Search

• Cs 3 Bi 2 Br 9 /BiOBr is synthesized through an in-situ growth approach. • In-situ XPS characterization confirms the S-scheme charge transfer mode. • Cs 3 Bi 2 Br 9 /BiOBr has strong redox abilities and high charge separation efficiency. • Cs 3 Bi 2 Br 9 /BiOBr can selectively photo-oxidize benzylic C‒H bonds. Converting hydrocarbons into aldehydes in a green and environmentally benign way is of great significance in fine chemistry. In this work, all-inorganic Cs 3 Bi 2 Br 9 perovskite nanoparticles were uniformly loaded on BiOBr nanosheets via an in-situ growth method, which can selectivity photoactivate aromatic C(sp3) H bond of toluene to generate benzaldehyde. According to the in-situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy characterization, the photogenerated electrons of BiOBr transfer to Cs 3 Bi 2 Br 9 enforced by the internal electric field under light irradiation, resulting in S-scheme heterojunction. Furthermore, theoretical calculations indicate that toluene molecules are inclined to adsorb on the BiOBr surface, subsequently involving the oxidation reaction to generate benzyl radical (PhCH 2 •) by using the energetic holes of BiOBr, while the remaining photoinduced electrons in the conduction band (CB) of Cs 3 Bi 2 Br 9 with powerful reduction ability reduce O 2 into •O 2 −, which is the vital oxidative active species working on toluene selective oxidation process. Such an unexceptionable charge carrier utilization mode and tendentious adsorption behavior of reactants contribute to the optimized Cs 3 Bi 2 Br 9 /BiOBr heterojunction with excellent photocatalytic performance, achieving a maximum of 22.5% toluene conversion and 96.2% selectivity towards benzaldehyde formation. This work provides a rational photocatalyst heterojunction construction protocol for the selective oxidation of saturated aromatic C H bonds. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It remains a significant hurdle for discovering birefringent materials in the deep ultraviolet (DUV, λ < 200 nm). It is well-known that the OH anions are recognized for their capability to eliminate the dangling bonds from terminal oxygen atoms, promoting the ultraviolet (UV) cutoff edge blueshift and regulating the crystal structure. Here, two new barium hydroxyborates, Ba3B11O18(OH)3(H2O) (BaBOH) and Na2BaB10O16(OH)2(H2O)2(NaBaBOH), were designed and synthesized while displaying different dimensions. Remarkably, BaBOH presents novel one-dimensional (1D) [B22O37(OH)6]∞double-chains formed by a new fundamental building block (FBB)[B11O21(OH)3]. NaBaBOH possesses a 2D [B10O16(OH)2]∞layer with a less common FBB [B10O19(OH)2]. They enrich the structural diversity of hydroxyborates. Moreover, NaBaBOH exhibits a broad transparent window within the DUV spectral range (<190 nm) and possesses a favorable birefringence of 0.064. Furthermore, detailed summaries and structural comparisons have been implemented for all hydroxyborates containing alkali and alkaline-earth metals. This reveals that the OH group modulation strategy can be appropriately employed for the structural design.

Cancer treatment has faced severe obstacles due to the smart biological system of cancer cells. Herein, we report a three-in-one agent Ir-CAvia attenuation of cancer cell stemness with the down-regulated biomarker CD133 expression from the mitochondria-directed chemotherapy. Over 80% of Ir-CAcould accumulate in mitochondria, result in severe mitochondrial dysfunctions, and subsequently initiate mitophagy and cell cycle arrest to kill cisplatin-resistant A549R cells. In vitroand in vivoantimetastatic experiments demonstrated that Ir-CAcan effectively inhibit metastasis with down-regulated MMP-2/MMP-9. RNA seq analysis and Western blotting indicated that Ir-CAalso suppresses the GSTP1 expression to decrease the intracellular Pt-GS adducts, resulting in the detoxification and resensitization to cisplatin of A549R cells. In vivoevaluation indicated that Ir-CArestrains the tumor growth and has minimal side effects and superior biocompatibility. This work not only provides the first three-in-one agent to attenuate cancer cell stemness and simultaneously realize anticancer, antimetastasis, and conquer metallodrug resistance but also demonstrates the effectiveness of the mitochondria-directed strategy in cancer treatment.

