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Adding a certain amount of steel fibers can overcome the brittleness defects in geopolymer concrete and improve the mechanical properties, which has a broader application prospect. However, the research on the material properties of steel fiber-reinforced geopolymer concrete (SFGPC) after high temperature exposure is still very limited. Therefore, tests on 114 cubes and 57 prisms after exposure to high temperatures were conducted in this paper. The main variables were temperature (20 °C, 200 °C, 400 °C, 600 °C, and 800 °C), steel fiber volume content (0, 1 %, and 2 %), and concrete type (SFGPC and steel fiber-reinforced ordinary Portland cement concrete (SFOPC)). The results indicated that SFGPC with a steel fiber content of 1 % at 800 °C experienced a 53.6 % reduction in compressive strength, a 58 % reduction in splitting tensile strength, a 93.9 % reduction in elastic modulus, a 45.9 % reduction in toughness index, and a 274.5 % increase in peak strain, compared with room temperature. The 1 % fiber content enhanced the compressive strength by 10.3 %−36.5 %, the splitting tensile strength by more than 16 %, the peak strain by 9.6 %−32.7 %, and the toughness index by 24.4 %−64.6 % compared to the absence of fiber content. Based on the room temperature model, a constitutive model of SFGPC under uniaxial compression after high temperatures was developed. • Cubes and prisms of SFGPC after high temperature exposure were tested. • High temperature reduced the strength, elastic modulus, and toughness index. • Increasing fiber content enhanced the mechanical behavior of SFGPC. • A constitutive model under compression after high temperatures was developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amorphous formation ability, thermal properties, crystallization behavior, magnetic properties, resistivity and bending ductility of Fe 84.5- x B 12 P 2 C 1 Cu 0.5 Co x (x = 0, 4, 8) alloys were systematically investigated. It is found that the substitution of Fe by Co promotes the transformation of the as-spun alloys from a completely amorphous structure to an amorphous/nanocrystalline dual-phase structure, which is related to the differences in the interactions between the involved atoms. The saturation magnetization of alloys increases with increasing Co content and can be increased to 1.93 T at x = 8 by heat treatment, but excessive substitution of Co for Fe deteriorates the coercivity and bending ductility due to the pre-existing α-Fe(Co) grains. The resistivity is positively correlated with the disorder of structure, and the as-spun alloy with x = 4 exhibits a high resistivity of 136.2 μΩ cm. As a result, the annealed Fe 80.5 B 12 P 2 C 1 Cu 0.5 Co 4 alloy with excellent soft magnetic properties (M s = 1.81 T, H c = 7.8 A/m) and good bending ductility in combination with high resistivity has potential for application in the field of electronic devices. • The crystallization tendency of alloy is enhanced by the substitution of Fe by Co. • The annealed Co4 alloy exhibits an ultrafine nanocrystalline structure. • Co4 alloy combines excellent soft magnetic properties with high resistivity. • Co0, Co4 Alloys exhibit good bending ductility even when annealing at T x1 -60 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • δ13C, δ15N, and δ18O were analyzed to reveal carbon–nitrogen coupled absorption. • Stability regulation mechanism of karst reservoir was indicated by diel monitoring. • The stability promotes the biological carbon pump development of karst reservoir. • Biological carbon pump caused carbon burial in karst reservoir. While river damming has been extensively investigated, there remains unclear in the diel biogeochemical processes and carbon control mechanisms in karst reservoirs, under the influence of the biological carbon pump (BCP) effect. We investigated the diel variation of Hongjiadu (HJD) and Wujiangdu (WJD) reservoirs, which exhibit typical periodic thermal stratification, in the Wujiang River located in Southwest China. We found that diel variation of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) (HJD: 1668.6 ± 10.4 µmol/L; WJD: 1777.9 ± 31.5 µmol/L), δ13C DIC (HJD: −3.1 ± 0.1 ‰; WJD: −4.6 ± 0.4 ‰), and other parameters in the lentic zones were relatively stable. Moreover, the Revelle factor in the lentic zones (HJD: 44.3-49.0; WJD: 44.3-53.9) were substantially higher than those of the fluvial zones (HJD: 24.4-33.4; WJD: 14.2-35.1). The stable diel variations indicate that the HJD and WJD reservoirs may have distinct stability regulatory mechanisms. In the lentic zones, δ13C DIC , nitrogen–oxygen isotope (δ15N and δ18O), and the correlation of C-N indicated that the conversion of DIC and NO 3 – is primarily influenced by primary production, and there was coupled absorption of carbon and nitrogen nutrients during photosynthesis. Meanwhile, the C/N weight ratio (6.0-10.1) and the δ13C POC (−30.0 ‰ to −24.7 ‰) also revealed a gradual transition from soil organic matter (OM) in the fluvial zone to phytoplankton source in the intermediate-lentic zone. Thus, two reservoirs had a significant BCP effect and converted a significant amount of DIC to autochthonous organic carbon (AOC) burial in the lentic zones. The BCP effect in subtropical deep karst reservoirs buried lots of carbon, increased carbon sequestration and decreased CO 2 emissions in the lentic zone. Simultaneously, the stability of reservoirs promotes BCP effect and intensifies carbon sequestration, which is of great significance for the study of the global carbon sources-sinks pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we developed a Cu 0.5 Fe 2.5 S 4 nanocatalyst through facile sulfidation of the Cu-MIL-88B(Fe) precursor to expedite surface Fe(III) reduction and enhance H 2 O 2 activation in the heterogeneous electro-Fenton (HEF). The as-prepared catalyst possesses relatively large specific surface area and uniformly dispersed metal active sites. The Cu 0.5 Fe 2.5 S 4 -catalyzed HEF system allowed complete removal of naproxen with minimal metal leaching, surpassing that of Cu-MIL-88B(Fe) or Fe 3 S 4. Quantitative XPS analysis, electrochemical characterization and density functional theory calculations reveal an electron donor-shuttle regime in which S2- and Cu species serve as the electron donor and shuttle, respectively. The Cu species significantly accelerate the internal electron transfer between S and Fe and mitigate the dissolution of the adjacent iron sites, securing the sustainable reducing capacity. Moreover, Cu 0.5 Fe 2.5 S 4 -based HEF exhibits great practicability for treatment of various organics in urban wastewater. This study opens new avenue for addressing the challenge of sluggish Fe(III)/Fe(II) cycling in HEF. [Display omitted] • Cu 0.5 Fe 2.5 S 4 designed from MOF sulfidation serves as novel HEF catalyst. • S2- provides many electrons to boost the Fe(III)/Fe(II) cycling in HEF. • Cu species acts as the electron shuttle to accelerate the internal electron transfer. • The Cu-doping stabilizes the adjacent iron sites and enhances the •OH production. • The high porosity and dispersibility of Cu 0.5 Fe 2.5 S 4 promote the mass transport in HEF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • BPF promotes glycolysis and the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines in macrophages. • Enhanced glycolysis promotes the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines induced by BPF. • The PI3K-AKT pathway is involved in BPF induced glycolysis and the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines of macrophages. • Estrogen receptor (ER) mediates the activation of PI3K-AKT signaling pathway induced by BPF. Bisphenol F (BPF) is a member of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). As a substitute of bisphenol A (BPA), BPF is widely used in various consumer products, leading to an increased risk of people's exposure. However, there are few studies on