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To improve protein extraction rate and the utilization of mulberry seed protein (MSP) for biorefinery purposes, ultrasound-assisted extraction was used to treating defatted mulberry seed protein (DMSP) for enhancing lipid production in Schizochytriumsp. SR21. Under ultrasound irradiation with solid-liquid ratio of 1:40, temperature of 60 °C, time of 9 min, and output power of 600 W, the extraction rate of DMSP reached 77.05%, which was significantly improved than the blank control (18.70%) and microwave treatment (22.50%). Moreover, the solubility and emulsibility of DMSP treated by ultrasound were significantly improved; the assay results measured by near-infrared Raman Spectroscopy showed that ultrasound-assisted treatment could reduce the α-helix in the protein (reduced by 9.75%); correspondingly, structures of β-sheet and β-turn increased 1.33% and 3.01%; it indicated that ultrasound treatment changed the spatial arrangement of protein main chain atoms. The antioxidant activity test and the amino acid composition of defatted mulberry seed protein hydrolysate (DMSPH) showed that ultrasound-assisted treatment enhanced the antioxidant activity of the protein hydrolysate and there was no significant difference in amino acid composition between the DMSP and yeast extract. The DMSPH was used as nitrogen source to cultivate Schizochytriumsp. SR21 which showed that DMSPH promoted lipid production and the DHA content was 35.55%, which was better than the results of cultured with traditional nitrogen source; it indicates that DMSP can be used as nitrogen source in culture of microorganisms and further explanation of ultrasound-assisted treatment of modified MSP as an alternative nitrogen source achieved the goal of biorefinery.

•The motion of a small bubble in forced vibrating sessile drop is found to periodically oscillate at certain Bond numbers and can be described by a harmonic function.•A theoretical model to predict the bubble motion, and correlate the amplitude and phase difference of the bubble with the Bond and Strouhal numbers is established, which is in good agreement with the numerical results.

Batch hydrothermal reactor is known as a closed system, and what happens in this “black box” is mysterious. Now, by using the tendency of graphene oxide (GO) to align along the flow and the fixation effect of thermoset resin, the hydrothermal annular convection can be inferred from the axisymmetric poloidal structure and GO-assembled annular distribution. Temperature difference and geometric symmetricity of the reactor account for the annular convection, which is also found to be affected by solution viscosity and reactor parameters. Numerical simulations reproduce the annular convection and are used to investigate the parameter space beyond experiments. Plume flows occur at the bottom of the reactor due to flow instability. Irregular and intensive flow is against the synthesis of high-aspect-ratio nanomaterials and monolithic gels. It is noteworthy that large-scale batch hydrothermal synthesis may not be feasible for some nanowires, nanosheets, and particularly gels due to the non-negligible flow influence.

In this note, we correct the proof of the global existence of solutions for a class of quasilinear wave equations with structural damping or strong damping obtained in Ding and Zhou (2022). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HDL apoA-1-mediated cholesterol efflux pathway requires multiple cellular proteins and signal transduction processes, including adenylyl cyclase (AC)/cAMP signaling. Due to the existence of multiple transmembrane AC isoforms, it was not known how many AC isoforms are expressed and which ones are essential for cholesterol efflux in macrophage foam cells. These questions were investigated in THP-1 macrophages in this study. Quantitative RT-PCR detected mRNAs for all nine transmembrane AC isoforms, but only the mRNA and protein of the AC1 isoform were consistently upregulated by cholesterol loading and apoA-1. AC1 shRNA interference decreased AC1 mRNA and protein levels, resulting in reduction of apoA-1-mediated cAMP production and cholesterol efflux, while the intracellular cholesterol levels remained high. Confocal microscopy showed that apoA-1 promoted translocation of cholesterol and formation of cholesterol-apoA-1 complexes (protrusions) on the cholesterol-loaded macrophage surface. AC1 shRNA-interfered macrophages showed no translocation of cholesterol to the cell surface. AC1 shRNA interference also disrupted cellular localization of the intracellular cholesterol indicator protein adipophillin, and the expression as well as surface translocation of ABCA1. Together, our results show that AC1 is a major isoform for apoA-1-activated cAMP signaling to promote cholesterol transport and exocytosis to the surface of THP-1 macrophage foam cells.