Countries have implemented a series of economic policies to address the economic threats arising from climate change. We investigate the impact of climate change on economic policy uncertainty and explore the mechanisms and heterogeneity of the impact by constructing the grid area-weighted average temperatures based on monthly panel data of 20 major global economies during 1997–2017. We find that climate change exacerbates economic policy uncertainty. These findings still hold after the robustness test by adjusting the control variables, replacing core explanatory variables and replacing fixed effects. More interestingly, splitting the sample into country groups reveals a considerable contrast in the impact of climate change on economic policy uncertainty. The coefficient on climate change is statistically significant in the case of developing economies, economies with hot climates, low level of trade openness, strong climate impact and high level of corruption. In addition, climate change leads to higher levels of economic policy uncertainty through, reducing economic growth, widening income disparities, increasing inflationary pressures and unemployment rate. This study provides a new perspective for understanding the economic consequences of climate change and policy implications for dealing with climate risks.

The adoption of green technologies has become a major challenge for manufacturing enterprises seeking to achieve green transformation. While previous research has mainly focused on developing new green technologies and products, there is a lack of attention on the adoption of mature technologies. This study aims to explore an innovation ecosystem design which may facilitate the adoption of green technologies via specific channels. Using a multiple case study design, this study investigates four representative enterprises in promoting the adoption of green technologies and propose a general framework, identifying four key ecosystem design paradigms and two channels for overcoming barriers to adoption. This study enriches the literature on ecosystem design and contributes to the theory of green transformation by incorporating the ecosystem perspective. The findings also also shed light on promoting the overall green transformation and upgrading the manufacturing industry in emerging economies.

For a class of industrial processes described by a second-order plus time delay model, this paper investigates the design of active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) incorporating model information. By using the low-frequency approximation, the lumped plant consisting of all internal loops can shape the closed-loop tracking dynamic to the expected response, allowing the feedback gains to be formulated by the desired tracking factor. In this framework, a rigorous stability criterion is first depicted intuitively in terms of dimensionless parameters. An explicit upper bound on the observer bandwidth is then analytically derived through an in-depth analysis of the decaying behavior in the magnitude of the loop function, which guarantees a more satisfactory margin for mismatched delays than existing related studies. Based on this constraint, the regulable tracking factor can further endow the ADRC system with comprehensive robustness to cope with other uncertainties. Comparative simulations and a water tank experiment reveal the merits of the proposed configuration. Furthermore, the field application of this method in the wet flue gas desulfurization process demonstrates its promising practical prospects.

Floral chemical components are important cues used by plants to attract pollinators. One outstanding case is “fruit fly orchids” in the genus of Bulbophyllumto attract their pollinators by releasing characteristic fragrances. Dacini fruit flies are main or exclusive pollinators which are strongly attracted to certain natural chemicals, either methyl eugenol (ME: a phenylpropanoid) or raspberry ketone (RK: a phenylbutanoid). Furthermore, zingerone (ZN: a phenylbutanoid) has been characterized as the attractant for both ME- and RK-sensitive fruit fly species. In the present study, we examined chemical profiles of two closely related Bulbophyllumorchids—B. hortorum, and B. macranthoidessubsp. tollenoniferum—distributed in Papua New Guinea and the Southeast Asian countries, respectively. We first observed that RK-sensitive flies were attracted to these orchids by ex situ cultivation in Penang, Malaysia. These Bulbophyllumorchids contained RK and/or ZN as their main floral components. Other than these attractants, multiple phenylbutanoids including potential attractants for RK-sensitive species were identified from these orchids. Therefore, we examined attractiveness of potential phenylbutanoid attractants to an RK-sensitive melon fly, Zeugodacus cucurbitae,using laboratory-reared flies. Furthermore, we analyzed molecular phylogenetic relationships among phenylpropanoid- or phenylbutanoid-producing orchids to see a relation between chemical profiles and phylogenetic classification in the related species.