the immunotoxicity and mechanism of BPF. This study aimed to investigate the effect of BPF on the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines by macrophages and explore its mechanism. In our study, RAW264.7 macrophages were treated with different concentrations of BPF (0, 5, 10 and 20 μM) for 24 h. The results showed that the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, TNF-α and IL-1β) and the production of lactate were increased in a dose-dependent manner. BPFalso led to the activation of the PI3K-AKT signaling pathway. After pretreatment with glycolysis inhibitor (2-DG) and exposure to BPF (20 μM), the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines induced by BPF was inhibited. PI3K inhibitor (LY294002) and estrogen receptor (ER) antagonist (ICI 182,780) could also inhibit the above effects induced by BPF (20 μM). In conclusion, our results suggested that BPF can enhance glycolysis through ER mediated PI3K-AKT signaling pathway, and the enhanced glycolysis further promoted the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Our research provides basic data for future studies on bisphenol exposure and immunotoxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High coverage film could be obtained from precursor film PEDOT: PSS-based inverted perovskite solar cell, via decreasing the amount of residual DMSO or mediating the evaporation rate of DMSO with continuous gradient annealing (GA) process at 65°C–85°C (heating rate of 20°C/5 min). • A remanent solvent management strategy was employed to prepare uniform film. • The influence of residual DMSO on the properties of the MAPbI 3 film was investigated. • High device reproducibility was obtained with gradient thermal annealing. Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have been attracting tremendous attention due to ease of processing, flexibility, and high performance. Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF) are the two most widely used solvents to dissolve perovskite precursors. Here, we investigate the impact of residual amount and evaporation rate of the DMSO inside the precursor films on the microstructure of the ultimate perovskite films. We decouple the DMSO and DMF solvents and demonstrate that DMSO component exhibits great and dominant influence on the final film morphology by using quasi in-situ photoluminescence (PL) measurement and X-ray diffraction (XRD) characterization of the wet films after spin-coating. Much more smooth and uniform perovskite films are obtained by careful management of remanent solvent, including decreasing residual amount by shelving the precursor films prior to heating and retarding the evaporation of the solvent via adopting a gradient annealing (GA) process. In consequence, the as-prepared PEDOT: PSS-based inverted PSCs yield a champion efficiency of 15.59% with high reproducibility. This work shows great potential in preparing high-quality perovskite films through a simple remanent solvent management engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Person re-identification (Re-ID) has attracted more attention in computer vision tasks recently and achieved high accuracy in some public available datasets in a supervised manner. The performance drops significantly when datasets are unlabeled, which limits the scalability of Re-ID algorithms in practical applications. Despite some unsupervised methods are proposed to address the scalability problem of Re-ID, it's hard to learn discriminative feature representations due to the lack of pairwise labels in different camera views. To overcome this problem, we propose an end-to-end network named Adaptive Attention-Aware Network for unsupervised person re-identification. Specifically, we propose a novel adaptive attention-aware module that could be easily embedded into Re-ID architecture. The proposed module focuses on learning strong expressive relationship among channels of feature maps, and alleviating the key problems of Re-ID, e.g., occlusion and local deformation. In addition, we extract the camera-invariant features by adopting camera-style transfer feature learning since matching pairs in Re-ID suffers from appearance changes under different camera views. Besides, unsupervised hard negative mining is introduced to learn large intra-person appearance variance and discriminate high inter-person appearance similarity in an unlabeled target dataset with an auxiliary labeled dataset. Comprehensive experiments on three public available Re-ID datasets demonstrate that our method can achieve the state-of-the-art results of unsupervised Re-ID and is competitive with supervised learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lead iodide (PbI 2) as a defect passivation in perovskite thin films can reduce halide vacancies and improve the performance of perovskite solar cells. However, excess PbI 2 can hurt the device's performance. In the case of perovskite films prepared by two-step sequential deposition, excess PbI 2 is distributed on the surface of perovskite film. The photo-decomposition of PbI 2 and the formation of surface energy barriers can hinder charge transfer in the device, leading to reduced device performance and accelerated device degradation. Inspired by the use of surfactants to control the morphology of perovskite nanocrystals, a dual-functional surfactant (oleamide) was introduced to control the distribution of excess PbI 2 on perovskite films. By adding oleamide, the aggregation distribution of PbI 2 was successfully achieved at the perovskite grain boundaries (GBs), forming a Type-I band alignment and reducing the trap density, thereby prolonging the carrier lifetime. The results show that the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the device increased from 21.23% to 23.12% after the introduction of oleamide. Compared with the control and oleamide-modified devices, the deep-level defects were reduced by about five orders of magnitude due to the Lewis-base nature of amide groups in oleamide. In addition, due to the aggregation distribution of excess PbI 2 at GBs and the hydrophobicity of oleamide, the modified device showed better stability, maintaining 83% of its initial performance after 1000 h in air. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of nitrogen-doped (N-doped) polymeric resin-derived porous carbons (NPCs) have been fabricated by a direct carbonization of the mixture of polymeric resin and potassium acetate. The polymeric resin serves as carbon and nitrogen precursor and potassium acetate as activation agent. The prepared carbons have a high specific surface area of 1946 m 2  g −1 and high N content of approximately 6.37 at%. The NPC-700 sample exhibits a highest specific capacitance of 312 F g −1 at 0.5 A g −1 in a three-electrode system in 7 M KOH. When tested with a two-electrode system, the optimal sample NPC-800 shows a good rate performance (capacitance retention of 73% in the range of 0.05 A g −1 to 20 A g −1 ) and high cycling stability (96.5% retention after 5000 cycles at 2 A g −1 ). The easy preparation and superior electrochemical performances render the NPCs a promising alternative electrode material for supercapacitor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curcumin shows protective effects on various diseases due to its anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative functions; however, its effect on organ transplantation has not been fully elucidated. To understand its role in liver ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury, we studied its impact on orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) and Kupffer cells (KCs) polarization and its underlying mechanisms. We first investigated the reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation and cytokines profile of KCs, intracellular ROS and the mRNA level of pro-inflammatory cytokines were downregulated while the mRNA level of anti-inflammatory cytokine was upregulated by the