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Reversible upconversion luminescence (RUCL) through defect engineering holds great promise for various applications, including photoswitches, information recording, and storage devices. However, the reversible photoluminescence in inorganic crystals is rarely reported. Crucially, the underlying mechanism of reversible luminescence remains unclear, which challenges the design of high‐performance reversible luminescence inorganic materials. Herein, an anomalous RUCL in a class of β‐Ba2ScAlO5:Yb3+/RE3+ (RE = Er, Ho, Tm, Tb, Sm, or Eu) phosphors is reported. By alternating annealing environments (air or hydrogen), a robust and repeatable cycle of luminescence and quenching is observed. The first‐principles calculations reveal that porous β‐Ba2ScAlO5:Yb3+/RE3+ can host oxygen interstitials (during annealing in air) with a low formation energy. The interstitial oxygen state, close to the Yb 4f state, leads to luminescence quenching. Removal of oxygen interstitials (during annealing in hydrogen) can restore the luminescence by initiating radiative energy transfer. Experimentally, the existence of interstitial oxygen is confirmed with neutron diffraction technology. It is worth noting that the strong chemical bonds in crystals make adding and removing anion vacancies challenging, unlike the more "free" interstitials. The findings offer new insights into manipulating upconversion luminescence in inorganic crystals by defect engineering and provide motivation for future research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimized catalytic properties and reactant adsorption energy played a crucial role in promoting CO2 electrocatalysis. Herein, Cu7S4/Cu underwent in situ dynamic restructuring to generate S−Cu2O/Cu hybrid catalyst for effective electrochemical CO2 reduction to formate that outperformed Cu2O/Cu and Cu7S4. Thermodynamic and in situ Raman spectra revealed that the optimized adsorption of the HCOO* intermediate on S−Cu2O/Cu was regulated and the H2 pathway (surface H) was suppressed by S‐doping. Meanwhile, Cu7S4/Cu nanoflowers created abundant boundaries for ECR and strengthened the CO2 adsorption by inducing Cu. These findings provide a new perspective on synthetic methods for various electrocatalytic reduction processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environmental stability of barium calcium aluminate for impregnated cathodes is significant for storing impregnants and fabricating thermionic cathodes. In this work, two types of phase structures are obtained in the 612‐type aluminate. The Ba3CaAl2O7 single‐phase structure is obtained if the crucible is uncovered after sintering for 300 min at 1200°C. In contrast, the Ba3Al2O6 and BaCO3 dual‐phase structure is achieved by suppressing the solid‐state reaction by covering the crucible and reducing the sintering duration to 75 min. The dual‐phase sample exhibits superior environment stability to the single‐phase one when exposed to moist air. The reason could be attributed to the smaller specific surface area and total pore volume of the dual‐phase sample due to the incomplete liberty of gases in sintering. Because of their identical compositions, the cathodes impregnated with different sintered phases possess comparable electron emission capacities. This work provides an effective process to synthesize 612‐aluminate with good environmental stability and emissive capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an additive margin network with adaptive feature recalibration, AMNets, for handling a wide range of visual tasks, is proposed. The new AMNets consists of three improvements on convolutional neural networks: (1) squeeze‐and‐excitation mechanism was embedded into the the residual block of single layer to improve the performance of the classification, (2) softmax loss was replaced by the additive margin softmax loss to minimize intra‐class variance and maximize inter‐class variance, and (3) Adam optimizer was exploited to update iteratively the network parameters. Experiments on the Brain Stroke CT Image Dataset show that our additive margin network is quite effective to improve state‐of‐the‐art algorithms. Network algorithms have been extensively used in medical image field to pursuit a more accuracy of disease recognition. This paper proposes AMNets, an additive margin network with adaptive feature recalibration for handling a wide range of visual tasks in medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mechanically and electrochemically stable and ionically conducting solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) is important for the stabilization of metal anodes. Since SEIs are originally absent in aqueous zinc metal batteries (AZMBs), it is very challenging to suppress water‐induced side reactions and dendrite growth of Zn metal anodes (ZMAs). Herein, a gradient‐structured and robust solid gradient SEI, consisting of B,O‐inner and F,O‐exterior layer, in situ formed by hydrated eutectic electrolyte for the homogeneous and reversible Zn deposition, is demonstrated. Moreover, the molar ratio of acetamide to Zn salt is modulated to prohibit the water activity and the hydrolysis of BF4− as well as to achieve high ionic conductivity owing to the regulation of the solvation sheath of Zn2+. Consequently, the eutectic electrolyte allows Zn||Zn symmetric cells to achieve a cycling lifespan of over 4400 h at 0.5 mA cm−2 as well as Zn||PANI full cells to deliver a high capacity retention of 73.2% over 4000 cycles at 1 A g−1 and to demonstrate the stable operation at low temperatures. This work provides the rational design for the hydrated eutectic electrolyte and the corresponding gradient SEIs for dendrite‐free and stable Zn anodes even under harsh conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease featuring an abnormal immune microenvironment and resultant accumulation of hydrogen ions (H+) produced by activated osteoclasts (OCs). Currently, clinic RA therapy can hardly achieve sustained or efficient therapeutic outcomes due to the failures in generating sufficient immune modulation and manipulating the accumulation of H+ that deteriorates bone damage. Herein, a highly effective immune modulatory nanocatalytic platform, nanoceria‐loaded magnesium aluminum layered double hydroxide (LDH‐CeO2), is proposed for enhanced immune modulation based on acid neutralization and metal ion inherent bioactivity. Specifically, the mild alkaline LDH initiates significant M2 repolarization of macrophages triggered by the elevated antioxidation effect of CeO2 via neutralizing excessive H+ in RA microenvironment, thus resulting in the efficient recruitment of regulatory T cell (Treg) and suppressions on T helper 17 cell (Th 17) and plasma cells. Moreover, the osteogenic