Hydrogels combined with complex 3D shapes and robust mechanical properties are extremely desired soft platforms in the fields of biomaterials, recently, 4D printing has been developed to be further ...shaped to form required patterns. On the basis of the excellent thixotropy of Laponite and the thermal-reversible sol–gel transition of agarose and easy formation of nanofibers below 35 °C, a 4D printing hydrogel (4D Gel) was fabricated by in situ polymerizing acrylamide in the agarose matrix containing Laponite. The experimental results demonstrated that Laponite played an important role in the improvement of 4D printing, such as endowing the ink with shear-thinning behavior to extrude easily and excellent shape stability after printing. The mechanical properties of 4D Gel were unexpectedly higher than those of both agarose and polyacrylamide hydrogels. The 4D Gel showed the ability to further transform its shapes, and was used successfully to construct a whalelike hydrogel, which opened mouth and cocked tail by treating with an external force and then cooling, as well as the octopus like hydrogel with waved tentacles to seem to “come alive”. This work opened a new avenue for creating more complex architectures than 3D with excellent properties, which is important in the macromolecule fields for the wide applications.
Photocatalysis has been regarded as a promising strategy for hydrogen production and high-value-added chemicals synthesis, in which the activity of photocatalyst depends significantly on their ...electronic structures, however the effect of electron spin polarization has been rarely considered. Here we report a controllable method to manipulate its electron spin polarization by tuning the concentration of Ti vacancies. The characterizations confirm the emergence of spatial spin polarization among Ti-defected TiO
, which promotes the efficiency of charge separation and surface reaction via the parallel alignment of electron spin orientation. Specifically, Ti
O
, possessing intensive spin polarization, performs 20-fold increased photocatalytic hydrogen evolution and 8-fold increased phenol photodegradation rates, compared with stoichiometric TiO
. Notably, we further observed the positive effect of external magnetic fields on photocatalytic activity of spin-polarized TiO
, attributed to the enhanced electron-spin parallel alignment. This work may create the opportunity for tailoring the spin-dependent electronic structures in metal oxides.
Dynamic reconstruction of catalyst active sites is particularly important for metal oxide-catalyzed oxygen evolution reaction (OER). However, the mechanism of how vacancy-induced reconstruction aids ...OER remains ambiguous. Here, we use Co3O4 with Co or O vacancies to uncover the effects of different defects in the reconstruction process and the active motifs relevant to alkaline OER. Combining in situ characterization and theoretical calculations, we found that cobalt oxides are converted to an amorphous Co(OH)6 intermediate state, and then the mismatched rates of *OH adsorption and deprotonation lead to irreversible catalyst reconstruction. The stronger *OH adsorption but weaker deprotonation induced by O defects provides the driving force for reconstruction, while Co defects favor dehydrogenation and reduce the reconstruction rate. Importantly, both O and Co defects trigger highly OER-active bridge Co sites in reconstructed catalysts, of which Co defects induce a short Co–Co distance (3.38 Å) under compressive lattice stress and show the best OER activity (η10 of 262 mV), superior to reconstructed oxygen-defected Co3O4-VO (η10 of 300 mV) and defect-free Co3O4 (η10 of 320 mV). This work highlights that engineering defect-dependent reconstruction may provide a rational route for electrocatalyst design in energy-related applications.
Due to the complex coupling between phenology and climatic factors, the influence mechanism of climate, especially preseason temperature and preseason precipitation, on vegetation phenology is still ...unclear. In the present study, we explored the long-term trends of phenological parameters of different vegetation types in China north of 30°N from 1982 to 2014 and their comprehensive responses to preseason temperature and precipitation. Simultaneously, annual double-season phenological stages were considered. Results show that the satellite-based phenological data were corresponding with the ground-based phenological data. Our analyses confirmed that the preseason temperature has a strong controlling effect on vegetation phenology. The start date of the growing season (SOS) had a significant advanced trend for 13.5% of the study area, and the end date of the growing season (EOS) showed a significant delayed trend for 23.1% of the study area. The impact of preseason precipitation on EOS was overall stronger than that on SOS, and different vegetation types had different responses. Compared with other vegetation types, SOS and EOS of crops were greatly affected by human activities while the preseason precipitation had less impact. This study will help us to make a scientific decision to tackle global climate change and regulate ecological engineering.
