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This study investigated the competitive adsorption of CO 2 , N 2 , and O 2 with different CO 2 /N 2 ratios on residual coal. Isothermal adsorption experiments on DX coal with single and multi-component gases were conducted at 20–40 °C and 0.1–1.0 MPa using a self-developed device. The results showed that O 2 and N 2 adsorption followed the Langmuir model, while CO 2 adsorption fitted the D-R model; The adsorption capacity and isosteric adsorption heat of DX coal for single gases were: CO 2 >O 2 >N 2 ; The adsorption capacity of O 2 , N 2 , and CO 2 increased linearly with CO 2 proportion under the same pressure, with correlation coefficients above 0.9; Higher temperature reduced CO 2 adsorption more than O 2 , decreasing the competitive selectivity of CO 2 over O 2 ; At constant O 2 concentration, the average isosteric adsorption heat of coal adsorbing O 2 decreased with increasing CO 2 proportion; At constant CO 2 /N 2 ratio, the average isosteric adsorption heat of coal adsorbing O 2 decreased with decreasing O 2 concentration. • Adsorption of DX coal in different O 2 and CO 2 /N 2 atmospheres were studied. • Multi-component gas adsorption IAST model with Langmuir and D-R models was formed. • Temperature increase would weaken CO 2 inhibitory effect on coal oxygen adsorption. • The average q st of O 2 progressively diminished as the CO 2 proportion increased. • The average q st of O 2 decline with O 2 concentration at a constant CO 2 /N 2 ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The proportion of ternary molten salt (NaCl-KCl-LiCl) was determined by simulation combined with experimental methods. • Phase change material (NaCl-KCl-LiCl) and composite phase change materials (NaCl-KCl-LiCl/CuO) were prepared by mechanical stirring and static melting. • CuO nanoparticles and ternary chlorine salt (NaCl-KCl-LiCl) form microscopic nanostructures. • CuO nanoparticles improve their specific heat and thermal conductivity without changing the latent heat of ternary chlorine salt (NaCl-KCl-LiCl). Herein, a novel phase change energy storage material based on a NaCl (15 wt%)-KCl (45 wt%)-LiCl (40 wt%) ternary molten salt and CuO nanoparticles with varying mass fraction as a heat transfer enhancer is produced through a combination of static melting and mechanical stirring methods. According to the microcosmic characterization data, a microphysical structure of a ternary chlorine salt, partially doped with CuO, is formed. According to the thermal analysis results, CuO nanoparticles are able to effectively improve specific heat, thermal conductivity and energy storage density of ternary chloride salts without any change in their melting point, freezing point and latent heat of fusion. In particular, the CuO nanoparticles with a 3% mass fraction are shown to be more appropriate as the enhanced heat transfer agents. The phase change materials produced in this study exhibit high heat transfer efficiency, high energy storage density and excellent high temperature cycling stability, which make them applicable in thermal energy storage systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the inerting effect and migration law of inert N2 and CO2 in large inclined goaf are studied using a physical simulation model. The differences in oxygen reduction and inert gas migration are analyzed and compared. The results show that as N2 and CO2 injection increased, the oxidation zone's range and width shrunk, and the end of the loose and oxidation zones moved closer to the working face. The migration profile of CO2 and N2 resembled a trumpet and an L shape, respectively, and under the same inerting flow rate, the effect of CO2 inerting on oxygen reduction was much less significant than that of N2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Velocity model building is crucial for seismic exploration, yet conventional methods struggle with complex geological scenarios due to assumptions of horizontal layering. These challenges are exacerbated in areas with complex structures and low signal-to-noise ratios, where precise velocity determination is difficult. To overcome these limitations, we propose the Multi-receptive Field Distillation Network, a novel deep-learning approach that leverages Multi-receptive Field modules to extract detailed seismic features, and a Shot Record Transformer Block to capture long-range dependencies. Our network employs a distillation architecture to process seismic data with and without noise, enhancing the model's ability to learn from noisy records. A Composite Loss function is introduced for optimizing model parameters, promoting a unified feature representation. Numerical experiments on synthetic models demonstrate our method's superior performance in noise inversion and velocity modeling accuracy. The results underscore the network's potential for improving seismic exploration accuracy. The code has been made public on GitHub: UPCvmb/MFD.git [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual emotion analysis (VEA), a crucial task that identifies the emotional content conveyed in an image, has garnered increasing attention due to the rapid growth of image posts in modern social media. Prompted by the remarkable generalization ability of prompt learning, recent studies have endeavoured to develop adaptive contextual prompts to adjust the representation spaces in visual emotion analysis dynamically. However, the majority of these studies have focused on non-oriented prompting strategies, overlooking the sentiment information associated with emotion labels. In this paper, we propose a novel approach, Multi-Perspective Prompt Learning (MPP-CLIP), within the context of CLIP, for visual emotion analysis. Our approach not only involves non-oriented prompting using learnable contexts but also leverages emotion-oriented prompting based on emotion labels. Thus, our design facilitates a strong coupling between the vision-emotion features, ensuring mutual synergy and discouraging the adoption of solely non-oriented solutions. In addition, we introduce Residual-Enhanced Adapter, which employs residual-style feature mixing to achieve efficient transfer learning from pre-trained CLIP to visual emotion analysis. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate our approach outperforms previous state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods while maintaining significantly lower computational and memory costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anomaly detection has been recently proposed as a visual scene understanding task and widely applied in industrial detection. Traditional unsupervised methods aim to enhance anomaly detection performance by improving input reconstruction quality. However, these approaches rarely address the problem of poor quality reconstruction information. The inferior information affects the reconstruction effect of the input images, and further weakens the recognition performance of anomaly detection. Moreover, existing methods ignore the features of generated images and information interaction between modules, resulting in insufficient use of information. In this paper, a novel Iterative Memory Review Network (IMRN) based on horizontal-vertical latent space is presented to detect anomalies by selecting prior reconstruction information and strengthening the interactivity between network modules. An iterative memory module is recommended for the generator to encode high-dimensional inputs. Meanwhile, a review module is proposed for image modeling by extracting local and global features and fusing reconstruction process information. While completing the expansion of horizontal latent space, the review module also encodes vertical information in different directions from the iterative memory module. Our proposed approach is validated in multi-class anomaly detection tasks on public datasets. Extensive experimental results on the MVTec dataset verify the superiority of our proposed IMRN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The ratios of eutectic salt (NaCl–KCl–Na 2 CO 3) were predicted by means of thermodynamic calculations. • Doping of Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles enhances the thermal properties of eutectic salts. • Doping of 2.0 wt% Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles increased TES densities by 9.91%. • Nanoparticle doping