China has established several free trade zones (FTZs) in recent years, which are becoming new drivers of growth for regional economic development. As the FTZ reform deepens, protecting intellectual ...property rights and improving application systems have become important for encouraging innovation in FTZs. To understand the knowledge spillover effects in different FTZs, this paper selects indicators at different levels of knowledge evaluation and uses the 2017 data of the provinces and cities where the first three batches of FTZs set up by China are located as samples to perform empirical analysis on knowledge spillover effects with a corrected spatial knowledge spillover model. According to the evaluation, the spatial knowledge spillover effects vary among FTZs—the spatial knowledge spillover effects of economically developed regions are smaller (0.0421), while their spillover effects on other FTZs are bigger (0.0795). In addition, the knowledge spillover effects of adjacent FTZ provinces and cities are significantly greater; the spatial spillover effects of southeastern coastal FTZ provinces and cities are more than those of central and western regions as well as northeastern provinces and cities (0.0795; 0.0533; 0.0672). This study is helpful for governments and policy makers to develop appropriate incentive policies for knowledge innovation targeting the knowledge spillover characteristics of different FTZs.
Using Al(OPri)3 (aluminum-iso-propoxide) and Y(NO3)3·6H2O as starting materials with HNO3 as catalyst the YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) precursor was prepared by a new sol–gel method. Polycrystalline ...YAG powders were obtained by drying the YAG precursor then heat-treated at temperatures above 850°C. The forming process of YAG was investigated by means of XRD, DTA and FT-IR spectra, and no other intermediate phases were observed to form over the temperature range of 850–950°C. The size of YAG nanocrystallite was estimated to be about 20–30nm according to XRD.
As an important aspect of global economic development, the choice of ship type for offshore oil transportation is a key issue in shipping companies making investment decisions. These can have ...far-reaching impacts regarding economic benefits and operational developments by shipping companies. To facilitate relatively accurate scientific decisions to evaluate the economic nature of tankers on investment plans, the study assigns entropy weights to various indicators and models tanker type economic arguments based on the entropy-weighted fuzzy matter-element approach, and by calculating the Euclid approach degree of each tanker evaluates the choice of tanker ship type. The results from the study show that the entropy-weighted fuzzy matter-element method is very effective in dealing with tanker selection and decision-making under complex and multi-attribute scenarios. Several conclusions are drawn and further work suggested.
Thirteen landslides (retrogressive thaw flows) were investigated to study the behavior of thaw retrogression in permafrost in the Mackenzie Valley, Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada. Those ...landslides are all in fine-grained ice-rich permafrost soils. Such landslides usually start from small-scale slope failures followed by retrogressive thaw flows when ice-rich permafrost soils are exposed to the atmosphere. The landslides were marked with survey stakes to measure their retreat rates for the thawing season of 2007. Two correlations are presented: one is between scarp wall height and retreat rate; another is between overall slope angle and retreat rate. It was found that thaw flow retrogression rate increases with increase in scarp wall height and slope angle up to a certain limit. It was also confirmed that thaw flow retrogression is not influenced by slope orientation.
The sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a pivotal process for renewable energy technologies, such as water splitting. The discovery of efficient, durable, and earth‐abundant electrocatalysts ...for water oxidation is highly desirable. Here, a novel trimetallic nitride compound grown on nickel foam (CoVFeN @ NF) is demonstrated, which is an ultra‐highly active OER electrocatalyst that outperforms the benchmark catalyst, RuO2, and most of the state‐of‐the‐art 3D transition metals and their compounds. CoVFeN @ NF exhibits ultralow OER overpotentials of 212 and 264 mV at 10 and 100 mA cm−2 in 1 m KOH, respectively, together with a small Tafel slop of 34.8 mV dec−1. Structural characterization reveals that the excellent catalytic activity mainly originates from: 1) formation of oxyhydroxide species on the surface of the catalyst due to surface reconstruction and phase transition, 2) promoted oxygen evolution possibly activated by peroxo‐like (O22−) species through a combined lattice‐oxygen‐oxidation and adsorbate escape mechanism, 3) an optimized electronic structure and local coordination environment owing to the synergistic effect of the multimetal system, and 4) greatly accelerated electron transfer as a result of nitridation. This study provides a simple approach to rationally design cost‐efficient and highly catalytic multimetal compound systems as OER catalysts for electrochemical energy devices.
This multimetal nitride system demonstrates greatly optimized electronic structure and local coordination environment, and enhanced the conductivity and active surface area as a catalyst in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The metal oxyhydroxide formed in the OER process due to the surface reconstruction and phase transition is an intrinsically active species for the OER. In addition, the promoted oxygen evolution is possibly activated by peroxo‐like (O22−) species.
