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of supporting mucosal immune barrier integrity and prevention of some pathogenic infections in aquatic species, are key areas of active study, often focusing on feed additives. The objectives of this study were to explore the effects of feeding cMOS (concentrated mannan oligosaccharide) on the gill and skin mucosal barriers of goldfish (Carassius auratus Linnaeus) and evaluate health status during Ichthyophthirius multifiliis infection. After feeding the cMOS-containing diet for 60 days, Hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining showed greater length of gill lamella and thicker dermal dense layer, while Alcian Blue and Periodic acid-Schiff (AB-PAS) staining showed higher numbers of mucin cells in cMOS fed fish. Chemical analysis showed that fish fed cMOS had greater enzyme activity of lysozyme (LZM) and alkaline phosphatase (AKP) in gill and skin tissues, while qRT-PCR revealed higher expression of Muc-2 and IL-1β, as well as lower expression of IL-10. After Ichthyophthirius multifiliis challenge, goldfish fed the cMOS diet had lower mortality and infection rates, as well as fewer visible white spots on the body surfaces. Histologically, the gill and skin of these fish presented less tissue damage and fewer parasites, and had a greater number of mucus cells. In addition, the expression of Muc-2 and IL-10 were notably higher while the expression of IL-1β was significantly lower in cMOS fed goldfish than control fed fish. In this study, cMOS fed goldfish had stronger immune barrier function of skin and gill mucous, and better survival following Ichthyophthirius multifiliis infection.

Yinchenhao Decoction (YD), a Chinese herbal medicine, has been traditionally used for treatment of metabolic liver diseases. A 10-week feeding trail was carried out to examine the effects of YD supplementation in a high carbohydrate diet (HCD) on liver histopathology, immune response, disease resistance, and expression of genes associated with endoplasmic reticulum stress, autophagy, apoptosis, necroptosis and inflammation in juvenile largemouth. A diet containing 9% carbohydrate was used as a low carbohydrate diet (LCD), and a HCD was formulated to contain 18% carbohydrate and supplemented with 0, 0.5, 1, 2 or 4% YD (HCD, HCD+0.5YD, HCD+1YD, HCD+2YD and HCD+4YD). Triplicate groups of fish (5.6 ± 0.2 g) were feed the test diets to visual satiety for 10 weeks. The highest survival rate after Nocardia seriolae challenge was recorded for the HCD+4YD group. YD application led to reduced ACP, AKP, AST and ALT activities. HCD-induced cells swelling, ruptured cell membrane, migrated nuclei and increasing inflammatory cells in hepatocytes were mitigated by YD addition. Moreover, YD decreased the expressions of pro-inflammation genes (TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-8, hepcidin1, NF-κB, COX2, CD80 and CD83) and increased the mRNA levels of anti-inflammation genes (IL-10 and IKBα). The mode of liver cell death was preferably changed to programed apoptosis rather than uncontrolled necroptosis by application of YD in HCD. Furthermore, the expression of UPR genes (IRE1, Eif2α, ATF6, XBP1 and GRP78/Bip) and autophagy genes (LC3-2, BNIP3 and P62) was increased by YD supplementation. In summary, our results demonstrated that YD addition in HCD enhances UPR, autophagy and programed apoptosis maintaining the homeostasis, and decreases uncontrolled necroptosis and inflammation, ultimately leading to improved immune response in largemouth bass.

Summary Ionic Coulomb blockade is one of the ion transport phenomena revealing the quantized nature of ionic charges, which is of crucial importance to our understanding of the sub-continuum transport in nanofluidics and the mechanism of biological ion channels. Here, we report an experimental observation and plausible theoretical reasoning of ionic conduction oscillations. Our experiment is performed under confinement in sub-nanometer (sub-nm) MoS2 pores with optoelectronic control enabled for active tuning of pore surface charges. Under this charge control, we measure the ionic current at fixed voltages and observe multiple current peaks. Our analytical discussions and molecular dynamics simulations further reveal that the conductance oscillations may originate from the multi-ion interaction at the pore entry, particularly the electrostatic repulsion of ions external to the pore by ions bound inside the pore. Our work adds a further understanding of ionic Coulomb blockade effect and paves the way for developing advanced ionic machineries.