pretreatment of Curcumin; Then the liver injury was detected by histopathological examination and liver function. Pretreatment with Curcumin significantly alleviated liver injury while improving liver function and overall post-transplantation survival compared with the control groups. The Western blotting showed that Curcumin inhibited the function of KCs via down-regulating the nuclear factor κb (NF-κb) signaling pathway by activating peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) and flow cytometry revealed that Curcumin suppressed pro-inflammatory phenotype (M1) of KCs while promoting its anti-inflammatory phenotype (M2) polarization. These results showed that Curcumin may exert positive effects on I/R injury after OLT through activating PPARγ by inhibiting the activation of NF-κb pathway and remodeling the polarization of KCs. This may reveal a potential therapy for I/R injury after liver transplantation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A label-free sensing paradigm based on smart flared-nanokites is developed for multiplexed detection of virus DNA. A nanokite consists of silver nanoclusters beacons (Ag NCBs) immobilized on gold nanoparticle (Au NP) core. Ag NCB, possessing hairpin-shaped configuration, includes three functional domains: silver nanoclusters (Ag NCs) as the reporter, conjugated loop as recognizing element, and stem attached thiol. Via thiol-gold bond, Ag NCBs self-assemble on Au NP and form Ag NCBs/Au NP. In this conformation, close proximity of Ag NCs to Au NP leads to quenching fluorescence owing to energy transfer. However, upon recognizing loop binds to target, concomitant flying of Ag NCs from Au NP can be monitored as corresponding fluorescence enhancement, termed a flared-nanokite. Interestingly, ultra-high fluorescence recovery rate is calculated as 4379.2% (1300.4%) for G-/R-nanokite. Moreover, through by bicolor Ag NCBs simultaneously immobilize on Au NP, multicolor flared-nanokite for multichannel detecting DNAs has been successfully constructed based on multistimuli-responsive effect, demonstrating its promising application in accurate diagnosis and treatment. [Display omitted] • Activatable flared-nanokites are developed for multiplexed detection of virus genes. • Nanokite consists of silver nanoclusters beacons immobilized on gold nanoparticle. • Ultra-high fluorescence recovery rate 4379.2% and 1300.4% for G- and R-nanokites. • Constructing logic gates for detecting DNAs via smart multicolor flared-nanokites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polymer hydrogels are a promising electrolyte for flexible superconductors (FSCs) due to their excellent flexibility, ions transportations and interfacial compatibility. However, the large internal resistance will decrease the power density (PD) and energy density (ED) of FSCs. In this work, Ti 3 C 2 T x was introduced to polyacrylamide/calcium alginate (PC) hydrogel electrolyte to decrease the internal resistance (IR) and improve the interfacial adhesion. The polyacrylamide/calcium alginate@Ti 3 C 2 T x (PCT) composite hydrogels were successfully prepared by in-situ polymerization. Their mechanical property and adhesive property to various substrates were investigated, respectively, and a flexible supercapacitor was assembled with composite hydrogels as electrolyte and two self-made Ti 3 C 2 T x sheets as electrode. It was found composite hydrogels can adhere to various substrates, which make the voltage drop of FSCs from 163 mV to 78.9 mV. The FSCs show a good performance, whose specific capacitance is 1051.9 mF cm−2 with a current density of 1.07 mA cm−2, and the ED reaches 32.3 Wh kg−1 and the capacitance retention rate is as high as 96% at a high current density of 18.7 mA cm−2. Meanwhile, it can sensitively monitor human movements such as finger bending, frowning, swallowing, etc. This work is expected to be applied in the field of energy storage and sensing. [Display omitted] • Ti 3 C 2 T x was introduced to the PC hydrogel to decrease the internal resistance and improve the interfacial adhesion. • The FSC with PCT as electrolyte has high specific capacitance (1051.9 mF cm−2) and large energy density (32.3 Wh kg−1). • The PCT hydrogel shows a good performance in the field of sensing, it can sensitively monitor many human movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Highlights • The interlayer distance of hard carbon crystallites is tunable. • The defect sites of hard carbon for Na-ion storage can be tunable. • The designed carbon anode exhibits an excellent electrochemistry property. • Na-ion full-cell delivers a high energy density of 247 Wh kg−1 (vs. anode). Abstract Hard carbon materials hold the most promising application among all anode materials for sodium-ion batteries because of the high storage capacity and good cycling stability. However, the low initial Coulombic efficiency limits their further commercialization. Herein, a new carbonization strategy is presented to prepare a cost-effective hard carbon material as anodes for sodium-ion batteries by pyrolyzing the interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) made from the mixture of biomass-derivative lignin and epoxy resin. By adjusting heat-treatment temperatures and the lignin/epoxy resin mass ratios, we can adjust the interlayer distance of carbon crystallites and defect sites for Sodium-ion storage, and thus obtain a hard carbon with a high capacity of 316 mAh g−1, a high ICE of 82%, and good rate capability (e.g. , 161 mAh g−1 at 300 mA g−1), all of which are superior to or comparable to those state-of-the-art carbons reported in literatures, by the help of a large interlayer distance of 3.95 Å. Besides, a full cell with the configuration of as-prepared hard carbon anode versus air-stable O3-Na 0.9 [Cu 0.22 Fe 0.30 Mn 0.48 ]O 2 cathode is further demonstrated, while it presents a high ICE of 80% and an energy density of 247 Wh kg anode −1 (vs. hard carbon) with good cycle performance. These excellent properties verify that our synthetic strategy is feasible, scalable and can be extended into the fabrication of various carbon anode materials with anticipative microstructures for the economical SIBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitrogen-containing carbon sphere with hierarchical porous structure is obtained through a facile thermostabilization and carbonization method of biomass-derivative sodium lignosulfonate. The synthesis route we proposed is cost-effective and environment-friendly without additional nitrogen precursor, activation or templating agent. The as-prepared carbon spheres exhibit high specific surface area of 1255–1939 m 2  g −1 and moderate surface nitrogen content of 1.14–1.66 at.%. When assembling into supercapacitors with 7 M KOH aqueous solution as electrolyte, the carbon sphere shows superior gravimetric specific capacitance up to 276 F g −1  at 0.1 A g −1 , high gravimetric energy density of 7.8 Wh kg −1 and power density of 6.2 kW kg −1 , together with unprecedented cycling stability (99.5% capacitance retention after 10000 cycles). Notably, in 1 M SBPBF 4 /PC organic electrolyte, the carbon sphere based supercapacitor presents impressive gravimetric energy density of 34.3 Wh kg −1 and power density of 9.4 kW kg −1 . These outstanding electrochemical performances suggest that the as-prepared porous carbon spheres should be a promising candidate for the field of energy storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zeolite Fe-MFI was synthesized and applied as catalysts in the liquid-phase dehydration of 1-phenylethanol (PHE). The ferrum may influence the nucleation/crystallization processes, the crystal size is varied with the ferrum content. However, all the ferrum were incorporated into the framework when the Fe:Si = 0.005–0.025. In the PHE dehydration, the extra-framework ferrum is inactive. Nevertheless, the Fe-MFI is highly active, a PHE conversion of about 90% and a styrene selectivity >99% were achieved. The Fe-MFI with 1.5–1.8 mmol/g acid sites and Brönsted to Lewis in the 0.13–0.18 range is preferred. Moreover, the Fe-MFI could be reused for at least five times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed a one-pot strategy to fabricate activated carbons by using water soluble phenol-formaldehyde resin as precursor and Na 2 CO 3 as activating agent. The prepared carbon materials have a typical hierarchical pore texture and a large specific surface area (SSA) of 1357 m 2 g −1 . When used as electrode materials for supercapacitors, the material shows a high specific capacitance of 226 F g −1 at 0.05 A g −1, good rate capability of 62.4% in the range of 0.05–20 A g −1 and outstanding cycling stability (only 2.5% loss in specific capacitance after 5000 cycles). These results suggest a low-cost and environmentally friendly design of electrode materials for high-performance supercapacitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a common generalization of both hypercontinuous posets and s 2 -quasicontinuous posets, and introduce a new concept of quasi-hypercontinuous posets. The main results are: (1) A poset is a quasi-hypercontinuous poset iff the upper topology is a hypercontinuous lattice iff the S ⁎ -convergence is topological with respect to the upper topology; (2) For a quasi-hypercontinuous poset, the quasi-liminf convergence is topological with respect to the interval topology; (3) The interval topology on a quasi-hypercontinuous poset is Tychonoff; (4) A lattice is quasi-hypercontinuous as a poset iff its normal completion is a quasi-hypercontinuous lattice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel strategy for the synthesis of hierarchical porous carbons (HPCs) from resol by potassium acetate activation for advanced supercapacitor electrodes was reported. The resultant HPCs with a high specific surface area up to 1201 m 2 g −1 as a supercapacitor electrode exhibits a high specific capacitance of 226 F g −1 at 0.05 A g −1 . Besides, the electrode shows high rate capability with 62.4% retention from 0.05 to 20 A g −1 . Moreover, it demonstrates good cyclic stability, showing a high capacitance retention of 97.1% over 5000 charge-discharge cycles at 2.0 A g −1 . The facile, efficient and template-free synthesis strategy for novel 3D-HPCs may promote commercial application of HPCs in the fields of supercapacitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imidazoline I 1 receptor (I 1 R) has been recognized as a promising target in the treatment of many diseases, but little is known about its function in liver fibrogenesis. This study aimed to investigate the effect of I 1 R activation on the development and progression of liver fibrosis. The results showed that I 1 R expression was decreased in the livers of both patients and mice with liver fibrosis, and in TGF-β-treated hepatic stellate cells (HSCs). Activation of I 1 R by moxonidine (MOX) significantly inhibited the progression of liver fibrosis in carbon tetrachloride-induced mice and attenuated the activation of HSCs and kupffer cells. MOX also suppressed the activation of TLR4/NF-κB and TGF-β/Smad signaling, however, knockdown of I 1 R abrogated the inhibitory effects of MOX. Additionally, MOX activated Nrf2 signaling in vivo and in vitro , but knockout or knockdown of Nrf2 ameliorated the anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic effects of MOX. Taken together, activation of I 1 R negatively regulates the progression of liver fibrosis in the Nrf2-dependent pathway, which suggests that specifically targeting I 1 R may be a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of liver fibrosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the protective effects of nobiletin against hepatic ischemia–reperfusion (IR) injury after liver transplantation. Kupffer cells (KCs) were activated and co-cultured with different concentration of nobiletin for 24 h in vitro, inflammatory products and activity of TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway were detected. Sprague–Dawley rats were selected and underwent orthotopic liver transplantation. Donors were injected intravenously with nobiletin (50 mg/kg) or saline solution, once a day for 1 week before the surgery. Recipients were randomly paired and sacrificed at the indicated time points (3, 6, and 24 h after the surgery), the graft liver tissues and blood samples were collected for analysis. Hepatic function, inflammatory mediators, apoptosis of hepatocytes, histological changes, KCs and CD4+ T-lymphocyte infiltration were assessed. Results showed nobiletin dose-dependently suppressed the expression of inflammatory mediators and the activity of TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway in activated KCs. Furthermore, nobiletin alleviated liver damage induced by IR in vivo, significantly decreased the serum levels of alanine aminotransferase, aspartate transaminase, inflammatory cytokines and alleviated the histopathology changes. Moreover, liver in the nobiletin treated group exhibited less KCs and CD4+ lymphocyte infiltration and lower hepatocyte apoptosis after operation. In addition, activity of TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway in KCs was also suppressed, consistent with the results in vitro. Collectively, Nobiletin can ameliorate IR injury after liver transplantation and may be a promising new strategy to protect against liver IR injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spent radioactive organic solvent (TBP/OK) was solidified by sulfoaluminate cement (SAC) with addition of zeolite, Ca(OH) 2 and T-80 type emulsifier (Tween 80). Leaching characteristics of uranium immobilized in the solidified matrices was investigated through the semi-dynamic leaching test. The leaching behavior was evaluated by several leaching parameters and predicted by one-dimensional radionuclide decay model based on the Fick’s second law. The results showed that the leaching rate and the cumulative leaching fractions (CLF) of uranium in 42 d were 5.70 × 10 −7 cm/d and 4.80 × 10 −5 cm, respectively. The solidification material used in present work was acceptable for solidification of uranium. The predictive values of CLF of uranium from the solidified matrices by the mathematical model were consistent with the experimental data in leaching period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • MIL-88B(Fe)/Fe 3 S 4 hybrids for effective water treatment by heterogeneous electro-Fenton. • Hybrid catalyst: highly uniform composition due to excellent distribution of small Fe 3 S 4. • Sulfidation allows breaking the activity-stability trade-off for high performance HEF. • Good recyclability of hybrids and fast trimethoprim removal even in urban wastewater. • Great catalytic activity and degradation mechanism confirmed by DFT calculations. Fe-based metal–organic frameworks are promising catalysts for water treatment, although their viability is hampered by the slow regeneration of active Fe(II) sites. A facile sulfidation strategy is proposed to boost the catalytic activity of MIL-88B(Fe) in heterogeneous electro-Fenton (HEF) treatment of organic micropollutants at mild pH. The synthesized MIL-88B(Fe)/Fe 3 S 4 hybrids possessed numerous and durable unsaturated iron sites, acting the S2− atoms as electron donors that enhanced the Fe(II) recycling. The sulfidated catalyst outperformed the MIL-88B(Fe), as evidenced by the 7-fold faster degradation of antibiotic trimethoprim by HEF and the fast destruction of micropollutants in urban wastewater. The hybrid catalyst was reused, obtaining >90% drug removal after four runs and, additionally, its inherent magnetism facilitated the post-treatment recovery. Electrochemical tests and DFT calculations provided mechanistic insights to explain the enhanced catalysis, suggesting that the accelerated Fe(III)/Fe(II) cycling and the enhanced mass transport and electron transfer accounted for the