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Chiral coumarins and their derivatives are ubiquitous structural motifs found in an array of biologically and therapeutically active natural products and drugs. Herein, a highly enantioselective dual remote copper-catalyzed vinylogous alkynylallylic substitution of yne-allylic esters with coumarins has been developed. The practicality of this method is exemplified by the use of readily available starting materials; mild reaction conditions; excellent regio-, enantio-, and stereoselectivities; and the very broad substrate scope (67 examples), while the scalability and further applications of this method are illustrated by the gram-scale reaction and the series of derivations of the products.

Background The increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) on a global scale has created a pressing demand for novel treatments. Gentianella turkestanorum(Gand.) Holub, a traditional Chinese herbal medicine, has been found to possess hypoglycemic effects. However, the mechanism of its action remains unclear.Objectives This study was to investigate the impact and mechanism of G. turkestanorum’s water extract (WEG) in reducing insulin resistance (IR) in T2DM.Materials and Methods Db/db mice were administered WEG for 8 weeks, during which their body weight, blood glucose (BG), oral glucose tolerance test, islet tolerance test, fasting insulin, total cholesterol, triglyceride, high-density lipoprotein, and low-density lipoprotein were monitored. Additionally, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels in db/db mice were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The study also evaluated the impact of WEG on liver injury through hematoxylin-eosin staining. The expression levels of key proteins and genes in both insulin signaling and inflammation-related pathways were detected using western blotting and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction.Results WEG has the potential to regulate glycolipid metabolism, reduce inflammation, and alleviate IR. The mechanism of action may involve promoting the insulin signaling pathway and inhibiting inflammation.Conclusion Gentianella turkestanorumcould be a viable treatment option for T2DM and IR.

Ionic gel (IG) electrolytes are emerging as promising components for the development of next-generation supercapacitors (SCs), offering benefits in terms of safety, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility. The ionic conductivity, stability, and mechanical properties of the gel electrolyte are relevant factors to be considered and the key to improving the performance of the SC. However, the structure–activity relationship between the internal structure of IGs and their SC properties is not fully understood. In the current study, the intuitive and regular structure–activity relationship between the structure and properties of IGs was revealed viacombining computational simulation and experiment. In terms of conductivity, the ionic liquid (IL) ([EMIM][TFSI]) in the IG has a high self-diffusion coefficient calculated by molecular dynamics simulation (MDS), which is conductive to transfer and then improves the conductivity. The radial distribution function of the MDS shows that the larger the g(r) between the particles in the polymer network, the stronger the interaction. For stability, IGs based on [EMIM][TFSI] and [EOMIM][TFSI] ILs have higher density functional theory calculated binding energy, which is reflected in the excellent thermal stability and excellent capacitor cycle stability. Based on the internal pore size distribution and stress-strain characterization of the gel network ([ME3MePy][TFSI] and [BMIM][TFSI] as additives), the highly crosslinked aggregate network significantly reduces the internal mesoporous distribution and plays a leading role in improving the mechanical properties of the network. By using this strategy, it will be possible to design the ideal structure of the IG and achieve excellent performance.

The practical utilization of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) necessitates the creation of electrocatalysts that are both efficient and abundant in earth elements, capable of operating effectively within a wide pH range. However, this objective continues to present itself as an arduous obstacle. In this research, we propose the incorporation of sulfur vacancies in a novel heterojunction formed by MoS2@CoS2, designed to exhibit remarkable catalytic performances. This efficacy is attributed to the advantageous combination of the low work function and space charge zone at the interface between MoS2and CoS2in the heterojunction. The MoS2@CoS2heterojunction manifests outstanding hydrogen evolution activity over an extensive pH range. Remarkably, achieving a current density of 10 mA cm–2in aqueous solutions 1.0 M KOH, 0.5 M H2SO4, and 1.0 M phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), respectively, requires only an overpotential of 48, 62, and 164 mV. The Tafel slopes for each case are 43, 32, and 62 mV dec–1, respectively. In this study, the synergistic effect of MoS2and CoS2is conducive to electron transfer, making the MoS2@CoS2heterojunction show excellent electrocatalytic performance. The synergistic effects arising from the heterojunction and sulfur vacancy not only contribute to the observed catalytic prowess but also provide a valuable model and reference for the exploration of other efficient electrocatalysts. This research marks a significant stride toward overcoming the challenges associated with developing electrocatalysts for practical hydrogen evolution applications.

The aging precipitation behavior of super-austenitic stainless steels 904L (4.32% molybdenum (Mo)), 254SMo (6.06% molybdenum) and AL-6XN (6.29% molybdenum) with different molybdenum contents at 800–900°C was investigated by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. The effect of molybdenum content on the σ-phase precipitation behavior of commonly used super-austenitic stainless steel was investigated. The results show that the super-austenitic stainless steels with different molybdenum contents formed different numbers and shapes of σ phases in the isothermal aging process, and the number of σ phases of 254SMo and AL-6XN is much larger than that of 904L, and the shape of the σ phases mainly shows coarse acicularity and elongation, while the σ phases of 904L show fine granularity.

Plasmonic superstructures hold great potential in encrypted information chips but are still unsatisfactory in terms of resolution and maneuverability because of the limited fabrication strategies. Here, we develop an antielectric potential method in which the interfacial energy from the modification of 5-amino-2-mercapto benzimidazole (AMBI) ligand is used to overcome the electric resistance between the Au nanospheres (NSs) and substrate, thereby realizing the in situgrowth of a Au–Ag heterodimers array in large scale. The morphology, number, and size of Ag domains on Au units can be controlled well by modulating the reaction kinetics and thermodynamics. Experiments and theoretical simulations reveal that patterned 3D Au–2D Ag and 3D Au–3D Ag dimer arrays with line widths of 400 nm exhibit cerulean and cyan colors, respectively, and achieve fine color modulation and ultrahigh information resolution. This work not only develops a facile strategy for fabricating patterned plasmonic superstructures but also pushes the plasmon-based high-resolution encrypted information chip into more complex applications.

