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Manganese (Mn) extraction from iron-rich pyrolusite ore with cheap sulphur dioxide is considered to be the most promising method with advantages of rapid leaching rate and high leaching efficiency. Nevertheless, co-dissolution of iron (Fe) with manganese has limited the development of its commercial practice. In this work, the separation kinetics and mechanism were investigated during the leaching process of high-iron pyrolusite ore in order to achieve high separation efficiency of manganese from iron. Firstly, the thermochemical analysis has been carried out to determine the feasibility of Mn/Fe separation. Secondly, the leaching behaviour and relative extraction of manganese and iron in the presence of $$\hbox {SO}_{2}$$ gas/aqueous $$\hbox {SO}_{2}$$ were investigated. Then, the effects of different variables containing reaction temperature, $$\hbox {SO}_{2}$$ concentration and sulphuric acid concentration on the separation efficiency were studied systematically. Lastly, the leaching kinetics was analysed and the separation mechanism was put forward. The results show that the iron leaching occurs in two stages. The separation efficiency depends on both the content of poor-crystalline iron oxide in the raw ore and the leaching conditions. In the first stage, the reactant diffusion was the rate-limiting step for the dissolution of both manganese and poor-crystalline iron oxide with activation energy of 10.48 kJ/mol and 20.18 kJ/mol, respectively. The iron dissolution of well-crystalline iron was controlled by reactant diffusion (25– $$45\,^{\circ }\hbox {C}$$ ) and chemical reaction (45– $$65\,^{\circ }\hbox {C}$$ ) with activation energy of 18.14 kJ/mol and 41.73 kJ/mol, respectively.

Incisional double-eyelid blepharoplasty is widely applied because of its extensive indications and robust results. The orbicularis-levator fixation method is an incisional approach that provides stronger adhesion than traditional techniques. However, there remains the risk of postoperative relapse or suture spitting out. The authors introduced a modified technique for supratarsal crease formation. When necessary soft tissue removal was completed, the orbicularis oculi muscle was anchored on the tarsus. Then the muscle edges near canthus were reattached to prevent muscle retraction. For skin closure, the skin-pretarsal fascia-skin maneuver was adopted to enhance cicatricial adhesion. Six hundred and fifty-nine patients underwent double eyelidplasty by the same surgeon using this modified technique. Patients were followed up from 2 to 38 months, with a mean period of 15 months. Short-term complications included mild edema, bruising or reddish change of the upper eyelid, yet all gradually relieved in 6–8 weeks. Fourteen cases of palpebral fold asymmetry and nine cases of unsatisfactory fold formation near the inner canthus were encountered, and all the defects had been well improved by revision surgeries. Ninety-five percent of the patients were satisfied with the long-term outcomes, which showed as natural and well-defined palpebral folds without scar hypertrophy, suture spitting out or crease depression. Besides, no supratarsal crease drooping or disappearing was observed 3 years postoperatively. The authors introduced an orbicularis-tarsus fixation method for upper eyelid blepharoplasty. It is a reliable technique that enables high feasibility and long-lasting result, and with lower risk of suture spitting out. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .

We make future projections of seasonal precipitation characteristics in southern Florida using a statistical downscaling approach based on Self Organized Maps. Our approach is applied separately to each three-month season: September–November; December–February; March–May; and June–August. We make use of 19 different simulations from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project, phase 5 (CMIP5) and generate an ensemble of 1500 independent daily precipitation surrogates for each model simulation, yielding a grand ensemble of 28,500 total realizations for each season. The center and moments (25%ile and 75%ile) of this distribution are used to characterize most likely scenarios and their associated uncertainties. This approach is applied to 30-year windows of daily mean precipitation for both the CMIP5 historical simulations (1976–2005) and the CMIP5 future (RCP 4.5) projections. For the latter case, we examine both the “near future” (2021–2050) and “far future” (2071–2100) periods for three scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5).

A lithium ion adsorbent was prepared using low-grade pyrolusite by the following steps: (1) Manganese rich material (MRM) with higher Mn content was prepared by pyrolusite–NaOH molten salt roasting and washing processes to remove impurities in pyrolusite, such as silicon, iron, aluminum, etc. (2) the lithium ion adsorbent was obtained by extraction of lithium with hydrochloric acid from the precursor, which was synthesized via the solid-phase reaction between MRM and LiOH. Compositions of low-grade pyrolusite, MRM, precursor and lithium ion adsorbent were characterized by powder x-ray diffraction and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Adsorption properties and selectivity of the adsorbent are also discussed. The results showed that in the NaOH roasting process, manganese was transformed to Na0.7MnO2.05 and silicon, iron, and aluminum became hydrosoluble Na2SiO3, Na2Al5.2O9.4 and Na3FeO3, respectively. The manganese content in MRM increased from 24.6% to 50% in the conditions of a 600°C 2 h roasting temperature, and the NaOH–pyrolusite mass ratio was 1.5, after the washing process. The Li1.27Mn1.73O4 precursor was synthesized at 750°C with good crystallization yielding a Li/Mn molar ratio of 3 via the LiOH and MRM roasting process. The value of Li+ extraction from the Li1.27Mn1.73O4 precursor reached a maximum in the condition of 0.3 mol/L HCl solution at 40°C for 6 h. Before and after adsorption of Li+, the spinel structure of the adsorbent was not changed. The Li+ adsorption capacity of the obtained adsorbent reached 36.5 mg/g in a LiOH solution, which contained 2 g/L Li+ and remained at 34–35 mg/g after several cycles. The lithium ion adsorbent had better Li+ selectivity in the synthetic salt-lake brine solution, and the separation coefficients of Li+ to Na+ and K+ reached 44.15 and 33.56, respectively.

