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The present study aimed to search for chicken abdominal fat deposition-related polymorphisms within RB1 and to provide functional evidence for significantly associated genetic variants. Association analyses showed that 11 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in intron 17 of RB1, were significantly associated with both abdominal fat weight (P G repressed the transcriptional efficiency of RB1 in vitro, through binding nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-KB) and SRY-related HMG box protein 2 (SOX2). Furthermore, RB1 mRNA expression levels in the abdominal fat tissue of individuals with the A/A genotype of g.32828A>G were lower than those of individuals with the G/G genotype. Collectively, we propose that the intronic SNP g.32828A>G of RB1 is an obesity-associated variant that directly affects binding with NF-KB and SOX2, leading to changes in RB1 expression which in turn may influence chicken abdominal fat deposition.

Ground-based freefall facilities are to create microgravity environment on earth for studying the space-related or fundamental sciences, which have been widely used in the field of combustion, fluid, physics and material sciences. Aiming to serve for the broader microgravity science and preliminary tests for projects onboard the upcoming assembly of Chinese Space Station, a 2.2 second freefall facility was designed and built in the Lee Shau Kee Science and Technology Building on the campus of Tsinghua University in Beijing. This facility is composed of five systems: (I) freefall tunnel and safety cables; (II) release and retrieve system; (III) the capsule; (IV) brake system; (V) electrical control and safety interlock system. The capsule consists of an outer drag shield and an inner rig of which the total weight is 280 kg. The capsule is released by a pneumatic chuck that minimizes disturbance of the release operation. The eddy current brake modules made of several permanent magnets are applied to decelerate the capsule without power supply. This paper primarily discusses the tests designed and conducted to characterize the performance of such facility in many aspects. The results show that during freefall, the microgravity level of 10-3 g can be achieved for 2.2 second. Concerning movement of the inner rig relative to the drag shield during freefall, the clearance of 0.43 m and relative velocity of 0.62 m/s were specified. The deceleration can be controlled within 15 g. The terminal velocity of capsule in the brake system ranges from 0.4 to 0.5 m/s depending on the actual weight of capsule. The noise level in the entrance section of brake system is about 75.6 dB. The duration of this noise is very short (

Electronic waste is the fastest growing waste stream and one of the most significant constituents is electronic plastics. In this study, the combustion kinetic of typical electronic plastic waste-television set (TV) plastic shell-was investigated using two basic kinetic methods. The reaction mechanism and kinetic compensation effect were probed as well. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) revealed that its degradation process can be divided into four stages, namely, reaction initiation stage (20-300 °C), major reaction stage (300-450 °C), minor reaction stage (450-600 °C), and reaction cessation stage (600-1,000 °C). The activation energy (

In this paper, an innovative NiTi shape memory alloy fiber reinforced Ti6Al4V-(NiTif/Mg3AlZn) metal-metal laminate composite (SMAFR-MML) was successfully fabricated by vacuum hot pressing method using Ti6Al4V (TC4) foils, Mg3AlZn (AZ31) foils, commercial pure Al foils and continuous NiTi shape memory alloy fibers. The phase constituent analyses of the composites were conducted by X-ray diffractometer (XRD). The microstructure characterizations and elemental analyses of the composites were examined by a field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The tensile mechanical properties of the composites were comparatively investigated with those of the MML composite without NiTi fibers and as-received AZ31 foils. Results showed that a continuous Mg-Ti elements diffusion layer with a thickness of ∼2.0 μm was formed at the TC4/AZ31 interface, and Mg2Al3 as well as Al8Mn5 phases discontinuously precipitated in the AZ31 matrix near the interface. Similarly, a continuous ∼1.7 μm thick Mg-Ni-Ti elements diffusion layer was formed at the AZ31/NiTi fiber interface, and Al3Ni2 phases precipitated adjacent to the NiTi fiber at the interface. Compared with the AZ31 foils and the MML composite without NiTi fibers, the SMAFR-MML composite possessed a superior comprehensive mechanical properties, which are attributed to the high strength and toughness of TC4 layers, good interfacial bonding at AZ31/NiTif interface and the plastic deformation and fracture of NiTi fibers during tensile process.