Background: The Delta variant of COVID-19 has emerged and spread globally since May 2021 and has been reported in more than 70 countries. The status of the vaccination, symptom onset time, and CT imaging signatures in the infected population have not been fully investigated and clarified. Methods: This study included 131 patients who were infected with the Delta variant of COVID-19. After screening, 106 patients with 458 follow-up CT scans were retrospectively selected and divided into complete and incomplete vaccination groups (66 and 40 patients, respectively). Imaging features were automatically extracted, and infection distribution in lung fields and progression pattern tendency were investigated. Furthermore, we extracted the most related clinical and imaging features to establish a vaccination status classification model. An independent testing dataset with 55 patients from another inpatient ward was enrolled to evaluate the generalizability of the model. Results: The severity of infection in the lung and lung fields of the complete vaccination group was overall lower than those of the incomplete vaccination group. A relatively earlier peak CT abnormality was found on days 8–11 in the complete vaccination group than in the incomplete vaccination group on days 12–15 after the first positive PCR time. The vaccination status classification model achieved the highest performance with an AUC of 0.929 and accuracy of 0.864 in the testing set and an AUC of 0.858 and accuracy of 0.727 in the independent testing set. Conclusion: In summary, compared to the incomplete vaccination group, the fully vaccinated patients had milder CT abnormalities and earlier peak time for chest impairment. Therefore, the vaccination status is determinable through dynamic imaging and clinical features.

Consumers have a growing demand for smart surveillance devices that can perform behavior analysis and provide danger alerts. Human-object interaction (HOI) detection is a crucial component in behavioral analysis. However, extracting interactive semantics is computationally intensive, especially when humans and objects are far apart, making it challenging to integrate HOI methods into smart surveillance devices, which are limited in computational capacity. Moreover, rare interactions cause HOI methods to suffer from a significant long-tail problem. In this paper, we propose a new HOI backbone, namely Ripple Transformer (RITR), and an Object-Centric Prediction (OCP) strategy to recognize HOIs accurately and cost-effectively. Specifically, RITR introduces a new ripple-window attention mechanism that can capture relationship semantics with low computational consumption. The OCP strategy mitigates the impact of the long-tail problem by reformulating the verb classification as a variable-domain multi-classification problem. The proposed methods are verified on ImageNet, COCO, MPII, and HICO-DET datasets. The experimental results showcase the accuracy and cost-efficiency of our methods in image classification, object detection, and HOI detection tasks, demonstrating their practicality for expanding the application scope of smart surveillance devices.

In this study, a series of alkali/alkaline-earth-metal doped Co3O4spinel oxides was prepared for N2O catalytic decomposition. It was found that doping with alkali/alkaline-earth-metal ions essentially caused lattice distortion of M–Co3O4, decreased the crystal size, and increased the specific surface area and Co2+(active sites) amounts. Physicochemical characterization of these as-prepared catalysts was performed, including Raman, XPS, H2-TPR, O2-TPD, and OIE, to indicate that M–Co3O4has a high lattice oxygen mobility and is prone to form more oxygen vacancies. These oxygen vacancies were involved in N2O decomposition and synergistically promoted the reaction cycle of Co2+sites. The catalytic activities were ranked in the order of Co3O4< Mg–Co3O4< Na–Co3O4< Ca–Co3O4< K–Co3O4< Rb–Co3O4< Cs–Co3O4, among which the best-performing sample (Cs–Co3O4) had a T90that was nearly 200 °C lower than that of pure Co3O4, with the complete conversion of N2O achieved at 350 °C. In addition, the effects of alkali/alkaline-earth-metal doping on the lattice distortion, oxygen vacancy formation, N2O dissociation, and oxygen recombination and desorption of M–Co3O4were verified using DFT calculations.

H13 tool steel was successfully prepared by selective laser melting (SLM) technology. The effects of heat treatment on the microstructure, mechanical properties, and tribological properties of SLMed H13 steel were investigated. The heat treatment process involved a solution treatment and a double aging treatment of the deposited H13 tool steel prepared by SLM. The aim is to optimize the microstructure and mechanical properties of SLMed H13 steel. Due to the rapid heating and cooling effects of SLM, carbide precipitation in the deposited H13 steel was not uniform and residual stresses were present. The purpose of the solution treatment is to dissolve the solution at a high temperature to eliminate the residual stresses and defects introduced by the SLM-forming structure. The solution treatment and first aging treatment produced the precipitation of small carbides at the grain boundaries and inside the crystals, which increased the hardness of SLMed H13 steel. The hardness increased from 538 ± 4.0 HV of the as-deposited sample to 548 ± 5.8 HV of samples after the first aging treatment. Accordingly, the ultimate tensile strength and the elongation at break decreased from 1882 MPa and 11.5% in the as-deposited sample to 1697 MPa and 7.9% in those after the first aging treatment, respectively. Furthermore, the friction coefficient and wear rate in the as-deposited sample decreased from 0.5160 and 2.36 × 10–6mm−3N−1m−1to 0.4244 and 1.04 × 10–6mm−3N−1m−1, respectively. However, the distribution of carbides inside the crystals was not uniform. The second aging treatment adjusted the morphology of carbide precipitation and made it more uniform, but the precipitation of carbides grew and settled at the bottom of the grain boundaries. The hardness decreased to 533 ± 6.7 HV compared with that with the first aging treatment, but the ultimate tensile strength and plasticity reached a balance (1807 MPa, 14.05%). Accordingly, the friction coefficient and wear rate also showed a stable and decreasing trend (0.4407, 0.98 × 10–6mm−3N−1m−1).

