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The large heat input welding performance of shipbuilding steel could be improved effectively by Mg treated in steelmaking process, but the mechanism of Mg on the nano-scale pinned particles had not been figured out yet, and this is also the bottleneck for Mg oxide metallurgy developing. In this research, with Mg-treated shipbuilding steel produced by industrial trials, the systematic experiments and theoretical analysis of thermodynamics and crystallography had been done. The results showed that, with increased welding energy, as the core pinned particles, the quantity of particles between 40 nm and 120 nm was stable when the welding energy was

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Photoreceptor cell degeneration is a major cause of blindness and a considerable health burden during aging but effective therapeutic or preventive strategies have not so far become commercially available. Here we show in mouse models that signaling through the tyrosine kinase receptor KIT protects photoreceptor cells against both light-induced and inherited retinal degeneration. Upon light damage, photoreceptor cells upregulate Kit ligand (KITL) and activate KIT signaling, which in turn induces nuclear accumulation of the transcription factor NRF2 and stimulates the expression of the antioxidant geneHmox1. Conversely, a viableKitmutation promotes light-induced photoreceptor damage, which is reversed by experimental expression ofHmox1. Furthermore, overexpression of KITL from a viral AAV8 vector prevents photoreceptor cell death and partially restores retinal function after light damage or in genetic models of human retinitis pigmentosa. Hence, application of KITL may provide a novel therapeutic avenue for prevention or treatment of retinal degenerative diseases.

In this paper, the leaching behaviors of vanadium (V), tungsten (W) and silicon (Si) from spent SCR (selective catalytic reduction) catalyst were evaluated and a pre-mix treatment to enhance V-W leaching with low Si leaching at 25°C and atmosphere pressure was developed. The effects of leaching factors were investigated systematically by two orthogonal array experiments, and then experiments with a single variable factor of NaOH concentration and temperature were carried out, respectively. Alkali, especially NaOH, is the best reagent for V and W simultaneous leaching from spent SCR catalyst. Increasing temperature or NaOH/catalyst ratios enhances V and W leaching rates. 68.3% V leaching rate and 50.1% W leaching rate were obtained under an optimal conditions (temperature 100°C, NaOH/catalyst ratio 0.9, L/S 15, stirring speed 900 rpm and time 240 min). However, the W/Si concentration ratio under this condition, as low as 1.4, is unacceptable from the view of separation and economy. A proposed pretreatment process, in which NaOH and catalyst was pre-mixed, decreases time consuming to 20 min and lowers temperature to 25°C but obtains higher W/Si concentration ratio 7.0 and almost the equal leaching rate (67.7% for V and 56.3% for W).

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are witnessing increasing attention in machine learning. However, the information propagation is becoming increasingly difficult as the networks get deeper, which makes the optimization of DNN extremely hard. One reason of this difficulty is saturation of hidden units. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology named RegA to decrease the influences of saturation on ReLU-DNNs (DNNs with ReLU). Instead of changing the activation functions or the initialization strategy, our methodology explicitly encourage the pre-activation to be out of the saturation region. Specifically, we add an auxiliary objective induced by L2-norm of the pre-activation values to the optimization problem. The auxiliary objective could help to active more units and promote effective information propagation in ReLU-DNNs. By conducting experiments on several large-scale real datasets, we demonstrate better representations could be learned by using RegA and the method help ReLU-DNNs get better performance on convergence and accuracy.

Fusarium mycotoxins, commonly present in corn and its derived products for animals, has caused significant economic impact on swine reproduction in the People’s Republic of China. The objective of the present study, therefore, was to evaluate changes in mycotoxin contents and microbial diversity by conventional solid fermentation of a contaminated diet. Three diets were evaluated, as follows: control group, basal diet; test group 1 (25 Toxin), basal diet in which corn and corn gluten meal were replaced with 25% mycotoxin-contaminated corn and corn gluten meal, respectively; test group 2 (50 Toxin), basal diet in which corn and corn gluten meal were replaced with 50% mycotoxin-contaminated corn and corn gluten meal, respectively. Compound strains were used for solid-state fermentation of the compound feed. Under the present experimental conditions, conventional solid fermentation altered microbial diversity, as demonstrated by high-throughput sequencing of a Fusarium mycotoxin-contaminated diet, and the content of zearalenone (ZEA) was reduced significantly. However, deleterious effects were also observed with regard to the contents of deoxynivalenol (DON) and fumonisin B1 (FUMB1). These results may have implications for animals consuming Fusarium mycotoxin-contaminated food or feed by conventional solid fermentation.

