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In the context of a global economic slowdown and structural shifts, comprehending labor market stability is crucial for devising effective macro-employment strategies. This research introduces an innovative framework to analyze employment resilience in the wake of China's smart city pilot policy. Utilizing data from 275 prefecture-level cities across China, spanning 2008 to 2020, the study delves into the beneficial effects of the smart city pilot policy on employment resilience. It employs a dual approach, integrating the Differences-in-Differences method (DID) with robustness analysis. Findings indicate that employment resilience in smart city pilot cities is approximately 0.58% higher compared to non-pilot cities. Factors such as location, size, and city type exhibit varying influences on this outcome. The research further reveals that entrepreneurial activities significantly mediate the link between smart city policies and employment resilience. Additionally, the concentration of manufacturing and productive services, along with their interplay, demonstrates notable moderating effects. This investigation broadens the economic research scope regarding smart cities and offers fresh empirical insights into the labor market impacts of smart city pilot policies, serving as a valuable guide for policymakers in managing employment markets.

The chemical synthesis of anthocyanins, especially delphinidin-3-O-glucoside and petunidin-3-O-glucoside, is preferable due to the challenges associated with their extraction and purification. However, the reported methods for the synthesis are scarce and intricate. Our research focused on exploring a one-step ester-to-ketone process and optimizing the ring formation reaction, simplifying and improving the overall synthesis strategy. Through these attempts, we were able to achieve higher production yields of delphinidin-3-O-glucoside and petunidin-3-O-glucoside. According to the results of DPPH, ABTS, and FRAP, the antioxidant activity of anthocyanins was increased with the number of B ring hydroxyl substituent. Additionally, both delphinidin-3-O-glucoside and petunidin-3-O-glucoside exhibited no cytotoxicity effects, highlighting their potential for safe application in various fields.

Panax ginsengMeyer polysaccharides exhibit various biological functions, like antagonizing galectin-3-mediated cell adhesion and migration. Galectin-8 (Gal-8), with its linker-joined N- and C-terminal carbohydrate recognition domains (CRDs), is also crucial to these biological processes, and thus plays a role in various pathological disorders. Yet the effect of ginseng-derived polysaccharides in modulating Gal-8 function has remained unclear.

Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) that have impaired differentiation can transform into leukemic blasts. However, the mechanism that controls differentiation remains elusive. Here, we show that the genetic elimination of Proteinase 3 (PRTN3) in mice led to spontaneous myeloid differentiation. Mechanistically, our findings indicate that PRTN3 interacts with the N-terminal of STAT3, serving as a negative regulator of STAT3-dependent myeloid differentiation. Specifically, PRTN3 promotes STAT3 ubiquitination and degradation, while simultaneously reducing STAT3 phosphorylation and nuclear translocation during G-CSF-stimulated myeloid differentiation. Strikingly, pharmacological inhibition of STAT3 (Stattic) partially counteracted the effects of PRTN3 deficiency on myeloid differentiation. Moreover, the deficiency of PRTN3 in primary AML blasts promotes the differentiation of those cells into functional neutrophils capable of chemotaxis and phagocytosis, ultimately resulting in improved overall survival rates for recipients. These findings indicate PRTN3 exerts an inhibitory effect on STAT3-dependent myeloid differentiation and could be a promising therapeutic target for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia.

Green supply chain management attracts wide attention due to lacking resources and greenhouse effect. More significantly, extended warranty service can boost supply chain members’ profit and enhance the products’ competitiveness. Additionally, we don’t have enough historical data to infer quantity of demand for a new environment friendly product. Therefore, extended warranty service is considered and uncertainty theory is applied in the analysis of supply chain. Then we study a green supply chain with a manufacturer and a retailer considering extended warranty service, where the demand of product is represented by uncertain variable. Assuming that both manufacturer and retailer aim to maximize the profit under confidence level, we present centralized channel case, decentralized channel case and cost sharing case, and respectively obtain equilibrium solutions. Next, we analyze decisions and profits between decentralized channel case and cost sharing case. The result shows that the coefficient of greening investment and the cost rate of extended warranty service have a positive impact on cost sharing proportion. What’s more, profit in the cost sharing case has a better performance than the one in decentralized channel case.

