for energy storage applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A new method for preparing anti-flashing rust and robust WPU coatings is proposed. • Click reaction attaches BET into WPU to limit its leakage. • The conjugated benzimidazole is highly effective against flashing rust of metal. • "External hard inner soft" structure from gradient metal coordination is constructed. Waterborne coatings have emerged as a promising alternative to traditional solvent-based coatings due to their environmentally friendly and easy application characteristics. Nevertheless, the application of these coatings is still limited by significant challenges such as the occurrence of flash rust phenomenon and the difficulty of reconciling mechanical properties with self-healing functions. Here, we report a novel self-healing waterborne polyurethane coating that utilizes coordination chemistry to achieve anti-flashing rust, mechanical robustness, and preserve self-healing and adhesion capabilities. The waterborne coating was designed by attaching 2-(2-benzimidazolyl) ethanethiol (BET) onto the polyurethane side chain. The conjugated benzimidazole forms a coordination structure with the tinplate substrate, effectively preventing the occurrence of flashing rust from the metal substrate during the film-forming process. Furthermore, BET forms a Zn(II)-ligands cross-linking structure with the exogenous zinc ions through coordination bonds, resulting in a distinctive sparse inside and dense outside structure due to the inhomogeneous distribution of zinc ions within the coating, thereby leading to high surface hardness (4H), and holding strong adhesion (∼2.0 MPa). In addition, the coordination between Zn2+ and BET provides extra interchain forces, resulting in a high self-healing efficiency (95.9%). Our work proposes a novel strategy to address the contradiction of simultaneously achieving anti-flashing rust and high hardness, without compromising adhesion and self-healing capabilities, thus offering the potential for expanding the commercial applications of waterborne polymer coatings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The AgNbO 3 antiferroelectric (AFE) ceramics have attracted increasing attention for their high energy storage performance and environmentally friendly characters. In this work, Ag 1–2 x Ba x NbO 3 ceramics were successfully prepared by the conventional solid-state reaction method. The effect of Ba-modification on phase structure, microstructure, and electric properties was systematically investigated. The introduction of Ba2+ ion led to complex cell parameter evolution and significant refinement of grain size. Room temperature dielectric permittivity increased obviously from ~260 for the pure AgNbO 3 counterpart to ~350 for those after adding a small amount of Ba element. Slim P-E hysteresis loops with improved AFE phase were achieved after Ba modification, due to the decrease of tolerance factor. A high recoverable energy density up to 2.3 J/cm3 with energy efficiency of 46% can be obtained for the composition of Ag 0.96 Ba 0.02 NbO 3 , in correlation with the enhanced AFE stability, reduced P r , increased P m and decreased Δ E. Moreover, the Ag 0.96 Ba 0.02 NbO 3 ceramics also exhibited excellent temperature stability in both energy density and efficiency with small variation of < 5% over 20–120 ℃. The results suggest that the electric properties of AgNbO 3 system can be largely tuned after Ba modification, making it a promising candidate for energy storage applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Condyloma acuminatum (CA) is a common sexually transmitted disease caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). Podophyllotoxin (POD), a cytotoxic compound, is able to effectively treat HPV; however, the severe irritation side effects of POD restrict its use as a treatment for CA. The aim of the present study was to construct novel POD‑loaded nanostructured nanolipid carriers (POD‑NLCs) and evaluate their physicochemical characteristics and cytotoxicity. POD‑NLCs (0.5%) were prepared using emulsion‑evaporation and low temperature‑solidification methods with optimized conditions and preparations. Subsequently, the POD‑NLCs were physicochemically characterized and their in vitro and in vivo release efficiencies and in vitro cytotoxicity were studied. The prepared POD‑NLCs had an average particle size, ζ potential, polydispersity index and encapsulation efficacy of 178.5±20 nm, ‑27±0.5 mV, 0.18±0.01 and 82.9±2%, respectively. In vitro and in vivo release studies demonstrated that POD‑NLCs are able to provide sustained drug delivery for 72 h in vitro and 10 h in the mucosa. Compared with a tincture formulation of POD (POD‑T), POD‑NLC induced less inflammatory cytokine production in