Somatic stem cells are regulated by their niches to maintain tissue homeostasis and repair throughout the lifetime of an organism. An excellent example to study stem cell/niche interactions is provided by the regeneration of melanocytes during the hair cycle and in response to various types of injury. These processes are regulated by neighboring stem cells and multiple signaling pathways, including WNT/β-catenin, KITL/KIT, EDNs/EDNRB, TGF-β/TGF-βR, α-MSH/MC1R, and Notch signaling. In this review, we highlight recent studies that have advanced our understanding of the molecular crosstalk between melanocyte stem cells and their neighboring cells, which collectively form the niche microenvironment, and we focus on the question of how McSCs/niche interactions shape the responses to genotoxic damages and mechanical injury.

Plants utilize energy from sunlight to perform photosynthesis in chloroplast, an organelle that could be damaged by solar UV radiation. The ultraviolet-B (UV-B) photoreceptor UVR8 is required for UV-B perception and signal transduction. However, little is known about how UVR8 influence chloroplast development under UV-B radiation. Here, we characterized tomato UVR8 gene (SlUVR8) and our results indicated that SlUVR8 facilitate plant acclimation to UV-B stress by orchestrating expression of the UVB-responsive genes (HY5 and CHS) and accumulating UV-absorptive compounds. In addition, we also discovered that SlUVR8 promotes fruit chloroplast development through enhancing accumulation of transcription factor GOLDEN2-LIKE2 (SlGLK2) which determines chloroplast and chlorophyll levels. Furthermore, UV-B radiation could increase expression of SlGLK2 and its target genes in fruits and leaves. SlUVR8 is required for UVB-induced SlGLK2 expression. Together, our work not only identified the conserved functions of SlUVR8 gene in response to UV-B stress, but also uncovered a novel role that SlUVR8 could boost chloroplast development by accumulating SlGLK2 proteins.

Density functional theory (DFT) computations were employed to investigate the transformation mechanism of CH3CHCO initiated by Cl/Br radicals. The title reactions could take place through two ways: hydrogen abstraction and the addition of Cl or Br to the carbon atoms of –CH- and –CO groups. Results suggested that the Cl/Br-additions are superior to H-abstraction, and the pathway of generating of CH3CHCl/CH3CHBr + CO by addition/elimination dominant the CH3CHCO + Cl/Br reactions. The kinetic calculation shows that C-IM1 and C-IM2 are the dominant products at low temperature, and the H-abstraction pathways are important for the title reactions. These investigations supply a comprehensive research of the Cl/Br-initiated oxidation of CH3CHCO, which are contribute to understand its transformation mechanism and atmospheric environmental risk assessment.

The molecular dynamics (MD) simulation method was used to explore the impact of vacancy concentration (0 at%, 0.1 at% and 0.2 at%) on the diffusion and precipitation rate of Cu atoms in the Fe-3.5Cu alloy and the growth of Cu precipitation during the aging process of the alloy. The mechanism of the influence of Cu precipitation relative to the tensile properties of Fe-3.5Cu alloy was investigated. The results showed that the presence of vacancies will promote the diffusion and precipitation of Cu atoms in the Fe-3.5Cu alloy, but the diffusion and precipitation rate of Cu atoms does not always increase with the increase in vacancies. In the alloy containing 0.2 at% vacancies, the diffusion and precipitation rate of Cu atoms is lower than that in the alloy containing 0.1 at% vacancies. During the aging process, when the alloy contains no vacancies, no Cu precipitates will be produced. In the alloy containing 0.1 at% vacancies, the size of the Cu precipitates produced is larger than the size of the Cu precipitates produced in the alloy containing 0.2 at% vacancies, but the number of precipitates is less than that in the alloy with 0.2 at% vacancies. During the tensile process, the Cu precipitates will promote early occurrence of phase transition of the internal crystal structure in the Fe-3.5Cu alloy system, and lead to the generation of vacancy defects in the system, thus weakening the yield strength and strain hardening strength of the alloy.

The accumulation of NH4HSO4 leads to the deactivation of commercial V2O5-WO3/TiO2 catalyst (VWTi) in practical application. The commercial catalyst is modified with 0.3 wt. % Ce and 0.05 wt. % Cu (donated as VWCeCuTi), and its sulfur resistance is noticeably improved. After loading 20 wt. % NH4HSO4, the NOx conversion of VWCeCuTi-S remains 40% at 250 °C, higher than that of VWTi-S (25%). Through a series of characterization analyses, it was found that the damaged surface areas and acid sites are the key factors for the deactivation of S-poisoned samples. However, surface-active oxygen and NO adsorption are increased by NH4HSO4 deposition, and the L–H mechanism is promoted over S-poisoned samples. Due to the interaction between V, Ce and Cu, the surface-active oxygen over VWCeCuTi-S is increased, and then NO adsorption is promoted. In addition, VWCeCuTi-S obtains a higher V5+ ratio and a better redox property than VWTi-S, which in turn accelerates the NH3-SCR reaction. More NO adsorption and encouraged reaction contribute to the better sulfur resistance of VWCeCuTi.