LiBH4 is of particular interest as one of the most promising materials for solid-state hydrogen storage. Herein, LiBH4 is confined into a novel two-dimensional layered Ti3C2 MXene through a facile impregnation method for the first time to improve its hydrogen storage performance. The initial desorption temperature of LiBH4 is significantly reduced, and the de-/rehydrogenation kinetics are remarkably enhanced. It is found that the initial desorption temperature of LiBH4@2Ti3C2 hybrid decreases to 172.6 °C and releases 9.6 wt % hydrogen at 380 °C within 1 h, whereas pristine LiBH4 only releases 3.2 wt % hydrogen under identical conditions. More importantly, the dehydrogenated products can partially rehydrogenate at 300 °C and under 95 bar H2. The nanoconfined effect caused by unique layered structure of Ti3C2 can hinder the particles growth and agglomeration of LiBH4. Meanwhile, Ti3C2 could possess superior effect to destabilize LiBH4. The synergetic effect of destabilization and nanoconfinement contributes...

Using an ensemble of nine El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) reconstructed proxies and volcano eruption proxies for the past 1500 years, this study shows that a significant La Nina state emerges in the second year (year (2) hereafter) after large tropical volcanic eruptions. The reasons for the development of La Nina are investigated using the Community Earth System Model (CESM). In the volcanic eruption experiment (Vol), a robust La Nina signal occurs in year (2), resembling the proxy records. The eastward positioning of the western North Pacific anomalous anticyclone (WNPAC) in Vol plays a critical role in the advanced decay of year (2) warming and the strong intensification of cooling in the equatorial eastern Pacific. The enhanced easterlies located on the southern edge of the WNPAC can stimulate consecutive oceanic upwelling Kelvin waves, shallowing the thermocline in the eastern Pacific, thereby resulting in a greater cooling rate by the enhanced thermocline feedback and cold zonal advection. Over the equatorial eastern Pacific, the reduced shortwave radiation contributes to the advanced decay of warming, while the upward latent heat flux augments the strong intensification of the cooling. Essentially, the eastward positioning of the WNPAC is a result of the volcanic forcing. The volcanic effect cools the maritime continent more than its adjacent oceans, thus pushing convective anomalies eastward during year (1). This induces vertical thermal advection and upward surface latent heat flux, thereby suppressing the development of warm Sea Surface Temperature over the central-western Pacific and causing the eastward positioning of the WNPAC in Vol.

As a byproduct in the pyrolusite leaching process with SO2, the existence of MnS2O6 will decrease the purity of MnSO4 produced by leaching. For obtaining MnSO4 with satisfactory quality, it is beneficial to decrease the formation of MnS2O6 during the leaching process. A study on the formation characteristics of dithionate and sulfate formed in pyrolusite leaching process with SO2 was carried out. The results indicated that $${\text{S}}_{ 2} {\text{O}}_{ 6}^{ 2- }$$ formation and mole ratio of $${{{\text{S}}_{ 2} {\text{O}}_{ 6}^{ 2- } } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{{\text{S}}_{ 2} {\text{O}}_{ 6}^{ 2- } } {{\text{SO}}_{ 4}^{ 2- } }}} \right. \kern-0pt} {{\text{SO}}_{ 4}^{ 2- } }}$$ increased with increasing initial pH, liquid–solid ratio and SO2 concentration, but was independent of particle size and stirring speed when particle size was less than 200 μm and stirring speed exceeded 400 rpm. The suitable conditions for obtaining MnSO4 product was 45 C and 0.4 mol L−1 H+ concentration with $${\text{S}}_{ 2} {\text{O}}_{ 6}^{ 2- }$$ concentration and $${\text{S}}_{ 2} {\text{O}}_{ 6}^{ 2- } /{\text{SO}}_{ 4}^{ 2- }$$ ratio were lower than 0.7 g L−1 and 0.02. Besides, the molar ratio of $${\text{S}}_{ 2} {\text{O}}_{ 6}^{ 2- }$$ to $${\text{SO}}_{ 4}^{ 2- }$$ (R) was put forward as a correlated parameter to evaluate the formation of reaction products, whose kinetics was analyzed in depth. The kinetic equation was related to reaction temperature, H+ and SO2 concentration, and the calculated reaction orders for SO2 concentration and initial H+ were 0.27 and − 0.17, the activation energy was 9696 J mol−1.

Gold nanoclusters have attracted widespread attention because of their unique optical and physical properties. However, traditional synthesis methods are complicated and require additional reducing agents, while the yield is often very low. Such resource and time-consuming synthesis processes limit their further application. Herein, a rapid sonochemical route is used to synthesize fluorescent Au nanoclusters in large quantities using glutathione (GSH) both as a capping and reducing agent. These Au nanoclusters are synthesized quickly (∼40 min) due to the presence of ultrasonic waves, and show orange red photoluminescence (Em = 598 nm), small size (∼2 nm) and good dispersion in aqueous solution. Moreover, GSH, as a protecting agent on the surface of resultant Au nanoclusters, has many functional groups including carboxyl and amino groups because of which the nanoclusters show high photo-, storage-, metal- and pH-stability. A stable Au nanoclusters-based nano-sensor is designed for highly sensitive and selective label-free detection of Cu2+ with a low limit of detection of 7 ppb (based on S/N = 3). The fluorescent probe can be used in versatile nanothermometry devices, because their photoluminescence intensity correlates strongly with temperature and varies considerably over a wide temperature range (20–80 °C). Therefore, the novel fluorescent sensing probe has great application prospects in Cu2+ detection and temperature sensing.

