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Surface characterization of metal nanoparticles is a critical need in nanocatalysis for in-depth understanding of the structure-function relationships. The surface structure of nanoparticles is often different from the subsurface, and it is challenging to separately characterize the surface and the subsurface. In this work, theoretical calculations and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) analysis illustrate that the surface atoms of noble metals (Pt and Pd) are oxidized in the air, while the subsurface atoms are not easily oxidized. Taking advantage of the oxidation properties, we suggest a stepwise reduction-oxidation approach to determine the surface atomic arrangement of noble metal nanoparticles, and confirm the rationality of this approach by identifying the surface structure of typical 2–3 nm Pt and Pd nanoparticles. The reduction-oxidation approach is applied to characterize the surface structure of model Pd-Sb bimetallic catalyst, which illustrates that the surface Pd is well isolated by Sb atoms with short bond distance at 2.70 A, while there are still Pd-Pd bonds in the subsurface. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations and Pd L edge X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) indicate that the isolation of surface Pd significantly decreases the adsorption energies of Pd-hydrocarbon, which leads to the high propylene selectivity and turnover frequency Pd-Sb bimetallic catalyst for propane dehydrogenation.

Lactam cyclic peptides are a class of interesting and pharmaceutically active molecules, but their previous syntheses have required the use of heavy metals and/or forcing conditions. Here, we describe the efficient application of the previously reported tert-butyl disulfide-protected amino acids and their use in the efficient, solid-phase synthesis of a series of lactam cyclic peptides under mild, metal-free conditions.

Selective cleavage of C-C linkages is the key and a challenge for lignin degradation to harvest value-added aromatic compounds. To this end, electrocatalytic oxidation presents a promising technique by virtue of mild reaction conditions and strong sustainability. However, the existing electrocatalysts (traditional bulk metal and metal oxides) for C-C bond oxidative cleavage suffer from poor selectivity and low product yields. We show for the first time that atomically dispersed Pt-N3C1 sites planted on nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (Pt1/N-CNTs), constructed via a stepwise polymerization-carbonization-electrostatic adsorption strategy, are highly active and selective toward Cα-Cβ bond cleavage in β-O-4 model compounds under ambient conditions. Pt1/N-CNTs exhibits 99% substrate conversion with 81% yield of benzaldehyde, which is exceptional and unprecedented compared with previously reported electrocatalysts. Moreover, Pt1/N-CNTs using only 0.41 wt % Pt achieved a much higher benzaldehyde yield than those of the state-of-the-art bulk Pt electrode (100 wt % Pt) and commercial Pt/C catalyst (20 wt % Pt). Systematic experimental investigation together with density functional theory (DFT) calculation suggests that the superior performance of Pt1/N-CNTs arises from the atomically dispersed Pt-N3C1 sites facilitating the formation of a key Cβ radical intermediate, further inducing a radical/radical cross-coupling path to break the Cα-Cβ bond. This work opens up opportunities in lignin valorization via a green and sustainable electrochemical route with ultralow noble metal usage.

The structurally new, carbon-free pentadecanuclear Fe-containing polyoxometalate, Na21[NaFe15(OH)12(PO4)4(A-α-SiW9O34)4]·85H2O (Na21-Fe15P4(SiW9)4), was synthesized using a facile one-pot, solution-based synthetic approach and systematically characterized by various spectroscopic techniques. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction reveals that the title complex is composed of two [Fe4(A-α-SiW9O34)] fragments and two [Fe3.5(A-α-SiW9O34)] fragments stabilized by four PO4 linkers in a tetrameric style with idealized Td point group symmetry. When coupling with (4,4'-ditert-butyl-2,2'-dipyridyl)-bis(coumarin)-iridium(III) hexafluorophosphate ([Ir(coumarin)2(dtbbpy)][PF6]) photosensitizer and triethanolamine (TEOA) sacrificial electron donor, polyoxoanion Fe15P4(SiW9)4 effectively catalyzed hydrogen production with a minimally optimized TON of 986, which represents, to our knowledge, one of the highest values among known Fe-substituted POM-catalyzed hydrogen production systems. Both a mercury-poisoning test and FT-IR characterizations proved the structural stability of Fe15P4(SiW9)4 catalyst under photocatalytic conditions. The photocatalytic mechanism of the present hydrogen-evolving system was investigated by time-solved luminescence and static emission quenching measurements.

Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (FTS) is a significant catalytic process for the production of liquid fuel and fine chemicals from natural gas-, coal-, and biomass-derived syngas. However, exploring high...

It is more and more important to consider the dependence structure among multiple testings, especially for the genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The existing procedures, such as local index of significance (LIS) and pooled local index of significance (PLIS), were proposed to test hidden Markov model (HMM)-dependent hypotheses under the framework of compound decision theory, which was successfully applied to GWAS. However, the etiology of complex diseases is not only with respect to the genetic effects, but also the environmental factors. Failure to account for the covariates in multiple testing can produce misleading bias of the association of interest, or suffer from loss of testing efficiency. In this paper, we develop a covariate-adjusted multiple testing procedure, called covariate-adjusted local index of significance (CALIS), to account for the effects of environmental factors via a factorial hidden Markov model. The theoretical results show that our procedure can control the false discovery rate (FDR) at the nominal level and has the smallest false non-discovery rate (FNR) among all valid FDR procedures. We further demonstrate the advantage of our novel procedure over the existing procedures by simulation studies and a real data analysis.

Pear (Pyrus spp.) belongs to the genus Pyrus, in the family Rosaceae. Some varieties of pear fruit exhibit bulged surface, which seriously affects the quality and commodity value of the pear fruit. In this study, we performed anatomical, physiological, and transcriptomic analysis to explore the mechanism of paclobutrazol (PBZ) on the bulged surface of pear fruit. The vascular bundles of flesh were more evenly distributed, and the fruit cells were more compactly arranged and smaller in size treated with PBZ. However, the auxin (IAA) content of flesh was decreased in the treated group. Furthermore, the GO and KEGG analysis of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) showed that auxin, phenylpropanoid metabolic pathways, and transcriptional factor genes were significantly enriched on the relieved bulged surface of pear fruit. And it was analyzed that some genes contained auxin responded cis-elements from the selected DEGs in the promoter region. We conclude that PBZ plays a negative role in cell division, cell elongation, and vascular bundle development on the bulged surface of pear fruit through the involvement of auxin-related genes. This study will provide a theoretical basis for the regulation of the bulged surface of pear fruit by a growth retardant agent.