activity is stimulated by the Mg ion released from LDH, thereby promoting the damaged bone healing. The encouraging therapeutic outcomes in adjuvant‐induced RA model mice demonstrate the high feasibility of such a therapeutic concept, which provides a novel and efficient RA therapeutic modality by the immune modulatory and bone‐repairing effects of inorganic nanocatalytic material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frost heave can lead to both the ground uplifting and frost heave pressure under different circumstances, and cause many engineering problems. To describe the characteristics of frost heave under various thermo‐hydro‐mechanical (THM) coupling conditions and calculate both the frost heave amount and the frost heave pressure, the coupled THM process, as well as the phase change of the pore water, should be considered for freezing soil. In this paper, thermodynamic equilibrium conditions in saturated freezing soil were derived to account for the mechanical effect on the cryogenic suction and unfrozen saturation of pore water during phase transition. Then the governing equations were developed considering the water flow, heat transfer, stress equilibrium, phase change, ice segregation, and their complex interactions. Based on that, a numerical model considering fully THM coupling is presented within the framework of finite element provided by COMSOL. Both frost heave amount tests and frost heave pressure tests were simulated to verify the proposed model. Then the model was applied to subgrades with different types of soil and different boundary conditions, to reveal the characteristics of frost heave amount and frost heave pressure under different conditions, and at the same time to demonstrate the model's applicative prospect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of non‐precious metal electrocatalysts for efficient oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is a significant research field vital for the progress of zinc−air battery technology. Here, we purposely constructed a core‐shell heterostructured electrocatalyst consisting of MnO nanotubes covered by Co nanoparticles anchored on N‐doped carbon substrate. MnO@Co/NC displayed superior ORR capability with a half‐wave potential of 0.85 V and almost no potential decay after 10,000 cycles CV test, outform that of commercial Pt/C catalysts. Employing MnO@Co/NC as the air electrode catalyst in primary Zn−air batteries leads to a top power density of 145 mW cm−2 and an enhanced specific capacity of 869 mAh g−1 as compared to commercial noble metal catalysts. Such superb ORR performance outcomes primarily stem from the synergistic effect between Co/NC shell and MnO core since the coupling structure not only regulates the inherent electronic structure but also accelerates electron transfer speed and boosts the active sites. Besides, the Co/NC outer layer can also help to improve the corrosion resistance of MnO@Co/NC in the electrolyte. This work demonstrated that the core‐shell heterostructured non‐precious catalysts open up a new avenue for obtaining sufficiently effective ORR catalysts in Zn−air batteries and other related applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For autonomous driving, traversability analysis is one of the most basic and essential tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel LiDAR‐based terrain modeling approach, which could output stable, complete, and accurate terrain models and traversability analysis results. As terrain is an inherent property of the environment that does not change with different view angles, our approach adopts a multiframe information fusion strategy for terrain modeling. Specifically, a normal distributions transform mapping approach is adopted to accurately model the terrain by fusing information from consecutive LiDAR frames. Then the spatial‐temporal Bayesian generalized kernel inference and bilateral filtering are utilized to promote the stability and completeness of the results while simultaneously retaining the sharp terrain edges. Based on the terrain modeling results, the traversability of each region is obtained by performing geometric connectivity analysis between neighboring terrain regions. Experimental results show that the proposed method could run in real‐time and outperforms state‐of‐the‐art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic HBV infection patients who do not conform to any of the usual immune states are regarded as 'grey zone' patients. We aimed to investigate the proportion of chronic HBV infection patients in the grey zone, and evaluate the clinical characteristics and liver pathological changes in grey zone patients. Clinical data of 1391 treatment‐naive chronic HBV infection patients with liver biopsy were collected. Natural history of HBV infection was determined based on European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) 2017, American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) 2018 and Chinese 2019 guidelines for the prevention and treatment of chronic HBV infection. Significant liver histological changes and associated risk factors of normal ALT grey zone patients were analysed. According to EASL, AASLD and Chinese criteria, there were 50.0%, 28% and 37.4% chronic HBV infection patients in the grey zone. Among the 353 grey zone patients with normal ALT, 72.4% had significant liver histological changes. ALT (optimal cut‐off value 25 IU/L) and HBV DNA (optimal cut‐off value 18,000 IU/mL) were independent risk factors of significant liver histological abnormalities. In conclusion, a substantial proportion of grey zone patients with normal ALT have significant liver histological changes that can be predicted by levels of serum ALT and HBV DNA. These results provide guidance of antiviral treatment in grey zone patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Most studies have focused on the degradation of acrylamide (AM) by a single strain. There are relatively few studies on the treatment of AM by anaerobic activated sludge. Previous studies have shown that conductive particles can change the mode of electron transport between anaerobic microorganisms. Therefore, this study compared the enhancement effect of three different particles (Fe3O4, granular activated carbon (GAC), graphite) on the treatment of synthetic AM wastewater by anaerobic activated sludge under different temperature conditions (30, 25, 20 °C) and particle dose (2, 6 g L−1). RESULTS: The results showed that 6 g L−1 GAC improved the removal rate of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and AM by 22.95% and 19% compared with the control group at 30 °C, respectively, indicating that the addition of GAC contributes to the degradation of AM and improves COD removal rate. Results of high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) showed that the activated sludge with GAC obviously promoted the degradation of AM. Besides, a large amount of propionic acid was detected in all experimental groups during the reaction, and the activated sludge with GAC promoted degradation of propionic acid. CONCLUSION: Anaerobic activated sludge supplemented with sufficient GAC can not only absorb and degrade AM synchronously but also accelerate the conversion of intermediates, such as acrylic and propionic acids. Based on the results of HPLC and liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, a possible method of degradation of AM by anaerobic activated sludge was proposed. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a highly toxic, and flammable acid gas that is widely present in confined spaces. However, conventional adsorption materials are inefficient and have poor reuse properties. Metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs) show potential viability as novel materials in gas adsorption. Herein, mainstream MOFs were investigated based on molecular simulation techniques to explore the differences contributing to H2S adsorption. The adsorption process of H2S in MOFs was simulated by Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) method, and the diffusion behavior was investigated based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The results showed that the interaction energy and isosteric heat of adsorption were important criteria for determining the adsorption performance of H2S. The regulation of open metal sites could help to further enhance the adsorption of H2S, and the pore structure of MOFs affected the capture of H2S. A higher self‐diffusion rate implies faster H2S capture. Hydrogen bonds affect the trapping efficiency of MOFs for H2S and the relative positions of ligands in the benzene ring cause subtle differences in adsorption. This study provides design strategies for the improvement of new high‐performing MOFs for H2S adsorption in confined spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) have a strong feature extraction ability for images and present a high level of efficiency and accuracy in object detection and image recognition. When CNN is used to model microwave devices, the existing literature generally uses its size parameters as one‐dimensional (1‐D) input, which does not give full play to the image‐processing ability of CNN. In order to make full use of the characteristics of CNN, this letter converts the 1‐D input of microwave devices into the form of an image model, that is, the 1‐D input is transformed into a two‐dimensional (2‐D) matrix composed of 0 and 1 as the input. The image model is combined with CNN, called image‐based CNN (ICNN), which establishes a deep learning surrogate model between the physical parameters and electrical properties of microwave devices and improves the accuracy and generalization ability of the model. Taking the resonant frequency of the microstrip antenna as a simulation example, modelling was carried out by the proposed ICNN and compared with the mainstream machine learning methods. The results show that the proposed method has high convergence and fitting accuracy.A new data processing technique‐image model, which transforms the original 1‐D data into 2‐D data to enhance the powerful feature extraction ability of CNN modelling is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Delineation of Organs‐at‐Risks (OARs) is an important step in radiotherapy treatment planning. As manual delineation is time‐consuming, labor‐intensive and affected by inter‐ and intra‐observer variability, a robust and efficient automatic segmentation algorithm is highly desirable for improving the efficiency and repeatability of OAR delineation. Purpose: Automatic segmentation of OARs in medical images is challenged by low contrast, various shapes and imbalanced sizes of different organs. We aim to overcome these challenges and develop a high‐performance method for automatic segmentation of 10 OARs required in radiotherapy planning for brain tumors. Methods: A novel two‐stage segmentation framework is proposed, where a coarse and simultaneous localization of all the target organs is obtained in the first stage, and a fine segmentation is achieved for each organ, respectively, in the second stage. To deal with organs with various sizes and shapes, a stratified segmentation strategy is proposed, where a High‐ and Low‐Resolution Residual Network (HLRNet) that consists of a multiresolution branch and a high‐resolution branch is introduced to segment medium‐sized organs, and a High‐Resolution Residual Network (HRRNet) is used to segment small organs. In addition, a label fusion strategy is proposed to better deal with symmetric pairs of organs like the left and right cochleas and lacrimal glands. Results: Our method was validated on the dataset of MICCAI ABCs 2020 challenge for OAR segmentation. It obtained an average Dice of 75.8% for 10 OARs, and significantly outperformed several state‐of‐the‐art models including nnU‐Net (71.6%) and FocusNet (72.4%). Our proposed HLRNet and HRRNet improved the segmentation accuracy for medium‐sized and small organs, respectively. The label fusion strategy led to higher accuracy for symmetric pairs of organs. Conclusions: Our proposed method is effective for the segmentation of OARs of brain tumors, with a better performance than existing methods, especially on medium‐sized and small organs. It has a potential for improving the efficiency of radiotherapy planning with high segmentation accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercialization of Zn‐metal anodes with low cost and high theoretical capacity is hindered by the poor reversibility caused by dendrites growth, side reactions, and the slow Zn2+‐transport and reaction kinetics. Herein, a reversible heterogeneous electrode of Zn‐nanocrystallites/polyvinyl‐phosphonic acrylamide (Zn/PPAm) with fast electrochemical kinetics is designed for the first time: phosphonic acid groups with strong polarity and chelation effect ensure structural reversibility and stability of the three‐dimensional Zn‐storage‐host PPAm network and the Zn/PPAm hybrid; hydrophobic carbon chains suppress side reactions such as hydrogen evolution and corrosion; weak electron‐donating amide groups constitute Zn2+‐transport channels and promote "desolvation" and "solvation" effects of Zn2+ by dragging the PPAm network on the Zn‐metal surface to compress/stretch during Zn plating/stripping, respectively; and the heterostructure and Zn nanocrystallites suppress dendrite growth and enhance electrochemical reactivity, respectively. Thus, the Zn/PPAm electrode shows cycle reversibility of over 6000 h with a hysteresis voltage as low as 31 mV in symmetrical cells and