As the rapid increase of the worldwide population, recovering valuable resources from wastewater have attracted more and more attention by governments and academia. Electrochemical technologies have ...been extensively investigated over the past three decades to purify wastewater. However, the application of these technologies for resource recovery from wastewater has just attracted limited attention. In this review, the recent (2010−2020) electrochemical technologies for resource recovery from wastewater are summarized and discussed for the first time. Fundamentals of typical electrochemical technologies are firstly summarized and analyzed, followed by the specific examples of electrochemical resource recovery technologies for different purposes. Based on the fundamentals of electrochemical reactions and without the addition of chemical agents, metallic ions, nutrients, sulfur, hydrogen and chemical compounds can be effectively recovered by means of electrochemical reduction, electrochemical induced precipitation, electrochemical stripping, electrochemical oxidation and membrane-based electrochemical processes, etc. Pros and cons of each electrochemical technology in practical applications are discussed and analyzed. Single-step electrochemical process seems ineffectively to recover valuable resources from the wastewater with complicated constituents. Multiple-step processes or integrated with biological and membrane-based technologies are essential to improve the performance and purity of products. Consequently, this review attempts to offer in-depth insights into the developments of next-generation of electrochemical technologies to minimize energy consumption, boost recovery efficiency and realize the commercial application.
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•The fundamentals of electrochemical technologies are summarized and analyzed.•Current researches on electrochemical resource recovery technologies are reviewed.•Pros and cons of electrochemical resource recovery technologies are discussed.•Prospects of electrochemical resource recovery from wastewater are proposed.
Objective
To quantitatively compare the diagnostic values of various diffusion parameters obtained from mono- and biexponential diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) models and diffusion kurtosis imaging ...(DKI) in differentiating between benign and malignant solitary pulmonary lesions (SPLs).
Methods
Multiple b-value DWIs and DKIs were performed in 89 patients with SPL by using a 3-T magnetic resonance (MR) imaging unit. The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) of various b-value sets, true diffusivity (D), pseudo-diffusion coefficient (D*), perfusion fraction (f), apparent diffusional kurtosis (K
app
), and kurtosis-corrected diffusion coefficient (D
app
) were calculated and compared between the malignant and benign groups using a Mann-Whitney U test. Receiver-operating characteristic analysis was performed for all parameters.
Result
The ADC
(0, 150)
values of malignant tumors were lower than those of the benign group (
p
= 0.01). The ADC
(0, 300)
, ADC
(0, 500)
, ADC
(0, 600),
ADC
(0, 800)
, ADC
(0, 1000),
ADC
total
, D, and D
app
of malignant tumors were significantly lower than those of benign lesions (all
p
< 0.001). D*, f, and K
app
showed no statistically significant differences between the two groups. ADC
total
showed the highest area under the curve (AUC = 0.862), followed by ADC
(0, 800)
(AUC = 0.844), ADC
(0, 600)
(AUC = 0.843), D(AUC = 0.834), ADC
(0, 1000)
(AUC = 0.834) and ADC
(0, 500)
(AUC = 0.824), D
app
(AUC = 0.796), and ADC
(0, 300)
(AUC = 0.773). However, the difference in diagnostic efficacy among these parameters was not statistically significant (
p
> 0.05).
Conclusion
Intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) and DKI-derived parameters have similar performance compared with conventional ADC in differentiating SPLs.
Key Points
• Mono- and biexponential DWI and DKI are feasible for differentiating SPLs.
• ADC
(0, ≥500)
has better performance than ADC
(0, <500)
in assessing SPLs.
• IVIM and DKI have similar performance compared with conventional DWI in differentiating SPLs.
Chest radiography is an extremely powerful imaging modality, allowing for a detailed inspection of a patient's chest, but requires specialized training for proper interpretation. With the advent of ...high performance general purpose computer vision algorithms, the accurate automated analysis of chest radiographs is becoming increasingly of interest to researchers. Here we describe MIMIC-CXR, a large dataset of 227,835 imaging studies for 65,379 patients presenting to the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Emergency Department between 2011-2016. Each imaging study can contain one or more images, usually a frontal view and a lateral view. A total of 377,110 images are available in the dataset. Studies are made available with a semi-structured free-text radiology report that describes the radiological findings of the images, written by a practicing radiologist contemporaneously during routine clinical care. All images and reports have been de-identified to protect patient privacy. The dataset is made freely available to facilitate and encourage a wide range of research in computer vision, natural language processing, and clinical data mining.