In this paper, a type of Ni metal and Ni3ZnC0.7 alloy nanoparticle catalyst encapsulated in N-doped graphite (NiZn@N-G-900), obtained by derivatization of metal–organic frameworks (MOF), was applied to activate peroxymonosulfate (PMS) to degrade Bisphenol A (BPA) in water. Characterizations and DFT calculations demonstrated that the encapsulation of graphite layer or N-doped graphite layer can not only adjust the surface charge distribution of the catalysts, but also improve the charge transfer ability between the catalyst and the adsorbate. These modifications were beneficial for the adsorption and activation of PMS. Based on the results of the modified radicals scavenging experiments and EPR, a typical 1O2 dominated non-radical system was proposed. Due to the characteristics of 1O2, the NiZn@N-G-900/PMS system had strong inorganic anion resistance, high selectivity and satisfactory practical application. Moreover, two pathways of BPA degradation were put forward.

In order to calculate the failure probability of complex structures such as a 2.5D/SiC composites turbine blade and improve the structure safety, a new adaptive model of Response Surface (RS) analysis has been developed in this paper, which can improve the computational efficiency of structural failure problem while ensure the accuracy. The Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) theory was used to establish the RS and reconstruct the performance function of structure. And, an Adaptive Latin hypercube Sampling (ALHS) strategy was adopted in the process of establishing and correcting the RS. Finally the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo(DSMC)was utilized to calculate the failure probability of the performance function replacing the complex structure. Two numerical examples were calculated to validate the accuracy and computational efficiency of the proposed method. Additionally the finite element stress analysis results of 2.5D C/SiC composite turbine blade were used to structural reliability analysis by the proposed method. The approach in this paper provides a new way to evaluate the risk of the complex structures.

A combined hot-injection and heat-up method was developed to synthesize monodisperse and uniform CoMn2O4 quantum dots (CMO QDs). CMO QDs with average size of 2.0, 3.9, and 5.4 nm were selectively obtained at 80, 90, and 105 °C, respectively. The CMO QDs supported on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were employed as catalysts for the oxygen reduction/evolution reaction (ORR/OER) in alkaline solution to investigate their size-performance relationship. The results revealed that the amount of surface-adsorbed oxygen and the band gap energy, which affect the charge transfer in the oxygen electrocatalysis processes, strongly depend on the size of the CMO QDs. The CMO-3.9/CNT hybrid, consisting of CNT-supported CMO QDs of 3.9 nm size, possesses a moderate amount of surface-adsorbed oxygen, a lower band gap energy, and a larger charge carrier concentration, and exhibits the highest electrocatalytic activity among the hybrid materials investigated. Moreover, the CMO-3.9/CNT hybrid displays ORR and OER performances similar to those of the benchmark Pt/C and RuO2 catalysts, respectively, due to the strong carbon-oxide interactions and the high dispersion of CoMn2O4 QDs on the carbon substrate; this reveals the huge potential of the CMO-3.9/CNT hybrid as a bifunctional OER/ORR electrocatalyst. The present results highlight the importance of controlling the size of metal oxide nanodots in the design of active oxygen electrocatalysts based on spinel-type, nonprecious metal oxides.

In this study, novel macro porous Ni2+-imprinted chitosan foam adsorbents (F-IIP) were prepared using sodium bicarbonate and glycerine to obtain a porogen for adsorbing nickel ions from aqueous solutions. The use of the ion-imprinting technique for adsorbents preparation improved the nickel ion selectivity and adsorption capacity. We characterised the imprinted porous foam adsorbents in terms of the effects of the initial pH value, initial metal ion concentration, and contact time on the adsorption of nickel ions. The adsorption process was described best by Langmuir monolayer adsorption models, and the maximum adsorption capacity calculated from the Langmuir equation was 69.93mgg-1. The kinetic data could be fitted to a pseudo-second-order equation. Our analysis of selective adsorption demonstrated the excellent preference of the F-IIP foams for nickel ions compared with other coexisting metal ions. Furthermore, tests over five cycle runs suggested that the F-IIP foam adsorbents had good durability and efficiency.

The characteristics and causes of centennial-scale drought events over eastern China during the past 1500 years were explored based on simulations of the Community Earth System Model (CESM). The results show that centennial- scale drought events over eastern China occurred during the periods of 622–735 (Drought period 1, D1) and 1420–1516 (Drought period 2, D2) over the past 1500 years, which is comparable with climate proxy data. In D1, the drought center occurred in northern China and the Yangtze River valley; however, in southern China, precipitation was much more than usual. In D2, decreased precipitation was found across almost the whole region of eastern China. The direct cause of these two drought events was the weakened East Asian summer monsoon, and the specific process was closely linked to the air–sea interaction of the Indo-Pacific Ocean. In D1, regions of maximum cooling were observed over the western Pacific, which may have led to anomalous subsidence, weakening the Walker circulation, and reducing the northward transport of water vapor. Additionally, upward motion occurred over southern China, strengthening convection and increasing precipitation. In D2, owing to the decrease in the SST, subsidence dominated the North Indian Ocean, blocking the low-level cross-equatorial flow, enhancing the tropical westerly anomalies, and reducing the northward transport of moisture. Additionally, descending motion appeared in eastern China, subsequently decreasing the precipitation over the whole region of eastern China. The anomalous cooling of the Indo-Pacific Ocean SST may have been caused by the persistently low solar irradiation in D1; whereas, in D2, this characteristic may have been influenced not only by persistently low solar irradiation, but frequent volcanic eruptions too.