efficient trimethoprim degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For studying the mechanism related to the microscopic internal structure of porous carbon additives in lead-carbon batteries, we conducted the electrochemical experiments with a three-electrode system on a lead-doped mesopore-dominated porous carbon (Pb@MC) composite in a Pb 2+ containing H 2 SO 4 electrolyte. Through the electrochemical measures, lead particles on the external surface of carbon could be not only electrodeposited into the nano-sized pores of carbon, but also attached on the pore wall with atomic state, which was observed for the first time by using High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) and Aberration Corrected Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy (ABF-STEM) with the help of ultrathin sectioning. The nano-lead electrodeposits on the internal surface of carbon didn’t grow up because they were confined by the nano-sized pores of carbon. These nano-lead deposits could not only effectively inhibit the hydrogen evolution, but also contribute the pseudocapacitance and enhance the reversible reaction of Pb/PbSO 4 , and thus result in the longer cycle performance of lead-carbon batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of S -convergence and liminf convergence are extended from dcpos to T 0 topological spaces. We introduce WC-spaces, a weakening of C-spaces, which were introduced as the generalization to T 0 spaces of continuous posets with their Scott topology. The main results are: (1) A T 0 space (X , τ) is a C-space iff the S -convergence coincides with convergence in the topology τ iff (X , τ) is a web space and the liminf convergence coincides with convergence in the supremum of τ and the lower topology; (2) A T 0 space is a WC-space iff the liminf convergence is topological for the liminf topology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a common generalization of both s 1 -continuous posets and quasicontinuous domains, and we introduce new concepts of way below relations and s 1 -quasicontinuous posets. The main results are: (1) A poset is an s 1 -quasicontinuous poset iff the σ 1 -topology is a hypercontinuous lattice iff the S ⁎ -convergence is topological with respect to the σ 1 -topology; (2) A poset is s 1 -continuous iff it is meet s 1 -continuous and s 1 -quasicontinuous; (3) The λ 1 -topology on an s 1 -quasicontinuous poset is Tychonoff; (4) A poset P is s 1 -quasicontinuous and the σ 1 -topology is sober iff P is a quasicontinuous domain and the σ 1 -topology coincides with the Scott topology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphene oxide supported l -proline (GO–Proline) bifunctional catalyst was prepared by covalent bonds via a succinate spacer. Fourier transform infrared spectrum (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were employed to characterize the structure and morphology. The characterizations demonstrated l -proline molecules could be readily introduced to the graphene oxide sheets with homogeneous distributions. Systematic studies demonstrated that it was an efficient, recoverable, and recyclable catalyst in the solvent free ketene forming reaction. Effect of different solvents on its catalytic properties was also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stress relaxation curves for three different hot deformation processes in the temperature range of 750–1000 °C were studied to develop an understanding of the precipitation behavior in a nitride-strengthened martensitic heat resistant steel. The first sharp jump in the stress relaxation plots was assumed to be indicative of the commencement of precipitation in this paper, according to the abrupt change in ∂ σ / ∂ t curve and the microstructure observation of the samples. The precipitation revealed by the stress jumps in the stress relaxation plots was further studied by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX). The results confirmed that, under the deformation situation of “Group C”, almost all the Nb atoms would precipitate as Nb(C,N) particles at its optimum precipitation temperature of 940 °C; Nearly all the C+N atoms would be consumed in forming M 23 C 6 particle at its nose precipitation temperature of 800 °C; only 60% V atoms would deposit as V(C,N) particles at its fastest nucleation temperature of 750 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a common generalization of both s 2 -continuous posets and quasicontinuous domains, and we introduce new concepts of way below relations and s 2 -quasicontinuous posets. The main results are: (1) The way below relation on an s 2 -quasicontinuous poset has the interpolation property; (2) The λ 2 -topology on an s 2 -quasicontinuous poset is completely regular; (3) A poset is s 2 -continuous iff it is meet s 2 -continuous and s 2 -quasicontinuous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal wastes from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) can cause soil arsenic pollution due to the widespread use of organoarsenic feed additives. This study investigated the arsenic pollution of surface soils in a typical CAFO zone, in comparison with that of agricultural soils in the Pearl River Delta, China. The mean soil arsenic contents in the CAFO zone were elevated compared to those in the local background and agricultural soils of the Pearl River Delta region. Chemical speciation analysis showed that the soils in the CAFO zone were clearly contaminated by the organoarsenic feed additive, p -arsanilic acid (ASA). Transformation of ASA to inorganic arsenic (arsenite and arsenate) in the surface soils was also observed. Although the potential ecological risk posed by the arsenic in the surface soils was relatively low in the CAFO zone, continuous discharge of organoarsenic feed additives could cause accumulation of arsenic and thus deserves significant attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Fe-based amorphous alloy was treated by the continuous rapid annealing. • B s and H c of the as-annealed alloy are 1.66 T and 7.6 A/m, respectively. • As-annealed ribbon can be bent 180° without breaking. • Precipitation of α-Fe with a size of 2–5 nm is responsible for the good properties. Fe-based amorphous alloys are promising soft magnetic materials for applications in power electronic devices. However, the practical use is inevitably limited by their brittleness that results from annealing. In this paper, an Fe 85 P 11 C 2 B 2 amorphous alloy was heat treated by using a self-designed continuous rapid annealing equipment. After rapidly annealing the amorphous precursors at 773 K for 0.3 s, the α-Fe phase with a size of 2 ∼ 5 nm precipitated, and the ribbon sample exhibits a high saturation magnetization (B s) of 1.66 T and low coercivity (H c) of 7.6 A/m in combination with good bending ductility. This work will provide a new heat treatment method for the soft-magnetic Fe-based amorphous alloy that can inhibit annealing-induced brittleness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solution-processed Cu-doped SnO 2 as an effective electron transporting layer for high-performance planar perovskite solar cells are systematically studied. The energy-level of SnO 2 electron transporting layer and the crystallization of CsFAMA films exhibit dramatically different evolution trends with respect to the addition of copper. The replacement of Sn ions by copper ions in the materials result in an improvement in conductivity of Cu-doped SnO 2 , further improve the current density of the corresponding devices. A little bit of p-type CuO does a lot for SnO 2 electron transport layer and their solar cells are firstly demonstrated. [Display omitted] • The Cu-doped SnO 2 has been successfully achieved, which results in the enhanced conductivity and improved energy band position for the Cu: SnO 2 electron transport layer. • A better quality of perovskite film with enhanced crystallinity and enlarged grain size was