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Capacitive deionization (CDI) is an emerging technique of seawater desalination technology with high efficiency and low energy consumption. Prussian blue (PB) is considered to be an excellent candidate for CDI intercalation electrode materials due to its spacious three-dimensional ion diffusion channels and available low-cost raw materials. However, the agglomerate tendency and inferior electronic conductivity of PB are the main factors which lead to lower capacity and poor cycling stability. Herein, a Prussian blue nanoparticle/carbon nanofiber (PB/CNF) composite material was synthesized by electrospinning and coprecipitation for capacitive deionization. The conductive CNFs bridged the PB nanoparticles with a size of ca. 50 nm to form a 3D conductive network structure, which can boost the diffusion kinetics of salt ions and electrons simultaneously in the PB/CNF electrode. The ion storage process by the combination of capacitance-controlled and diffusion-controlled behaviors allows the PB/CNF-5 composite to achieve a salt adsorption capacity (SAC) of 51.81 mg g–1 in a 500 mg L–1 NaCl solution at 1.4 V, and it has excellent cycle stability for 80 cycles. Remarkably, it also shows an excellent salt adsorption performance of 97.35 mg g–1 in a 3000 mg L–1 NaCl solution. Overall, the strategy of antiaggregation and enhanced electronic conductivity not only improved the desalination performance of PB nanoparticles but also provided a technical guideline for nanometer-sized materials and helped to facilitate better CDI electrode design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Stroke is a common and frequently occurring disease among middle-aged and elderly people, with approximately 55%−75% of patients remaining with upper limb dysfunction. How to promote the recovery of motor function at an early stage is crucial to the life of the patient. Objectives. This study aimed to investigate whether high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) of the primary motor cortex (M1) functional area in poststroke patients in the subacute phase is more effective in improving upper limb function than conventional tDCS. Methods. This randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial included 69 patients with subcortical stroke. They were randomly divided into the HD-tDCS, anodal tDCS (a-tDCS), and sham groups. Each group received 20 sessions of stimulation. The patients were assessed using the Action Research Arm Test, Fugl–Meyer score for upper extremities, Motor Function Assessment Scale, and modified Barthel index (MBI) pretreatment and posttreatment. Results. The intragroup comparison scores improved after 4 weeks of treatment. The HD-tDCS group showed a slightly greater, but nonsignificant improvement as compared to a-tDCS group in terms of mean change observed in function of trained items. The MBI score of the HD-tDCS group was maintained up to 8 weeks of follow-up and was higher than that in the a-tDCS group. Conclusion. Both HD-tDCS and a-tDCS can improve upper limb motor function and daily activities of poststroke patients in the subacute stage. This trial is registered with ChiCTR2000031314. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To clarify the effects of a local orthodontic force on alveolar bone by analysing bone remodelling in different regions of the maxilla during orthodontic tooth movement (OTM).

