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Phosphorus (P) stemming from biodiesel and/or lubricant oil additives is unavoidable in real diesel exhausts and deactivates gradually the Cu-SSZ-13 zeolite catalyst for ammonia-assisted selective catalytic NO

Emulsifying capacity (EC) of proteins is a benchmark standard widely used to evaluate the quality of protein ingredients in emulsion foods. EC (mL of oil emulsified per g of protein) is usually measured by a sudden drop in electrical resistance (phase transition) with the continuous addition of oil to a specific protein solution. However, little is known about electrochemical mechanisms behind this process because resistance, measured with an ohmmeter, is not sensitive enough to monitor changes in the concentration of protein electrolytes. Here, pea (PPI), myofibrillar (MPI), and whey (WPI) protein isolates were vigorously homogenized with oil at a series of oil/protein ratios to prepare emulsions with different final protein concentrations. The conductivity was closely monitored using a conductivity meter. A linear relationship was discovered between conductivity and the final protein concentrations. At higher oil fractions, the migration of proteins from the aqueous phase to the oil-water interface limited protein mobility, leading to a conductivity drop. EC was calculated from the regression lines; when the starting protein concentration was raised from 0.5% to 2.0%, the EC of PPI, MPI, and WPI decreased from 717, 782, 1339 to 219, 303, and 540 mL oil/g protein, respectively. The dependence of EC on the initial protein concentration and the sensitivity of conductivity to the depleting protein electrolytes suggest that protein concentration is an important factor to consider when determining EC for a given protein or comparing EC among different proteins. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: The simple and sensitive electrical conductivity test described in this paper allows for the accurate determination of emulsifying capacity of proteins. It may be adopted by the food industry to compare the emulsifying properties of different protein ingredients.

All-inorganic cesium lead halide perovskite nanostructures have become an outstanding luminous optoelectronic material for illumination and display. In this paper, we synthesized monodispersed colloidal single- and mixed-halide CsPbX3 (X = Cl, Br, I) nanocrystals with various morphologies and brightly luminescent properties. By varying the amount of PbX2 (X = Cl, Br, I), the prepared CsPbX3 nanocrystals possess high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY, about 70%), narrow full width at half-maximum (FWHM) (4–17 nm), tunable band gap (407–680 nm), and highly strong photostability. In addition, it is found that the PL decay lifetime of CsPbX3 nanocrystals ranged from 1 to 6 ns, and their PL mechanism was studied thoroughly. These corresponding results demonstrate that all-inorganic colloidal CsPbX3 perovskite nanocrystals are expected to have a promising application in the field of optoelectronic material.

Phenolic compounds are commonly incorporated into muscle foods to inhibit lipid oxidation and modify product flavor. Those that are present in or extracted from plant sources (seeds, leaves, and stems) known as "phytophenols" are of particular importance in the current meat industry due to natural origins, diversity, and safety record. Apart from these primary roles as antioxidants and flavorings, phytophenols are now recognized to be chemically reactive with a variety of food constituents, including proteins. In processed muscle foods, where the structure-forming ability is critical to a product's texture-related quality attributes and palatability, the functional properties of proteins, especially gelation and emulsification, play an essential role. A vast amount of recent studies has been devoted to protein-phenol interactions to investigate the impact on meat product texture and flavor. Considerable efforts have been made to elucidate the specific roles of phytophenol interaction with "myoproteins" (i.e., muscle-derived proteins) probing the structure-forming process in cooked meat products. The present review provides an insight into the actions of phytophenols in modifying and interacting with muscle proteins with an emphasis on the reaction mechanisms, detection methods, protein functionality, and implications for structural characteristics and textural properties of muscle foods.

