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In-situ catalytic biomass pyrolysis for syngas production is a competitive technology for the recovery of energy in biomass. However, in conventional in-situ catalytic pyrolysis process, the mode of catalyst introduction makes it difficult to separate the catalyst from the char after pyrolysis, resulting in difficulty in catalyst recycling. We considered that the use of monolithic catalyst which has larger size than the biomass feedstock might solve the problem of the separation difficulty between the catalyst and char. In order to verify the feasibility of this strategy, NiO/γ-Al2O3 was respectively supported on ceramic honeycomb, metal foam, and metal wire mesh to produce three monolithic catalysts with different outer surface areas. Their catalytic performance for cattle manure pyrolysis was tested and the result revealed that compared with the granular NiO/γ-Al2O3, using monolithic catalysts with ceramic honeycomb, metal foam, and metal wire mesh carrier respectively increased the gas production by 37%, 33%, and 11%. The use of monolithic catalyst in in-situ catalytic biomass pyrolysis, not only simplified the separation process of catalyst and char, but also enhanced the catalysis performance.

Cattle manure is a major livestock waste in agroecosystem, and in-situ catalytic pyrolysis is considered as a potential technology for its disposal. In order to increase the gas production during cattle manure pyrolysis and alleviate the problem of frequent regeneration-separation of the in-situ catalyst, a strategy of in-situ catalytic pyrolysis was proposed in this work, in which the pyrolytic char product was not separated from the pyrolysis catalyst of NiO/γ-Al2O3 but mixed with it and recycled for several times as the co-catalyst for cattle manure pyrolysis instead. Adopting this strategy, it was observed that the mixed-type catalyst could lead to 70% increase in gas production and 82% promotion in syngas energy conversion rate compared with the circumstance of no catalyst added. Through different means of characterization, it was found that there are synergistic effects between char and NiO/γ-Al2O3, which enhance the catalytic performance of catalyst. On one hand, during the pyrolysis process, char can translate NiO into Ni that has higher cracking activity through in-situ reduction. On the other hand, due to its rich porous texture and large pore volume, char can act as an additional adsorbent for the reactants. Based on the experimental results of this work, the proposed strategy of cyclic in-situ catalysis with the recycled char as the co-catalyst can be a promising scheme in the practical biomass pyrolysis process for gas production.

Tar removal is a great challenge preventing the commercialization of the biomass gasification technology for power generation. In this study, a series of Ni/MgAl2O4 compounds with different nickel contents were prepared by a seeded-growth strategy without surfactants, and employed as the catalysts for steam reforming of toluene which is considered as a tar model. These catalysts exhibited good catalytic activity, carbon deposition resistance and anti-sintering properties, especially 20Ni/MgAl2O4, which could achieve 100% gas yield with no more than 0.359% of solid carbon selectivity, and its catalytic performance did not decrease even after 600 min operation. The characterization results demonstrated that the catalyst prepared by this method showed several desirable properties, such as small Ni particle size, high dispersity of Ni on the MgAl2O4 support, high specific surface area, uniform mesoporous structure, and appropriate basic properties. In addition, DFT calculations indicated that there is a competitive adsorption of H2O and C7H8 on Ni5 clusters, and H2O is easier to adsorb on the Ni5 cluster than C7H8.

Automatic vertebrae localization and segmentation in computed tomography (CT) are fundamental for spinal image analysis and spine surgery with computer-assisted surgery systems. But they remain challenging due to high variation in spinal anatomy among patients. In this paper, we proposed a deep-learning approach for automatic CT vertebrae localization and segmentation with a two-stage Dense-U-Net. The first stage used a 2D-Dense-U-Net to localize vertebrae by detecting the vertebrae centroids with dense labels and 2D slices. The second stage segmented the specific vertebra within a region-of-interest identified based on the centroid using 3D-Dense-U-Net. Finally, each segmented vertebra was merged into a complete spine and resampled to original resolution. We evaluated our method on the dataset from the CSI 2014 Workshop with 6 metrics: location error (1.69 ± 0.78 mm), detection rate (100%) for vertebrae localization; the dice coefficient (0.953 ± 0.014), intersection over union (0.911 ± 0.025), Hausdorff distance (4.013 ± 2.128 mm), pixel accuracy (0.998 ± 0.001) for vertebrae segmentation. The experimental results demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed method. Furthermore, evaluation on the dataset from the xVertSeg challenge with location error (4.12 ± 2.31), detection rate (100%), dice coefficient (0.877 ± 0.035) shows the generalizability of our method. In summary, our solution localized the vertebrae successfully by detecting the centroids of vertebrae and implemented instance segmentation of vertebrae in the whole spine.