shortens melting time by 82 s. With the introduction of the Brayton cycle technology, molten salts have become one of the most promising thermal storage materials in thermal energy storage (TES) systems. In this study, a novel eutectic salt (ES) NaCl–KCl–Na 2 CO 3 was used as the base salt and Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles (NPs) as additives to prepare Nano-ES. Both thermal analysis and molecular dynamics results showed that the doping of Al 2 O 3 NPs improved the thermophysical properties of the ES. In particular, the TES density and liquid-state thermal conductivity of the ES increased by 11.60 % and 28.62 %, respectively, when the content of NPs was 2.0 wt%. The improvement in thermophysical properties was attributed to the NPs-induced change in the microstructure of the ES. However, the doping of NPs led to inevitable increase in the viscosity of the ES, which directly affected the strength of natural convection. This study further analyzed the melting process of ES and Nano-ES in shell-tube TES system, and the results showed that the melting rate of TES materials was affected by natural convection and thermal conductivity. The ES with lower viscosity and thermal conductivity exhibited a melting rate close to that of Nano-ES at 420–540 s stage. The viscosity of the TES materials should not be neglected during the application of TES systems. This study provides an important guiding significance for the selection of molten salts and additives for high-temperature TES systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual grounding associates linguistic expressions with the corresponding objects or regions in an image. Current methods extract multi-scale features from the image and establish cross-modal relationships through transformers. However, the direct combination of multi-scale features often results in an excess of redundant information, which diminishes the synergistic complementarity across different scales. Furthermore, utilizing transformers to acquire compact multi-modal representations may potentially overlook essential corner regions. In this paper, we propose a unique centralized-transformer network with multi-scale discrepancy information (CTMDI) by exploring multi-scale difference features and performing centralized cross-modal reasoning for precise visual grounding. The multi-scale discrepancy information module calculates the variations of features at different scales to capture fine-grained details and maintain the overall understanding of the visual content. To enhance cross-modal interactions, a centralized transformer is proposed to simultaneously aggregate the local essential information and global distance correlations of multi-modal fusion features. Comprehensive experiments on three typical datasets demonstrate the superiority of CTMDI over existing approaches. • Capturing the differences between different-scale features. • Alleviating the interference of redundant information. • Focusing on distinctive information at each scale. • Obtaining comprehensive and discriminative feature representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eutectic salts, a promising thermal storage material for the next generation of concentrating solar power plants, have attracted extensive attention. Its thermal performance is a crucial factor affecting the efficient utilization of efficient solar energy. Utilizing NaCl–KCl–LiCl as the phase-change material and introduced Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles to enhance thermal conductivity, thus study explores potential mechanisms for improving heat transfer and thermal storage performance. Experimental and molecular dynamics results consistently showed that doping Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles significantly increased the specific heat and thermal conductivity of eutectic salt. Specifically, at a nanoparticle content of 1.0 wt%, liquid-specific heat and thermal conductivity increased by 44.58 % and 21.43 %, respectively. Experimental and simulation results mutually validated a consistent upward trend. However, nanoparticle introduction unavoidably led to increased viscosity, with a maximum increase of 32.15 %. Subsequently, detailed simulation analysis of a shell-and-tube heat storage unit for composite materials highlighted that heat conduction rate was influenced by both natural convection and heat conduction. Therefore, viscosity and thermal conductivity should be simultaneously considered in the system applications. This scientific strategy holds promise for widespread application of eutectic salts in solar thermal energy storage, further promoting sustainable development of renewable energy. • Thermophysical properties can be improved by doping with Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles. • Doping with 1.0 wt% Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles achieves a maximum specific heat. • Thermal conductivity and viscosity showed the largest increases of 21.43 % and 22.56 %. • Thoroughly assessed the systemic application scenarios of thermal storage materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thermophysical properties of molten salts aid in determining the storage efficiency of thermal energy storage (TES) systems in concentrating solar power plants. In this research, a novel ternary molten salt (4NaCl–37KCl–59LiNO 3 , mol%) was utilized as the phase change material (PCM), while Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles (NPs) were employed as a thermal conductivity enhancer. Experimental measurements and molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to confirm that the introduction of Al 2 O 3 NPs as dopants enhanced the specific heat, thermal conductivity, and energy storage density of the eutectic salt. Specifically, at an Al 2 O 3 NP content of 0.5 wt%, the composite PCM exhibited a 44.23 % increase in liquid-state specific heat and a 40.82 % increase in liquid-state thermal conductivity, along with a 15.73 % increase in storage density. This study demonstrates that the enhanced thermal properties of eutectic salts by adding Al 2 O 3 NPs are primarily attributed to the emergence of nanostructures and alterations in atomic potential energy, as evidenced by both experimental and simulated microstructural analyses. These findings offer valuable insight into the selection of thermal storage materials and additives, as well as their implementation in medium-temperature TES systems, with the objective of optimizing the efficient utilization of solar energy. • Eutectic ratios of ternary molten salts predicted by thermodynamic calculations. • Thermophysical properties can be improved by doping with Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles. • The effect of nanoparticle content on thermophysical properties were studied. • Doping with 0.5 wt% Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles achieves a maximum energy storage density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple and efficient method for the synthesis of spirooxindole derivatives via a three-component reaction of isatin, 5-aminopyrazole, and 1,3-dicarbonylcompounds (or β-​oxo-benzenepropanenitril​e) catalyzed by copper triflate in ethanol is described. The advantages of this method include high efficiency, mild reaction conditions, recoverable catalyst, and environmentally benign conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monolithic catalyst was prepared by hydrothermal synthesis of Co3O4 crystals on metal foams (Ni, Cu, Fe) and named Co3O4@X. Then ZIF-67 nanoparticles were grown in situ on the surface of the catalyst after secondary treatment (named Co3O4-ZIF-67@X). CO oxidation catalytic performance of these catalysts was tested through temperature-programmed experiments. Morphology of the catalysts was characterized by SEM and XPS. The results showed that the catalytic performance depended on the nature of transition-metal carrier. High adsorbed oxygen content on the surface and morphology with large surface area is favorable for the catalytic reaction. Among the samples, needle-like Co3O4 grown on Ni foam with abundant adsorbed oxygen species (Oads) manifested the best catalytic activity after activation, achieving over 85% CO conversion at 40°C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An image-based Chinese poetry generation network. • Poetry theme and style control module aims to