obtained. • The doping concentration of 5 mol% was desirable for the fabricated CsFAMA solar cells with a champion PCE of 21.35%. • The PSCs device based on Cu: SnO 2 ETL delivers excellent stability under continuous light or thermal conditions. A high-quality electron transport layer (ETL) is indispensable for effective and stable planar perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Tin oxide (SnO 2) is considered the most promising alternative to TiO 2 as ETL due to its excellent optical and electrical properties. However, some of improvements need to be carried out for intrinsic SnO 2 , such as conductivity, energy loss, and lattice mismatch in the SnO 2 /perovskite interface. Herein, the Cu-doped SnO 2 (Cu: SnO 2) as ETL has been made through mixing the copper salt precursor solution with SnO 2 colloidal solution in room-temperature solution-processed. The Cu incorporated into SnO 2 increases the conductivity of ETL and uplifts the conduction band to obtain a more suitable band alignment in SnO 2 /perovskite interface for relieving the energy barrier in the charge transporting. Moreover, it further improves the quality of perovskite films with the enhanced crystallinity, enlarged grain size, which have an impact on light absorption and reduction of defect states for the perovskite layer. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the prepared planar PSCs with Cu:SnO 2 ETL exceeds 21%, compared with the SnO 2 -based PSCs (19.63%), and the long-term stability was improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphene inducing graphitization of hard carbon can be realized via assemble of PF and GO with hydrogen bonding, and sequential inducing tendency during carbonization process. [Display omitted] • A hard carbon with less defects and lower specific surface area is synthesized. • The unique structure is realized via graphene induced graphitization of hard carbon. • The hard carbon exhibits ultrahigh initial coulombic efficiency (90.4%). • A Na-ion full cell with great stability and superior rate capability is demonstrated. Hard carbons exhibit great potential as anode materials for Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs). However, the large initial irreversible capacity is still a major obstacle in their practical application. It is widely known that lower surface area and fewer defects may increase the initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) for carbon anode in SIBs. In this study, a graphene-induced graphitization strategy is proposed for synthesizing less defective hard carbon. This strategy is realized through the assembly of phenolic resin (PF) and graphene oxide (GO) taking advantage of their hydrogen bonding interaction. Thus, aromatic ring near graphene has a strong tendency to be arranged along the graphene layer during pyrolysis process, a significant transition from sp 3 to sp 2 hybridization carbon occurs, endowing hard carbon with fewer defects and lower surface area. The structural advantages of the hard carbon contribute to the superior ICE (90.4%), the highest ever reported, and excellent reversible specific capacity of 343 mA h g−1 at 30 mA g−1 even after 100 cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We isolated CD8+TCM from healthy donors. [•] We than transferred TCM with the gene encoding TCRs specific for tumor antigen. [•] TE derived from TCM exhibited improved survival and reacquired the TCM phenotype. [•] TCR gene transfer effectively promoted the specific killing of TCM. [•] TCM were more effective than CD8+T cells in effector function after gene transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A simple solvent engineering strategy was employed to control morphology of PbI 2 films effectively by water processing. • Platelet-like PbI 2 films can successfully control the residual amount of PbI 2 in perovskite film. • Platelet-like PbI 2 films can control the morphology of the perovskite film and improve the device efficiency [Display omitted] The performance of organic-inorganic perovskite solar cells depends largely on the quality of perovskite film. Currently, various methods are applied to prepare the perovskite film. Among them, the two-step method is counted as a promising candidate to obtain high-quality perovskite film. In this study, we attain a special platelet-like PbI 2 films by applying pure water to cover wet PbI 2 film and standing for a period of time. The unique morphology contributes to the entry of organic cations solution into the PbI 2 and promoting its reaction with PbI 2 , which reducing the residual amount of PbI 2 in the perovskite film. Compared to the traditional two-step method, water processing method can obtain a high-quality perovskite film with enlarged grain size, improved crystallization, and prolonged carrier lifetime. As a result, the efficiency of the prepared device based on the film has increased from 17.90% without water processing to 20.14% of water processing. Which demonstrates that this solvent engineering for PbI 2 film opens up a possibility to prepare high-quality perovskite in a two-step method and obtain highly efficient perovskite solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Organoarsenic compounds, such as roxarsone (3-nitro-4-hydroxyphenylarsonic acid, ROX) and p-arsanilic acid (ASA), are widely used as animal feed additives, while animal wastes bearing these compounds are often used to fertilize agricultural land, which can cause arsenic pollution of soil, surface water, and groundwater. Determination of a number of inorganic and organic arsenic species in a variety of environmental matrices is necessary to study the environmental fate of organoarsenic feed additives and to assess their risk. A robust analytical method was developed in this work for precise and accurate quantification of ROX, ASA, dimethyl arsenic acid (DMA), monomethyl arsenic acid (MMA), arsenate [As(V)], and arsenite [As(III)] by HPLC–ICP-MS with gradient elution. Extraction conditions for recovering the inorganic and organic arsenic species from soils and sediments were also optimized, and the best results were obtained with 0.5mol·L−1 H3PO4 under constant shaking for 16h. This method was applied in determining the levels of inorganic and organic arsenic species in sediments, soils, and surface water surrounding several swine farms in the Pearl River Delta in southern China and the results showed that the environmental media were already impacted by organoarsenic feed additives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Porous carbons are derived by carbonizing coal tar pitch with one dimension non-silica template (needle-like nano-sized MgO). The samples are characterized by nitrogen adsorption at 77K and XRD analysis. The electrochemical performances for supercapacitor are evaluated in a 6M KOH aqueous solution. The results show that the as-prepared porous carbons possess abundant mesopores of 3.7–6.5nm. With air stabilization process, the samples possess more micropores, contributing nearly 50% of surface areas. The porous carbon with large template content through air stabilization possess a high surface area of 864m2 g−1. For supercapacitors electrode material, the porous carbon shows a high capacity and excellent power performance, retaining 100Fg−1 even at a current density of 30Ag−1. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Mesoporous carbons are prepared from a mixture of the soluble starch with needle-like nano-sized Mg(OH)2 particles. The samples structures are characterized by TEM, nitrogen adsorption at 77K and XRD. The electrochemical performance for electrochemical capacitors is evaluated in a 6M KOH aqueous solution. The resultant carbons show a disordered pore structure with interweaving straight nano-tunnels that resembled the shape of the template, and possess a high surface area more than 1000m2 g−1 and a large pore volume. The special one dimensional morphology of templates cause a graphitization effect on the carbon in partial region, different from catalytic graphitization mechanism of transition metal particles. Due to those characteristics, the samples exhibit good electrochemical performances used for electrochemical capacitors electrode, especially excellent power capability. The sample carbonized at 950°C for 6h retain a capacitance of 126Fg−1 even at a high current density of 40Ag−1. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles (mean size of about 10nm) capped by surfactant oleic acid (OA) were incorporated into P3HT:PCBM BHJ-PSCs by doping in the P3HT:PCBM photoactive layer for the first time. The PCE of the OA-Fe3O4:P3HT:PCBM BHJ-PSC device is enhanced by ∼18% at the optimum OA-Fe3O4 NPs doping ratio of 1%. The role of the magnetic property of Fe3O4 NPs on the PCE of OA-Fe3O4:P3HT:PCBM devices was studied, confirming the exclusive contribution of the Fe3O4 NPs to the observed enhancement of PCE. The enhancement of the PCE of the OA-Fe3O4:P3HT:PCBM BHJ-PSC device is found to be primarily due to the increase of short-circuit current (J sc) by ∼14%, which is attributed to the magnetic field effect originated from the superparamagnetism of Fe3O4 NPs, resulting in the increase of the population of triplet excitons. Finally, the effect of Fe3O4 NPs on the enhancement of PCE of OA-Fe3O4:P3HT:PCBM device is further investigated by comparing different means of doping in P3HT:PCBM or PEDOT:PSS layer, confirming that such an effect can be achieved only when Fe3O4 NPs are doped in the P3HT:PCBM photoactive layer. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Mg2Ni-based hydride was prepared by hydriding combustion synthesis (HCS), and subsequently modified with various carbonaceous materials including graphite, multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), carbon aerogels (CAs) and carbon nanofibers (CNFs) by mechanical milling (MM) for 5 h. The structural properties of the modified hydrides were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). All of the modified hydrides show amorphous or nanocrystalline-like phases. The hydride modified with graphite exhibits the most homogenous distribution of particles and the smallest particle size. The effects of the modifications on electrochemical properties of the hydride were investigated by galvanostatic charge/discharge, linear polarization, Tafel polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiostatic discharge measurements. The results show that the maximum discharge capacity, the high rate dischargeability (HRD), the exchange current density and the hydrogen diffusion ability of the hydride modified with the carbonaceous materials are all increased. Especially, the hydride modified with graphite possesses the highest discharge capacity of 531 mAh/g and the best electrochemical kinetics property. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Mg2Ni-based hydride was prepared by hydriding combustion synthesis (HCS), and subsequently modified with various metal elements (Ti, Co, Cr and Y) by mechanical milling. The effects of the modifications on electrochemical properties of the hydride were investigated. Both of the maximum discharge capacity and the high rate dischargeability (HRD) are increased by the modification of Co, while the cycling stability is improved for the hydride modified with Ti, Cr and Y. The Tafel polarization shows that the addition of the metals has a positive effect on improving the anti-corrosion ability. The electrochemical kinetics was also characterized by linear polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiostatic discharge. The results show that the hydrogen diffusion coefficient and the electrochemical reaction resistance are increased by the modifications, but the exchange current density decreases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates optimal design of spatially varying frictional constraints in reducing the risk of failure due to wrinkling and thinning. First, this problem is formulated deterministically as a multi-objective optimization with spatially distributed frictional constraints, and pre-determined BHF. An FEM-based genetic algorithm approach (NSGA-II) is used to determine the deterministic Pareto front for multiple design alternatives, and a tradeoff strategy is used to identify an optimal design. Further, using a first order mean-value approach, a probabilistic formulation is proposed. The deterministic and probabilistic designs are compared to the conventional spatially uniform friction case. The results show that in the drawing of a Hishida oil pan part, an overall improvement of 33% in strain distribution can be obtained and a further 12% improvement can be obtained with probabilistic design. A covariance based approach is used to explore a reliable design that is robust to process uncertainties. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Often, sheet drawing processes are designed to provide the geometry of the final part, and then the process parameters such as blank dimensions, blank holder forces (BHFs), press strokes and interface friction are designed and controlled to provide the greatest drawability (largest depth of draw without violating the wrinkling and thinning constraints). The exclusion of inherent process variations in this design can often lead to process designs that are unreliable and uncontrollable. In this paper, a general multi-criteria design approach is presented to quantify the uncertainties and to incorporate them into the response surface method (RSM) based model so as to conduct probabilistic optimization. A surrogate RSM model of the process mechanics is generated using FEM-based high-fidelity models and design of experiments (DOEs), and a simple linear weighted approach is used to formulate the objective function or the quality index (QI). To demonstrate this approach, deep drawing of an aluminum Hishida part is analyzed. With the predetermined blank shape, tooling design and fixed drawing depth, a probabilistic design (PD) is successfully carried out to find the optimal combination of BHF and friction coefficient under variation of material properties. The results show that with the probabilistic approach, the QI improved by 42% over the traditional deterministic design (DD). It also shows that by further reducing the variation of friction coefficient to 2%, the QI will improve further to 98.97%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The influence of acetylene black (AB) content (0–20 wt.%) on the electrochemical performance of activated carbon based electrochemical double layer capacitor (EDLC) electrodes has been studied systematically. The electrochemical performance was evaluated by galvanostatic charging/discharging, cyclic voltammetry, and alternating current impedance. Experimental results indicated that 5 wt.