Dehydration is the first chemical reaction in biomass pyrolysis. The process of dehydration has great influence on the subsequent chemical reactions and product distribution. There is little research on dehydration characteristics of real biomass during pyrolysis. Therefore, in this study the dehydration characteristics were investigated using rice husk as the biomass representative in the pyrolysis experiments. On this basis, NiO/γ-Al2O3, was used as the catalyst for rice husk pyrolysis to study its catalytic mechanism for the dehydration reaction of biomass. Results of the pyrolysis experiments indicated that dehydration reaction mainly occurred in the temperature range of 250–350 °C, in which the mass of water produced was around 5.92% of the dry raw material. Through comparing the dehydration curve with thermogravimetric (TG) curve of rice husk, it was found that the dehydration was one of the primary reactions during the pyrolysis, and the accumulated water produced attained to 33.82 wt% of total volatile products of the pyrolysis at 400 °C. When catalyst NiO/γ-Al2O3 was used with NiO loading in the range of 5–20%, the production of water increased by 0.88–1.04 times at 350 °C under the pyrolysis condition in this study. The results of catalytic pyrolysis showed that γ-Al2O3 was the major active component for catalyzing the dehydration reactions. Through characterization of the catalysts by temperature programmed desorption of ammonia (NH3-TPD), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), it was found that the weak acid sites on γ-Al2O3 surface played the most important role in the catalytic dehydration reactions.

Objective: To quantitatively estimate life expectancy (LE) and depression and anxiety-free life expectancy (DAFLE) for the years 2013 and 2018 in Jiangxi Province, China, by sex and urban–rural areas. Additionally, to compare the discrepancy of DAFLE/LE of different sexes and urban-rural areas over various years. Methods: Based on the summary of the health statistics of Jiangxi Province in 2013 and 2018 and the results of the 5th and 6th National Health Service Surveys in Jiangxi Province, the model life table is used to estimate the age-specific mortality rate by sex and urban–rural areas. Sullivan’s method was used to calculate DAFLE. Results: Data from 2013 indicate that those aged 15 can expect to live 56.20 years without depression and anxiety for men and 59.67 years without depression and anxiety for women. Compared to 2013, DAFLE had not fluctuated significantly in 2018. The proportion of life expectancy without depression and anxiety (DAFLE/LE) declined between 2013 and 2018. DAFLE/LE in urban areas was higher than in rural areas. Men had higher DAFLE/LE than women. From 2013 to 2018, the DAFLE aged 15 decreased by 0.18 years for urban men and decreased by 0.52 years for urban women, rural areas also decreased to varying degrees. Conclusions: Even if women had a longer life span than men, they would spend more time with depression or anxiety. DAFLE did not increase with the increase in LE from 2013 to 2018, suggesting an absolute expansion of the burden, especially in rural areas. Depression and anxiety health services in Jiangxi, China will face more serious obstacles and challenges, which may lead to more disability. This requires more attention and more effective measures from the public, medical departments and the government.

Biogas, which primarily consists of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2), is a renewable energy carrier, and can be upgraded to a natural gas substitute after removing trace impurities and CO2. Among the various CO2 separation technologies, amine absorption is generally considered to be energy intensive as regenerating the rich solution need additional heat to strip CO2. However, it could hardly be found the related data concerning energy consumption of biogas upgrading projects adopting amine absorption. In this work, a pilot biogas upgrading project with combined amine absorption unit and gas steam boiler was established with treatment capacity of 300 Nm3/h feed biogas. The major energy for operating this biogas upgrading project was self-provided through combustion a fraction of the biogas to generate steam for regenerating rich absorbent. Operation results showed that, besides much higher CO2 removal efficiency (>99.5%), CH4 recovery of this project attained around 89.0%, which was higher than that of several biogas upgrading projects using one-stage PSA or two-stage membrane permeation technologies. Based on the results of this work, it proves that amine absorption is a highly effective technique for CO2 removal in biogas upgrading projects, and its energy consumption is not higher than other technologies.