the cervical mucous and led to a decreased histopathological score. In addition, a cytotoxicity assay demonstrated that inhibition of the POD‑NLCs was 98.4% at 24 h and remained >98% up to 72 h. Furthermore, more cells were arrested in the G2/M phase of the cell cycle following POD‑NLC treatment compared with the POD‑T treatment. The present study provides evidence that POD‑NLC is a promising delivery system for the treatment of CA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of reconstructing the surface shape of transparent objects. The difficulty of this problem originates from the viewpoint dependent appearance of a transparent object, which quickly makes reconstruction methods tailored for diffuse surfaces fail disgracefully. In this paper, we introduce a fixed viewpoint approach to dense surface reconstruction of transparent objects based on refraction of light. We present a simple setup that allows us to alter the incident light paths before light rays enter the object by immersing the object partially in a liquid, and develop a method for recovering the object surface through reconstructing and triangulating such incident light paths. Our proposed approach does not need to model the complex interactions of light as it travels through the object, neither does it assume any parametric form for the object shape nor the exact number of refractions and reflections taken place along the light paths. It can therefore handle transparent objects with a relatively complex shape and structure, with unknown and inhomogeneous refractive index. We also show that for thin transparent objects, our proposed acquisition setup can be further simplified by adopting a single refraction approximation. Experimental results on both synthetic and real data demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of our proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bi 0.85 La 0.15 Fe 0.95 Mn 0.05 O 3 (BLFMO) gel films with benzoylacetone (BzAc) as a chelating reagent were fabricated on (00 l ) LaAlO 3 (LAO) substrates using a photosensitive sol-gel method. The morphology, crystalline structure, electric and magnetic properties, and the grating-pattern of the films were investigated. The results showed that the epitaxial BLFMO films deposited on LAO single crystal substrates exhibit a higher degree of the c-axis orientation. The remnant polarization and saturation magnetization were found to be higher than those of the randomly oriented BLFMO films. Moreover, the gratings of the film with a period of 1 μm were obtained after exposure to two interference laser beams followed by leaching in ethanol. After treatment at 600 °C, the gel film turned into inorganic film gratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2′-5′-Oligoadenylate synthetase-like protein (OASL) is an interferon-inducible antiviral protein that exerts antiviral effects through the RNase L- or retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I)-dependent signalling pathway. In this study, we identified and cloned the OASL gene (named duOASL ) from healthy adult Cherry Valley ducks. Full-length duOASL cDNA (1630 bp) encoded a 504-amino acid polypeptide containing three conserved domains, namely, nucleotidyltransferase domain, 2′-5′-oligoadenylate synthetase domain, and two ubiquitin-like repeats. DuOASL mRNA expression was quantified by performing quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR). Results of qRT-PCR showed that duOASL was broadly expressed in all examined tissues, with the highest mRNA expression in the large intestine. Antiviral activity of duOASL was measured by determining its effect on Duck Tembusu virus (DTMUV) replication in vitro. We found that duOASL overexpression slightly inhibited DTMUV replication, whereas duOASL knockdown by using a specific small interfering RNA increased DTMUV replication in DF-1 cells. Thus, we successfully cloned and characterized the antiviral protein duOASL from Cherry Valley ducks and found that it exerted antiviral effects against DTMUV. These results provide a solid foundation for performing further studies to determine the mechanism underlying the antiviral effect of duOASL at the cellular level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the greatest challenges for advancing lithium-ion battery (LIB) technology is to minimize cell degradation during operation for long-term stability. To this end, it is important to understand how cell performance during operation relates to complex LIB microstructures. In this report, transmission X-ray microscopy (TXM) nanotomography is used to gain quantitative three-dimensional (3D) microstructure-performance correlations of LIB cathodes during cycling. The 3D microstructures of LiMn 2 O 4 (LMO) electrodes, cycled under different