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) play a pivotal role in the pathological development of hypertension. Helios, a transcription factor from the Ikaros family, was recently reported to be a bona fide marker for natural Tregs or activated Tregs with suppression function, however, little has been known about its role in hypertension. This study was aimed to find whether Helios+ Tregs really play a vital role in hypertension. A total of 60 hypertension patients, and 46 normotension subjects were enrolled in this study. Frequencies of different Tregs subsets in peripheral blood were measured by flow cytometry. Plasma cytokine level was determined by ELISA. The mRNA expression of Foxp3 and Helios in purified CD4+ T cells was detected by RT-PCR. Proportion of CD4+Foxp3+Helios+ Tregs was decreased significantly in patients with hypertension (62.52%±1.18% vs. 71.89%±1.03%, P<0.01), and it was correlated with plasma level of IL-10 positively (a=0.505, P<0.05) and plasma level of IFN-gamma negatively (r=—0.551, P<0.05). The mRNA expression of Foxp3 (7.23±1.00 vs. 10.58±0.54, P<0.05) and Helios (8.47±0.95 vs. 15.52±2.0, P<0.05) was decreased in CD4+ T cells from patients with hypertension. Helios+ Tregs were decreased in patients with hypertension and may play a protective role in hypertension progression.

In this paper, we investigate flows with moving contact lines on curved solid walls on a dual-resolution grid using a diffuse-interface immersed-boundary (DIIB) method. The dual-resolution grid, on which the flows are solved on a coarse mesh while the interface is resolved on a fine mesh, was shown to significantly improve the computational efficiency when simulating multiphase flows. On the other hand, the DIIB method is able to resolve dynamic wetting on curved substrates on a Cartesian grid, but it usually requires a mesh of high resolution in the vicinity of a moving contact line to resolve the local flow. In the present study, we couple the DIIB method with the dual-resolution grid, to improve the interface resolution for flows with moving contact lines on curved solid walls at an affordable cost. The dynamic behavior of moving contact lines is validated by studying drop spreading, and the numerical results suggest that the effective slip length λncan be approximated by 1.9Cn, where Cnis a dimensionless measure of the thickness of the diffuse interface. We also apply the method to drop impact onto a convex substrate, and the results on the dual-resolution grid are in good agreement with those on a single-resolution grid. It shows that the axisymmetric simulations using the DIIB method on the dual-resolution grid saves nearly 60% of the computational time compared with that on a single-resolution grid.

Ion trap performances were investigated based on digital ion trap technology with different collision gases and their pressures. Collision gases of helium (M= 4 amu), nitrogen (M= 28 amu) and argon (M= 40 amu) with various pressures were adopted in ion excitation and dissociation stages for comparing the ion trap performances, including mass resolution, signal intensity, analysis ability of tandem mass spectrometric and low-mass cut off (LMCO) effect. The results indicated that when argon was used, the kinetic energy could be efficiently transferred and the LMCO effect was improved with higher ion capture and dissociation efficiencies except lower mass resolution. Higher mass resolution was realized with helium as collision gas. Furthermore, at the same gas pressure, heavier gas was beneficial to abundant fragment ions and structural information of precursor ion.

The aim was to illuminate the difference in incidence, mortality, and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) of gastric cancer (GC) between the United States of America (US) and China. The multiple management was analyzed with stratification to explore an effective survival improvement strategy. The Global Burden of Disease Study data was analyzed to assess GC morbidity, mortality and DALYs from 1990 to 2019 in the US and China. The age-period-cohort model was established to generate estimation of metrics. Verification was completed and stratified analysis of the multiple management was performed by accessing data of Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database in 1992 to 2019. Continuous downtrends in GC incidence, mortality and DALYs from 1990 to 2019 and persistent uptrends in 1-, 3-year survival from 1992 to 2019 were observed in the US population. In the Chinese population, the overall trends of incidence, mortality and DALYs decreased with a fluctuating manner. The lower overall survival rates were observed in elderly, unmarried patients, distant disease and poor grade, as well as patients lacking of medical treatment (P< .05). In stratified analyses, single local therapy decreased and the other modalities increased over time across different stages. Moreover, combined treatment and single systemic therapy decreased, but single local and conservative therapy increased with age. The study quantified the incidence, GC-specific mortality and DALYs in the US and China and estimated stage profiles, 1- and 3-year survival in the US. The heavy burden on later-onset GC (>70) and potential increase on early-onset GC (<40) needed to be addressed. Combined modalities and single chemotherapy were becoming more widely used over time, however, their uses decreased with age because of poor physical fitness. Our findings provide new insights into management tailoring appropriately to specific subgroups contributes to the increasing survival rate.

