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Among various intergranular microstructures, pore spaces in SEs play a critical role in Li-metal nucleation in SEs. To realize Li-metal nuclei-free inside the SE, removing pore spaces is essential and a commonly applicable design strategy to all SEs.

Herein, we have prepared platinum phosphide (PtP2)-based cathode electrocatalysts for HT-PEMFCs. The high activity and stability of the PtP2/C-based catalysts were attributed to the high oxyphilicity of the phosphorus atoms.

We assessed three popular force fields, AMBER ff14SB, CHARMM36m, and OPLS-AA/L in predicting conformational propensities of a β-peptide foldamer in different solvent conditions.

Carfilzomib (CFZ) is a second-generation proteasome inhibitor effective in blood cancer therapy. However, CFZ has shown limited efficacy in solid tumor therapy due to the short half-life and poor tumor distribution. Albumin-coated nanocrystal (NC) formulation was shown to improve the circulation stability of CFZ, but its antitumor efficacy remained suboptimal. We hypothesize that NC size reduction is critical to the formulation safety and efficacy as the small size would decrease the distribution in the reticuloendothelial system (RES) and selectively increase the uptake by tumor cells. We controlled the size of CFZ-NCs by varying the production parameters in the crystallization-in-medium method and compared the size-reduced CFZ-NCs (z-average of 168 nm, NC(168)) with a larger counterpart (z-average of 325 nm, NC(325)) as well as the commercial CFZ formulation (CFZ-CD). Both CFZ-NCs showed similar or higher cytotoxicity than CFZ-CD against breast cancer cells. NC(168) showed greater uptake by cancer cells, less uptake by macrophages and lower immune cell toxicity than NC(325) or CFZ-CD. NC(168), but not NC(325), showed a similar safety profile to CFZ-CD in vivo. The biodistribution and antitumor efficacy of CFZ-NCs in mice were also size-dependent. NC(168) showed greater antitumor efficacy and tumor accumulation but lower RES accumulation than NC(325) in 4T1 breast cancer model. These results support that NC formulation with an optimal particle size can improve the therapeutic efficacy of CFZ in solid tumors.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a technologically important method to grow thin films with high conformality and excellent thickness control from vapor phase precursors. The development of new thermal ALD processes can be limited by precursor reactivity and stability: reaction temperature and precursor design are among the few variables available to achieve higher reactivity in gas-phase reactions, unlike in solution synthesis, where the use of solvent and/or a catalyst can promote a desired reaction. To bridge this synthesis gap between vapor-phase and solution-phase, we demonstrate the use of an ultrathin coating layer of a vapor phase-compatible solvent─an ionic liquid (IL)─on our growth substrate to perform ALD of SnO. Successful SnO deposition is achieved using tin acetylacetonate and water, a process that otherwise would require a stronger counter-reactant such as ozone. The presence of the layer of IL allows a solvent-mediated reaction mechanism to take place on the growth substrate surface. We report a growth per cycle of 0.67 Å/cycle at a deposition temperature of 100 °C in an IL comprising 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulfate. Characterization of the ALD films confirms the SnO film composition, and

In Analog Computing-in-Memory (CIM) neural network accelerators, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are required to convert the analog partial sums generated from a CIM array to digital values. The overhead from ADCs substantially degrades the energy efficiency of CIM accelerators so that previous works attempted to lower the ADC resolution considering the distribution of the partial sums. Despite the efforts, the required ADC resolution still remains relatively high. In this article, we propose the data-driven partial sum quantization scheme, which exhaustively searches for the optimal quantization range with little computational burden. We also report that analyzing the characteristics of the partial sum distributions at each layer gives an additional information to further reduce the ADC resolution compared to previous works that mostly used the characteristics of the partial sum distributions of the entire network. Based on the finer-level data-driven approach combined with retraining, we present a methodology for extreme partial-sum quantization. Experimental results show that the proposed method can reduce the ADC resolution to 2 to 3 bits for CIFAR-10 dataset, which is the smaller ADC bit resolution than any previous CIM-based NN accelerators.