OVATE family proteins (OFPs) are the plant-specific transcription factors, and have significant functions in regulating plant growth, development and resistance. The OFP genes have been investigated in several plants, but they still lack a systematic analysis of OFP genes in Chinese pear and some other five Rosaceae genomes. Here, 28 PbrOFPs were identified within Chinese pear and compared them with those of other five Rosaceae genomes. Evolutionary tree revealed that all OFP genes from six Rosaceae genomes were divided into eight groups. Seventeen conserved microsynteny regions were detected in Chinese pear genome, suggested that these PbrOFP genes might be considered to have originated from the large-scale duplication events., indicating these PbrOFP genes might contain specialized regulatory mechanisms in these tissues, such as flower, ovary and fruit. Remarkably, two PbrOFP genes (Pbr010426.1 and Pbr010427.1) were up-regulated under Venturia nashicola treatment, and five PbrOFP genes were up-regulated under PEG treatment, suggesting that these genes might play crucial roles in defence to environmental stresses. Our data presented a systematic analysis and might aid in the selection of appropriate PbrOFPs for further functional studies in Chinese pear, especially in response to the mechanism of biotic and abiotic stresses. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s12298-020-00866-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Telomeric DNA, whose length homeostasis is closely correlated with immortality of cancer cells, is regarded as a molecular clock for cellular lifespan. Regarding the capacity in forming G-quadruplex, G-rich 3′-overhang (G-overhang) has been considered as an attractive anticancer target. However, it is still challenging to precisely target telomeric G-overhang with current ligands because of the polymorphism of G-quadruplexes in cells. Herein, we construct a telomeric G-overhang-specific near-infrared-traceable DNA nano-hydrolase, which is composed of four parts: (i) dexamethasone for targeting cell nuclei; (ii) complementary DNA for hybridizing with G-overhang; (iii) multinuclear Ce(IV) complexes for hydrolyzing G-overhang; and (iv) upconversion nanoparticles for real-time tracking. The multivalent targeted DNA nano-hydrolase can be traced to precisely digest telomeric G-overhang, which contributes to telomeric DNA shortening and thereby causes cell aging and apoptosis. The anticancer treatment is further proved by in vivo studies. In this way, this design provides a telomeric G-overhang-specific eradication strategy based on a non-G-quadruplex targeting manner.

Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) is important in the diagnosis of many diseases. Because ALP is used to detect biomarkers for many diseases, many researchers conduct investigations to develop ALP detection strategies. The use of fluorescent material has attracted attention because of the technique's high sensitivity and the low sample volume required. Herein, we review and discuss the working mechanisms and advantages of four main categories:DNA fluorescent probes, molecular fluorescent probes, chemical coordination-based probes, and nanoparticle probes. Development prospects and trends are also discussed.

Droplet-confined assembly is a powerful tool to fabricate functional nanostructures of block copolymers (BCPs), where the interfacial interaction plays a crucial role. Here, we report an unconventional strategy of using interfacial phase separation to control this assembly. The key lies in the use of an elaborately designed binary surfactant system to tune the interfacial configuration of droplets and realize an asymmetrically directed assembly of BCPs inside droplets, which finally creates unprecedented Janus onion particles with solid surfactant-like properties, e.g., as stabilizers for Pickering emulsions. The formation of Janus onions is due to the strong longitudinal selective interaction and the strong lateral phase separation at the droplet interfaces, provided by our surfactant system. This concept of interfacial phase separation directed assembly not only enriches the routes to controllable assembly of BCPs, but also offers an innovative paradigm to construct distinct regions on droplet surfaces, illuminating potential functions such as smart encapsulation and delivery.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have shown as unique nanoreactors to tune the catalytic activity of confined nano-catalysts. Here we report that the catalytic performance of molybdenum carbide nanoparticles (MoCx NPs) for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) process can be enhanced by encapsulation within single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with a diameter of 1-2 nm. The catalyst with MoCx NPs located on the interior surface of SWNTs (MoCx@SWNTs) exhibits a lower onset over-potential and a smaller Tafel slope than the one with MoCx NPs attached on the exterior surface (MoCx/SWNTs). This is likely attributed to the much smaller particle size and the more reduced states of the confined MoCx NPs, as well as the larger specific surface area of MoCx@SWNTs compared with MoCx/SWNTs. In addition, the electronic structure of the confined MoCx NPs might be modified by the confinement effects of SWNTs, and hence the adsorption free energy of H atoms on the confined MoCx NPs, which could also contribute to their higher performance. These results suggest that the SWNTs can be further explored for constructing novel catalysts with beneficial catalytic performance.

Metabolic glycan labeling (MGL) followed by bioorthogonal chemistry provides a powerful tool for tumor imaging and therapy. However, selectively metabolic labeling of cells or tissues of interest remains a challenge. Particularly, owing to tumor heterogeneity including tumor subtypes and interpatient heterogeneity, it is far more difficult to realize tumor-cell-selective metabolic labeling for precise diagnosis. Inspired by nature, we designed azidosugar-functionalized metal-organic frameworks camouflaged with cancer cell membranes to accomplish cancer-cell-selective MGL in vivo. With abundant receptors, this biomimetic platform not only selectively targets homotypic cells but also realizes different breast cancer subtype-selective MGL. Moreover, the endo/lysosomal-escaped ZIF-8 can make azidosugar escape from lysosomes and accelerate its metabolic incorporation. This strategy also takes advantage of cancer-tissue-derived cell membranes, which may have huge potential for personalized diagnosis and therapy.