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is a very effective technique for image representation, which has been widely applied in computer vision and pattern recognition. This is because it can capture the underlying intrinsic structure of data by using its parts-based representations in the low dimensional space. However, NMF is an unsupervised learning method without utilizing both the available label information and the manifold geometrical structure of data space. In this paper, we propose a new semi-supervised graph-based discriminative nonnegative matrix factorization (GDNMF) method, which incorporates the local manifold regularization and the label information of the data into the NMF. GDNMF not only encodes the local geometrical structure of the data space by constructing k -nearest graph, but also takes into account the available label information. Thus, the discriminative abilities of clustering representations are greatly enhanced. Clustering experiments on five popular databases verify the effectiveness of our proposed GDNMF compared to the other state-of-the-art methods.

Concept factorization (CF) has been a powerful data representation method, which has been widely applied in image processing and document clustering. However, traditional CF cannot guarantee the decomposition results of CF to be sparse in theory and do not consider the geometric structure of the databases. In this paper, we propose a graph-regularized CF with local coordinate (LGCF) method, which enforces the learned coefficients to be sparse by using the local coordinate constraint meanwhile preserving the intrinsic geometric structure of the data space by incorporating graph regularization. An iterative optimization method is also proposed to solve the objective function of LGCF. By comparing with the state-of-the-arts algorithms (Kmeans, NMF, CF, LCCF, LCF), experimental results on four popular databases show that the proposed LGCF method has better performance in terms of average accuracy and mutual information.

The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) forms a monolayer at the back of the vertebrate eye and is fundamental to retinal function and homoeostasis. During early development, RPE cells undergo rapid proliferation, but in the adult, they remain normally nonproliferative throughout life. Nevertheless, under pathological conditions such as in proliferative vitreoretinopathy or after retinal ablation, mature RPE cells can re-enter the cell cycle and form nodules or multiple cell layers. Here we show that Dapl1, whose human homolog represents a susceptibility locus for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), is highly up-regulated in quiescent but not proliferating RPE cells and that experimental overexpression of DAPL1 in proliferating RPE cells inhibits their proliferation. Consistent with this observation, the percent of Ki67-positive cells is significantly higher in E11.5 Dapl1 knockout mouse embryos compared to age-matched controls. In adult Dapl1-/- mice, which survive without showing any overt pathology, RPE overgrowth leads to multiple cell layers and/or cellular nodules. The antiproliferative effect of DAPL1 is associated with an increase in CDKN1A protein levels. Reduction of CDKN1A by siRNA in DAPL1-overexpressing RPE cells in vitro partially restores cell proliferation. Hence, we show that DAPL1 is a novel regulator of RPE cell proliferation that is important for the maintenance of the RPE as a monolayer. The findings suggest that DAPL1 dysregulation may be involved in abnormal RPE-related proliferative diseases and corresponding retinal dysfunctions in humans.

Dysfunction and loss of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) are hallmarks of retinal degenerative diseases in mammals. A critical transcription factor for RPE development and function is the microphthalmia-associated transcription factor MITF and its germline mutations are associated with clinically distinct disorders, including albinism, microphthalmia, retinal degeneration, and increased risk of developing melanoma. Many studies have revealed new insights into central roles of MITF in RPE cell physiology, including melanogenesis, regulation of trophic factor expression, cell proliferation, anti-oxidant functions, and the visual cycle. In this review, we discuss the complex functional roles of MITF in RPE development, homeostasis, and retinal degeneration and touch upon key questions and challenges in neuroprotective strategies for retinal degenerative disorders associated with deficiencies in MITF or its many target genes.

Novel Fe–28Mn–10Al–C–0.5Nb low-density steel was developed and the room temperature tensile behavior in the solid solution state and the microstructure evolution process during plastic deformation were studied, aiming to clarify the dominant deformation mechanisms. The results show that the developed steel was fully austenitic with a low density of 6.63 g/cm3 and fairly high stacking fault energy of 84 MJ/m2. The present fully austenitic Fe–28Mn–10Al–C–0.5Nb low-density steel exhibited an excellent ultimate tensile strength of 1084 MPa and elongation of 37.5%, in addition, the steel exhibited an excellent combination of strength and ductility (i.e., the product of strength and ductility (PSE) could reach as high as 40.65 GPa%). In spite of the high stacking fault energy, deformed microstructures exhibited planar glide characteristics, seemingly due to the glide plane softening effect. The excellent combination of strength and ductility is attributed to plasticity induced by microbands and leads to the continuous strain hardening during deformation at room temperature. Moreover, the addition of Nb does not change the deformation mechanism and strengthening mechanism of Fe–Mn–Al–C low-density steel, and can optimize the mechanical properties of the steel.