Computational simulations have become of major interest to screen potential photocatalysts for optimal band edge positions which straddle the redox potentials. Unfortunately, these methods suffer from a difficulty in resolving the dynamic solvent response on the band edge positions. We have developed a computational method based on the GW approximation coupled with an implicit solvation model that solves a generalized Poisson equation (GPE), that is, GW-GPE. Using GW-GPE, we have investigated the band edge locations of (quasi) 2D materials immersed in water and found a good agreement with experimental data. We identify two contributions of the solvent effect, termed a "polarization-field effect" and an "environmental screening effect", which are found to be highly sensitive to the atomic and charge distribution of the 2D materials. We believe that the GW-GPE scheme can pave the way to predict band edge positions in solvents, enabling design of 2D material-based photocatalysts and energy systems.

Summer monsoon precipitation provides crucial water resources for agriculture, industry, and life in East Asia (EA). Meanwhile, it causes disasters when occurring over highly populated regions. Recently, we have witnessed a series of extreme precipitation events in South Korea, China, and Japan during the summer monsoon season. It remains uncertain whether these events and the EA summer monsoon precipitation system are affected by the ongoing climate changes. The summer precipitation in EA is contributed by various extra-tropical cyclones, fronts, and other weather systems. Here, we focus on the stationary front-induced precipitation, which accounts for more than 30% of EA summer precipitation. Based on objectively detected frontal systems, we found that the intensity of observed frontal rainfall increased by 19.8% during 1991–2015. It was further shown that the intensity increase of frontal rainfall is mainly attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing on the basis of the Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble simulations. We found that the reinforced western North Pacific subtropical high makes enhanced water vapor convergence in the lower troposphere along its rim. This study confirms that the frontal summer monsoon precipitation system over EA has been intensified significantly by human-induced global warming, which will likely enhance further in the future.

Irrigation is one of the crucial Nature-Human interactions and also an anthropogenic forcing in the Earth system. The literature has shown that artificial water supply to soil for example water exploitation from groundwater for irrigation can alter water and heat budgets at the land surface, resulting in changes in regional climate and hydrological cycles. Due to the expected increase in irrigation to meet growing food demand, the impact of irrigation is likely to increase further in the future. Therefore, it is essential to consider to better understand the irrigation-induced changes in the various components of the Earth system, today and in the future.Our research aims to advance the quantitative understanding of the impact of irrigation and groundwater exploitation as anthropogenic drivers of regional climate and environmental changes. We developed an earth system modeling framework coupling the updated Earth system model, MIROC-ES2L (Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate, Earth System version 2 for Long-term simulations) and newly implemented hydrological human activity modules. This modeling framework enables to simulate a fully coupled Nature-Human system including water cycle dynamics related to irrigation.Our preliminary results show notable differences between simulations with and without the irrigation process. Here, we show the hydrological variables affected by irrigation and identify the regions and timings of significant impact. Further, we estimate the individual contribution of groundwater and surface water use to such impacts by irrigation.

The impact of climate change on typhoon is of great concern in the East Asia. In particular, typhoon heavy rainfall has a destructive impact on our society and economy since they are many megacities along the coastal regions. Although observations suggest significant changes in typhoon heavy rainfall, the contribution of anthropogenic forcing has not been determined.In this study, we show that anthropogenic global warming has a substantial impact on the observed changes in typhoon heavy rainfall in the western North Pacific region. Observational data show that, in general, typhoon heavy rainfall has increased (decreased) in coastal East Asia (tropical western North Pacific) during latter half of 20th Century and onward. A similar spatial distribution is found in the “Anthropogenic fingerprint”, difference between Earth systems with and without human-induced greenhouse gas emission, from a set of large ensemble climate simulations. This provides evidence to support that the significant increase in the frequency of typhoon heavy rainfall along coastal East Asia is not explained solely by natural variability. Further, the results show that since mid-1970s, the signal of “Anthropogenic fingerprint” has been increasing rapidly and departs from natural variability in early-2000s.Reference:Utsumi, N., & Kim, H. (2022). Observed influence of anthropogenic climate change on tropical cyclone heavy rainfall. Nature Climate Change, 12(5), 436–440. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01344-2