Defect engineering is an effective way to modulate the electric states and provide active sites for electrocatalytic reactions. However, most studied oxygen vacancies are unstable and susceptible ...under the oxygen circumstance. Here, we fabricated cobalt-defected Co3–x O4 in situ for an efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER). XAFS and PALS characterizations show that the crystals have abundant Co vacancies and a distorted structure. DFT calculations indicate that the metal defects lead to obvious electronic delocalization, which enhances the carrier transport to participate in water-splitting reactions along the defective conducting channels and the water adsorption/activation on the catalyst surface. Therefore, cobalt-defected Co3–x O4 shows remarkably high OER activity by delivering a much lower overpotential of 268 mV@10 mA cm–2 (with a small Tafel slope of 38.2 mV/dec) for OER in KOH electrolyte, in comparison with normal Co3O4 (376 mV), IrO2 (340 mV), and RuO2 (276 mV). This work opens up a promising approach to construct electronic delocalization structures in metal oxides for high-performance electrochemical catalysts.
The World Health Organization has declared SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak a worldwide pandemic. However, there is very limited understanding on the immune responses, especially adaptive immune responses ...to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Here, we collected blood from COVID-19 patients who have recently become virus-free, and therefore were discharged, and detected SARS-CoV-2-specific humoral and cellular immunity in eight newly discharged patients. Follow-up analysis on another cohort of six patients 2 weeks post discharge also revealed high titers of immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies. In all 14 patients tested, 13 displayed serum-neutralizing activities in a pseudotype entry assay. Notably, there was a strong correlation between neutralization antibody titers and the numbers of virus-specific T cells. Our work provides a basis for further analysis of protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2, and understanding the pathogenesis of COVID-19, especially in the severe cases. It also has implications in developing an effective vaccine to SARS-CoV-2 infection.
•SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies are detected in COVID-19 convalescent subjects•Most COVID-19 convalescent individuals have detectable neutralizing antibodies•Cellular immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 are found in COVID-19 convalescent subjects•Neutralization antibody titers correlate with the numbers of virus-specific T cells.
In blood samples from COVID-19 convalescent subjects, Ni et al. have detected SARS-CoV-2-specific humoral and cellular immunity. Most subjects display serum neutralizing activities, which correlate with the numbers of virus-specific T cells.
•Data from NHANES 2011–2014 were used to examine the associations between urinary OPE metabolites and MetS in adults.•The associations for urinary OPE metabolites and OPEs mixture varied by ...sex.•Certain OPE metabolites and OPEs mixture were associated with elevated odds ratio of MetS in adult men.
Organophosphate esters (OPEs) are increasingly used as flame retardants and plasticizers in various products. In vivo and in vitro studies suggest that OPEs can affect metabolic health but the human evidence is lacking.
We analyzed data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2011–2014, to examine the associations between urinary OPE metabolites and metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its components in adults.
We included a total of 1157 adults aged ≥20 years who had information on urinary OPE metabolites, components of MetS and essential covariates in the current analyses. MetS was composed of hyperglycemia, hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, low high-density cholesterol, and central obesity. Binary logistic regression and weighted quantile sum (WQS) regression were used to assess the associations of individual OPE metabolites and OPEs mixture with MetS and its components. All analyses were conducted in men and women separately. Potential effect modification by age, serum total testosterone (TT) level and menopause status were also examined via stratified analyses as well as by testing the significance of the interaction term with exposure.
After adjusting for confounders, bis(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (BCEP) and bis(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate (BDCPP) were positively associated with MetS in a dose-dependent manner (P-trend = 0.02 and 0.02 for BCEP and BDCPP, respectively) in all men. Meanwhile, increasing quartiles of DPHP was positively associated with hyperglycemia (P-trend = 0.03), but DBUP was inversely associated with central obesity (P-trend = 0.02). WQS analyses in all men found that OPEs mixture (OPEs index) was positively associated with MetS odds ratio (OR) for OPEs index: 1.65; 95%CI :1.21, 2.24, hyperglycemia (OR:1.47; 95%CI:1.09,2.00), and central obesity (OR:1.36; 95%CI:1.01,1.83). Although there was no significant interaction between exposure and effect modifiers, stratified analyses in men suggested that significant associations were mainly limited to those aged < 60 years or those with TT < 437 ng/dL (the median level in men). By contrast, the associations with MetS and its components were sparse and inconsistent in women except for the positive association between OPEs index and central obesity.