conditions, including cycle number, operating voltage, and temperature, are characterized via TXM and statistically analyzed to investigate the impact of cycling conditions on the electrode microstructural evolution and cell performance. It is found that the number of cracks formed within LMO particles correlated with capacity fade. For the cell cycled at elevated temperatures, which exhibits the most severe capacity fade among all cells tested, mechanical cracking observed in TXM is not the only dominant contributor to the observed degradation. Mn 2+ dissolution, as verified by detection of Mn on the counter electrode by energy dispersive spectrometry, also contributed. The current work demonstrate 3D TXM nanotomography as a powerful tool to help probe in-depth understanding of battery failure mechanisms, which could be applicable to electrode structure optimization for advancing LIB development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphene oxide (GO) membranes are a promising candidate for water treatment, such as sewage purification and desalination, due to its high mechanical strength, superior flexibility and hydrophilic property. However, one of their major application challenges is the membrane fouling, resulting in membrane blocking and poor water flux. Here, we incorporate triethanolamine (TEOA) modified titanate nanowires (TNWs) with GO membranes to resolve the fouling problem by taking advantage of enhanced membrane photocatalytic properties. The results show that the composite membranes exhibited remarkable photocatalytic degradation of Congon Red dyes under UV-light during filtration separation, and membrane fouling could be significantly alleviated after UV-light irradiation, leading to high water treatment performance for long-term cycling use. Furthermore, intercalation of TNWs between GO layers can produce a great quantity of nanochannels inside the membranes such that significantly increases the water flux. Besides, the presence of TEOA can evidently improve the aqueous stability for GO membranes, which is also an essential requirement for practical application. Our work demonstrates that endowing GO membranes with photocatalytic properties is an effective approach to resolve the fouling problem. And the as-prepared GO/TEOA-TNWs composite membranes are a promising material with anti-fouling function and highly-aqueous-stability for long-term practical water treatment applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functions of non-agricultural crops unearthed from archaeological sites mainly pertain to their usage as livestock feed. However, the studies of livestock feed have predominantly relied on qualitative analysis, which often lacks descriptive objectivity and relies heavily on subjective feelings and experiences. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by focusing on quantitative analysis, utilizing macro-plant remains from the data of seventy-five archaeological settlements and one archaeological investigation in northern China spanning the Neolithic Age to the Bronze Age, as well as stable isotope analyses of carbon and nitrogen. This research delves into various aspects, including the exploration of the plant resources and livestock farming and the categorization of feed types for cattle and pigs in captivity. By employing quantitative analysis, we can gain a more comprehensive and objective understanding of these subjects. This approach aligns with studies on ancient livestock management and feed diversity. In essence, the discussion of civilization development and social changes during the Pre-Qin period holds significant value when considering forage analysis, just as crop analysis has proven insightful. By focusing on the quantitative analysis of non-agricultural crops and their role as livestock feed, we can shed light on important aspects of ancient societies and their agricultural practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of medical drugs, the widely used tetracycline has brought many adverse effects on the ecosystem and human health. Tetracycline pollution of water environment is becoming more and more serious, and has become an emerging environmental problem. As single celled organisms, microalgae are not only model organisms for risk assessment of aquatic ecosystems, but also can efficiently purify sewage. Microalgae-mediated pollutant remediation has attracted more and more attention from researchers. In this paper, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (C. reinhardtii) was used to remove tetracycline in aqueous solution, and the removal efficiency and mechanism of microalgae on tetracycline were studied. The results showed that the removal rates of tetracycline by active and inactivated microalgae at a density of 5 × 106 