36Cl preparation method for Chinese Karst samples (Tiankeng) Shen, Hongtao; Sasa, Kimikazu; Meng, Qi ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms,
11/2019, Letnik:
458
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Tiankeng, a typical Karst relief of the Late Quaternary Period, in the south of China, plays an important role when researching the surface shape and evolution of the Karst relief. The accumulation ...of Chlorine-36 (T1/2 = 301 ka) through the interaction of cosmic ray particles with Ca, K and Cl in rocks allow it to be used as the ideal nuclide for determination of the exposure age and erosion rate of limestone. In this work, an improved 36Cl sample preparation method for Tiankeng limestone was presented. The Isotope Dilution-AMS technique allows for the simultaneous measurement of 36Cl and Cl with a single AMS sample preparation. The barium introduced during the sample preparation was removed to avoid ionizer poisoning and attain a higher and more stable beam current. The method is particularly suitable for limestone samples, as well as for soil, sediment and water samples.
Uranium and plutonium are both poisonous radioactive elements, which are very harmful to human health and environment. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the distribution of 238U ...concentration and 239+240Pu activity in the uranium mine surrounding soils. We have collected some surface soil sediments within 2 km of two uranium mines and a solid waste management center in Guangxi Province. The 238U concentration in these study areas is in the range of 1.44–83.91 mg/g, and the 238U concentration in the A uranium mine surrounding surface soils is higher than that in the B uranium mine and the solid waste management center. While the B uranium mine and the solid waster management center don't pollute the surrounding soils because the 238U concentrations in their surrounding soils are similar to the average 238U concentration in the soil. The 239+240Pu activities in soil samples collected around the two uranium mines and the solid waste management center are close ranged from 0.06 mBq/g to 0.51 mBq/g. Moreover, the 240Pu/239Pu atom ratios in our study samples are ranged from 0.15 to 0.23, which indicate the Pu may come from the global fallout. In addition, we study heavy metals in our collected samples, only heavy metal Tl has weak positive correlations with 238U concentrations and 239+240Pu activities. And there is a weak positive correlation between 238U concentrations and 239+240Pu activities.
•238U concentration, 239+240Pu activity and 240Pu/239Pu atom ratio in surface soils are analyzed in uranium mines.•Data of U and Pu are used as background values in surface soils around uranium mines.•The content of heavy metals in soils has a certain correlation with 239+240Pu activity and 238U concentration.•239+240Pu activity has a positive correlation with 238U concentration.
In this study, plutonium activity concentrations in the urban wetlands and lacustrine sediment of Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP) are studied for the first time. Results show 239+240Pu activity ...concentrations in the wetland surface soils of SIP range from 0.035 to 0.426 mBq/g and the 240Pu/239Pu atom ratio ranges from 0.171±0.024 to 0.226±0.049. Judging from the atom ratio of 240Pu/239Pu, the main source of Pu in the wetland is global fallout. The correlations of Pu between organic matter and heavy metals are also studied. The correlation coefficients show Pu has significant positive correlations with Cu, Sn and Pb but negative correlation with As. Unlike distributions of Pu in other places, Pu in SIP has weak correlation with organic matter content. A sediment core from Lake Yangcheng is also analyzed to investigate the historical record of Pu deposition. The atom ratios of each layer in the sediment core indicate the area is mainly influenced by global fallout. Using Pu as a discrete-time maker, the deposition rate in Lake Yangcheng is 0.396±0.019 cm/yr. The calculated inventory of 239+240Pu is 58.5 Bq/m2, which is in the range of inventories of the corresponding latitudes according to UNSCEAR.
•239+240Pu activity concentrations in the wetland surface soils of SIP range from 0.035 to 0.426 mBq/g.•240Pu/239Pu atom ratios were 0.171–0.226 in the wetlands of SIP.•240Pu/239Pu atom ratios were 0.168–0.200 in the sediment core from the Yangcheng Lake.•Pu has significant positive correlations with Cu, Sn and Pb but negative correlation with As.