This work presents a homemade multirole 3D-printed modular spectrometer (MPMS), which can be easily assembled like bricks and expanded with several modules to measure different types of spectra, such as UV–vis absorption, fluorescence emission, flame emission/absorption, glow discharge, and even Raman spectra. The spectrometer is designed to be cheap, flexible, and its inner structure is displayable, making it suitable for a range of applications and age groups. The assembly process allows for a clear understanding of the basic structure of the monochromator, the core component of spectrometers, as well as reveals the connections and similarities between different spectral analysis methods. Despite being easily disassembled, the spectrometer is robust, easy to calibrate, and highly precise, making it suitable for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. This study provides a valuable tool for those seeking a practical and educational approach to spectroscopy.

Graphical abstract:

Active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) is widely applied in the motion control and the industrial process control for its merits of the uncertainty rejection, efficacy and ease of use. However, most process control models exist time-delay, which greatly deteriorates the closed-loop control performance of ADRC. Moreover, the controller gain tuning of ADRC is complex, laborious and time-consuming. Considering the above two difficulties, the key innovation of the paper is that aiming at the practical wet electrostatic precipitator (WESP) system with time-delay, a simple yet robust TD-ADRC gain tuning method is developed, which is mainly constructed by artificial time-delay block, observer and feedback control loop. The proposed gain tuning method is based on the bandwidth-parameterization technique, further using the scaling skill to simplify the gain tuning rule and stability analysis. Additionally, the exhaustive robustness metrics of closed-loop system are analyzed, which ensures that the gain tuning method maintains the controlled time-delay system with qualified robustness and well control performance. Alternatively, another robust stable region of TD-ADRC controller parameters are explored through the distinctively rigorous stability proof. Finally, plenty of simulations of WESP based on the practical operation data validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Note to Practitioners— This paper was focused on gain tuning problem of the time-delay active disturbance rejection control (TD-ADRC) method. The controlled system is the first order plus time-delay (FOPTD) wet electrostatic precipitator (WESP) system. Thus, the novelties can be viewed from perspectives of method research and the combination of method and WESP model. From the perspective of the method research, time-delay in the process model is the obstacle to the most ADRC design or other kinds of controller design, and it always brings out lots of complexities to the gain tuning. In order to deal with the aforementioned problems, proposed TD-ADRC controller is designed for the purpose of simpler controller structure compared to the existing TD-ADRC method. Consequently, the simple gain tuning rule of proposed TD-ADRC method is explored by the exhaustive robustness analysis, which is under the pillar of the rigorous stability proof. Therefore, the engineer can avoid the laborious and time-consuming gain tuning procedure at the field and have the comprehensive hold to the robustness metric of time-delay system. From another perspective, proposed method can robustly regulate the WESP output in the presence of time-delay and disturbances in simulation, whose model is based on the practical data from the step response test. By the way, the proposed TD-ADRC is universal for higher order system which has the potential to apply in other system. It is promising that the proposed method could apply to the coal-fired station in the mid-term. In the future, more detailed researches about the versatile of the proposed method for the higher order system should be taken in an effort.