cells·mL−1 were 81.9% and 89.8%, respectively. C. reinhardtii removed tetracycline through biosorption and nonmetabolic processes. Microalgal cell supernatant and hydroxyl radicals could significantly promote the removal of tetracycline. The positively charged tetracycline was electrostatically adsorbed on the microalgae surface and extracellular polymeric substances. Microalgae biomass can promote the production of ROS and enhance the ability of microalgae to remove tetracycline. [Display omitted] • Both live and inactived Chlamydomonas reinhardtii are reliable microalgaes for tetracycline removal. • Inactivated Chlamydomonas reinhardtii could maintain excellent tetracycline removal ability. • Under light conditions, the removal effect of inactivated microalgae was better than that of live microalgae. • Microalgal cell supernatant and hydroxyl radicals could promote the tetracycline removal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lanthanide-based optical ratiometric thermometer is a promising temperature detecting tool for noninvasive temperature measurements. However, owing to the thermal quenching of upconversion luminescence (UCL), the traditional temperature sensing range is limited to less than 600 K. In this work, highly thermally stable UCL is observed through introduced appropriate Cu2+ ions into LiYF 4 :Yb/Er (20/2 mol%) microcrystals (MCs) and on which are further used for temperature sensing applications. As gradually increases the doping of Cu2+ ions, the octahedron morphology of LiYF 4 MCs with smooth surfaces gradually aggregates smaller particles on their surface forming diamond-like micro-clusters. Based on the single-particle spectroscopy technique, the temperature-dependent UCL properties were systematically investigated and demonstrated. Doping of Cu2+ ions can efficiently adjust and enhance the UCL in the LiYF 4 :Yb/Er (20/2 mol%) MCs. The UCL thermal quenching temperature is less than ~670 K for Cu2+-free MCs. In contrast, the quenching temperature extends to as high as ~870 K when doping with 2 mol% Cu2+ ions. Furthermore, these highly thermal stable MCs are utilized to detect the temperature in a wide temperature ranging from 298 K to 873 K. A maximum relative sensitivity (S r) of 1.23%K−1 at 298 K is obtained and temperature uncertainty δ T < 0.091 K is determined under the measured temperature for the 2 mol% Cu2+-doped MCs. The highly thermally stable UCL properties and excellent thermometer performance of these MCs, particularly conducted at single-particle spectroscopy technique, can be potentially applied to micro-scale thermometers. • Cu2+ ions manipulate the morphology and size of LiYF 4 :Yb3+/Er3+ microcrystals. • Appropriate Cu2+ ions improve the upconversion luminescence thermostability. • High-temperature thermometers achieved at single-particle spectroscopy technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to investigate the evaporation characteristics of ethanol–diesel blend fuel, an experimental method of droplet evaporation with post processing techniques is established. The droplet normalized square diameter, temperature and phenomenon during evaporation process is used to analyze the evaporation characteristics at different ambient temperatures. The results show that: the DE10 (diesel (85%) + ethanol (10%) + biodiesel (5%)) droplet has a fluctuation evaporation phase more than D100 (diesel) and the lifetime is shorter at 623 K. Puffing and micro-explosion can be observed during the fluctuation evaporation phase, which causes the droplet normalized square diameter fluctuated. The temperature of DE10 droplet is lower than D100 at first and then becomes higher. When the ambient temperature is 723 K, the evaporation of DE10 droplet remains three-stage characteristics but the fluctuations of normalized square diameter are strengthened. The strengthened micro-explosion causes a fluctuation of temperature but there exists a delay to the time of micro-explosion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile crowdsensing leverages mobile devices (e.g., smart phones) and human mobility for pervasive information exploration and collection; it has been deemed as a promising paradigm that will revolutionize various research and application domains. Unfortunately, the practicality of mobile crowdsensing can be crippled due to the lack of incentive mechanisms that stimulate human participation. In this paper, we study incentive mechanisms for a novel Mobile Crowdsensing Scheduling (MCS) problem, where a mobile crowdsensing application owner announces a set of sensing tasks, then human users (carrying mobile devices) compete for the tasks based on their respective sensing costs and available time periods, and finally the owner schedules as well as pays the users to