Improving the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) may considerably increase maize yield and decrease the use of nitrogen (N) fertilizer. But the genetic basis of NUE in maize is still poorly understood. In this study, an association panel of 139 maize inbred lines genotyped with 50,790 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was used to dissect the genetic basis of NUE-related traits by genome-wide association study (GWAS). NUE, N uptake efficiency (NupE), N utilization efficiency (NutE), grain N concentration (GNC), stover N concentration (SNC) and N harvest index (NHI) were estimated under two N levels. GWAS was performed using a fixed and random model circulating probability unification (FarmCUP) method. In total, 27 and 23 significant SNP-traits association signals were identified under normal and low N levels. In addition, 10 significant association signals were detected based on the traits relative value (normal N supply / low N supply) of two N levels. Further, 60 candidate genes were predicted for these traits base on linkage disequilibrium (LD) and low nitrogen transcriptome analysis of significant SNP regions. Among the candidate genes identified in this study, 66.7% involved in nitrogen compound metabolic process. Zm00001d025831 and Zm00001d004633 encoded ammonium transporter1 and transmembrane amino acid transporter family protein, respectively, may be important candidate genes for NUE. The markers identified in this study maybe has important significance and could be useful in molecular marker assisted selection in breeding of high-NUE maize varieties, and the candidate genes could deepen the understanding of the genetic basis of NUE.

Given that many people suffer from large-area skin damage, skin regeneration is a matter of high concern. Here, an available method is developed for the formation of large-area robust skins through three stages: fabrication of a biodegradable sealant-loaded nanofiber scaffold (SNS), skin tissue reconstruction, and skin regeneration. First, a microfluidic blow-spinning strategy is proposed to fabricate a large-scale nanofiber scaffold with an area of 140 cm × 40 cm, composed of fibrinogen-loaded polycaprolactone/silk fibroin (PCL/SF) ultrafine core-shell nanofibers with mean diameter of 65 nm. Then, the SNS forms, where the gelling reaction of fibrin sealant occurs in situ between thrombin and fibrinogen on PCL/SF nanofiber surface, to promote the migration and proliferation of fibroblasts, accelerating skin regeneration. Through an in vivo study, it is shown that the SNS can rapidly repair acute tissue damage such as vascular bleeding and hepatic hemorrhage, and also promote angiogenesis, large-area abdominal wall defect repair, and wound tissue regeneration for medical problems in the world. Besides, it avoids the risk of immune rejection and secondary surgery in clinical applications. This strategy offers a facile route to regenerate large-scale robust skin, which shows great potential in abdominal wall defect repair.

Angle-independent structural colors are prepared by membrane separation-assisted assembly (MSAA) method with modified reduced graphene oxide (rGO) as the substrate membrane. We show that the wrinkled and crumpled rGO laminates not only ensure uneven morphology of colloidal film but improve color saturation by decreasing coherent scattering. In addition, we study the influence of stopband position on thermal insulation property of the colloidal film for the first time. High absolute temperature difference of 6.9 °C is achieved comparing with control sample. And films with longer stopband positions indicate better thermal insulation performance because of inherent slow photon effect in photonic structure. This general principle of thermal insulation by colloidal films opens the way to a new generation of thermal management materials.

Microfluidic spinning technology (MST) has drawn much attention owing to its ideal platform for ordered fluorescent fibers, along with their large-scale manipulation, high efficiency, flexibility, and environment friendliness. Here, we employed the MST to fabricate a series of uniform fluorescent microfibers. By adjusting the microfluidic spinning parameters, the as-prepared microfibers of different diameters are successfully obtained. For more practice, these regular arranged fibers could be formed to versatile fluorescent codes by using various microfluidic chips. Also, these versatile fluorescent fibers could be further weaved into a white fluorescent film via continuous and cross-spinning process, which could be applied in a white light emitting diode (WLED) and a wearable device. Besides, we investigated the MST-directed microreactors to carry out green synthesis of CdSe quantum dots (QDs) fibers by the knot of Y-type microfluidic chip. The as-prepared CdSe QDs show nice optical property and are good candidate as phosphors in WLED. This strategy offers a facile and environment-friendly route to fluorescent hybrid microfibers and might open their potential application in optical devices, security, and fluorescent coding.

Nitrogen doping has been proved to be an effective way to modify the properties of graphene and other carbon materials. Herein, we explore a composite with nitrogen doped carbon overlayers wrapping SiC substrate as a support for Ni (Ni/CN-SiC) and evaluate its effects on the methanation activity. The results show that both the activity and stability of Ni are enhanced. Characterization with STEM, XRD, XPS, Raman and H2-TPR indicates that nitrogen doping generates more defects in the carbon overlayers, which benefit the dispersion of Ni. Furthermore, the reduction of Ni is facilitated.

Gold nanoparticle (Au NP) incorporated photonic crystals (PCs) have been extensively studied due to the intricate interplay between the surface plasmon resonance of Au NPs and the periodic nanostructure of PCs. Herein, we successfully synthesized Au NP decorated poly(styrene-co-(generation 3 carbosilane-thioether vinyl-terminated dendrimer)) (P(st-co-G3Vi)) microspheres via in situ reduction of Au ions based on the strong coordination between the Au ions and the sulfur atom in G3Vi dendrimers. These composite Au-doped microspheres demonstrate a bumpy surface topography, which gives rise to a higher hydrophobicity and could effectively suppress the formation of an ubiquitous coffee-ring during the drying process of a colloidal suspension. More importantly, layer-controllable PCs were constructed with Au-doped microspheres by combining the Langmuir-Blodgett method with a layer-by-layer stacking strategy. By manipulating the stacking layers and diameters of microspheres, multifarious PCs with different photonic band gaps and reflection intensities were obtained, which can serve as an effective substrate for amplified quantum dot fluorescence. Further investigation reveals that fluorescence could be significantly pronounced by five-layer PCs. This work offers a facile and reproducible strategy to prepare Au NP incorporated PCs by in situ synthesis of Au NPs within dendrimer-functionalized microspheres, resulting in an enhancement of quantum dot fluorescence, which will lead to promising applications in energy-saving optoelectronic devices.

Photonic crystals (PCs) have attracted great attention in recent years because of their vibrant structural colors. However, the poor mechanical stability of photonic crystals has severely limited their application. Here, we present an original strategy to construct a flexible and tough PC film composed of composite microspheres. These microspheres were prepared by coating CdSe@ZnS quantum dots on generation 3 polyamidoamine (G3 PAMAM) dendrimer-functionalized poly(styrene-methyl methacrylate-acrylic acid) (PS) microspheres via an in situ reaction. Benefiting from the strong coordination interactions among the dendrimer-functionalized microspheres, the mechanical robustness and the mechanical stability of the PC film were notably strengthened. In addition, taking advantage of the angle-independent characteristics of the PC beads, we applied them to improve the luminescence of a white LED. The PC beads were simply doped into the silicone and the light intensity of the WLED was enhanced with a full angle, significantly. This method may provide an efficient route for designing energy-saving WLEDs with high brightness.

