SARS-CoV-2 is the underlying cause for the COVID-19 pandemic. Like most enveloped RNA viruses, SARS-CoV-2 uses a homotrimeric surface antigen to gain entry into host cells. Here we describe S-Trimer, ...a native-like trimeric subunit vaccine candidate for COVID-19 based on Trimer-Tag technology. Immunization of S-Trimer with either AS03 (oil-in-water emulsion) or CpG 1018 (TLR9 agonist) plus alum adjuvants induced high-level of neutralizing antibodies and Th1-biased cellular immune responses in animal models. Moreover, rhesus macaques immunized with adjuvanted S-Trimer were protected from SARS-CoV-2 challenge compared to vehicle controls, based on clinical observations and reduction of viral loads in lungs. Trimer-Tag may be an important platform technology for scalable production and rapid development of safe and effective subunit vaccines against current and future emerging RNA viruses.
The paper presents the results of an experimental study on properties of concrete prepared with recycled mortar aggregate (RMA) that has been modified by a CO2 curing method. The experimental ...investigation was conducted in two parts. Firstly, the properties such as density, 10% fine value, and water absorption of CO2 improved RMA were determined. Secondly, the fresh, hardened and durability properties including slump, compressive and tensile splitting strength, drying shrinkage and chloride penetrability of the concretes prepared with RMA and CO2 cured aggregates (CI-RMA) were determined. It was found that the density, and 10% fine value of the CI-RMA was higher, and the water absorption of the CI-RMA was lower when compared to the untreated RMA. For the concrete, not only was there an improvement in the mechanical properties and resistance to chloride ion penetration for the concrete prepared with CI-RMA, but also the drying shrinkage was decreased.
An innovative nanostructure, namely the core–ring structure, is reported in this paper. It occurs in NiCo2O4 nanoplatelets, synthesized by the coprecipitation decomposition method using sodium ...hydroxide as the precipitant. The yield of core–ring hexagonal NiCo2O4 nanoplatelets is greater than 80% at 200 °C. A high‐resolution transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy investigation reveals the typical core–ring nanostructure, which shows a strong enrichment of Co in the core with a Co content higher than 80%. A mechanism for the core–ring structure formation is proposed. The core–ring NiCo2O4 can be used as an electrocatalyst for an oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline water electrolysis. Compared with the electrodes of ordinary NiCo2O4 and Co3O4, or other NiCo2O4 electrodes prepared by alternate methods, the electrode coated by core‐ring NiCo2O4 nanoplatelets exhibits the greatest electrocatalytic properties, with an over‐potential of 0.315 V at a current density of 100 mA cm−2.
A typical core–ring nanostructure occurs in NiCo2O4 nanoplatelets. It is revealed by energy dispersive spectroscopy analysis that the cation concentration of Co (Ni) in this structure gradually increases (decreases) from the ring to the core. These core–ring nanoplatelets are active anode catalysts for water electrolysis.
Organolead halide perovskites have attracted extensive attentions as light harvesting materials for solar cells recently, because of its high charge‐carrier mobilities, high photoconversion ...efficiencies, low energy cost, ease of deposition, and so on. Herein, with CH3NH3PbI3 film deposited on flexible ITO coated substrate, the first organolead halide perovskite based broadband photodetector is demonstrated. The organolead halide perovskite photodetector is sensitive to a broadband wavelength from the ultraviolet light to entire visible light, showing a photo‐responsivity of 3.49 A W−1, 0.0367 A W−1, an external quantum efficiency of 1.19×103%, 5.84% at 365 nm and 780 nm with a voltage bias of 3 V, respectively. Additionally, the as‐fabricated photodetector exhibit excellent flexibility and robustness with no obvious variation of photocurrent after bending for several times. The organolead halide perovskite photodetector with high sensitivity, high speed and broad spectrum photoresponse is promising for further practical applications. And this platform creates new opportunities for the development of low‐cost, solution‐processed and high‐efficiency photodetectors.