Haloketones (HKs) is one class of disinfection by-products (DBPs) which is genetically toxic and mutagenic. Monitoring HKs in drinking water is important for drinking water safety, yet it is a ...time-consuming and laborious job. Developing predictive models of HKs to estimate their occurrence in drinking water is a good alternative, but to date no study was available for HKs modeling. This study was to explore the feasibility of linear, log linear regression models, back propagation (BP) as well as radial basis function (RBF) artificial neural networks (ANNs) for predicting HKs occurrence (including dichloropropanone, trichloropropanone and total HKs) in real water supply systems. Results showed that the overall prediction ability of RBF and BP ANNs was better than linear/log linear models. Though the BP ANN showed excellent prediction performance in internal validation (N25 = 98–100%, R2 = 0.99–1.00), it could not well predict HKs occurrence in external validation (N25 = 62–69%, R2 = 0.202–0.848). Prediction ability of RBF ANN in external validation (N25 = 85%, R2 = 0.692–0.909) was quite good, which was comparable to that in internal validation (N25 = 74–88%, R2 = 0.799–0.870). These results demonstrated RBF ANN could well recognized the complex nonlinear relationship between HKs occurrence and the related water quality, and paved a new way for HKs prediction and monitoring in practice.
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•Linear/log linear regression models cannot well predict haloketones (HKs) levels.•Back propagation (BP) is good to predict HKs in internal but bad in external validation.•Radial basis function artificial neural network (RBF ANN) well predicts HKs levels.•RBF ANN can well recognize complex relationships between HKs and water quality.
Graph convolutional networks (GCNs) have been widely used and achieved remarkable results in skeleton-based action recognition. In GCNs, graph topology dominates feature aggregation and therefore is ...the key to extracting representative features. In this work, we propose a novel Channel-wise Topology Refinement Graph Convolution (CTR-GC) to dynamically learn different topologies and effectively aggregate joint features in different channels for skeleton-based action recognition. The proposed CTR-GC models channel-wise topologies through learning a shared topology as a generic prior for all channels and refining it with channel-specific correlations for each channel. Our refinement method introduces few extra parameters and significantly reduces the difficulty of modeling channel-wise topologies. Furthermore, via reformulating graph convolutions into a unified form, we find that CTR-GC relaxes strict constraints of graph convolutions, leading to stronger representation capability. Combining CTR-GC with temporal modeling modules, we develop a powerful graph convolutional network named CTR-GCN which notably outperforms state-of-the-art methods on the NTU RGB+D, NTU RGB+D 120, and NW-UCLA datasets. 1
The radial conjugated π‐system of cycloparaphenylenes (CPPs) makes them intriguing fluorophores and unique supramolecular hosts. However, the bright photoluminescence (PL) of CPPs was limited to the ...blue light and the supramolecular assembly behavior of large CPPs was rarely investigated. Here we present the synthesis of tetra‐benzothiadiazole‐based 12cycloparaphenylene (TB12CPP), which exhibits a lime to orange PL with an excellent quantum yield up to 82 % in solution. The PL quantum yield of TB12CPP can be further improved to 98 % in polymer matrix. Benefiting from its enlarged size, TB12CPP can accommodate a fullerene derivative or concave–convex complexes of fullerene and buckybowl through the combined π–π and C−H⋅⋅⋅π interactions. The latter demonstrates the first case of a ternary supramolecule of CPPs.
A benzothiadiazole‐based 12cycloparaphenylene (TB12CPP) is obtained and characterized. TB12CPP exhibits a lime to orange emission with a quantum yield up to 98 %, ranking it as one of the brightest CPPs. As a supramolecular host, TB12CPP is bright as well, showing adaptable ring structure. A ternary assembly between TB12CPP, fullerene, and buckybowl is realized.
A new design method for ultrabroadband radar cross section (RCS) reduction by exploiting characteristic complementary polarization conversion metasurfaces (PCMs) is proposed and validated. The ...proposed method lifts the conventional bandwidth limitation enforced by the performance of a single PCM and expands the RCS reduction bandwidth. A systematic strategy for ultrabroadband RCS reduction design is developed and an effective reflection coefficient amplitude of the composite surface (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\Gamma _{ {eff}} </tex-math></inline-formula>) is derived as a new RCS reduction indicator. Based on this indicator, complete polarization conversion (CPC) frequency points of PCM are identified as important characteristics, and PCM pairs with interleaved CPC points, termed as initial PCM (I-PCM) and complementary PCM (C-PCM), are designed to compensate each other for ultrabroadband RCS reduction. A scaling-and-tuning two-step method for designing the C-PCM of a specific I-PCM is developed and validated. To further improve RCS reduction performance, taking the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{\Gamma _{ {eff}}} </tex-math></inline-formula> as an indicator, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to select the optimal I-PCMs, C-PCMs, and their area ratios. Finally, an ultrabroadband RCS reduction surface is designed, fabricated, measured, and validated. It realizes 10-dB monostatic RCS reduction ranging from 7.6 to 26.2 GHz (110.7% relative bandwidth) which exceeds the polarization conversion bandwidth of each individual PCM. Besides, good polarization insensitivity and bistatic RCS reduction performance are also obtained. The proposed method provides a new route for designing broadband RCS reduction surface based on PCMs with unsatisfactory characteristics and greatly alleviates the performance requirement for PCMs.