The interactions between uranium and non‐innocent organic species are an essential component of fundamental uranium redox chemistry. However, they have seldom been explored in the context of multidimensional, porous materials. Uranium‐based metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) offer a new angle to study these interactions, as these self‐assembled species stabilize uranium species through immobilization by organic linkers within a crystalline framework, while potentially providing a method for adjusting metal oxidation state through coordination of non‐innocent linkers. We report the synthesis of the MOF NU‐1700, assembled from U4+‐paddlewheel nodes and catecholate‐based linkers. We propose this highly unusual structure, which contains two U4+ ions in a paddlewheel built from four linkers—a first among uranium materials—as a result of extensive characterization via powder X‐ray diffraction (PXRD), sorption, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), in addition to density functional theory (DFT) calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increase in the carbapenem-hydrolyzing capacity of class D β-lactamase has been observed in strains of multiple species, posing a significant challenge to the control of antibiotic resistance. In this study, we aimed to investigate the genetic diversity and phylogenetic characteristics of new blaOXA-48-like variants derived from Shewanella xiamenensis. Three ertapenem-non-susceptible S. xiamenensis strains were identified, one isolated from the blood sample of an inpatient, the other two isolated from the aquatic environment. Phenotypic characterization confirmed that the strains were carbapenemase producers and exhibited antimicrobial resistance patterns to ertapenem, with some showing lower susceptibility to imipenem, chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin, and tetracycline. No significant resistance to cephalosporins was observed. Sequence analysis revealed that one strain harbored blaOXA-181 and the other two strains harbored blaOXA-48-like genes, with open reading frame (ORF) similarities with blaOXA-48 ranging from 98.49% to 99.62%. The two novel blaOXA-48-like genes, named blaOXA-1038 and blaOXA-1039, respectively, were cloned and expressed in E. coli. The three OXA-48-like enzymes demonstrated significant hydrolysis activity against meropenem, and the classical β-lactamase inhibitor had no significant inhibitory effect. In conclusion, this study demonstrated the diversity of the blaOXA gene and highlighted the emergence of novel OXA carbapenemases in S. xiamenensis. Further attention to S. xiamenensis and OXA carbapenemases is recommended for the effective prevention and control of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanical force is essential to shape the internal architecture and external form of the skeleton by regulating the bone remodeling process. However, the underlying mechanism of how the bone responds to mechanical force remains elusive. Here, we generated both orthodontic tooth movement (OTM) model in vivo and a cyclic stretch‐loading model in vitro to investigate biomechanical regulation of the alveolar bone. In this study, signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) was screened as one of the mechanosensitive proteins by protein array analysis of cyclic stretch‐loaded bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) and was also proven to be activated in osteoblasts in response to the mechanical force during OTM. With an inducible osteoblast linage‐specific Stat3 knockout model, we found that Stat3 deletion decelerated the OTM rate and reduced orthodontic force‐induced bone remodeling, as indicated by both decreased bone resorption and formation. Both genetic deletion and pharmacological inhibition of STAT3 in BMSCs directly inhibited mechanical force‐induced osteoblast differentiation and impaired osteoclast formation via osteoblast–osteoclast cross‐talk under mechanical force loading. According to RNA‐seq analysis of Stat3‐deleted BMSCs under mechanical force, matrix metalloproteinase 3 (Mmp3) was screened and predicted to be a downstream target of STAT3. The luciferase and ChIP assays identified that Stat3 could bind to the Mmp3 promotor and upregulate its transcription activity. Furthermore, STAT3‐inhibitor decelerated tooth movement through inhibition of the bone resorption activity, as well as MMP3 expression. In summary, our study identified the mechanosensitive characteristics of STAT3 in osteoblasts and highlighted its critical role in force‐induced bone remodeling during orthodontic tooth movement via osteoblast–osteoclast cross‐talk. © 2022 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drastically lowering the usage of platinum while enhancing activity and stability toward oxygen reduction is critical to promoting energy conversion efficiency in metal‐air batteries. Herein, an efficient oxygen reduction catalyst was rationally designed by constructing ultrasmall Pt and Pt/MoC dual active sites co‐anchored on nitrogen‐doped carbon. Owing to the synergistic effect of the dual active sites, the optimized Pt‐MoC@NC delivers superior oxygen reduction activity with ultralow Pt loading. Especially, the Pt‐MoC@NC shows robust methanol