% AB was the best choice for electrodes presenting high energy density and good rate capability. AB ensures that the composite electrodes present high electronic conductivity; however, scanning electron microscope images show that excessive AB form large agglomerates, which stuff the voids among activated carbon particles and hinder the electrolyte ion transfer during the electrochemical double layer charging/discharging. Thus the composite electrodes with excessive AB lose their hierarchically porous structure and the subsequent ion-sieving effect deteriorates the electrochemical performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, the concepts of g s 2 -convergence and quasi-liminf convergence of filters in posets are introduced. The main results are: (1) For an order consistent topology τ on a poset P , P is τ -quasicontinuous iff the g s 2 -convergence coincides with τ -convergence; (2) For an order consistent topology τ on a poset P , the quasi-liminf convergence coincides with τ ∨ ω (P) -convergence if P is τ -quasicontinuous; (3) For an order consistent topology τ on a poset P , P is τ -continuous iff the s 2 -convergence coincides with τ -convergence iff it is meet τ -continuous and the quasi-liminf convergence coincides with τ ∨ ω (P) -convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Person re-identification, getting impressive performance under the single-domain setting, often suffers huge performance drop when deploying to the unseen target domain owing to domain gap. Current research mainly focuses on unsupervised domain adaptation to alleviate the domain gap, and the methods by clustering the target-domain samples have achieved significant results. However, some inaccurate pseudo-labels, i.e., noisy pseudo-labels, may be generated on clustering, which will seriously affect the performance of the model. In order to solve the above problem, we propose a novel unsupervised domain adaptive person re-identification method by exploiting reliable pseudo-labels (RPL) from two aspects, i.e., adaptive dynamic clustering (ADC) and cross-camera similarity evaluation (CCSE). Specifically, firstly, for the methods based on the density-based clustering algorithm, we propose the adaptive dynamic clustering which calculates the clustering radius adaptively and dynamically to obtain more reasonable clustering results in the iterative optimization of the model. Next, for noisy pseudo-labels caused by small inter-class variations under the same camera, we propose the cross-camera similarity evaluation to filter out these noises to further improve the discrimination of the model. Extensive experiments on three publicly available large-scale datasets show that the proposed method can achieve state-of-the-art performance on unsupervised domain adaptation person re-identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an important challenge to develop a chemosensor for trace uranyl ion in an aqueous medium for sustainable development of nuclear energy and environmental conservation. A conjugated fluorescent polymer sensor P2 based on amidoxime groups and polyfluorene, which showed good hydrophilous resulting adequate contact with uranyl ions and selectivity and sensitivity even in the presence of other metal ions in DMA/H 2 O (v /v = 20:80, pH = 6.0) solution, for uranyl ion was designed and prepared in this work. And it possesses good thermal stability and a larger Stokes shift (108 nm). Importantly, the fluorescence quenching occurred when P2 combining uranium. It had a good linear relationship with UO 2 2+ concentration in the range of 10 to 200 nM with a fairly low LOD 7.4 × 10−9 M. Interaction properties between the sensor P2 and UO 2 2+ and the fluorescent mechanism were investigated by density functional theory (DFT). More importantly, the sensor can be successfully used for the detection of uranyl ion in environmental solutions. This work suggests that conjugated fluorescent polymer with amidoxime groups will be a prospective sensor of uranyl ion in the environmental sample. Unlabelled Image • The polymer sensor P2 possesses good thermal stability and a larger Stokes shift (108 nm). • The polymer sensor P2 shows high sensitivity and selectivity toward UO22+. • The LOD of P2 for UO22+ was down to 7.4 × 10−9 M. • The polymer sensor P2 was applied to detect UO 2 2+ in real samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A Pose-Invariant Convolutional Baseline is proposed. • Appearance-Enhanced Feature Learning Network is proposed. • The state-of-the-art results are reported in three Re-ID datasets. Person re-identification (Re-ID) has important practical application value in intelligent video analysis. Due to the illumination, occlusion, and pose variation, person Re-ID is still a challenging problem. Some recent Re-ID methods based on ResNet-50 have achieved high accuracy, but performance degradation is caused by pose variation. To address this issue, Pose-Invariant Convolutional Baseline (PICB) embed with the proposed Pooling Fusion Block (PFB) is put forward as a new baseline for person Re-ID task. On the basis of PICB, an end-to-end network named Appearance-Enhanced Feature Learning Network (AEFLN) is proposed to simultaneously learn diversity body features and discriminative part features. Specially, a novel (DBFL) strategy is presented to learn diversity body features, which could alleviate the potential local minima problem generated by optimizing model with randomly initialized parameters in PFB. In addition, uniform part-level feature extractors are applied to learn part features, which compensates for body features' lack of distinguishable local information. In testing phase, body features and part features are integrated to represent the enhanced appearance feature for each person image. Comprehensive experiments have demonstrated that our method can outperform the sate-of-the-art results on several public available datasets, including Market-1501, CUHK03 and DukeMTMC-reID. For instance, we achieve 74.8% (+11.1%) and 76.5% (+19.0%) in Rank-1 accuracy and mAP on CUHK03 dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Porous carbon was prepared from deoiled asphalt by conventional NaOH activation process and by the combination of nano-sized MgO template method and NaOH activation process. The electrochemical properties used as supercapacitors electrode material were evaluated in 7M KOH aqueous solution. Porous carbon sample obtained by NaOH activation possessed more micropores and higher specific surface area, resulting in a higher specific capacitance of 235Fg−1 at low charge–discharge current of 50mAg−1. For the combination method, the resultant carbons possessed higher capacitance and good capacitance maintaining at high current, with a capacitance of nearly twice as that of the former at current density of 10Ag−1, due to their abundant mesopores. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Widespread outbreaks of mandarinfish (Siniperca chuatsi) ranavirus (MRV) have emerged in many mandarinfish farms in Guangdong, the most important region of the mandarinfish industry in China. Unlike the early typical clinical signs of abnormally swollen abdomens due to extremely severe ascites, diseased fish from the reemerging natural outbreaks of MRVs had little ascites but showed lethargy, anorexia and a typical sleepy syndrome. The disease duration of the natural outbreak of MRV could last for 1 to 5 months. Additionally, the majority of the surviving fish showed persistent anorexia and body emaciation and deformity, which is also very different from the symptoms of mandarinfish infectious spleen and kidney necrosis virus (ISKNV)—the notorious and well-known iridoviral agent in the mandarinfish industry. Mandarinfish vaccinated with the ISKNV-inactivated vaccine showed no protective effect against the natural outbreak of MRV, whereas the ISKNV vaccine seamed to induce a stronger outbreak of the MRV disease in MRV carrier fish. By real-time quantitative PCR, the liver, spleen, kidney as well as intestine are shown to be the major viral reservoirs, both under artificial infection and natural outbreak. Additionally, histopathology, immuno-histochemistry, immunofluorescence assay and transmission electron microscopy also confirmed the pathogenicity of MRV to mandarinfish. Collectively, the emerging MRV disease remained a severe and actual threat to the mandarinfish industry. As two different genera members in the family Iridoviridae , the ISKNV vaccine provided no cross-protection against MRV. A combination vaccine, containing both ISKNV and MRV, is urgently needed. • Outbreaks of MRV in both natural and ISKNV-FKC vaccinated mandarinfish; • Natural MRV diseases showed persistent infection, characterization by lethargy, anorexia and a typical sleepy syndrome; • ISKNV-FKC vaccine showed no cross protection against MRV infection, whereas could induce a stronger outbreak of MRV; • Histopathology, IHC and IFA were characterized in MRV-infected mandarinfish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]