Zero-shot learning (ZSL) has been actively studied for image classification tasks to relieve the burden of annotating image labels. Interestingly, the semantic segmentation task requires more labor-intensive pixel-wise annotation, but zero-shot semantic segmentation has not attracted extensive research interest. Thus, we focus on zero-shot semantic segmentation that aims to segment unseen objects with only category-level semantic representations provided for unseen categories. In this article, we propose a novel context-aware feature generation network (CaGNet) that can synthesize context-aware pixel-wise visual features for unseen categories based on category-level semantic representations and pixel-wise contextual information. The synthesized features are used to fine-tune the classifier to enable segmenting of unseen objects. Furthermore, we extend pixel-wise feature generation and fine-tuning to patch-wise feature generation and fine-tuning, which additionally considers the interpixel relationship. Experimental results on Pascal-VOC, Pascal-context, and COCO-stuff show that our method significantly outperforms the existing zero-shot semantic segmentation methods.

Promoting market coordination and enhancing the efficiency of green growth is a necessity for China’s effective economic development. Using panel data from 2007 to 2020, this paper conducts a comprehensive study on 226 cities at the prefecture-level and above, combining theoretical analysis and empirical tests to systematically explore the impact of market cohesion on urban green total factor productivity (GTPF) and the mediating role of factor mismatch. Findings demonstrate that market coordination maximizes urban GTPF. At the mechanism level, factor mismatch plays a mediating role, and market coordination can enhance GTPF by addressing capital and labor mismatch. In terms of heterogeneity analysis, market coordination significantly promotes GTPF positively in the east-central region and negatively in the western region. In terms of technological progress and technical efficiency, the eastern region shows a larger significance than the central and western regions combined. In view of the above, the concept of market coordination development has been implemented to promote GTFP in cities.

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High strength aluminum alloy sheets with excellent formability are necessary for the successful fabrication of complex-shaped components in order to prevent cracking during the forming process. To address this issue, this study investigated the formability of annealed (O) and water-quenched (WQ) Al–Cu–Li alloys at both room and cryogenic temperatures. Our results reveal a significant increase in the forming limit curve, with a 40% enhancement observed as the forming temperature decreased from 298 K to 113 K. Additionally, a 30% increase in formability was observed when transitioning from the O temper to the WQ temper. Thickness measurements reveal that WQ pre-treatment and cryogenic forming promoted continuous work hardening, thus improving deformation homogeneity. The mechanism responsible for the higher work hardening ability was elucidated by examining the microstructure evolution in different regions of the components. The results show that coarse particles in the O tempered alloys accelerated cross slip, resulting in the formation of recovered microstructures (i.e., dislocation cells and Cube texture) while simultaneously hindering dislocation movement and inducing local stress concentration. Conversely, for the WQ tempered alloy deformed at cryogenic temperature, the dissolution of particles and decreased stacking fault energy at low temperature suppressed cross slip and resulted in well-arranged dislocations within the slip system. Consequently, the combination of WQ pre-treatment and cryogenic forming demonstrates enhanced formability in high strength aluminum alloys, offering a novel method for manufacturing complex-shaped components.

Despite the rich information about the physiological state of a cell encoded in the dynamic changes of cell-surface glycans, chemical methods to capture specific glycan epitopes at the single-cell level are quite limited. Here, we report a chemoenzymatic method for the single-cell detection of N-acetyllactosamine (LacNAc) by labeling LacNAc with a specific DNA barcode. The chemoenzymatic labeling does not alter the transcriptional status of immune cells and is compatible with multiple scRNA-seq platforms. Integrated analysis of LacNAc and the transcriptome of T cells at the single-cell level reveals that the amount of cell-surface LacNAc is significantly upregulated in activated CD8+T cells but maintained at basal levels in resting CD8+T cells (i.e., naive and central memory T cells). Further analysis confirms that LacNAc levels are positively correlated with the glycolytic activity of CD8+T cells during differentiation. Taken together, our study demonstrates the feasibility of the chemoenzymatic detection of cell-surface glycan in single-cell RNA sequencing-based multiomics with TCR sequence and cell-surface epitope information (i.e., scTCR and CITE-seq), and provides a new way to characterize the biological role of glycan in diverse physiological states.

