The spatial arrangements of Ti species would affect the electronic metal-support interactions and the proportion of Ce3+ sites for ceria-supported Ru catalysts. Ti-Surface-loaded CeO2 supported Ru ...catalysts exhibited excellent ammonia synthesis activity, which is attributed to a larger proportion of Ru metal, more electrons of Ru species and better adsorption ability of hydrogen and nitrogen.
The accurate determination of the interface shear strength is essential in the design of geosynthetic-reinforced soil structures. The particle geometries of three types of soil materials and a ...spherical granular medium are imaged and quantified using binary image-based methods and described in terms of regularity. Cyclic direct shear tests are conducted to investigate the effects of particle regularity on the interface shear strength, stress–displacement relationship, shear stiffness, and damping ratio. The results reveal that the interface shear strength and deformation strongly depend on particle regularity. The vertical displacement ratio is found to increase with particle regularity under the same cycle number. The interface stiffness is observed to increase with the cycle number for particle regularities of 0.453, 0.565, and 0.672 but decreases with the cycle number for a particle regularity of 0.971. For a given regularity, the trend of damping ratio with the increasing cycle number is contrary to the that of shear stiffness. Finally, it is observed that the cyclic friction angle decreases with increasing particle regularity, the relationship of which is determined using linear regression. Thus, the systematic quantification of particle shape characteristics can lead to a better understanding of soil–geogrid interface behaviour.
•Cyclic direct shear tests are conducted to investigate the effects of particle regularity on the interface shear strength of the specimens.•The particle shape characteristics, summarized in this study in terms of regularity, is found to control the interfacial shear behaviour.•The shear stiffness and damping ratio are found to be sensitive to particle regularity.•The best fit line relating maximum peak shear stress and normal stress for different particle regularities is in good agreement with the test data.
Purpose
The relationship between vitamin D levels and cancer incidence and mortality in individuals with metabolic syndrome (MetS) remains poorly explored. Herein, we aimed to determine the ...association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D 25(OH)D concentrations and the risk of 16 cancer incidence types and cancer/all-cause mortality in patients with MetS.
Methods
We enrolled 97,621 participants with MetS at recruitment from the UK Biobank cohort. The exposure factor was baseline serum 25(OH)D concentrations. The associations were examined using Cox proportional hazards models, which were displayed as hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).
Results
Over a median follow-up period of 10.92 years for cancer incidence outcomes, 12,137 new cancer cases were recorded. We observed that 25(OH)D concentrations were inversely related to the risk of colon, lung, and kidney cancer, and HRs (95% CI) for 25(OH)D ≥ 75.0 vs. < 25.0 nmol/L were 0.67 (0.45–0.98), 0.64 (0.45–0.91), and 0.54 (0.31–0.95), respectively. The fully adjusted model revealed a null correlation between 25(OH)D and the incidence of stomach, rectum, liver, pancreas, breast, ovary, bladder, brain, multiple myeloma, leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, esophagus, and corpus uteri cancer. Over a median follow-up period of 12.72 years for mortality outcomes, 8286 fatalities (including 3210 cancer mortalities) were documented. An “L-shaped” nonlinear dose–response correlation was detected between 25(OH)D and cancer/all-cause mortality; the respective HRs (95% CI) were 0.75 (0.64–0.89) and 0.65 (0.58–0.72).
Conclusion
These findings emphasize the importance of 25(OH)D in cancer prevention and longevity promotion among patients with MetS.
Application of Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) into vehicle structures calls for innovative manufacturing processes. In terms of reducing deformation resistance through external energy, ...Electro-Plastic Effect (EPE) provides a potential alternative to traditional thermal softening phenomenon. In this work, effectiveness of EPE on one group of AHSS, Transformation Induced Plasticity (TRIP) Steel, was evaluated. It was found that EPE cannot be effectively initiated until the current density reaches a threshold value between 7.4A/mm2 and 11.4A/mm2. Besides, the softening phenomenon is more distinct at larger strains. Underlying mechanisms are explained from perspectives of dislocation multiplication, gliding and mechanical twinning. The inevitable Joule heating phenomenon associated with current was suppressed with forced air cooling and the temperature distribution inside the tensile specimen was numerically calculated with a coupled Finite Element Model. Effectiveness of EPE rather than thermal softening or expansion was further proved with the larger flow stress reduction under higher current density and shorter pulses at same temperature increase. Hollomon equation was adopted to model the observed stress strain relationships. Since material properties of TRIP steels are directly related to the phase transformation from retained austenite into martensite, volume fraction of retained austenite was quantitatively measured by X-ray Diffraction (XRD). It was found that the applied current retarded martensitic transformation process. Metallographic analysis was further performed and phenomena of change of grain structures and phase distribution were hardly observable.
The characteristics of disorders of consciousness (DOC) are changes in arousal and/or awareness caused by severe brain injuries. To date, the management of DOC patients remains a complex and ...challenging task, and neuromodulation techniques offer a promising solution. However, a bibliometric analysis focusing on neuromodulation techniques in DOC is currently absent. The aim of this study is to provide a bibliometric visualization analysis to investigate the research hotspots and frontiers in the field of neuromodulation techniques in DOC from 2012 to 2022.
The publications were collected and retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) from 2012 to 2022. CiteSpace and Microsoft Excel were utilized perform the first global bibliographic analysis of the literature related to neuromodulation techniques for DOC.