maximize its own sensing revenue under a certain budget. We prove that the MCS problem is NP-hard and propose polynomial-time approximation mechanisms for it. We also show that our approximation mechanisms (including both offline and online versions) achieve desirable game-theoretic properties, namely truthfulness and individual rationality, as well as \mathcal O(1) performance ratios. Finally, we conduct extensive simulations to demonstrate the correctness and effectiveness of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Designing and developing a multifunctional hydrogel with conductivity, antioxidant activity and photothermal antibacterial activity inspired by mussel chemistry. • The hydrogels had good antioxidant and ability to remove intracellular ROS. • Based on the good adhesion of hydrogels, the hydrogels showed adequate hemostatic ability. • Hydrogels could effectively promote burn wound healing. The outstanding role of hydrogels in promoting wound repair has been studied extensively, but the development of hydrogels with multiple functions to deal with the complex wound environments remains as a challenge and a research focus. Thus, inspired by mussel chemistry, the dopamine grafted gelatin (GelDA) and polydopamine coated graphene oxide (pGO) were prepared firstly. Then, the GelDA/pGO hydrogels with multifunction of adhesion, conductivity, antioxidant, and antibacterial activity were designed through an oxidative coupling reaction between catechol groups. The rheology, mechanical properties, and conductivity of hydrogels could be adjusted appropriately by changing the concentration of pGO. Furthermore, the catechol groups made the hydrogel possessed an adequate adhesive hemostasis in the rat liver hemorrhage model. While the introducion of pGO enabled the hydrogels to get the satisfactory photothermal antibacterial properties, which were verified by both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria tests. Finally, in vivo wound healing experiment demonstrated the beneficial effect of hydrogel on promoting burn wound healing. The prepared GelDA/pGO hydrogels could be considered as promising multifunctional wound dressings for accelerating wound healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A flexible, self-standing graphene–Se@CNT composite film has been synthesized by a facile two-step assembly process. The film is directly employed as cathode for rechargeable Li–Se batteries without extra binders and conductive additives. It exhibits much higher reversible capacity and cycling stability (315 mAh g−1 after 100 cycles at 0.1 C) than graphene–Se composite film. The improved electrochemical performance is mainly attributed to the synergistic effects of graphene and CNT, which not only function as a flexible scaffold for strains/stresses release and volume expansion, but also offer a three-dimensional conductive architecture with open channels for electron transfer and Li ion diffusion, as well as strong confinement of soluble polyselenides. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Chlorella sp. TLD 6B, a microalgae growing in the Taklamakan Desert, Xinjiang of China, is a good model material for studying the physiological and environmental adaptation mechanisms of plants in their arid habitats, as its adaptation to the harsh desert environment has led to its strong resistance. However, when using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) to analyze the gene expression of this algae under abiotic stress, it is essential to find the suitable endogenous reference genes so to obtain reliable results. This study assessed the expression stability of 9 endogenous reference genes of Chlorella sp. TLD 6B under four abiotic stresses (drought, salt, cold and heat). These genes were selected based on the analysis results calculated by the three algorithmic procedures of geNorm, NormFinder, and BestKeeper, which were ranked by refinder. Our research showed that 18S and GTP under drought stress, 18S and IDH under salt stress, CYP and 18S under cold stress, GTP and IDH under heat stress were the most stable endogenous reference genes. Moreover, UBC and 18S were the most suitable endogenous reference gene combinations for all samples. In contrast, GAPDH and α-TUB were the two least stable endogenous reference genes in all experimental samples. Additionally, the selected genes have been verified to be durable and reliable by detecting POD and PXG3 genes using above endogenous reference genes. The identification of reliable endogenous reference genes guarantees more accurate RT-qPCR quantification for Chlorella sp. TLD 6B, facilitating functional genomics studies of deserts Chlorella as well as the mining of resistance genes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]