The development of enzyme-free sensing materials with high performance and low cost is extremely essential in the fields of medicine, food, and chemical engineering. In this work, a solvent-processing film of 2,3,9,10,16,17,23,24-octa-(2,6-dimethylphenoxy) phthalocyaninato cobalt complex-based electrochemical sensor was prepared on a glassy carbon electrode. The CoPc(OC $_{{8}} \text{H}_{{9}}$ )8 film is demonstrated to be a lamellar structure with a large surface area, which in turn increases the active site of ascorbic acid (AA) redox reactions, and thus presents excellent sensitivity and terrific anti-interference ability for the detection of AA with wide detection range (0.1– $100 ~\mu \text{M}$ ) and low limit of detection (LOD) (36 nM), and can selectively detect AA in milk and human serum. Because of its outstanding electrocatalytic kinetic characteristics, this present enzyme-free electrochemical sensor has a broad prospect in the application of analytical sensing of AA and it will be helpful for the design and fabrication of high-performance low-cost electrochemical sensor for trace detection of AA.

Human-Object Interaction (HOI), as an important problem in computer vision, requires locating the human-object pair and identifying the interactive relationships between them. The HOI instance has a greater span in spatial, scale, and task than the individual object instance, making its detection more susceptible to noisy backgrounds. To alleviate the disturbance of noisy backgrounds on HOI detection, it is necessary to consider the input image information to generate fine-grained anchors which are then leveraged to guide the detection of HOI instances. However, it has the following challenges. i) how to extract pivotal features from the images with complex background information is still an open question. ii) how to semantically align the extracted features and query embeddings is also a difficult issue. In this paper, a novel end-to-end transformer-based framework (FGAHOI) is proposed to alleviate the above problems. FGAHOI comprises three dedicated components namely, multi-scale sampling (MSS), hierarchical spatial-aware merging (HSAM) and task-aware merging mechanism (TAM). MSS extracts features of humans, objects and interaction areas from noisy backgrounds for HOI instances of various scales. HSAM and TAM semantically align and merge the extracted features and query embeddings in the hierarchical spatial and task perspectives in turn. In the meanwhile, a novel training strategy Stage-wise Training Strategy is designed to reduce the training pressure caused by overly complex tasks done by FGAHOI. In addition, we propose two ways to measure the difficulty of HOI detection and a novel dataset, i.e., HOI-SDC for the two challenges (Uneven Distributed Area in Human-Object Pairs and Long Distance Visual Modeling of Human-Object Pairs) of HOI instances detection. Experiments are conducted on three benchmarks: HICO-DET, HOI-SDC and V-COCO. Our model outperforms the state-of-the-art HOI detection methods, and the extensive ablations reveal the merits of our proposed contribution.

Rechargeable magnesium batteries (RMBs) have been proposed as a promising alternative to currently commercialized lithium-ion batteries. However, Mg anode passivation in conventional electrolytes necessitates the use of highly corrosive Cl–ions in the electrolyte. Herein for the first time, we design a chloride-free electrolyte for RMBs with magnesium bis(hexamethyldisilazide) (Mg(HMDS)2) and magnesium triflate (Mg(OTf)2) as the main salts and tetrabutylammonium triflate (TBAOTf) as an additive. The TBAOTf additive improved the dissolution of Mg salts, consequently enhancing the charge-carrying species in the electrolyte. COMSOL studies further revealed desirable Mg growth in our modulated electrolyte, substantiated by homogeneous electric flux distribution across the electrolyte–electrode interface. Post-mortem chemical composition analysis uncovered a MgF2-rich solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) that facilitated exceptional Mg deposition/dissolution reversibility. Our study illustrates a highly promising strategy for synthesizing a corrosion-free and reversible Mg battery electrolyte with a widened anodic stability window of up to 4.43 V.

Peanut is a major food crop prone to enrichment in toxic cadmium (Cd). To control Cd levels in peanut, this study aimed to develop a near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) model for determining Cd concentration in peanut kernels as an alternative to traditional wet chemistry techniques, which can be expensive, time-consuming, and destructive. Near-infrared (NIR) diffuse reflectance spectra of 110 bulk peanut kernel samples were collected, and Cd concentration of the kernel samples was determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. A robust quantitative NIRS prediction model for Cd concentration in peanut kernels was developed for the first time. In the calibration set, the best model had a high coefficient of determination (Rcal2= 0.9194) and a low root mean square error of cross-validation (RMSECV = 0.0388). In the prediction set of 105 additional peanut kernel samples not involved in the model development, the coefficient of determination (Rp2) was as high as 0.9539 and the root mean square error of prediction was as low as 0.0341. This study provides a rapid and low-cost screening tool for low-Cd breeding and Cd management in peanut.

High-performance zeolite-supported noble metal catalysts with low loading and high dispersion of active components are the most promising materials for achieving the complete oxidation of formaldehyde (HCHO) at room temperature. In this work, palladium nanoparticles (Pd NPs) with different sizes were successfully encapsulated inside the silicalite-1 (S-1) zeolite framework by using diverse stabling ligands via the one-pot method. Thereafter, the rule on selecting the coordinative ligands for palladium was clarified: more N atoms, a short carbon chain, a smaller branch chain, and bidentate coordination are characteristics of an ideal ligand. Accordingly, the best-performing 0.2Pd@S-1(Ethylenediamine) catalyst exhibited outstanding performance for HCHO oxidation, achieving 100% conversion even at room temperature. High-resolution high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HR HAADF-STEM) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicate that the chelate is formed by complexation of Pd2+ions with ethylenediamine, displaying the smallest spatial site resistance simultaneously with the zeolite synthesis, resulting in Pd located mostly within the 5-membered ring (5-MR) channels of S-1 after calcination, thus limiting the growth of Pd clusters and promoting their dispersion.