tolerance. As the cathodic catalyst, Pt‐MoC@NC based zinc‐air battery possesses outstanding performance with a large peak power density of 100 mW cm−2 and long charge‐discharge durability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is utilized as one of the most popular consumer plastics worldwide, but difficulties associated with recycling PET have generated a severe environmental crisis with most PET ending its lifecycle in landfills. We report that zirconium‐based metal–organic framework (Zr‐MOF) UiO‐66 deconstructs waste PET into the building blocks terephthalic acid (TA) and mono‐methyl terephthalate (MMT) within 24 hours at 260 °C (total yield of 98 % under 1 atm H2 and 81 % under 1 atm Ar). Extensive structural characterization studies reveal that during the degradation process, UiO‐66 undergoes an intriguing transformation into MIL‐140A, which is another Zr‐MOF that shows good catalytic activity toward PET degradation under similar reaction conditions. These results illustrate the diversity of applications for Zr‐MOFs and establish MOFs as a new class of polymer degradation catalysts with the potential to address long‐standing challenges associated with plastic waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on automatic inspection for the commonly used component called spring-wire socket. An automatic inspection system is built that adopts an endoscope to improve the imaging quality. To detect the low contrast targets in complex background, we adopt the pipeline of Faster R-CNN but with several improvements. The improved network specifies the targets in the form of quadrangular bounding box as opposed to previous methods that specify them by rectangular bounding box. With the quadrangular representation, additional shape and pose information is provided and unexpected overlaps and background disturbance could be avoided. In the network, an eight-dimensional (8-D) vector is designed to represent the quadrangular bounding box followed by the improved anchor mechanism in the region proposal network. And also, a novel overlap score calculation method is proposed. On the basis of the detection result, rules arisen from expertise are provided to determine the quality of the component in which way automatic quality inspection could be accomplished. The superiority of our detection network over existing ones is sufficiently demonstrated with the detection result of irregular targets in images captured in the industrial scenario. Meanwhile, successful inspection result proves that the system meets the industrial requirements in terms of both accuracy and speed and thus is of practical significance to industrial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work demonstrated the development of a hierarchical porous carbon–carbon composite used as an electrode material for capacitive deionization. The novel core–shell composite consisting of carbon nanofibers and N-rich porous carbon nanosheets (CNFZIF) was obtained by in situ growth of zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) nanosheets on electrospun nanofibers. By tailoring the composition and porosity of CNFZIF, ion transport and adsorption in the composite were tuned to achieve a large desalination capacity and a high desalination rate. Thanks to the synergistic effect of its N-rich carbon surface, high hydrophilicity, large specific surface area and unique hierarchical porous structure, the engineered CNFZIF sample exhibited an excellent capacitive deionization performance with a maximum desalination capacity of up to 50.88 mg g−1 for NaCl solution and a high capacity retention rate of 97% after 30 cycles. Remarkably, CNFZIF also demonstrated high desalination capacities of 27.19 mg g−1, 25.35 mg g−1 and 20.46 mg g−1 for CaCl2, MgCl2, and KCl solutions, respectively. This work provided a new route for the design of advanced electrode materials, and therefore represents a major step forward in the development of electrodes for capacitive deionization applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Melanosomes in nature have diverse morphologies, including spheres, rods, and platelets. By contrast, shapes of synthetic melanins have been almost entirely limited to spherical nanoparticles with few exceptions produced by complex templated synthetic methods. Here, we report a non‐templated method to access synthetic melanins with a variety of architectures including spheres, sheets, and platelets. Three 1,8‐dihydroxynaphthalene dimers (4‐4′, 2‐4′ and 2‐2′) were used as self‐assembling synthons. These dimers pack to form well‐defined structures of varying morphologies depending on the isomer. Specifically, distinctive ellipsoidal platelets can be obtained using 4‐4′ dimers. Solid‐state polymerization of the preorganized dimers generates polymeric synthetic melanins while maintaining the initial particle morphologies. This work provides a new route to anisotropic synthetic melanins, where the building blocks are preorganized into specific shapes, followed by solid‐state polymerization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intriguing catalytic properties of cerium-based materials have motivated the development of Ce-based metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). However, the controlled