Myonghwa Park,1 Keunyeob Oh,2 Hyungjun Kim,3 Xing Fan,1,4 Thi-Thanh-Thnh Giap,1,5 Rhayun Song1 1College of Nursing, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, South Korea; 2College of Economics and Management, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, South Korea; 3School of Business, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, South Korea; 4College of Medicine, Lishui University, Lishui, People’s Republic of China; 5College of Health Sciences, VinUniversity, Hanoi, VietnamCorrespondence: Rhayun Song, College of Nursing, Chungnam National University, Munwha-ro 266, Jung-Gu, Daejeon, 35015, South Korea, Tel +82-42-580-8331, Fax +82-42-580-8309, Email songry@cnu.ac.kr Xing Fan, College of Nursing, Chungnam National University, Munwha-ro 266, Jung-Gu, Daejeon, 35015, South Korea, Tel +82-42-580-8331, Fax +82-42-580-8309, Email fanxing@o.cnu.ac.krPurpose: To predict the performance of infection-prevention behaviors among adults in Korea based on the health belief model, using social support as a mediator.Patients and Methods: A nationwide cross-sectional survey of 700 participants from the local community was conducted using both online and offline methods from 8 metropolitan cities and 9 provinces in Korea from November 2021 to March 2022. The questionnaire was composed of 4 sections: demographic information, motivational factors for behavior change, social support, and infection-prevention behaviors. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with the AMOS program. The general least-squares method was applied to assess the fit of the model and the bootstrapping method was tested for indirect effect and the total effect.Results: Motivation factors that directly affected infection-prevention behaviors were self-efficacy (γ=0.58, p< 0.001), perceived barriers (γ=– .08, p=0.004), perceived benefits (γ=0.10, p=0.002), perceived threats (γ=0.08, p=0.009), and social support (γ=0.13, p< 0.001), after controlling for related demographic variables. Cognitive and emotional motivation factors together explained 59% of the variance in infection-prevention behaviors. Social support exerted significant mediating effects between each cognitive and emotional motivation variable and infection-prevention behaviors, along with a significant direct effect on infection-prevention behaviors (γ=0.12, p< 0.001).Conclusion: The engagement of prevention behaviors among community-dwelling adults was influenced by their self-efficacy, perceived barriers, perceived benefits, and perceived threats with social support as a mediator. Prevention policy approaches could include providing specific information to improve self-efficacy and build awareness of the severity of the disease while establishing a supportive social environment for promoting health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.Keywords: COVID-19, health belief model, prevention behavior, motivation factor, social support

In recent decades, the interior regions of Eurasia and North America have experienced several unprecedentedly cold winters despite the global surface air temperature increases. One possible explanation of these increasing extreme cold winters comes from the so-called Warm Arctic Cold Continent (WACC) pattern, reflecting the effects of the amplified Arctic warming in driving the circulation change over surrounding continents. This study analyzed reanalysis data and model experiments forced by different levels of anthropogenic forcing. It is found that WACC exists on synoptic scales in observations, model’s historical and even future runs. In the future, the analysis suggests a continued presence of WACC but with a slightly weakened cold extreme due to the overall warming. Warm Arctic events under the warmer climate will be associated with not only a colder continent in East Asia but also a warmer continent, depending on the teleconnection process that is also complicated by the warmer Arctic. Such an increasingly association suggests a reduction in potential predictability of the midlatitude winter anomalies.