Ursolic acid (UA) is a naturally occurring pentacyclic triterpenoid widely found in fruits and vegetables. It has been reported that UA has anti‐inflammatory effects. However, its efficacy and ...mechanism of action in the treatment of chronic prostatitis (CP) remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of UA treatment in CP and further explore the underlying mechanism. CP rat and pyroptosis cell models were established in vivo and in vitro, respectively. The efficacy of UA in inhibiting CP was evaluated via haematoxylin‐eosin (HE) staining and measurement of inflammatory cytokines. RNA sequencing and molecular docking were used to predict the therapeutic targets of UA in CP. The expression of pyroptosis‐related proteins was examined using various techniques, including immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, and flow cytometry. UA significantly ameliorated pathological damage and reduced the levels of proinflammatory cytokines in the CP model rats. RNA sequencing analysis and molecular docking suggested that NLRP3, Caspase‐1, and GSDMD may be key targets. We also found that UA decreased ROS levels, alleviated oxidative stress, and inhibited p‐NF‐κB protein expression both in vivo and in vitro. UA improved pyroptosis morphology as indicated by electron microscope and inhibited the expression of the pyroptosis‐related proteins NLRP3, Caspase‐1, ASC, and GSDMD, reversed the levels of IL‐1β, IL‐18, and lactate dehydrogenase in vivo and in vitro. UA can mitigate CP by regulating the NLRP3 inflammasome‐mediated Caspase‐1/GSDMD pathway. Therefore, UA may be a potential for the treatment of CP.
Ursolic acid alleviates chronic prostatitis via regulating NLRP3 inflammasome‐mediated Caspase‐1/GSDMD pyroptosis pathway.
To achieve high‐efficiency deep‐blue electroluminescence satisfying Rec.2020 standard blue gamut, two thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) emitters are developed: ...5‐(2,12‐di‐tert‐butyl‐5,9‐dioxa‐13b‐boranaphtho3,2,1‐deanthracen‐7‐yl)‐10,10‐diphenyl‐5,10‐dihydrodibenzob,e1,4azasiline (TDBA‐PAS) and 10‐(2,12‐di‐tert‐butyl‐5,9‐dioxa‐13b‐boranaphtho3,2,1‐deanthracen‐7‐yl)‐9,9‐diphenyl‐9,10‐dihydroacridine (TDBA‐DPAC). Inheriting from their parented organoboron multi‐resonance core, both emitters show very promising deep‐blue emissions with relatively narrow full width at half‐maximum (FWHM, ≈50 nm in solution), high photoluminescence quantum yield (up to 92.3%), and short emission lifetime (≤2.49 µs) with fast reverse intersystem crossing (>106 s−1) in doped films. More importantly, replacing the spiro‐centered sp3 C atom (TDBA‐DPAC) with the larger‐radius sp3 Si atom (TDBA‐PAS), enhanced conformational heterogeneities in bulky‐group‐shielded TADF molecules are observed in solution, doped film, and device. Consequently, OLEDs based on TDBA‐PAS retain high maximum external quantum efficiencies ≈20% with suppressed efficiency roll‐off and color index close to Rec.2020 blue gamut over a wide doping range of 10–50 wt%. This study highlights a new strategy to restrain spectral broadening and redshifting and efficiency roll‐off in the design of deep‐blue TADF emitters.
Conformational heterogeneity in bulky‐group‐shielded deep‐blue thermally activated delayed fluorescent emitters enables suppression of spectral broadening, redshifting, and concentration quenching. Devices based on the emitter present high external quantum efficiency up to 22.35% with suppressed efficiency roll‐off and color indices close to Rec.2020 blue gamut over a wide doping range of 10–50 wt%.
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•Current electrochemical technologies to achieve resource recovery is presented.•Nutrients in urine can be recovered as liquid, solid and gaseous products.•Energy can be exploited by ...means of the conversion of organic pollutants.•Electro-membrane technologies are still the superior option to reclaim water.•Intelligent technology will be desirable booster for on-site treatment paradigm.
The rapid expanding of worldwide population and continuous advancement of living standard require increasing demand of resources, such as nutrients, water and energy, etc. From the viewpoint of circular economy and sustainable development, these resources often discarded as waste must be reclaimed and returned back to our daily life. Source-separated urine, one kind of the special decentralized wastewater, that contains a variety of nutrients with high concentration is considered as valuable waste stream. After being collected in the front-end, the urine can be treated on-site to recycle nutrients, energy and water. Among all the on-site treatment technologies, electrochemical technology is worth being paid more attention due to apparent advantages, including powerful news, flexibility and rapidness, as well as the potential to become intelligent technologies. As a niche technology, however, the electrochemical technology has been under-appreciated for a long time. In this review, the investigations and development of electrochemical technologies for nutrients recovery, energy exploitation and water reclamation in recent decade (2011–2021) are summarized and discussed systematically. The necessity to develop on-site treatment of source-separated urine was discussed initially. And then, pros and cons of each electrochemical technology to recover nutrients, energy and water, respectively, were discussed and analyzed. Perspective and future efforts on development of electrochemical technologies for the on-site treatment of urine were also carefully analyzed. Intelligent technology would become important part of the on-site electrochemical treatment of urine, aiming to optimize the treatment process, improve recovery efficiency and lower carbon footprint. This review is expected to open a new era for the investigation and development of electrochemical technologies towards on-site treatment of source-separated urine.
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