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Lithium metal (LM) is a promising anode material for next generation lithium ion based electrochemical energy storage devices. Critical issues of unstable solid electrolyte interphases (SEIs) and dendrite growth however still impede its practical applications. Herein, a composite gel polymer electrolyte (GPE), formed through in situ polymerization of pentaerythritol tetraacrylate with fumed silica fillers, is developed to achieve high performance lithium metal batteries (LMBs). As evidenced theoretically and experimentally, the presence of SiO2 not only accelerates Li+ transport but also regulates Li+ solvation sheath structures, thus facilitating fast kinetics and formation of stable LiF‐rich interphase and achieving uniform Li depositions to suppress Li dendrite growth. The composite GPE‐based Li||Cu half‐cells and Li||Li symmetrical cells display high Coulombic efficiency (CE) of 90.3% after 450 cycles and maintain stability over 960 h at 3 mA cm−2 and 3 mAh cm−2, respectively. In addition, Li||LiFePO4 full‐cells with a LM anode of limited Li supply of 4 mAh cm−2 achieve capacity retention of 68.5% after 700 cycles at 0.5 C (1 C = 170 mA g−1). Especially, when further applied in anode‐free LMBs, the carbon cloth||LiFePO4 full‐cell exhibits excellent cycling stability with an average CE of 99.94% and capacity retention of 90.3% at the 160th cycle at 0.5 C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue the agent's low generalization problem for searching target object in challenging visual navigation could be solved by "how" and "where" allowing the agent utilizing the scene priors. Although, recent works endow scene priors as fixed spatial features to provide good generalization in novel environment. However, these priors cannot adapt to new scenes. How to build scene priors and where to use the priors in visual navigation has not been well explored. We propose visual relationship detection module to adaptively build relational scene graph as priors. Besides, in order to use priors, we propose Graph attention Markov logical inference Network (GMN) module, which encodes the scene priors and performs precise action inference. GMN updates the graph structure in an unknown scene and estimates the shortest path in scene graph, whose emission probabilities from path to actions are pointwised by action samples in reinforcement learning to get optimal navigation policy. The whole navigation framework is driven by unsupervised reinforcement learning (RL) to exploit the environment. We conduct experiments on the AI2THOR virtual environment, and the results outperform the current most state-of-the-art both in SPL (Success weighted by Path Length) and success rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of visual mapless navigation is to navigate from a random starting point in a scene to a specified target in an unknown environment. A fundamental challenge in visual mapless navigation is generalizing to a novel environment, where the layout of the scenes and appearance of targets are unfamiliar. Furthermore, traditional navigation models are frozen during inference resulting in poor adaptability. To address these issues, we propose a multi goals and multi scenes visual mapless navigation model, which integrates meta learning with spatial relationships between different object categories. In this way, our method not only improves the generalization on multi goals in multi scenes but also encourages effective navigation. Experimental results on AI2-THOR dataset show that our approach significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art model SAVN by > 27.05 % for the average success rate and by > 31.7 % for the average SPL. Our source code and data of this paper are available at: https://github.com/zhiyu-tech/WHU-VMN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Concise, high-yield method for the solventfree synthesis of biscoumarins and 3-arylphenols. • Knoevenagel condensation of 1,3-acetonedicarboxylates with substituted salicyclaldehydes and cinnamaldehydes. • Key products could be confirmed by X-ray crystallography. • One-pot open-vessel process for the formations of C-O and C-C bonds. In this article, a facile method for NH 4 OAc-promoted synthesis of biscoumarins and 3-arylphenols is described by a straightforward Knoevenagel condensation of 1,3-acetonedicarboxylates with substituted salicyclaldehydes and cinnamaldehydes under the solventfree condition. The structures of the key products were confirmed using X-ray analysis. The plausible mechanisms are proposed and well-discussed. In the overall reaction process, water could be generated as the byproduct. Various reaction conditions are investigated for one-pot condensation. A facile method for NH 4 OAc-promoted synthesis of biscoumarins and 3-arylphenols is described by a straightforward Knoevenagel condensation of 1,3-acetonedicarboxylates with substituted salicyclaldehydes and cinnamaldehydes under the solventfree condition. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The detection of biomarkers in blood macrophages is a new non-invasive cancer screening method, but its performance in early stage lung cancer screening remains undetermined. We evaluated the Apo10 and TKTL1 levels in blood macrophages of 156 early-stage lung cancer patients and 153 controls. APT (combination of Apo10 and TKTL1) level was significantly higher in the lung cancer group than that in the control group (P < 0.001). AUROC analysis showed that APT has high diagnostic value in differentiating early-stage lung cancer (AUC = 0.9132) and can be considered a biomarker for screening lung cancer patients from individuals with lung nodules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Car ownership in China reached 194 million vehicles at the end of 2016. The traffic congestion index (TCI) exceeds 2.0 during rush hour in some cities. Inefficient processing for minor traffic accidents is considered to be one of the leading causes for road traffic jams. Meanwhile, the process after an accident is quite troublesome. The main reason is that it is almost always impossible to get the complete chain of evidence when the accident happens. Accordingly, a police and insurance joint management system is developed which is based on high precision BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS)/Global Positioning System (GPS) positioning to process traffic accidents. First of all, an intelligent vehicle rearview mirror terminal is developed. The terminal applies a commonly used consumer electronic device with single frequency navigation. Based on the high precision BDS/GPS positioning algorithm, its accuracy can reach sub-meter level in the urban areas. More specifically, a kernel driver is built to realize the high precision positioning algorithm in an Android HAL layer. Thus the third-party application developers can call the general location Application Programming Interface (API) of the original standard Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to get high precision positioning results. Therefore, the terminal can provide lane level positioning service for car users. Next, a remote traffic accident processing platform is built to provide big data analysis and management. According to the big data analysis of information collected by BDS high precision intelligent sense service, vehicle behaviors can be obtained. The platform can also automatically match and screen the data that uploads after an accident to achieve accurate reproduction of the scene. Thus, it helps traffic police and insurance personnel to complete remote responsibility identification and survey for the accident. Thirdly, a rapid processing flow is established in this article to meet the requirements to quickly handle traffic accidents. The traffic police can remotely identify accident responsibility and the insurance personnel can remotely survey an accident. Moreover, the police and insurance joint management system has been carried out in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, and Wuxi, Eastern China's Jiangsu Province. In a word, a system is developed to obtain and analyze multisource data including precise positioning and visual