In this cross-sectional study, exposure to OPEs was positively associated with elevated odds of MetS and individual components in men, especially among those aged <60 years or those with relatively low TT level. But the associations were less apparent in women except for the consistent positive association of OPEs mixture with central obesity. Nevertheless, these results need to be interpreted with caution and should be confirmed in future studies, ideally with multiple urine samples collected prospectively to improve the exposure measurement of OPEs.
Radio frequency identification technology has been widely used in missing tag detection to reduce and avoid inventory shrinkage. In this application, promptly finding out the missing event is of ...paramount importance. However, the existing missing tag detection protocols cannot efficiently handle the presence of a large number of unexpected tags whose IDs are not known to the reader, which shackles the time efficiency. To deal with the problem of detecting missing tags in the presence of unexpected tags, this paper introduces a two-phase Bloom filter-based missing tag detection (BMTD) protocol. The proposed BMTD exploits Bloom filter in sequence to first deactivate the unexpected tags and then test the membership of the expected tags, thus dampening the interference from the unexpected tags and considerably reducing the detection time. Moreover, the theoretical analysis of the protocol parameters is performed to minimize the detection time of the proposed BMTD and achieve the required reliability simultaneously. In addition, we derive a critical threshold on the unexpected tag size for the execution of first phase in BMTD. Extensive experiments are then conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed BMTD. The results demonstrate that the proposed BMTD significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art solutions.
To investigate the coupling damage characteristics of rock after high-temperature treatment under impact load, dynamic uniaxial compression tests for deep sandstone specimen under laboratory ...conditions varying with high temperature (i.e., 25°C, 100°C, 300°C, 500°C, 700°C, and 900°C) and strain rate (i.e., 170 s-1, 205 s-1, and 240 s-1) were performed using splitting Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) system. Coupling damage variable of deep sandstone was deduced based on the Lemaitre equivalent strain theory. Moreover, the damage parameters of deep sandstone were systematically determined according to the test data, and the effects of high temperature and strain rate on damage growth curves were investigated. Finally, a dynamic compound damage constitutive model, which could consider the coupling damage, was established and verified to describe the dynamic mechanical characteristic of deep sandstone. Theoretical and experimental results indicated that the simulated stress-strain curves matched the test data well and the proposed coupling damage constitutive model could reflect the high temperature-induced weakening and strain rate strengthening effect.
In this study, the effect of Fe (II) on Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation (ANAMMOX) process was investigated by step-wise increasing the Fe (II) in influent from 1 to 50 mg L−1. The nitrogen removal, ...biofilm property and the microbial community were analyzed in each phase. Results showed that, the anaerobic ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AAOB) bioactivity and the nitrogen removal of ANAMMOX system were slightly improved to 0.58 from the initial 0.51 kg m−3 d−1 by Fe (II) in 1–5 mg L−1. The nitrogen removal was suppressed and could recover to the initial level during the same period under 10–20 mg L−1 Fe (II), while it did not recover to the initial level under 30 mg L−1 Fe (II) and showed no recovery performance under 50 mg L−1 Fe (II). The irreversible suppression threshold of Fe (II) was calculated as 50 mg L−1. The iron content in ANAMMOX biofilm presented linear correlation with the influent Fe (II) in 1–20 mg L−1, which then tended to be stable when Fe (II) was higher. Dehydrogenase activity (DHA) showed similar and faster response to Fe (II) than the microbial activity, and it was an effective pre-indicator for the nitrogen removal performance in the ANAMMOX system suffered Fe (II). The Fe (II) feeding firstly led to the relative abundance of AAOB decreased to 11.04% from the initial 35.46%, and finally picked up to 19.39% after the long-term acclimatization.
•Fe (II) in 1–5 mg L−1 effectively improved AAOB bioactivity and nitrogen removal.•Fe (II) in 10–30 mg L−1 performed reversible inhibition on ANAMMOX process.•The irreversible suppression threshold of Fe (II) on ANAMMOX was 50 mg L−1.•DHA was a pre-indicator for nitrogen removal performance of ANAMMOX system suffered Fe (II).•Fe (II) feeding lowered the relative abundance of Candidatus Kuenenia.