Search

The objectives were to evaluate the effects of standardized ileal digestible (SID) His:Lys ratio above the current NRC requirement on growth performance, intestinal health, and mobilization of His-containing proteins, including hemoglobin, carnosine, and trypsinogen, in nursery pigs from 7 to 11 kg body weight (BW). Forty pigs (26 d of age; initial BW of 7.1 ± 0.5 kg) were allotted to 5 dietary treatments based on a randomized complete block design with sex and initial BW as blocks. Dietary treatments were supplemented with varying SID His to Lys ratios of 26%, 32%, 38%, 43%, and 49% and fed to pigs for 14 d (SID Lys = 1.22%). Feed intake and BW were recorded at d 0, 7, and 14 to measure growth performance. Blood samples were collected on d 12. Pigs were euthanized on d 14 to collect pancreas, longissimus dorsi muscles, mid-jejunum, and jejunal mucosa. Data were analyzed using the Proc Mixed of SAS. Growth performance was not affected, whereas varying SID His to Lys ratio affected hemoglobin (P  < 0.05, max: 12 g/dL at 36%), immunoglobulin A (IgA, P  < 0.05, min: 1.25 μg/mg at 35%) in jejunal mucosa, villus height (P  = 0.065, max: 536 μm at 40%) in jejunum, trypsinogen (P  = 0.083, max: 242 pg/mg at 41%) in pancreas, and carnosine (P  = 0.051, max: 4.7 ng/mg at 38%) in muscles. Varying SID His to Lys ratios linearly increased (P  < 0.05, from 1.95 to 2.80 nmol/mg) protein carbonyl in muscles and decreased (P  < 0.05, from 29.1% to 26.9%) enterocyte proliferation. In conclusion, SID His to Lys ratio between 35% and 41% in diets fed to nursery pigs at 7 to 11 kg enhanced intestinal health and maximized concentrations of His-containing proteins, indicating that His-containing proteins are effective response criteria when determining His requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible lithium-ion batteries are critical for the next-generation electronics. However, during the practical application, they may break under deformations such as twisting and cutting, causing their failure to work or even serious safety problems. A new family of all-solid-state and flexible aqueous lithium ion batteries that can self-heal after breaking has been created by designing aligned carbon nanotube sheets loaded with LiMn2O4 and LiTi2(PO4)3 nanoparticles on a self-healing polymer substrate as electrodes, and a new kind of lithium sulfate/sodium carboxymethylcellulose serves as both gel electrolyte and separator. The specific capacity, rate capability, and cycling performance can be well maintained after repeated cutting and self-healing. These self-healing batteries are demonstrated to be promising for wearable devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A speech enhancement method is presented, which applies a soft mask to a target speech output of spatial filtering, such as conventional beamforming or independent component analysis (ICA). In contrast to conventional methods using either outputs or filters estimated by spatial filtering, the mask is constructed by exploiting both local output signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) and spatial selectivity obtained from the directivity pattern of the estimated filters. Experiments were conducted for both ICA and minimum power distortionless response beamforming as spatial filtering in order to demonstrate that the described mask estimation is not a tuned method for particular preprocessing. The results in terms of both SNR with a retained speech ratio and word accuracy in speech recognition show that the described method can effectively suppress residual noise in the target speech output of spatial filtering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving one property without sacrificing others is challenging for lithium-ion batteries due to the trade-off nature among key parameters. Here we report a chemical vapor deposition process to grow a graphene-silica assembly, called a graphene ball. Its hierarchical three-dimensional structure with the silicon oxide nanoparticle center allows even 1 wt% graphene ball to be uniformly coated onto a nickel-rich layered cathode via scalable Nobilta milling. The graphene-ball coating improves cycle life and fast charging capability by suppressing detrimental side reactions and providing efficient conductive pathways. The graphene ball itself also serves as an anode material with a high specific capacity of 716.2 mAh g -1 . A full-cell incorporating graphene balls increases the volumetric energy density by 27.6% compared to a control cell without graphene balls, showing the possibility of achieving 800 Wh L -1 in a commercial cell setting, along with a high cyclability of 78.6% capacity retention after 500 cycles at 5C and 60 °C.

Lithium-metal-based batteries, owing to the extremely high specific energy, have been attracting intense interests as post-Li-ion batteries. However, their main drawback is that consumption/de-activation of lithium metal can be accelerated when O 2 or S used in the cathode crosses over to the metal, reducing the lifetime of the batteries. In use of ceramic solid state electrolyte (SSE) separator, despite the capability of gas blocking, thick and heavy plates (~0.3 mm) are necessitated to compensate its mechanical fragility, which ruin the high specific energy of the batteries. Here, we demonstrate fabrication of a new membrane made of micron-sized SSE particles as Li-ion channels embedded in polymer matrix, which enable both high Li-ion conduction and gas-impermeability. Bimodal surface-modification was used to control the energy of the particle/polymer interface, which consequently allowed channel formation via a simple one-step solution process. The practical cell with the new membrane provides a cell-specific energy of over 500 Wh kg -1 , which is the highest values ever reported.

Flexible lithium-ion batteries are critical for the next-generation electronics. However, during the practical application, they may break under deformations such as twisting and cutting, causing their failure to work or even serious safety problems. A new family of all-solid-state and flexible aqueous lithium ion batteries that can self-heal after breaking has been created by designing aligned carbon nanotube sheets loaded with LiMn 2 O 4 and LiTi 2 (PO 4 ) 3 nanoparticles on a self-healing polymer substrate as electrodes, and a new kind of lithium sulfate/sodium carboxymethylcellulose serves as both gel electrolyte and separator. The specific capacity, rate capability, and cycling performance can be well maintained after repeated cutting and self-healing. These self-healing batteries are demonstrated to be promising for wearable devices., (© 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)