Good's buffers have been widely applied in cell/organ culture over the past half a century as biocompatible pH stabilizers. However, the emergence of severe adverse effects, such as cellular uptake, lysosomal autophagic activation, and visible light-induced cytotoxicity, raises serious questions over its biocompatibility while underlying mechanism was unclear. Here we report that riboflavin (RF, component of cell culture medium) generates 1O2, ·OH, and O2•-under visible light exposure during regular cell manipulation. These short half-life reactive oxygen species (ROS) react with tertiary amine groups of HEPES, producing 106.6 μM of H2O2. Orders of magnitude elevated half-life of ROS in the medium caused severe cytotoxicity and systematic disorder of normal cell functions. We have further designed and validated zwitterionic betaines as the new generation biocompatible organic pH buffers, which is able to completely avoid the adverse effects that found on HEPES and derivate Good's buffers. These findings may also open a new avenue for zwitterionic betaine based materials for biomedical applications.

Surfactin is a typical kind of biosurfactant with a large diversity of structure, and its molecular structure is expected to play a crucial role in its adsorption dynamics. Adsorption kinetics of surfactin homologues at the n-hexadecane/aqueous solution interface is studied using a droplet-based microfluidic method. Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to illustrate the dependence of adsorption energy on the surfactin structure. Rapid reduction of dynamic interfacial tensions is obtained. The best fit to experimental results reveals that surfactin with shorter aliphatic chains, C13-surfactin and C14-surfactin, has larger rate constants of adsorption and desorption. Interfacial tensions are rapidly reduced in the case of the oil/water interface which is freshly formed, and the equilibrium adsorption is rapidly established approximately in 100–350 ms at concentrations above the critical micelle concentration. C15-surfactin that has a longer aliphatic chain adsorbs and desorbs slower, and the equilibration time of adsorption is slightly longer. Moreover, C15-surfactin has a strong tendency for adsorbing at the interface, which is in accordance with the larger adsorption energy obtained by molecular dynamics simulation, and aggregating behavior in solution. The present study provides insights on the surfactin structure and the dynamics of adsorption at the liquid/liquid interface.

The Evidential K-Nearest Neighbor (EK-NN) classification rule provides a global treatment of uncertainty and imprecision in class labels, and has been widely used in pattern recognition. Nevertheless, EK-NN still suffers from the fixed presupposition of hyper-parameter K without prior knowledge, due to the different spatial distribution of neighbors of each pattern in Euclidean space. More concretely, neighbors of some patterns may provide confusing information and then derive wrong classification results. To address this issue, we propose a sparse reconstructive evidential K-NN (SEK-NN) classifier, appropriately determining an individual K for each pattern and mapping the correlations between patterns from Euclidean space to a sparse reconstructed space. To match with this sparse reconstructed space, SEK-NN supersedes the Euclidean distance by correlation coefficients to measure the dissimilarities between patterns. When handling high-dimensional data, a parallel version of SEK-NN is implemented under the Apache Spark to speed up the parameter estimation. We respectively test SEK-NN and parallel SEK-NN over 19 middle dimensional datasets, 1 middle volume and 4 high-dimensional datasets that are up to 100 thousand of dimensions. Experimental results show that SEK-NN has great prediction performance and parallel SEK-NN is able to appropriately tackle high-dimensional datasets.

Cancer is a severe threat to human life and health and represents the main cause of death globally. Drug therapy is one of the primary means of treating cancer; however, most anticancer medications do not proceed beyond preclinical testing because the conditions of actual human tumors are not effectively mimicked by traditional tumor models. Hence, bionic in vitrotumor models must be developed to screen for anticancer drugs. Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technology can produce structures with built-in spatial and chemical complexity and models with accurately controlled structures, a homogeneous size and morphology, less variation across batches, and a more realistic tumor microenvironment (TME). This technology can also rapidly produce such models for high-throughput anticancer medication testing. This review describes 3D bioprinting methods, the use of bioinks in tumor models, and in vitrotumor model design strategies for building complex tumor microenvironment features using biological 3D printing technology. Moreover, the application of 3D bioprinting in vitrotumor models in drug screening is also discussed.