ABSTRACTThis study adapted and validated Barnard’s Online Self-Regulated Learning Questionnaire (OSLQ) to assess adult learners’ (n = 1302) online self-regulation, and examined its relation with attitude towards online learning and perceived online learning satisfaction. It was found that age and employment status were important demographic factors influencing adult learners’ online self-regulation. Specifically, middle- and late-career learners perceived themselves to be more self-regulated than early career learners, and self-employed learners perceived themselves to be more self-regulated than out-of-labour learners. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that online self-regulation contributed to adult learners’ perceived online learning satisfaction over and above attitude towards online learning and demographic variables. This suggests that online self-regulation is an important predictor of adult learners’ online learning satisfaction. Further, within the subscales of online self-regulation, it was found that the more participants set goals and sought help while learning online, the more satisfied they perceived their online learning. Implications for supporting adult learners’ online self-regulation and online learning were discussed.

Graphical Abstract: Irradiation response and dislocation loop damage in coarse-grained (a) and nanocrystallinegrained (b) W-based HEAs as compared to coarse-grained (c) and nanocrystalline-grained (d) pure W material.

The static and dynamic characteristics of silicon carbide (SiC) metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) under gate and drain biases exhibit differential degradation after irradiation. Total ionizing dose (TID) irradiation caused threshold voltage shift and switch response degradation, and the degradation trends of these two parameters were not the same dependence on the bias. The threshold voltage of devices under test (DUT) shifted toward negative due to the radiation-induced positive oxide trapped charges. Turn-off time ( ${t} _{\text {off}}$ ) was more sensitive to TID irradiation compared to turn-on time ( ${t} _{\text {on}}$ ). The switch response changed after irradiation due to parasitic capacitance gate-to-drain capacitance (CGD) and threshold voltage degradation. It has been verified by Sentaurus TCAD 2-D simulations that the high-speed accumulation of gate oxide traps in the localized region of the trench gate MOS [U-shaped trench-gate metal–oxide–semiconductors (UMOS)] due to the nonuniform distribution of the electric field is the main reason for the special degradation of electrical parameters under drain bias. For TID radiation damage evaluation and radiation hardening of SiC MOSFETs under different biases, both static and dynamic performances should be considered. The experimental results provide valuable insights into the behavior of SiC MOSFETs under radiation and are crucial for designing reliable electronic systems for space and nuclear applications.

Dry-gel direct conversion to silico-aluminophosphate zeotype with LTA structure was presented, in which 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium and tetramethylammonium were used as co-template. Compared with previously reported hydrothermal and ionothermal synthesis, this new approach combined multiple advantages, including low autogenous pressure, low ionic liquid usage and high product yield etc. The obtained product presented excellent structural stability with high BET area and hierarchical porosity.Silicoaluminophosphate zeotype with LTA structure was synthesized by dry-gel direct conversion route using 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium and tetramethylammonium cations as co-template. This new approach presents the advantages, such as low autogenous pressure, low ionic liquid usage, high product yield etc., and affords a greener method as compared with the traditional hydrothermal and ionotherml synthesis.

To find alternatives to lithium-ion batteries, much effort is being devoted to finding electrode materials that allow reversible Mg2+disinsertion/insertion. Due to the strong Coulomb force between Mg2+and electrode materials, certain modification methods are often needed to reduce the energy barrier of Mg jumping in materials. The bronze-phase TiO2(B) has attracted considerable attention as a promising anode for lithium-ion batteries, but it has proven to be difficult for Mg to insert therein. The PBE+U calculations show that the low capacity of perfect TiO2as the anode of magnesium-ion batteries (MIB) is mainly due to the high diffusion energy barrier of the Mg ion (at least 1.27 eV). Both the defects of oxygen vacancies and F-doping can significantly reduce the band gap value and the Mg-ion migration barriers. The results of CM5 charges and charge density differences prove that the local lattice distortion caused by oxygen vacancies can cause the distribution of Ti3+away from Mg, resulting in a significant decrease in the Mg–O binding energy, which is beneficial to the reduction of the migration barrier. F-doping can make the binding energy of Mg at each site tend to be the same, so that the energy barrier of Mg jumping along the way is lower. In addition, the coexistence of oxygen vacancy and F doping in TiO2(B) has synergistic effects in improving Mg-ion diffusion.

Quantification of neomycin residues in food samples demands an efficient purification platform. Herein, hierarchical macroporous agarose monoliths with multiple boronate affinity sites were established for selective separation of neomycin. The silica core was synthesized by “one-step” Stöber procedures followed by modification with amino group and incorporation of polyethyleneimine. A versatile macroporous agarose monolith was prepared by emulsification strategies and functionalized with epoxy groups. After introducing polyethyleneimine-integrated silica nanoparticles onto the agarose monolith, fluorophenylboronic acids were immobilized. The physical and chemical characteristics of the composite monolith were analyzed systematically. After optimization, neomycin showed high binding ability of 23.69 mg/g, and the binding capacity can be manipulated by changing the pH and adding monosaccharides. The composite monolith was subsequently utilized to purify neomycin from the spiked model aquatic products followed by high-performance liquid chromatography analysis, which revealed a remarkable neomycin purification effect, indicating the great potential in the separation of neomycin from complicated aquatic products.

Coordination cages with intrinsic enzyme-like activity are a class of promising catalysts for improving the efficiency of organic reactions. We present herein a viable strategy to conveniently construct multimetallic active sites into a coordination cage viaself-assembly of a pre-formed sulfonylcalix[4]arene-based tetranuclear copper(II) precursor and an amino-functionalized dicarboxylate linker. The cage exhibits a “defective”, partially open cylindrical structure and features coordinatively labile dimetallic Cu(II) sites. Modulated by this unique inner cavity environment, promising catalytic activity toward selective oxidation of primary alcohols to carboxylic acids at room temperature is achieved. Mechanistic studies reveal that the coordinatively labile dimetallic Cu(II) sites can efficiently capture and activate the substrate and oxidant to catalyze the reaction, while the confined nano-cavity environment modulates substrate binding and enhances the catalytic turnover. This study provides a new approach to designing biomimetic multifunctional coordination cages and environmentally friendly supramolecular catalysts.

Lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries have shown exceptional theoretical energy densities, making them a promising candidate for next-generation energy storage systems. However, their practical application is limited by several challenging issues, such as uncontrollable Li dendrite growth, sluggish electrochemical kinetics, and the shuttling effect of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs). To overcome these issues, we designed and synthesized hierarchical matrixes on carbon cloth (CC) by using metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). ZnO nanosheet arrays were used as anode hosts (CC-ZnO) to enable stable Li plating and stripping. The symmetric cell with CC-ZnO@Li was demonstrated to have enhanced cycling stability, with a voltage hysteresis of ∼25 mV for over 800 h at 1 mA cm–2and 1 mAh cm–2. To address the cathode challenges, we developed a multifunctional CC-NC-Co cathode host with physical confinement, chemical anchoring, and excellent electrocatalysis. The full cells with CC-ZnO@Li anodes and CC-NC-Co@S cathodes exhibited excellent electrochemical performance, with long cycling life (0.02% and 0.03% capacity decay per cycle when cycling 900 times at 0.5 C and 600 times at 1 C, respectively) and outstanding rate performance (793 mAh g–1at 4 C). Additionally, the pouch cell based on the flexible CC-ZnO@Li anode and CC-NC-Co@S cathode showed good stability in different bending states. Overall, our study presents an effective strategy for preparing flexible Li and S hosts with hierarchical structures derived from MOF, which can pave the way for high-performance Li–S batteries.

The dynamic recrystallization (DRX) mechanism of as-cast nickel base superalloy N10276 during primary hot working was investigated by compression tests at temperatures of 1000–1200 °C and strain rates between 0.01 and 10 s−1. Optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, electron backscattered diffraction technique and transmission electron microscopy were used to characterize the evolution of microstructure. At higher deformation temperature or lower strain rate, the true stress–true strain curves exhibit the characteristic of a peak stress followed by a steady state flow stress under large strains, confirming the occurrence of DRX. The degree of DRX increases with elevating deformation temperature. With the progress of DRX, low angle grain boundaries gradually decrease, while high angle grain boundaries increase continuously. Microstructure studies have shown that discontinuous dynamic recrystallization is the main recrystallization mechanism. Since there are few original grain boundaries and twin boundaries, and lack of second phase particles for particle stimulated nucleation, geometrically necessary boundaries are formed as supplementary nucleation sites through sub-grain boundary rotation and deformation twin boundaries. The annealing twins dominated by Σ3 grain boundaries are generated in large quantities during the growth of recrystallized grains.

This study aimed to assess the feasibility of the home-based kyphosis-specific exercises among Chinese older adults with different exercise habits and explore its potential effects on reducing the kyphosis angle and improving physical performance.

Sorafenib, which inhibits multiple kinases, is an effective frontline therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Ferroptosis is a form of iron-dependent programmed cell death regulated by lipid peroxidation, which can be induced by sorafenib treatment. Oncoprotein hepatitis B X-interacting protein (HBXIP) participates in multiple biological pro-tumor processes, including growth, metastasis, drug resistance, and metabolic reprogramming. However, the role of HBXIP in sorafenib-induced ferroptotic cell death remains unclear. In this study, we demonstrated that HBXIP prevents sorafenib-induced ferroptosis in HCC cells. Sorafenib decreased HBXIP expression, and overexpression of HBXIP blocked sorafenib-induced HCC cell death. Interestingly, suppression of HBXIP increased malondialdehyde (MDA) production and glutathione (GSH) depletion to promote sorafenib-mediated ferroptosis and cell death. Ferrostatin-1, a ferroptosis inhibitor, reversed the enhanced anticancer effect of sorafenib caused by HBXIP silencing in HCC cells. Regarding the molecular mechanism, HBXIP transcriptionally induced the expression of stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) via coactivating the transcriptional factor ZNF263, resulting in the accumulation of free fatty acids and suppression of ferroptosis. Functionally, activation of the HBXIP/SCD axis reduced the anticancer activity of sorafenib and suppressed ferroptotic cell death in vivo and in vitro. HBXIP/SCD axis-mediated ferroptosis can serve as a novel downstream effector of sorafenib. Our results provide new evidence for clinical decisions in HCC therapy.

With rapid worldwide spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), jointly identifying severe COVID-19 cases from mild ones and predicting the conversion time (from mild to severe) is essential to optimize the workflow and reduce the clinician’s workload. In this study, we propose a novel framework for COVID-19 diagnosis, termed as Structural Attention Graph Neural Network (SAGNN), which can combine the multi-source information including features extracted from chest CT, latent lung structural distribution, and non-imaging patient information to conduct diagnosis of COVID-19 severity and predict the conversion time from mild to severe. Specifically, we first construct a graph to incorporate structural information of the lung and adopt graph attention network to iteratively update representations of lung segments. To distinguish different infection degrees of left and right lungs, we further introduce a structural attention mechanism. Finally, we introduce demographic information and develop a multi-task learning framework to jointly perform both tasks of classification and regression. Experiments are conducted on a real dataset with 1687 chest CT scans, which includes 1328 mild cases and 359 severe cases. Experimental results show that our method achieves the best classification (e.g., 86.86% in terms of Area Under Curve) and regression (e.g., 0.58 in terms of Correlation Coefficient) performance, compared with other comparison methods.