TiO2 nanotube arrays (TNTs) modified with CuxO (x = 1, 2) were prepared by a simple impregnation-calcinations method. The obtained samples were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy , UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and photocurrent tests. The photocatalytic ability of the as-prepared photocatalysts was evaluated using rhodamine B (RhB) as a target pollutant. Compared with pure TNTs, the CuxO/TNTs composite exhibited much higher photocatalytic activity under visible-light irradiation (λ > 420 nm). The photocatalytic activity of the composite was related to impregnation time of the copper nitrate solution, and an optimal time was 2 h. The activity of 2-CuxO/TNTs displayed 4.9 times as high as that of pure TNTs. The enhanced photocatalytic performance is mainly attributed to the synergistic effects of initiating visible-light absorption and the matched band edge positions of Cu2O, CuO and TiO2. Also, a possible mechanism on the CuxO/TNTs photocatalytic degradation of RhB is proposed. Overall, the inexpensive and environmentally friendly photocatalyst, as promising materials, could be used to remove some aquatic pollutants in the field of water purification.

Recently, construction of three-dimensional (3D) architecture and design of heterostructure have been proved to be two important approaches for improving photocatalytic (PC) properties of TiO2-based catalysts. In this work, a 3D microporous surface on Ti substrate (MPT) was prepared by simple acid etching. Then, heterojunctioned SrTiO3/TiO2 nanotubes with dominant {001} facets of anatase TiO2were successfully fabricated on MPT by combining anodization with hydrothermal treatment. The 3D microporous-patterned SrTiO3/TiO2 nanotubes heterojunction shows significantly enhanced photo-current density and ∼200% improved PC effect in degradation of Rhodamine B owing to its higher specific surface area, stronger light-harvesting ability and positive heterojunction effect in comparison with TiO2 nanotubes formed on flat Ti substrate. Moreover, the 3D microporous structure on Ti substrate improved the adhesive strength between the nanotubes layer and Ti substrate, which can be ascribed to the effective release of internal stress. Therefore, this present strategy is expected to expand the application of TiO2-based catalysts in many fields which require excellent PC properties and mechanical stability.

In this work, using a lanthanum nitrate solution as lanthanum source, a visible-light responsive La2O3/TiO2 nanotube arrays (TNTs) composite was synthesized by a facile impregnation-calcinations technique. The as-synthesized samples were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and photocurrent tests. The photocatalytic activity of the La2O3/TNTs composite under visible-light irradiation (λ>420 nm) was evaluated by the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB). The results revealed one part of La was doped, and the other part was dispersed on the TNTs surface in the form of La2O3. La-doping narrowed the band gap and La2O3 modification accelerated the separation of photo-induced electron-hole pairs. Consequently, the as-prepared La2O3/TNTs composite exhibited much higher photocatalytic activity than pure TNTs. The photocatalytic activity of the composite was related to impregnation time of lanthanum nitrate solution, and an optimal time was 2 h. The activity of 2-La2O3/TNTs displayed 3.7 times as high as that of pure TNTs. A possible mechanism on the La2O3/TNTs photocatalytic activities is suggested. The composite, as promising materials, could be used to degrade dye wastewater or other organic pollutants.

This paper presents an optimization study of sandwich plates with corrugated cores for minimizing the transmitted sound power, considering the manufacturability of the structure and constraints on the structural weight and fundamental frequency. A two-dimensional plate model is developed based on the spectral element method (SEM) for the calculation of the frequency-domain vibration response of the whole sandwich structure subject to airborne excitation, and the Rayleigh integral formula is used to calculate the transmitted sound power via its structure-born path. A genetic algorithm-based multi-parameter optimization method is employed to search for the optimal structural parameters with the objective to minimize the sound power transmitted. It is indicated that the optimization results depend highly on the properties of resonant modes in the targeted frequency band. Because of the local modes of the sandwich structure in the high frequency band, the transmitted sound power can be significantly reduced with neither increasing the structural weight nor deteriorating the bending stiffness.