excellent durability and flexibility in fiber‐shaped batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aqueous Zn metal‐based batteries have considerable potential as energy storage system; however, their application is extremely limited by dendrite development and poor reversibility. In this study, to overcome both challenges, F‐doped carbon nanoparticles (FCNPs) are uniformly constructed on substrates (Ti, Zn, Cu, and steel) by a plasma‐assisted surface modification, which endows reversible and uniform deposition of Zn metal. FCNPs with high surface charge density act as nucleation assistors and form numerous homogenous Zn nucleation sites toward Zn 3D growth, which improves Zn plating kinetic and results in uniform Zn deposition. Furthermore, the ZnF2 solid electrolyte interface generated during cycling contributes to rapid mass transfer and enhances Zn reversibility, but also suppresses the side reaction. Accordingly, the half‐cell of P‐Ti coupled with Zn exhibits an average Coulombic efficiency of 99.47% with 500 cycles. The symmetric cell of the P‐Zn anode presents a lifespan of over 1500 h at the current density of 5 mA cm−2. Notably, the cell works for 100 h at 50 mA cm−2. It is believed that this ingenious surface modification broadens revolutionary methods for uniform metallic deposition, as well as the dendrite‐free rechargeable batteries system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gut microbiota plays important roles in host metabolism. Whether and how much the gut microbiota in different gut locations contributes to the variations of host serum metabolites are largely unknown, because it is difficult to obtain microbial samples from different gut locations on a large population scale. Here, we quantified the gut microbial compositions using 16S rRNA gene sequencing for 1070 samples collected from the ileum, cecum and faeces of 544 F6 pigs from a mosaic pig population. Untargeted metabolome measurements determined serum metabolome profiles. We found 1671, 12,985 and 103,250 significant correlations between circulating serum metabolites and bacterial ASVs in the ileum, cecum, and faeces samples. We detected nine serum metabolites showing significant correlations with gut bacteria in more than one gut location. However, most metabolite‐microbiota pairwise associations were gut location‐specific. Targeted metabolome analysis revealed that CDCA, taurine, L‐leucine and N‐acetyl‐L‐alanine can be used as biomarkers to predict porcine fatness. Enriched taxa in fat pigs, for example Prevotella and Lawsonia intracellularis were positively associated with L‐leucine, while enriched taxa in lean pigs, such as Clostridium butyricum, were negatively associated with L‐leucine and CDCA, but positively associated with taurine and N‐acetyl‐L‐alanine. These results suggested that the contributions of gut microbiota in each gut location to the variations of serum metabolites showed spatial heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite unprecedented successes of antibody‐based cancer immunotherapy, the serious side effects and rapid clearance following systemic administration remain big challenges to realize its full potential. At the same time, combination immunotherapy using multiple antibodies has shown particularly promising in cancer treatment. It is noticed that the working mechanisms of natural holdase and foldase chaperone are desirable to overcome the limitations of therapeutic antibodies. Holdase chaperone stabilizes unfolded client and prevents it from activation and degradation, while foldase chaperone assists unfolded client to its native state to function. Here a holdase/foldase mimetic nanochaperone (H/F‐nChap) to co‐delivery two types of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), αCD16 and αPDL1, and resiquimod (R848) is developed, which significantly improves cancer immunotherapy. The H/F‐nChap presents holdase activity in blood and normal tissues that hides and protects mAbs from unnecessary targeted activation and degradation, thereby prolonging blood circulation and reducing immunotoxicity in vivo. Furthermore, H/F‐nChap switches to foldase activity in the tumor microenvironment that exposes mAbs and releases R848 to enhance the engagement between NK cells and tumor cells and promote immune activation, respectively. The H/F‐nChap represents a strategy for safe and spatiotemporal delivery of multiple mAbs, providing a promising platform for improved cancer immunotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photothermal therapy (PTT) has emerged as an attractive technique for the treatment of bacterial infections. However, the uncontrolled heat generation in conventional PTT inevitably causes thermal damages to healthy tissues and/or organs. It is thus essential to develop a smart and universal strategy to regulate the photothermal equilibrium temperature to a preset safe threshold. Herein, a thermoresponsive hydrogel‐enabled thermostatic PTT system for enhanced healing of bacteria‐infected wounds is reported. In this system, the near‐infrared (NIR)‐triggered heat generation by photothermal nanomaterials is spontaneously transferred to a thermoresponsive hydrogel with a lower critical solution temperature (LCST), leading to its rapid phase transition by forming considerable light‐scattering centers to block NIR penetration. Such a dynamic and reversible process automatically regulates the photothermal equilibrium temperature to the phase‐transition point of the LCST‐type hydrogel. In contrast to temperature‐uncontrolled conventional PTT with severe thermal damages, the thermoresponsive hydrogel‐enabled thermostatic PTT provides effective protection on healthy tissues and/or organs, which remarkably accelerates wound healing by efficient bacterial eradication. This study establishes a smart, simple and universal PTT platform, holding great promise in the safe and efficient treatment of bacterial skin infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of frost heave in unsaturated subgrade soils should consider the coupled movement of liquid water, vapor, and heat, accompanied by phase transition of water, vapor, and ice. In this paper, the equilibrium relationship of the three phases of water in soils was comprehensively considered, and the water head and vapor density were determined under frozen and unfrozen conditions from the perspective of thermodynamics. Based on that, the governing equations of mass and energy conservation were then derived and a new transient finite element model was developed, considering the behavior of the phase change and coupled hydrothermal transport under frozen as well as unfrozen conditions. Since the discontinuities between the frozen and the unfrozen zones may bring difficulties to the numerical solution, two kinds