The current synthesis routes of anthocyanins are relatively complicated, which significantly hinders their development. We optimized the method by introducing a selective iodination reaction and also established a general scheme for preparing anthocyanin diglycosides. This method allows anthocyanin synthesis to require fewer steps and costs. Based on this, we prepared four common anthocyanins and two anthocyanin diglucosides and measured their antioxidant and anti-insulin resistance activities.

Inverse models can be used to estimate surface fluxes in terms of the observed atmospheric concentration measurement data. This paper proposes a new nonparametric spatio-temporal inverse model and provides the global expressions for the estimates by employing the B-spline method. The authors establish the asymptotic normality of the estimators under mild conditions. The authors also conduct numerical studies to evaluate the finite sample performance of the proposed methodologies. Finally, the authors apply the method to anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emission data from different provinces of Canada to illustrate the validity of the proposed techniques.

Colorectal neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) differ significantly from colorectal carcinoma (CRC) in terms of treatment strategy and prognosis, necessitating a cost-effective approach for accurate discrimination. Here, we propose an approach for distinguishing between colorectal NET and CRC based on pathological images by utilizing pathological prior information to facilitate the generation of robust slide-level features. By calculating the similarity between morphological descriptions and patches, our approach selects only 2% of the diagnostically relevant patches for both training and inference, achieving an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.9974 on the internal dataset, and AUROCs of 0.9724 and 0.9513 on two external datasets. Our model effectively identifies NETs from CRCs, reducing unnecessary immunohistochemical tests and enhancing the precise treatment for patients with colorectal tumors. Our approach also enables researchers to investigate methods with high accuracy and low computational complexity, thereby advancing the application of artificial intelligence in clinical settings.

The effect of yttrium (Y) addition on the oxidation behavior of a Ni-based directionally solidified single-crystal superalloy is investigated in this study. Isothermal oxidation tests for samples with different levels of Y addition are conducted at 1100 °C in air. The Y content of the samples is determined by the actual pickup amount obtained from an Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectrometry test. It is discovered that the addition of Y increases the oxide resistance by the scale of an adhesive double-layer oxide, which is composed of Al2O3and spinel Ni(Cr,Al)2O4. With 70 ppm of Y addition, the oxidation mass gain decreases from 12.6 g/m2for the alloy without Y addition to 5.3 g/m2, and the oxidation rate decreases significantly. In addition, the internal nitride disappears after Y doping because of an increase in oxidation scale adherence and a decrease in oxidation products. In this study, the alloy with 660 ppm Y addition demonstrates the best oxidation resistance.

Self-accelerating optical Airy beams present attractive characteristics such as self-bending and non-diffraction, which have rendered this field a research hotspot in recent years. In this paper, the desired phase changes of the unit cell structure for the transmitted cross-polarized wave can be realized by modifying the rotation angle of the unit cell, while the amplitude can be modulated by changing the inner diameter R of the double layer split-ring resonator (SRR). As such, the amplitude and phase modulations can be performed simultaneously and independently to achieve the desired transmitted wave envelope. Furthermore, a novel, to the best of our knowledge, strategy of 2D Airy beam deflection control is also presented by simultaneously modifying the phase and amplitude of the envelope of the transmitted beam, and its feasibility is theoretically and experimentally demonstrated. Our proposed designs suggest high application potentials in the fields of optical particle manipulation, controllable wireless energy transmission, and complex terrain exploration.

In order to greatly improve the energy efficiency and electrolyte utilization efficiency of vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) and to enable them to operate at high current densities, MXene/CoO composites were used for the first time in this research as electrocatalysts for the V3+/V2+reaction. The catalytic effect of the materials was characterized by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectra (EIS) tests. Then battery performance of MXene/CoO composite modified plasma-treated graphite felt (GF) negative electrodes (MXene/CoO/GF) were tested in a VRFB. The results show that MXene/CoO composites can improve the catalytic activity. There is a 22.93 % increase in energy efficiency and 124.94 % increase in electrolyte utilization efficiency when MXene/CoO/GF is applied as VRFB negative electrode at a current density of 200 mA cm−2compared to GF. At a current density of 250 mA cm−2, the energy efficiency of MXene/CoO/GF is maintained at 75.55 %. The excellent performance is attributed to the addition of MXene/CoO, which increases the active sites for redox reactions and thus improves the kinetics of the V3+/V2+reaction.