Objective: This study assessed the incidence, mortality, and pathogens associated with nosocomial neonatal sepsis (NNS) in Shaanxi Province to improve the prevention and control of NNS. Methods: Nine large neonatal departments in Shaanxi Province participated in this retrospective epidemiological investigation of NNS during the period of 2008-2010, using standardized protocol. The incidence, mortality, pathogens, antibiotic sensitivity, clinical characteristics, prognosis, and costs were analyzed. Results: Of 16,642 neonates admitted to neonatal departments in the 9 hospitals during 2008-2010, there were 139 cases of NNS, with incidence of 8.3% and mortality of 20.8%. The predominant pathogens were Gram-negative bacteria, accounting for 67.6% of positive cultures. Gram-positive bacteria accounted for 24.5% and fungal infection accounted for 7.9%. The most common Gram-negative species were Klebsiella pneumonia (22.3%), Escherichia coli (15.1%), and Enterobacter cloacae (8.6%). The dominant Gram-positive species identified were coagulase negative staphylococcal species (CONS) (8.6%), followed by Staphylococcus aureus (7.9%). The recovered bacterial pathogens demonstrated varying antibiotic resistance, but no meropenem-or-vancomycin-resistant strains were detected. Preterm and full-term infants showed significant difference in clinical manifestations, laboratory findings, mortality, and cost. Conclusion: NNS in the hospitals of Shaanxi Province showed a decreasing trend from 2008 to 2010, but the mortality did not reduce significantly. The predominant bacteria were Gram negative, and pathogens were found to have varying antibiotic resistance. The preterm group had higher mortality and costs than the full-term infants. Therefore, effective measures should be taken to control NNS, especially in preterm infants.

The molecular dynamics (MD) method was used to simulate and calculate the segregation energy and cohesive energy of Cu atoms at the &Sigma, 3{111}(110) and &Sigma, 3{112}(110) grain boundaries, and the tensile properties of the BCC-Fe crystal, with the grain boundaries containing coherent Cu clusters of different sizes (a diameter of 10 &Aring, 15 &Aring, and 20 &Aring, ). The results showed that Cu atoms will spontaneously segregate towards the grain boundaries and tend to exist in the form of large-sized, low-density Cu clusters at the grain boundaries. When Cu cluster exists at the &Sigma, 3{111}(110) grain boundary, the increase in the size of the Cu cluster leads to an increase in the probability of vacancy formation inside the Cu cluster during the tensile process, weakening the breaking strength of the crystal. When the Cu cluster exists at the &Sigma, 3{112}(110) grain boundary, the Cu cluster with a diameter of 10 &Aring, will reduce the strain hardening strength of the crystal, but the plastic deformation ability of the crystal will not be affected, and the existence of Cu clusters with a diameter of 15 &Aring, will suppress the structural phase transformation of the crystal, and significantly decrease the plastic deformation ability of the crystal, thereby resulting in embrittlement of the crystal.

The spatial variation of chlorophyll a in the Southern Ocean (SO) was of great significance. Sea surface chlorophyll a concentrations was measured by Ferry Box monitoring system on the Chinese polar research vessel Xue Long, which circumnavigated the Antarctic continent in a clockwise direction during the austral summer 2013–2014 (November 2013–April 2014). The concentrations of chlorophyll a indicated a relatively uniform distribution of 0.049–11.647 mg m−3 (mean 0. 869 mg m−3, n = 152,751). The highest chlorophyll a concentrations (mean 1.847 mg m−3) was found in the Ross sea (RS). In addition, six high-chlorophyll a hot spots were recognized. Analysis revealed that phytoplankton bloom could be controlled by multiple factors in different regions, and the chlorophyll a bloom is attributed to the combined effect of surface and subsurface processes such as, continental shelf, sea ice melting, Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) upwelling, suitable temperature, and nutrient injection from subsurface to the surface. The topographic effects, sea ice melting and CDW upwelling may play a major role in controlling primary productivity in the SO. Among of all, CDW upwelling may be the most important role improving primary productivity. This study presented the phytoplankton distribution patterns and the relation with potential growth-controlling factors in the SO, which will provide more insight in the mechanisms that control global warming to reduce global CO2 the atmosphere into the ocean interior.

Based on the input and output data of the 11 provinces and cities in the 2006-2016 Yangtze River Economic Belt, the article selects R&D personnel’s full-time equivalent nuclear R&D research expenditure as the input index, selects the number of patent grants as an indicator of acceptable output, water consumption and wastewater discharge. As a non-conforming output indicator, the EBM model considering undesired output is used to measure the water innovation efficiency of each province and city, and calculate the global Moran’I index value, and draw the Moran index map for 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2016. It is found that water use efficiency is generally on the rise, and there is significant spatial autocorrelation between regions. Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have been at the frontier level of efficiency and have the positive correlation. Chongqing and Guizhou have negative correlations with neighboring provinces and cities. In order to more effectively improve the water innovation efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, in addition to paying attention to the development of the province and the city itself, it is also necessary to pay attention to the radiation belt actions of neighboring provinces and cities, and formulate differentiated water management measures.