of smoothing techniques were proposed to solve the discontinuities at the phase transition interface, which guaranteed robust convergence and enhanced computational efficiency. The model proposed was verified by comparing with some available test results and applied to analyze the frost heave process of unsaturated subgrade under impermeable road pavements, demonstrating the model's accuracy and applicative prospect. It is revealed that the movement of liquid water and vapor in the frozen zones may still exist, and its mechanism and performance are different from that in unfrozen zones. The significance of vapor migration on the subgrade frost heave is also emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to determine the (a) dose–response effects of cognitively engaging movement games (CEMGs) designed to improve aerobic capacity, interference control (IC), and academic performance, (b) relationship between intervention‐induced improvements in aerobic capacity, IC, and academic performance, and (c) moderation effect of IC on the relationship between aerobic capacity and academic performance in overweight children. Seventy‐five overweight children (aged 11.23 ± 0.60 years; 48% males) participated in this study conducted in Taipei during the 2018/2019 academic year and were randomly assigned to the low‐dose (20‐min) intervention, high‐dose (40‐min) intervention, and control groups and completed a Stroop test, half‐mile run, and language and mathematics tests before and after a 10‐week afterschool program. Both intervention groups showed similar improvements in outcomes of aerobic capacity (ds > 0.80), IC (ds > 0.76), and academic performance (ds > 0.90) from the pretest to posttest, whereas these outcomes were unchanged for the control group. Furthermore, improved IC moderated the association between improvements in aerobic capacity and academic performance. Our findings suggest that CEMG with varying doses is feasible and effective for improving aerobic capacity, IC, and academic performance in overweight children and that the association between improvements in aerobic capacity and academic performance depends on the intervention effects on IC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitrogen‐doped carbon‐coated transition‐metal sulfides (TMS@NCs) have been considered as efficient anodes for sodium‐ion batteries. However, the uncontrollable morphology and weak core–shell binding forces significantly limit the sodium storage performance and life. Herein, based on the reversible ring‐opening reaction of the epoxy group of the tertiary amino group‐rich epoxide cationic polyacrylamide (ECP) at the beginning of hydrothermal process (acidic environment) and the irreversible ring‐opening (cross‐linking reactions) at the late hydrothermal period (alkaline environment), 47 nm‐sized ZnS@NCs were prepared via a one‐pot hydrothermal process. During this process, the covalent bonds formed between the ZnS core and elastic carbon shell significantly improved the mechanical and chemical stabilities of ZnS@NC. Benefiting from the nanosize, fast ion/electron transfer, and high stability, ZnS@NC exhibited a high reversible capacity of 421.9 mAh g−1 at a current density of 0.1 A g−1 after 1000 cycles and a superior rate capability of 273.8 mAh g−1 at a current density of 5 A g−1. Moreover, via this universal synthesis strategy, a series of TMS@NCs, such as MoS2@NC, NiS@NC, and CuS@NC were developed with excellent capacity and cyclability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra and Aqua daily land surface temperature (LST) products are important data sets for global warming monitoring. To reveal the consistency and differences between MODIS Terra and Aqua daily LST products for monitoring LST trends, this study used these two products to extract the mean annual surface temperature (MAST) of the Tibetan Plateau from 2003 to 2020. Then, nine MAST combinations were constructed for daytime, nighttime, and daily average conditions separately with Terra and Aqua MAST series, including Terra only, Aqua only, and the integrated one. Finally, the Mann‐Kendall trend test was applied to these series and obtained the spatiotemporal variability. The results indicated that there was high spatial consistency of the multi‐year averaged MAST of different combinations at daytime/nighttime/daily average scales. Meanwhile, there are quite similar temporal trends in terms of spatial distribution and change rate. The MAST changes are dominated by warming trends, and the areas and change rates of the significant changing pixels at different elevations, vegetation cover ranges, and land cover types presented similar distribution patterns. Although there are some discrepancies in the detailed location for pixels with significant trends among different combinations, the proportion of the pixels with the same trends of daytime/nighttime/daily‐average groups is as high as 68.88%, 66.75%, and 71.76%, respectively. These findings reveal that different MODIS LST products have similar performance in monitoring LST trends, indicating that the detection can well reflect the variation of surface thermal environment regardless of which MODIS LST product is used. Key Points: Different land surface temperature (LST) combinations were generated with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra and Aqua daily daytime and nighttime LST productsThe daytime, nighttime, and daily averaged mean annual surface temperature from different combinations show similar spatial distributions over the Tibetan PlateauThe detection well reflects the variation of surface thermal environment regardless of which MODIS LST product is used [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real‐time simulation of active distribution networks (ADNs) can provide an accurate insight into transient behaviours, but faces challenges in simulation efficiency and flexibility brought by larger system scales and wider time‐scale ranges. This paper presents an asynchronous multi‐rate (AMR) method and design for the real‐time simulation of large‐scale ADNs. In the proposed method, the entire ADN was decoupled into different subsystems according to accuracy requirements, and optimized time‐steps were allocated to each subsystem to realize a fully distributed simulation. This not only alleviated the time‐step coordination problem existing in multi‐rate real‐time simulations, but also enhanced the flexible expansion capabilities of the real‐time simulator. To realize the AMR real‐time simulation, a multi‐rate interfacing method, synchronization mechanism, and data communication strategy are proposed in this paper, and their hardware design is also presented in detail. A modified IEEE 123‐node system with photovoltaics and wind turbine generators was simulated on a 