Metal–organic framework (MOF)-derived nanostructures exhibit wonderful characteristics and possess broad application potential by modulating the complex composition and inner nanostructure. Although various MOF-based nanocomposites have been successfully developed, a facile method that can easily modulate the structure-dependent chemical components of the MOF-derived hybrids remains a challenge. By coating zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) with Au/polydopamine (Au/PDA) via in situ redox-oxidation polymerization of HAuCl4 and dopamine, it was found that the ZIF-8 templates were simultaneously etched off to give Au/PDA hybrid microcapsules with a cubic shape. This one-step sacrificial templating process followed a competing chelation between gold ions and Zn2+ cations to 2-methylimidazole and PDA; thus, both the hollow and the yolk-like hybrid cubic microcapsules were controllably obtained by varying the synthetic dynamics. Owing to the hollow nature, penetrated PDA shell, well-distributed Au nanocrystals, and unique stable nanostructure, the non-spherical Au/PDA hybrid cubic microcapsules showed high performance in catalyzing the reduction of 4-nitrophenol as well as adsorption/release of ibuprofen as a model drug. Moreover, this simple strategy offers a controllable design in developing multifunctional nanocomposites with definite inner nanostructures and activities for nanocatalysis, drug delivery, energy storage etc.

Our previous study reported that aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) promoted influenza replication. Mannan oligosaccharide (MOS), derived from the cell walls of yeast, is a potent immunomodulator. Here, we investigated the role of MOS in AFB1-promoted influenza replication and further explored the underlying mechanisms. In vitro and in vivo, the exposure to AFB1 alone resulted in significantly decreased weight gain and increased viral replication as well as lung and spleen damages. Increased influenza replication coupled with increases in toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), phosphorylated nuclear factor κB, and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) levels. However, MOS given in conjunction with exposure to AFB1 significantly reversed these above changes. A further study indicated that MOS activity was abolished by TLR4 knockout or TLR4 overexpression. Surprisingly, TNF-α played no role in the MOS-mediated protective effects. Collectively, our data suggest that MOS alleviates the AFB1-promoted influenza replication, inflammation, and tissue damages in a TLR4-dependent manner.

Thin-film stretchable sensors are believed to have a great applications on devices with curved surfaces. As one type of these sensors, electronic skins (e-skins) for pressure measurement have the potential to provide protection to the human body by feeding back the contact pressure. One of the applications is to monitor the contact pressure from a colonoscope to the colonic wall during a colonoscopy to prevent perforation and hemorrhaging. Many studies have reported the highly flexible and stretchable nature of e-skin sensors. However, no effort has been made to investigate their performance in a colon simulator. In this paper, we developed a new technique to make ultra-thin, highly stretchable electrodes on thin films. Then we successfully built a three-layer tube-shaped tactile sensor with high conformability and stretchability. We then investigated the pressure generated by various bending curvatures on a colonoscope. Finally, we performed a real-time pressure measurement with the whole sensing system on a fake colonoscope in a colon-simulator. The measured pressure was obtained and visualized on a computer screen. These experiments validated the applicability of the designed sensor and revealed the actual stress distribution on a tube-shaped e-skin sensor array in a colon-simulator. This research could be the starting point of the effort to upgrade the strategies of colonoscopy for safer operations and could provide new routines to optimize tactile sensor design for other medical applications.