Summary Background A plump single eyelid with medial epicanthal fold is the morphological feature of the East Asian population. This study describes a practical technique that combines orbicularis oculi muscle resection-based epicanthoplasty and orbicularis-tarsus fixation double-eyelid plasty for cosmetic blepharoplasty and reports on surgical outcomes in a large number of Chinese patients. Methods For supratarsal crease formation, the soft tissue was removed in a conservative manner and the orbicularis oculi muscle was anchored on the tarsus to build a reliable attachment. To correct the epicanthal fold, a modified redraping technique was used for the design of skin incision, and most importantly, a triangular muscle block composed of the orbicularis oculi muscle was selectively removed to release the abnormal tension in the epicanthal fold. Results From January 2015 to February 2019, 475 patients underwent double-eyelid blepharoplasty combined with epicanthoplasty using this technique. The follow-up period ranged from 2 to 38 months, with a mean period of 16 months. Of these, 97% of the patients were satisfied with surgical outcomes, presenting well-defined palpebral folds and naturally improved inner canthus contour, with no conspicuous scar. The photographic analysis in 84 patients showed significant improvement in palpebral fissure proportion postoperatively. No supratarsal crease drooping or recurrence of the epicanthal fold was observed up to 38 months after the surgery. Conclusions This method is a safe and reliable technique to achieve an elongated and more balanced eye shape in Chinese patients, with minimal scarring and a low risk of postoperative complication in a long follow-up period.

Previous studies show that the evolution of global mean temperature forced by the total forcing is almost the same as the sum of those forced by individual forcing in the last 21 000 years as simulated in three independent climate models, CCSM3, FAMOUS and LOVECLIM. But how does the linearity of the climate response depend on the spatial and temporal scales quantitatively and in what regions the linear response tends to dominate remain unknown. Here, based on the TraCE-21ka climate simulation outputs, the spatial and temporal dependence of the linear response of temperature evolution in the Holocene is studied using correlation coefficient and a linear error index. The results show that the linear response of global mean temperature is strong on the orbital, millennial and centennial scales throughout the Holocene, but is poor on the decadal scale. The linear response differs significantly between the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH). In the NH, the linear response is strong on millennial scale, while in the SH the linear response is strong on orbital scale, such that the linear response of the global mean orbital variability is dominated by the SH response, but that of the global millennial variability seems dominated by the NH response. Furthermore, at the regional scales, the linear responses differ substantially between the orbital, millennial, centennial and decadal timescales. On the orbital scale, the linear response is dominant for most regions, even at the small area of about a mid-size country like Germany. On the millennial scale, the linear response is still strong in the NH over many regions, albeit weaker than on the orbital scale. However, the millennial variability shows relatively poor linear response over most regions in the SH. On the centennial and decadal timescales, the linear response is no longer significant in almost all the regions. The regions of strong linear response on the millennial scale are mostly consistent with those on the orbital scale, notably western Eurasian, North Africa, subtropical North Pacific, tropical Atlantic and Indian Ocean, because of a large signal-to-noise ratios over these regions. This finding can improve our understanding of the regional climate response to various climate forcings in the Holocene.

Mangano-manganic oxide can be prepared through thermal decomposition of manganese sulfate from the absorption or leaching solution, so desulfurization by pyrolusite or leaching pyrolusite with sulfur dioxide should be fully exploited for the recovery of manganese salt. However, upon preparing MnSO4 using above techniques, manganese dithionate is an inevitable by-product, which lowers the purity of the industrial raw material MnSO4 and exerts negative influences on pyrolysis technology. Information regarding thermal decomposition of solid-state manganese dithionate is scarce. To recycle manganese dithionate efficiently, pyrolysis mechanism and kinetics were systematically investigated by thermal decomposition method. The characteristics of thermal decomposition products were determined by thermogravimetric analysis techniques (TG), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Ion chromatography (IC). The experimental results revealed that both desulfurization and following dehydration of MnS2O6·H2O were a one-step process, and the desulfurization occurred at about 150°C lower than the dehydration at 230°C. As increasing pyrolysis temperature to 900°C, the manganese sulfate was firstly formed, and to 1100°C, Mangano-manganic oxide was obtained by losing sulfur oxides. Consequently, the kinetic parameters for each decomposition steps of manganese dithionate were determined by the Coasts and Redfern (CR) integral method. The as-obtained experimental and kinetic results may provide theoretical guides for recycling manganese dithionate.

A sensitive method for simultaneous determination of dithionate and sulfate using ion chromatography equipped with a suppressed conductivity detector was developed. The flow rate was 1.2 mL min–1, and the mobile phase contained KOH, which was gradient-generated by an automatic generator. The detection limits were 0.63 and 0.42 mg L–1 for dithionate and sulfate, respectively. The correlation coefficients of the calibration curves were greater than 0.997. The linearity ranges were 5–200 mg L–1, and the accuracies were in the range of 99.5–111%. The proposed method was rapid, accurate, and fully validated. Finally, the method was successfully applied to the analysis of the leaching liquid and slurry by SO2-leaching pyrolusite.