Successful emergence from the soil is a prerequisite for survival of germinating seeds in their natural environment. In rice, coleoptile elongation facilitates seedling emergence and establishment, and ethylene plays an important role in this process. However, the underlying regulatory mechanism remains largely unclear. Here, we report that ethylene promotes cell elongation and inhibits cell expansion in rice coleoptiles, resulting in longer and thinner coleoptiles that facilitate seedlings emergence from the soil. Transcriptome analysis showed that genes related to reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation are upregulated and genes involved in ROS scavenging are downregulated in the coleoptiles of ethylene-signaling mutants. Further investigations showed that soil coverage promotes accumulation of ETHYLENE INSENSITIVE 3-LIKE 1 (OsEIL1) and OsEIL2 in the upper region of the coleoptile, and both OsEIL1 and OsEIL2 can bind directly to the promoters of the GDP-mannose pyrophosphorylase (VTC1) gene OsVTC1-3and the peroxidase (PRX) genes OsPRX37, OsPRX81, OsPRX82, and OsPRX88to activate their expression. This leads to increased ascorbic acid content, greater peroxidase activity, and decreased ROS accumulation in the upper region of the coleoptile. Disruption of ROS accumulation promotes coleoptile growth and seedling emergence from soil. These findings deepen our understanding of the roles of ethylene and ROS in controlling coleoptile growth, and this information can be used by breeders to produce rice varieties suitable for direct seeding.

Quantum dots (QDs) light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) are considered the most promising candidate for application in displays. While the efficiency of QLEDs has been greatly developed in recent years and is comparable to that of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), it still remains challenging to realize both high efficiency and long lifetimes. In this work, we report efficient and stable red QLEDs with the maximum current efficiency of 13.48 cd A–1, external quantum efficiency of 18.65%, and low efficiency roll-off at high luminance with a long lifetime exceeding ∼2.9 × 105h, representing a 3-fold increase in stability. Tailoring the composition of QDs suppresses nonradiative Förster resonant energy transfer and Auger recombination and provides favorable valence band alignment to boost the hole injection. Our work suggests that tailoring the nanostructures of QDs offers an effective means to simultaneously achieve high efficiency and high stability, accelerating QLED technology for practical applications in displays and lighting.

Biomedical magnesium alloys have become an ideal material for degradable implants because of their similar density and elastic modulus with human bone. In this study, Mg-3Zn-0.2Ca-xAg (x = 0%, 0.1%, 0.3%, 0.5%, 0.7%, wt.%) alloys were fabricated to enhance the comprehensive properties of the Mg-3Zn-0.2Ca (wt.%) alloys. The microstructure shows that the alloy possesses relatively smaller grain size of 2.08 μm when the addition of Ag is 0.3 wt.%. The Mg-3Zn-0.2Ca-0.3Ag also owns the best mechanical properties whose elongation, yield strength and tensile strength are 4.57%, 5.7%, and 2.4%, respectively, higher than that of Mg-3Zn-0.2Ca. The electrochemical experiments shows that Mg-3Zn-0.2Ca-0.3Ag has lower corrosion current density (30.5 μA/cm2), which indicates that its corrosion resistance has been improved. After immersed in simulated body fluids at 37 ℃ for 15 days, the hydrogen release rate and degradation rate of the Mg-3Zn-0.2Ca-0.3Ag is significantly lower than that of Mg-3Zn-0.2Ca. In addition, the cytotoxicity test with L 929 cells shows that Mg-3Zn-0.2Ca-0.3Ag alloy has good biocompatibility.

A general and unified approach to synthesize Ag, Cu and Au nanoparticles (NPs) is developed at room temperature in air atmosphere under ultrasonication in poly(N-vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) solutions with ascorbic acid and glucose as the reducing and nucleation agents, respectively. XRD, TEM, and HR-TEM analysis of the Ag, Cu, and Au NPs confirm purity and average diameters of 15.5 ± 2.0 nm, 50 ± 3.0 nm, and 10 ± 1.0 nm, respectively. An ultrasonic-assisted mechanism, wherein reduction occurs readily and produces anti-oxidation particles, is proposed and discussed. Fast infrared sintering was used to avoid damaging the substrate of conductive patterns whose resistivity at 10 W (∼50 °C) sintering power for less than 6 min reached up to 10 ± 0.5 μΩ cm, 40 ± 3.0 μΩ cm, and 280 ± 5 μΩ cm for Ag, Cu, and Au patterns, respectively. Paper-based electrodes were produced successfully and exhibited excellent flexibility and good conductivity. The potential of this method for large scale production is discussed.