AbstractBy aiming to understand the importance of the ongoing effects of COVID-19 on several economies, this study attempts to highlight the impact of COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths occurring in the most affected countries of the world such as China and the USA, especially in the context of their respective currencies. For this purpose, the daily data from January 22, 2020, till May 7, 2021, has been taken into account, and then has been analyzed to examine the linear relationship between the currency and proxies of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the (autoregressive distributed lag) ARDL model has been employed in order to fulfil the research objective with numerous statistical diagnostic measures, so as to validate the model. The results indicate that the exchange rate is affected negatively due to the effect of COVID-19 cases and deaths in particular countries. Moreover, the effect of the pandemic is not limited to the short run only, but also in the long run, as it is hurting the financial backbone of China and the USA.

Paired electrolysis methods are appealing for chemical synthesis because they generate valuable products at both electrodes; however, development of such reactions is complicated by the need for both half-reactions to proceed under mutually compatible conditions. Here, a modular electrochemical synthesis (ModES) strategy bypasses these constraints using a “redox reservoir” (RR) to pair electrochemical half-reactions across aqueous and nonaqueous solvents. Electrochemical oxidation reactions in organic solvents, the conversion of 4-t-butyltoluene to benzylic dimethyl acetal and aldehyde in methanol or the oxidative C–H amination of naphthalene in acetonitrile, and the reduction of oxygen to hydrogen peroxide in water were paired using nickel hexacyanoferrate as an RR that can selectively store and release protons (and electrons) while serving as the counter electrode for these reactions. Selective proton transport through the RR is optimized and confirmed to enable the ion balance, and thus the successful pairing, between redox half-reactions that proceed with different rates, on different scales, and in different solvents (methanol, acetonitrile, and water).

Postsynthetic modification (PSM) of the metal–organic framework (MOF) has been demonstrated to be an effective strategy to enhance performance. In this particular work, the anion framework Mn-MOF{[Mn3O(H2O)3(HTC)]2–} (HTC6–= (5′-(3,5-dicarboxyphenyl)-[1,1′:3′,1″-terphenyl]-3,3″,5,5″-tetracarboxylate] was obtained, and NH2(CH3)2+ions were filled within the pores to balance the charge. In order to release the internal pores of Mn-MOF, the trivalent Fe(III) was introduced instead of Mn(II) nodes, resulting in the porous Mn1–xFex-MOF, and the NH2(CH3)2+ions were simultaneously deported from the pores. The content of Fe(III) in Mn1–xFex-MOFwas highly dependent on the concentration of Fe(III) solution, and the maximum could be up to Mn0.05Fe0.95-MOFwith a BET surface area of 1209.457 m2g–1. Compared to the amorphization of dense Mn-MOFat 0.8 GPa in a diamond anvil cell, the mechanical stability of porous Mn0.05Fe0.95-MOFhas been dramatically enhanced, and the framework integrity could be maintained up to 16.5 GPa. The proton conductivity for the Mn1–xFex-MOFseries was also investigated, where Mn0.93Fe0.07-MOFshowed the best performance of 1.47 × 10–2S cm–1under 70 °C and 98% RH due to the onset of reversed charge from the anionic framework to cationic framework and the formation of the most compact hydrogen bonding net. This work has not only provided an example for the PSM strategy but also illustrated that the versatile functionalities of MOF materials were mainly ascribed to the tunable porosity.

High-voltage sodium metal batteries are a highly intriguing battery technology in view of their resource sustainability, cost efficiency, and ultrahigh energy density. However, developing a high-performance electrolyte, compatible with both high-voltage cathodes and highly reactive sodium metal anodes, is extremely challenging. In this work, we delicately formulate a ternary phosphate electrolyte, composing of a cost-effective sodium bis(trifluoromethane sulfonyl) imide salt, a nonflammable triethyl phosphate (TEP) solvent, and a fluoroethylene carbonate (FEC) co-solvent. By rationally tailoring the TEP/FEC ratio, the ternary phosphate electrolyte displays a well-balanced performance, not only enabling highly efficient sodium deposition (an average Coulombic efficiency of 95.7% for Na//Cu cells) but also inheriting the intrinsic anodic stability (≥4.5 V vs Na+/Na) and nonflammability of phosphates. As a consequence, high-voltage Na3V2(PO4)2F3cathode-based sodium metal cells (Na3V2(PO4)2F3//Na) deliver remarkable cyclic stability (97.9% capacity retention after 300 cycles), which is among the best for Na3V2(PO4)2F3-based batteries. This work may guide the electrolyte design principles and is highly enlightening in developing high energy density sodium-based batteries.