The adsorption of Ni(II) ions from aqueous solution by chitosan (CTS) and its triethylenetetramine derivative beads (CCTS) was investigated in a batch adsorption system. Chitosan beads were crosslinked with epichlorohydrin and then grafted with triethylenetetramine to obtain sorbents that are insoluble in aqueous acidic solution and improve adsorption capacity, respectively. Elemental analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy were used to analyze the structure and characteristics of chitosan and its derivative. It showed that the derivative of chitosan possessed good stability in acidic solution and achieved optimal adsorption capacity at pH higher than 4.5 and the max adsorption capacity of chitosan and chitosan derivate were 58.09 and 91.44 mg/L, respectively. Their adsorption processes could be best described by the pseudo second-order model, which suggested that the rate-limiting step may be the chemical adsorption rather than the mass transport. The experimental data of adsorption of Ni 2+ by chitosan derivate was fitted well by the Langmuir isotherm model with a high correlation coefficient (R 2 > 0.99), showing that monolayer adsorption took place on the surface of chitosan derivate absorbents, while the adsorption isotherm was well fitted by Freundlich for chitosan. Furthermore, the chitosan derivate exhibited good adsorption performance after regeneration for 5 cycles. At last, FTIR and XPS analysis showed that both the nitrogen and oxygen functional groups were involved in the adsorption of Ni 2+ .

MoS2 with expanded layers was synthesized and characterized as an anode material for lithium ion batteries in an ether-based electrolyte by cutting off the terminal discharge voltage at 1.0 V to prevent a MoS2 conversion reaction. The as-prepared MoS2 achieved 96% capacity retention even after 1400 cycles and showed good performance in a full cell with LiCoO2 as the counter electrode.

In this study, the role of AD 1258 Samalas mega volcanic eruption in the summer hydroclimate change over Europe and the corresponding mechanisms are investigated through multi-member ensemble climate simulation experiments based on the Community Earth System Model (CESM). The results show that the CESM simulations are consistent with the reconstructed Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and the historical records of European climate. Europe experiences significant summer cooling in the first three years after the Samalas mega volcanic eruption, peaking at &minus, 3.61 &deg, C, &minus, 4.02 &deg, C, and &minus, 3.21 &deg, C in year 1 over the whole Europe, Southern Europe, and Northern Europe, respectively. The summer surface air temperature (SAT, &deg, C) changes over the European continent are mainly due to the direct weakening of shortwave solar radiation induced by volcanic aerosol. The summer precipitation over the European continent shows an obvious dipole distribution characteristic of north-south reverse phase. The precipitation increases up to 0.42 mm/d in year 1 over Southern Europe, while it decreases by &minus, 0.28 mm/d in year 1 over Northern Europe, respectively. Both simulations and reconstructions show that the centers with the strongest increase in precipitation have always been located in the Balkans and Apennine peninsulas along the Mediterranean coast over Southern Europe, and the centers with the strongest precipitation reduction are mainly located in the British Isles and Scandinavia over northwestern Europe. The negative response of North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) with significant positive sea level pressure (SLP) anomaly in the north and negative SLP anomaly in the south is excited in summer. The low tropospheric wind anomaly caused by the negative phase of NAO in summer affects the water vapor transport to Europe, resulting in the distribution pattern of summer precipitation in Europe, which is drying in the north and wetting in the south. The knowledge gained from this study is crucial to better understand and predict the potential impacts of single mega volcanic eruption on the future summer hydroclimate change in Europe.

In this paper, a composite oxide catalyst consisting of NiO and ZnO was prepared by homogeneous precipitation method, which was used to activate peroxymonosulfate (PMS) to remove bisphenol A (BPA) in water. 95.26% BPA removal and 67.11% total organic carbon (TOC) removal were obtained under the optimum condition. Characterization and theoretical calculations (DFT) of the catalyst proved that electron rearrangement occurred in oxygen vacancy modified heterojunction catalysts. It resulted in the formation of acidic sites (NiO) and alkaline sites (oxygen vacancies) on the surface of the catalyst, thus promoting the adsorption and activation of PMS. According to the quenching experiments, a typical surface-bound radical reaction system was proposed. The reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the system were surface-bond SO4•−, surface-bond •OH and 1O2. Finally, the BPA degradation pathways and the activation mechanism of PMS were analyzed in detail.

In this study, the influences on persistent droughts over Eastern China from tropical volcanic eruptions with three categories of magnitudes, i.e., 25 Tg, 50 Tg, and 100 Tg, were investigated through three groups of volcanic sensitivity experiments based on the Community Earth System Model (CESM). The results showed that, the 25 Tg tropical volcanic eruptions are too weak to significantly influence the regional precipitation changes over Eastern China, while the 50 Tg tropical volcanic eruptions can strongly intensify droughts and prolong the drought conditions for about five years. Both the extension and intensification of the drought conditions induced by 100 Tg tropical volcanic eruption are the largest among the three sensitivity experiments. These drought conditions are mainly caused by the weakened East Asia Summer Monsoon (EASM), and their extension and intensification depend on the strength of the volcanic eruptions. The intensities of weakened EASMs after volcanic eruptions are associated with the distinct ocean&ndash, land thermal contrast after eruptions. The ocean&ndash, land thermal contrast is the largest after the 100 Tg tropical volcanic eruptions, while it is much weaker after the 25 Tg volcanic eruptions. The durations of drought extensions are determined by the recovery rates of the West Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH), which are associated with the magnitudes of the volcanic eruptions.

