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Facile photorefractive (PR) composite films were prepared. As evidence of PR effect of the PR composite films, two-beam coupling (TBC) experiment were carried out at 633 nm wavelength. Interestingly, strong energy transfers appeared under zero external electric field (Eex). The highest TBC gain coefficient is up to 230.32 cm−1. The TBC gain coefficient increases with the increase of photosensitizer within certain range. The probable cause of PR effect under non-external electric field were proposed.

Flower-like nickel oxide/reduced graphene oxide nanocomposites (NiO/RGO) are synthesized via a facile and versatile hydrothermal strategy for lithium ion battery application. The flower-like NiO with the petal thickness of 50–80 nm is wrapped homogeneously by RGO sheets. More importantly, the NiO/RGO nanocomposites exhibit a superior reversible lithium storage capacity of 702.3 mAh g−1 after 100 cycles at a current density of 100 mA g−1, accounting for a retention by 77.0% in comparison to that of the 2th cycle, which is higher than that of pristine NiO. The performance improvement can be ascribed to the addition of RGO, which can enhance the electrical conductivity of NiO as well as mitigate the aggregation and volume change of NiO during charge-discharge processes. The designed NiO/RGO nanocomposite may have talent application as anode material of lithium ion batteries.

A novel magnetic levitation support method is proposed, which can relieve the perturbation caused by traditional support methods and provide more accurate position control of the capsule. This method can keep the perfect symmetry of the octahedral spherical hohlraum and has the characteristics in stability, tunability and simplicity. It is also favorable that all the results, such as supporting forces acting on the superconducting capsule, are calculated analytically, and numerical simulations are performed to verify these results. A typical realistic design is proposed and discussed in detail. The superconducting coating material is suggested, and the required superconducting properties are listed. Damped oscillation of the floating capsule in thin helium gas is discussed, and the restoring time is estimated. Keywords: ICF capsule support, Magnetic levitation, Symmetry, PACS Codes: 52.57.Fg, 74.70.Ad, 74.78.-W

We show a designed FePt nanoparticles for embedding in a single crystal MgO matrix and demonstrate plasmon resonance absorption can appear in the ultraviolet region. The state of the FePt alloy is confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and selected area electron diffraction. By increasing the laser energy density from 4 to 6 J/cm2, the shape of the FePt nanoparticles is changed from quasi-spherical to quasi-elliptical. Compared with pure MgO, a single plasmon resonance peak at 234 nm was found in the ultraviolet region for the embedded FePt. Increasing the laser energy density induces peak splitting into two peaks, located at 225 and 262 nm, respectively. With a high laser energy density, a red-shift and a blue-shift are observed for the two peaks, respectively. These results are accordance with the theoretical calculations. The ultraviolet plasmon resonance absorption for FePt NPs can be tuned by changing the shape of the nanoparticles.

Porous carbon derived from biomass materials with enrich, low cost, clean, and renewable merits, exhibits various physical and chemical properties. So, it is of great significance to rationally utilize biomass materials for producing porous carbon with low cost to reduce overusing fossil fuel and environmental pollution. In this report, porous carbon has been fabricated using fruits shells of the Paulownia tomentosa by a facile method of KOH-activation. The as-obtained porous carbon containing a larger number of micropores and slight mesopores possesses a high specific surface area (1914.4 m2/g) and well hierarchical porosity. As the anode for sodium ion batteries, the porous carbon sample displays superior cycling stability and rate capability, delivering a reversible specific capacity of 179 mA h/g at 50 mA/g after 100 cycles and a discharge specific capacity of 100 mA h/g at 1 A/g.

Built upon an analysis of 2858 publicly listed companies in China, we found that although polluting companies historically received more loans from banks than nonpolluting companies, this trend has...

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) have successfully attracted considerable attention for application in energy storage, and have been proposed as an alternative to lithium ion batteries (LIBs) due to the abundance of sodium resources and low price. Sn has been deemed as a promising anode material in SIBs which holds high theoretical specific capacity of 845 mAh g−1. In this work we design nanocomposite materials consisting of porous carbon (PC) with SnO2 and Sn (Sn/SnO2/PC) via a facile reflux method. Served as an anode material for SIBs, the Sn/SnO2/PC nanocomposite delivers the primary discharge and charge capacities of 1148.1 and 303.0 mAh g−1, respectively. Meanwhile, it can preserve the discharge capacity approximately of 265.4 mAh g−1 after 50 cycles, which is much higher than those of SnO2/PC (138.5 mAh g−1) and PC (92.2 mAh g−1). Furthermore, the Sn/SnO2/PC nanocomposite possesses better cycling stability with 77.8% capacity retention compared to that of SnO2/PC (61.88%) over 50 cycles. Obviously, the Sn/SnO2/PC composite with excellent electrochemical performance shows the great possibility of application in SIBs.