The welding performance of shipbuilding steel under large heat input could be improved greatly by the Mg addition to the steel, but the impact toughness of the HAZ is not stable. According to the three different thickness steel plates obtained in the industrial experiment, the large heat input welding was carried out by different heat input, and the impact toughness analysis, impact fracture analysis, metallographic microstructure analysis and inclusions analysis were carried out. The results showed that, the HAZ of three kinds of thickness plates induced a lot of IAF, with Mg addition, the inclusion dimension had been reduced effectively, and the IAF induced ability of the inclusions had also been improved. The difference of HAZ impact toughness with different welding heat input and different impact temperature is significant, in consideration of the influence of welding heat input and metallographic microstructure on impact toughness of HAZ, the welding heat load had far greater effect than metallographic microstructure on ductile-brittle transition temperature. At the same time, if the original metallographic microstructure of steel was coarse, the pinning effect of the inclusions would be reduced significantly, and the microstructure of HAZ would be coarsened and the impact toughness of HAZ would be decreased, so there is a certain matching relationship between the metallographic microstructure and the inclusion dimension.

The welding performance of shipbuilding steel under large heat input could be improved greatly by the addition of Mg to the steel, but the impact toughness of the heat affect zone (HAZ) is not stable. According to the three different thickness steel plates obtained in the industrial experiment, the large heat input welding was carried out by different heat input, and the impact toughness analysis, impact fracture analysis, metallographic microstructure analysis and inclusions analysis were carried out. The results showed that, the HAZ of three kinds of thickness plates induced much intragranular acicular ferrite (IAF), with Mg addition, the inclusion dimension had been reduced effectively, and the IAF-induced ability of the inclusions had also been improved. The difference of HAZ impact toughness with different welding heat input and different impact temperature is significant, considering the influence of welding heat input and metallographic microstructure on the impact toughness of HAZ, the welding heat load had a far greater effect than the metallographic microstructure on ductile&ndash, brittle transition temperature. At the same time, if the original metallographic microstructure of steel was coarse, the pinning effect of the inclusions would be reduced significantly, and the microstructure of HAZ would be coarsened and the impact toughness of HAZ would be decreased, so there is a certain matching relationship between the metallographic microstructure and the inclusion dimension.

Two-photon microscopy imaging has been widely applied in biological imaging, but the development of two-photon absorption probes is obviously lagging behind in the development of imaging technology. In this paper, a two-photon fluorescent probe (1) based on pyrimidine 2-isothiocyanate has been designed and synthesized through a simple method for two-photon biological imaging. Probe 1 was able to couple effectively with the amino groups on biomolecules. To verify the reactivity of the isothiocyanate group on probe 1 and the amine groups on the biomolecules, D-glucosamine was chosen as a model biomolecule to conjugate with probe 1. The result showed that probe 1 could effectively conjugate with D-glucosamine to synthesize probe 2, and the yield of probe 2 was 83%. After conjugating with D-glucosamine, linear absorption spectra, single-photon fluorescence spectra, and two-photon fluorescence spectra of probes 1 and 2 did not present significant changes. Probes 1 and 2 exhibited high fluorescence quantum yields (0.71–0.79) in toluene and chloroform. They also exhibited different photo-physical properties in solvents with different polarities. The two-photon absorption cross-section of probe 1 was 953 GM in toluene. In addition, probe 1 could be effectively conjugated with transferrin, and the conjugated probe (Tf–1) could be transported into Hep G2 cells through a receptor-mediated process for biological imaging. These results demonstrate that such probes are expected to have great potential applications in two-photon fluorescence bioimaging.

Controllable growth of anatase TiO2 with dominant high reactive crystal facets has attracted intense interest in the past few years due to their unique structure-dependent properties. In this work, SrTiO3/TiO2 heterostructure nanotubes (SrT) arrays films with high reactive dominant (001) facets of anatase TiO2 were successfully prepared through the part conversion of TiO2 by a hydrothermal method. Various characterizations were used to investigate the morphologies, crystal phases and chemical compositions of the prepared samples. Structure analyses using X-ray diffraction and a high-resolution transmission electron microscope revealed that, the treatment sequence of hydrothermal reaction and annealing was a crucial influence factor on controlling the growth of preferred orientation of (001) facets of TiO2 in SrTiO3/TiO2 heterojunction, whereas the inverse treatment sequence yielded randomly oriented facets. The formation mechanism of dominant (001) facets of TiO2 in the heterojunction was related to crystal structures of TiO2 and SrTiO3. The heteroepitaxial growth on (001) plane of SrTiO3 led to dominant (001) facets of anatase TiO2 attributing to their excellent surface lattices match. The photoelectric performances of pure TiO2 nanotubes and SrT were investigated by photoluminescence, UV–visible diffuse reflectance, photocurrent and current–voltage response. The semiconductor characteristics of them were studied by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and Mott–Schottky analysis in detail. The results demonstrated that the heterostructure of SrT not only increased light absorption, but also effectively shifted the Fermi level and promoted charge transfer. Among all the samples, the SrTiO3/TiO2 heterojunction prepared by 1 h hydrothermal treatment (1SrT) exhibited the best photoelectrochemical performances due to the synergetic contributions of the high active (001) facets of anatase TiO2 and the charge transport properties of the heterostructure.

In tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), high pigment mutations (hp-1 and hp-2) were mapped to genes encoding UV-damaged DNA binding protein 1 (DDB1) and de-etiolated-1 (DET1), respectively. Here we characterized a tomato methyl-CpG-binding domain protein SlMBD5 identified by yeast two-hybrid screening using SlDDB1 as a bait. Yeast two-hybrid assay demonstrated that the physical interaction of SlMBD5 with SlDDB1 is mediated by the C-termini of SlMBD5 and the β-propeller-C (BPC) of SlDDB1. Co-immunoprecipitation analyses revealed that SlMBD5 associates with SlDDB1-interacting partners including SlDET1, SlCUL4, SlRBX1a and SlRBX1b in vivo. SlMBD5 was shown to target to nucleus and dimerizes via its MBD motif. Electrophoresis mobility shift analysis suggested that the MBD of SlMBD5 specifically binds to methylated CpG dinucleotides but not to methylated CpHpG or CpHpH dinucleotides. SlMBD5 expressed in protoplast is capable of activating transcription of CG islands, whereas CUL4/DDB1 antagonizes this effect. Overexpressing SlMBD5 resulted in diverse developmental alterations including darker green fruits with increased plastid level and elevated pigmentation, as well as enhanced expression of SlGLK2, a key regulator of plastid biogenesis. Taken together, we hypothesize that the physical interaction of SlMBD5 with the CUL4-DDB1-DET1 complex component may affect its binding activity to methylated DNA and subsequently attenuate its transcription activation of downstream genes.

Camphorsulfonic acid doped polyaniline (CSA-PANI) was prepared by a doping-dedoping-redoping process, and subsequently used for modifying the TiO2 nanotube arrays (TNTs) on titanium surfaces via a facile impregnation method. The obtained CSA-PANI/TNTs hybrids were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and photocurrent tests. The photocatalytic activities of the hybrids were measured by the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) under visible-light irradiation (λ > 420 nm). The results indicate the hybridization between CSA-PANI and TiO2 greatly enhances the photocatalytic activity of TNTs. The CSA-PANI (100 mg/L) hybridized TNTs photocatalyst displays the highest photocatalytic activity for RhB decomposition. Conductive CSA-PANI polymer can arouse visible light absorption and accelerate the separation of photo-induced electron–hole pairs. A possible mechanism on the CSA-PANI/TNTs photocatalytic activities is suggested. Such a photocatalyst should be promising for photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants using solar energy.

N-doped TiO2 nanotube arrays modified with NiO (denoted NiO/N-TNTs) were successfully prepared by a facile impregnation–calcinations-cycle technique. As-prepared nanocomposites were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and photocurrent tests. The photocatalytic activities of the as-prepared samples were measured by the degradation of Rhodamine B aqueous solutions under visible-light irradiation (λ > 420 nm). The results indicated the nitrogen was doped into the lattice and the NiO nanoparticles were deposited into the pore of the photocatalysts. N-doping narrows the band gap and NiO modification accelerates the separation of photo-induced electron–hole pairs. Consequently, NiO/N-TNTs photocatalyst exhibited a higher photocatalytic activity than pure TNTs, NiO/TNTs and N-doped TNTs photocatalysts. Interestingly, the NiO/N-TNTs photocatalyst possesses good stability. A possible mechanism on the NiO/N-TNTs photocatalytic activities was suggested. Such a photocatalyst should be potential for organic pollutant removal in photocatalytic system.

The WRKY transcription factors are one of the well-characterized classes of plant transcription factors, which participated in various biotic and abiotc stress responses. Previous study showed that there are 81 WRKY genes in tomato, wherein a number of SlWRKY genes including SlWRKY39 were significantly up-regulated under salt, drought stress and PstDC3000 infection. However little is known about their physiological role in tomato. In this study, by using a forward genetic approach, we demonstrated transgenic plants over-expressing SlWRKY39 showing enhanced resistance to multiple stress factors including PstDC3000, salt and drought. Transgenic plants accumulated higher level of proline and lower level of malonic dialdehyde. Compared with wild type, the expression of pathogenesis-related genes SlPR1, SlPR1a1 and environmental stress related genes SlRD22, SlDREB2A were up-regulated in the transgenic plants. These results indicated that SlWRKY39 is a positive regulatory component of tomato against biotic and abiotic stress probably via activating the expression of both pathogenesis-related genes and stress related genes.