Normalization of clinical text involves linking different ways of talking about the same clinical concept to the same term in the standardized vocabulary. To date, very few annotated corpora for normalization have been available, and existing corpora so far have been limited in scope and only dealt with the normalization of diseases and disorders. In this paper, we describe the annotation methodology we developed in order to create a new manually annotated wide-coverage corpus for clinical concept normalization, the Medical Concept Normalization (MCN) corpus. In order to ensure wider coverage, we applied normalization to the text spans corresponding to the medical problems, treatments, and tests in the named entity corpus released for the fourth i2b2/VA shared task. In contrast to previous annotation efforts, we do not assign multiple concept labels to the named entities that do not map to a unique concept in the controlled vocabulary. Nor do we leave that named entity without a concept label. Instead, our normalization method that splits such named entities, resolving some of the core ambiguity issues. Lastly, we supply a sieve-based normalization baseline for MCN which combines MetaMap with multiple exact match components. The resulting corpus consists of 100 discharge summaries and provides normalization for the total of 10,919 concept mentions, using 3792 unique concepts from two controlled vocabularies. Our inter-annotator agreement is 67.69% pre-adjudication and 74.20% post-adjudication. Our sieve-based normalization baseline for MCN achieves 77% accuracy in cross-validation. We also detail the challenges of creating a normalization corpus, including the limitations deriving from both the mention span selection and the ambiguity and inconsistency within the current standardized terminologies. In order to facilitate the development of improved concept normalization methods, the MCN corpus will be publicly released to the research community in a shared task in 2019.

Gold nanoclusters have attracted widespread attention because of their unique optical and physical properties. However, traditional synthesis methods are complicated and require additional reducing agents, while the yield is often very low. Such resource and time-consuming synthesis processes limit their further application. Herein, a rapid sonochemical route is used to synthesize fluorescent Au nanoclusters in large quantities using glutathione (GSH) both as a capping and reducing agent. These Au nanoclusters are synthesized quickly (∼40 min) due to the presence of ultrasonic waves, and show orange red photoluminescence (Em = 598 nm), small size (∼2 nm) and good dispersion in aqueous solution. Moreover, GSH, as a protecting agent on the surface of resultant Au nanoclusters, has many functional groups including carboxyl and amino groups because of which the nanoclusters show high photo-, storage-, metal- and pH-stability. A stable Au nanoclusters-based nano-sensor is designed for highly sensitive and selective label-free detection of Cu2+ with a low limit of detection of 7 ppb (based on S/N = 3). The fluorescent probe can be used in versatile nanothermometry devices, because their photoluminescence intensity correlates strongly with temperature and varies considerably over a wide temperature range (20-80 °C). Therefore, the novel fluorescent sensing probe has great application prospects in Cu2+ detection and temperature sensing.

Normalization maps clinical terms in medical notes to concepts in standardized medical vocabularies. To complement the traditional lexical transformation based approach, we propose a hybrid normalization system which incorporates a deep learning model to capture semantic similarity between different surface expressions of the same concept. When evaluating our system against the mentions which may be normalized to existing concepts in the ShARe/CLEF eHealth 2013 dataset, our hybrid system achieves 90.6% in accuracy and outperforms a strong exact match + edit distance baseline by 2.6%. The results suggest the potential of the deep learning model to further improve the performance of normalization by mapping concept mentions to concepts using semantic similarity.

LiBH

Electrolytic manganese is conventionally produced through low-grade manganese ore leaching in SO2, with the combustion of high sulfur coal. Subsequently the coal ash and manganese slag, produced by the combustion of high sulfur coal and preparation of electrolytic manganese, can be used as raw ingredients for the preparation of sulphoaluminate cement. In order to realize the ‘coal-electricity-sulfur-manganese-building material’ system of complementary resource utilization, the conditions of material inflow and outflow in each process were determined using material flow analysis. The material flow models in each unit and process can be obtained by analyzed of material flow for new technology, and the input-output model could be obtained. Through the model, it is possible to obtain the quantity of all the input and output material in the condition of limiting the quantity of a substance. Taking one ton electrolytic manganese as a basis, the quantity of other input material and cements can be determined with the input-output model. The whole system had thusly achieved a cleaner production level. Therefore, the input-output model can be used for guidance in practical production.

Cerebral autoregulation is defined as the mechanism by which constant cerebral blood flow is maintained despite changes of arterial blood pressure, and arterial blood pressure represents the principle aspect of cerebral autoregulation. The impairment of cerebral autoregulation is reported to be involved in several diseases. However, the concept, mechanisms, and pathological dysfunction of cerebral autoregulation are beyond full comprehension. Nitric oxide control and sympathetic control are main contributors to cerebral autoregulation. Although impaired cerebral autoregulation after nitric oxide inhibition or sympathetic ganglia blockade is reported, managing the inhibition or blockade can have negative consequences and needs further exploration. Additionally, impaired cerebral autoregulation following subarachnoid hemorrhage and traumatic brain injury has been proven by several descriptive studies, although without corresponding explanations. As the most important mechanisms of cerebral autoregulation, the changes of nitric oxide and sympathetic stimulation play significant roles in these insults. Therefore, the in-depth researches of nitric oxide and sympathetic nerve in cerebral autoregulation may help to develop new therapeutic targets.