The liquefaction mechanisms of the algal biomass to bio-oil were investigated by using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy, respectively. It was found that NaOH was a satisfactory catalyst and contributed to helping the liquefaction of algal biomass. The bio-oil from algal biomass was composed of many compounds, including carbohydrates, alcohol, hydroxybenzene, carboxylic acid, alkene, ester, and others. The mechanism of hydrothermal catalytic liquefaction was discussed. It was found that, comparing with the husk bio-fuel, the algal bio-oil as a promising alternative fuel was more close to the traditional diesel fuel in physicochemical properties. The novel research outcomes contribute to improving the yield of bio-oil from microalgae, reducing the cost of the bio-oil and accelerating the commercial application of the algal bio-oil in the near future.

The aim of this study is to understand the utilization of inpatient services and its contributing factors among middle-aged and elderly females (MAEF) in less developed rural regions. Five surveys were conducted between 2006 and 2014 with rural residents of Jiangxi by stratified cluster random sampling. Participant females included only those who were aged 45 and above. Complex sampling logistics analysis was performed to analyze the effect of three factors on inpatient service. Complex sampling logistics regression analysis revealed that the probability of hospitalization for the divorced or widowed females was significantly lower than that of married ones (aOR = 0.177, p &lt, 0.05). However, the probability of early discharge was significantly higher among divorced or widowed females than married ones (aOR = 3.237, p &lt, 0.05). In addition, females with chronic diseases were more likely to be hospitalized (aOR = 3.682, p &lt, 0.05). Also, early discharge （aOR = 7.689，p &lt, 0.05) occurred among the participants who should be hospitalized but were not hospitalized occurred (aOR = 3.258，p &lt, 0.05). The continuous improvement of the new rural cooperative medical policy has promoted the utilization of inpatient services for the MAEF. Findings from this study emphasize the need to strengthen the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases among middle-aged and elderly women.

Background Glioblastoma (GBM) remains the most biologically aggressive subtype of gliomas with an average survival of 10 to 12 months. Considering that the overall survival (OS) of each GBM patient is a key factor in the treatment of individuals, it is meaningful to predict the survival probability for GBM patients newly diagnosed in clinical practice. Material and Methods Using the TCGA dataset and two independent GEO datasets, we identified genes that are associated with the OS and differentially expressed between GBM tissues and the adjacent normal tissues. A robust likelihood‐based survival modeling approach was applied to select the best genes for modeling. After the prognostic nomogram was generated, an independent dataset on different platform was used to evaluate its effectiveness. Results We identified 168 differentially expressed genes associated with the OS. Five of these genes were selected to generate a gene prognostic nomogram. The external validation demonstrated that 5‐gene prognostic nomogram has the capability of predicting the OS of GBM patients. Conclusion We developed a novel and convenient prognostic tool based on five genes that exhibited clinical value in predicting the survival probability for newly diagnosed GBM patients, and all of these five genes could represent potential target genes for the treatment of GBM. The development of this model will provide a good reference for cancer researchers.

A bio-oil was prepared from planktonic algal biomass via thermochemical liquefaction with a NaOH catalyst. The effects of reaction conditions, including temperature, time, and the ratio of biomass to solvent, on the liquefaction yield were investigated. The liquefaction yield initially increased and then decreased with increasing temperature and reaction time. The maximum yield (61.6%) was observed after liquefaction at 300°C for 30 min with 0.2 mol/L NaOH as a catalyst and a biomass to solvent ratio of 1:10. The chemical components of the obtained bio-oil were analyzed via gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, with results indicating that the algal bio-oil was composed of furan, phenol, acid, and ester derivatives.