A facile, low-cost, green, kilogram-scale synthesis of high quality CQDs were synthesized. The throughput of CQDs is 1.4975 kg in one pot and the as-prepared CQDs have a highly crystalline hexagonal ...structure with remarkable solubility, stability, and biocompatibility. It showed outstanding electrocatalytic activity, Fe3+ sensitivity and good biocompatibility.
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The development of large-scale synthetic methods for high quality carbon quantum dots (CQDs) is fundamental to their applications. However, the macroscopic preparation and scale up synthetic of CQDs is still in its infancy. Here, we report a facile, green, kilogram-scale synthesis of high quality fluorescent CQDs derived from poplar leaves via a one-step hydrothermal method. Notably, the throughput of CQDs can reach a level up to as high as 1.4975 kg in one pot. The structure and properties of the as-prepared CQDs were assessed through TEM, XRD, XPS and various spectroscopic methods. The obtained high quality CQDs with a photoluminescent quantum yield of 10.64% showed remarkable stability in aqueous media, rich functional groups, high photostability, consistent photoluminescence within biological pH range and low cytotoxicity. On account of these good properties, we demonstrated the multifunctional application to electrocatalytic water splitting, Fe3+ sensing and bioimaging. It showed remarkable electrocatalytic activity, Fe3+ sensitivity and good biocompatibility. This study provides a green, facile, inexpensive and large-scale method for producing high quality CQDs, which provides application value for large-scale production of CQDs.
Despite unprecedented responses of some cancers to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapies, the application of checkpoint inhibitors in pancreatic cancer has been unsuccessful. Glucocorticoids and ...glucocorticoid receptor (GR) signaling are long thought to suppress immunity by acting on immune cells. Here we demonstrate a previously undescribed tumor cell-intrinsic role for GR in activating PD-L1 expression and repressing the major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) expression in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells through transcriptional regulation. In mouse models of PDAC, either tumor cell-specific depletion or pharmacologic inhibition of GR leads to PD-L1 downregulation and MHC-I upregulation in tumor cells, which in turn promotes the infiltration and activity of cytotoxic T cells, enhances anti-tumor immunity, and overcomes resistance to ICB therapy. In patients with PDAC, GR expression correlates with high PD-L1 expression, low MHC-I expression, and poor survival. Our results reveal GR signaling in cancer cells as a tumor-intrinsic mechanism of immunosuppression and suggest that therapeutic targeting of GR is a promising way to sensitize pancreatic cancer to immunotherapy.
Corrosion by seawater is an electrochemical Corrosion, and all types of metals or alloys when they are in contact with seawater have a specific corrosion potential at a certain level of seawater ...alkalinity or acidity. Metal corrosion is a major technical problem and plenty of methods have been developed to provide solution. Inhibitor-enhanced coating can be recognized as the most efficient method. In this research, Halloysite nanotube (HNT) was used to create HNT-epoxy composite as protection towards corrosion without the inhibitor. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) study was done on HNT-epoxy composite coatings for corrosion protection carbon steel in 3.5% NaCl solution. The morphology analysis of the HNT was done by optical microscope and field emission scanning electron microscope(FESEM). The EIS characterizations showed a turning point of the composite coating from good to poor corrosion resistance performance. According to EIS measurements, increasing the halloysite concentration had resulted in the enhancement of the barrier effect and an increase in the ability to protect corrosion coating in NaCl solution. The corrosion morphology observations indicated that an increase in nanoparticle loading lead to an increase in the intercalation site and make the composite opaquer. Furthermore, the nanoparticles loading showed poor interaction with the epoxy composite, due to clustering of the nanoparticles and visible as wavy opaque surface. The findings show that the HNT is a very good alternative as a corrosion barrier in coating due to their viability and compatibility with diversity of water- and oil- based coatings onto a protected surface.
Glioma is one of the most commonly diagnosed intracranial malignant tumors with extremely high morbidity and mortality, whose treatment was seriously limited because of the unclear molecular ...mechanism. In this study, in order to identify a novel therapeutic target for glioma treatment, we explored the functions and mechanism of MEX3A in regulating glioma. The immunohistochemical staining of MEX3A in glioma and normal tissues revealed the upregulation of MEX3A and further indicated the relationship between high MEX3A expression and higher malignancy as well as poorer prognosis of glioma. In vitro loss-of-function and gain-of-function experiments comprehensively demonstrated that MEX3A may promote glioma development through regulating cell proliferation, cell apoptosis, cell cycle, and cell migration. In vivo experiments also suggested the inhibition of glioma growth by MEX3A knockdown. Moreover, our mechanistic study identifies CCL2 as a potential downstream target of MEX3A, which possesses similar regulatory effects on glioma development with MEX3A and could attenuate the promotion of glioma induced by MEX3A overexpression. Overall, MEX3A was identified as a potential tumor promoter in glioma development and therapeutic target in glioma treatment.
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