This study presents the discovery that porous boron nitride (p-BN) is active in acetylene hydrochlorination, although boron nitride (BN) is generally considered chemically inert. An acetylene conversion of 99% is achieved with a vinyl chloride selectivity over 99% at 280 °C at a gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) of 1.32 mL min–1 g–1. By contrast, the commercially available crystallized hexagonal BN (h-BN) exhibits no catalytic activity. Furthermore, this p-BN is rather durable as demonstrated by a 1000 h lifetime test. Catalytic tests, spectroscopic characterization, and theoretical calculations indicate that the activity likely originates from the defects and edge sites. Particularly, the armchair edges of BN can polarize and activate acetylene, which then reacts with gaseous HCl giving vinyl chloride as the product.

Integral attack, as a powerful technique in the cryptanalysis field, has been widely utilized to evaluate the security of block ciphers. Integral distinguisher is based on balanced property on output with probability one. To obtain a distinguisher covering more rounds, an attacker will usually increase the data complexity by iterating through all values of more bits of plaintexts under the firm limitation that the data complexity should be less than the whole plaintext space. In order to release the limitation and reduce the data complexity, Wang et al. proposed a statistical integral distinguisher at FSE’16. In this paper, we exploit the statistical integral distinguisher to attack the IDEA and CAST-256 block ciphers. As a result, we manage to mount a key recovery attack on 29-round CAST-256 with 296.8 chosen plaintexts, 2219.4 encryptions and 273 bytes of memory. By making a trade-off between the time complexity and data complexity, the attack can be achieved by 283.9 chosen plaintexts, 2244.4 encryptions and 266 bytes of memory. As far as we know, these are the best attacks on CAST-256 in the single-key model without weak-key assumption so far. What’s more, we find an integral distinguisher of IDEA block cipher, which is the longest integral distinguisher known to now. By taking advantage of this distinguisher, we achieve a key recovery attack on 4.5-round IDEA with 258.5 known plaintexts, 2120.9 encryptions and 246.6 bytes of memory respectively. It is the best integral attack with respect to the number of rounds.

ZnO with various morphologies and contents was used to decorate reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets via an easy one-step low-temperature chemical etching route to improve photocatalytic properties. The ZnO shape and content in ZnO/rGO composites were adjusted by changing aging time, heating mode, and rGO mass added. Shape and content-dependent optical and photocatalytic properties are observed in ZnO/rGO composites. A moderate amount of ZnO nanorings (NRs) decorated with rGO can significantly improve the light absorption and photo-luminescence emission because of plasmonic resonant absorption and plasmonic nanoantenna radiation, respectively. ZnO NR/rGO composites with a moderate ZnO content of 29.54 wt.% exhibit the optimum photocatalytic activity with a 0.025 min −1 apparent rate constant, which is significantly higher than those of pure rGO (0.0085 min −1 ) and ZnO NRs (0.018 min −1 ). The improved performance is ascribed to the synergistic effect of enhanced adsorption capacity, plasmonic light absorption, plasmonic nanoantenna radiation, and the prolonged lifetime of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Our findings not only offer insights into the plasmon enhanced optical and photocatalytic properties of ZnO NR/rGO composites but also suggest the possibility of fabricating ZnO NR/rGO photocatalyst with enhanced performance.

The emergence of ferromagnetism in perovskite oxide LaFeO 3 nanoparticles and colossal dielectric response in ceramics has inspired researchers to study the effect of various dopants on the magnetic and dielectric properties of LaFeO 3 powders and ceramics. However, the influence of alkali element Na doping has not been studied yet, and the origin of such ferromagnetic behavior is still ambiguous. The primary objective of the present work is to elucidate the effect of Na doping on the magnetic properties of La 1−x Na x FeO 3 (x=0, 0.1 and 0.2) powders and dielectric properties of corresponding ceramics prepared by citric sol-gel method. FE-SEM results showed that the introduction of Na dopant actually resulted in the formation of nonstoichiometric La 1−x FeO 3 and x/2 Na 2 O. Compared to the canted AFM behavior for the pure powder, ferromagnetic behavior with enhanced magnetization of 2.11 emu/g at 10 kOe could be obviously observed at room temperature for the powder with x=0.2. XPS measurement suggested nonstoichiometric Fe/La ratio which leads to the distortion of lattice structure and enlarged canting angle between the two AFM coupled Fe sublattice should be responsible for the enhancement of magnetization in the Na-doped samples. Meanwhile, the introduction of Na dopant lowered the growth temperature of grains of the parent LFO and resulted in larger average grain size, which in turn leaded to great enhancement of e′ into the order of 10 5 at 100 Hz at the cost of high tanδ for the Na-doped ceramics.

A facile and electrostatically-driven approach has been developed to prepare bicontinuous polymer nanocomposites, through the polyoxometalate (POM) macroion-induced phase transition of PS-b-P2VP from an initial lamellar phase to a stable bicontinuous phase. The multi-charged POMs can electrostatically crosslink P2VP blocks and lead to bicontinuous phases in which the POM-hybrid conductive domains occupy a large volume fraction more than 50 %. Furthermore, POMs can serve as both high proton conductors and nanoenhancers, endowing the bicontinuous nanocomposites with a conductivity of 0.1 mS cm-1 and a Young's modulus of 7.4 GPa at room temperature, which are 2 orders of magnitude and 1.8 times enhanced respectively, compared with the pristine PS-b-P2VP. This approach can provide a new concept based on electrostatic control to design functional bicontinuous polymer materials.