The cavitation erosion behavior of different metals, such as pure copper (Cu), steel GCr15 (ASTM A295) and stainless steel 1Cr18Ni9Ti (ASTM A276 321), in the emulsified biomass fuel/diesel (10wt% biomass fuel in blend with diesel fuel) was investigated by using a magnetostrictive-induced cavitation vibratory apparatus. The morphology of surface was observed by optical microscope and scanning electron microscope, and the cavitation erosion rates of three metals were evaluated by mass loss method. The surface compositions after cavitation erosion were analyzed by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The experimental results showed that the surface morphologies and elements of Cu and GCr15 were changed greatly before and after cavitation erosion in the emulsified biomass fuel/diesel blend, as contrast to 1Cr18Ni9Ti. The degree order of cavitation erosion among three metals was Cu, GCr15 and 1Cr18Ni9Ti, because that the anti-corrosion effect of 1Cr18Ni9Ti played a great role in the mass loss by cavitation erosion. A Study on Cavitation Erosion Behavior of Different Metals in Biomass Fuel/Diesel Blend

Background:Determining factors predictive of the natural risk of rupture of cerebral aneurysms is difficult. We studied morphological factors associated with rupture in a study model of patients with mirror location intracranial aneurysms, one aneurysm that had ruptured and one that had not, each patient served as their own control attempting to eliminate confounding variables.Methods:We collected five one-dimensional measurements and four two-dimensional indices from three-dimensional rotational digital subtraction angiography images of patients in the proposed study model and explored their correlation with aneurysm rupture. Parameters were analyzed with a paired Student's t test for significance and significant parameters were further examined by multivariate conditional logistic regression analysis.Results:Fifty-two patients with 52 pairs of intracranial aneurysms in a mirror location were studied. The maximum perpendicular height, neck diameter, maximum width, maximum height, aspect ratio, size ratio, and bottleneck factor were significantly associated with ruptured aneurysms on bivariate analysis. A logistic regression analysis showed that only size ratio, which was defined as the ratio of the maximal height to parent artery average diameter, is independently correlated with ruptured intracranial aneurysms.Conclusions:In a case-control study of patients with mirror location intracranial aneurysms, size ratio was identified as the unique morphological factor associate with the rupture of cerebral aneurysms.

Magnetoelectric (ME) (CoFe2O4)0.3-(BaTiO3)0.7 (CFO-BTO) nanostructures have been synthesized by a combinative using of hydrothermal reaction and polymer-assisted deposition. The feather-like nanostructures have an average diameter of 250nm and lengths up to 5μm, with the single-crystal CFO nanopillars embedded in the BTO matrix. The CFO-BTO nanostructures exhibit good magnetic (Ms=21.0emu/g, Mr=10.4emu/g and Hc=560.7Oe) and ferroelectric properties (Ps=10.5μC/cm2, Pr=5.6μC/cm2), as well as a large ME coefficient of 51.8mV/cmOe. A prominent phonon abnormality has also been detected between 110°C and 140°C. With emphasis on the novel microstructure, the ME response and phonon abnormality of the CFO-BTO nanostructures have been discussed.

Magnetoelectric (ME) (CoFe2O4)0.3–(BaTiO3)0.7 (CFO–BTO) nanostructures have been synthesized by a combinative using of hydrothermal reaction and polymer-assisted deposition. The feather-like nanostructures have an average diameter of 250 nm and lengths up to 5 μm, with the single-crystal CFO nanopillars embedded in the BTO matrix. The CFO–BTO nanostructures exhibit good ferromagnetic and ferroelectric properties, as well as a large ME coefficient of 51.8 mV/cm Oe. A model has been proposed to explain the three-dimensional phases-connectivity of the nanostructures. And it is suggested that the novel type of phases-connectivity greatly promote the ME response.

InN films grown on sapphire at different substrate temperatures from 550°C to 700°C by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition were investigated. The low-temperature GaN nucleation layer with high-temperature annealing (1100°C) was used as a buffer for main InN layer growth. X-ray diffraction and Raman scattering measurements reveal that the quality of InN films can be improved by increasing the growth temperature to 600°C. Further high substrate temperatures may promote the thermal decomposition of InN films and result in poor crystallinity and surface morphology. The photoluminescence and Hall measurements were employed to characterize the optical and electrical properties of InN films, which also indicates strong growth temperature dependence. The InN films grown at temperature of 600°C show not only a high mobility with low carrier concentration, but also a strong infrared emission band located around 0.7 eV. For a 600 nm thick InN film grown at 600°C, the Hall mobility achieves up to 938 cm2/Vs with electron concentration of 3.9 × 1018 cm−3.