Cordaitaleans, as close relatives of modern conifers, had a long geological history in the Cathaysia from the Visean (Mississippian, lower Carboniferous) to the end of Permian. They became prominent since the late Pennsylvanian, and best developed during the Cisuralian (early Permian) in North China, serving as the volumetrically dominant to subdominant elements of wetland floras. Architecture and ecology of the Cathaysian cordaitaleans from non-peat-forming environments are poorly known. Here, we report giant cordaitalean trunks and describe their morphology and brief anatomical features from the Cisuralian Taiyuan Formation in Yangquan, Shanxi Province, North China. These trunks are characterized by the Artisia-like pith and pycnoxylic xylem. Absence of growth rings in the logs suggests they grew under non-seasonal humid tropical conditions. They are preserved in sandstone bodies interpreted as deposits of distributary river channels on the delta plain. Several trunks with attached rooting systems indicate that these trees may have been growing on channel levees or delta plains, and brought into the channels by lateral bank erosion. Allometric estimates of tree height suggests that the largest trees were up to approximately 43.5 m tall. Mature cordaitaleans with straight trunks were probably the tallest trees and formed the canopy of the riparian forest in North China during the Cisuralian.

Metal magnesium is mainly produced from the calcined dolomite by the vacuum silicothermic process. However, it requires a high energy input. An improved process was proposed in which the magnesium was produced from pre-prepared pellets. In this work, diffusion and phase transformations in the pre-prepared pellets during the reduction process were investigated. The results suggested that the reduction ratio is remarkably increased as the reduction temperature increased or the dolomite/ferrosilicon molar ratio decreased. Only Si diffused into dolime, which caused the reduction reactions and Fe might not have been involved in the reactions. The liquid Ca-Si alloy was produced. CaSi was an important intermediate product to produce CaSi2 and Ca vapor. Both CaSi2 and Ca vapor were the effective reducing agents for MgO. This process for Mg production includes both solid–liquid and solid–gas reactions. A plausible reactions route was proposed based on experimental and thermodynamic analyses.

Mechanochemical reaction involves simultaneous chemical reaction and particle crushing; the latter increases the effective reaction area and improves the reactivity, thus enhancing its kinetics. The classical shrinking core model was used to model the kinetics of bastnaesite mechanochemical decomposition in NaOH solution, which shows a questionable result. Mechanochemical reaction is a dynamic process, where the particle shape and concentration in reaction interface undergo constant change. Thus, a physically consistent model was applied to describe the kinetics. The variations in OH− concentration and particle shape were considered in the revision of model. Considering the variation in OH− concentration in solution with time, the model with varying OH− concentration agrees better with the experimental data, improving the regression coefficients to between 0.936 and 0.992. By introducing fractal geometry to deal with the irregular system, the model was further optimized, and the regression coefficients increase to between 0.940 and 0.997. All these models considere shrinking particle approaches and controlling mechanisms for the diffusion and chemical reaction. Finally, the fractal model with varying OH− concentration was selected to describe the mechanochemical decomposition of bastnaesite, which indicates that the process is controlled by chemical reaction.

CeO2 was successfully prepared by electrotransformation of CeCl3 solution in previous work. In this work, the oxidation mechanism of Ce3+ was determined by cyclic voltammetry and a potential-pH diagram, which indicated that Ce3+ was oxidized by oxygen during the electrotransformation, and the important role of the oxygen content in solution was confirmed. Thus, the influence of atmosphere (air/argon/oxygen) on CeO2 preparation was investigated by adjusting the gas type and flow rate. XRD patterns demonstrated the cubic fluorite structure and grain size of CeO2. With an increase in the gas flow rate, the grain size decreased, but the particle size increased. This result indicated that the smaller grains contained more lattice defects and higher surface energy, so the grains preferred to agglomerate together, forming larger particles. XPS spectra proved that Ce3+ and Ce4+ both existed in the CeO2 samples. Raman scattering revealed that more oxygen vacancies could be produced with an argon atmosphere and high gas flow.

Tissue engineering is promising in realizing successful treatments of human body tissue loss that current methods cannot treat well or achieve satisfactory clinical outcomes. In scaffold-based bone tissue engineering, a high performance scaffold underpins the success of a bone tissue engineering strategy and a major direction in the field is to produce bone tissue engineering scaffolds with desirable shape, structural, physical, chemical and biological features for enhanced biological performance and for regenerating complex bone tissues. Three-dimensional (3D) printing can produce customized scaffolds that are highly desirable for bone tissue engineering. The enormous interest in 3D printing and 3D printed objects by the science, engineering and medical communities has led to various developments of the 3D printing technology and wide investigations of 3D printed products in many industries, including biomedical engineering, over the past decade. It is now possible to create novel bone tissue engineering scaffolds with customized shape, architecture, favorable macro-micro structure, wettability, mechanical strength and cellular responses. This article provides a concise review of recent advances in the R & D of 3D printing of bone tissue engineering scaffolds. It also presents our philosophy and research in the designing and fabrication of bone tissue engineering scaffolds through 3D printing., Highlights • 3D printing of bioceramic pastes followed by sintering improves bone formation. • Cryogenic 3D printing of drug loaded polymer solution supports cell differentiation. • Surface modification of 3D printed scaffolds improves the cellular responses.