In this paper, long afterglow luminescent materials CaAl 2 O 4 :Eu 2+ , Nd 3+ and SrAl 2 O 4 :Eu 2+ , Dy 3+ were successfully synthesized by high temperature solid state reaction using the alumina extracted from oil shale ash. The properties of samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) photoluminescence (PL) spectra, thermoluminescent (TL) curve, long afterglow material optical test system. CaAl 2 O 4 :Eu 2+ , Nd 3+ and SrAl 2 O 4 :Eu 2+ , Dy 3+ prepared with alumina extracted from oil shale ash showed persistent phosphorescence in blue (440 nm) and green (515 nm) with persistence time over 10 h for the blue and 8 h for the green. This result indicates that the alumina extracted from oil shale ash can be used to prepare fluorescent materials. This reuse can not only utilize the oil shale ash rationally but also substantially increased the added-value of oil shale ash.

Leaves are the main organs of photosynthesis in green plants. Leaf area plays a vital role in dry matter accumulation and grain yield in maize (Zea mays L.). Thus, investigating the genetic basis of leaf area will aid efforts to breed maize with high yield. In this study, a total of 150 F7 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) derived from a cross between the maize lines Xu 178 and K12 were used to evaluate three ear-leaves area (TELA) under multi-environments. Inclusive composite interval mapping (ICIM) was used to identify quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for TELA under a single environment and estimated breeding value (EBV). A total of eight QTLs were detected under a single environmental condition, and four QTLs were identified for EBV which also can be detected in single environment. This indicated that the EBV-detected QTLs have high genetic stability. A major QTL (qTELA_2-9) located in chromosome bin 2.04/2.05 could be detected in four environments and has a high phenotypic contribution rate (ranging from 10.79 to 16.51%) that making it a good target for molecular breeding. In addition, joint analysis was used to reveal the genetic basis of leaf area in six environments. In total, six QTL×environment interactions and nine epistatic interactions were identified. Our results reveal that the genetic basis of the leaf area is not only mainly determined by additive effects, but also affected by epistatic effects environmental interaction effects.

Returning straw to soil improved soil carbon sequestration capacity and increase soil organic matter. However, in different soil depth, especially in subsoil, there were few studies on the effects of straw decomposition on soil carbon sequestration and the properties of humic substances. Therefore, an in-situ incubation study, with six different straw rates and three different soil depths, was carried out to explore the effects of straw decomposition on soil organic carbon and humic substance composition at different soil depths. The experiment was composed of six straw rates: 0, 0.44, 0.88, 1.32, 2.64, and 5.28% of soil dry mass. The maize straw was proportionately mixed with soil and put into nylon bags. Then, the nylon bags were buried in soil at three depths (15, 30, and 45 cm) and the straw decomposition trial lasted for 17 consecutive months in-situ. Soil samples were collected after completion of the field trial. Humic substances were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed using the modification method of humus composition and the methods specified by the International Humus Association. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy were used in this study. Results indicated that CO2 concentration increased with increase in soil depth. Compared with the “zero” straw control, soil organic carbon contents in the treatments amended with 1.32, 2.64, and 5.28% maize straw increased significantly, and most accumulations were at 30–45 cm depths. FTIR and fluorescence emission spectra analyses indicated that the addition of straw enhanced the aliphatic structure and decreased the aromaticity of humic acid (HA), that was to say that HA molecular structure approaches to the development of simplification and younger. The maximum change in HA molecular structure was under the 5.28% treatment in the 30–45 cm depth. Returning maize straw to the subsoil layers is more conducive to the accumulation of soil organic carbon and improvement of the quality and activity of HA and the organic carbon in the subsoil can be renewed.

BaLuF5:Ce,Tb,Eu(Sm) submicrospheres were synthesized via an ILs/ethylene glycol(EG) two-phase system. The crystalline phase, size, morphology, and luminescence properties were characterized using powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), photoluminescence (PL) spectra. The results show that 1-methyl-3-octylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([Omim]PF6) was used as fluoride source and capping agent to tune morphology and size of the crystals. The formation mechanism has been supposed. Under the excitation of ultraviolet, the BaLuF5:5%Ce3+,5%Tb3+, BaLuF5:Eu3+, and BaLuF5:5%Ce3+,5%Sm3+ exhibit green and red emission, which was derived from Tb3+, Eu3+, and Sm3+ emission. When codoping Ce3+, Tb3+, Sm3+ or Eu3+ together, multi-color emission can be realized. Furthermore, this synthetic route may have potential applications for fabricating other lanthanide fluorides.

LuVO4:Eu3+ nano/microcrystals with different morphologies/sizes including nanoparticles, nanosheets, nanodisks, nanoquadrangles, sub-microflakes, microspheres, and bulks were successfully synthesized by a mild solvothermal process using tartaric acid (TA) as the template. The amount of tartaric acid (TA) and the initial pH value play vital roles in controlling the morphologies of LuVO4 products. Besides, the reaction temperature was responsible for the generation of pure LuVO4 crystals in the presence of TA. Based on this, the possible formation mechanism of multi-morphologies was proposed. Furthermore, the dependence of luminescence performance on morphology has been discussed in detail. The LuVO4:Ln3+ (Ln = Tm3+, Er3+, Sm3+, Eu3+) nanoparticles show the characterized transition of Ln3+ and give bright blue, green, orange-red and red emission. Moreover, blue-green, green-yellow, pink, yellow-pink and white light can be obtained by adjusting the amount of doped Ln3+ ions and the corresponding concentrations of the LuVO4 host. This general and simple method may be of much significance in the synthesis of many other rare earth inorganic materials.

LaFeO3-δ nanoparticles were prepared by citric sol-gel method with different raw material choosing and calcination process. The choosing of polyethylene glycol instead of ethylene glycol as raw material and additional pre-calcination at 400 °C rather than direct calcination at 600 °C could result in the decrease of resistance due to the reduction of activation energy Ea. Meanwhile, the choosing of ethylene glycol as raw material and additional pre-calcination leads to the enhancement of sensitivity to ethanol. Comprehensive analysis on the sensitivity and XRD, SEM, TEM, XPS results indicates that the sensing performance of LaFeO3-δ should be mainly determined by the adsorbed oxygen species on Fe ions, with certain contribution from native active oxygen. The best sensitivity of 46.1–200 ppm ethanol at prime working temperature of 112 °C is obtained by the sample using ethylene glycol as raw material with additional pre-calcination, which originates from its uniformly-sized and well-dispersed particles as well as high atomic ratio of Fe/La at surface region.