•At the same ambient temperature inside the car, the refrigerating capacity of system based on medium pressure air supply decreases with the increase of the ambient temperature outside the car, and the compressor power increases with the increase of the ambient temperature outside the car, especially when the ambient temperature inside the car is −3 °C, the system refrigerating capacity decreases 30.1 %, and the compressor power increases 35.6 %.•At the same ambient temperature inside the car, the exhaust temperature of compressor increases with the increase of the ambient temperature outside the car. When the ambient temperature inside the car is −3 °C, 3 °C, 7 °C, 12 °C, and the ambient temperature outside the car increased from 21 °C to 43 °C, the exhaust temperature increases 43.97 %, 40.72 %, 45.53 % and 38.54 % respectively.•At the same ambient temperature inside the car, the COP decreases with the increase of ambient temperature outside the car, the EER decreases with the increase of ambient temperature outside the car, and the decreasing amplitude of EER is smaller than that of COP. Especially at the ambient temperature inside the car is −3 °C, the COP is decreased by 51.24 %, and the EER is decreased by 42.68 %.

ACT001, derived from traditional herbal medicine, is a novel compound with effective anticancer activity in clinical trials. However, little is known regarding its role in pituitary adenomas. Here, we demonstrated that ACT001 suppressed cell proliferation and induced cell death of pituitary tumor cells in vitro and in vivo. ACT001 was also effective in suppressing the growth of different subtypes of human pituitary adenomas. The cytotoxic mechanism ACT001 employed was mainly related to autophagic cell death (ACD), indicated by autophagosome formation and LC3-II accumulation. In addition, ACT001-mediated inhibitory effect decreased when either ATG7 was downregulated or cells were cotreated with autophagy inhibitor 3-methyladenine (3-MA). RNA-seq analysis showed that mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway was a putative target of ACT001. Specifically, ACT001 treatment promoted the phosphorylation of JNK and P38 by binding to mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 4 (MEK4). Our study indicated that ACT001-induced ACD of pituitary tumor cells via activating JNK and P38 phosphorylation by binding with MEK4, and it might be a novel and effective anticancer drug for pituitary adenomas.

ABSTRACTIn recent years, a steady increase has been detected in the incidence of acute cerebral infarction (ACI). ACI is caused by blood flow disruption, leading to high disability and mortality rates. Understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms is critical toward developing effective therapeutic approaches. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are an important class of non-coding RNAs, which have been implicated in several molecular pathways, and their dysregulation has been described in several disease conditions. Here, we set out to explore the possible regulatory role of circRNAs in ischemic stroke and study their molecular function in disease. First, we applied high-throughput sequencing techniques to identify the differential changes of plasma circRNAs expression in patients with acute cerebral infarction. Next, we used GO and KEGG pathway analysis to predict the function of differentially expressed circRNAs. Moreover, we have assessed the possible interaction between the identified differentially expressed circRNAs and miRNAs. Finally, we have selected and validated five downregulated circRNAs by RT-qPCR. Together, the results of this study provide evidence that circRNAs are potential biomarkers for early diagnosis of cerebral infarction and have to be considered as targets for drug treatment.