meet the theme and style requirements of poem. • Constructed a theme-based Chinese classical poetry dataset. The automatic generation of poems from images is a classic task in natural language processing. Recently, it has gained tremendous research interest due to the help of neural sequence-to-sequence networks. The current methods are not qualified to generate poems under the joint control of the theme and style conditions, while these two key factors are critical to the quality of Chinese poetry. This paper proposes an image-based Chinese poem generation network (ICPGN), which can obtain the holistic content and sentiments in images and transform them into theme and style representations. A poem theme and style control module (PTSC) is designed to ensure that the generated poems meet the theme and style requirements simultaneously. A new dataset CQC2020 is constructed for training and testing of the proposed network and other related methods. Extensive manual and machine experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness and competitiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, image-text matching based on local region-word semantic alignment has attracted considerable research attention. The fine-grained interplay can be achieved by aggregating the similarities of the region-word pairs. However, the similarities of aligned region-word pairs are treated equally in most cross-modal matching literatures, without considering their respective importance. Moreover, the local alignment methods are prone to bring about a global semantic drift due to the ignorance of thematic considerations for the image-text pairs. In this paper, a novel Dual-View Semantic Inference (DVSI) network is proposed to leverage both local and global semantic matching in a holistic deep framework. For the local view, a region enhancement module is proposed to mine the priorities for different regions in the image, which provides differentiate abilities to discover the latent region-word relationships. For the global view, the overall semantics of image is summarized for global semantic matching to avoid global semantic drift. The two views are unified together for final image-text matching. Extensive experiments conducted on MSCOCO and Flicr30K demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DVSI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the main pathological subtype of Non-small cell lung cancer. We downloaded the gene expression profile and immune-related gene set from the TCGA and ImmPort database, respectively, to establish immune-related gene pairs (IRGPs). Then, IRGPs were subjected to univariate Cox regression analysis, LASSO regression analysis, and multivariable Cox regression analysis to screen and develop an IRGPs signature. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was applied for evaluating the predicting accuracy of this signature by calculating the area under ROC (AUC) and data from the GEO set was used to validate this signature. The relationship of 22 tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) to the immune risk score was also investigated. An IRGPs signature with 8 IRGPs was constructed. The AUC for 1- and 3-year overall survival in the TCGA set was 0.867 and 0.870, respectively. Similar results were observed in the AUCs of GEO set 1, 2 and 3 (GEO set 1 [1-year: 0.819; 3-year: 0.803]; GEO set 2 [1-year: 0.834; 3-year: 0.870]; GEO set 3 [1-year: 0.955; 3-year: 0.827]). Survival analysis demonstrated high-risk LUAD patients exhibited poorer prognosis. The multivariable Cox regression indicated that the risk score was an independent prognostic factor. The immune risk score was highly associated with several TIICs (Plasma cells, memory B cells, resting memory CD4 T cells, and activated NK cells). We developed a novel IRGPs signature for predicting 1- and 3- year overall survival in LUAD, which would be helpful for prognosis assessment of LUAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ferroelectric (FE) materials have strong polarization effects and are switchable by the applied electric field, making them attractive candidates for polarization engineering in GaN‐based devices. Herein, the FE response of Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 (HZO) deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) on AlGaN/GaN high‐electron‐mobility transistor (HEMT) heterostructures is characterized and analyzed in both metal–ferroelectric–semiconductor (MFS) and metal–ferroelectric–oxide–semiconductor (MFOS) configurations. Strong 2D‐electron gas (2DEG) channel modulation from FE polarization switching is observed. Significant FE polarization switching as well as distinct polarization recovery behavior is observed for the first time in GaN transistor structures. The polarization recovery appears to be related to the presence of significant coupling between the FE layer and the 2DEG channel at the AlGaN/GaN heterointerface. These results have significant implications for the design of devices exploiting FE effects in GaN and related materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of novel glycosyl nitrogen‐containing heterocycles derivatives were designed and synthesized. With the help of microwave, the reaction was carried out in water rapidly and afforded the target compounds in good yields. The acid catalysts that were essential for this kind of reaction under traditional heating method were avoided through this strategy. Preliminary biological evaluation showed that most of the compounds could inhibit the growth of A549 cells, but the inhibition of HepG‐2 cells was relatively poor. Notably, compound 2i displayed the best potency with an IC50 value of 3.42 μM against A549 cell lines, which is comparable with the common anticarcinogen paclitaxel (5.12 μM). Molecular modeling studies suggested that 2i may bind to the ATP‐binding site of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), indicating a rational design strategy. These results provide a starting point for designing glycosyl nitrogen‐containing heterocycles as the potential drugs in lung cancer therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient and mild multicomponent reaction (MCR) for the preparation of vinyl sulfone is reported, which is achieved by the hydrogenation/difunctional sulfonylation of an alkynyl ester with the corresponding N-allyl bromodifluoroacetamide, DABSO and H2O under visible light conditions without the need for any metal catalysts or additives. This transformation is the first example of a conversion using H2O as the hydrogen source to interact with DABCO to form [DABCO-H]+, which ultimately reacts with the vinyl group, with the advantage of high chemoselectivity and step economy. Notably, the method produces different sulfonylation products with the same substrate regulated by the presence or absence of H2O, which greatly reduces the cost of the chemical reaction and exhibits good functional group tolerance and substrate range. In addition, gram-scale experiments proceeded smoothly, proving the practicality of the methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chlorine and fluorine salts are very promising thermal storage media for high–temperature thermal energy storage (TES) systems. In this study, NaCl–KCl–NaF/nanoparticles composite phase change materials (CPCMs) were employed by an advanced high–temperature and high–pressure reactor. NaCl–KCl–NaF was adopted as the BS, while CuO and Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles have been uniformly dispersed in different ratios to generate CPCMs from the base salt (BS). Microscopic characterization, thermal properties characterization, and economic analysis of CPCMs and the BS were performed. The findings revealed that the best results were obtained when the BS was added with 0.5 wt percent Al 2 O 3 and 0.5 wt percent CuO nanoparticles, CPCMs have improved solid/liquid thermal conductivity by a factor of 3.70 and 1.84, and TES density by a factor of 1.13, while reducing the cost per unit of TES density by approximately 26.8%. In addition, the CPCMs and BS possess excellent operating temperature range and thermal stability, whereby they are applicable in high–temperature TES systems. • A new composite phase change material (CPCM) was developed and characterized. • The TES density of PCM/0.5 wt% Al 2 O 3 / 0.5 wt% CuO was 2.12 times higher than that of the PCM. • Addition