This paper proposes Attribute-Decomposed GAN (ADGAN) and its enhanced version (ADGAN++) for controllable image synthesis, which can produce realistic images with desired attributes provided in various source inputs. The core ideas of the proposed ADGAN and ADGAN++ are both to embed component attributes into the latent space as independent codes and thus achieve flexible and continuous control of attributes via mixing and interpolation operations in explicit style representations. The major difference between them is that ADGAN processes all component attributes simultaneously while ADGAN++ utilizes a serial encoding strategy. More specifically, ADGAN consists of two encoding pathways with style block connections and is capable of decomposing the original hard mapping into multiple more accessible subtasks. In the source pathway, component layouts are extracted via a semantic parser and the segmented components are fed into a shared global texture encoder to obtain decomposed latent codes. This strategy allows for the synthesis of more realistic output images and the automatic separation of un-annotated component attributes. Although the original ADGAN works in a delicate and efficient manner, intrinsically it fails to handle the semantic image synthesizing task when the number of attribute categories is huge. To address this problem, ADGAN++ employs the serial encoding of different component attributes to synthesize each part of the target real-world image, and adopts several residual blocks with segmentation guided instance normalization to assemble the synthesized component images and refine the original synthesis result. The two-stage ADGAN++ is designed to alleviate the massive computational costs required when synthesizing real-world images with numerous attributes while maintaining the disentanglement of different attributes to enable flexible control of arbitrary component attributes of the synthesized images. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed methods’ superiority over the state of the art in pose transfer, face style transfer, and semantic image synthesis, as well as their effectiveness in the task of component attribute transfer. Our code and data are publicly available at https://github.com/menyifang/ADGAN.

The effect of vanadium nitride (VN) particles additives on microstructure and mechanical properties of the extruded AZ31 Mg alloy was systematically investigated. The experimental results revealed that the addition of 0.5 wt% VN decreased the average grain size of AZ31 Mg alloy from 6.4 to 4.9 µm. With the increase in VN content, the refining effect would weaken because excessive VN particles would negatively affect the dynamic recrystallization process of the alloys. The scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive spectroscopy indicated that AlN, VN and Al–V–N particles with different morphologies were distributed in the streamline along the extrusion direction during the extrusion process. The mechanical properties of AZ31 Mg alloy vary with the addition of VN. The extruded AZ31 + 0.5 wt% VN Mg alloy possesses an excellent combination of high strength and ductility. The yield strength and ultimate tensile strength of the extruded AZ31 + 0.5 wt% VN Mg alloy were increased without sacrificing ductility. This is mainly due to the grain refinement caused by double-heterogeneous nucleation particles. With a further increase in VN content, the presence of excessive VN particles increases the stress concentration, and the initiation source of microcracks in the alloy during alloy deformation makes the cracks more easily propagated and results in a decrease in the ductility of the extruded alloy.

The classification of environmental sound events is of great significance for applications such as machine hearing and acoustic surveillance. Feature representation and feature vector dimension directly affect system performance. To better extract features and reduce computational burden, a novel frequency-energy feature representation and two-stage dimension reduction system were proposed. First, a frequency-energy diagram is generated. Based on this, the importance screening is done and only the energy bins of high importance are retained, which reduces the dimension of feature vector while extracting key information. Then the Bicubic interpolation method is used to further reduce the dimension. And the appropriate feature vector dimension is determined based on the change of information entropy. The proposed frequency-energy feature representation and two-stage dimension reduction system are evaluated with Real Word Computing Partnership sound scene database (RWCP-SSD), UrbanSound8K, and ESC-50 datasets, which demonstrate that the robustness is satisfactory under low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and 15 noise types from NOISEX-92 database.

The oxygen content of metal powder is decisive for the recyclability of powder. The research on the effect of oxygen content on powder properties and material formability has practical significance for economical production with additive manufacturing while preventing the waste of resources. Here, we deliberately oxidized the powder by baking at high temperature to increase the oxygen content in the powder and gave the calculation method of the oxygen content in the powder oxidation film. The majority of oxygen element was found in the oxide particles in the powder and the oxide film on the powder surface, which did affect the flowability of the powder. It is worth noting that the increase in the oxygen content does not change the phase of H13 steel, but it can promote the molten pool flow and obtain a smoother surface. The increase in the oxygen content in the powder is not the decisive factor for the formability and defects of the printed samples. It is the combined effect of the powder deformation, the increase in the oxygen content, and the impurity pollution after repeated use, which leads to the limitation of repeated utilization of the powder.

Recent evidence shows a close link between Parkinson’s disease (PD) and cardiac dysfunction with limited treatment options. Mitophagy plays a crucial role in the control of mitochondrial quantity, metabolic reprogramming and cell differentiation. Mutation of the mitophagy protein Parkin is directly associated with the onset of PD. Parkin-independent receptor-mediated mitophagy is also documented such as BCL2/adenovirus E1B 19 kDa protein-interacting protein 3 (BNIP3) and FUN14 domain containing 1 (FUNDC1) for receptor-mediated mitophagy. In this study we investigated cardiac function and mitophagy including FUNDC1 in PD patients and mouse models, and evaluated the therapeutic potential of a SGLT2 inhibitor empagliflozin. MPTP-induced PD model was established. PD patients and MPTP mice not only displayed pronounced motor defects, but also low plasma FUNDC1 levels, as well as cardiac ultrastructural and geometric anomalies (cardiac atrophy, interstitial fibrosis), functional anomalies (reduced E/A ratio, fractional shortening, ejection fraction, cardiomyocyte contraction) and mitochondrial injury (ultrastructural damage, UCP2, PGC1α, elevated mitochondrial Ca2+uptake proteins MCU and VDAC1, and mitochondrial apoptotic protein calpain), dampened autophagy, FUNDC1 mitophagy and apoptosis. By Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), we found overtly altered glucose transmembrane transport in the midbrains of MPTP-treated mice. Intriguingly, administration of SGLT2 inhibitor empagliflozin (10 mg/kg, i.p., twice per week for 2 weeks) in MPTP-treated mice significantly ameliorated myocardial anomalies (with exception of VDAC1), but did not reconcile the motor defects or plasma FUNDC1. FUNDC1 global knockout (FUNDC1−/−mice) did not elicit any phenotype on cardiac geometry or function in the absence or presence of MPTP insult, but it nullified empagliflozin-caused cardioprotection against MPTP-induced cardiac anomalies including remodeling (atrophy and fibrosis), contractile dysfunction, Ca2+homeostasis, mitochondrial (including MCU, mitochondrial Ca2+overload, calpain, PARP1) and apoptotic anomalies. In neonatal and adult cardiomyocytes, treatment with PD neurotoxin preformed fibrils of α-synuclein (PFF) caused cytochrome crelease and cardiomyocyte mechanical defects. These effects were mitigated by empagliflozin (10 μM) or MCU inhibitor Ru360 (10 μM). MCU activator kaempferol (10 μM) or calpain activator dibucaine (500 μM) nullified the empagliflozin-induced beneficial effects. These results suggest that empagliflozin protects against PD-induced cardiac anomalies, likely through FUNDC1-mediated regulation of mitochondrial integrity.