Micro-arc oxidation (MAO) can produce metal surface coatings with excellent properties. By using appropriate auxiliary sealing technology, the micro-holes on the surface of the coatings can be reduced and the performance of the MAO coatings can be further improved. In this work, a dense and corrosion-resistant α-Al2O3ceramic film was prepared by MAO on the surface of boron-containing low carbon steel (10B21). Based on the electrolyte including NaAlO2, NaH2PO4, Na2CO3and Na2B4O7, we studied the effects of different concentrations of the α-Al2O3additive (0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 g/L) in the electrolytes on the MAO layers of 10B21 and investigated the mechanisms for the effect of the added α-Al2O3. The results showed that the added α-Al2O3particles diffused and were adsorbed into the pores in the MAO layer, and as the conversion rate from Al2O3to the α phase in the layer increased, the pore in the films became smaller. In particular, for the α-Al2O3concentration of 3 g/L, the lowest hole of 1∼2 μm was obtained. Since the surface of the MAO films prepared by adding α-Al2O3had an increased higher α-Al2O3content, excellent electrochemical corrosion performance in a 3.5% NaCl solution was obtained, and the electrochemical self-corrosion current density was 0.2 μA/cm2. After a neutral salt spray test carried out for 7 days, the corrosion rate was 20 g·m−2·d-1, and the corrosion resistance was greatly improved.

The continuous reduction of clinically available antibiotics has made it imperative to exploit more effective antimicrobial therapies, especially for difficult‐to‐treat Gram‐negative pathogens. Herein, it is shown that the combination of an antimicrobial nanozyme with the clinically compatible basic amino acid L‐arginine affords a potent treatment for infections with Gram‐negative pathogens. In particular, the antimicrobial activity of the antimicrobial nanozyme is dramatically increased by ≈1000‐fold after L‐arginine stimulation. Specifically, the combination therapy enhances bacterial outer and inner membrane permeability and promotes intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. Moreover, the metabolomic and transcriptomic results reveal that combination treatment leads to the increased ROS‐mediated damage by inhibiting the tricarboxylic acid cycle and oxidative phosphorylation, thereby inducing an imbalance of the antioxidant and oxidant systems. Importantly, L‐arginine dramatically significantly accelerates the healing of infected wounds in mouse models of multidrug‐resistant peritonitis‐sepsis and skin wound infection. Overall, this work demonstrates a novel synergistic antibacterial strategy by combining the antimicrobial nanozymes with L‐arginine, which substantively facilitates the nanozyme‐mediated killing of pathogens by promoting ROS production. It is reported that L‐arginine exhibits potent synergistic antibacterial activity with nanozymes. The combination therapy leads to increased ROS‐mediated membrane damage by inhibiting the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS), adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthesis, and the bacterial antioxidant system. The discovery of L‐arginine as a powerful adjunctive agent in combating bacterial infections holds significant implications.

Mounting evidence suggests that strategies combining DNA-damaging agents and stimulator of interferon genes (STING) agonists are promising cancer therapeutic regimens because they can amplify STING activation and remodel the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. However, a single molecular entity comprising both agents has not yet been developed. Herein, we designed two PtIV-MSA-2 conjugates (Iand II) containing the DNA-damaging chemotherapeutic drug cisplatin and the innate immune-activating STING agonist MSA-2; these conjugates showed great potential as multispecific small-molecule drugs against pancreatic cancer. Mechanistic studies revealed that conjugate Iupregulated the expression of transcripts associated with innate immunity and metabolism in cancer cells, significantly differing from cisplatin and MSA-2. An analysis of the tumor microenvironment demonstrated that conjugate Icould enhance the infiltration of natural killer (NK) cells into tumors and promote the activation of T cells, NK cells and dendritic cells in tumor tissues. These findings indicated that conjugate I, which was created by incorporating a Pt chemotherapeutic drug and STING agonist into one molecule, is a promising and potent anticancer drug candidate, opening new avenues for small-molecule-based cancer metalloimmunotherapy.A small-molecule metallo-immunotherapeutic, Pt-MSA-2-I, created by incorporating DNA damaging cisplatin and a STING agonist into one molecule, can enhance STING activation and remodel the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, showing potential against pancreatic cancer.