The 239+240Pu and 137Cs activities and 240Pu/239Pu atom ratios in surface soil and soil core collected from Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were investigated. The maximum of 239+240Pu and 137Cs activity ...concentrations in five soil cores were found in upper layers and have a same trend: the maximum followed by exponential decline. The 240Pu/239Pu atom ratio ranged from 0.160 ± 0.009 to 0.212 ± 0.012, clarified that the plutonium mainly came from the global fallout and the contribution of Lop Nor test sites was negligible. In addition, the vertical profiles of radionuclides (210Pb, 238U, 232Th, 226Ra, 40K) have been studied and a high correlation has been found between them. The correlations of Pu between organic matter (OM) and heavy metals were also studied. Person Correlation Coefficients revealed Pu had significant positive correlations with organic matter and Cd, Cu, Co, Zn, but negative correlation with Tl. The results have important implication for further understanding of the sources, records and environmental impacts of global and regional nuclear activities, which expanded the database of Pu activity level and atom ratio in Chinese soil and established a foundation for future environmental risk assessment.
•239+240Pu activity in Qinghai soil was 0.01 ± 0.01 mBq/g-2.20 ± 0.15 mBq/g.•240Pu/239Pu atom ratio indicating that Pu mainly came from the global fallout.•Inventory of 239 + 240Pu in Qinghai was 116.57–554 Bq/m2.•Pu has positive correlations with OM, Cd, Co, Cu, Zn and negative with Tl.
Exposure age dating of Chinese tiankengs by 36Cl-AMS Shen, Hongtao; Sasa, Kimikazu; Meng, Qi ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms,
11/2019, Letnik:
459
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China is one of the most typical karst relief areas with various forms, and tiankeng is one of the most typical karst relief forms of the Quaternary ...Period. In this work, accurate measurements of tiankeng exposure ages were made. The exposure ages of carbonate rocks from the five largest tiankengs in the world, the DaShiwei, HuangJing, ChuanDong, DaTuo, and DaCao tiankengs, were determined by accelerator mass spectrometry to be at least 20–400 thousand years, which provides significant proof for activity of new tectonic movement of the Eurasian continent in the Quaternary.
Metal sulfides have received considerable attention for efficient sodium storage owing to their high capacity and decent redox reversibility. However, the poor rate capability and fast capacity decay ...greatly hinder their practical application in sodium‐ion batteries. Herein, an elegant multi‐step templating strategy has been developed to rationally synthesize hierarchical double‐shelled nanoboxes with the CoS2 nanosheet‐constructed outer shell supported on the CuS inner shell. Their structure and composition enable these hierarchical CuS@CoS2 nanoboxes to show boosted electrochemical properties with high capacity, outstanding rate capability, and long cycle life.
Sodium in a box: Double‐shelled CuS@CoS2 nanoboxes composed of an outer shell of hierarchical CoS2 nanosheets supported on the inner CuS nanobox are synthesized by a delicate template‐based strategy using Cu2O nanocubes as the starting material. Their structure and composition enable these hierarchical CuS@CoS2 nanoboxes to exhibit attractive electrochemical properties as an anode material for sodium‐ion batteries.
Oxaliplatin is a first-line clinical drug in cancer treatment and its side effects of peripheral neuropathic pain have also attracted much attention. Neuroinflammation induced by oxidative ...stress-mediated activation of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) plays an important role in the course. Current studies have shown that curcumin has various biological activities like antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antitumor and so on, while few studies were conducted about its role in oxaliplatin-induced peripheral neuropathic pain. The aim of this study is to verify the mechanism of curcumin alleviating oxaliplatin-induced peripheral neuropathic pain. Intraperitoneal injection with oxaliplatin (4 mg/kg body weight) was given to the rats twice a week and last for four weeks to establish the model rats. Gavage administration of curcumin (12.5, 25, and 50 mg/kg body weight, respectively) was conducted for consecutive 28 d to explore the effects and potential mechanism. Our results showed that curcumin administration could increase mechanical withdrawal threshold and decrease the paw-withdrawal times of cold allodynia significantly; meanwhile, motor nerve conduction velocity (MNCV) and sense nerve conduction velocity (SNCV) were both increased and the injured neurons of the spinal cord were repaired. In addition, curcumin administration increased superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), catalase (CAT) and reduced malondialdehyde (MDA). Moreover, the curcumin operation inhibited the activated of NF-κB and level of inflammatory factors like tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). In conclusion, these findings suggested that curcumin could alleviate oxaliplatin-induced peripheral neuropathic pain; the mechanism might be inhibiting oxidative stress-mediated activation of NF-κB and mitigating neuroinflammation.