This paper deals with a class of quasilinear wave equations with structural damping or strong damping. By virtue of the improved Faedo–Galerkin method and some technical efforts, we first establish the local well-posedness of weak solutions, especially the continuity of weak solutions with respect to time in the natural phase space. Then we investigate the global existence, asymptotic behavior and finite time blow-up of weak solutions with subcritical or critical initial energy. As for the supercritical initial energy case, we show that the weak solutions may blow up in finite time with arbitrarily high initial energy. Last but not least, the upper and lower bounds of the blow-up time for blow-up solutions are derived. • We prove for the first time the continuity of the energy functional with respect to time. • The existence of finite time blow-up solutions with arbitrarily high initial energy is established. • The upper and lower bounds of the blow-up time are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dielectric elastomer generator (DEG), consisting of highly deformable dielectric elastomer (DE) film sandwiched between compliant electrodes, can convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. The widely used carbon grease (CG) electrode has short service life. The conductive rubber electrode is the most promising electrode, but its properties still need to be improved to obtain DEG with high energy density and long life. In this study, thin electrode film of superconducting carbon black (CB)/Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite with smooth surface, uniform thickness and good dispersion of CB in PDMS matrix was prepared by using solution blending combined with ultrasonication followed by freeze drying and mask scraping technique. The strong interfacial bonding between the electrode and DE substrate was obtained by optimizing CB content and mask scraping technique and by using PDMS in both electrode and DE substrate. High elongation at break, good compliance, high electrical conductivity (EC) and high stability of EC were successfully obtained. Compared with DEG using CG electrode, the energy loss at the same conditions of DEG using the electrodes with 6 wt% CB is reduced by 40.3%, and the harvested energy density (up to 20.5 mJ/cm3) increases by 32%. More importantly, CB/PDMS electrode can withstand 60,000 cycles of stretching under 200% strain, much higher than that reported in previous studies.

In this paper, a novel fluorescent material with high conductivity as 0.45 S·cm-1 and strong fluorescence has been successfully synthesized basing on polyaniline (PANI) nanostructures doped with a new prepared fluorescein TPABTDBN. The PANI nanostructures were prepared via a simplified template-free method (STFM) with FeCl3 as oxidant and dopant. The resulting sample was characterized by SEM, IR and fluorescence spectroscopy. The fluorescence intensity of synthesized composite improves with the increasing content of TPABTDBN. The electrical properties of pressed composite pellets were measured from room temperature about 291K down to 132K, the conductance follow the exponential temperature dependence of three-dimensional variable-range hopping (VRH) model.

PANI nanofibers with a really nanoscaled diameter of 20 ~ 30 nm and a high conductivity of 100 S/cm were successfully prepared by using FeCl3 · 6H2O as oxidant at the acidic dopant-free. Compared with other synthetic methods for nanostructures, this approach is most simple and cheap because of FeCl3 · 6H2O having two-function of oxidant and dopant at the same time, resulting in further simplifying reaction reagents. Characterizations of UV-visible, FTIR spectra, XRD as well as conductivity measured by four-probe method definitely proved the nanofibers oxidized by FeCl3 as oxidant at dopant-free are identical to the emeraldine salt form of PANI, although without external acidic dopant, and Cl- anion is incorporated the PANI main chain as counter-ion.

A kind of Cholesteric Liquid Crystal was prepared by mixing CB15 with Nematic Liquid Crystal 1717. The influence of CB15 content on the CLC texture, pitch length and thermal optical properties were investigated. The results indicated that the CB15 content affected significantly the CLC texture and the content in the region of 8.0-12.0 wt% were optimal condition for realizing the thermally erase in which texture could be easily changed from scatting focal conic texture to transparent planar one.

A kind of chiral azobenzene was synthesized. The formation of chiral azobenzene was confirmed by IR and 1H NMR spectroscopy, and mesomorphic properties were investigated by DSC and POM. The reversible optically induced switching effect between trans and cis isomer of chiral azobenzene was demonstrated by a UV/Vis/NIR spectrophotometer. It was found that cholesteric liquid crystal molecular alignment could be adjusted by these chiral azobenzene.

In this work, we report on conducting polyaniline (PANI) nanostructures synthesized by a simplified template-free self-assembly method, which are doped with different oxidants such as ammonium persulfate (APS), FeCl3, Fe(NO3)3, and Fe2(SO4)3. It is found that the morphologies of the as-prepared PANI nanowires are dependent on the oxidant and the molar ratio of aniline to oxidant. The PANI nanostructures are semiconducting with room-temperature conductivity ranging from 10-2 to 100 S/cm, and the temperature dependence of conductivity follows three-dimensional Mott variable range hopping (3D Mott-VRH) model. In addition, the PANI pellets exhibit hydrophilic behavior.