crystallization of Ce MOFs remains nascent due to complications with the high reduction potential of Ce4+ species. Modulators offer a route in other well-studied coordination networks to slow down crystallization processes to allow for corrective, uniform crystal growth. Herein, we report an investigation of modulator identity and concentration on the synthesis of a Ce-UiO-type MOF with 2,6-naphthalenedicarboxylic acid (NDC) as a linker. At low concentrations using both benzoic acid and trifluoroacetic acid, we observed a mononuclear Ce3+ MOF (NU-350) through single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies. Higher modulator concentrations yielded pure-phase Ce-UiO-NDC, with uniform particle sizes observed with utilizing benzoic acid as a modulator. Moreover, we demonstrated the transferability of this synthesis through the pure-phase synthesis of Ce-UiO-66 with benzoic acid as a modulator. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy showed a single crystalline domain within Ce-UiO-NDC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates automatic quality inspection for the components with a small diameter and deep aperture. An automatic pick-and-place system is constructed, which employs an endoscope to achieve better image quality aiming at the characteristics of the component. A coarse-to-fine contour extraction algorithm with four steps is presented to inspect the component’s quality. First, approximate locations of the targets are estimated using faster region-based convolutional neural networks (faster RCNN). Second, the corresponding edge image is obtained by using the multiscale probability boundary (mPb) detector. Third, edge enhancement is performed, which is based on the Brownian motion model. Fourth, the corresponding contours are finely extracted by edge grouping. A shape analyzing algorithm is utilized to classify the components based on the extracted contours. Comparison experiments fully demonstrate the superiority of the proposed inspection method over existing methods. Meanwhile, successful inspection results on challenging real-world image data prove that the system is of practical significance to industrial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isoreticular synthesis is a powerful tool to enhance specific attributes of a metal–organic framework (MOF). While the isoreticular expansion of MOF structure are prevalent in the literature, the compression of a topology holds great promise for separations due to the contracted pore apertures and/or cavities. Herein, we report the synthesis, characterization and Xe/Kr separation capability of a new Zr-based MOF, NU-1106, connected by the tetratopic linker 1,3,6,8-pyrene tetracarboxylate, which exhibits a compressed ftw topology compared to the extended ones reported previously. NU-1106 showed selective uptake of Xenon over Krypton, providing the potential for use for separations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Alveolar bone osteoporosis has attracted more and more attention because of its profound impact on stomatognathic function and treatment, but current treatments have not been targeted to alveolar bone and might even cause severe side effects. Thus, identifying the effects of anti‐osteoporosis agents on alveolar bone is essential. Icariin ameliorates metabolic dysfunction of long bones, but its effects on alveolar bone remain unclarified. Materials and methods: BMSCs were isolated from rat mandibles (mBMSCs). The osteogenic potential of mBMSCs and the signalling pathway involved under icariin treatment were measured by ALP and alizarin red staining, reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR), Western blotting and immunofluorescence. Dual‐luciferase assay, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and co‐immunoprecipitation were used to investigate the molecular mechanism. Ovariectomized and sham‐operated rats treated with or without icariin were analysed by micro‐CT, TRAP staining and calcein double labelling. Results: We found that icariin promoted osteoblast differentiation of mBMSCs. Furthermore, STAT3 was critical for icariin‐promoted osteoblast differentiation, as indicated by increased phosphorylation levels in icariin‐treated mBMSCs, while preventing STAT3 activation blocked icariin‐induced osteoblast differentiation. Mechanistically, icariin‐promoted transcription of the downstream osteogenic gene osteocalcin (Ocn) through STAT3 and STAT3 bound to the promoter of Ocn. Notably, icariin prevented the alveolar bone osteoporosis induced by oestrogen deficiency through promoting bone formation. Conclusions: For the first time, our work provides evidence supporting the potential application of icariin in promoting osteogenesis and treating alveolar bone osteoporosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a critical electrical connector component in the modern industrial environment, spring-wire sockets and their manufacture quality are closely relevant to equipment safety. These types of defects in a component are difficult to properly distinguish due to the defect similarity and diversity. In such cases, defect types can only be determined using cumbersome human visual inspection. To satisfy the requirements of quality control, a machine