A new titanium-tungsten-bearing hot rolled high strength bainitic steel was developed through the design of chemical composition and rolling processing. The chemical composition of 0.04C-0.1Ti-0.4W (wt%) was determined to make full use of alloying elements through considering the atomic ratio of elements. The rolling condition in the region through austenite recrystallization to austenite non-recrystallization region was adopted to realize a homogenous and fine microstructure. The effects of coiling temperature (CT) on the microstructure, precipitation and mechanical properties of the steel were investigated. Results showed that the average effective grain sizes of bainite ferrite were measured to be 2.2 µm, 1.8 µm and 2.4 µm for the sample of CTs 550 °C, 600 °C and 650 °C, respectively. The precipitates formed during coiling process were identified as nanoscale NaCl-type (TiW)C carbides that contain a high level of Ti and W. As CT increases, the precipitation amount of nanoscale precipitate increases. At the CT of 600 °C, an optimal combination of strength and ductility was achieved (yield strength: 733 MPa; ultimate tensile strength: 806 MPa; uniform elongation: 14.9%; total elongation: 24.4%). In addition, due to re-precipitation of nanoscale carbides, the strength of the steels coiled at 600 °C was obviously increased after tempering at 650 °C for 15 × 103 s holding, exhibiting superior ageing strengthening effect.

We report a synthesis procedure for dodecanethiol capped wurtzite ZnO nanocrystals with an average diameter of 4 nm that are monodisperse, highly soluble, and shelf-stable for many months. Compared to previous ZnO ink recipes, we demonstrate improved particle solubility and excellent ink stability, resulting in ZnO nanocrystal inks that are optimized for printed electronics applications. The ZnO nanocrystal solution exhibits an absorption peak at 341 nm (3.63 eV), which represents a blue-shift of approximately 0.3 eV from the bulk ZnO bandgap (∼3.3 eV). This blue shift is consistent with previously reported models for an increased bandgap due to quantum confinement. We used variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry (VASE) to determine the optical properties of solution-processed thin films of ZnO nanocrystals, which provides valuable insight into the changes in film composition and morphology that occur during thermal annealing treatments ranging from 150–300 °C. The ZnO nanocrystals maintain their quantum confinement when deposited into a thin film, and the degree of quantum confinement is gradually reduced as the thermal annealing temperature increases. Using infrared absorption measurements (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), we show that the dodecanethiol ligands are removed from the ZnO films during annealing, resulting in a high-purity semiconductor film with very low carbon contamination. Furthermore, we show that annealing at 300 °C results in complete ligand removal with only a slight increase in grain size. Thin-film transistors (TFT) using ZnO nanocrystals as the channel material annealed at 300 °C show moderate mobility (∼0.002 cm2 V−1 s−1) and good on/off ratio >104. These results demonstrate the distinct advantages of colloidal nanocrystals for printed electronics applications: the composition and morphology of the solution-processed film can be carefully tuned by controlling the size and surface coating of the nanocrystals in the ink.

Vintage is a decisive factor for market price of commercial bottled dry red wines. Aim of this study was to use color parameters and pigments for the prediction of the age of dry red wine by means of partial least squares (PLS) and multiple linear regression (MLR). Both models allow the prediction of the age accurately, with high coefficients of determination (R2), and low enough root mean square error of cross-validation (RMSECV). Although less variables were required to obtain a successful MLR model, its prediction results were as accurate as the model obtained by PLS. The ratio of the first polymeric pigments (TFPP) and malvidin-3-glycoside was demonstrated to be a promising and practical chemical parameter for the rapid and simple age assessment of the dry red wines.

N-doped mesoporous carbons, NMCs, have attracted intensive attention recently and have shown potential applications in various scientific fields including catalysis and energy conversion/storage. Via modification with foreign N elements and construction of mesoporous structures for NMCs, their electronic and spin structure, as well as their porosity can be greatly tailored. And the resultant electron-donor property, surface wettability, conductivity, ion/molecular transfer and reactivity are changed accordingly. In this review, we will summarize the recent research progress of these metal-free NMCs, with an emphasis on their synthesis and performance, especially for their synthetic strategy and catalytic properties toward oxygen and nitro compound reductions, as well as their electrochemical properties as electrode materials for lithium-ion/sulfur batteries and supercapacitors. We hope for future developments, such as controlling doping methods more precisely, generating more active sites by N-doping, and finding wider applications of NMCs in other fields.