The analysis included a total of 338 publications. From 2012 to 2022, a consistent yet irregular increase in the number of articles published on neuromodulation techniques in DOC was observed. Frontiers in Neurology published the highest number of papers (
= 16). Neurosciences represented the main research hotspot category (
= 170). The most prolific country, institution, and author were the USA (
= 105), the University of Liege (
= 41), and Laureys Steven (
= 38), respectively. An analysis of keywords revealed that UWS/VS, MCS, and TMS constituted the primary research trends and focal points within this domain.
This bibliometric study sheds light on the current progress and emerging trends of neuromodulation techniques in DOC from 2012 to 2022. The focal topics in this domain encompass the precise diagnosis of consciousness levels in patients suffering from DOC and the pursuit of efficacious neuromodulation-based evaluation and treatment protocols for such patients.
With the appropriate process parameters, both large and small tools can produce sound joints with tensile strengths (TS) 80% higher than those fabricated with Al base metal. As a large tool moves ...into the steel, it can peel off and embed steel fragments into the Al matrix, causing critical defects around the embedded fragments. Using small tools and lower rotational speed (RS) will significantly reduce the welding heat, resulting in an unwelded Al/steel interface at the bottom of the weld. Since the tool size and process parameters determine the amount of generated heat, they also determine the thickness of the intermetallic compound (IMC) layer that forms at the Al/steel interface. The welding forces in the weld plane are primarily affected by the tool offset.
A novel optical fiber relative humidity (RH) sensor based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is proposed and demonstrated in this paper. The sensor head is formed by a ...single-mode-multimode-single-mode-single-mode(SM-MM-SM-SM) fiber structure through lateral offset fusion splicing. The intermodal interference is achieved by two lateral offset points. The change of relative humidity will cause the optical path difference changed of the core mode and cladding modes, which gives rise to the interference pattern change. The ambient RH change can be determined by monitoring the energy variation of the interference pattern. The experimental results show the dip energy of the transmission spectrum changes with respect to surrounding RH with good linearity. The MZI with a interferometer length of 15mm offers the enhanced RH sensitivity of −0.0487dB/%RH in the range of 35–95%RH with linearity of 0.9966. The proposed humidity has compact size, simple fabrication procedure and does not need any functional coating, making it a good candidate for RH measurements.
There has been much debate about whether returns on financial assets, such as stock returns or commodity returns, are predictable; however, few studies have investigated cryptocurrency return ...predictability. In this article we examine whether bitcoin returns are predictable by a large set of bitcoin price-based technical indicators. Specifically, we construct a classification tree-based model for return prediction using 124 technical indicators. We provide evidence that the proposed model has strong out-of-sample predictive power for narrow ranges of daily returns on bitcoin. This finding indicates that using big data and technical analysis can help predict bitcoin returns that are hardly driven by fundamentals.
Recently, increasing evidence has indicated that platelet-activating factor acetylhydrolase 1b catalytic subunit 3 (PAFAH1B3) plays an important role in several cancers. However, its role in lung ...adenocarcinoma (LUAD) has not been reported until now.
The expression of PAFAH1B3 in LUAD was determined by using the Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) database and real-time PCR (RT-PCR), western blot and immunohistochemical (IHC) analyses. A chi-square test was used to investigate the correlation between PAFAH1B3 expression and clinical parameters. Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier analysis were performed to analyze the prognostic value of PAFAH1B3. The CCK-8 assay, clone formation assay, transwell invasion assay and flow cytometry were conducted to detect cell proliferation, clone formation, invasion and the cell cycle. The xenograft tumor model was constructed to explore the function of PAFAH1B3 in vivo. Western blot and IHC analyses were performed to detect epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related markers. Immune Cell Abundance Identifier (ImmuneCellAI) and IHC analyses were used to analyze the effect of PAFAH1B3 on immune cell infiltration.
Our study showed that the expression of PAFAH1B3 was upregulated in LUAD tissues and cells compared with noncancerous tissues and cells. Additionally, the results indicated that the expression of PAFAH1B3 was positively correlated with distant metastasis, TNM stage and poor clinical outcome and it was an independent prognostic risk factor for LUAD. In addition, silencing PAFAH1B3 suppressed cell proliferation, colony formation, and invasion and increased the cell population in the G0-G1 phases in vitro. Furthermore, our results showed that knockdown of PAFAH1B3 increased the epithelial marker E-cadherin level and decreased the mesenchymal marker N-cadherin level in vitro and in vivo. We also proved that PAFAH1B3 downregulation inhibited tumorigenesis and neutrophil infiltration in the xenograft tumor model.
Our studies indicate that PAFAH1B3, a prognostic risk factor, promotes proliferation, invasion and EMT and affects immune infiltrates in LUAD.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has been a powerful tool for applications including single molecule detection, analytical chemistry, electrochemistry, medical diagnostics and bio-sensing. ...Especially, flexible SERS substrates are highly desirable for daily-life applications, such as real-time and in situ Raman detection of chemical and biological targets, which can be used onto irregular surfaces. However, it is still a major challenge to fabricate the flexible SERS substrate on large-area substrates using a facile and cost-effective technique. The roll-to-roll ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography (R2R UV-NIL) technique provides a solution for the continuous fabrication of flexible SERS substrate due to its high-speed, large-area, high-resolution and high-throughput. In this paper, we presented a facile and cost-effective method to fabricate flexible SERS substrate including the fabrication of polymer nanostructure arrays and the metallization of the polymer nanostructure arrays. The polymer nanostructure arrays were obtained by using R2R UV-NIL technique and anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) mold. The functional SERS substrates were then obtained with Au sputtering on the surface of the polymer nanostructure arrays. The obtained SERS substrates exhibit excellent SERS and flexibility performance. This research can provide a beneficial direction for the continuous production of the flexible SERS substrates.
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