To investigate the parameter characteristics of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) speed sensorless vector control system and capture the noise matrices quickly and accurately in the speed estimation process of the extended Kalman filter for PMSM, The recursive least square method with forgetting factor is proposed to determine the actual parameters of the system, and then a new variable-scale chaotic particle swarm optimization (VCPSO) algorithm is put forward to accurately obtain the system noise matrix and the measurement noise matrix. The simulation results show that noise matrix optimization of extended Kalman filter by employing VCPSO algorithm under actual motor parameters is better than those employing standard PSO or chaotic PSO algorithms with faster speed and higher accuracy.

Ticks are implicated in the transmission of various human and livestock pathogens worldwide. This study aimed to understand the geographical distribution of tick species, along with tick-associated viruses, in Heilongjiang Province, northeast China. Molecular methods were used to classify tick species, with next-generation sequencing and polymerase chain reaction-based analyses used to assess the viromes of ticks from four representative sampling locations in the Greater Khingan Mountains. Five species of ixodid ticks were identified, including Ixodes persulcatus, Dermacentor nuttalli, Dermacentor silvarum, Haemaphysalis longicornis, and Haemaphysalis concinna. From the 1102 ticks, 3,568,561 high-quality reads were obtained by next-generation sequencing. Following trimming, 302,540 reads were obtained, of which 6577 (2.16%) reads were annotated to viruses. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the viral sequences shared a close relationship with Orthonairovirus, Phlebovirus, deer tick Mononegavirales-like virus, and Jingmen tick virus sequences, but the significance of these newly-identified tick-borne viruses to human and animal health requires further investigation. The results of this study provide a basis not only for further studies on the relationship between ticks and tick-borne viruses, but also for preventing future tick-borne epidemic outbreaks by means of vector control.

Chinese dwarf cherry (Ouli) is a native shrub in northwest China with high ecological value, but the nutritive potential remains to be explored. In this study, the total content of polyphenols, flavonoids, proanthocyanidins, and anthocyanins of Ouli from 30 germplasms were measured, and the antioxidant activities were evaluated by FRAP and ABTS assays. The polyphenol profile was determined by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry. Grey relational analysis and partial least squares were utilized to build chemometrics models for selecting antioxidant compounds. The contents of total flavonoids, proanthocyanidins, phenols and total anthocyanidins of 30 germplasms of Ouli were 119.92–668.76 mg/100 g fresh weight (FW), 90.81–555.44 mg/100 g FW, 148.42–390.43 mg/100 g FW, 0.02–17.26 mg/100 g FW, respectively. A total of 61 compounds were identified, including 40 flavonoids (26 flavonols, 4 anthocyanins, 6 dihydroflavonols, 2 dihydrochalcones, and 2 flavones), 12 proanthocyanidins, 6 phenolic acids, and 3 types of other class compounds (one stilbene and two phenols). The proanthocyanidin compounds in Ouli contributes most to the total antioxidant capacity with the antioxidant rank that procyanidin trimer > tetramer > dimer ≈ monomer. Catechin and procyanidin B1 were the most abundant compounds and were 18.45–162.50 μg/g FW and 30.52–149.42 μg/g FW, respectively. Shanxi (SX) 2 and SX10 could be considered as potential germplasms, and proanthocyanidins could be chosen as a characteristic nutrient evaluation index of Ouli. This study not only takes a key step to lay the groundwork for further research of Ouli but also provides a reference for the discovery of the functional ingredients of other foods.

