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In this work, pre-oxidized polyacrylonitrile fibers are treated with ultrasonic etching and solution etching to produce ultra-thin sections. The evolution of the fibers' microstructure in the pre-oxidation process is observed, and the transformation model of the microstructure of the pre-oxidized fibers is proposed. Scanning electron microscopy and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy were used to observe the microstructure changes of the fibers. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction were used to observe the chemical structure transformation and crystallization degree of the fibers in the pre-oxidation process. The results revealed that pre-oxidized fibers exhibited a smooth surface, while their interior consisted of fibrils. The longitudinal microfibrils were connected by the transverse microfibrils and amorphous regions. The fracture morphology of the fibers shifted from ductile to brittle, and the cross-section gradually became smoother. The linear molecular chain of PAN transformed into a ring structure as pre-oxidation progressed, subsequently leading to the cross-linking of this ring structure into an orderly trapezoidal configuration. The connection between the fibrils was enhanced, and the fiber structure became more compact and stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on MnO2/carbon cloth (CC) composite materials, an Ag-doped MnO2 nanowire, self-assembled, urchin-like structure was synthesized in situ on the surface of CC using a simple method, and a novel and efficient flexible electrode material for supercapacitors was developed. The morphology, structure, elemental distribution, and pore distribution of the material were analyzed using SEM, TEM, XRD, XPS, and BET. The electrochemical performance was tested using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge/discharge (GCD). In the three-electrode system, GCD testing showed that the specific capacitance of the material reached 520.8 F/g at 0.5 A/g. After 2000 cycles at a current density of 1 A/g, the capacitance retention rate was 90.6%, demonstrating its enormous potential in the application of supercapacitor electrode materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Silk nanofibers (SNF) have great applications in high-performance functional nanocomposites due to their excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and degradability. However, the preparation of SNF by traditional methods often requires the use of some environmentally harmful or toxic reagents, limiting its application in green chemistry. In this paper, we successfully prepared SNF using natural silk as raw material and solvent stripping technology by adjusting the solvent concentration and solution ratio (the diameter of about 120 nm). Using the above SNFs as raw materials, SNF membranes were prepared by vacuum filtration technology. In addition, we prepared an SNF/MXene nanocomposite material with excellent humidity sensitivity by simply coating MXene nanosheets with silk fibers. The conductivity of the material can approach 1400.6 S m−1 with excellent mechanical strength (51.34 MPa). The SNF/MXene nanocomposite material with high mechanical properties, high conductivity, and green degradability can be potentially applied in the field of electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, providing a feasible approach for the development of functional nanocomposite materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible supercapacitors are demanded for energy storage of wearable electronics. In this paper, a simple strategy for preparing flexible carbon fibers (CFs) with good energy storage capacity using a mixed acid treatment process is reported. When the volume ratio of concentrated sulfuric acid to concentrated nitric acid is 3:1, the carbon fiber electrodes have the best electrochemical performance with a high capacitance of 27.83 F g−1 at 15 mA g−1 and extremely high capacitance retention of 79.9% after 500 cycles at 100 mA g−1. Furthermore, their energy density can reach 3.86 Wh kg−1 with a power density of 7.5 W kg−1. Such an excellent electrochemical performance of carbon fiber electrodes is attributed to their surface rich oxygen-containing functional groups, rough surface, and a certain number of graphene quantum dots (GQDs). Importantly, the all-solid-state flexible supercapacitor performs excellent bending stability performance with a capacitance retention of almost 100% after 500 times of bending at 180°, showing good prospects and applications in the field of flexible energy storage devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cotton (Gossypium spp.) is the fifth largest oil crop in the world, and cottonseed provides abundant vegetable oil resources and industrial bioenergy fuels for people; therefore, it is of practical significance to increase the oil content of cotton seeds for improving the oil yield and economic benefits of planting cotton. Long-chain acyl-coenzyme A (CoA) synthetase (LACS) capable of catalyzing the formation of acyl-CoAs from free fatty acids has been proven to significantly participate in lipid metabolism, of which whole-genome identification and functional characterization of the gene family have not yet been comprehensively analyzed in cotton. In this study, a total of sixty-five LACS genes were confirmed in two diploid and two tetraploid Gossypium species, which were divided into six subgroups based on phylogenetic relationships with twenty-one other plants. An analysis of protein motif and genomic organizations displayed structural and functional conservation within the same group but diverged among the different group. Gene duplication relationship analysis illustrates the LACS gene family in large scale expansion through WGDs/segmental duplications. The overall Ka/Ks ratio indicated the intense purifying selection of LACS genes in four