Based on low-temperature thermochronological data (i.e., apatite fission-track (AFT) and (U–Th)/He (AHe)), structural evolution, burial and thermal history, this paper examines the relationship of multi-stage evolution between the upper Ordovician Wufeng and lower Silurian Longmaxi formations (i.e., the WL formation) and rapid exhumation at the Changning shale gas field in the southern Sichuan basin. AFT ages are generally young from southeast to northwest, decreasing from ca. 40 to 15 Ma while AHe single-grain ages range from ~35 to ~5 Ma. Inverse thermal histories show that a multi-stage cooling history with initial cooling began in the Late Cretaceous to early Cenozoic (middle Eocene), followed by accelerated rapid cooling in the late Cenozoic, with cooling rates of 2–4 °C/Myr across the Changning shale gas field. In particular, thermal models of samples in the western Changning area show a substantial increase in the cooling rates, i.e., from less than 1 °C/Myr to 3–5 °C/Myr in the Miocene. Integrated with inverse T-t models of low-temperature thermochronological data, the burial history indicates a four-stage thermal evolution of the WL Formation in the Changning shale-gas field: Early Mature from the middle Silurian to middle Permian, Middle Mature from the late Permian to Late Triassic, Late Mature from the Early Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, and Over mature since the middle Cretaceous, reaching a maximum burial depth of ~6000 m and maximum temperature of 190–200 °C at ca. 70–80 Ma. This evolution further suggests that a normal hydrostatic pressure index dominated the WL Formations in the Paleozoic. The gas generation and pressure index, however, have substantially increased since the Late Jurassic, particularly from the Early to middle Cretaceous, with a maximum pressure index of 2.1, which is indicative of the main shale gas accumulation and enrichment period in the WL Formation. Post-gas-generation structural deformation, uplift, and exhumation had a significant impact on shale gas enrichment, mainly through their influence on shale gas preservation. This suggests some relationships among the higher pressure coefficient of the WL Formation, the higher productivity and total gas content of the WL Formation, a weaker post-gas-generation structural deformation, and a weaker uplift, as indicated by the erosion and burial depth across the Changning shale gas field. Due to a significantly stronger cooling and uplift that occurred the in Late Cenozoic across the western Changning area, the pressure index decreased rapidly from ~2.0 to 1.0 with a normal pressure condition, indicating the destruction of the reservation condition in the WL Formation.

The Sn-based materials have been hindered from practical use for lithium ion batteries due to the inherent volume change leading to poor cycling performance. To mitigate this challenge, in this study, amorphous SnO 2 /graphene aerogel nanocomposites are fabricated via a simple hydrothermal approach. The amorphous nature of SnO 2 is clearly determined in detail by transmission electron microscopy, aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction measurement. The as-prepared material shows satisfying reversible capacity and significant cyclic stability. For instance, it delivers an excellent discharge capacity of 700.1 mA h g −1 in 80th cycle at a current density of 100 mA g −1 , in accordance with a high retention capacity of 97.6% compared to that of the sixth cycles, which is much better than crystalline SnO 2 /graphene aerogel. The enhanced electrochemical performance can be ascribed to the intrinsic isotropic nature, smaller size, and high electrochemical reaction kinetics of amorphous SnO 2 , together with the graphene aerogels matrix. Therefore, this study may provide an effortless, economic, and environmental friendly strategy to fabricate high volume change electrode materials for lithium ion batteries.

The mesoporous silicate molecular sieves were synthesized with polyether F127 as the template by the aerosol-assisted method for loading and release of ibuprofen (IBU). The synthesized samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and N 2 adsorption–desorption isotherms. The drug IBU was applied as a model drug to investigate the drug release behaviour by ultraviolet spectrophotometry measurements. The investigation results demonstrate that mesoporous silicate molecular sieves by the aerosol-assisted method are spherical with a core–shell structure. As the drug carrier, it has good structural stability and can achieve drug controlled release which is expected. It exhibits safety to a certain degree. Therefore, the aerosol-assisted synthesis method provides a new idea for the synthesis of sustained-release drug carriers.