A series of color-tunable emitting LuVO 4 :Tm 3+ ,Dy 3+ ,Eu 3+ microspheres were successfully synthesized by a solvothermal process. The structure was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results revealed that the sample is pure tetragonal phase of LuVO 4 and consists of 3D-hierachical microspheres with the diameter about 2 μm. Additionally, the possible formation mechanism of microspheres was proposed. Furthermore, the photoluminescence properties of LuVO 4 :Dy 3+ ,Eu 3+ samples were investigated in detail. Both blue and yellow emissions corresponding to the 4 F 9/2 - 6 H 15/2 , 4 F 9/2 - 6 H 13/2 transition of Dy 3+ ions and red emission corresponding to the 5 D 0 - 7 F J (J = 1, 2, 3, 4) transition of Eu 3+ ions can be observed in LuVO 4 :Dy 3+ ,Eu 3+ phosphors under 366 nm near-ultraviolet radiation. The energy transfer process between Dy 3+ and Eu 3+ was demonstrated to be resonant type via dipole-quadrupole mechanism. Additionally, when co-doping Dy 3+ with Tm 3+ or Eu 3+ or tri-doping Tm 3+ ,Dy 3+ ,Eu 3+ ions in the single component, the colorful emitting can be obtained by giving abundant blue, green, red, yellow, orange, especially white-light-emission. This type of color-tunable luminescence phosphors may have promising application in solid state lighting application.

Robust aerial infrared target recognition with multi-scale and multi-angle characteristics is a key technique in infrared systems. However, traditional algorithms often fail to achieve a high accuracy and robustness due to simple features and classifiers. Moreover, deep learning algorithms mainly focus on improving accuracy with the price of high complexity. To address above issues, we propose a two-stage lightweight aerial infrared target recognition based on convolutional neural networks(CNN). We propose the coarse region extraction based on the local contrast in the first stage, which combines infrared image characteristics properly. In the second stage, we propose the find target recognition, which constructs lightweight CNN by changing network layers and convolution kernels. Experimental results demonstrate the algorithm proposed can achieve recognition for six kinds of aerial infrared target. Compared with other algorithms, our algorithm obtains higher accuracy and robustness.

Nanodrug-based cancer therapy is impeded by poor penetration into deep tumor tissues mainly due to the overexpression of hyaluronic acid (HA) in the tumor extracellular matrix (ECM). Although modification of nanoparticles (NPs) with hyaluronidase (HAase) is a potent strategy, it remains challenging to get a uniform distribution of drug at the tumor site because of the internalization of NPs by the cells in the tumor and HA regeneration. Herein, an intelligent nanocarrier, which can release HAase in response to the acidic tumor microenvironment (pH 6.5) and perform a strong neighboring effect with size reduction to overcome the above two problems and accomplish drug deep tumor penetration in vivo, is reported. In this design, HAase is encapsulated on the surfaces of doxorubicin (DOX) preloaded ZnO-DOX NPs using a charge convertible polymer PEG-PAH-DMMA (ZDHD). The polymer can release HAase to degrade HA in the tumor ECM (pH 6.5). ZnO-DOX NPs can release DOX in lysosomes (pH 4.5) to induce cell apoptosis, and exert a neighboring effect with size reduction to infect neighboring cells. The hierarchical targeted release of HAase and drugs is demonstrated to enhance tumor penetration and decrease side effects in vivo. This work shows promise for further application of ZDHD NPs in cancer therapy.

Monoclonal antibody (mAb) fragmentation is a well-known degradation pathway that results in product loss and can significantly impact product quality, efficacy, or even cause immunogenic reactions, thus potentially endangering patients’ health. It is recognised that residual proteases present among host cell proteins (HCPs) such as those expressed by Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) can induce fragmentation, and failure of their complete removal during downstream processing could cause fragmentation during mAb production and in the final drug product. We identified, using a protease inhibitor screen, an aspartic protease that contributes to proteolytic fragmentation of partially purified mAbs in multiple projects. Subsequent LC–MS analysis indicated that cathepsin D, a typical aspartic protease, was responsible for the observed fragmentation of in-process samples. To address the issue, an alternative chromatography wash was implemented at the capture step and has been demonstrated to be an effective and scalable solution to mitigate the residual cathepsin D associated fragmentation risk. Furthermore, a near real time targeted mass spectrometry method has been developed to proactively monitor the presence of cathepsin D during upstream and downstream process. Our approach demonstrated an emerging HCP mitigation strategy through integrated upstream and downstream involvement and holds great promise for a range of future applications.

3D confined assembly in emulsion droplets is an effective way to prepare block copolymer particles with tunable nanostructures. In this process, the multi-component interaction at the droplet interface plays a crucial role, which is mainly dominated by surfactants. Here, we report the utilization of a polymer surfactant, ammonium-terminated polystyrene chains (N–PSn), to control the 3D confined assembly of poly(styrene-block-2-vinylpyridine) (PS-b-P2VP). N–PSn shows a different interfacial tuning ability from small molecular surfactants, which can not only stabilize the emulsion droplets but also increase the volume fraction of PS components through fusing its PS chains with PS-b-P2VP. Consequently, unusual nanostructured PS-b-P2VP particles were obtained based on a binary surfactant system of N–PSn and poly(vinyl alcohol), e.g., the rarely reported toroid-stacked ellipsoidal particles. The morphological formation mechanism was systemically studied by regulating the molecular weight of N–PSn. These results provide a new surfactant platform to tune the confined assembly of block copolymers.

We demonstrate an easy solvothermal method for the synthesis of monodisperse polycrystalline Fe3O4 microspheres ranging in size from 82 nm to 1116 nm. Results show that controlling H2O volume fraction (γ) modulates the crystal size (D) and sphere diameter (d) of Fe3O4 microspheres and also changes their surface state. D and d values of Fe3O4 microspheres change with γ in a Gauss model and a Boltzmann mode, respectively. Adding nonreductive H2O favors the increased O content. In these cases, the saturation magnetization (Ms) and coercivity (Hc) values follow various Gauss models of variation with γ because of the weakened interaction with decreased d, the enhanced surface spin disorder with D, the increased O content, and the critical size for multidomain–monodomain behavior. The cooperation of size (D and d) with surface state induces e ″ and tanδE to gradually decrease with γ, and μ ″ and tanδM are significantly enhanced at γ = 9.2% (d = 728 nm). This work clearly shows the potential to tune magnetic and microwave properties of polycrystalline magnetic nanomaterials by controlling crystal/particle size and surface state.