information, and a solution is proposed for efficient processing of traffic accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual navigation recently incorporates priors in reinforcement learning (RL), which endows agent's associative ability in searching object task and has made promising results. However, there is the problem of poor exploration in end-to-end learning to new scenes. Besides, most of the priors only serve as the spatial features of scene layout without fully and directly providing guidance for RL's policy, thus making the navigation inefficient. To address these issues, we design a Graph Transformer Viterbi inference network (GTV), which finds new object relations and explores potential graph-based optimal actions in policy. Our method decomposes the RL's action to learn the adaptive priors in state representations and GTV based actions in policy, which generates a dense end-to-end learning signal and new graph edges in novel scenes. This, in turn, enables object-centric relational RL agents to learn policies faster and improve generalization ability. The results demonstrate our framework outperforms the baseline by 25.85% relatively on SPL (Success weighted by Path Length) and 30.64% on success rate, which also requires only 1 / 5 number of iterations to converge, compared with the baselines. Our code will be made publicly available in the scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, research on vehicle network location service has begun to focus on its intelligence and precision. The accuracy of space-time information has become a core factor for vehicle network systems in a mobile environment. However, difficulties persist in vehicle satellite positioning since deficiencies in the provision of high-quality space-time references greatly limit the development and application of vehicle networks. In this paper, we propose a high-precision-based vehicle network location service to solve this problem. The major components of this study include the following: (1) application of wide-area precise positioning technology to the vehicle network system. An adaptive correction message broadcast protocol is designed to satisfy the requirements for large-scale target precise positioning in the mobile Internet environment; (2) development of a concurrence service system with a flexible virtual expansion architecture to guarantee reliable data interaction between vehicles and the background; (3) verification of the positioning precision and service quality in the urban environment. Based on this high-precision positioning service platform, a lane-level location service is designed to solve a typical traffic safety problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of intelligent driving vehicles, multi-task visual perception based on deep learning emerges as a key technological pathway toward safe vehicle navigation in real traffic scenarios. However, due to the high-precision and high-efficiency requirements of intelligent driving vehicles in practical driving environments, multi-task visual perception remains a challenging task. Existing methods typically adopt effective multi-task learning networks to concurrently handle multiple tasks. Despite the fact that they obtain remarkable achievements, better performance can be achieved through tackling existing problems like underutilized high-resolution features and underexploited non-local contextual dependencies. In this work, we propose YOLOPv3, an efficient anchor-based multi-task visual perception network capable of handling traffic object detection, drivable area segmentation, and lane detection simultaneously. Compared to prior works, we make essential improvements. On the one hand, we propose architecture enhancements that can utilize multi-scale high-resolution features and non-local contextual dependencies for improving network performance. On the other hand, we propose optimization improvements aiming at enhancing network training, enabling our YOLOPv3 to achieve optimal performance via straightforward end-to-end training. The experimental results on the BDD100K dataset demonstrate that YOLOPv3 sets a new state of the art (SOTA): 96.9% recall and 84.3% mAP50 in traffic object detection, 93.2% mIoU in drivable area segmentation, and 88.3% accuracy and 28.0% IoU in lane detection. In addition, YOLOPv3 maintains competitive inference speed against the lightweight YOLOP. Thus, YOLOPv3 stands as a robust solution for handling multi-task visual perception problems. The code and trained models have been released on GitHub. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two cinnamic acid derivatives ( CPA and CPC) containing carbazolyl triphenylethylene moiety have been synthesized and characterized. The two derivatives possessed aggregation-induced emission property. They exhibited different and interesting responsive behaviors to solvents, water and metal ions. Considering the structural differences between the two derivatives resulting in different interactions between their molecules and the various media was proposed as a possible explanation for these observations. The intermolecular interactions of CPC were much stronger than those of CPA, which promoted molecular association through intermolecular hydrogen bonding to form multimers. It was found that CPC and CPA exhibited high sensitivity to K and Mn, respectively. It is suggested that the derivatives have potential technological applications in chemosensor fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New aggregation-induced emission materials derived from diphenylcarbazole triphenylethylene were prepared. The thermal, photophysical, electrochemical and aggregation-induced emissive properties were investigated. All the compounds had strong blue light emission capability and excellent thermal stability. Their maximum fluorescence emission wavelengths were between 450 to 460 nm in TLC plates, while their glass transition temperatures ranged from 162.2 to 182.4 °C. The decomposition temperatures of the synthesized compounds were all well over 500 °C. The synthesized compounds possessed aggregation-induced emission (AIE) properties, which exhibited enhanced fluorescence emissions in aggregation states or in solid states. The HOMO energy levels estimated from the oxidation potentials were found in the range from 5.49 to5.52 eV. The lowest unoccupied molecular orbital/highest occupied molecular orbital (LUMO/HOMO) energy gaps (ΔEg) for the compounds were estimated from the onset absorption wavelengths of UV absorption spectra and ranged from 3.04 to 3.20 eV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Acid-sensing ion channels (ASICs) are ligand-gated cation channels activated by a drop in extracellular pH. They are enriched in the mammalian brain with a high synaptic density. Accumulating evidence suggests that ASIC1 contributes to synaptic activity related to learning/memory and fear conditioning, and also plays critical roles in neurodegenerative diseases. In this study, we explored the effect of the psychostimulant, cocaine, on protein expression of ASICs in the mouse forebrain in vivo. We found that chronic systemic injection of cocaine (20mg/kg, once daily for 5 consecutive days; 14 days of withdrawal) increased ASIC1, but not ASIC2, protein levels in the striatum, including the dorsal (caudate putamen) and the ventral (nucleus accumbens) striatum. No significant changes in ASIC1 or 2 protein levels in the median prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus were observed following the chronic cocaine administration. These data demonstrate that chronic cocaine exposure can upregulate ASIC expression in the striatum in a subunit-selective manner. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) are densely expressed in the limbic system of the mammalian brain. Increasing evidence suggests a critical role of mGluRs in the pathogenesis of various mental illnesses, including drug abuse and addiction. In this study, we investigated the effect of psychostimulant, cocaine, on protein expression of a specific mGluR subtype, mGluR8, in the rat forebrain in vivo. A rabbit antibody against the extracellular N-terminus of mGluR8 was developed to detect changes in mGluR8 proteins in immunoblot assays. With this antibody, we found that acute systemic injection of cocaine reduced mGluR8 protein levels in the striatum. The reduction of mGluR8 proteins was rapid and transient as it was induced 25min after cocaine injection and returned to the normal level by 6h. No significant change in mGluR8 protein levels in the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus was observed following cocaine administration. These data demonstrate that protein expression of mGluR8 is subject to the modulation by dopamine stimulation. Acute exposure to cocaine results in a dynamic and region-specific downregulation of mGluR8 expression in the striatum. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract  Group I mGluRs (mGluR1/5) are G-protein-coupled receptors and are abundantly expressed in most of medium spiny projection neurons in the striatum. Recent evidence demonstrates that group I mGluRs are among essential regulators for constitutive and inducible gene expression in host neurons. Upon activation, mGluR1/5 signals activate extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERKs) which in turn phosphorylate transcription factors such as cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) and Elk-1, and thereby facilitate immediate early gene and opioid peptide gene expression. The conventional mGluR1/5 signaling cascade (phosphoinositide hydrolysis and intracellular Ca2 release) participates in linking mGluR1/5 to ERK. Additionally, the prominent mGluR1/5 adaptor protein Homer contributes to assemble an efficient signaling apparatus connecting mGluR1/5 to gene expression. The mGluR1/5 linkage to transcription also functions in dopamine-stimulated gene expression. Together, the mGluR1/5-mediated gene expression constitutes a transcription-dependent mechanism underlying molecular adaptations and plasticity related to the pathogenesis of various mental illnesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Psychostimulants activate the Ras-mitogen-activated protein kinase (Ras-MAPK) cascade in the limbic reward circuit and thereby trigger a transcription-dependent mechanism underlying enduring synaptic plasticity related to addictive properties of drugs of abuse. The Ras-specific activator, Ras-guanine nucleotide-releasing factor (Ras-GRF), is predominantly expressed at synapses and is thought to actively regulate Ras-MAPK responses to changing synaptic signals. In this study, a possible influence of cocaine on Ras-GRF gene expression at the protein level in the rat striatum was investigated in vivo. A single systemic injection of cocaine induced an increase in Ras-GRF1 protein levels in both the dorsal (caudoputamen) and ventral (nucleus accumbens) striatum. The increase in Ras-GRF1 proteins was dose-dependent and was a delayed and transient event. In contrast to Ras-GRF1, a closely related Ras-GRF2 showed no change in its protein abundance following cocaine administration. These data identify the Ras activator, Ras-GRF1, although not Ras-GRF2, as a susceptible target to cocaine stimulation in striatal neurons. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Hypothalamic orexin (hypocretin) neurons project to the key structures of the limbic system and orexin receptors, both orexin receptor type 1 (OXR1) and type 2 (OXR2), are expressed in most limbic regions. Emerging evidence suggests that orexin is among important neurotransmitters that regulate addictive properties of drugs of abuse. In this study, we examined the effect of psychostimulant cocaine on orexin receptor protein abundance in the rat limbic system in vivo. Intermittent administration of cocaine (20 mg/kg, i.p., once daily for 5 days) caused a typical behavioral sensitization response to a challenge cocaine injection at a 14-day withdrawal period. Repeated cocaine administration at the same withdrawal time also increased OXR2 protein levels in the nucleus accumbens while repeated cocaine had no effect on OXR1 and orexin neuropeptide (both orexin-A and orexin-B) levels in this region. In contrast to the nucleus accumbens, OXR2 levels in the frontal cortex, the ventral tegmental area, the hippocampus, and the dorsal striatum (caudate putamen) were not altered by cocaine. Remarkably, the up-regulated OXR2 levels in the nucleus accumbens showed a long-lasting nature as it persisted up to 60 days after the discontinuation of repeated cocaine treatments. In contrast to chronic cocaine administration, an acute cocaine injection was insufficient to modify levels of any orexin receptor and peptide. Our data identify the up-regulation of OXR2 in the nucleus accumbens as an enduring molecular event that is correlated well with behavioral plasticity in response to chronic psychostimulant administration. This OXR2 up-regulation may reflect a key adaptation of limbic orexinergic transmission to chronic drug exposure and may thus be critical for the expression of motor plasticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter proposes an augmented scheme of LT codes to improve the decoding success rate. The method involves substituting the 1‐s in full‐degree columns of the generator matrix of conventional LT codes with binary extension field elements and simultaneously increasing the ratio of full‐degree columns in the ideal soliton distribution. For non‐full‐degree columns, we retain the nonzero elements as 1‐s in the conventional LT codes generator matrix to preserve computational efficiency. Compared to conventional LT codes, the proposed method enhances the linear independence of the generator matrix, leading to a higher decoding success rate with minimal data packets. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the method at improving the performance of LT codes, with close to 100% decoding success rate achieved with around 5% data redundancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Panoptic driving perception encompasses traffic object detection, drivable area segmentation, and lane detection. Existing methods typically utilize anchor-based multi-task learning networks to complete this task. While these methods yield promising results, they suffer from the inherent limitations of anchor-based detectors. In this paper, we propose YOLOPX, a simple and efficient anchor-free multi-task learning network for panoptic driving perception. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to employ the anchor-free detection head in panoptic driving perception. This anchor-free manner simplifies training by avoiding anchor-related heuristic tuning, and enhances the adaptability and scalability of our multi-task learning network. In addition, YOLOPX incorporates a novel lane detection head that combines multi-scale high-resolution features and long-distance contextual dependencies to improve segmentation performance. Beyond structure optimization, we propose optimization improvements to enhance network training, enabling our multi-task learning network to achieve optimal performance through simple end-to-end training. Experimental results on the challenging BDD100K dataset demonstrate the state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance of YOLOPX: it achieves 93.7% recall and 83.3% mAP50 on traffic object detection, 93.2% mIoU on drivable area segmentation, and 88.6% accuracy and 27.2% IoU on lane detection. Moreover, YOLOPX has faster inference speed compared to the lightweight network YOLOP. Consequently, YOLOPX is a powerful solution for panoptic driving perception problems. The code is available at https://github.com/jiaoZ7688/YOLOPX. • A novel anchor-free multi-task learning network for panoptic driving perception. • Lane detection utilizing multi-scale high-resolution features and long-distance contextual dependencies. • Several optimization improvements for efficient end-to-end training. • Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of YOLOPX by achieving excellent performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual Dialog aims to answer an appropriate response based on a multi-round dialog history and a given image. Existing methods either focus on semantic interaction, or implicitly capture coarse-grained structural interaction (e.g. , pronoun co-references). The fine-grained and explicit structural interaction feature for dialog history is seldom explored, resulting in insufficient feature learning and difficulty in capturing precise context. To address these issues, we propose a structure-aware dual-level graph interactive network (SDGIN) that integrates verb-specific semantic roles and co-reference resolution to explicitly capture context structural features for discriminative and generative tasks in visual dialog. Specifically, we create a novel structural interaction graph that injects syntactic knowledge priors into dialog by introducing semantic role labeling that imply which words are sentence stems. Furthermore, considering the single perspective limitation of previous algorithms, we design a dual-perspective mechanism that learns fine-grained token-level context structure features and coarse-grained utterance-level interactions in parallel. It possess an elegant view to explore precise context interactions, realizing the mutual complementation and enhancement of different granularity features. Experimental results show the superiority of our proposed approach. Compared to other task-specific models, our SDGIN outperforms previous models and achieves a significant improvement on the benchmark dataset VisDial v1.