vision apparatus for component inspection is presented in this paper. With a brief description of the apparatus system design, our emphasis is put on the defect recognition algorithm. A multitask convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed for detecting those ambiguous defects. Compared with the image processing method in machine vision, the defect inspection problem is converted into object detection and classification problems. Instead of breaking it down into two separate tasks, we jointly handle both aspects in a single CNN. In addition, data augmentation methods are discussed to analyze their effects on defects recognition. Successful inspection results using the presented model are obtained using challenging real-world defect image data gathered from a spring-wire socket module inspection line in an industrial plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the huge demand for textile production in China, fabric defect detection is particularly attractive. At present, an increasing number of supervised deep-learning methods are being applied in surface defect detection. However, the annotation of datasets in industrial settings often depends on professional inspectors. Moreover, the methods based on supervised learning require a lot of annotation, which consumes a great deal of time and costs. In this paper, an approach based on self-feature comparison (SFC) was employed that accurately located and segmented fabric texture images to find anomalies with unsupervised learning. The SFC architecture contained the self-feature reconstruction module and the self-feature distillation. Accurate fiber anomaly location and segmentation were generated based on these two modules. Compared with the traditional methods that operate in image space, the comparison of feature space can better locate the anomalies of fiber texture surfaces. Evaluations were performed on the three publicly available databases. The results indicated that our method performed well compared with other methods, and had excellent defect detection ability in the collected textile images. In addition, the visual results showed that our results can be used as a pixel-level candidate label. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: allomelanin; anisotropy; DHN melanin; melanin; solid-state polymerization EN allomelanin anisotropy DHN melanin melanin solid-state polymerization 17221 17221 1 07/28/21 20210802 NES 210802 B Anisotropic synthetic melanins b have been generated by solid-state polymerization, as reported by Nathan C. Gianneschi et al. in their Research Article on page 17464. Ellipsoidal platelets of melanin, found to date only in biology, were obtained through pre-organizing the 4-4' dihydroxynaphthalene dimer as the building block, followed by solid-state oxidative polymerization to give polymeric melanin materials without changing their overall morphology. Ellipsoidal platelets of melanin, found to date only in biology, were obtained through pre-organizing the 4-4' dihydroxynaphthalene dimer as the building block, followed by solid-state oxidative polymerization to give polymeric melanin materials without changing their overall morphology. [Extracted from the article]

Allomelanin, anisotropy, DHN melanin, melanin, solid-state polymerization Keywords: allomelanin; anisotropy; DHN melanin; melanin; solid-state polymerization EN allomelanin anisotropy DHN melanin melanin solid-state polymerization 17361 17361 1 07/28/21 20210802 NES 210802 B Anisotrope synthetische Melanine b wurden durch Festkörperpolymerisation hergestellt, wie Nathan C. Gianneschi et al. in ihrem Forschungsartikel auf S. 17605 berichten. Titelbild: Anisotropic Synthetic Allomelanin Materials via Solid-State Polymerization of Self-Assembled 1,8-Dihydroxynaphthalene Dimers (Angew. [Extracted from the article]

Compositionally graded cylinders of Ti–Mn alloys were produced using the Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS™) technique, with Mn content varying from 0 to 12 wt.% along the cylinder axis. The cylinders were subjected to different post-build heat treatments to produce a large sample library of α–β microstructures. The microstructures in the sample library were studied using back-scattered electron (BSE) imaging in a scanning electron microscope (SEM), and their mechanical properties were evaluated using spherical indentation stress–strain protocols. These protocols revealed that the microstructures exhibited features with averaged chord lengths in the range of 0.17–1.78 μm, and beta content in the range of 20–83 vol.%. The estimated values of the Young's moduli and tensile yield strengths from spherical indentation were found to vary in the ranges of 97–130 GPa and 828–1864 MPa, respectively. The combined use of the LENS technique along with the spherical indentation protocols was found to facilitate the rapid exploration of material and process spaces. Analyses of the correlations between the process conditions, several key microstructural features, and the measured material properties were performed via Gaussian process regression (GPR). These data-driven statistical models provided valuable insights into the underlying correlations between these variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]