The morphology and size of nanostructures have been considered to be directly related to capacitive performance. Additionally, hydrothermal synthesis is a common method to control nanostructures. In practice, researchers paid more attention to the direct effect of “useful ions” on morphology or size of nanostructures, e.g. the combination and decomposition processes of H+ and WO42− to form WO3. Unfortunately, the effects of other incidental residual ions on the nanostructures have been often neglected. Herein, we add an extra procedure (cleaning the precursor) in the as-optimized hydrothermal synthesis routine to remove residual ions in the solution around tungstic acid colloids. A comparative study shows such an extra procedure would result in a further considerable reduction of WO3 nanoplates in the thickness by 50% and in a prominent enhancement of the specific capacitance from 203.5 F g−1 to 334.0 F g−1 at a scan rate of 2 mV s−1. The thin WO3 nanoplates also show outstanding cycle stability for 5000 cycles. Interestingly, when we refilled the precursors solution with the Na+ and Cl− ions again, the thickness of WO3 nanoplates gradually thickens as the increase of NaCl content. In this way, the effect of residual ions on the thickness of nanoplates has been experimentally demonstrated. Otherwise, this facile method can be helpful to establish a bridge between the physical deposition method, which is suitable for the complete fabrications of single thin layer materials with less active sites and the common hydrothermal synthesis method, which tends to produce thicker fragmental nanoplates but more abundant reaction sites. Also, this simple and efficient method can be extended to the preparation of thin nanoplates of other transition metal oxides and better electrochemical performance can be expected.

A cylindrical cryogenic target containing deuterium fuel acts as an important surrogate to help understand implosion physics before the deuterium-tritium capability is brought online. Uniformity of the deuterium ice thickness is a key parameter for the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. Achieving and retaining a uniform deuterium ice layer in capsule without infrared radiation is difficult in engineering. The method used to calculate the ice thickness deviation of deuterium-tritium fuel is invalid when the bulk heat generation is equal to zero. Appearance solutions of the deuterium ice in steady state conclude that a uniform ice layer can't be retained long without infrared radiation. A transient algorithm by integrating heat transfer theory, the equation derived from Stefan problem and mass conservation with moving mesh technics in a finite element model can be applied to predict deuterium ice spherical symmetry degeneration. It is certified with good reliability by comparing the simulated results with theoretical and experimental data. As for the deuterium targets, the characteristics of linear approximation and integrability avert heavy work of moving mesh in analyses of stable and unstable scenarios. The work has great support for the cryogenic processing and engineering design of ICF targets.

Background: Gastric ulcer is also known as stomach ulcer which is complex with multifactor-associated disease and shows high prevalent worldwide. It affects most of the people around the world, and the initiation and progression of the disease are due to the imbalance in the destructive and defensive mechanism and associated factors present in the mucosa of gastric. The current study is interested to evaluate the ethanolic extract of Sargassum fusiforme polysaccharides (SFPee) toward gastric ulcer induced by ethanol in rat model. Materials and Methods: S. fusiforme is a Chinese pharmacopeia and used as a medicinal ingredient. It contains polysaccharides, phlorotannins, and meroterpenoids which are the major contributors for its pharmacological properties. While the polysaccharides are the predominant ingredients, which account for 40%–60% of the algae dry weight. S. fusiforme polysaccharides show a potent antioxidation, anticancer, antiaging, and anticlotting function and thus promote health benefits. However, the mechanisms behind its pharmacological properties remain largely unknown. Here, we assessed the SFPee ameliorative effects on gastric ulcer induced by ethanol in male Wistar rats. We are also interested to identify the molecular machinery involvement of antigastric ulcer property of SFPee in gastric ulcer-induced rats. Results: Based on the investigation, the role of SFPee on gastric ulcer on various molecules, oxidative stress markers, antioxidant enzymes, the expression of nuclear factor-kappa B, IκB, nitrotyrosine, cyclooxygenase-2, and the assessment of the inflammatory response. Conclusion: Our results show that SFPee exhibited significant anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties against ethanol-induced gastric ulcer by altering various molecules involved in the gastric ulcer initiation. Abbreviations used: SFP: Sargassum fusiforme polysaccharides; CAT: Catalase; SOD: Superoxide dismutases; ROS: Reactive oxygen species; TBARS: Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances.

Highly crystalline mesoporous anatase TiO2 nanospheres with high surface area (higher than P25 and anatase TiO2) are prepared by a soft-template method. Despite the high specific surface area, these samples have three times lower equilibrium adsorption (