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rényi entropy as a generalization of the Shannon entropy allows for different averaging of probabilities of a control parameter α. This paper gives a new perspective of the Kalman filter from the Rényi entropy. Firstly, the Rényi entropy is employed to measure the uncertainty of the multivariate Gaussian probability density function. Then, we calculate the temporal derivative of the Rényi entropy of the Kalman filter's mean square error matrix, which will be minimized to obtain the Kalman filter's gain. Moreover, the continuous Kalman filter approaches a steady state when the temporal derivative of the Rényi entropy is equal to zero, which means that the Rényi entropy will keep stable. As the temporal derivative of the Rényi entropy is independent of parameter α and is the same as the temporal derivative of the Shannon entropy, the result is the same as for Shannon entropy. Finally, an example of an experiment of falling body tracking by radar using an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) in noisy conditions and a loosely coupled navigation experiment are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity is an established risk factor for colorectal cancer, but the mechanisms responsible for this relationship are not adequately delineated. Using a TNF-α-/- mouse model, the present study aimed to test the causal role of TNF-α in mediating the promotion of tumorigenic Wnt signaling by high-fat diet-induced obesity. A 2×2 factorial study was performed with wild-type and TNF-α-/- mice on a 60 kcal% high-fat diet or a 10 kcal% low-fat diet. The inflammatory cytokine profile and genes within the Wnt signaling pathway were measured by electrochemiluminescence assay, real-time PCR, Western blotting or immunohistochemistry. The high-fat diet increased body weights in both wild-type and TNF-α-/- animals (P<.05), but males were more sensitive to high-fat diet-induced weight gain and increases of colonic TNF-α than females (P<.05). Genetic ablation of TNF-α suppressed the obesity-promoted elevation of Wnt signaling, as indicated by decreased levels of phospho-GSK3β and active β-catenin, two key components within the Wnt pathway (P<.05). The transcriptional expression of several Wnt signaling targets (C-myc, Cyclin D1 and Axin 2) and cell proliferation, as indicated by Ki-67 staining, were attenuated by the deletion of TNF-α in the high-fat-fed TNF-α-/- animals comparing with the wild-type animals (P<.05). Our data collectively showed that the genetic deletion of TNF-α attenuated the tumorigenic Wnt signaling, which was otherwise elevated by high-fat diet-induced obesity, and demonstrated a causal role of TNF-α in mediating obesity-associated Wnt signaling, which indicates a potential mechanism of inflammation-driven Wnt signaling for obesity-associated colorectal carcinogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A non-linear filtering algorithm based on the alpha-divergence is proposed, which uses the exponential family distribution to approximate the actual state distribution and the alpha-divergence to measure the approximation degree between the two distributions; thus, it provides more choices for similarity measurement by adjusting the value of α during the updating process of the equation of state and the measurement equation in the non-linear dynamic systems. Firstly, an α -mixed probability density function that satisfies the normalization condition is defined, and the properties of the mean and variance are analyzed when the probability density functions p (x) and q (x) are one-dimensional normal distributions. Secondly, the sufficient condition of the alpha-divergence taking the minimum value is proven, that is when α ≥ 1 , the natural statistical vector's expectations of the exponential family distribution are equal to the natural statistical vector's expectations of the α -mixed probability state density function. Finally, the conclusion is applied to non-linear filtering, and the non-linear filtering algorithm based on alpha-divergence minimization is proposed, providing more non-linear processing strategies for non-linear filtering. Furthermore, the algorithm's validity is verified by the experimental results, and a better filtering effect is achieved for non-linear filtering by adjusting the value of α. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bismuth-based materials are ideal electrodes for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) due to their high capacity and low cost. However, conventional solid bismuth materials still suffer from severe volume expansion during the reaction process, which hinders its application. Herein, single-crystal bismuth nanospheres with diameters in the range of 200–400 ​nm were successfully prepared with the Na–Bi alloying mechanism studied using in-situ XRD, which confirms a stepwise process of Bi→NaBi→Na 3 Bi with large volume variation. To address the volume change issue, we introduce a porous structure into the bulk of Bi crystals, which alleviated its volume expansion and suppressed its cyclic failure. An in-situ TEM experiment is further carried out to verify this effective structure-modification strategy, demonstrating its applicable feature for electrode design and performance enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FFT acquisition scheme based on partial matched filter is an important search method in GNSS receivers, which can scan the code phase and Doppler frequency by parallel search scheme. However, the detection probability reduces due to the coherent combing loss and scalloping loss. To solve this problem, we propose a new FFT acquisition method based on Partial Matched Filter (PMF-FFT) in GNSS receiver, in which, the IF signal is divided and central frequency is shifted before the matched filters, and the FFT results are combined to search the Doppler frequency. The performance of the scheme is analyzed by amplitude response of the system. Both analysis and simulation results show that the new scheme has a larger acquisition range without adding the FFT points, which is quite appropriate for dynamic and weak signal environments. We also do a comparison based on the collected data test, showing that the PMF-FFT scheme outperforms the other three methods generally used in the GNSS receivers. Moreover, we apply an FPGA&DSP hardware receiver to verify the practicability and superiority of our method, which turns out our method can extremely reduce the acquisition time in a cold start condition, compared to the serial scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature, most previous studies on English implicit inter-sentence relation recognition only focused on semantic interactions, which could not exploit the syntactic interactive information in Chinese due to its complicated syntactic structure characteristics. In this paper, we propose a novel and effective model DSGCN-RoBERTa to learn the interaction features implied in sentences from both syntactic and semantic perspectives. To generate a rich contextual sentence embedding, we exploit RoBERTa, a large-scale pre-trained language model based on the transformer unit. DSGCN-RoBERTa consists of two key modules, the syntactic interaction and the semantic interaction modules. Specifically, the syntactic interaction module helps capture the depth-level structure information, including non-consecutive words and their relations, while the semantic interaction module enables the model to understand the context from the whole sentence to the local words. Furthermore, on top of such multi-perspective feature representations, we design a strength-dependent matching strategy that is able to adaptively capture the strong relevant interactive information in a fine-grained level. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method achieved state-of-the-art results on benchmarks Chinese compound sentence corpus CCCS and Chinese discourse corpus CDTB datasets. We also achieve comparable performance on the English corpus PDTB that demonstrates the superiority of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3) has been formally operated together with the regional system (BDS-2) for more than one year. However, the different frequency numbers between BDS-2 and BDS-3 makes their integration a troublesome problem, especially when all available frequencies are taken into account. To make a comprehensive analysis of multi-frequency precise positioning models in BDS-2 and BDS-3, the popular real-time kinematic positioning is taken as an example for data processing. Since in general the reliable, successful and rapid ambiguity resolution is the key of an appropriate multi-frequency positioning model, the framework of multi-frequency ambiguity resolution (AR) is summarized first. The usual loose combined model for the joint BDS-2 and BDS-3 system is described. To make full use of the common frequencies B1I and B3I in BDS-2 and BDS-3, an improved combined model is proposed where both the loose combined mode and tightly combined mode are applied. The performance of ambiguity resolution (AR) and positioning precision are obtained from four short baselines with different lengths in the above two models and with different elevation masks. The comparison results show that: (1) Both the combined model and improved combined model can achieve nearly 100% AR success rate and correctly-fixed rate, as well as consistent centimeter level's fixed solution; (2) The improved combined model can obtain higher AR fixed rate and shorter time to first fix (TTFF) compared with the usual combined model, and the improvements can be up to 15% for the fixed rate and 37% for TTFF; (3) To achieve the largest AR fixed rate while keep reliable AR and precise positioning, a relative large elevation mask such as 30° is highly recommended for a joint BDS-2 and BDS-3 system with sufficient observed satellites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional and structural adaptation of common carotid artery could be one of the important causes of postflight orthostatic intolerance after microgravity exposure, the mechanisms of which remain unclear. Recent evidence indicates that long-term spaceflight increases carotid artery stiffness, which might present a high risk to astronaut health and postflight working ability. Studies have suggested that vascular calcification is a common pathological change in cardiovascular diseases that is mainly manifested as an increase in vascular stiffness. Therefore, this study investigated whether simulated microgravity induces calcification of common carotid artery and to elucidate the underlying mechanisms. Four-week-old hindlimb-unweighted (HU) rats were used to simulate the deconditioning effects of microgravity on cardiovascular system. We found that simulated microgravity induced vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) osteogenic differentiation and medial calcification, increased receptor activator of nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) ligand (RANKL) and RANK expression, and enhanced NF-κB activation in rat common carotid artery. In vitro activation of the RANK pathway with exogenous RANKL, a RANK ligand, increased RANK and osteoprotegerin (OPG) expression in HU rats. Moreover, the expression of osteogenic markers and activation of NF-κB in HU rats were further enhanced by exogenous RANKL but suppressed by the RANK inhibitor osteoprotegerin fusion protein (OPG-Fc). These results indicated that the OPG/RANKL/RANK system modulates VSMC osteogenic differentiation and medial calcification of common carotid artery in simulated microgravity rats by regulating the NF-kB pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spaceborne global navigation satellite system reflectometry (GNSS-R) has recently been applied for wind speed retrieval over oceans, where the wind speed is often retrieved using features extracted from delay-Doppler map (DDM) and empirical geophysical model functions (GMFs). However, it is challenging to utilize the other factors related to the GNSS-R process, such as the geometry and sea state, as the input in GMF given their complicated effects. The use of a fully connected network (FCN) has been recently proposed, but the overfitting occurs at high wind speed due to the non-uniform wind distribution, and some information is undesirably forfeited due to artificially extracting features from DDMs. To this end, we propose a deep learning-based end-to-end modified convolutional neural network (CNN) model, which applies the cumulative distribution function (CDF) matching. A multimodal approach is utilized where the convolutional layers extract effective DDM features at first. Then, they are fused with the auxiliary information, including the geolocation of the specular point, incidence angle, range corrected gain (RCG), uncertainty of bistatic radar cross section (BRCS), and significant wave height (SWH). Further, multiple fully connected layers compose the remainder of the network's layers. At the last step, CDF matching is applied to correct the system deviation of CNN winds. We found that the root mean square error (RMSE) and bias of wind speed retrievals are 1.53 m/s and − 0.097 m/s, respectively, within 0–25 m/s when the proposed method is used. Notably, the bias is reduced by 51%, compared with the FCN architecture, while the RMSE of the retrievals at 12–25 m/s is improved by 12%. Moreover, the RMSE and bias against the incidence angle differ no more than 0.35 m/s and 0.078 m/s, while those against RCG differ less than 0.24 m/s and 0.061 m/s, respectively. Time-series analyses indicated that the wind speed retrievals of the proposed model are in line with the referenced wind speeds. We identified a temporal increase of the retrieval bias, driven by the downward trend of DDM observation in the cyclone global navigation satellite system (CYGNSS) Version 2.1 inadequately calibrated products. • A statistically modified CNN with auxiliary information fusion is proposed. • In this approach, convolutional layers extract effective DDM features. • CDF matching in an adaptively polynomial form is performed to eliminate the bias. • It reduces bias of wind speed retrievals by 51%, compared to FCN architecture. • It also improves the Root Mean Square Error of the retrievals at 12–25 m/s by 12%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Lithiated halloysite nanotubes and networked polymers are used to prepare a cost-effective artificial composite SEI layer. • This nanocomposite artificial SEI layer exhibits excellent electrochemical and mechanical properties. • The NCL-Li composite anode displays superior Li stripping/platting behavior. • The NCL-Li|NCM811 cells display a good cycling stability and promising safety performance. In lithium metal batteries (LMBs), the instability of the solid electrolyte interface (SEI) induced lithium dendrites and dead lithium frequently causes low cyclability and serious safety issues. Thereby, a highly stable artificial SEI layer with excellent lithium-ion mobility is desirable for dendrite-free lithium metal (LM) anodes. Herein, a novel clay/cross-linked network polymer-based artificial SEI layer (named as NCL) is prepared via compositing lithiated halloysite nanotubes (Li-HNTs) and cross-linked network polymers. The obtained NCL exhibits a promising Li+ transference number of 0.39, high ionic conductivity of 6.37 × 10-4 S cm−1 at 20 °C and superb mechanical performance. Benefiting these advantages, Li+ can be uniformly and fast plated/stripped under the protection of NCL, effectively suppressing the formation of lithium dendrites. The NCL-protected LM symmetrical cells can be stably cycled for more than 1000 h and 1100 h at 1 mA cm−2 under cycling capacities of 1 mAh cm−2 and 3 mAh cm−2, respectively. The NCL-Li|Cu half-cells present dendrite-free and reversible Li deposition with a high Coulombic efficiency of 99% for 170 cycles at 0.5 mA cm−2. Moreover, the LiFePO 4 full-cell successfully achieves a good capacity of 115 mAh g−1 with a sensational capacity retention of 97.5% over 800 cycles at 2C. Additionally, 300 mAh LiNi 0.8 Co 0.1 Mn 0.1 O 2 -coupled pouch-cells not only can stably circulate more than 50 cycles, but also can reliably function at repetitive mechanical deformation statuses and at different damage conditions. Therefore, this novel hybrid artificial SEI protective layer with desirable properties shed new light on the practical application of high-performance LMBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Consider temporal dependencies, spatial correlations, and travel semantics jointly. • Extracted location semantics enrich prior knowledge and reveal travel regularities. • Spatial attention mechanism captures spatial correlations via driving status data. • Outperforms traditional destination prediction models in accuracy. • Supports location-based services such as personalized service recommendations. Individual driving final destination prediction supports location-based services such as personalized service recommendations, traffic navigation, and public transport dispatching. However, real-time destination prediction is challenging due to the complexity of temporal dependencies, and the strong influence of travel spatiotemporal semantics and spatial correlations. Besides temporal context, the nearby urban functionalities of traveling zones and departure regions, and the crucial positions on the road network where trajectory points located would reflect the travel intentions of drivers. However, these spatial factors are rarely considered in existing studies. To fill this gap, we propose a real-time individual driving destination prediction model LSI-LSTM based on an attention-aware Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) by taking Location Semantics and Location Importance of trajectory points into account. More specifically, a trajectory location semantics extraction method (t-LSE) enriches feature description with prior knowledge for implicit travel intentions learning. t-LSE represents urban functionality through Points of Interest (POIs) using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF). Meanwhile, a novel trajectory spatial attention mechanism (t-SAM) captures the trajectory points that strongly correlate to candidate destinations based on the location importance inferred from the driving status, i.e., turning angle, driving speed, and traveled distance. Comparative experiments with three baseline methods, i.e., Hidden Markov Model, Random Forest, and LSTM, demonstrate significant prediction accuracy improvements of LSI-LSTM on four individual trajectory datasets. Further analyses validate the effectiveness of the proposed semantic extraction method and attention mechanism, and also discuss the factors that may affect the prediction results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Nervous necrosis virus (NNV) infection during larvae and juvenile stage in grouper (Epinephelus coioides) has caused severe economic losses in the aquaculture industry in Asia. The aims of this study were to evaluate the influence of recombinant Reishi protein, rLZ-8, on the innate immune responses and the viral resisting ability in fish. Groupers were fed with rLZ-8 supplemented diet (1.25–37.5 mg rLZ-8/kg diet), and the cytokine gene expression, innate immune responses, and survival rate after NNV challenge were examined. The fish fed with rLZ-8 diet showed 6- to 11-fold upregulated TNF-α and IL-1β gene expression, along with significant increased respiratory burst and phagocytic activity. Moreover, feeding the fish with 37.5 mg/kg rLZ-8 diet elicited significant improvement in post viral challenge survival rate (85.7%). These discoveries indicated that rLZ-8 could be utilized as an ant-pathogen immunostimulant, and provided a new candidate to fight against NNV infection in fish. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) is central to synaptic transmission. Here we show that synaptic CaMKIIα binds to the N-terminal region of the third intracellular loop of the limbic dopamine D3 receptor (D3R). This binding is Ca2+ sensitive and is sustained by autophosphorylation of CaMKII, providing an unrecognized route for the Ca2+-mediated regulation of D3Rs. The interaction of CaMKIIα with D3Rs transforms D3Rs into a biochemical substrate of the kinase and promotes the kinase to phosphorylate D3Rs at a selective serine site (S229). In accumbal neurons in vivo, CaMKIIα is recruited to D3Rs by rising Ca2+ to increase the CaMKIIα-mediated phosphorylation of D3Rs, thereby transiently inhibiting D3R efficacy. Notably, the D3R inhibition is critical for integrating dopamine signaling to control behavioral sensitivity to the psychostimulant cocaine. Our data identify CaMKIIα as a recruitable regulator of dopamine receptor function. By binding and phosphorylating limbic D3Rs, CaMKIIα modulates dopamine signaling and psychomotor function in an activity-dependent manner. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We used molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the relationship between mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms in CoCrFeMnNi alloys having different compositions. According to deformation twinning activity, the deformation mechanisms in the different CoCrFeMnNi compositions under tensile loading can be classified into three major categories: easy-shear (ES), inter-locks (IL) and bulk hexagonal closed packed (hcp) transformation (BH). We found that the compositions with ES were more likely to rupture early because of the short and fragmented twins. The compositions following the IL pattern promoted the movement of interlocking stacking faults in the twin boundaries that could prolong tensile deformation. Moreover, BH could further increase ductility because the hcp transformation could absorb and dissipate the stacking faults. Experimental observations of immobile stacking-fault networks that impede dislocation motion and further provide preferred sites for the formation of the hcp phase were commonly found in the ES, IL and BH patterns. The calculated intrinsic stacking fault energies of CoCrFeMnNi and CoCrFeNi were consistent with the experimental measurements. The combination of high unstable stacking fault energy with the formation of the IL pattern results in high strength and high ductility in the CoCrFeMnNi HEA system. • Molecular dynamics simulations were carried to elucidate relationship between mechanical properties and defect evolution. • Easy-shear (ES), inter-locks (IL) and bulk hcp transformation (BH) patterns were found based on twining activity. • Experimental observations of immobile stacking-fault networks were found in the ES, IL and BH patterns. • High unstable stacking fault energy with the IL pattern results in high strength and ductility in the CoCrFeMnNi system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Group I metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR1 and mGluR5 subtypes) are densely expressed in mammalian brain. They are actively involved in the regulation of normal cellular activity and synaptic plasticity, and are frequently linked to the pathogenesis of various mental illnesses. Like ionotropic glutamate receptors, group I mGluRs are subject to the regulation by protein phosphorylation. Accumulative data demonstrate sufficient phosphorylation of the intracellular mGluR1/5 domains at specific serine/threonine sites by protein kinase C in heterologous cells or neurons, which serves as an important mechanism for regulating the receptor signaling and desensitization. Emerging evidence also shows the significant involvements of G protein-coupled receptor kinases, Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II, tyrosine kinases, and protein phosphatases in controlling the phosphorylation status of group I mGluRs. This review analyzes the recent data concerning group I mGluR phosphorylation and the phosphorylation-dependent regulation of group I mGluR function. Future research directions in this area with newly available high throughput and proteomic approaches are also discussed in the end. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Chick (CE) or duck embryo eggs are known for nutritional supplement foods in traditional East countries for physical fitness enhancement and postpartum conditioning for many years. In this study, we evaluated the effects of different parts of the 10-day CE (embryo: CEr, yolk: CEw, and chorioallantoic membrane: CEp) on the antifatigue and antiaging activities in a D-galactose- (D-gal) induced aging mice model. The results showed CEp obviously increased the muscle weight and the liver and muscle glycogen content and enhanced exercise performance. In the antiaging assay, CEp significantly increased the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and Glutathione Peroxidase (GPx). Moreover, the immunohistochemistry results of NRF-2 and HO-1 were also detected in the livers of mice in the D-gal/CEp group. The only partially potential such as CEr might improve OFT function with TG level, and CEw had strange grip strength. Therefore, we suggest that CEp has a potent antifatigue ability and could minimize the occurrence of age-associated disorders, more than other parts of the 10 days chicken embryo egg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • A hetero-structured Mo 2 C-Mo 2 N/C electrocatalyst for polysulfides is proposed. • A facile in-situ synthesis of hetero-structured Mo 2 C-Mo 2 N/C material is developed. • High-performance lithium-sulfur batteries are realized. • The working mechanism of the material is experimentally and computationally probed. Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) are promising electrochemical energy storage devices. However, the shuttle effects and slow conversion kinetics of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) still impede the practical application of LSBs. Herein, with the assistance of g-C 3 N 4 , a hetero-structured Mo 2 C-Mo 2 N embedded in the nitrogen-doped carbon sheets composite (Mo 2 C-Mo 2 N/C) is facilely in-situ synthesized. The g-C 3 N 4 not only acts as the nitriding reagent for the heterostructure formation, but also is the structure-directing reagent for the formation of two-dimensional structures. More interestingly, Mo 2 C-Mo 2 N/C is also employed as a modifier of separators for LSBs. As evidenced experimentally and theoretically, the hetero-structured Mo 2 C-Mo 2 N exhibits a strong adsorption ability to LiPSs and concurrently offers a built-in electric field inside the heterostructure that ensures the fast conversion of LiPSs, thus significantly suppressing the shuttle effect and accelerating the electrochemical kinetics of LSBs. Therefore, the prepared LSBs with the Mo 2 C-Mo 2 N/C modified separator deliver a discharge specific capacity of 1404 mAh/g at 0.1 C and 660 mAh/g at 4 C, and achieve 1000 stable cycles at 1 C, with a capacity decay rate of only 0.028% per cycle. This study not only provides an efficient strategy for synthesizing hetero-structured materials but also sheds new light on the design of functional separators for high-performance and long-life cycle LSBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel photosensitive low-viscosity epoxy acrylate resin was synthesized by utilizing polyethylene glycol diglycidyl ether (PEGGE) and acrylic acid (AA) as starting materials. The structure of polyethylene glycol diglycidyl ether diacrylate (PEGGEA) was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). 2-Isopropyl thioxanthone (ITX), ethyl 4-(dimethylamino) benzoate (EDAB) and 2-benzyl-2-(dimethylamino)-1-[4-(4-morpholinyl) phenyl]-1-butanone (369) as photoinitiators and trihydroxymethyl propane triacrylate (TMPTA) as monomer were mixed with PEGGEA to prepare a kind of UV-curable resins, which may be utilized to boost the resin curing under UV light. The UV-curing properties and the thermal stability of the prepared resins with different contents of oligomer were investigated using FTIR-attenuated total reflection (ATR) spectroscopy and TGA. The viscosity of the oligomers and the mechanical properties of the cured resins were also studied. The results showed that the content of oligomer will affect the UV-curing properties and the thermal stability of the UV-curing resins. The viscosity of the prepared UV-curing resins was less than 200 mPa s at 25 °C, and the hardness of cured resins was high than 6H, which could meet the requirements for three-dimensional printing (3DP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Three new polyoxygenated C18-dibenzocyclooctadiene lignans, arisanschinins M and N (1 and 2) and schisphenin A (3), together with eight related metabolites (4–11), were isolated from the fruits of Schisandra arisanensis and Schisandra sphenanthera, respectively. The structures of 1–3 were elucidated on the basis of extensive spectroscopic and 2D NMR (HSQC, HMBC, and NOESY) analyses. The configuration of the biphenyl moiety in the octadiene ring was determined by circular dichroism (CD). Compound 1 possessed an unprecedented 3-(1-hydroxypropan-2-yl)-3-methyl-1,4-dioxo-2-one lactonide ring system attaching at C-6/C-14. Pharmacological studies revealed that compounds 3, 4, 6, 7, and 10 exhibited significant anti-hepatic fibrosis activity, while 9 and 11 showed cytotoxicity against HSC-T6 cells. The biogenetic pathway for compound 1 was also proposed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An economic, simple and sensitive enzymatic method for the determination of copper in aqueous samples was proposed in this study. By removal of copper, Superoxide dismutase (SOD) becomes apoenzyme SOD (apo-SOD) that has no SOD activity. The amount of copper added can be estimated by the recovery of SOD activity from reconstituted apo-SOD. The concentration of copper in an aqueous sample can thus be determined. A linear relationship (R2 = 0.998) between the concentrations of copper, ranging from 20 to 80 ppb, and the recovered SOD activities was observed. The detection limit for copper in the proposed assay was 20 ppb. Moreover, interfering effects of some common metals on the recovery of SOD activity was evaluated. It showed that the concentrations of these metals less than 45 µg/mL exhibited no interference in the assay. In addition, data obtained from this assay were very close to those estimated by inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). This enzymatic method can be adapted as a routine assay for the determination of copper in aqueous samples such as beverages, drinking water and liquid foods. The assay can be applied for large number of samples (about 96 samples per hour) on an ELISA microplate reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To compare anterior and posterior approaches for treating cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) involving more than two levels, especially in regard to quality of life and cost effectiveness. Methods: The authors studied 116 CSM patients who underwent decompressive surgery by either an anterior or a posterior approach with instrumentation. In the anterior group, 1-3 levels subtotal vertebrectomy was followed by bone graft and Orion anterior cervical locking plate fixation. In the posterior group, multilevel laminectomy with posterior screw-rod fixation was performed. Follow-up, which included radiographic assessment, clinical examination and documentation of length of any hospitalization and cost and incidence of complications, was performed 1 day before discharge, 6 months after leaving hospital, and at final follow-up. Results: Both groups had improved clinical outcomes. The anterior group showed greater satisfaction but lower visual analog scale scores than the posterior group, whereas SF-36 emotional role and mental health scores were higher in the anterior group. There was no marked difference between the two groups in length of hospitalization and most of the costs of treating CSM, however treatment and examination fees were significantly higher in the posterior group. Conclusions: Both anterior and posterior decompressions (with instrumentation) are effective procedures for improving the neurological outcomes of patients with CSM. However, although the two approaches have similar health care costs, anterior cervical corpectomy (with instrumentation) seems to be subjectively assessed by patients as better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study that investigates the simple, rapid and cost-effective method for DNA extraction, filtration (FT) and dilution (DL) protocols from a single salmon egg from real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification. It notes that the DNA quality, amount and real-time PCR performance were evaluated and compared with the common Qiagen tissue kit (QTK) and Chelex-100-based (CX) protocols. The importance of the extracted DNA in phylogenic research is also emphasized.

