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A five year old girl SP † sp was admitted to the department of Ophthalmology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Jilin, P.R. China, in November 2019, with a history of repeated episodes of redness and itching for more than two months in both her eyes. No lice and recurrence was found after one week of follow up.{Figure 1} Hence, careful ocular examination should be done in cases with ocular itching and redness, to rule out phthiriasis palpebrarum, which is often misdiagnosed as allergic blepharoconjunctivitis. On further examination, lice infestation was not found in other hair-bearing skins, such as the eyebrows and the scalp hairs. [Extracted from the article]

LiNi0.8Co0.1Mn0.1O2 (NCM811) cathode material is prized in the electric vehicles (EVs) industry for its high capacity and voltage during operation. However, the high residual alkali content and inferior ionic conductivity of Ni‑rich cathode materials are the intractable obstacles to the large-scale commercial application for a long time. Herein, a feasible Nb2O5 coating strategy is proposed to eliminate residual alkali along with constructing high Li+ conductive coating layer on NCM811 cathode materials surface. Impressively, 0.3% Nb2O5‑coated NCM811 cathode exhibits superior rate capability (146.4 mA h g−1@400 mA g−1) and remarkable rate cyclic stability (188.5 mA h g−1 after 100 cycles with capacity retention of 94.8%). On the one hand, a small quantity of Nb2O5 coating on NCM811 surface can react with surface residual alkali to promote the transformation of low electronic conductivity surface residual alkali into the Li+ conductor of LiNbO3 coating layer, enhancing Li+ de-intercalation kinetics and rate performance. On the other hand, excessive Nb2O5 coating may introduce Nb5+ into the lattice of NCM811, acting as pivotal components within the Li+ layer, which effectively suppresses the H2 ↔ H3 phase transition, contributing to long-term cyclic stability. This work paves a new path for the rational design and facile coating of Ni-rich oxide cathode materials with reinforced structure stability and boosted rate capability in high‑energy‑density lithium-ion batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reservoir optimal operation (ROO) has always been a hot issue in the field of water resources management. Analysis of the relationship of optimal control water level and inflow is conducive to understanding and solving ROO under deterministic inflow conditions. The current research uses a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) as a tool to effectively model complex systems and then extracts systematic relationship diagrams from the dataset. A new fuzzy cognitive map with offset (FCM-O) is proposed to overcome the causal inference error caused by non-linear mapping of the activation function in a traditional FCM. With the application of inferring the causal relationship between the optimal control water level and inflow of ROO for the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR), the experimental results show that, compared with FCM in the min data error, FCM-O reduces 11.11% and 7.14% in the training and the testing, respectively. Also, the experimental results of FCM-O are more reasonable than those of FCM. Finally, the following conclusions about the causal inference of optimal control water level and inflow in ROO for TGR are drawn: (1) The optimal control water level in September, October and November needs to be raised as much as possible to raise the water head of power generation, which is mainly affected by the constraints of the maximum operating water level of the reservoir rather than inflow; (2) the optimal control water level in January, February and March is positively affected by the inflow of the adjacent months; (3) the optimal control water level in April is due to the approaching flood season. In order to prevent water discarding, the water level is low and the optimum operation space is small. All of those shows that FCM-O is more competent than FCM in the causal relationship between optimal control water level and inflow in ROO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TiNb2O7 (TNO) has been regarded as a promising anode material for high-power lithium–ion batteries due to its high theoretical capacity and work voltage (387.6 mA h g−1, 1.6 V vs. Li+/Li). Herein, a series of microspherical TNO anode materials are synthesized by a facile solvothermal method, and the effect of solvothermal time on the microstructure and electrochemical performance is investigated. Specifically, when the solvothermal time is 12 h, the TNO microsphere (TNO-12) exhibits