of two nanoparticles was better than single addition. • The weight loss of the base salt and CPCMs was less than 8% at 900 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different content of Cu has been loaded onto CoFe2O4 support, and their gas-phase CO oxidation performance has been tested to explore the best Cu loading content and the mechanism of catalyst oxidation. The fundamental characteristics of Cu doped CoFe2O4 are revealed by XRD and TEM. The catalytic mechanism is elucidated by XPS, H2-TPR, CO-TPD and in-situ DRIFTS. The CO oxidation performance is greatly improved upon Cu doping on the surface of CoFe2O4 catalysts. It is found that 5 wt% Cu/CoFe2O4 catalysts showed higher CO oxidation performance.Graphical Abstract: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Material interface-related uncertainties induced by inter-diffusion or reactions between two different materials may deteriorate the actual performance of a structural design achieved by topology optimization. Thus a rational methodology is needed to address this issue in the design of hybrid-material engineering products implemented by some novel fabrication techniques such as additive manufacturing. This paper presents a robust shape and topology optimization method accounting for uncertain graded interface properties of multi-material structures. A level set function is used to track the evolving material interfaces during the optimization process, and the material interface uncertainties is modeled by introducing an intermediate zone with graded properties represented by a random field. On the basis of discretizing the input random field by means of the Expansion Optimal Linear Estimation (EOLE) method, the uncertain propagation analysis is implemented with the Polynomial Chaos expansion (PCE) to predict the stochastic response. Then the robust shape and topology optimization problem is stated as a multi-criteria optimization problem, in which the expected value and the standard deviation of the performance function of interest are to be minimized under a given material volume constraint. The shape derivative of the stochastic response is derived in the context of Eulerian description, and then used to advance the evolution of the level set function through the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. In the numerical examples, the proposed robust design method is exemplified by the mean compliance minimization problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 1,1,2‐triphenylethane‐1,2‐diol, AgSbF6, and NOSbF6, two different carbonyl products of rearrangement were synthesized: neutral ketone compound 1,2,2‐triphenylethanone (1) from NOSbF6 and coordination complex of Ag ion and aldehyde product ([Ag·22]+SbF6–) from AgSbF6. Single crystal X‐ray analyses reveal the different structure generated by different salt. UV/Vis absorption spectra and calculation demonstrate the formation of both compounds. It provides an example of chemoselectivity of Wagner–Meerwein 1,2‐shifts in pinacol rearrangement that depends upon different oxidant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Attention based encoder-decoder models have shown a great success on video captioning. Recent multi-modal video captioning mainly focused on applying the attention mechanism to all modalities and fusing them in the same level. However, the connections among specific modalities have not been investigated in the fusion process. In this paper, the expressivity of uni-modal is firstly investigated. Due to the characteristic of attention mechanism, an instance-level of visual content is exploited to refine the temporal features. Then, a semantic detection architecture based on CNN+RNN is also employed on the spatiotemporal content to exploit the correlations between semantic labels for better video semantic representation. Finally, a hierarchical attention-based multimodal fusion model for video captioning is proposed by jointly considering the intrinsic properties of multimodal features. Experimental results on the MSVD and MSR-VTT datasets show that the proposed method has achieved competitive performance compared with the related video captioning methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive efforts have been focused on attention-based frameworks for image captioning, which have achieved good performances when the generated words have an explicit corresponding with the image region. However, the generation of functional words, such as “on”, “of”, have not been investigated. In this paper, a dual temporal modal is first proposed for image captioning to address the role of visual information on every time step. Based on the dual temporal modal, word-conditional semantic attention is also proposed to solve the problem of functional words generation. Finally, a balance strategy is adopted on the basis of the attention variation to make a trade off between visual attention and word-conditional semantic attention. Extensive experiments are conducted on Flickr30k and COCO dataset to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hollow structures have attracted attention because of high specific surface area, advantages of light scattering, and shortening the charge transfer distance. In this study, hollow CdS nanocubes (H-CdS) were successfully synthesized by PBA self-template method, and CoP x nanoparticles were decorated on H-CdS surfaces. The unique topography and the introduction of CoP x not only greatly improve the light utilization, but also make the photogenerated carriers to be efficiently separated. It can be found that the 1.0 wt% CoP x /H-CdS sample presents highest hydrogen production rate of 1710.4 μmol·g−1·h−1 with apparent quantum yield of 9.1% under irradiation of 420 nm monochromatic light. The characterization results further explored the kinetics of the photoinduced charge carrier transfer and separation pathways, density functional theory (DFT) calculations showed that CoP x could effectively inhibit the photogenerated carrier recombination and reduce the activation energy of H 2 generation. This work provides a new perspective for designing high performance photocatalysts. A facile strategy is developed to synthesize CoP x /H-CdS photocatalysts with high efficient photocatalytic performance, and CoP x has the ability to capture electrons, which promotes the separation efficiency of photogenerated charge carriers. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Reviewed the development of various eutectic molten salts as phase change materials. • Methods for increasing the thermal conductivity of eutectic molten salts were summarized and analyzed. • The background of the application of eutectic molten salts in concentrated solar power plants is described. • The future R&D directions and application challenges of eutectic molten salts are analyzed. To solve the problems of energy crisis and environmental pollution, the use of thermal energy storage technology in renewable energy systems can eliminate the difference between energy supply and demand and improve the energy efficiency. This review summarizes the structure and application of concentrating solar power station. The preparation and characterization of eutectic salts as phase change materials are discussed herein. Furthermore, the methods to improve the thermal properties and stability of eutectic salt are described in detail. The addition of high-conductivity materials and the optimization process of heat storage unit structure and packaging technology are summarized and discussed. Finally, analysis of the application potential and challenges of eutectic salt in the field of high-temperature thermal energy storage in the near future is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel wind farm parameterization is proposed for the mesoscale wind farm simulation. • A sub-grid wind turbine interaction model improves the wind speed simulation. • The wake length is shortened and the turbine-induced turbulence is reduced in the coupled model. • The simulated wind power output is decreased by 1 % compared with the original model. The wind farm parameterization in the mesoscale numerical weather prediction (NWP) model is a valuable approach to exploring the performance and atmospheric impact of the large-scale wind farm. However, the sub-grid interactions between turbines are not resolved in the current parameterization method. In