Catalysts : open access journal 11(1), 52 (2021). doi:10.3390/catal11010052 special issue: "Special Issue "Selective Catalytic Reduction : From Basic Science to deNOx Applications" / Dr. Feng Gao, Special Issue Editors: Dr. Feng Gao, Dr. Todd J. Toops", Published by MDPI, Basel

Collectives are a fundamental part of HPC applications and their optimization has undergone decades of study. In recent years collectives have been accelerated with in-network hardware support, initially in the NIC, but recently also in the switch. This support is limited, however, to a very small set of scalar operations. In this work, we first propose that these collectives be extended to operations on composite data types such as matrices. We then demonstrate how these high-level collectives can be supported in an FPGA-based switch. In this paper, we propose a reconfigurable compute-in-the-network FPGA assistant, FPin, to implement high-level collectives in MPI. To maintain streaming packet processing while retaining reuse-based compute-intensive processing we propose a bulk-streaming message passing interface along with a methodology to tune communication-computation overlap. As a proof of concept, we evaluate the efficiency of the FPGA assistant with the ubiquitous distributed matrix multiply kernel, PGEMM. Experimental results show that PGEMM accelerated with high-level collective support can achieve, on average, 2.4× and 1.8× speedups on an FPGA cluster compared to the state-of-the-art COSMA algorithm on Stampede2 Skylake for float and complex float data types, respectively.

MPI collective operations can often be performance killers in HPC applications; we seek to solve this bottleneck by offloading them to reconfigurable hardware within the switch itself, rather than, e.g., the NIC. We have designed a hardware accelerator MPI-FPGA to implement six MPI collectives in the network. Preliminary results show that MPI-FPGA achieves on average 3.9× speedup over conventional clusters in the most likely scenarios. Essential to this work is providing support for sub-communicator collectives. We introduce a novel mechanism that enables the hardware to support a large number of communicators of arbitrary shape, and that is scalable to very large systems. We show how communicator support can be integrated easily into an in-switch hardware accelerator to implement MPI communicators and so enable full offload of MPI collectives. While this mechanism is universally applicable, we implement it in an FPGA cluster; FPGAs provide the ability to couple communication and computation and so are an ideal testbed and have a number of other architectural benefits. MPI-FPGA is fully integrated into MPICH and so transparently usable by MPI annlications.

The COVID-19 outbreak is a global crisis that has placed small and medium enterprises (SMEs) under huge pressure to survive, requiring them to respond effectively to the crisis. SMEs have adopted various digital technologies to cope with this crisis. Using a data set from a survey with 518 Chinese SMEs, the study examines the relationship between SMEs’ digitalization and their public crisis responses. The empirical results show that digitalization has enabled SMEs to respond effectively to the public crisis by making use of their dynamic capabilities. In addition, digitalization can help improve SMEs’ performance. We propose a theoretical framework of digitalization and crisis responses for SMEs and present three avenues for future research.

Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) are fundamental to many real-world scientific computing applications and so their optimization has undergone decades of study. Algebraic multigrid (AMG) is one of the most well-known solvers, being widely adopted in High Performance Computing (HPC) due to its good scalability. Acceleration of AMG is known to be very challenging, due to the following reasons: (1) irregular computation patterns, (2) random memory access, and (3) a large number of kernels with various computation types. To the best of our knowledge, there is no prior work on FPGA-based acceleration of AMG. To tackle these challenges, we propose an efficient FPGA-based reconfigurable framework, called FP-AMG, for high-performance AMG calculation. In order to obtain full pipeline utilization, we propose a novel and scalable architecture that can be reused for all kernels in AMG. Given that AMG is strictly memory-bound, we propose algorithmic and architectural optimizations to ensure nearly ideal use of memory bandwidth. The efficiency of FP-AMG is evaluated with six well-known benchmarks on two FPGA devices: one with and one without high bandwidth memory (HBM). The experimental results are compared with a highly optimized Intel Xeon E5-2680-V4 implementation of the state-of-the-art HYPRE library. Our experiments show that FP-AMG can achieve average speedups of $ 2.5\times$ and $ 6.6\times$, for FPGAs without and with HBM, respectively.