In this paper, a new filled function with only one parameter is proposed. The main advantages of the new filled function are that it not only can be analyzed easily, but also can be approximated uniformly by a continuously differentiable function. Thus, a minimizer of the proposed filled function can be obtained easily by using a local optimization algorithm. The obtained minimizer is taken as the initial point to minimize the objective function and a better minimizer will be found. By repeating the above processes, we will find a global minimizer at last. The results of numerical experiments show that the new proposed filled function method is effective.

Pansharpening is the process of integrating a high spatial resolution panchromatic image with a low spatial resolution multispectral image to obtain a multispectral image with high spatial and spectral resolution. Over the last decade, several algorithms have been developed for pansharpening. In this paper, a technique, called enhanced back-projection (EBP), is introduced and applied as postprocessing on the pansharpening. The proposed EBP first enhances the spatial details of the pansharpening results by histogram matching and high-pass modulation, followed by a back-projection process, which takes into account the modulation transfer function (MTF) of the satellite sensor such that the pansharpening results obey the consistency property. The EBP is validated on four datasets acquired by different satellites and several commonly used pansharpening methods. The pansharpening results achieve substantial improvements by this postprocessing technique, which is widely applicable and requires no modification of existing pansharpening methods.

Problem The function of CD49a on human decidual natural killer (dNK) cells is unknown. Method of study The expression of CD49a on dNK cells from human patients with recurrent spontaneous abortions or age-matched healthy controls was analyzed by flow cytometry. DNK cells were treated with CD49a neutralizing antibody and analyzed for function (cytokines production and cytotoxic activity). Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) microarray analysis was used to identify a potential regulator of CD49a. Results DNK cells from human patients who underwent recurrent spontaneous abortions had lower levels of CD49a and increased perforin, granzyme B, and IFN-r expression, when compared to dNK cells from age-matched healthy controls. Perforin, granzyme B, and IFN-r expression levels in dNK cells were upregulated, while the migration and adhesion of dNK cells were downregulated by CD49a-neutralizing antibody. By the 51 Cr release assay, the killing activity of dNK cells also increased with CD49a neutralizing antibody. Further, lnc-49a, a newly identified lncRNA, was shown to be a positive regulator of CD49a in primary human NK cells. Conclusion CD49a is involved in the regulation of dNK cells functions, including cytotoxic activity, migration, and adhesion. Further, lnc-49a is a positive regulator of CD49a in human primary dNK cells.

TiO2 nanotubes on Ti substrate were fabricated by electrochemical anodization. Ag nanoparticles were deposited on the TiO2 nanotubes by a silver mirror reaction. Antibacterial activity of the nanotubes with different structural features was evaluated by a culture test with Escherichia coli bacteria. The anatase nanotubes showed the highest antibacterial activity among three crystal phases including anatase, rutile and amorphous titania. The diameters of the nanotubes affected the antibacterial activity. The two nanotubes with 200 nm and 50 nm diameters had higher antibacterial rate than those with other diameters. The antibacterial activity of the nanotubes was independent on their lengths. Ag-deposited nanotubes exhibited excellent antibacterial activity and its antibacterial rate was up to approximately 100%. TiO2 nanotubes and Ag-deposited nanotubes on titanium should be potential for antibacterial applications in clinics and industry, especially regarding with their reusability.

Cytoplasmic dynein 1 is fundamentally important for transporting a variety of essential cargoes along microtubules within eukaryotic cells. However, in mammals, few mutants are available for studying the effects of defects in dynein-controlled processes in the context of the whole organism. Here, we deleted mouse Dlic1 gene encoding DLIC1, a subunit of the dynein complex. Dlic1(-/-) mice are viable, but display severe photoreceptor degeneration. Ablation of Dlic1 results in ectopic accumulation of outer segment (OS) proteins, and impairs OS growth and ciliogenesis of photoreceptors by interfering with Rab11-vesicle trafficking and blocking efficient OS protein transport from Golgi to the basal body. Our studies show that Dlic1 deficiency partially blocks vesicle export from endoplasmic reticulum (ER), but seems not to affect vesicle transport from the ER to Golgi. Further mechanistic study reveals that lack of Dlic1 destabilizes dynein subunits and alters the normal subcellular distribution of dynein in photoreceptors, probably due to the impaired transport function of dynein. Our results demonstrate that Dlic1 plays important roles in ciliogenesis and protein transport to the OS, and is required for photoreceptor development and survival. The Dlic1(-/-) mice also provide a new mouse model to study human retinal degeneration.