cotton species during evolution. The LACS genes promoter elements contain numerous light response cis-elements associated with fatty acids synthesis and catabolism. In addition, the expression of almost all GhLACS genes in high seed oil were higher compared to those in low seed oil. We proposed LACS gene models and shed light on their functional roles in lipid metabolism, demonstrating their engineering potential for modulating TAG synthesis in cotton, and the genetic engineering of cottonseed oil provides a theoretical basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-fractured horizontal well (MFHW) technology is a key technology for developing unconventional reservoirs, which can generate a complex fracture network called a stimulated reservoir volume (SRV). Currently, there are many relative analytical models to describe the fluid seepage law, which are not suitable for volcanic reservoirs as of yet. The reasons are as follows: (1) due to the development of natural fractures, multi-scaled flow (matrix, natural fractures, SRV) should be considered to characterize MFHW flow in volcanic reservoirs; (2) non-Darcy flow and stress sensitivity should be considered simultaneously for seepage in volcanic reservoirs. Thus, this paper presents a novel MFHW analysis model of volcanic reservoirs that uses a multi-scale dual-porosity medium model and complex flow mechanisms. Laplace transformation, the Duhamel principle, the perturbation method and Stehfest numerical inversion are employed to solve the model to obtain dynamic pressure response curves. The results show that the pressure response curve can be divided into eight stages. Sensitivity analysis shows that the parameters of hydraulic fractures mainly affect the early flow stage. The parameters of the SRV region mainly affect the middle flow stage. The parameters of unreconstructed regions, non-Darcy flow and stress sensitivity mainly affect the late flow stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to quantitatively evaluate the differences in corneal biomechanics after SMILE and FLEx surgery using an acoustic radiation force optical coherence elastography system (ARF-OCE) and to analyze the effect of the corneal cap on the integrity of corneal biomechanical properties. A custom ring array ultrasound transducer is used to excite corneal tissue to produce Lamb waves. Depth-resolved elastic modulus images of the in vivo cornea after refractive surgery were obtained based on the phase velocity of the Lamb wave. After refractive surgery, the average elastic modulus of the corneal flap decreased (71.7 ± 24.6 kPa), while the elastic modulus of the corneal cap increased (219.5 ± 54.9 kPa). The average elastic modulus of residual stromal bed (RSB) was increased after surgery, and the value after FLEx (305.8 ± 48.5 kPa) was significantly higher than that of SMILE (221.3 ± 43.2 kPa). Compared with FLEx, SMILE preserved most of the anterior stroma with less change in corneal biomechanics, which indicated that SMILE has an advantage in preserving the integrity of the corneal biomechanical properties. Therefore, the biomechanical properties of the cornea obtained by the ARF-OCE system may be one of the essential indicators for evaluating the safety of refractive surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, reservoir engineers used numerical simulation or reservoir engineering methods to predict oil production, and the accuracy of prediction depended more on the engineers' own experience. With the development of data science, a new trend has arisen to use deep learning to predict oil production from the perspective of data. In this study, a hybrid forecasting model (CNN-LSTM) based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network is proposed and used to predict the production of fractured horizontal wells in volcanic reservoirs. The model solves the limitation of traditional methods that rely on personal experience. First, the production constraints and production data are used to form a feature space, and the abstract semantics of the feature time series are extracted through convolutional neural network, then the LSTM neural network is used to predict the time series. The certain hyperparameters of the whole model are optimized by Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO). In order to estimate the model, some production dynamics from the Xinjiang oilfield of China are used for comparative analysis. The experimental results show that the CNN-LSTM model is superior to traditional neural networks and conventional decline curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Production profiling technology is an important method for monitoring the dynamics of oil and gas reservoirs which can effectively improve the efficiency of oil recovery. Production profiling is a technique in which a test instrument is lowered from the tubing to the bottom of the well to measure flow, temperature, pressure, and density in a multi-layer section of a producing well. Normal production profiling process needs to stop production, operate complex, consume long time and high cost. Furthermore, the profile cannot be continuously monitored for a long time. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a production profiling interpretation method based on reservoir primitive microbial DNA sequencing. The microbial stratigraphic baseline with high-resolution features is obtained by sampling and DNA sequencing of produced fluid and cuttings from different wells. Specifically, the random forest algorithm is preferred and improved by comparing the accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and running time of three clustering methods: Naïve-Bayes classifier, random forest classifier, and back-propagation classifier. Constructing PSO-random forest model is based on stratigraphic records and produced fluid bacteria features. The computational accuracy and efficiency of this method allows it to describe the production profile for each formation. Moreover, this test process does not need to stop production with simple operation and does not pollute the formation. Meanwhile, by sampling fluid production at different stages, it can achieve the purpose of long-term effective dynamic monitoring of the reservoir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The velocity of water can cause differences in the growth of inhabitant fish, thereby functioning as an important aquatic environmental factor. In order to explore the response mechanism of Leopard Coralgrouper (Plectropomus leopardus) under different flow velocities, P. leopardus fish of the same sizes were fed in water characterized by three different flow rates (5 cm/s, 10 cm/s, and 20 cm/s) for 150 d, after which the differences in growth and the levels of liver oxidative stress kinase were analyzed. Additionally, potential underlying regulatory pathways were explored using comparative transcriptomic approaches. The results showed that in the feeding environment involving a flow rate of 10 cm/s, the weight increase of P. leopardus and its liver contents of glutathione peroxidase (GPX), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and superoxide dismutase (T-SOD) were significantly higher than for the other two groups. After matching the comparative transcriptomic results between group pairs (5 cm/s and 10 cm/s, 5 cm/s and 20 cm/s, and 10 cm/s and 20 cm/s), a total of 225 common differential gene expressions were screened. The KEGG pathway enrichment analysis showed that these genes were mainly involved in protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum, the TGF-β signaling pathway, fatty acid metabolism, fatty acid synthesis, and other pathways. These results not only provide a theoretical basis for the selection of flow velocity in the culture environment of P. leopardus, but also reveal its potential means of adaption to different flow velocities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperature-sensitive genic male sterile (TGMS) line Beijing Sterility 366 (BS366) has been utilized in hybrid breeding for a long time, but the molecular mechanism underlying male sterility remains unclear. Expression arrays, small RNA, and degradome sequencing were used in this study to explore the potential role of miRNA in the cold-induced male sterility of BS366. Microspore observation showed defective cell plates in dyads and tetrads and shrunken microspores at the vacuolated stage. Differential regulation of Golgi vesicle transport, phragmoplast formation, sporopollenin biosynthesis, pollen exine formation, and lipid metabolism were observed between cold and control conditions. Pollen development was significantly represented in the 352 antagonistic miRNA-target pairs in the integrated analysis of miRNA and mRNA profiles. The specific cleavage of ARF17 and TIR1 by miR160 and miR393 were found in the cold-treated BS366 degradome, respectively. Thus, the cold-mediated miRNAs impaired cell plate formation through repression of Golgi vesicle transport and phragmoplast formation. The repressed expression of ARF17 and TIR1 impaired pollen exine formation. The results of this study will contribute to our understanding of the roles of miRNAs in male sterility in wheat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yinchuan Graben is an important potential exploration area that is located on the western margin of the Ordos Basin. Over 8000 m of Cenozoic strata have been formed since the Cretaceous. With an integrated approach of cores observation, logging analysis, and geochemical analysis, we analyzed the characteristics of the Cenozoic source rocks in the Yinchuan Graben and determined the formation and destruction of the fossil oil reservoirs. With type III kerogen, the TOC of the dark mudstone in the Qingshuiying Formation is up to 7.5%, and the Ro is 0.95–1.04%, indicating the source rocks have entered the mature stage but the hydrocarbon generation potential is insufficient. A quantity of reservoir bitumen and oil-bearing fluid inclusions (GOI = 1.67–4%) were found in the Qingshuiying Formation sandstone in Well YQ-1, which indicates a fossil oil reservoir had existed. The fossil oil reservoir and reservoir bitumen were generated by the unexplored pre-Cenozoic strata in the Yinchuan Graben. The reservoir bitumen has high maturity and is associated with many fluid inclusions with a high homogenization temperature or CO2. This indicates that the bitumen was formed by the pyrolysis of the oil which was caused by the hot fluid migrating along with the deep fault belts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioreactor scale-up from the laboratory scale to the industrial scale has always been a pivotal step in bioprocess development. However, the transition of a bioeconomy from innovation to commercialization is often hampered by performance loss in titer, rate and yield. These are often ascribed to temporal variations of substrate and dissolved oxygen (for instance) in the environment, experienced by microorganisms at the industrial scale. Oscillations in dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration are not uncommon. Furthermore, these fluctuations can be exacerbated with poor mixing and mass transfer limitations, especially in fermentations with filamentous fungus as the microbial cell factory. In this work, the response of glucose-limited chemostat cultures of an industrial Penicillium chrysogenum strain to different dissolved oxygen levels was assessed under both DO shift-down (60% → 20%, 10% and 5%) and DO ramp-down (60% → 0% in 24 h) conditions. Collectively, the results revealed that the penicillin productivity decreased as the DO level dropped down below 20%, while the byproducts, e.g., 6-oxopiperidine-2-carboxylic acid (OPC) and 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6APA), accumulated. Following DO ramp-down, penicillin