All-inorganic cesium lead halide perovskite nanostructure CsPbBr3 quantum dots have brought extensive attention in photoelectric applications. In this paper, CsPbBr3 quantum dots were synthesized with the diameter ranges from 8.7 to 11.8 nm by adjusting reaction temperature from 140 to 180 °C. In addition, for the monodisperse CsPbBr3 nanocrystals, it was found that radiative lifetime exists between 5 and 20 ns and PL decay lifetimes ranges from 4 to 11 ns, and their PL mechanism was studied thoroughly.

The replicas with resolution doubling have been fabricated by capillary force lithography. We studied several masters with characteristic sizes range from micron to submicron. Replicas with resolution doubling fabricated by a DVD master were demonstrated and discussed in detail. The fabricated replicas demonstrated an average period of ~370 nm, which is half period of the DVD master. This method breaks the rule of one-to-one replication. The key factor to fabricate a replica with resolution doubling is to utilize a thin film with the thickness between 50 nm and 100 nm for the DVD master. Therefore, it seems to be no threshold for anyone to apply this method. Meanwhile it exhibits excellent reproducibility and stability.

Currently, the reversible logic circuit is a popular research topic in the field of information processing as it is a most effective approach to minimize power consumption, which can achieve the one-to-one mapping function to identify the input signals from its corresponding output signals. In this letter, we propose and experimentally demonstrate an optical Feynman gate for reversible logic operation using silicon micro-ring resonators (MRRs). Two electrical input signals (logic operands) are applied across the micro-heaters above MRRs to determine the switching states of MRRs, and the reversible logic operation results are directed to the output ports in the form of light, respectively. For proof of concept, the thermo-optic modulation scheme is used to achieve MRR’s optical switching function. At last, a Feynman gate for reversible logic operation with the speed of 10 kbps is demonstrated successfully.

In this paper, we propose a reconfigurable electro-optic logic circuit, which can perform any combinatorial logic operations using a microring resonator (MRR)-based optical switching array. The operands are represented by electrical signals, which are applied to the corresponding MRRs to control their switching status. The operation results are directed to the output port in the form of light. For proof of concept, the circuit consisting of four thermooptic MRR-based optical switches is fabricated on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate using the commercial complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication process. Finally, several logic operations of four operands with the operation speed of 10 kb/s are demonstrated successfully.

Composite coatings of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP)-polyaniline (PANI) were prepared on 304 stainless steel (SS) for corrosion protection application by one-step electrodeposition. The composition and structure of the coatings were obtained by Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV–vis spectrum, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The electropolymerization rate of aniline is decreased and large aggregation of polyaniline particles can be significantly inhibited in the presence of PVP. It is suggested that 1.0 wt% PVP-PANI coating provides enhanced corrosion protection for 304 SS in 1 M H2SO4 solution. The interaction between PANI and PVP favors the formation of the compact structure and consequent high corrosion performance.

The effect of glucose oxidase (GOx) catalytic oxidation on the efficacy of gallic acid (GA) to modify the chemical structure and gelling behavior of myofibrillar protein (MP) was investigated. In contrast to non-oxidized MP samples where GA induced very little changes, GA (0, 6, 30, and 60 µmol/g MP) under GOx treatment promoted sulfhydryl and amine loss (up to 58% and 49%, respectively). The attenuation of intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence in the GA/GOx-treated MP corroborated the finding. The gelling capacity of MP, corresponding to disulfide and non-disulfide bond formation in protein aggregates, was markedly enhanced by 60 µmol GA under GOx, up to 86% in gel storage modulus G' and 53% in gel strength. The GOx-aided GA modification of MP could be a potential ingredient strategy in meat processing to promote textural attributes of cooked products.