It is assumed that mood can be inferred from one’s facial expression. While this association may prove to be an objective marker for mood disorders, few studies have explicitly evaluated this linkage. The facial movement responses of women with major depressive disorder (n = 66) and healthy controls (n = 46) under emotional stimuli were recorded using webcam. To boost facial movements, the naturalistic audio-visual stimuli were presented. To assess consistent global patterns across facial movements, scores for facial action units were extracted and projected onto principal component using principal component analysis. The associations of component for facial movements with functional brain circuitry was also investigated. Clusters of mouth movements, such as lip press and stretch, identified by principal component analysis, were attenuated in depressive patients compared to those in healthy controls. This component of facial movements was associated with depressive symptoms, and the strengths of resting brain functional connectivity between nucleus accumbens and both posterior insular cortex and thalamus. The evaluation of facial movements may prove to be a promising quantitative marker for assessing depressive symptoms and their underlying brain circuitry.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates CN177_0W, CN177_2W, CB060_0W, and CB060_2W were isolated from two tuberculosis patients in South Korea. Here, we report the whole-genome sequences of clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis isolated before and after tuberculosis treatment.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates CN118, CN272, CB131, IP004, and IP016 were isolated from three hospitals in South Korea. Here, we report the whole-genome sequences of the five M. tuberculosis clinical isolates to aid the understanding of their genetic diversity.

Future projections of global mean precipitation change (ΔP) based on Earth-system models have larger uncertainties than projections of global mean temperature changes (ΔT)

With the growth of drug-facilitated crimes, prevention has become increasingly important. Although various drug detection technologies exist, most focus on postconsumption detection. However, the prevention of drug-facilitated crimes requires technology for the quick and easy detection of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATSs) before ingestion. Herein, drug screening kits (DSKs) were developed for the simple detection of ATSs in drinks. The DSKs consisted of polydiacetylene nanofiber-based paper sensors fabricated by electrospinning with 10,12-pentacosadiynoic acid (PCDA) and PCDA-dopamine as sensing materials that can bind ATSs via hydrogen bonding and π-π interactions. Dropping a drink on the DSK provided an immediate visual indication of the presence of ATSs. When ATSs were present in the drink, the color of the DSK clearly changed from blue to red, with the increase in red intensity being more than twofold greater than that observed when water alone was tested. Notably, the result could be confirmed by the naked eye without any analytical instrumentation. A color change indicating the presence of ATSs was successfully observed in various alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks. These results indicate the potential of DSKs for preventing drug-facilitated crimes caused by unwanted drug intake.

The “selective and successive oxygen redox” concept is suggested as a universal reaction mechanism in Mn–Fe binary oxide cathodes, and it elucidates the oxygen (in)stability affecting the cycle retention in sodium-ion batteries.

Highly efficient and selective N-methylation of aniline with methanol is possible with Pd1Cu0.6–Fe3O4 nanoparticle catalyst.

Symmetry breaking and valency change of Ni–N–C catalysts endow a CO2 electroreduction activity.

Highlights A three single-phase Cu, Cu2O, and CuO monolithic nanowire network was successfully fabricated by reversible selective laser-induced redox (rSLIR)Monolithic metal–semiconductor–metal multispectral photodetectors with Cu nanowire (CuNW) as an electrode and Cu2ONW/CuONW having different bandgaps were suggested. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40820-021-00786-1., Active electronics are usually composed of semiconductor and metal electrodes which are connected by multiple vacuum deposition steps and photolithography patterning. However, the presence of interface of dissimilar material between semiconductor and metal electrode makes various problems in electrical contacts and mechanical failure. The ideal electronics should not have defective interfaces of dissimilar materials. In this study, we developed a novel method to fabricate active electronic components in a monolithic seamless fashion where both metal and semiconductor can be prepared from the same monolith material without creating a semiconductor–metal interface by reversible selective laser-induced redox (rSLIR) method. Furthermore, rSLIR can control the oxidation state of transition metal (Cu) to yield semiconductors with two different bandgap states (Cu2O and CuO with bandgaps of 2.1 and 1.2 eV, respectively), which may allow multifunctional sensors with multiple bandgaps from the same materials. This novel method enables the seamless integration of single-phase Cu, Cu2O, and CuO, simultaneously while allowing reversible, selective conversion between oxidation states by simply shining laser light. Moreover, we fabricated a flexible monolithic metal–semiconductor–metal multispectral photodetector that can detect multiple wavelengths. The unique monolithic characteristics of rSLIR process can provide next-generation electronics fabrication method overcoming the limitation of conventional photolithography methods. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40820-021-00786-1.