Experimental results here can give some new insights into the mechanism of selective recovery of scandium and sodium from high alkali Bayer red mud (RM) through sulfation-roasting-leaching process. Effects of roasting and leaching conditions including roasting time, roasting temperature, concentrated H2SO4addition, leaching temperature, leaching time and liquid to RM solid ratio on the leaching rates of calcium, iron, aluminum, silicon, sodium, titanium, scandium and gallium were studied and analyzed, suggesting that roasting temperature and roasting time were the two primary constraints on selective recovery of Sc and Na. High leaching temperature also brought a negative effect on the iron leaching rate. Phase transitions and thermal behaviors of sulfated RM indicated that sodium had an inhibitory action on the liberation of SO2or SO3from metal sulfates, which should follow the decomposition order of TiOSO4gt;Ga2(SO4)3gt;Fe2(SO4)3gt;NaFe(SO4)2gt;NaAl(SO4)2∼Al2(SO4)3gt;Na3Sc(SO4)3gt;Na2SO4gt;CaSO4. After water leaching, solid-liquid separation could be carried out extremely smoothly and >95 wt.% Na+, ∼60 wt.% Sc in [Sc(H2O)x(SO4)n]3–2n(x≤6) with impurities of 0 wt.% Fe3+, 0 wt.% Ti4+, 0 wt.% Ga3+, 7 wt.% Al3+, ∼29 wt.% Ca2+and ∼3 wt.% Si4+could be leached into leachant under the optimized roasting and leaching conditions. The alkali-free residue obtained could then be employed as iron-making or building materials.

Colistin is the last-resort antibiotic to treat multidrug-resistant (MDR) Gram-negative bacterial infections that are untreatable by other clinically available antibiotics. However, the recently merged plasmid-borne gene mobilized colistin resistance (mcr) leads to modification of the colistin target (i.e., bacterial membrane), greatly compromising the therapy outcome of colistin. To address this unmet clinical need, a nanocomplex (CMS-pEt_20 NP) of anionic prodrug colistin methanesulfonate (CMS) and guanidinium-functionalized cationic polymer pEt_20 is developed through facile self-assembly for co-delivering an antibiotic and antimicrobial polymer with membrane affinity to reverse colistin resistance. The CMS-pEt_20 NP formation enables reversal of colistin resistance and complete killing of clinically isolated mcr-positive colistin-resistant bacteria including MDR E. coliand K. pneumoniae, while monotreatment of polymer or antibiotic at equivalent doses exhibits no antibacterial activity. Mechanistic studies reveal that the CMS-pEt_20 NP enhanced the affinity of delivered CMS to the modified membrane of colistin-resistant bacteria, reviving the membrane lytic property of colistin. The increased membrane permeability caused by colistin in turn promotes an influx of pEt_20 to generate intracellular ROS stress, resulting in elimination of colistin-resistant bacteria. More importantly, a colistin-resistant mouse peritonitis-sepsis infection model demonstrates the excellent therapeutic efficacy of CMS-pEt_20 NP with 100% survival of the infected mouse. In addition, the nanocomplex is proven not toxic both in vitroand in vivo. Taken together, the self-assembled antibiotic–polymer nanocomplex with two complementary antibacterial mechanisms successfully reverses the colistin resistance phenotype in bacteria, and it can be a potential strategy to treat untreatable colistin-resistant MDR bacterial infections.

We report on a monolayer (ML) MoS2belt-like single crystal directly fabricated on the Rutile-TiO2(001) surface via chemical vapor deposition (CVD). We find that the photoluminescence (PL) behaviors in the ML MoS2single crystal strongly depend on their shapes and the interface of MoS2/TiO2. Compared with the as-grown triangular ML MoS2, the PL peak position is in a blue shift and the PL intensity is increased for the as-grown ML MoS2belt. Moreover, the PL peak position is in the blue shift by about 38 meV and the intensity is enhanced by nearly 15 times for the as-grown ML MoS2belt crystal on TiO2than those samples transferred onto SiO2/Si substrate. This special PL behavior can be attributed to the in-plane compressive strain that is introduced during the CVD growth of ML MoS2belts confined by the substrate. The energy band of the strained ML MoS2belt is changed with an up-shift in the conduction band minimum (VBM) and a down-shift in the valence band maximum (CBM), and the band gap is thus enlarged. This results in the energy band structural realignment in the interface of MoS2/TiO2, thereby weakening the charge transferring from the TiO2substrate to MoS2and suppressing the concentration of charged excitons to finally enhance the PL intensity of the ML MoS2belt. The substrate-confined ML MoS2belts provide a new route for tailoring light-matter interactions to upgrade their weak quantum yields and low light absorption, which can be utilized in optoelectronic and nanophotonic devices.