AlN/Al 0.3 Ga 0.7 N distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) are grown on sapphire (0 0 0 1) by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The number of stacks of the DBRs varies between 6 and 30. The thickness of the quarter-wave layers is designed such that the target peak reflectance locating at the wavelength of 330 nm. The GaN or AlGaN templates are employed for growing the AlN/AlGaN DBRs. It is found that the templates intensively influence on the surface roughness and the interfacial properties of AlN/AlGaN DBRs. The result of atomic force microscopy indicates that the AlN/AlGaN DBRs grow on GaN template under quasi-two-dimensional mode. And the good interfaces of AlN/AlGaN not only clearly observed by cross-sectional scanning electron microscopy, but also concluded from narrow width and high orders of satellite peaks detected by high-resolution X-ray diffraction. The peak reflectance of 20 stacks DBRs on GaN template reaches up to 82% located at 326 nm.While those DBRs grown on AlGaN template do not show such structural and optical properties due to the rough surface of AlGaN template and the poor interfaces of AlN/AlGaN.

High-quality single-crystal Ga-doped ZnO films have been epitaxially deposited on (0 0 0 2) sapphire substrate by low-pressure metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) technique. The dependence of structural, electrical and optical properties of films on Ga doping concentration was investigated. As grown at the Ga/Zn gas ratio of 3.2 at%, the film shows a narrow linewidth of 0.26° for ZnO (0 0 0 2) peak, high carrier concentration of 2.47×1019 cm−3, and high optical transparency over 90%. The carrier concentration increased sharply and became saturated at higher doping level due to the onset of carrier compensation. The Burstein–Moss blueshift of the absorption edge energy increased as expected with the carrier concentration up to 2.47×1019 cm−3. In addition, doping-induced photoluminescence (PL) emission linewidth broadening and bandgap renormalization (BGR) effects have also been observed. The intensity of PL emission decreased with increasing Ga dopant concentration, which was believed to be a direct consequence of the doping-enhanced nonradiative recombination rates.

GaN films are grown on Si(111) with low-temperature GaN (LT-GaN) layers as buffer layers by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE). The LT-GaN layers are deposited at different temperatures ranging from 400 to 900 °C. The surface property, the structure and optical properties of the GaN films with different LT-GaN layers are studied. When deposition temperature of LT-GaN layer is 600 °C, the GaN film shows the best properties.

Mn-doped films were grown in an ammonia-source HVPE system. Mn 3 GaN 0.5 and GaN were detected in film samples without other phase when the HCl–Mn/NH 3 ratio range from 1 200 to 1 100 . (Ga x Mn 1− x )N phase also formed in films. Two broad bands centered at 305 and 674 cm −1 and new peaks at wave numbers of 592 cm −1 arised in Raman spectra of Mn-doped films. It was also found that A 1 (LO) modes of all Mn-doped samples were strongly asymmetric and showed a considerable redshift. Mn-doped films showed an obvious hysteresis loops at room temperature. Mn-doped films showed metallic characteristic and this mixed structure may be greatly beneficial to spin injection magnetotransport devices.

The growth front evolution of gallium nitride (GaN) thin films deposited on sapphire substrates by HVPE has been studied with atomic force microscope (AFM). The dynamic scaling characteristics are observed during the deposition process. After numerical correlation analysis, the roughness exponent α =0.75 and the growth exponent β =0.59 are obtained by using self-affine model. The roughening mechanisms of GaN thin films has been simply investigated, and the results indicate that one or more roughening mechanisms are present in the growth process in addition to stochastic roughening and diffusion effect. The computed values of the correlations in the input noise are very close to our results.

The Mn-implanted GaN with ferromagnetism at room temperature has been prepared successfully. The optical and structural properties of Mn-implanted GaN films have been investigated. The films studied were grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition, with Mn implanted in 150 keV, which can offer many distinguished advantages compared with other doping methods. A new energy band with a minimum at 2.9 eV in the reflectance spectra has been observed. The yellow band emission was greatly decreased according to the result of photoluminescence. The results of vibrating sample magnetometer experiment proved the ferromagnetic properties of Mn-doped GaN at room temperature.