l -Carnitine supplementation has been used to reduce obesity caused by high-fat diet, which is beneficial for lowering blood and hepatic lipid levels, and for ameliorating fatty liver. However, whether l -carnitine may affect irregular feeding-induced obesity and lipid metabolism disorder is still largely unknown. In the present study, we developed a time-delayed pattern of eating, and investigated the effects of l -carnitine on the irregular eating induced adiposity in mice. After an experimental period of 8 weeks with l -carnitine supplementation, l -carnitine significantly inhibited body weight increase and epididymal fat weight gain induced by the time-delayed feeding. In addition, l -carnitine administration decreased levels of serum alanine aminotransferase (GPT), glutamic oxalacetic transaminase (GOT) and triglyceride (TG), which were significantly elevated by the irregular feeding. Moreover, mice supplemented with l -carnitine did not display glucose intolerance-associated hallmarks, which were found in the irregular feeding-induced obesity. Furthermore, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis indicated that l -carnitine counteracted the negative alterations of lipid metabolic gene expression (fatty acid synthase, 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl coenzyme A reductase, cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase, carnitine/acylcarnitine translocase) in the liver and fat of mice caused by the irregular feeding. Therefore, our results suggest that the time-delayed pattern of eating can induce adiposity and lipid metabolic disorders, while l -carnitine supplementation might prevent these negative symptoms.

Circadian clock plays an essential role in orchestrating daily physiology, and its disruption can evoke metabolic diseases such as obesity. L-Carnitine can reduce blood lipid levels, and ameliorate fatty liver through regulating lipid metabolism. However, whether L-Carnitine administration may affect the disturbance of lipid metabolism and circadian rhythm of mice induced by prolonged circadian disruption is still unknown. Herein, we investigated the effects of L-Carnitine on conditions of circadian clock and lipid metabolism through a chronic jet-lag mice model which was developed by reversing 12 h light/12 h dark cycle every 4 days for a continuous 12 weeks. Results showed that L-Carnitine administration significantly decreased levels of serum glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase (GOT) and triglycerides (TG), which were remarkably elevated by chronic jet-lag. More importantly, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis indicated that L-Carnitine supplementation would effectively counteract the negative alterations in gene expression which related to lipid metabolism (Srebp1, Acaca, Fasn, and Scd1), metabolic regulator (mTOR) and circadian rhythm (Bmal1, Per1, Cry1 and Dec1) in the liver of mice subjected to the chronic jet-lag. As a conclusion, L-Carnitine was partly effective in preventing the disruption of circadian clock and lipid metabolic disorders induced by the chronic jet-lag.

With the increasing integration of photovoltaic, it is of much significance to study the capacity of grid-connected photovoltaic integration because peak load regulation capacity of power grid has become the bottleneck problem. This paper applies the Lagrangian Relaxation method of unit combination problem to find the photovoltaic integration capacity. With the consideration of peak load regulation, the optimal goal is to find the minimum system operating cost with wind power and photovoltaic introduced in the start-up mode model of unit combination. This method is applied to the analysis of future photovoltaic integration capacity of a solar resourceful province in north China according to the power structure and spinning reserve capacity, obtaining that the accommodating capacity is greater than planned. Some suggestions are put forward to magnify the integration capacity according to actual situation. These results provide reference to power supply plan, grid frame construction, operation and dispatch.

In China, the discrete type transformer has been widely used due to the increasing of underground substation and indoor substation, with constrains of the problem of land occupancy and urban environmental sustainability. This paper proposes a finite element method for studying the thermal model of the discrete type transformer. By solving finite element equations, the temperature field and flow field distribution of the discrete type transformer are established. A visual image of the simplified model is provided with the help of COMSOL software, to simulate the thermal model of the discrete type transformer. Then, the heat dissipation effect influenced by environment temperature and length of the pipeline is analyzed. According to thermal model, the discrete type transformer shows better performance in heat dissipation and practicability, especially when comparing with the traditional integrated transformer. This study has guiding influence on the design of transformer.

In the last decade, the demand-side perspective emerges and gains momentum in strategy, entrepreneurship, as well as technology innovation fields. However, empirical evidence that supports the dema...

Business model innovation (BMI) is critical for entrepreneurial firms, but the mechanism explaining how BMI impacts firm performance remains under-researched. Drawing on insights from the resource-...