this study, we propose an improved wind farm parameterization by coupling a novel sub-grid wind turbine interference model. It is incorporated in the state-of-the-art Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. To verify the model, the coupled model is applied in a real offshore wind farm in China for comparing the model performances with the original parameterization. The findings demonstrate that the proposed approach improves the wind simulation and has minimal sensitivity to horizontal grid resolution, hence strengthening the model's robustness. Additionally, it is discovered that the sub-grid interaction reduces the turbine-produced turbulence and shortens the wake length by more than 30% compared to the original parameterization. Importantly, the power output prediction of turbine cells is modified, approximately resulting in a 1 % reduction of the entire wind farm relative to the original model. The effects of sub-grid turbine interaction are effectively captured in the proposed model and it is recommended for further wind farm simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims. To investigate the correlation between the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value and cervical intervertebral disc degeneration in adult symptomatic patients. Methods. A total of 52 symptomatic and 40 healthy volunteers were included. DWI and routine MRI examinations were performed to their cervical spines. The cervical discs (from C2-C3 to C6-C7) were graded according to the Pfirrmann grading system, and ADC values of the nucleus pulposus (NP) were measured. Differences of the ADC values between different genders and anatomic levels were analyzed; the correlation between the ADC value and the Pfirrmann grade was investigated. The cut-off ADC values of each Pfirrmann grade were calculated. Results. The mean ADC value of the NP decreased with increasing Pfirrmann grade (I–V) upon both patients and asymptotic volunteers. The ADC value decreased descendingly from C2-C3 to C5-C6 (P<0.05) and then increased at C6-C7 (P<0.05). Additionally, the comparison of the ADC values between different genders achieved statistical significance at each anatomical level (P<0.05), except at C6-C7 (P>0.05). Significant negative correlations between the ADC value and either age or Pfirrmann grade were observed. Conclusions. Our preliminary findings suggest that the ADC value obtained by DWI can provide a reliable indicator to evaluate the cervical disc degeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cocrystal explosive is getting more and more attention in high energy density material field. Different molar ratios of 2,4,6,8,10,12-hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane (CL-20)/1-Methyl-4,5-dinitro-1H-imidazole (MDNI) cocrystal were studied by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation and quantum-chemical density functional theory (DFT) calculation. Binding energy of CL-20/MDNI cocrystal and radial distribution function (RDF) were used to estimate the interaction. Mechanical properties were calculated to predict the elasticity and ductility. The length and bond dissociation energy of trigger bond, surface electrostatic potentials (ESP) of CL-20/MDNI framework were calculated at B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) level. The results indicate that CL-20/MDNI cocrystal explosive might have better mechanical properties and stability in a molar ratio 3:2. The N-NO2 bond becomes stronger upon the formation of intermolecular H-bonding interaction. The surface electrostatic potential further confirms that the sensitivity decreases in cocrystal explosive in comparison with that in isolated CL-20. The oxygen balance (OB), heat of detonation (, detonation velocity ( and detonation pressure ( of CL-20/MDNI suggest that the CL-20/MDNI cocrystal possesses excellent detonation performance and low sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen energy is vital important for solving pollution of environment and energy shortage. Hydrogen production via solar energy and semiconductor photo-splitting water is one of the most environmentally friendly strategies at present. In this work, Co-N-C, a non-noble metal-based ZIF-67 derivative, was employed as a co-catalyst to achieve an in situ growth of spherical CdS via simple one-step hydrothermal. Due to the large specific surface area of Co-N-C, the agglomeration of CdS is avoided and the photocorrosion phenomenon is weakened. Under irradiation of visible light, the hydrogen generation activity of Co-N-C/CdS was achieved 905 μmol g−1 h−1. It is 6 times that of pure CdS with excellent stability. At the contact interface of the Co-N-C and CdS, the transfer and the separation of photoinduced carriers had been enhanced by a great many of channels. DFT calculation further showed that Co nanoclusters, as the active sites of hydrogen production, significantly enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen evolution activity. Therefore, Co-N-C not only acts as electron acceptor, but also serves as support of highly dispersed CdS to promote the stability of system during photocatalytic hydrogen generation. This work demonstrates the advantages of CdS binding MOF derivatives to construct composite photocatalysts with enhanced dispersibility and hydrogen production activity. [Display omitted] • Co-N-C/CdS were fabricated via a simple one-step hydrothermal method. • Co-N-C as a dispersion support reduces the size of CdS. • Co nanoclusters promote hydrogen evolution as active sites. • A photoelectron transport channel is formed at the interface between Co-N-C and CdS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The study aims at effect of cracks in cooling shock sandstone on AE signal in coal-fire control. • The AE attenuation coefficient α related to elastic modulus and crack change rate is derived. • The amplified and unamplified AE parameters of cooling shock sandstone are analyzed. Most surface collapses in coal fire control project are caused by the weakening of high temperature rocks with the water cooling shock. Using acoustic emission to capture disaster signals timely and effectively is critical to ensure the engineering safety. This study aimed to investigating the thermal damage of high-temperature sandstone subjected to cooling shock and its effect on capturing acoustic emission (AE) signals during fracture. The X-ray diffraction test, scanning electron microscope test and uniaxial compression experiment with AE monitoring were carried out for the raw sandstone and 800 ℃ high-temperature sandstone cooled using water (cooling shock sandstone), respectively, The results showed that the crack density and volume of cooling shock sandstone increased by 8.79% and 2.69%, respectively, and p-wave velocity decreased by 51.83%, compared with those of the raw sandstone. The mechanical strength of cooling shock sandstone decreased, including a 50.68% reduction in elastic modulus. The AE attenuation coefficient α related to the elastic modulus and the crack change rate was derived, providing an approach to count the attenuation of AE signal caused by thermal damage for cooling shock sandstone. Increasing the preamplifier amplification factor is feasible to improve the accuracy for monitoring the fracture of cooling shock sandstone in coal-fire control project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obtaining reliable sedimentary facies models is critical for geology, which primarily involves inferring conditional distributions from sparse wells. Multiple-point simulation (MPS) captures complex geological patterns by simulating multi-point probabilities, but it is sensitive to the stationarity of training images, and the limited training image is difficult to reflect the uncertainty of the prior geological models. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have recently been proposed to spontaneously simulate multiple geological models that behave differently, generating realizations that respect spatial observations (hard data), with impressive results. In this paper, we explore a more flexible approach to conditioning synthetic realizations beyond hard data, allowing stylistic control over the realizations. We construct a conditional generative adversarial network consisting of a deep generator and a multi-scale discriminator as the conditional mapping model, and obtained realizations with improved visual quality. Based on this, style codes, which are numerical codes representing geological properties, are introduced to extend the existing mapping model. The resulting extended generative model can synthesize images that respect the hard data and exhibit the desired geological style. In addition, we collect and construct a dataset, which contains abundant and realistic fluvial patterns to reflect adequate prior geological knowledge. Extensive experiments have been carried out on this dataset, the results show that the generated images reflect absolute responses to style codes while maintaining the matching rate of 94.78% to the hard data, which can provide new ideas for conditional geological modeling. • Migrates geological modeling to image conditional generation. • A flexible and transparent conditional modeling approach for conditioning geological realizations. • A geological dataset containing realistic and rich river morphology. • Provides an alternative for geological modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of their excellent properties, glass-ceramics have been widely developed and applied in many fields, and there are many potential application values to be disseminated. The preparation of glass-ceramics from industrial slag and metallurgical waste provides a new way for the comprehensive utilization of solid waste. Coal gangue is the largest of all kinds of industrial waste slag, while iron tailings and high-carbon ferrochrome slag also occupy a large proportion of China's industrial solid waste. With cheap industrial solid waste as the main raw material, the production of high-value-added glass-ceramics can reduce pollution, protect the ecological environment, and have good economic and social benefits. Cordierite glass-ceramics were prepared using the sintering method with coal gangue, iron tailings, and high-carbon ferrochrome slag as the main raw materials. Meanwhile, an iron silicon alloy containing chromium was obtained. The heat treatment system of basic glass was determined by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and the sintered product was analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). An orthogonal test was used to analyze the effects of the mass of basic glass powder, molding pressure, and holding time on the grain size and crystallinity of the samples. The hardness, acid and alkali resistance, density, and water absorption of the sintered products were determined. The results show that the main crystal phase of the prepared glass-ceramics is cordierite. The optimal combination for the green body is "basic glass powder mass 6 g, molding pressure 35 MPa, holding time 10 min". The properties of glass-ceramics are good. At the crystallization temperature of 970 °C, the Vickers hardness is up to 866 HV, and the bulk density is up to 2.99 g/cm3. This study may provide a useful reference for the treatment of industrial solid waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a novel heterostacked tunnel FET (HS-TFET) is proposed for steeper average subthreshold swing (SS). Different from conventional TFETs, HS-TFETs owns a stacked source configuration consisting of an upper source layer with a relatively larger bandgap material and an underlying source layer with smaller bandgap materials. Since smaller bandgap materials exhibit much higher band-to-band tunneling efficiency, the underlying layer of HS-TFET could provide extra drain current increment with increasing gate voltage, and thus effectively improve the subthreshold characteristics for steeper average SS. The simulation results show that the proposed Si–Ge-based HS-TFET can achieve much steeper average SS (25 mV/decade) than conventional Si TFET (42 mV/decade), exhibiting more than one decade higher I60 without leakage current degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In tube hydroforming (THF), the friction between the tube and dies plays an important role. The coefficient of friction (COF) in THF is generally determined by assuming that the contact pressure between the tube and dies is equivalent to the hydraulic pressure acting on the internal surface of the tube so that the COF can be calculated by multiplying the hydraulic pressure by the contact area. For the pulsating hydroforming process of a tube, the pulsating amplitude and frequency of the hydraulic pressure may impact the friction and result in complicated frictional characteristics. This paper presents a method for determining the COF in the THF guiding zone by a self-developed measurement system. THF experiments were performed under pulsating and non-pulsating pressures on SUS304 stainless steel tubes to investigate the relationship between the contact and hydraulic pressures and the effects of fluctuations in the hydraulic pressure on the COF. The contact pressure increased periodically with fluctuations in the hydraulic pressure and was always less than the hydraulic pressure with a maximum pressure difference of 20 %. The pulsating amplitude and frequency of the hydraulic pressure impacted the fluctuations of the contact pressure and pressure difference. The COF decreased faster with deformation; the average COF was less under pulsating pressure than under non-pulsating pressure. Increasing the pulsating amplitude and frequency decreased the average COF but had little effect on the decreasing rate of the COF. The pulsating amplitude had a clearer influence than the pulsating frequency on the amplitudes of the COF curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of the ocean on the performance of offshore wind farms is a challenging study in the wind energy field. In the present study, by coupling a mesoscale numerical weather prediction model, Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF), with a sea surface model and a refined wind farm parameterization, a systematic atmosphere-sea surface-wind farm simulation method is established. The question of how the ocean-atmosphere interaction changes the wake effect and power output of wind farms based on the method is explored. The results show that the momentum deficit due to the operating wind turbines is remarkable, and the wind speed deficit has a strong horizontal diffusion on a sea surface. Wake from the offshore wind farm is prone to mix and extends with a shorter length than that on the flat land. The wake mixing enhances the interference from upwind to downwind turbines, resulting in the power outputs of downwind turbines being decreased by 10%. Besides, the increasing wind shear due to the ocean waves decreases the wind power by around 3.5%. Accordingly, it is significant for applying such a coupled air-sea surface-wind farm simulation method when assessing the offshore wind farm performance and the impact of the wind farms on the marine atmospheric boundary layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A highly specific recognition-before-labeling strategy has been developed for sensitive detection of non-small cell lung cancer A549 cells, by using fluorescent QDs as signal units and DNA aptamers as recognition elements. A QD–aptamer system used for cell imaging and bioanalysis mostly relies on the recognition-after-labeling strategy in which aptamers were firstly labeled with QDs and then the QD–aptamer conjugates as a whole were utilized for specific recognition. Here in our strategy, aptamers were used firstly to recognize target cells, and then fluorescent QDs were sequentially added to bind the aptamers and light the target cells. The proposed recognition-before-labeling strategy didn't require the complex process of QD functionalization, and avoided the possible impact on the aptamer configuration from steric hindrance. Meanwhile, QDs, with strong fluorescence and good photostability, also give this method a high signal-to-background ratio (S/B). The recognition-before-labeling strategy is simple and sensitive, suggesting a new method for in vitro diagnostic assays of cancer cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photocatalytic water splitting provides a green method to solve the energy shortage issue. Combine two-dimensional carbon nitride nano sheets with other two-dimensional semiconductors can effectively increase the construct area and improve the utilization of photogenerated charges. Herein, 2D-2D NiCo-LDH/g-C 3 N 4 composites were successfully prepared by a simple hydrothermal