In order to study the transition process of the gas-liquid two-phase flow in the centrifugal pump, the model pump was studied experimentally. At the same time, the Eulerian-Eulerian heterogeneous flow model and the SST k-ωturbulence model were used to simulate the transition process of the gas-liquid two-phase flow in the pump. The two-phase flow transition process in the pump was studied in detail by using the numerical model verified by experimental results. The flow law of the transition process in the pump was revealed. The judgment criterion for the end of the gas-liquid two-phase flow transition process in the pump was determined. The results show that the gas volume fraction at the pump outlet is more accurate than the outlet pressure. After 0.45 s, the gas volume fraction at the pump outlet does not change with time. It can be regarded as the end of the transition process. The average gas volume fraction at each monitoring point increases rapidly with time, then decreases slowly, and finally reaches stability. The average pressure at each monitoring point first drops rapidly, then rises slightly, and finally reaches a stable value. Along the radial direction of the section VIII in the volute, the amplitude of the gas velocity fluctuation gradually decreases, and the gas velocity gradually changes from greater than the liquid velocity to less than the liquid velocity since the driving effect of the impeller becomes weak. This study is of great significance to further improve the structural design of the gas-liquid two-phase flow pump and improve the stability of the pump operation.

Conventional optical anti-counterfeiting strategies are based on the single-color emission, which are easily deciphered and thus greatly limited in the application of information security. Herein, a multimodal dynamic optical information coding with red, green, and blue (RGB) tricolors has been developed by photoluminescence (PL), persistent luminescence (PersL), thermally stimulated luminescence (TSL), and thermally stimulated persistent luminescence (TSPL). The BaSi2O2N2:Eu2+phosphors with a blue emission peak at 494 nm were used as the crucial blue optical information coding material and exhibited the distinctive response properties to light, heat, and force stimuli with intrinsic trap depths of 0.674 and 0.82 eV. More importantly, by combining the red Sr2Si5N8:Eu2+,Dy3+and green SrSi2O2N2:Eu2+,Dy3+nitride phosphors, a RGB tricolor and multimodal strategy has been successfully developed for anti-counterfeiting applications. The “RGB tricolor flower” with RGB emissions is given as a typical example to achieve the dynamic display of optical information encryption and decoding through the various PL, PersL, TSL, and TSPL modes. Finally, the traditional quick response (QR) code mechanism has been integrated into the design of multi-information encrypted RGB tricolor anti-counterfeiting devices with different identifiabilities of the encrypted information in natural light, PL, PersL, TSL, and TSPL modes. The laminated layers of RGB QR code patterns containing different specific information, such as “DLPU” and “116034”, can be effectively recognized in the corresponding modes. The design strategy of RGB tricolor and multimodal optical information encryption and decoding devices in this work greatly improves the security level of advanced optical information technologies and extends the potential applications in dynamic anti-counterfeiting fields.

The capability to manipulate the size of the electronic band gap is of importance to semiconductor technology. Among these, a wide direct band gap is particularly helpful in optoelectronic devices due to the efficient utilization of blue and ultraviolet light. Here, we reported a paraffin-enabled compressive folding (PCF) strategy to widen the band gap of two-dimensional (2D) materials. Due to the large thermal expansion coefficient of paraffin, folded 2D materials can be achieved via thermal engineering of the paraffin-assisted transfer process. It can controllably introduce 0.2–1.3% compressive strain onto folded structures depending on the temperature differences and transfer the folding product to both rigid and soft substrates. Exemplified by MoS2, its folded multilayers demonstrated blue-shifts at direct gap transition peaks, six times stronger photoluminescence intensity, almost double mobility, and 20 times higher photoresponsivity over unfolded MoS2. This PCF strategy can attain controllable widening band gap of 2D materials, which will open up novel applications in optoelectronics.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

This paper addresses the event-triggered tracking control design for state-constrained switched nonstrict feedback nonlinear systems. With the help of a time-varying nonlinear shifting function (TVNSF) introduced into the switched nonlinear system, the proposed solution is seen as a unified tool regardless of whether the constraint conditions are state constraints, output constraint, or even no constraint. Also, by allowing the triggering error to vary with the switching signal in time, the negative effects of the mismatch between the individual controller and the subsystem on system performance are trumped. Moreover, by using constructed individual Lyapunov function that depends on the lower bound of the control gain function of individual subsystem, a novel switching signal satisfying the average dwell time (ADT) is provided to ensure the boundedness of all variables in the closed-loop system. Finally, the proposed theory is carried over into a mass-spring-damper system to verify its effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]