Using elliptical iron glycolate nanosheets as precursors, elliptical Fe3O4/C core-shell nanorings (NRs) [25 ± 10 nm in wall thickness, 150 ± 40 nm in length, and 1.6 ± 0.3 in long/short axis ratio] are synthesized via a one-pot hydrothermal route. The surface-poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP)-protected-glucose reduction/carbonization/Ostwald ripening mechanism is responsible for Fe3O4/C NR formation. Increasing the glucose/precursor molar ratio can enhance carbon contents, causing a linear decrease in saturation magnetization (Ms) and coercivity (Hc). The Fe3O4/C NRs reveal enhanced low-frequency microwave absorption because of improvements to their permittivity and impedance matching. A maximum RL value of -55.68 dB at 3.44 GHz is achieved by Fe3O4/C NRs with 11.95 wt % C content at a volume fraction of 17 vol %. Reflection loss (RL) values (≤-20 dB) are observed at 2.11-10.99 and 16.5-17.26 GHz. Our research provides insights into the microwave absorption mechanism of elliptical Fe3O4/C core-shell NRs. Findings indicate that ring-like and core-shell nanostructures are promising structures for devising new and effective microwave absorbers.

The multidimensional linear cryptanalysis and the multidimensional zero-correlation linear cryptanalysis have been widely used in the attacks on block ciphers. In the multidimensional linear cryptanalysis with $$\chi ^2$$ź2-method and the multidimensional zero-correlation linear cryptanalysis, the statistics used to distinguish the right key and wrong keys are calculated from the probability distribution of multidimensional (zero-correlation) linear approximations. In this paper, we show that the statistics can be computed directly from the empirical correlations of multidimensional (zero-correlation) linear approximations for random plaintext set. In this way, the computation cost of the probability distribution can be removed. In the situation where FFT technique can be applied to calculate the correlations, our proposed computing method for the statistics can decrease the time complexity of multidimensional (zero-correlation) linear cryptanalysis. As an illustration, the Feistel network with bijective round functions consisting of the modular additions or XORs with subkeys and CAST-256 have been attacked with our revised multidimensional zero-correlation linear cryptanalysis. Our attacks on such kind of Feistel networks are the best according to the number of rounds and we improved the previous multidimensional zero-correlation attack on CAST-256 from 28 to 29 rounds. Compared with the best attack on 29-round CAST-256 with multiple zero-correlation linear cryptanalysis method, our attack leads to the same complexity but without any assumption of independence. Therefore our attack on CAST-256 is the best attack without any assumption.

This paper investigates calibration of Hargreaves equation in Xiliaohe Basin. Twelve meteorologicalgauges located within Xiliaohe Basin in Northeast China were monitored during 1970 and 2014 providing continuous records of meteorological data. Taking daily ET0 calculated by Penman-Montieth equation as the benchmark, the error of Hargreaves equation for computing ET0 was evaluated and the investigation on regional calibration of Hargreaves equation was carried out. Results showed there was an obvious difference between the calculating results of Hargreaves and Penman-Monteith equation. The estimation of the former was obviously higher during June and September while lower during the rest time in a year. The three empirical parameters of the Hargreaves equation were calibrated using the SCE-UA (Shuffled Complex Evolution) method, and the calibrated Hargreaves equation showed an obvious promotion in the accuracy both during the calibration and verification period.

Kernel size and weight are important agronomic traits, as well as crucial traits that influence grain yield in maize. In the present study, 150 F7 recombinant inbred lines derived from a cross 178×K12 were evaluated for kernel length (KL), kernel width (KW), kernel thickness (KT), and 100-kernel weight (HKW) across seven environments. Natural variations in KL, KW, KT, and HKW were observed in the population. A set of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for the kernel-related traits were identified by inclusive composite interval mapping method. For the four kernel traits from seven environments and the best linear unbiased prediction data, a total of 52 QTLs were detected, which distributed on all chromosomes except chromosome 6. The LOD values ranged from 2.52 to 8.91, the additive effect from − 2.22 to 1.37, and the range of individually explaining phenotypic variation was from 5.8 to 23.49%. Amongst these QTLs, most were detected only in one or two environments. Three stable QTLs, qKL4-1 at bin 4.07/4.08, qKW4-2 at bin 4.06 and qKT2-1 at bin 2.02/2.03, were identified across at least three environments. Besides, several overlapping QTLs associated with multiple traits were identified. For example, qKW3-1 for KW and qHKW3-1 for HKW were located in the same marker interval at Bin 3.01/3.02. These stable QTLs and overlapping QTLs found in this study will contribute to the understanding of genetic components of grain yield and provide the foundation for molecular marker-assisted breeding in maize.

In the absence of long-series streamflow records in plain areas, design storm, which serves as the most important input in a hydrologic model, plays an important role in flood control and water resources management. For a large drainage basin, design storm may be estimated for sub-basins separately, thus the spatial distribution of design storm needs to be carefully treated. However, few studies have been carried out to evaluate the rationality of the spatial distribution in a design storm, which means the storm over space should be in accordance with actual needs or its distributing patterns. Taking the Tai Lake Basin (TLB), 3-d Copula-based models combining extreme rainfall of different sub-basins were built using long-term rainfall data, and conditional probabilities of sub-basins encountering certain amounts of rainfall were investigated to evaluate the rationality of the design storm. Results show that the spatial distribution of the design storm based on a typical year is hardly rational, in which rainfall of the northeastern part of the basin is suggested to be weakened while in the southwest to be strengthened, after the rainfall is redistributed based on long-term information, it shows a better rationality of spatial distribution. Such information provides valuable significance in guiding flood control of TLB, and the considered evaluating method can be used for similar basins in plain areas.