Asian summer monsoon (ASM) precipitation is the primary water resource for agriculture in many Asian countries that have experienced rapid economic growth in recent decades, thus implying the necessity for further investigations on both the internal variability of the ASM and the influence of external factors on the ASM. Using long-term high-resolution (0.5° × 0.5°) observed precipitation data, contrary to previous studies on inter-annual timescale, we showed that over the last 110 years, volcanic eruptions have influenced ASM variations on an inter-decadal timescale via teleconnections with the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). This relationship was also confirmed by Coupled Model Intercomparison Program Phase 5 (CMIP5) model simulations. During the active volcanic eruption periods (1901–1935 and 1963–1993), significantly lower ASM precipitation was observed compared with that during the inactive volcanic eruption period (1936–1962). We found that during active volcanic eruption periods, which correspond to a negative AMO state, there is an anomalously weakened Walker circulation over the tropical Pacific that transports less moisture to the ASM region and subsequently reduces ASM precipitation. This new finding may help improve decadal predictions of future changes in the ASM.

Participants in the 2012 i2b2 Shared-Task and Workshop on Challenges in Natural Language Processing for Clinical Data created a variety of systems for processing temporal relations in clinical records. The different ways of conceptualizing the shared-task Tracks reflects the complexity of temporal analysis of narratives even for humans, and the use of hybrid systems, world knowledge, and other sources of linguistic information reflect the difficulty of formulating temporal analysis for automated methods. Despite their promising results, and significant advancement on the state of the art in temporal relations in medical records, the 2012 i2b2 challenge systems only scratched the surface in this task. Open questions remain about the applicability of the developed systems for real life practical questions, such as the determination of the progression of diseases in patients, for example, heart disease in diabetic populations. Nevertheless, the 2012 i2b2 Challenge corpus of temporal annotations remains a valuable asset to the medical NLP community, and we hope will serve as the basis for further innovation in temporal relations, resulting in systems that can be applied to real life clinical problems.

This study investigated the potential use of pyrolusite reductive leaching residue (PLR), a low-cost residual solid by-product in manganese hydrometallurgy, as alternative adsorbent for removal of Congo red (CR) from aqueous solution. The surface characteristics of the PLR were measured. The effect of contact time was experimentally studied to evaluate the adsorption capacity, kinetics, and equilibrium. Experimental results revealed that the adsorption process almost finished within 300 min; adsorption capacity of the PLR increased with increasing initial CR concentrations and temperature. CR uptake process obeyed the pseudo-second-order kinetics. The CR uptake process was best described by the Langmuir isotherm with maximum monolayer adsorption capacity of 45.66 mg/g at 25°C. Thermodynamic studies showed CR adsorption onto the PLR was endothermic and spontaneous in nature. The regeneration studies showed that the PLR has good reuse performance. The results indicated that PLR could be employed as ...

Background The Sixth Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) Natural Language Processing Challenge for Clinical Records focused on the temporal relations in clinical narratives. The organizers provided the research community with a corpus of discharge summaries annotated with temporal information, to be used for the development and evaluation of temporal reasoning systems. 18 teams from around the world participated in the challenge. During the workshop, participating teams presented comprehensive reviews and analysis of their systems, and outlined future research directions suggested by the challenge contributions. Methods The challenge evaluated systems on the information extraction tasks that targeted: (1) clinically significant events, including both clinical concepts such as problems, tests, treatments, and clinical departments, and events relevant to the patient's clinical timeline, such as admissions, transfers between departments, etc; (2) temporal expressions, referring to the dates, times, durations, or frequencies phrases in the clinical text. The values of the extracted temporal expressions had to be normalized to an ISO specification standard; and (3) temporal relations, between the clinical events and temporal expressions. Participants determined pairs of events and temporal expressions that exhibited a temporal relation, and identified the temporal relation between them. Results For event detection, statistical machine learning (ML) methods consistently showed superior performance. While ML and rule based methods seemed to detect temporal expressions equally well, the best systems overwhelmingly adopted a rule based approach for value normalization. For temporal relation classification, the systems using hybrid approaches that combined ML and heuristics based methods produced the best results.

NO in flue gas was oxidized into NO 2 by ozone in gas-phase first, and then SO 2 and NO 2 were oxidized by redox reaction between MnO 2 and SO 2 /NO 2 and catalyzed oxidation between O 2 and SO 2 /NO 2 in absorption process. Molar ratio of O 2 /(SO 2 + 0.5NO x ) in flue gas had a decisive effect on catalyzed oxidation in absorption process, and eventually influenced reaction byproducts, Mn extraction rate and SO 2 /NO x absorption capability. Results showed that increasing O 2 /(SO 2 + 0.5NO x ) enhanced catalyzed oxidation and led to the lower reaction pH. When O 2 /(SO 2 + 0.5NO x ) ⩽ 18, SO 2 and NO x were mainly oxidized by MnO 2 with main products of MnSO 4 and Mn(NO 3 ) 2 , while when O 2 /(SO 2 + 0.5NO x ) ⩾ 18, SO 2 and NO x were mainly oxidized by O 2 with main products of H 2 SO 4 and HNO 3 . Total absorption capability of SO 2 and NO x increased with increasing O 2 /(SO 2 + 0.5NO x ). Mn extraction rate increased with the increase of O 2 /(SO 2 + 0.5NO x ) first and then decreased, the maximum Mn extraction rate of 91% was got when O 2 /(SO 2 + 0.5NO x ) at around 13. Both the SO 2 /NO x absorption capability and Mn extraction rate could be enhanced by adding rhodochrosite as pH regulator in the case of O 2 /(SO 2 + 0.5NO x ) ⩾ 18.