Five new oxygenated lignans with a dibenzocyclooctadiene skeleton, kadsuphilols P-T (-), and two new C homolignans, kadsuphilols U and V ( and ), were isolated by chromatographic fractionation of an AcOEt extract of the stems of Kadsura philippinensis. The structures of the isolated metabolites were elucidated through extensive spectroscopic analysis including HR-ESI-MS and 2D-NMR (HMQC, COSY, and HMBC). The configuration at the chiral centers and at the biphenyl moiety were determined by interpretation of NOESY and CD data, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Novel well-crystallized β-nickel hydroxide nanocrystalline thin films were successfully synthesized at low temperature on the quartz substrates by hydrothermal method, and the oriented carbon nanofibers (CNFs) were prepared by acetylene cracking at 750°C on thin film as the catalyst precursor. High resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) measurement shows that thin films were constructed mainly with hexagonal β-nickel hydroxide nanosheets. The average diameter of the nanosheets was about 80nm and thickness about 15nm. Hydrothermal temperature played an important role in the film growth process, influencing the morphologies and catalytic activity of the Ni catalysts. Ni thin films with high catalytic activity were obtained by reduction of these Ni(OH)2 nanocrystalline thin films synthesized at 170°C for 2h in hydrothermal condition. The highest carbon yield was 1182%, and was significantly higher than the value of the catalyst precursor which was previously reported as the carbon yield (398%) for Ni catalysts. The morphology and growth mechanism of oriented CNFs were also studied finally. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Plastic changes in glutamatergic synapses that lead to endurance of drug craving and addiction are poorly understood. We examined the turnover and trafficking of NMDA receptors and found that chronic exposure to the psychostimulant amphetamine (AMPH) induced selective downregulation of NMDA receptor NR2B subunits in the confined surface membrane pool of rat striatal neurons at synaptic sites. This downregulation was a long-lived event and was a result of the destabilization of surface-expressed NR2B caused by accelerated ubiquitination and degradation of crucial NR2B-anchoring proteins by the ubiquitin-proteasome system. The biochemical loss of synaptic NR2B further translated to the modulation of synaptic plasticity in the form of long-term depression at cortico-accumbal glutamatergic synapses. Behaviorally, genetic disruption of NR2B induced and restoration of NR2B loss prevented behavioral sensitization to AMPH. Our data identify NR2B as an important regulator in the remodeling of excitatory synapses and persistent psychomotor plasticity in response to AMPH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The purity of β-SiC nanowires is raised obviously by using an ordered nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide template by the thermal evaporation method without any metal catalyst. The microstructures were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. The results show that the synthesized products mainly consist of nanowires, which are single-crystalline β-SiC with diameters of about 50nm and tens of micrometers long. The nanowires axes lie along the 〈111〉 direction and possess a high density of planar defects. The β-SiC nanowires exhibit the strong photoluminescence peaks at wavelength 400nm, which is significantly shifted to the blue compared with the reported luminescence results of SiC materials. The blueshift may be ascribed to morphology, quantum size confinement effects of the nanomaterials and abundant structure defects that existed in the nanowires. Finally, the growth mechanism of SiC nanowires and the effect of anodic aluminum oxide template are also analyzed and discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: γ-Fe2O3/SiO2 core–shell nanoparticles with an average diameter by about 30 nm were synthesized by hydrothermal reaction of Tetraethoxysilane and Fe(NO3)3⋅9H2O as precursors. The phase component, structure and magnetic properties of the nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and magnetic measurements. The results show that the uniform γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles were capped with an amorphous SiO2 thin shell by about 5 nm in the thickness. The effect of hydrothermal temperature and growth mechanism were discussed towards the end of this paper. The magnetic property of nanoparticles was also discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Geochemical and Sr-Nd-Pb isotopic data are presented for volcanic rocks from Zougouyouchaco (30.5 Ma) and Dogai Coring (39.7 Ma) of the southern and middle Qiangtang block in northern Tibet. The volcanic rocks are high-K calc-alkaline trachyandesites and dacites, with SiO2 contents ranging from 58.5 to 67.1 wt % The rocks are enriched in light REE (LREE) and contain high Sr (649 to 986 ppm) and relatively low Yb (0.8 to 1.2 ppm) and Y (9.5 to 16.6 ppm) contents, resulting in high La/Yb (29-58) and Sr/Y (43-92) ratios, as well as relatively high MgO contents and Mg no., similar to the compositions of adakites formed by slab melting in subduction zones. However, the adakitic rocks in the Qiangtang block are characterized by relatively low ϵNd(t) values (-3.8 to -5.0) and highly radiogenic Sr ((87Sr/86Sr)i = 0.706-0.708), which are inconsistent with an origin by slab melting. The geochemistry and tectonics indicate that the adakitic volcanic rocks were most likely derived from partial melting of delaminated lower continental crust. As the pristine adakitic melts rose, they interacted with the surrounding mantle peridotite, elevating their MgO values and Mg numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Dopamine-glutamate interactions in the neostriatum determine psychostimulant action, but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain elusive. Here we found that dopamine stimulation by cocaine enhances a heteroreceptor complex formation between dopamine D2 receptors (D2R) and NMDA receptor NR2B subunits in the neostriatum in vivo. The D2R-NR2B interaction is direct and occurs in the confined postsynaptic density microdomain of excitatory synapses. The enhanced D2R-NR2B interaction disrupts the association of Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) with NR2B, reduces NR2B phosphorylation at a CaMKII-sensitive site (Ser1303), and inhibits NMDA receptor-mediated currents in medium-sized striatal neurons. Furthermore, the regulated D2R-NR2B interaction is critical for constructing behavioral responsiveness to cocaine. Our findings here uncover a direct and dynamic D2R-NR2B interaction in striatal neurons in vivo. This type of dopamine-glutamate integration at the receptor level may be responsible for synergistically inhibiting the D2R-mediated circuits in the basal ganglia and fulfilling the stimulative effect of psychostimulants. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]