Low-nitrogen (LN) tolerance is a compound character with a complex genetic basis. Many agronomic traits have been shown to be closely related to LN tolerance in maize. In this study, 150 F7 recombinant inbred lines derived from a cross between inbreds 178 and K12 were evaluated for agronomical and physiological traits under high-nitrogen (HN) and LN conditions in 2 years. Inclusive composite interval mapping (ICIM) was used to identify the quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for traits recorded under different treatments (LN and HN) in 2 years. In total, 86 QTLs were detected: 38 for HN and 35 for LN, while 13 QTLs were detected under both nitrogen levels, suggesting that LN-specific QTLs may play a role in improving LN tolerance in maize. Overlapping QTLs for different traits were located on all chromosomes except chromosome 4 and chromosome 9. Many of these regions overlapped with previously reported QTLs. Several consensus major QTLs and LN-specific major QTLs found in the study can be used in marker-assisted selection breeding for genetic improvement and LN tolerance in maize in the future.

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), published by NIST, is widely used in data encryption algorithms, hash functions, authentication encryption schemes and so on. Studying distinguishing attacks on (reduced round) AES can help designers and cryptanalysts to evaluate the security of target ciphers. Since integral attack is one of the most powerful tool in the field of symmetric ciphers, in this paper, we evaluate the security of AES by integral cryptanalysis. Firstly we put forward a new statistical integral distinguisher with multiple structures on input and integral properties on output, which enables us to reduce the data complexity comparing to the traditional integral distinguishers under multiple structures. As illustrations, we propose a secret-key distinguisher on 5-round AES with secret S-box under chosen-ciphertext mode. Its data, time and memory complexities are \(2^{114.32}\) chosen ciphertexts, \(2^{110}\) encryptions and \(2^{33.32}\) blocks. This is the best integral distinguisher on AES with secret S-box under secret-key setting so far. Then we present improved known-key distinguishers on 8-round and full 10-round AES-128 with reduced complexities based on Gilbert’s work at ASIACRYPT’14. These distinguishers are the best ones according to the time complexity. Moreover, the proposed statistical integral model could be used to proceed known-key distinguishing attacks on other AES-like ciphers.

CAST-128 and CAST-256 are two symmetric algorithms designed by Adams in 1990s. Both of them adopt the CAST design procedure which makes them process a number of desirable cryptographic. CAST-128 is notably used as the default cipher in some versions of GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) systems. As an extension of CAST-128, CAST-256 was submitted as a candidate for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Since they are widely used, there are many different attacks on them. Differential cryptanalysis is one of the most powerful tools. In this paper, we achieve improved differential cryptanalysis of both CAST-128 and CAST-256 based on the technique of accessing differential tables. Firstly, we propose a differential attack on 9-round CAST-128 with \(2^{73}\) encryptions and \(2^{58}\) chosen plaintexts. Although we cannot improve the number of attacked rounds, the time complexity is significantly reduced. Then we mount an improved differential attack on 10 quad-rounds of modified CAST-256 which increase one quad-round than previous attack. The time complexity of this attack is \(2^{217}\) encryptions, and the data complexity is \(2^{123}\) chosen plaintexts. As far as we know, these are the best known attacks on CAST-128 and CAST-256 under weak key assumption.

Low-cost GPS (receiver) has become a ubiquitous and integral part of our daily life. Despite noticeable advantages such as being cheap, small, light, and easy to use, its limited positioning accuracy devalues and hampers its wide applications for reliable mapping and analysis. Two conventional techniques to remove outliers in a GPS trajectory are thresholding and Kalman-based methods, which are difficult in selecting appropriate thresholds and modeling the trajectories. Moreover, they are insensitive to medium and small outliers, especially for low-sample-rate trajectories. This paper proposes a model-based GPS trajectory cleaner. Rather than examining speed and acceleration or assuming a pre-determined trajectory model, we first use cubic smooth spline to adaptively model the trend of the trajectory. The residuals, i.e., the differences between the trend and GPS measurements, are then further modeled by time series method. Outliers are detected by scoring the residuals at every GPS trajectory point. Comparing to the conventional procedures, the trend-residual dual modeling approach has the following features: (a) it is able to model trajectories and detect outliers adaptively; (b) only one critical value for outlier scores needs to be set; (c) it is able to robustly detect unapparent outliers; and (d) it is effective in cleaning outliers for GPS trajectories with low sample rates. Tests are carried out on three real-world GPS trajectories datasets. The evaluation demonstrates an average of 9.27 times better performance in outlier detection for GPS trajectories than thresholding and Kalman-based techniques.

Integral attacks form a powerful class of cryptanalytic techniques that have been widely used in the security analysis of block ciphers. The integral distinguishers are based on balanced properties holding with probability one. To obtain a distinguisher covering more rounds, an attacker will normally increase the data complexity by iterating through more plaintexts with a given structure under the strict limitation of the full codebook. On the other hand, an integral property can only be deterministically verified if the plaintexts cover all possible values of a bit selection. These circumstances have somehow restrained the applications of integral cryptanalysis. In this paper, we aim to address these limitations and propose a novel statistical integral distinguisher where only a part of value sets for these input bit selections are taken into consideration instead of all possible values. This enables us to achieve significantly lower data complexities for our statistical integral distinguisher as compared to those of traditional integral distinguisher. As an illustration, we successfully attack the full-round Skipjack-BABABABA for the first time, which is the variant of NSA's Skipjack block cipher.

High-quality elliptical polycrystalline Fe3O4 nanorings (NRs) with continuously tunable size have been synthesized in large amounts via a rapid microwave-assisted hydrothermal approach. The surface-protected glucose reducing/etching/Ostwald ripening mechanism is responsible for the formation of NRs. Ring size can be modulated by selecting iron glycolate nanosheets with various sizes as precursors. The size-dependent magnetic behavior of the NRs was observed. Our research gives insights into the understanding of the microwave absorption mechanism of elliptical Fe3O4 NRs. Owing to their large specific surface area, shape anisotropy, and closed ring-like configuration, elliptical polycrystalline Fe3O4 NRs exhibited significantly enhanced microwave absorption performance compared with Fe3O4 circular NRs, nanosheets, microspheres, nanospindles, and nanotubes. An optimal reflection loss value of -41.59 dB is achieved at 5.84 GHz and R(L) values (≤-20 dB) are observed at 3.2-10.4 GHz. Some new mechanisms including multiple scattering, oscillation resonance absorption, microantenna radiation, and interference are also crucial to the enhanced absorption properties of NRs. These findings indicate that ring-like nanostructures are a promising structure for devising new and effective microwave absorbers.