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At present, the education of Traditional Chinese theatre arts in universities is lacking in both “software” and “hardware”, which is in the dilemma of being marginalized by teaching. There are many common problems in the bottleneck and causes of many kinds of theatre arts in the development of universities education, such as the shortage of teachers, the lack of interest of students, the weakness of scientific research, the poor environment of Traditional Chinese Theatre arts and so on. In view of the above problems, it is suggested to adopt multi-channel strategies to cultivate students' interest, improve the supporting Traditional Chinese Theatre arts curriculum, and optimize the traditional Chinese Theatre arts environment, so as to change the current dilemma of Traditional Chinese Theatre arts in universities.

Purpose: This study aims to identify EEG biomarkers that predict the level of depressive personality (where extreme scores indicate disorder), as opposed to the presence or absence of a depressive state or a depression diagnosis.Methods: Fourier features were extracted from 2-second epochs of resting state EEG and used by LSBoost to maximise the correlation with depressive trait tendencies (PID-5 depressivity index).Results: Our method accounted for 25.75% of the variance in PID-5 scores, albeit in females only. The recording channel C3 and frequencies in the gamma band were the most important contributors to the prediction. The findings are consistent with previous psychological studies and suggest that our method is a feasible strategy for developing quantitative EEG biomarkers for trait depressivity in a neuropsychologically interpretable form. We have also shown that there might be different markers for depressivity between males and females.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19) has spread to 181 countries and regions and leaving behind 1,133,788 confirmed cases and 62784 deaths worldwide. Countries with lower health services and facilities like Pakistan are on great risk. Pakistan so far has 3,277 confirmed cases and 50 reported deaths due to COVID19. Various mathematical models had presented to predict the global and regional size of pandemic. However, all those models have certain limitation due to their dependence on different variables and analyses are subject to potential bias. As each country has its own dimension therefore country specific model are required to develop accurate estimate. Here we present a data model to predict the size of COVID19 in Pakistan. In this mathematical data model, we used the time sequence mean weighting (TSMW) to estimate the expected future number of COVID19 cases in Pakistan until 29th April 2020. For future expected numbers of cases for long terms the data collection have to be maintained in real time.

EEG signals are often contaminated with artefacts, particularly with mains power from electrical equipment. Low-pass filtering and notch filtering can lose valuable data. Here we describe a novel mains power noise removal method based on the fact that mains power noise is a sine wave component with an essentially fixed frequency and the same phase across all channels. This removes the blink component, leaving uncontaminated EEG largely unchanged. Blink removal had a success rate of >99.9% recovered variance of the original EEG when removing synthesised mains power components. We compared this method with two other popular mains power noise removal methods. Our method was better than Cleanline which is an ICA based method and multiple PLI which is an adaptive notch filter based method. With the higher recovery, our method shows clear advantages over Cleanline and multiple PLI for removing mains power noise. From the aspect of data loss, it is obviously better than low-pass filter and normal notch filter.

Ferromagnetic nanoparticles (NPs) prepared by conventional routes usually lead to large particle sizes because of their easy aggregation nature, and the low loading amount greatly limits their application in reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP). In this contribution, well dispersed Ni nanoparticles with small diameter of 7 nm are supported on mesoporous silica SBA-15 through a facile in situ decomposition and reduction strategy. It is found that the as-prepared Ni/SBA-15 can be used as a catalyst and exhibits a high specific surface area (461 m2 g−1) and ultra-high loading amount of Ni particles (574 μg mg−1). The well-dispersed and high-loading Ni NPs make the Ni/SBA-15 exhibit excellent catalytic performance in 4-NP reduction, superior to any Ni NPs supported catalysts reported so far and many noble metal supported catalysts. In particular, the magnetic behaviour of Ni/SBA-15 makes it easy to recycle for reuse. This novel synthetic strategy may pave the way for the preparation of other metal nanoparticles supported on different kinds of amorphous silica with high loading capacity and high dispersion.

The high cost of noble metal nanoparticles used for catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) leads to an extensive study of Ni nanoparticles (NPs) for their low cost and magnetic properties. However, the conventional routes for preparing the ferromagnetic Ni NPs usually lead to large particle size and aggregation. In this study, we propose a simple two-step method for the synthesis of hierarchical Ni NP supported silica magnetic hollow microspheres (Ni/SiO2 MHMs). Tiny Ni NPs are well dispersed on the supports with high loading amounts (15 wt%). The size of Ni NPs can be tuned from 10 nm to 21 nm with the size of Ni/SiO2 MHMs increasing from 230 nm to 800 nm. The as-prepared samples exhibit excellent catalytic activity in the reduction of 4-NP. Furthermore, the experimental results prove that the size of Ni NPs plays an important role in the catalytic activity. The catalytic activity of small sized Ni NPs is higher than that of large sized and many other supported Ni NP catalysts as reported. In particular, the magnetic properties of Ni/SiO2 MHMs make them easy to recycle for reuse.