3 field‐programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)‐based AMR real‐time simulator. The real‐time results were captured by the oscilloscope and verified with PSCAD/EMTDC, which demonstrated the superiority in simulation flexibility and accuracy compared with the synchronous multi‐rate (SMR) method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Field‐programmable gate array (FPGA)‐based real‐time simulators are often applied in simulations of active distribution networks (ADNs) because of their parallel architectures and low cost. The overall performance of an FPGA‐based real‐time simulator is mainly determined by its kernel solver, which solves the nodal equation at each simulation time step. With the increasing scale of ADNs, real‐time simulations of fast switching dynamics, along with limited computation hardware, have increased the requirements of the solver in terms of both time and resource consumption. In this study, a highly parallel kernel solver is proposed to improve the simulation efficiency of the FPGA‐based real‐time simulator. The multi‐level parallel design and its implementation, including the parallelism at the system and module and element levels, are presented in detail. A modified IEEE 123‐node system with distributed photovoltaics (PVs) is then simulated using a three‐FPGA‐based real‐time simulator. Simulation results are compared with the commercial simulation tool PSCAD/EMTDC to validate the proposed kernel solver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rechargeable batteries are key in the field of electrochemical energy storage, and the development of advanced electrode materials is essential to meet the increasing demand of electrochemical energy storage devices with higher density of energy and power. Anode materials are the key components of batteries. However, the anode materials still suffer from several challenges such as low rate capability and poor cycling stability, limiting the development of high‐energy and high‐power batteries. In recent years, heterojunctions have received increasing attention from researchers as an emerging material, because the constructed heterostructures can significantly improve the rate capability and cycling stability of the materials. Although many research progress has been made in this field, it still lacks review articles that summarize this field in detail. Herein, this review presents the recent research progress of heterojunction‐type anode materials, focusing on the application of various types of heterojunctions in lithium/sodium‐ion batteries. Finally, the heterojunctions introduced in this review are summarized, and their future development is anticipated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic conformational changes in the secondary structures of proteins are essential to their functions and can regulate diverse cellular events. Herein we report the design of a synthetic polymer‐based secondary structure analogue of a zinc finger (ZnF) by introducing a zinc coordination motif to overcome the free energy barrier predicted by theoretical calculations and fold‐free polymer chains. The conformational switching between unfolded and folded state of the ZnF analogue can be triggered in situ to drastically manipulate the accessibility of conjugated cell adhesive ligands to the cell membrane receptors, thereby effectively controlling the adhesion, spreading, mechanosensing, and differentiation of stem cells. We believe that emulating the dynamic secondary structures of proteins via rational design of a folded synthetic polymer–cation complex is a promising strategy for developing bioactive materials to mediate desired cellular functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultrathin nanowires (NWs) have always attracted the attention of researchers due to their unique properties, but their facile synthesis is still a great challenge. Herein we developed a general method for the synthesis of rare earth (RE) oxide ultrathin NWs at atmospheric pressure and low temperature (50 °C). The formation mechanism of ultrathin NWs lies in two aspects: thermodynamic advantage of one dimensional (1D) growth at low temperature, and supplement of effective monomers. As an extension, fifteen kinds of RE oxide ultrathin NWs were synthesized through this strategy, and they all exhibited polymer‐like behaviors. Meanwhile, the high viscosity, organic gel, wet‐ and electro‐spinning of Ce‐Mo‐O NWs were studied in detail, demonstrating the similarity of ultrathin inorganic NWs to polymers. In addition, the Ce‐Mo‐O ultrathin NWs were used as photocatalysts for toluene oxidation and showed excellent performance with toluene conversion ratio of 83.8 %, suggesting their potential application in organic photocatalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, through the optimized arrangement of the magnetized plasma, dielectric, and nonlinear Kerr dielectric, a tunable reflection phase retarder with a certain bandwidth is investigated. When the electric field of the incident electromagnetic wave is parallel to the xoy plane and has an angle of 45° with the x‐axis, the electric field can be further decomposed into Ex and Ey along the x‐ and y‐axes, indicating TM and TE waves, respectively. The results show that under reasonable parameters, the 180° or −180° phase delay of the reflected wave of the proposed structure is obtained and adjusted. In particular, the nonlinear bistable response at this performance is also demonstrated. Furthermore, to verify the superiority of the obtained bandwidth of the phase retarder, the influences of the incident angle, the plasma frequency, the external magnetic field, and the nonlinear light intensity on the bandwidth of the phase retarder have been studied. It is observed that the total phase retarder bandwidth can reach 2.6 GHz by appropriately optimizing those parameters. Additionally, this work provides constructive suggestions for tunable broadband phase blockers and half‐wave plates, and it still holds some potential significance in the radome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High order schemes have been investigated for quite a long time, and the flux reconstruction (FR) scheme proposed by Huynh recently attracts the attention of researchers due to its simplicity and efficiency. Building the framework that bridges discontinuous Galerkin (DG) and spectral difference (SD) schemes, FR recovers DG and SD conveniently with a careful selection of parameters. In this article, FR scheme is realized based on the framework of p4est, an open source adaptive mesh refinement library. The shock capturing ability of localized Laplacian artificial viscosity and in‐cell piecewise integrated solution methods are compared. Curved boundary treatment for high order schemes