We report an electro-optic photonic integrated circuit which can perform the exclusive (XOR) logic operation based on two silicon parallel-cascaded microring resonators (MRRs) fabricated on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. PIN diodes embedded around MRRs are employed to achieve the carrier injection modulation. Two electrical pulse sequences regarded as two operands of operations are applied to PIN diodes to modulate two MRRs through the free carrier dispersion effect. The final operation result of two operands is output at the Output port in the form of light. The scattering matrix method is employed to establish numerical model of the device, and numerical simulator SG-framework is used to simulate the electrical characteristics of the PIN diodes. XOR operation with the speed of 100Mbps is demonstrated successfully.

We demonstrate an all-optical tunable microfiber knot resonator (MFKR) by direct light-graphene interaction using external vertical incidence pump laser. The 1530 nm CW pump source is employed to irradiate the sample, which can achieve the performance modulation of MFKR including transmission loss, extinction ratio, and resonant wavelength by the saturable absorption, photo-thermal, and optical Kerr effects, respectively. Compared with the MFKR with only the bottom graphene film, the tunable ranges of transmission loss and extinction ratio are increased by 69 and 125 times, respectively, which can induce a remarkable amplitude tuning. The resonant wavelength of MFKR occurs a red-shift under the irradiation of the pump light, and the red-shift range can exceed one free spectral range (FSR), which means the resonant wavelength could be tuned in the full wavelength range of the transparent window of optical fiber. It is promising for the device to be applied as an all-optical modulator, tunable optical filter, etc.

Graphene nanosheets anchored with SnO2 nanoparticles with super-high surface area were synthesized via the hydrothermal self-assembly method. Investigations found that the SnO2 nanoparticles are uniformly decorated on the surface of graphene nanosheets and the heterocomposites successfully shift the absorption edge from the UV range for pure SnO2 nanoparticles to a visible range. Photocatalytic investigations show that the SnO2/graphene heterostructures possessing enhanced photocatalytic ability for the Rhodamine B degradation under visible light irradiation. The visible light photocatalytic performance can be attributed to the synergetic effect of graphene and dye molecules. The superior photocatalytic efficiency is ascribed to the large specific surface area of the heterocomposites and the superior electronic characteristics of graphene, which greatly restrain the self-radiative recombination of photogenerated electron–hole pairs.

Porous SnO2 nanostructures with nanochannels are synthesized through anodic oxidation of tin foils in oxalic acid solution. The effect of varying the applied potentials on the morphologies and photocatalytic activities of the porous channel-like SnO2 are investigated. The enhancement of photocatalytic efficiency is exhibited with increasing the pore diameter and the complete removal of MO molecules is possible in 120 min under the irradiation. Photocatalytic efficiency of the porous channel-like SnO2 nanostructure for the photo-reduction of MO pollutants is much faster than that of simple SnO2 nanoparticles, which mainly attribute to the efficient anti-recombination of photogenerated electron–hole pairs for the introducing of porous nanochannel-like nanostructures. The structure would significantly extend its application not only in waste water remediation but also in other fields, such as supercapacitors and gas sensors.

Terminal erythroid differentiation starts from morphologically recognizable proerythroblasts that proliferate and differentiate to generate red cells. Although this process has been extensively studied in mice, its characterization in humans is limited. By examining the dynamic changes of expression of membrane proteins during in vitro human terminal erythroid differentiation, we identified band 3 and α4 integrin as optimal surface markers for isolating 5 morphologically distinct populations at successive developmental stages. Functional analysis revealed that these purified cell populations have distinct mitotic capacity. Use of band 3 and α4 integrin enabled us to isolate erythroblasts at specific developmental stages from primary human bone marrow. The ratio of erythroblasts at successive stages followed the predicted 1:2:4:8:16 pattern. In contrast, bone marrows from myelodysplastic syndrome patients exhibited altered terminal erythroid differentiation profiles. Thus, our findings not only provide new insights into the genesis of the red cell membrane during human terminal erythroid differentiation but also offer a means of isolating and quantifying each developmental stage during terminal erythropoiesis in vivo. Our findings should facilitate a comprehensive cellular and molecular characterization of each specific developmental stage of human erythroblasts and should provide a powerful means of identifying stage-specific defects in diseases associated with pathological erythropoiesis.