This paper investigated a novel hydrothermal liquefaction process of Chlorella pyrenoidosa catalyzed by Ce/HZSM-5. The chemical groups and components of the residues of C. pyrenoidosa were analyzed by Fourier transform infrared spectrometry and Gas Chromatograph–Mass Spectrometer. The crystal structure and micro surface topography of C. pyrenoidosa before and after catalytic liquefaction were characterized by X-ray diffraction and Scanning electron microscopy, respectively. The experimental results showed that the catalytic cracking effects of Ce/HZSM-5 were superior to that of HZSM-5 as a liquefaction catalyst of C. pyrenoidosa. Compared with HZSM-5, Ce/HZSM-5 has a significantly enhanced Lewis acid active center, smaller particle size, larger specific surface, and highly dispersed Ce4O7 with trivalent and tetravalent cerium in the zeolite skeleton channel that accelerate the catalytic liquefaction of C. pyrenoidosa. The rare earth modified zeolite Ce/HZSM-5 exhibits good potential and a beneficial nature for the preparation of bio-oil from microalgae with high efficiency.

Forward and reverse current-voltage characteristics of the Pt Schottky contacts on modulation-doped Al/sub 0.22/Ga/sub 0.78/N/GaN heterostructures were investigated. The barrier height of 0.94 eV and the ideality factor of 1.4 were obtained for the sample with the Si-doping level of 7.5 /spl times/ 10/sup 17/ cm/sup -3/ in the top Al/sub 0.22/G/sub 0.78/N barrier layer. The barrier height is lower and the ideality factor is larger for the samples with higher Si-doping level in the barrier. The reverse current mechanism are also different for the samples with different doping level of the Al/sub 0.22/Ga/sub 0.78/N barrier. It is suggested that the interfacial properties are crucial to the current-voltage characteristics of the samples. Capacitance-frequency measurement indicates that the density of the metal-semiconductor interfacial states are higher for the samples with higher Si-doping level in the barrier. It is thought that the chemical properties of the Al/sub 0.22/Ga/sub 0.78/N surface are influenced by the Si-doping level of Al/sub 0.22/Ga/sub 0.78/N, resulting in the difference in Pt/Al/sub 0.22/Ga/sub 0.73/N interfacial properties.

N-type GaN films grown by Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy technique were etched under different conditions at room temperature. Direct evidence of etch-stop effect of dislocations during photoelectrochemical (PEC) etching has been found. Further investigation of the mechanism has been discussed.

Thick GaN films grown with different V/III ratio on sapphire by hydride vapour phase epitaxy have been investigated. The V/III ratio is changed from 240 to 30. All the GaN films, which are n type, show only (0002) oriented peak and have the band emission with no yellow luminescence bands. When V/III ratio is 30, the full width at half maximum of (0002) X-ray rocking curve is the smallest, line-width of the band edge emission is narrow, the surface morphology shows step-flow growth and the growth rate is the highest.

A method based on Schottky capacitance-voltage (C-V) simulation was developed to extract the polarization-induced charge density in modulation-doped AlxGa1-xN/GaN heterostructures. There are two characteristic slopes in the experimental and simulated C-V curves.The influences of the polarization-induced charge density, n-AlGaN doping level and the Schottky barrier height on the positions of the two slopes in the C-V curves are much different from each other. The polarization-induced charge density can be extracted accurately by fitting the experimental C-V curves. It is extracted to be 6.78 x 1012cm-2in modulation-doped Al0.22Ga0.78N/GaN heterostructures with the Al0.22Ga0.78N thickness of 30 nm or 45 nm. The charge density reducesto 1.30 x 1012cm-2in the heterostructure with the Al0.22Ga0.78N thickness of 75 nm. It is thought that the reduction of the polarization-induced charges at the heterointerface is due to the partial relaxation of the Al0.22Ga0.78N layer on GaN.

Featherlike (CoFe2O4)0.3–(BaTiO3)0.7 (CFO–BTO) nanostructures were synthesized by a hydrothermal reaction and polymer-assisted deposition. With CFO nanopillars embedded in the BTO matrix, the nanostructures show an average diameter of 250 nm and lengths of up to 5 µm. The microstructure and growth mechanism of the nanostructures were investigated. A large magnetoelectric (ME) coefficient of 51.8 mV cm-1 Oe-1 at room temperature and a strong phonon abnormality between 110 and 140 °C are discussed.