A lab-scale circulation process of electrolytic manganese production with low-grade pyrolusite leaching by SO2 was introduced, exploring its feasibility and stability. Material balances of manganese and sulfur in circulation process were investigated. Results showed that the circulation process was entirely feasible. SO2 absorption efficiency of 99.66% and Mn extraction rate of 95.5% were obtained when a two-stage continuous countercurrent leaching process was used. The electrolytic manganese, meeting the needs of national industry grade standards, could be produced using purified leaching solution. 32 days' continuous running test proved good stability of the circulation process with the current efficiency of 78.1%, electricity consumption of 5396 kW h/t and total Mn recovery rate of 81.77%. The circulation process realized that the electrolytic manganese production with low-grade pyrolusite, has a wide prospect in industrial applications due to the advantages of stable performance, high efficiency and low consumption.

Molybdenum disulfide is popular for rechargeable batteries, especially in Li-ion batteries, because of its layered structure and relatively high specific capacity. In this paper, we report MoS2-C nanocomposites that are synthesized by a hydrothermal process, and their use as anode material for Li-ion batteries. Ascorbic acid is used as the carbon source, and the carbon contents can be tuned from 2.5 wt % to 16.2 wt %. With increasing of carbon content, the morphology of MoS2-C nanocomposites changes from nanoflowers to nanospheres, and the particle size is decreased from 200 to 60 nm. This change is caused by the chemical complex interaction of ascorbic acid. The MoS2-C nanocomposite with 8.4 wt % C features a high capacity of 970 mAh g(-1) and sustains a capacity retention ratio of nearly 100% after 100 cycles. When the current increases to 1000 mA g(-1), the capacity still reaches 730 mAh g(-1). The above manifests that the carbon coating layer does not only accelerate the charge transfer kinetics to supply quick discharging and charging, but also hold the integrity of the electrode materials as evidenced by the long cycling stability. Therefore, MoS2-based nanocomposites could be used as commercial anode materials in Li-ion batteries.

The residue from desulfurization and denitrification of exhaust gas treatment process with pyrolusite ore as absorbent is regarded as a potential source of iron and manganese. In this study, an extraction process is proposed for recovery of iron and manganese with ammonium sulphate roasting followed by sulphuric acid leaching. Firstly, the conversion mechanism was analyzed through mineral phase analysis of roasting products at different roasting temperature by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD) technology. Then, the parameters of the roasting procedure such as roasting temperature and time, ammonium sulphate dosage, leaching temperature, leaching time, and sulphuric acid concentration are examined. The results implicate that the iron oxide and manganese dioxide in the residue are firstly converted into the water-soluble ( NH 4 ) 3 Fe ( SO 4 ) 3 and ( NH 4 ) 2 Mn 2 ( SO 4 ) 3 at 200–350 °C, and then the more stable NH 4 Fe ( SO 4 ) 2 and MnSO 4 are formed, at temperature higher than 350 °C. Under optimum conditions, 95.2% Fe and 97.0% Mn can be extracted. Reactant diffusion through inert layer of silicon dioxide was considered as the rate-limiting step for iron extraction with an activation energy of 20.56 kJ/mol, while, the recovery process of Mn was controlled by both reactant diffusion and chemical reaction with an activation energy of 29.52 kJ/mol.

Laser microdissection followed by mass spectrometry has been successfully used for amyloid typing. However, sample contamination can interfere with proteomic analysis, and overnight digestion limits the analytical throughput. Moreover, current quantitative analysis methods are based on the spectrum count, which ignores differences in protein length and may lead to misdiagnoses. Here, we developed a microwave-assisted filter-aided sample preparation (maFASP) method that can efficiently remove contaminants with a 10-kDa cutoff ultrafiltration unit and can accelerate the digestion process with the assistance of a microwave. Additionally, two parameters (P- and D-scores) based on the exponentially modified protein abundance index were developed to define the existence of amyloid deposits and those causative proteins with the greatest abundance. Using our protocol, twenty cases of systemic amyloidosis that were well-typed according to clinical diagnostic standards (training group) and another twenty-four cases without subtype diagnoses (validation group) were analyzed. Using this approach, sample preparation could be completed within four hours. We successfully subtyped 100% of the cases in the training group, and the diagnostic success rate in the validation group was 91.7%. This maFASP-aided proteomic protocol represents an efficient approach for amyloid diagnosis and subtyping, particularly for serum-contaminated samples.

We analyze the RI-TIMEXes in temporally annotated corpora and propose two hypotheses regarding the normalization of RI-TIMEXes in the clinical narrative domain: the anchor point hypothesis and the anchor relation hypothesis. We annotate the RI-TIMEXes in three corpora to study the characteristics of RI-TMEXes in different domains. This informed the design of our RI-TIMEX normalization system for the clinical domain, which consists of an anchor point classifier, an anchor relation classifier and a rule-based RI-TIMEX text span parser. We experiment with different feature sets and perform error analysis for each system component. The annotation confirmed the hypotheses that we can simplify the RI-TIMEXes normalization task using two multi-label classifiers. Our system achieves anchor point classification, anchor relation classification and rule-based parsing accuracy of 74.68%, 87.71% and 57.2% (82.09% under relaxed matching criteria) respectively on the held-out test set of the 2012 i2b2 temporal relation challenge. Experiments with feature sets reveals some interesting findings such as the verbal tense feature does not inform the anchor relation classification in clinical narratives as much as the tokens near the RI-TIMEX. Error analysis shows that underrepresented anchor point and anchor relation classes are difficult to detect. We formulate the RI-TIMEX normalization problem as a pair of multi-label classification problems. Considering only the RI-TIMEX extraction and normalization, the system achieves statistically significant improvement over the RI-TIMEX results of the best systems in the 2012 i2b2 challenge., Comment: Draft version