The purpose of this research is to validate the cyberloafing scale proposed by Akbulut et al. (2016). Specifically, the reliability, validity, and dimensionality of the cyberloafing scale are assessed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). An online survey was administered to employees working in public listed companies in Malaysia (n = 255), who have a personal computer and internet access at the workplace. SmartPLS 3 software was used to validate the cyberloafing scale. The findings showed that the cyberloafing scale by Akbulut et al. (2016) was comprehensive, valid, and reliable. All items loaded appropriately on their assigned dimension constructs; thus, proving construct validity. Each dimension construct showed high internal consistency, where their average variance extracted values were greater than 0.5; thus, proving reliability and convergent validity. Based on the results from a confirmatory tetrad analysis, it should be modelled as a reflective-formative construct. Future studies are highly encouraged to use this scale. Overall, the cyberloafing scale by Akbulut et al. (2016) is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used formally to assess employees' cyberloafing behaviour.

This paper presents a design method for frequency response masking (FRM)-based nonuniform filter bank with reduced effective wordlength. Instead of designing prototype filters separately, we propose to model the filter bank design problem as a nonlinear programming problem and jointly design the prototype filters in the FRM structure. Moreover, in this work, all the filters are designed directly in the finite wordlength space, such that they can be directly implemented using efficient fixed-point arithmetic without any quantization. By simultaneously considering all the subband constraints during optimization, the proposed method is able to guarantee the desirable stopband attenuation for all subbands and achieve optimal effective wordlength (EWL) for the coefficients, reducing the hardware complexity for very large-scale integration (VLSI) implementation. Experimental results show that the hardware complexity of filter banks can be reduced without sacrificing the audiogram compensation performance for hearing aid applications.

Graphical abstract: Maximizing the potential of sulfur cathodes: MXenes are a class of 2D materials that possess promising electrochemical properties. They have been able to solve the main issues surrounding sulfur cathodes, bringing them closer to their full potential, which when fully achieved, would make sulfur-based batteries the next-generation energy storage device.

Two-dimensional MXenes produce competitive performances when incorporated into lithium–sulfur batteries (LSBs), solving key problems such as the poor electronic conductivity of sulfur and dissolution of its polysulfide intermediates. However, MXene nanosheets are known to easily aggregate and restack during electrode fabrication, filtration, or water removal, limiting their practical applicability. Furthermore, in complex electrocatalytic reactions like the multistep sulfur reduction process in LSBs, MXene alone is insufficient to ensure an optimal reaction pathway. In this work, we demonstrate for the first time a loose templating of sulfur spheres using Ti3C2TxMXene nanosheets decorated with polymorphic CoSe2nanoparticles. This work shows that the templating of sulfur spheres using nanoparticle-decorated MXene nanosheets can prevent nanosheet aggregation and exert a strong electrocatalytic effect, thereby enabling improved reaction kinetics and battery performance. The S@MXene-CoSe2cathode demonstrated a long cycle life of 1000 cycles and a low capacity decay rate of 0.06% per cycle in LSBs.

The creep anisotropy behavior under different stresses at 180 °C of hot-extruded AZ91—2Y magnesium alloy with pre-compression (PC) and without pre-compression (NPC) was studied. Microstructure, texture and mechanical properties of the alloy were examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and tensile creep tests. The results revealed that the creep resistance was proportional to the volume fraction of spherical Mg17Al12precipitates. The dynamic precipitation of large volume fraction of lamellar Mg17Al12in NPC samples leads to the basal 〈a〈 slip as the dominant creep mechanism, and the NPC samples have obvious anisotropy. In the PC samples, dynamic precipitation of large volume fraction of spherical Mg17Al12has inhibitory effect on the basal 〈a〉 slip. The pyramidal 〈c+a〉 slip and twinning improve the creep anisotropy resistance significantly.

• Novel 3D flower-like hollow CuS@PANI micropheres have been successfully synthesized via a solvothermal process followed by in-situ polymerization. • The excellent reflection loss of 3D flower-like hollow CuS@PANI micropheres is −71.1 dB with a matching thickness of 2.75 mm. • The effective absorption bandwidth of 3D flower-like hollow CuS@PANI micropheres almost cover the whole X-band. Superior electromagnetic (EM) wave absorption properties in 8.2–12.4 GHz (X -band) can be obtained via the effective combination of polyaniline (PANI) and CuS. Herein, novel 3D flower-like hollow CuS@PANI microspheres were fabricated by a solvothermal process followed by in-situ polymerization. EM wave absorption properties of 3D flower-like hollow CuS@PANI microspheres in X -band were systematically studied, indicating the minimum reflection loss (RL min) of -71.1 dB and effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) covering 81% of test frequency range were achieved with a thickness of 2.75 mm. Excellent EM wave absorption properties of 3D flower-like hollow CuS@PANI microspheres were mainly ascribed to outstanding impedance matching characteristic and dielectric loss capability (conduction loss, interfacial polarization loss and dipole polarization loss). Moreover, due to the distinctive flower-like hollow structure of CuS@PANI microspheres, an additional wave-absorbing mechanism was provided by increasing the transmission paths of EM waves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the treatment of T1N0M0 papillary thyroid carcinoma, the rates of disease progression and complications were not shown to be significantly different between microwave ablation and surgical resection.