productivity under DO shift-up experiments returned to its maximum value in 60 h when the DO was reset to 60%. The result showed that a higher cytosolic redox status, indicated by NADH/NAD+, was observed in the presence of insufficient oxygen supply. Consistent with this, flux balance analysis indicated that the flux through the glyoxylate shunt was increased by a factor of 50 at a DO value of 5% compared to the reference control, favoring the maintenance of redox status. Interestingly, it was observed that, in comparison with the reference control, the penicillin productivity was reduced by 25% at a DO value of 5% under steady state conditions. Only a 14% reduction in penicillin productivity was observed as the DO level was ramped down to 0. Furthermore, intracellular levels of amino acids were less sensitive to DO levels at DO shift-down relative to DO ramp-down conditions; this difference could be caused by different timescales between turnover rates of amino acid pools (tens of seconds to minutes) and DO switches (hours to days at steady state and minutes to hours at ramp-down). In summary, this study showed that changes in oxygen availability can lead to rapid metabolite, flux and productivity responses, and dynamic DO perturbations could provide insight into understanding of metabolic responses in large-scale bioreactors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the high complexity of geo-spatial entities and the limited field of view of LiDAR equipment, pairwise registration is a necessary step for integrating point clouds from neighbouring LiDAR stations. Considering that accurate extraction of point features is often difficult without the use of man-made reflectors, and the initial approximate values for the unknown transformation parameters must be estimated in advance to ensure the correct operation of those iterative methods, a closed-form solution to linear feature-based registration of point clouds is proposed in this study. Plücker coordinates are used to represent the linear features in three-dimensional space, whereas dual quaternions are employed to represent the spatial transformation. Based on the theory of least squares, an error norm (objective function) is first constructed by assuming that each pair of corresponding linear features is equivalent after registration. Then, by applying the extreme value analysis to the objective function, detailed derivations of the closed-form solution to the proposed linear feature-based registration method are given step by step. Finally, experimental tests are conducted on a real dataset. The derived experimental result demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed solution: By using eigenvalue decomposition to replace the linearization of the objective function, the proposed solution does not require any initial estimates of the unknown transformation parameters, which assures the stability of the registration method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since pairwise registration is a necessary step for the seamless fusion of point clouds from neighboring stations, a closed-form solution to planar feature-based registration of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) point clouds is proposed in this paper. Based on the Plücker coordinate-based representation of linear features in three-dimensional space, a quad tuple-based representation of planar features is introduced, which makes it possible to directly determine the difference between any two planar features. Dual quaternions are employed to represent spatial transformation and operations between dual quaternions and the quad tuple-based representation of planar features are given, with which an error norm is constructed. Based on L2-norm-minimization, detailed derivations of the proposed solution are explained step by step. Two experiments were designed in which simulated data and real data were both used to verify the correctness and the feasibility of the proposed solution. With the simulated data, the calculated registration results were consistent with the pre-established parameters, which verifies the correctness of the presented solution. With the real data, the calculated registration results were consistent with the results calculated by iterative methods. Conclusions can be drawn from the two experiments: (1) The proposed solution does not require any initial estimates of the unknown parameters in advance, which assures the stability and robustness of the solution; (2) Using dual quaternions to represent spatial transformation greatly reduces the additional constraints in the estimation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to quantitatively evaluate the differences in corneal biomechanics after SMILE and FLEx surgery using an acoustic radiation force optical coherence elastography system (ARF-OCE) and to analyze the effect of the corneal cap on the integrity of corneal biomechanical properties. A custom ring array ultrasound transducer is used to excite corneal tissue to produce Lamb waves. Depth-resolved elastic modulus images of the in vivo cornea after refractive surgery were obtained based on the phase velocity of the Lamb wave. After refractive surgery, the average elastic modulus of the corneal flap decreased (71.7 ± 24.6 kPa), while the elastic modulus of the corneal cap increased (219.5 ± 54.9 kPa). The average elastic modulus of residual stromal bed (RSB) was increased after surgery, and the value after FLEx (305.8 ± 48.5 kPa) was significantly higher than that of SMILE (221.3 ± 43.2 kPa). Compared with FLEx, SMILE preserved most of the anterior stroma with less change in corneal biomechanics, which indicated that SMILE has an advantage in preserving the integrity of the corneal biomechanical properties. Therefore, the biomechanical properties of the cornea obtained by the ARF-OCE system may be one of the essential indicators for evaluating the safety of refractive surgery.