is adopted. The performance of developed code is estimated in both one and two dimensions including curved boundary and shock cases, and some attractive results are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waterborne polyester is a common eco‐friendly material in which ester bonds are easy to hydrolyze. Therefore, we synthesized a series of waterborne comb‐like polyesters (WCPEs) with hydrophilic side chains through aza‐Michael addition under green and mild conditions. The physicochemical structure of the polyesters was verified by 1H NMR, FTIR, and GPC characterizations. The pH value of dispersions dropped by less than 0.7 after storage for 2 months. The dispersions remained stable after 6 months at room temperature. In addition, the WCPEs exhibited good wetting and dispersing ability for pigment particles as Tego 740 W, which is a mature pigment dispersant product for waterborne coatings. Moreover, the cross‐linked WCPEs exhibited excellent chemical resistance, there was only 1.2% weight loss, and almost no mechanism properties decline for cross‐linked transparent films even after treatment under an alkaline environment for 20 days. Thus, the synthesized WCPE has potential application as an alkali resistance eco‐friendly material, and possesses excellent performance as pigment‐dispersion resin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerobic exercise has been identified as an effective strategy for transiently enhancing inhibitory control, an ability to suppress irrelevant distractors while focusing on relevant information in facilitating the implementation of goal‐directed behavior. The purpose of this study was to employ a go/no‐go version of the redundant‐target task and event‐related potential to further determine whether inhibitory control at the perceptual and response levels as well as their underlying processing capacity and neuroelectric alterations are differentially affected by a single bout of aerobic exercise. Twenty‐seven young adults completed the redundant‐target task while electroencephalogram was recorded before and after one 20‐min bout of moderate‐intensity aerobic exercise and a sitting control condition on separate days in counterbalanced order. Although behavioral outcomes of mean‐level performance did not differ between intervention conditions, time‐related decreases in processing capacity for the faster responses were only observed following rest. Aerobic exercise resulted in maintained P3b amplitude from pretest to posttest for all trial types while decreased P3b amplitude from pretest to posttest during single‐target and redundant‐target trials was observed following rest. Further, the time‐related changes in P3b amplitude were positively correlated with improvements in task performance following exercise. These findings suggest that a short bout of aerobic exercise selectively counteracts the time‐related decrements in processing capacity as well as neuroelectric processing of attention and conflict suppression that contribute to behavioral outcomes of inhibitory control. A single bout of aerobic exercise selectively counteracts time‐related decrements in general information processing efficiency measured by system factorial technology (SFT) as well as neuroelectric correlates (i.e., P3‐ERP) of conflict suppression but not response inhibition when both these processes are required in a novel inhibitory control task. Further, P3b amplitude and task performance changes after exercise are positively correlated. The significance of these findings lies in the identification of conflict suppression as the isolated sub‐process that can transiently benefit from exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational architecture design of the artificial protective layer on the zinc (Zn) anode surface is a promising strategy to achieve uniform Zn deposition and inhibit the uncontrolled growth of Zn dendrites. Herein, a red phosphorous‐derived artificial protective layer combined with a conductive N‐doped carbon framework is designed to achieve dendrite‐free Zn deposition. The Zn–phosphorus (ZnP) solid solution alloy artificial protective layer is formed during Zn plating. Meanwhile, the dynamic evolution mechanism of the ZnP on the Zn anode is successfully revealed. The concentration gradient of the electrolyte on the electrode surface can be redistributed by this protective layer, thereby achieving a uniform Zn‐ion flux. The fabricated Zn symmetrical battery delivers a dendrite‐free plating/stripping for 1100 h at the current density of 2.0 mA cm–2. Furthermore, aqueous Zn//MnO2 full cell exhibits a reversible capacity of 200 mAh g–1 after 350 cycles at 1.0 A g–1. This study suggests an effective solution for the suppression of Zn dendrites in Zn metal batteries, which is expected to provide a deep insight into the design of high‐performance rechargeable aqueous Zn‐ion batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuromorphic photonics system based on the principle of biological brain is emerging as one of the potential solutions to the bottleneck inherent in classical von Neumann computing system. Optoelectronic synaptic devices, used to mimic the visual function of bio‐synapse by adapting synaptic weights, can construct a highly efficient brain‐inspired computing system, in which the nanostructured materials and device architectures are attracting extensive interests, giving many potential benefits in confined light‐matter interaction, fast carrier dynamics, and photocarriers trapping. Moreover, the conjunction of traditional nanostructured photodetectors and newly realized electronic synapses also exhibit appealing performance for many practical applications including information processing and computing. This review focuses and summarizes on recent achievement in developing advanced optoelectronic synaptic devices based on nanostructured materials as 0D (quantum dots), 1D, and 2D materials, as well as, the rapidly evolving hybrid heterostructures. In addition, challenges and promising prospects in this research field are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: The aim of this study was to apply a two‐stage deep model combining multi‐scale feature maps and the recurrent attention model (RAM) to assist with the pathological diagnosis of breast cancer histological subtypes by the use of whole slide images (WSIs). Methods and results: In this article, we propose an integrated framework combining multi‐scale feature maps from Inception V3 and the recurrent attention model to classify the six histological subtypes of breast cancer. This model was trained with 194 WSIs, and on 63 validation WSIs the model achieved accuracies of 0.9030 for patch‐level classification and 0.8889 for WSI‐level classification. In the testing stage, a total of 65 WSIs