This work reported a facile method for fabricating multi-layered polydopamine (PDA) encapsulated AuAg@C@AuAg core/shell nanosphere with a hollow interior. During the synthetic process, the preliminary Ag@C nanosphere is easily covered by an AuAg/PDA hybrid layer through the in situ redox-oxidized polymerization to form the Ag-AuAg@C@AuAg/PDA precursor, in which the AuAg bimetallic nanocrystals are simultaneously obtained via the electrochemical substitution reaction. After etching the residue Ag core, the final AuAg@C@AuAg/PDA hybrid nanosphere is achieved and the inner AuAg shows a unique nanoframe-like nanostructure. The carbon shell plays an important role for the formation and structure evolution of the AuAg@C@AuAg/PDA, and the composition can be modulated by varying the polymerization process. Owing to the well distributed AuAg nanocrystals and inner AuAg nanoframes, the AuAg@C@AuAg/PDA shows better performance than Ag-AuAg@C@AuAg/PDA precursor in catalyzing 4-nitrophenol, and the rate constant (K) to catalyst weight ratio reaches as high as 3.63 min-1 •mg-1. As a result, this work not only offers a hybrid bi-metallic nanocatalyst with excellent performance, but also has valuable implications for compositional modulation of hollow interior multi-layered nanostructure in adsorption, drug delivery, and nanocatalysis.

With the aim to elucidate the roles of different oxygen species, the catalytic oxidation of toluene over Pt/Mn3O4 synthesized by a facile reduction method was investigated. Compared with the Pt/Mn3O4-C using the commercial Mn3O4 as the support, Pt/Mn3O4-R was found to possess more surface oxygen vacancies, exhibit better redox properties and dispersion of platinum particles, leading to its higher activity for toluene oxidation (T90 = 183 ℃). Through toluene-TPD, toluene-TPSR and in-situ DRIFTS, it was found that toluene oxidation over Pt/Mn3O4-R catalyst might follow the Mars–van Krevelen (MVK) mechanism and the pathway of toluene oxidation over Pt/Mn3O4-R was possible toluene → benzoate → carbonate → CO2. The lattice oxygen species on the surface of catalysts was directly involved in the oxidation of toluene and played an important role in the formation of key intermediate such as carbonate, resulting in the difference of the reaction mechanism and pathway between Pt/Mn3O4-R and Pt/Mn3O4-C. In addition, the degradation of the surface carbonate was demonstrated to be the rate-controlling step at 180℃ to 200℃.

High flexibility skin-like sensors, such as electrical skin (e-skin) sensor for pressure measurement, have the potential to provide quantitative physical assessments and protection for human life. One promising application is to monitor the contact pressure of a colonoscope to the colonic wall during a colonoscopy to prevent perforation and hemorrhaging. Many attempts have been made to fabricate highly stretchable electronic devices. However, no effort has been made to investigate the mechanical behaviors of a tubular-shaped e-skin when bent, which is a typical working condition of such a sensor when attached to a colonoscope. The sensor should measure no pressure without external compressive force. However, bending of the sensor will generate measurable pressure, which is no use to doctor’s diagnostic and causes disturbance to the doctor. This paper aims to compensate this false positive error to improve the sensor’s reliability and accuracy. Based on a tubular-shaped, highly flexible skin-like sensor array we developed, we conducted both modeling and experimental studies on the change of the maximum pressure distribution of a tubular e-skin sensor under various bending conditions with and without external compressive force. This paper revealed the value of the maximum stress on a tubular-shaped e-skin sensor array when bent. The measuring errors due to bending in pressure detection during colonoscopy can be quantified for compensation. Thus, high accuracy diagnose can be achieved. These results could also be potentially used to address strategies on optimizing tactile sensor design for other medical applications.

Due to the utilization of overlapped dipole resonances, traditional Huygens’ metasurfaces suffer from dipole interactions. In this Letter, we propose a design of phase-gradient Huygens’ metasurface based on the quadrupole resonances excited in the cross-shaped structures. The quadrupole resonances are theoretically shown insensitive to the quadrupole interactions. Benefiting from this intrinsic property, the proposed metasurface can well suppress element interaction influence and exhibits some impressive properties, including the ability to suppress high diffraction orders, tunable anomalous refractive angles, and high transmission efficiency. The numerical results show promising potential for quadrupole resonances to be applied in advanced Huygens’ metasurface designs.