Metallic magnesium is a promising high-capacity anode material for energy storage technologies beyond lithium-ion batteries. However, most reported Mg metal anodes are only cyclable under shallow cycling (≤1 mAh cm–2) and thus poor Mg utilization (<3%) conditions, significantly compromising their energy-dense characteristic. Herein, composite Mg metal anodes with high capacity utilization of 75% are achieved by coating magnesiophilic gold nanoparticles on copper foils for the first time. Benefiting from homogeneous ionic flux and uniform deposition morphology, the Mg-plated Au–Cu electrode exhibits high average Coulombic efficiency of 99.16% over 170 h cycling at 75% Mg utilization. Moreover, the full cell based on Mg-plated Au–Cu anode and Mo6S8cathode achieves superior capacity retention of 80% after 300 cycles at a low negative/positive ratio of 1.33. This work provides a simple yet effective general strategy to enhance Mg utilization and reversibility, which can be extended to other metal anodes as well.

Six donor–donor−π–acceptor (D–D−π–A) triphenylamine-based starburst organic dyes with different electron-donating moieties and thiophene-based π-linkers were synthesized and characterized. Their photophysical and electrochemical properties, together with their photocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance as photosensitizers (PSs), were investigated. Distinctive and prolonged hydrogen evolution performances of these PSs under visible-light irradiation from water in their platinized TiO2composites were demonstrated: a turnover number (TON) of up to 24 900 (252 h) with 1560 μmol (37.6 mL) hydrogen produced, an initial turnover frequency (TOFi) of 1130 h–1, initial activity (Activityi) of 705 mmol g–1h–1, and initial apparent quantum yield (AQYi) of 12.1%. To the best of our knowledge, according to the TOF and TON values, the designed PS system is one of the most efficient and robust photocatalytic H2generation systems adopting a TiO2-anchoring molecular PS in the literature. The results showed that the starburst triarylamine donor moiety with phenothiazine functionality and the alkyl chain on the thiophene π-linker could boost the performance and longevity of the photocatalytic system, providing a powerful strategy for the development of starburst-based highly efficient and robust D–D−π–A organic photosensitizers in the future.

Spirocitromycetin, an antiosteoporotic polyketide bearing a unique spirocycle, was characterized from a human mucus sputum-derived Penicillium velutinum. Its structure and absolute configuration were elucidated spectrally, with its biosynthetic pathway likely mediated via polivione, a reported heptaketide. Spirocitromycetin was shown to be antiosteoporotic at 0.1 μM in the prednisolone-induced osteoporotic zebrafish model. A combination of spirocitromycetin variant synthesis and bioassay has identified 5′-methyl-3′H-spiro[chromane-3,2′-furan]-3′,4-dione as an unreported antiosteroporotic pharmacophore. Collectively, this work offers new starting (sub)structures that may be of significance for antiosteoporotic drug discovery.

The potassium storage performance of UiO-66 derivatives was investigated by density functional theory calculations. The calculation results show that the substitution of all Zr in nodes of UiO-66 by Ti reduces the band gap. During potassiation, UiO-66-Ti and UiO-66-Hf have similar charge transfer processes to UiO-66, in which the charges of Ti and Hf are almost not changed, and the charge transfers from K to C or O near it. Compared with UiO-66, UiO-66-Hf has a lower theoretical capacity (490 mAh/g) with a smaller volume expansion and a slightly higher energy barrier for K-ion diffusion. UiO-66-Ti has a lower diffusion barrier for K ion although it has a larger volume expansion with all sites occupied by K. For the −NH2, −NO2, −Br, −Cl, −OH, −SH, and −CH3functionalized UiO-66, the substitutions of H in ligands reduce the band gap of UiO-66, with the largest reduction in UiO-66-NH2. The p orbitals of N in the NH2contribute greatly to the reduction of the band gap. The K intercalated at the K2(L) and K3 sites during the charging process will transfer part of the electrons to the substituents. Between the Zr6O4(OH)4nodes, there will be a migration path that crosses the substituent, and the diffusion energy barrier on this path is smaller than that of the original path of UiO-66. The results suggest that proper modification of UiO-66 can improve its electronic conductivity and ionic conductivity as the anode of potassium ion battery.

Increasing active metal sites is a valid approach to improve the catalytic activity of the catalyst. Co3+is the main active metal site of Co-based catalysts. In this research work, through the partial transformation of CoFePBA (CFP) vialow-temperature heat treatment, the effective control of the Co3+/Co2+ratio has been achieved. The partial transformation strategy of low-temperature heat treatment can not only maintain the original framework structure of CFP, but also increase more active sites. The characterization results show that the CFP-200 sample obtained viaheat treatment at 200 °C for 2 h under N2atmosphere has the highest Co3+/Co2+ratio. As an oxygen evolution reaction electrocatalyst, CFP-200 shows the best electrocatalytic activity among all samples. In 1.0 mol/L KOH electrolyte, the overpotential is 312 mV at a current density of 10 mA/cm2. Therefore, low-temperature heat treatment provides an effective method for preparing low-cost and high-efficiency electrocatalysts.