higher specific surface area and more reasonable pore size distribution. As a result, TNO-12 anode delivers a high reversible discharge capacity of 299.87 mA h g−1 with a superior initial coulombic efficiency above 98.5%, excellent cycling capacity retention of 80.15% after 100 cycles at 0.5 C (150 mA g−1), and good rate performance at 0.1–2 C. Most importantly, the full cell constructed with TNO anode and commercial oxide cathode (LiNi0.6Mn0.4O2/LiMn2O4 with a mass ratio of 85: 15) exhibits excellent cycling stability at high current densities (79.14% after 100 cycles at 0.5 C). This study optimizes the synthesis process for high-performance microspherical TNOs, providing new insights for the next generation of commercial anodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) has been widely used as an alternative anodic material for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to its ultrahigh capacity retention and long cycle lifespan. However, the restriction of lithium insertion, intrinsically poor electronic conductivity, and sluggish lithium ionic kinetics of bulk TiO 2 hinder their specific capacity and rate performance. Herein, LiTiO 2 nanoparticles (NPs) are synthesized via a facile ball milling method by the reaction of anatase TiO 2 with LiH. The as-prepared LiTiO 2 NPs have strong structural stability and a "zero strain" effect during the repeated intercalation/deintercalation, even at low potential. As anodic materials for LIBs, LiTiO 2 NPs exhibit a superior rate performance of ∼100 mA h g -1 at 10C (3350 mA g -1 ) with a capacity retention of 100% after 1000 cycles, which is 5 times higher than that of the original commercial anatase TiO 2 powder. The higher specific capacity of LiTiO 2 NPs is attributed to the increased conversion of Ti 3+ to Ti 2+ on the porous surface of LiTiO 2 NPs, which provides a more capacitive contribution. This study not only provides a new fabrication approach toward Ti-based anodes for ultrafast LIBs but also underscores the potential importance of embedding lithium into transition metal oxides as a strategy for boosting their electrochemical performance.

The integration of Li 2 S 6 within a poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)-based polymer electrolyte is demonstrated to improve the polymer electrolyte's ionic conductivity because the strong interplay between O 2- (PEO) and Li + from Li 2 S 6 reduces the crystalline volume within the PEO. The Li/electrolyte interface is stabilized by the in situ formation of an ultra-thin Li 2 S/Li 2 S 2 layer via the reaction between Li 2 S 6 and lithium metal, which increases the ionic transport at the interface and suppresses lithium dendrite growth. A symmetric Li/Li cell with the Li 2 S 6 -integrated composite electrolyte has excellent cyclability and a high critical current density of 0.9 mA cm -2 at 40 °C. Impressive electrochemical performance is demonstrated with all-solid-state Li/LiFePO 4 and high-voltage Li/LiNi 0.8 Mn 0.1 Co 0.1 O 2 cells at 40 °C., (© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Selenium-sulfur solid solutions (Se 1- x S x ) are considered to be a new class of promising cathodic materials for high-performance rechargeable lithium batteries owing to their superior electric conductivity than S and higher theoretical specific capacity than Se. In this work, high-performance Li-Se 1- x S x batteries employed freestanding cathodes by encapsulating Se 1- x S x in a N-doped carbon framework with three-dimensional (3D) interconnected porous structure (NC@SWCNTs) are proposed. Se 1- x S x is uniformly dispersed in 3D porous carbon matrix with the assistance of supercritical CO 2 (SC-CO 2 ) technique. Impressively, NC@SWCNTs host not only provides spatial confinement for Se 1- x S x and efficient physical/chemical adsorption of intermediates, but also offers a highly conductive framework to facilitate ion/electron transport. More importantly, the Se/S ratio of Se 1- x S x plays an important role on the electrochemical performance of Li- Se 1- x S x batteries. Benefiting from the rationally designed structure and chemical composition, NC@SWCNTs@Se 0.2 S 0.8 cathode exhibits excellent cyclic stability (632 mA h g-1 at 200 cycle at 0.2 A g -1 ) and superior rate capability (415 mA h g -1 at 2.0 A g -1 ) in carbonate-based electrolyte. This novel NC@SWCNTs@Se 0.2 S 0.8 cathode not only introduces a new strategy to design high-performance cathodes, but also provides a new approach to fabricate freestanding cathodes towards practical applications of high-energy-density rechargeable batteries., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Lu, Fang, Wang, Xiao, kumar, Gan, He, Huang, Zhang and Xia.)