This work reports a silicone coating (PDMS-UIa) with marine antifouling and self-healing properties, which was prepared by the first synthesis of polydimethylsiloxane polymer containing imine and urea groups and then adding a small amount of eco-friendly antifoulant. The characteristic structure of the polymer was verified via Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The PDMS-UIa coating has rapid self-repairing performance, excellent transparency and the ability to control the release of antifouling agents at a certain rate. The adhesion experiment using four typical benthic diatoms indicated that the PDMS-UIa coating can effectively inhibit the attachment of diatoms, which effectively improves the static antifouling ability of silicone materials.

The porous carbon materials formed from biomass precursors are promising candidates for adsorbing organic vapor pollutants. However, these materials have insufficient pores, which hinder their accessibility to adsorbates. This study develops an ultrahigh-surface-area porous carbon adsorbent with interlacing micro-mesoporous structures through Trichoderma viride decomposition. An orthogonal experiment is conducted, and the most suitable conditions for fabricating porous carbon with an ultrahigh SBET of 3714 m2.g-1 and a hierarchical porous structure are identified. This work achieves one of the highest specific surface areas of biomass carbons among recent studies. T. viride corrodes the internal and external microstructures of rice husks, and regulates the lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose contents, which improve the efficiency of carbonization and chemical activation. The carbonaceous materials with microbial pretreatment exhibit better toluene adsorption performances (100 ppm: 708 mg.g-1), adsorption rates, and cyclic utilization than those without pretreatment (100 pm: 538 mg.g-1). In addition, grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation is conducted. The micropores and mesopores created after microbial pretreatment are effective toluene adsorption sites. Moreover, the diffusion coefficient calculated by utilizing Thomas model and Chemical diffusion verify that the mesopores accelerate the kinetic process of toluene adsorption.

Pore-fluid identification is one of the key technologies in seismic exploration. Fluid indicators play important roles in pore-fluid identification. For sandstone reservoirs, the effective pore-fluid bulk modulus is more susceptible to pore-fluid than other fluid indicators. AVO (amplitude variation with offset) inversion is an effective way to obtain fluid indicators from seismic data directly. Nevertheless, current methods lack a high-order AVO equation for a direct, effective pore-fluid bulk modulus inversion. Therefore, based on the Zoeppritz equations and Biot–Gassmann theory, we derived a high-order P-wave AVO approximation for an effective pore-fluid bulk modulus. Series reversion and Bayesian theory were introduced to establish a direct non-linear P-wave AVO inversion method. By adopting this method, the effective pore-fluid bulk modulus, porosity, and density can be inverted directly from seismic data. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the precision of our proposed method. Model and field data evaluations show that our method is stable and feasible.

In this paper, we propose to combine local and global features in a carefully designed convolutional neural network for 3D face alignment. We firstly adopt a part heatmap regression network to predict the landmark points on a local granularity by generating a series of heatmaps for each 3D landmark point. To enhance the ability of local feature representation, we incorporate the designed network with a part attention module, which transfers the convolution opereation into a channelwise attention opereation. Additionally, we take all these heatmaps alongside the input image as the input of another shape regression network in order to model the feature representations from local discrete regions to a global semantically continuous space. Extensive experiments on challenging datasets, AFLW2000-3D, 300VW and the Menpo Benchmark, show the effectiveness of both the global consistency and local description in our model, and the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art baselines.

Transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), as highly anisotropic layered compounds, have attracted increasing interest from basic research to practical applications. Among them, zirconium disulfide (ZrS2) with remarkable physical properties has been widely investigated recently. Here, ZrS2 employed as a saturable absorber is utilized in an Er-doped fiber laser. A stable mode-locking operation is achieved, with central wavelength of ~1559.5 nm, 3 dB bandwidth of ~1.72 nm, and pulse duration of ~1.75 ps. These results make ZrS2 an appealing candidate for generating ultrafast laser pulses.