method. The lamellar NiCo-LDH was grown in situ on g-C 3 N 4 , in which way the hydrogen production rate was enhanced by about 21 times, reaching 755 μmol·g−1·h−1. According to the results of density functional theory （DFT） calculations, an S-type heterojunction is successfully constructed, which achieves the spatial separation of semiconductor photogenerated electron-hole with guaranteed strong redox capability. This work emphasizes that effective transport channels for transfer and separation of photogenerated charges can be created through efficient interfacial regulation strategy. • The 2D-2D S-type heterojunction increases the charge transfer channel. • The hydrogen production rate of 20 LDH/CN is 21 times than that of g-C 3 N 4. • The Gibbs free energy of hydrogen adsorption of 20 LDH/CN is close zero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of integrated circuit (IC) failure analysis (FA) is to find and to explain failure root cause and mechanism, which helps IC designer and manufacturer to improve design and process. Leakage current presence within circuit is the main failure root cause among the FA cases, although the leakage currents within different circuits can stimulate a variety of IC failure modes. It is significant to study the leakage currents within ICs and to localize relevant defects quickly and accurately by the combination of some complementary FA techniques. However, it is difficult to identify the original leakage current from the consequential leakage currents and to locate the relevant defect. In this paper, we explain the shape and location of a photon emission spot induced by an original leakage current is different from the one induced by a consequential leakage current. In a general case, and not only in this photon emission spot case, a method is elaborated to identify the original leakage current from the consequential leakage currents and to exactly locate the relevant defect by the combination of some complementary FA techniques. Some other functional failure cases will be studied to demonstrate adaptation and interest of this general method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reproducible, highly efficient, and racemization-free protocol for the triphosgene-mediated solid-phase coupling of proteinogenic amino acids was developed. The efficiency of the reaction was demonstrated by the first total synthesis of the bioactive natural octacyclopeptide brachystemin A. This protocol will broaden the application of triphosgene in the synthesis of a wide range of peptides, including aromatic amino acids, N-alkylated amino acids, as well as proteinogenic amino acids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic monitoring of soil moisture by remote sensing can play a significant role in agricultural production, weather research, and ecological environment evaluation. In recent years, continuous attention has been focused on the thought that soil moisture information can be extracted from multi-dimensional spectral feature space. A variety of soil moisture monitoring indices have been put forward in succession based on the spectral feature space, and some of them have gotten widespread attention and application such as PDI (perpendicular drought index), an simple, effective, and feasible index which has been developed based on red and near infrared spectral feature space and applied in many areas. However, the majority of these indices are devised without considering the influence of mixed pixels, which makes the effect of soil moisture estimation worse in vegetation-covered areas than in bare areas. Aiming at the problem of accuracy degradation for PDI monitoring in vegetation-covered areas, this study thoroughly analyzed the distribution of vegetation-soil pixels in Nir-Red spectral feature space, and figured out the distribution characteristics of PDI monitoring error under vegetation coverage. By taking PVI (perpendicular vegetable index) as vegetation coverage characterization, we tried to improve the PDI model in the PVI-PDI two-dimensional feature space and developed a new index (vegetation adjusted perpendicular drought index, VAPDI) theoretically suitable for vegetation coverage. Then, we used the measured soil moisture data in the study area in the Mingan Town, Bayinnaoer city of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, China to compare and validate the PDI and VAPDI. Results showed that the coefficient of determination between the PDI and measured soil moisture were 0.630, 0.504, 0.571 and 0.543 respectively in 4 vegetation cover types (bare soil, wheat stubble, potato, and cowpea), and the coefficient of determination between the VAPDI and measured data were 0.599, 0.523, 0.602, and 0.585, respectively. The accuracy of the VAPDI was higher than the PDI in vegetation areas, and the advantage of VAPDI on monitoring accuracy increased gradually with the increase of vegetation coverage degree. Therefore, the overall effect of the VAPDI was better than that of the PDI in farmland vegetation areas. The comparison of space distribution of the PDI and VAPDI also indicated that the VAPDI does a better job in distinguishing the differences of soil moisture. The VAPDI index with clear physical meaning is simple and practical, which implies a good application prospect in the aspect of the mesoscale soil moisture inversion by remote sensing. The research can provide valuable information for method selection and error analysis in farmland soil moisture monitoring by remote sensing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an analytical model of the channel surface potential in the tunnel field effect transistors (TFETs) is established and verified. The dual-modulation effects in TFETs that the surface potential of the channel is alternatively controlled by the gate bias and drain bias in different operating regimes are emphasized and studied. The transition point corresponding to the switching between the two operating regimes is also analyzed quantitatively. For the first time, a closed-form analytical model of the surface potential in TFETs, including the impacts of both the gate voltage and drain voltage is proposed. Furthermore, a compact current model of the TFET-based on the derived surface potential expression is given. The model predicted tunneling current agree well with the TCAD simulation results in all operating regions of TFETs, which will be helpful for the circuit properties simulation of the TFET. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention-based approaches have been firmly established the state of the art in image captioning tasks. However, both the recurrent attention in recurrent neural network (RNN) and the self attention in transformer have limitations. Recurrent attention only takes the external state to decide where to look, while ignoring to discover the internal relationships between image regions. Self attention is just the opposite. To fill this gap, we firstly introduce an Outside-in Attention that makes the external state participate in the interaction of the image regions. And, it prompts the model to learn the dependency inside the image regions, as well as the dependency between image regions and the external state. Then, we investigate a Sequential Transformer Framework (S-Transformer) based on the original Transformer structure, where the decoder is incorporated with the Outside-in Attention and RNN. This framework can help the model to inherit the advantages of both the transformer and recurrent network in sequence modeling. When tested on COCO dataset, the proposed approaches achieve competitive results in single-model and ensemble configurations on both MSCOCO Karpathy test split and the online test server. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, an efficient polymer‐based organic afterglow system, which shows reversible photochromism, switchable ultralong organic phosphorescence (UOP), and prominent water and chemical resistance simultaneously, has been developed for the first time. By doping phenoxazine (PXZ) and 10‐ethyl‐10H‐phenoxazine (PXZEt) into epoxy polymers, the resulting PXZ@EP‐0.25 % and PXZEt@EP‐0.25 % films show unique photoactivated UOP properties, with phosphorescence quantum yields and lifetimes up to 10.8 % and 845 ms, respectively. It is found that the steady‐state luminescence and UOP of PXZ@EP‐0.25 % are switchable by light irradiation and thermal annealing. Moreover, the doped films can still produce conspicuous UOP after soaking in water, strong acid and base, and organic solvents for more than two weeks, exhibiting outstanding water and chemical resistance. Inspired by these exciting results, the PXZ@EP‐0.25 % has been successfully exploited as an erasable transparent film for light printing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, an efficient polymer‐based organic afterglow system, which shows reversible photochromism, switchable ultralong organic phosphorescence (UOP), and prominent water and chemical resistance simultaneously, has been developed for the first time. By doping phenoxazine (PXZ) and 10‐ethyl‐10H‐phenoxazine (PXZEt) into epoxy polymers, the resulting PXZ@EP‐0.25 % and PXZEt@EP‐0.25 % films show unique photoactivated UOP properties, with phosphorescence quantum yields and lifetimes up to 10.8 % and 845 ms, respectively. It is found that the steady‐state luminescence and UOP of PXZ@EP‐0.25 % are switchable by light irradiation and thermal annealing. Moreover, the doped films can still produce conspicuous UOP after soaking in water, strong acid and base, and organic solvents for more than two weeks, exhibiting outstanding water and chemical resistance. Inspired by these exciting results, the PXZ@EP‐0.25 % has been successfully exploited as an erasable transparent film for light printing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Propose a dynamic synchronization method to achieve SDL by OBIRCH. [•] OBIRCH is transformed from S-TLS equipment to D-TLS equipment. [•] The experimental results show good SDL result using “lock off” mode laser. [•] The SDL realized by this method is applied on digital and mixed-mode analog ICs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: While many investigators have studied symptomatic prostatitis, little research has been done with regard to asymptomatic (NIH-IV) prostatitis. Purpose: To describe the prevalence of and risk factors for NIH-IV prostatitis among a large male population. Methods: The study population was comprised of 1,868 men at the second phase recruitment of a population-based cohort in China. Asymptomatic and symptomatic men were defined by the National Institutes of Health Chronic Prostatitis (CP) Symptom Index. Meanwhile, EPS specimens and their leukocyte count were collected. Lifestyle and demographic characteristics were obtained through a questionnaire. Results: Prevalence of NIH-IV prostatitis was 21.1% among 1,868 asymptomatic men aged 19–78 years and increased with age. After adjusteing for potential confounding variables (age, smoking habits, alcohol drinking habits, education, physical activity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, obesity and diabetes), age remained a significant factor for NIH-IV prostatitis (OR = 1.35; 95% CI = 1.06–1.71; P = 0.01) and the risk of NIH-IV prostatitis was significantly higher in smokers≧15 pack/years than non-smokers (OR = 1.33; 95% CI = 1.01–1.75; P = 0.03). In addition, compared with non-drinkers, the OR of NIH-IV prostatitis in drinkers ≧1 drinks/week was 1.35 (95% CI = 1.03, 1.77, p = 0.02) after adjusting for the other variables above. In addition, having less than a college education may be a risk factor for NIH-IV prostatitis, although a statistically significant difference did not exist in our data (OR = 1.22; 95% CI = 0.97–1.52; P = 0.08). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that NIH-IV prostatitis is prevalent in China. Age, smoking, drinking and lower education levels were associated with an increased risk of NIH-IV prostatitis. The prevalence of NIH-IV prostatitis should be taken into account when estimating the total prevalence of CP in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A refined wind farm parameterization in the WRF model is conducted. • The power coefficients of the rotor equivalent wind speed under real air density are modified. • The average power is notably decreased by the reduced variable air density. • The impact of atmospheric stability on the power is compared between original and refined models. In the original wind farm parameterization of the Weather Research and Forecasting model, the standard constant air density is a source of errors in power output estimation, and the hub-height wind speed is inappropriate to represent the wind speed through the whole rotor area. To overcome these issues, a refined model incorporating variable air density is developed, and the hub-height wind speed is replaced with the rotor equivalent wind speed (REWS) in this study. To keep consistency, the power coefficients corresponding to the REWS under variable air density conditions are modified. The influences of atmospheric stability are investigated to evaluate the performance of wind power estimation between the original and the current refined models. The refined wind farm parameterization has few impacts on the flow field, however, the average power generation becomes more scattered and is notably decreased by nearly 7% due to the reduced variable air density. Meanwhile, the REWS slightly increases the power estimation by around 1.1%. Both REWS and variable air density can decrease the estimation uncertainty of the average power induced by complex atmospheric stability. Moreover, atmospheric stability plays a more significant role in power outputs, and the refined model can capture a stronger correlation between the atmospheric condition and wind power generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind power simulation was validated to be sensitive to the planetary boundary layer (PBL) parameterization schemes in the Weather Researching and Forecasting (WRF) model. However, the performance of PBL schemes was rarely evaluated under different resolutions of topography. In this study, we present a sensitivity study to figure out how the resolution of the topography database will influence the performance of PBL schemes. It refers not only to the individual impact of the PBL schemes and topography datasets on wind speed prediction but also the combined interactions. Hourly simulated wind speeds are compared with the measurements at different heights, and these differences are statistically analyzed in both stable and unstable surface layers under the flat and complex terrain. The results show that the Yonsei University (YSU) scheme offers consistently good predictions, however, the Mellor-Yamada-Janjic (MYJ) scheme which has poor performance still provides acceptable outcomes under high-resolution topography. The wind speed shows low sensitivity to the PBL schemes and the relevant wind power density is nearly declined by 6% with refined resolution topography datasets over the complex terrain. Accordingly, a precise topography dataset can increase the simulated robustness of potential wind power prediction. • Performance of PBL schemes are evaluated under different topographic datasets. • High-resolution topographic datasets improve the performance of PBL schemes. • Precise topographic data reduce the sensitivity of wind power to PBL schemes. • Accuracy of topography is significant to wind prediction in stable surface layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mouse gene expression data are complex and voluminous. To maximize the utility of these data, they must be made readily accessible through databases, and those resources need to place the expression data in the larger biological context. Here we describe two community resources that approach these problems in different but complementary ways: BioGPS and the Mouse Gene Expression Database (GXD). BioGPS connects its large and homogeneous microarray gene expression reference data sets via plugins with a heterogeneous collection of external gene centric resources, thus casting a wide but loose net. GXD acquires different types of expression data from many sources and integrates these data tightly with other types of data in the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) resource, with a strong emphasis on consistency checks and manual curation. We describe and contrast the 'loose' and 'tight' data integration strategies employed by BioGPS and GXD, respectively, and discuss the challenges and benefits of data integration. BioGPS is freely available at . GXD is freely available through the MGI web site () or directly at . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]