Organometal halide perovskites have shown tremendous potential as incident light absorbers for optoelectronic applications. In this work, a broadband photodetecotor is demonstrated based on the CH3NH3PbI3 film, showing a photo‐responsivity of 3.49 A W−1, 0.0367 A W−1, an external quantum efficiency of 1.19 × 103 %, 5.84% at 365 and 780 nm, respectively. These results provide new opportunities for the development of high‐efficiency photodetectors.
A new three-dimensional (3D) turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) subgrid mixing scheme is developed using the Advanced Research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model (WRF-ARW) to ...address the gray-zone problem in the parameterization of subgrid turbulent mixing. The new scheme combines the horizontal and vertical subgrid turbulent mixing into a single energetically consistent framework, in contrast to the conventionally separate treatment of the vertical and horizontal mixing. The new scheme is self-adaptive to the grid-size change between the large-eddy simulation (LES) and mesoscale limits. A series of dry convective boundary layer (CBL) idealized simulations are carried out to compare the performance of the new scheme and the conventional treatment of subgrid mixing to the WRF-ARW LES dataset. The importance of including the nonlocal component in the vertical buoyancy specification in the newly developed general TKE-based scheme is illustrated in the comparison. The improvements of the new scheme with the conventional treatment of subgrid mixing across the gray-zone model resolutions are demonstrated through the partitioning of the total vertical flux profiles. Results from real-case simulations show the feasibility of using the new scheme in the WRF Model in lieu of the conventional treatment of subgrid mixing.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This case report presents the electrocardiogram findings of a patient in their 50s with intermittent compression-like pain in the chest and a history of hypertension and diabetes.
Accurate and reliable monthly runoff forecasting plays an important role in making full use of water resources. In recent years, long short-term memory neural networks (LSTM), as a deep learning ...technology, has been successfully applied in forecasting monthly runoff. However, the hyperparameters of LSTM are predetermined, which has a significant influence on model performance. In this study, given that the decomposition of monthly runoff series may provide a more accurate prediction, as revealed by many previous studies, a hybrid model, namely, VMD-GWO-LSTM, is proposed for monthly runoff forecasting. The proposed hybrid model comprises two main components, namely, variational mode decomposition (VMD) coupled with the gray wolf optimizer (GWO)-based LSTM. First, VMD is utilized to decompose raw monthly runoff series into several subsequences. Second, GWO is implemented to optimize the hyperparameters of the LSTM for each subsequence on the condition that the inputs are determined. Finally, the total output of all subsequences is aggregated as the final forecast result. Four quantitative indices are employed to evaluate the model performance. The proposed model is demonstrated using 73 and 62 years of monthly runoff series data derived from the Xinfengjiang and Guangzhao Reservoirs in China's Pearl River system, respectively. To identify the feasibility and superiority of the proposed model, backpropagation neural networks (BPNN), support vector machine (SVM), LSTM, EMD-LSTM, VMD-LSTM and GWO-LSTM are also utilized for comparison. The results indicate that the proposed hybrid model can yield best forecast accuracy among these models, making it a promising new method for monthly runoff forecasting.
Electrochemical water splitting is a clean technology for H2 fuels, but greatly hindered by the slow kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, a series of spinel‐structured nanosheets ...with oxygen deficiencies and ultrathin thicknesses were designed to increase the reactivity and the number of active sites of the catalysts, which were then taken as an excellent platform for promoting the water oxidation process. Theoretical investigations showed that the oxygen vacancies confined in the ultrathin nanosheet could lower the adsorption energy of H2O, leading to increased OER efficiency. As expected, the NiCo2O4 ultrathin nanosheets rich in oxygen vacancies exhibited a large current density of 285 mA cm−2 at 0.8 V and a small overpotential of 0.32 V, both of which are superior to the corresponding values of bulk samples or samples with few oxygen deficiencies and even higher than those of most reported non‐precious‐metal catalysts. This work should provide a new pathway for the design of advanced OER catalysts.