Novel anti-static nanofibers based on blends of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and a room-temperature ionic liquid (RTIL), 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate BMIMPF6, were fabricated ...using an electrospinning approach. The effects of the RTIL on the morphology, crystal structure, and physical properties of the PVDF nanofibers were investigated. Incorporation of RTIL leads to an increase in the mean fiber diameter and the rough fiber surface of the PVDF/RTIL composite nanofibers compared with the neat PVDF nanofibers. The PVDF in the PVDF/RTIL nanofibers exhibits an extremely high content (almost 100%) of β crystals, in contrast to the dominance of PVDF γ crystals in bulk melt-blended PVDF/RTIL blends. Nonwoven fabrics produced from the electrospun PVDF/RTIL composite nanofibers show better stretchability and higher electrical conductivity than those made from neat PVDF without RTIL, and are thus excellent antielectrostatic fibrous materials. In addition, RTIL greatly improved the hydrophobicity of the PVDF fibers, enabling them to effectively separate a mixture of tetrachloromethane (CCl4) and water. The extremely high β content, excellent antielectrostatic properties, better stretchability, and hydrophobicity of the present PVDF/RTIL nanofibers make them a promising candidate for micro- and nanoscale electronic device applications.
Cytochromes P450 (CYPs) play a key role in generating the structural diversity of terpenoids, the largest group of plant natural products. However, functional characterization of CYPs has been ...challenging because of the expansive families found in plant genomes, diverse reactivity and inaccessibility of their substrates and products.
Here we present the characterization of two CYPs, CYP76AH3 and CYP76AK1, which act sequentially to form a bifurcating pathway for the biosynthesis of tanshinones, the oxygenated diterpenoids from the Chinese medicinal plant Danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza).
These CYPs had similar transcription profiles to that of the known gene responsible for tanshinone production in elicited Danshen hairy roots. Biochemical and RNA interference studies demonstrated that both CYPs are promiscuous. CYP76AH3 oxidizes ferruginol at two different carbon centers, and CYP76AK1 hydroxylates C-20 of two of the resulting intermediates. Together, these convert ferruginol into 11,20-dihydroxy ferruginol and 11,20-dihydroxy sugiol en route to tanshinones. Moreover, we demonstrated the utility of these CYPs by engineering yeast for heterologous production of six oxygenated diterpenoids, which in turn enabled structural characterization of three novel compounds produced by CYP-mediated oxidation.
Our results highlight the incorporation of multiple CYPs into diterpenoid metabolic engineering, and a continuing trend of CYP promiscuity generating complex networks in terpenoid biosynthesis.
Machine recognition of human emotional state is an important component for efficient human-computer interaction. The majority of existing works address this problem by utilizing audio signals alone, ...or visual information only. In this paper, we explore a systematic approach for recognition of human emotional state from audiovisual signals. The audio characteristics of emotional speech are represented by the extracted prosodic, Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC), and formant frequency features. A face detection scheme based on HSV color model is used to detect the face from the background. The visual information is represented by Gabor wavelet features. We perform feature selection by using a stepwise method based on Mahalanobis distance. The selected audiovisual features are used to classify the data into their corresponding emotions. Based on a comparative study of different classification algorithms and specific characteristics of individual emotion, a novel multiclassifier scheme is proposed to boost the recognition performance. The feasibility of the proposed system is tested over a database that incorporates human subjects from different languages and cultural backgrounds. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system. The multiclassifier scheme achieves the best overall recognition rate of 82.14%.
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