Abstract: An integrated approach is proposed to solve the optimization problem of the Euclidean distance threshold ε in recurrence quantification analysis (RQA), which is increasingly applied in the study of heart rate variability (HRV). In this paper, ε is inversely computed from a given recurrence rate (REC), the percentage of recurrence points. From the inversely computed ε, two other RQA output variables: determinism (DET), the percentage of recurrence points forming diagonal line structures, and laminarity (LAM), the percentage of recurrence points forming vertical and horizontal structures, are computed out as well. The trend of DET, LAM values at different REC levels (DLR trend) is introduced to comprehensively represent the dynamic properties of a time series. Based on the DLR trend, the variation of discrimination power, represented by the average loss (or Bayes risk), of DET and LAM, at different REC values is analyzed. Surrogate techniques are used to generate reliable test data sets for the discrimination evaluation. In particular, the results show that (1) the optimal REC can be much higher than the widely used 1% REC, and (2) after the optimization, the average loss can be reduced compared to 1% REC. It is also demonstrated that the optimal ε depends on the dynamic source and RQA variables, and the DLR trend based ε optimization method can improve RQA discrimination analysis especially for the short term HRV analysis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this study, we carried out experimental and numerical investigations on the dripping dynamics in axisymmetric capillary flow focusing. For the direct numerical simulations, we solved the Navier-Stokes equations coupled with a diffuse interface method. For the experiments, we observed both periodic and non-periodic dripping modes at different focused and focusing liquid flow rates. The non-periodic dripping that results in polydispersed droplets downstream the orifice can be attributed to the nonlinear dynamics of the flow; thus, we constructed numerical plots of the streamlines and temporal evolutions of the focused liquid cone in different modes. We identified a phase diagram of the dripping regimes in the plane of mainly dimensionless parameters, which led us to further investigate the effects of liquid physical properties, such as viscosity and interface tension, on the mode transition. For suppression of the nonlinear dynamics, we proposed a geometrical optimization that imports a guiding rod positioning along the axis of the capillary tube. Here, we conducted a numerical analysis on the manipulation of the dripping process, as well as scaling analysis on the appearance of the nonlinear dripping. We expect this study to provide an insight into the underlying physical mechanisms of dripping in flow focusing, which are advantageous in the generation of monodispersed microdroplets for various applications.

The control of magnetism via an electric field has attracted substantial attention because of potential applications in magnetoelectronics, spintronics and high-frequency devices. In this study, we demonstrate a new approach to enhance and control the magnetization of multiferroic thin film by an electric stimulus. First, to reduce the strength of the antiferromagnetic superexchange interaction in BiFeO3, we applied strain engineering to stabilize a highly strained phase. Second, the direction of the ferroelectric polarization was controlled by an electric field to enhance the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction in the highly strained BiFeO3phase. Because of the magnetoelectric coupling in BiFeO3, a strong correlation between the modulated ferroelectricity and enhanced magnetization was observed. The tunability of this strong correlation by an electric field provides an intriguing route to control ferromagnetism in a single-phase multiferroic.

A 22-year-old female suffering from idiopathic long-QT syndrome complicated by frequent syncope, torsade-de-pointes-type ventricular tachycardia, and asthma, was successfully treated by video-assisted extensive left second and third thoracic sympathetic ganglionectomy, instead of left stellate and first thoracic ganglio-nectomy, to avoid postoperative Horner's syndrome. The QT interval was significantly shortened from 0.6 to 0.43 seconds four days after the surgery. It remained at 0.43 seconds during a 3-month follow-up with no recurrence of tachycardia or syncope.

Topology change of interfaces often leads to unresolved interface structures such as tiny droplets/bubbles, which requires the regularization of the order parameter and consequently causes artificial modification of volume fraction of the fluids. This could give rise to unphysical oscillation of pressure and cause the failure of computation, in particular for two-phase flows involving large density ratio. We develop a robust conservative sharp-interface method for incompressible viscous two-phase flows with topology changes and large density ratio. The method consists of a cut-cell meshing approach that dynamically generates unstructured meshes in the vicinity of the interface, a second-order finite volume scheme in the Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian framework, and a projection method. The jump conditions at the interfaces are incorporated into the calculation of fluxes at the cell faces of the unstructured meshes that coincide with the reconstructed interfaces, to ensure that they are strictly satisfied at the interface. Unlike a pseudo-compressible formulation used in the previous study, the projection method prevents the oscillation of pressure in the presence of topology change. Special treatments are proposed to further improve the robustness of the method when dealing with unresolved interface structures, including removal of tiny droplets, adjustment of spatial discretization and restriction of the maximum curvature calculated. In such a way, two-phase flows involving topology change and large density ratio can be numerically resolved in a sharp-interface, efficient and robust manner. The performance of the proposed method is systematically examined by a series of numerical tests, including spurious currents, oscillation of a suspended droplet, droplet deformation in shear flows, breakup of a liquid thread, rising bubbles and partial coalescence of a droplet with a pool. The numerical results are compared against analytical solution, benchmark results or experimental data, and good agreement has been achieved. • The cut-cell algorithm generates unstructured body-fitted meshes around interfaces. • A 2nd-order finite volume scheme in ALE ensures conservation of mass and momentum. • Jump conditions at interfaces are strictly satisfied at the reconstructed interfaces. • Several numerical treatments related to topology changes are well addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]