Beneficial deficiencies: A series of spinel‐structured nanosheets with oxygen deficiencies (Ovac) and ultrathin thicknesses were synthesized for the first time. These features lead to an increase in the number of active sites and in the activity of the catalyst in water oxidation, which was confirmed by experimental and theoretical studies.
Moths rely heavily on pheromone communication for mate finding. The pheromone components of most moths are modified from the products of normal fatty acid metabolism by a set of tissue-specific ...enzymes. The turnip moth, Agrotis segetum uses a series of homologous fatty-alcohol acetate esters ((Z)-5-decenyl, (Z)-7-dodecenyl, and (Z)-9 tetradecenyl acetate) as its sex pheromone components. The ratio of the components differs between populations, making this species an interesting subject for studies of the enzymes involved in the biosynthetic pathway and their influence on sex pheromone variation.
Illumina sequencing and comparative analysis of the transcriptomes of the pheromone gland and abdominal epidermal tissue, enabled us to identify genes coding for putative key enzymes involved in the pheromone biosynthetic pathway, such as fatty acid synthase, β-oxidation enzymes, fatty-acyl desaturases (FAD), fatty-acyl reductases (FAR), and acetyltransferases. We functionally assayed the previously identified ∆11-desaturase GenBank: ES583599, JX679209 and FAR GenBank: JX679210 and candidate acetyltransferases (34 genes) by heterologous expression in yeast. The functional assay confirmed that the ∆11-desaturase interacts with palmitate and produces (Z)-11-hexadecenoate, which is the common unsaturated precursor of three homologous pheromone component acetates produced by subsequent chain-shortening, reduction and acetylation. Much lower, but still visible, activity on 14C and 12C saturated acids may account for minor pheromone compounds previously observed in the pheromone gland. The FAR characterized can operate on various unsaturated fatty acids that are the immediate acyl precursors of the different A. segetum pheromone components. None of the putative acetyltransferases that we expressed heterologously did acetylate any of the fatty alcohols tested as substrates.
The massive sequencing technology generates enormous amounts of candidate genes potentially involved in pheromone biosynthesis but testing their function by heterologous expression or gene silencing is a bottleneck. We confirmed the function of a previously identified desaturase gene and a fatty-acyl reductase gene by heterologous expression, but the acetyltransferase postulated to be involved in pheromone biosynthesis remains illusive, in spite of 34 candidates being assayed. We also generated lists of gene candidates that may be useful for characterizing the acetyl-CoA carboxylase, fatty acid synthetase and β-oxidation enzymes.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
•It explored a new way to reuse fine recycled concrete aggregate (FRCA) in mortar.•Different size ranges of river sand (RS) were replaced by corresponding FRCA.•Fractions of aggregate with size ...>0.6 mm replaced with FRCA was acceptable.•Replacement of RS with FRCA and crushed fine stone was compared.
This study explored an alternative way to reuse fine recycled concrete aggregate (FRCA) in cement mortars by using a new designed method to replace natural aggregates. The river sand (RS) in different particle size ranges with varied lower limits (i.e., 4.75–2.36 mm, 4.75–1.18 mm, 4.75–0.6 mm, 4.75–0.3 mm and 4.75–0.075 mm) were replaced gradually by the corresponding FRCA. As a comparison, same particle size ranges of fine crushed stone (FCS) were also used as replacement of RS. All types of mortars were controlled by a similar consistency. The results showed that the decrease in the lower limit of the replaced particle size range of FRCA (RL(FRCA)) tended to cause reductions in the compressive and flexural strength and increases in the drying shrinkage of the mortars. Using different particle size ranges of FRCA to replace RS in mortars resulted in more adverse effects on the strength and drying shrinkage than incorporating the corresponding FCS. The results of this study could provide a guidance on which particle size ranges of FRCA could be used as the replacement of RS in cement mortars for specific performance requirement.
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