The easy aggregation nature of ferromagnetic nanoparticles (NPs) prepared by conventional routes usually leads to a large particle size and low loading, which greatly limits their applications to the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP). Herein, we developed a novel in situ thermal decomposition and reduction strategy to prepare Ni nanoparticles/silica nanotubes (Ni/SNTs), which can markedly prevent the aggregation and growth of Ni NPs, resulting in an ultra-small particle size (about 6 nm), good dispersion and especially high loading of Ni NPs. It was found that Ni/SNTs, which have a high specific surface area (416 m(2) g(-1)), exhibit ultra-high catalytic activity in the 4-NP reduction (complete reduction of 4-NP within only 60 s at room temperature), which is superior to most noble metal (Au, Pt, and Pd) supported catalysts. Ni/SNTs still showed high activity even after re-use for several cycles, suggesting good stability. In particular, the magnetic property of Ni/SNTs makes it easy to recycle for reuse.

Binary metal oxide MnCo2O4 nanosheets wrapped on a hollow activated carbon shell (C@MnCo2O4) were successfully synthesized through a facile hydrothermal method followed by a calcination process. The novel structure of a flower-like C@MnCo2O4 composite, which consists in a good conductive carbon shell and well interconnected nanosheets, can efficiently facilitate electrolyte penetration and offers an expedite transport path for ions and electrons. Notably, the large surface of the hybrid composite (347 m2 g−1) can provide a large amount of active sites, which evidently accommodates the strain during cycling. Benefiting from this elegant combination and the effectively mesoporous structure, the specific capacitance of the C@MnCo2O4 composite can be achieved as high as 728.4 F g−1, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest value so far reported for MnCo2O4 based electrode materials. In addition, the C@MnCo2O4 composite exhibits enhanced rate capability and an excellent cycling stability of 95.9% retention after 1000 cycles at a high current density of 8 A g−1. Therefore, the desirable integrated electrical performance allows it to be a promising electrode material for supercapacitor applications.

In this report, MgSiO3:Eu-DOX-DPP-RGD hollow microspheres employed for simultaneous imaging and anti-cancer therapy have been designed by sequentially loading the anti-tumor drugs doxorubicin (DOX), light-activated platinum(IV) pro-drug PPD, and a targeted peptide of NH2-Gly-Arg-Gly-Asp-Ser (RGD) onto MgSiO3:Eu mesoporous hollow spheres, which were synthesized using solid SiO2 spheres as sacrificed template by a facile hydrothermal process based on the Kirkendall effect. The photoluminescence intensity of MgSiO3:Eu has been optimized, which can emit a recognized red signal in vitro and in vivo under modest ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. It was found that the platform has high biocompatibility and could become intracellular through fast and effective endocytosis with the aid of the targeted peptide RGD, and chemotherapeutic drugs DOX and light-activated platinum(IV) pro-drug DPP that can be released from the carrier to induce an obvious inhabitation effect to HeLa cancer cells (survival rate of only 17.4%), which has been verified by in vitro and in vivo results. Moreover, the in vitro result using a photosensitizer ZnPc loaded carrier shows that the system is not suitable for ZnPc induced photodynamic therapy. The apparent imaging effect and high anti-tumor efficacy of this functional system give it great potential in actual clinical applications.

The high cost of noble metal nanoparticles used for catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) leads to an extensive study of Ni nanoparticles (NPs) for their low cost and magnetic properties. However, the conventional routes for preparing the ferromagnetic Ni NPs usually lead to large particle size and aggregation. In this study, we propose a simple two-step method for the synthesis of hierarchical Ni NP supported silica magnetic hollow microspheres (Ni/SiO2 MHMs). Tiny Ni NPs are well dispersed on the supports with high loading amounts (15 wt%). The size of Ni NPs can be tuned from 10 nm to 21 nm with the size of Ni/SiO2 MHMs increasing from 230 nm to 800 nm. The as-prepared samples exhibit excellent catalytic activity in the reduction of 4-NP. Furthermore, the experimental results prove that the size of Ni NPs plays an important role in the catalytic activity. The catalytic activity of small sized Ni NPs is higher than that of large sized and many other supported Ni NP catalysts as reported. In particular, the magnetic properties of Ni/SiO2 MHMs make them easy to recycle for reuse.

A unique and rational design was presented to fabricate Ni/SiO2@Au magnetic hollow microspheres (MHMs) with interesting structures and well-dispersed metal nanoparticles. Hierarchical nickel silicate hollow microspheres were synthesized using silica colloidal spheres as a chemical template. Then, Ni/SiO2 MHMs with well-dispersed Ni nanoparticles were prepared via an in situ reduction approach. Ni/SiO2@Au MHMs were finally obtained by immobilizing uniform Au nanoparticles onto Ni/SiO2 support through a low-temperature chemical reduction process. It was found that Ni/SiO2@Au MHMs inherit the shape and uniformity of the original silica scaffold, and Ni NPs and Au NPs, which were less than 5 nm in size, were well dispersed on the mesoporous silica shell with narrow size distribution. Both Ni/SiO2 and Ni/SiO2@Au MHMs showed excellent catalytic activity in the 4-nitrophenol reduction reaction. Importantly, introduction of a small amount of Au NPs onto Ni/SiO2 MHMs markedly improved the catalytic activity. In particular, Ni/SiO2@Au MHMs showed high conversion even after re-use for several cycles with magnetic separation. The unique structure, high catalytic performance, and ease of separation make Ni/SiO2@Au MHMs highly promising candidates for diverse applications.