Half-sandwich Os-arene complexes exhibit promising anticancer activity, but their photochemistry has hardly been explored. To exploit the photocytotoxicity and photochemistry of Os-arenes, O,O-chelated complexes [Os(η6-p-cymene)(Curc)Cl] (OsCUR-1, Curc = curcumin) and [Os(η6-biphenyl)(Curc)Cl] (OsCUR-2), and N,N-chelated complexes [Os(η6-biphenyl)(dpq)I]PF6(OsDPQ-2, dpq = pyrazino[2,3-f][1,10]phenanthroline) and [Os(η6-biphenyl)(bpy)I]PF6(OsBPY-2, bpy = 2,2′-bipyridine), have been investigated. The Os-arene curcumin complexes showed remarkable photocytotoxicity toward a range of cancer cell lines (blue light IC50: 2.6–5.8 μM, photocytotoxicity index PI = 23–34), especially toward cisplatin-resistant cancer cells, but were nontoxic to normal cells. They localized mainly in mitochondria in the dark but translocated to the nucleus upon photoirradiation, generating DNA and mitochondrial damage, which might contribute toward overcoming cisplatin resistance. Mitochondrial damage, apoptosis, ROS generation, DNA damage, angiogenesis inhibition, and colony formation were observed when A549 lung cancer cells were treated with OsCUR-2. The photochemistry of these Os-arene complexes was investigated by a combination of NMR, HPLC-MS, high energy resolution fluorescence detected (HERFD), X-ray adsorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy, total fluorescence yield (TFY) XANES spectra, and theoretical computation. Selective photodissociation of the arene ligand and oxidation of Os(II) to Os(III) occurred under blue light or UVA excitation. This new approach to the design of novel Os-arene complexes as phototherapeutic agents suggests that the novel curcumin complex OsCUR-2, in particular, is a potential candidate for further development as a photosensitizer for anticancer photoactivated chemotherapy (PACT).

We propose an improved scheme to measure the Stokes polarization parameters by making the to-be-measured state evolve unitarily. An optical setup able to implement the scheme is presented theoretically and experimentally. Theoretical results indicate that at least two unitary operators should be employed to determine the Stokes parameters of light with arbitrary degrees of polarization. Compared with the results acquired by a commercial polarimeter, the proposed scheme is used to obtain the Stokes parameters of 13 representative states with degrees of polarization r=1 and r=0.5, experimentally. The fidelity between the two states gained by the above methods is in the range of 0.9802±0.0046 to 1.0000±0.0000.

Carbonatites and related alkaline rocks host most REE resources. Phosphate minerals, e.g., apatite and monazite, commonly occur as the main REE-host in carbonatites and have been used for tracing magmatic and mineralization processes. Many carbonatite intrusions undergo metamorphic and/or metasomatic modification after emplacement; however, the effects of such secondary events are controversial. In this study, the Miaoya and Shaxiongdong carbonatite-alkaline complexes, in the South Qinling Belt of Central China, are selected to unravel their magmatic and hydrothermal remobilization histories. Both the complexes are accompanied by Nb-REE mineralization and contain apatite and monazite-(Ce) as the major REE carriers.

LiTiOPO4 was prepared by solid-phase combustion method using citric acid as fuel. The LiTiOPO4 materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction test (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The XRD test showed that the synthesized samples were pure phases and the addition of different weight fractions of the combustion agent citric acid did not change the phase structure of the LiTiOPO4. The microscopic observations revealed that the LiTiOPO4 prepared after the addition of citric acid as a combustion agent was a sheet-like stacked structure. The electrochemical test results showed that the rate discharge capacity of LiTiOPO4 anode at 5000 mA g−1 maintains 184.7 mAh g−1 in the voltage range of 0.01–3.0 V and keeps at 147.2 mAh g−1 after 500 cycles. The LiTiOPO4 anode exhibits excellent cycling stability and good reversibility, which is attributed to the high crystallinity of LiTiOPO4 prepared by solid-phase combustion and the lamellar stacked layer structure that facilitates lithium-ion insertion/de-insertion.