were used to achieve an accuracy of 0.8462 without any form of data curation. The t‐distributed stochastic neighbour embedding showed that features extracted by the feature network of the RAM from WSIs of the same category can cluster together after training, and the visualization of decision steps showed that the decision‐making glimpses are focused on the middle tumour area of an example from test WSIs. Finally, the false classification patches indicated that the morphological similarities between tumour tissues of different subtypes or non‐tumour tissues and tumour tissues in patches might contribute to misclassification. Conclusions: This model can imitate the diagnostic process of pathologists, pay attention to a series of local features on the pathology image, and summarize related information, in order to accurately classify breast cancer into its histological subtypes, which is important for treatment and prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work proposes a novel and simple synthesis method for microporous‐ceria‐wrapped gold (Au@mp‐CeO2) nanoparticles (NPs) based on linker molecule‐induced stacking of ultrafine CeO2 particles (or beads) on the surface of pre‐prepared gold NPs. The resulting NPs have a uniform size and microporous CeO2 shells with a mean thickness of 28 nm and porosity of 42%. The shell is highly tunable from about 4 to 30 nm thick. This method is universal and suitable for other metal@mp‐oxide nanoarchitectures (such as Au@mp‐CuO NPs, Au@mp‐Cr2O3 NPs, Ag@mp‐CeO2 NPs, and Ag@mp‐CeO2 nanowires) simply via changing the pre‐prepared metal cores or shell precursors. Most significantly, the as‐prepared Au@mp‐CeO2 NPs can be used for accurate monitoring of toluene vapor (10 ppm level) at room temperature based on their conductometric and surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) dual response. Moreover, these NPs can be also used for other hazardous gases, such as chlorobenzene, hydrogen sulfide, and 1‐dodecanethiol. This excellent performance benefits from the micropore‐enhanced interaction between CeO2 and gas molecules. This work not only provides new and controllable preparation for metal@mp‐oxide nanoarchitectures, but also demonstrates the great potential applications of these materials in real‐time and identifiable monitoring of hazardous gases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A shape‐variable aqueous secondary battery operating at low temperature is developed using Ga68In22Sn10 (wt%) as a liquid metal anode and a conductive polymer (polyaniline (PANI)) cathode. In the GaInSn alloy anode, Ga is the active component, while Sn and In increase the acid resistance and decrease the eutectic point to ‐19 °C. This enables the use of strongly acidic aqueous electrolytes (here, pH 0.9), thereby improving the activity and stability of the PANI cathode. Consequently, the battery exhibits excellent electrochemical performance and mechanical stability. The GaInSn–PANI battery operates via a hybrid mechanism of Ga3+ stripping/plating and Cl− insertion/extraction and delivers a high reversible capacity of over 223.9 mAh g−1 and an 80.3% retention rate at 0.2 A g−1 after 500 cycles, as well as outstanding power and energy densities of 4300 mW g−1 and 98.7 mWh g−1, respectively. Because of the liquid anode, the battery without packaging can be deformed with a small force of several millinewtons without any capacity loss. Moreover, at approximately ‐5 °C, the battery delivers a capacity of 67.8 mAh g−1 at 0.2 A g−1 with 100% elasticity. Thus, the battery is promising as a deformable energy device at low temperatures and in demanding environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: UVA radiation can cause skin oxidative stress. Tremella fuciformis polysaccharides (TFPS) are the main active ingredient in Tremella. Previous studies have shown that TFPS have protective effects on UVA‐induced oxidative stress cells, but the specific protective mechanism has not been clarified. Objective: This study aims to explore the potential protective mechanism of Tremella fuciformis polysaccharides on UVA‐induced damage to human dermal fibroblasts cells. Methods: We evaluated the protective ability of TFPS against UVA‐induced damage by detecting cell survival rate, the content of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and malondialdehyde (MDA) in the cells, and the scavenging activity of ABTS free radicals, as well as the enzyme activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH‐Px), and the Nrf2‐Keap‐1 pathway protein and gene were measured to study the protective mechanism of TFPS from photodamage. Results: TFPS pretreatment can reduce the oxidative stress of UVA‐treated human dermal fibroblasts cells. After TFPS pretreatment, the content of ROS and MDA in the cell decreased significantly and the total antioxidant activity was increased. Among them, the active of CAT, SOD, and GSH‐Px in the cells increased significantly. TFPS can also protect fibroblasts by up‐regulating Nrf2 and down‐regulating Keap1 expression. Finally, it was also found that TFPS pretreatment increased the content of collagen I, elastin, and hyaluronic acid (HA) in skin fibroblasts treated with UVA. Conclusion: These results indicate that a certain concentration of TFPS can effectively alleviate skin damage caused by UVA, and they may be used as an effective component of cosmetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robust localization is an essential capability for autonomous land vehicles. While a lot of work focused on structured environments, this article focuses on navigation in off‐road environments. In the off‐road environment, due to the lack of salient features, scan matching algorithms tend to degenerate. Therefore, the first contribution of this paper is to propose a reliable degeneracy indicator which can evaluate the scan matching performance. The evaluated degeneracy indicator is then integrated into the factor graph optimization framework which is used in both the offline mapping system and the online localization system. Moreover, a complete navigation system that can handle the incomplete and partly outdated LiDAR maps is developed. Extensive tests on real‐world data sets show that the proposed system outperforms state‐of‐the‐art approaches, especially in degenerate scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An asymmetric reductive amination of aryl N‐heteroaryl ketones with Benzyl Amines has been realized via one‐pot two‐step process, using p‐toluenesulfonic acid and chiral iridium complexes as catalysts, a mixture of formic acid/triethylamine as a reductant. Twenty‐three examples of chiral aryl N‐heteroaryl methylamines were obtained with good yields and up to 99% ee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]