1-Ethyl-2, 3-dimethylimidazolium nitrate [C2mmim][NO3] is a typical solvent for industrial applications. Under inappropriate temperatures, [C2mmim][NO3] may present a flammability hazard due to thermal decomposition. This study investigated the thermal stability and flammability of [C2mmim][NO3] via simultaneous thermogravimetric analyzer, homemade combustion test device (CTD) with high speed camera, and thermogravimetry coupled with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (TG-FTIR). The thermal decomposition of [C2mmim][NO3] was divided into two parts based upon the dynamic experiments, and the maximum operating temperature was determined to comprehensively estimate the thermal stability of [C2mmim][NO3]. CTD experiments indicated that [C2mmim][NO3] could produce intense combustion when heated. Further TG-FTIR experiments confirmed that [C2mmim][NO3] decomposed to produce a large number of flammable gases, such as ethylene, which might be the reason that [C2mmim][NO3] has prominent flammability.

Line-structured laser scanner has been widely applied in industrial applications, such as 3D reconstruction. Breakpoint detection of the laser stripe centerline is necessary for further analysis. The laser stripe centerline is always not smooth in industrial environments due to the inevitable noises. In this paper, a robust and accurate breakpoint detection method named Fitting-Derivative-Optimization (FDO) is proposed, which mainly includes three steps. The first step is to fit the noisy laser stripe centerline. A novel piecewise fitting method without any empirical parameters is proposed in this step. The second step is to initialize the breakpoints. The second derivative curve of the point slope angle in the fitted laser stripe centerline is calculated. The local extremum points in the second derivative curve are extracted to be the initial breakpoints. The third step is to optimize the breakpoints. In this step, a new optimization method named Neighborhood-Circle (NC) is proposed, which optimizes each breakpoint in its neighborhood circularly to weaken the influence of correlation between breakpoints. Finally, robustness and accuracy of the proposed FDO method are evaluated by simulations and experiments respectively. In simulations, different Gaussian noises are added into the laser stripe centerline for comparisons. Experiments are also implemented to detect breakpoints for two industry parts by using a line-structured laser scanning system. Both of the simulation and experiment results demonstrate that the proposed FDO method can perform well in industrial environments.

A novel process of calcification-leaching for bastnaesite concentrate (REFCO3) was proposed. The prior calcification was carried out in the system of NaOH CaO H2O and the lgC-pH pattern for Ce F Ca C H2O system was drawn. The thermodynamics result indicates that decomposition for bastnaesite requires certain alkaline condition, but excessive alkalinity also causes decomposition of CaF2. XRD and SEM-EDS analyses on the calcification-leaching process reveal that bastnaesite first decomposes into RE (OH)3 and CaF2. Then, by HCl leaching rare earths were extracted, while CaF2 was left in the leaching residue. In addition, effects of temperature, time, NaOH and CaO on the calcification were investigated. The results show that the leaching rate of rare earths (REs) reaches 72.5 wt%, at the same time 99.2 wt% of F is left in leaching residue with 20 wt% NaOH and 38 wt% CaO at 493 K for 180 min.

Rational construction of Z-scheme photocatalysts and deep exploration of Z-scheme transfer mechanism are highly desirable for improving the activity of CO2 reduction photocatalysts but remains a significant challenge. Herein, we synthesized a series of heterostructured CdS/CdWO4 materials by selectively depositing CdS nanoparticles on the edges of CdWO4 nanoplates. Selective deposition mechanism of CdS and the formation of the composites were studied in detail. The photocatalytic CO2 reduction activities of the synthesized materials were investigated and the results show that CdS/CdWO4 materials exhibit higher photocatalytic activity than pure CdS and CdWO4. We suggest that the enhanced photoreduction CO2 activity is attributed to Z-scheme charge transfer mechanism based on the analyses of the products of CO2 reduction and the band structure of CdS and CdWO4. Kelvin probe force microscope on CdWO4 nanoplates shows that the photogenerated electrons, driven by electric field forces, would migrate to the edge of CdWO4. The charge transfer direction, coupling with the selective deposition of CdS nanoparticles, facilitates CdS/CdWO4 composites following Z-scheme transfer. In-situ Pt photodeposition tests provide strong experimental support to the charge transfer mechanism. The results gained herein are expected to provide some useful insights into the structure-oriented rational design of Z-scheme photocatalysts for CO2 reduction.

Temperature is a key factor that influences fish metabolism. Therefore, it is important to understand how temperature variation affects lipid metabolism and energy consumption in fish. We determined respiration frequency, Na+/K+-ATPase activity, and lipid metabolism in common carp (Cyprinus carpio) after 18 days of temperature stress (5 °C and 30 °C, with 17 °C as the control). We found that respiratory frequency was positively correlated with water temperature (p