The g-C3N4 with different structures was prepared by heat treatment using urea (CN-U) and thiourea (CN-T) as precursors under the same conditions. The microstructure and optical properties of the ...photocatalyst were analyzed with advanced tools, The results showed that the CN-U has a porous structure, a high specific surface area and a wide band gap in comparison with CN-T. The in situ FT-IR technique was used to monitor the adsorption and reaction process of visible photocatalytic NO oxidation on g-C3N4. The corresponding reaction mechanism was proposed based on the results of reaction intermediate observation and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) radical scavenging. It was revealed that (1) the presence of defective sites favored the adsorption of gas molecules and electronically compensated it leading to promoted formation of the final products; (2) the high separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs enhanced the production of radicals during the photocatalytic reaction; (3) the hydroxyl radicals (.OH) are not selective for the decomposition of pollutants, which are favorable to the com- plete oxidation of the reaction intermediates. The above three aspects are the main reasons for the CN-U possessing the efficient visible light photocatalytic activity. The present work could provide new insights and methods for understanding the mechanism of photocatalysis.
Finetuning pre-trained deep neural networks (DNN) delicately designed for large-scale natural images may not be suitable for medical images due to the intrinsic difference between the datasets. We ...propose a strategy to modify DNNs, which improves their performance on retinal optical coherence tomography (OCT) images. Deep features of pre-trained DNN are high-level features of natural images. These features harm the training of transfer learning. Our strategy is to remove some deep convolutional layers of the state-of-the-art pre-trained networks: GoogLeNet, ResNet and DenseNet. We try to find the optimized deep neural networks on small-scale and large-scale OCT datasets, respectively, in our experiments. Results show that optimized deep neural networks not only reduce computational burden, but also improve classification accuracy.
Diabetes is a systemic disease in which patients with diabetes may develop peripheral neuropathy of the lower extremities and peripheral vascular disease due to long-term continuous exposure to high ...glucose. Delayed wound healing in diabetes is one of the major complications of diabetes. Slow wound healing in diabetic patients is associated with high glucose toxicity. When the condition deteriorates, the patient needs to be amputated, which seriously affects the quality of life and even endangers the life of the patient. In general, the delayed healing of diabetes wound is due to the lack of chemokines, abnormal inflammatory response, lack of angiogenesis and epithelial formation, and fibroblast dysfunction. The incidence of several chronic debilitating conditions is increasing in patients with diabetes, such as chronic renal insufficiency, heart failure, and hepatic insufficiency. Fibrosis is an inappropriate deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. It is common in diabetic patients causing organ dysfunction. The fibrotic mechanism of diabetic fibroblasts may involve direct activation of permanent fibroblasts. It may also involve the degeneration of fibers after hyperglycemia stimulates immune cells, vascular cells, or organ-specific parenchymal cells. Numerous studies confirm that fibroblasts play an essential role in treating diabetes and its complications. The primary function of fibroblasts in wound healing is to construct and reshape the ECM. Nowadays, with the widespread use of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), an increasing number of studies have found that fibroblasts have become the critical immune sentinel cells, which can detect not only the activation and regulation of immune response but also the molecular pattern related to the injury. By exploring the heterogeneity and functional changes of fibroblasts in diabetes, the manuscript discusses that fibroblasts may be used as immunomodulatory factors in refractory diabetic wound healing, providing new ideas for the treatment of refractory diabetic wound healing.
To reveal the cultural effect in the job demands-resources model, this study examined how Confucian familism, emotional labor, and work-family conflict (WFC) explain the variance in teachers' ...emotional exhaustion, with a focus on the mediating roles of emotional labor and WFC. With a sample of 3,312 teachers in China, the results of this study revealed that surface acting and expression of naturally felt emotion (ENFE) and WFC mediated the relationship between familism and emotional exhaustion. Moreover, familism positively predicted deep acting, ENFE, WFC, and emotional exhaustion, while negatively predicted surface acting. These findings suggest that Confucian familism may play the dual role of motivator and stressor for Chinese teachers' emotional labor and well-being. This study contributes to the job demands-resources theory by revealing the important role of cultural traditions and provides valuable information for interventions to sustain teacher well-being.
The catalytic performance of light-derived CO2 reduction with H2O is strongly dependent on the separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers. Herein, the direct Z-scheme catalysts ...(g-C3N4/3DOM-WO3) of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheets decorated three-dimensional ordered macroporous WO3 (3DOM-WO3) were successfully fabricated by using the in-situ colloidal crystal template method. The slow light effect of 3DOM-WO3 photonic crystals expands the absorption of visible light and improves the utilization of light energy. The Z-scheme structure of g-C3N4/3DOM-WO3 catalysts is able to upgrade the separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. The g-C3N4/3DOM-WO3 photocatalyst, whose formation rate of CO product is 48.7 μmol g−1 h−1, exhibits the excellent catalytic activity for CO2 reduction. The transfer pathway of stimulated electrons over the g-C3N4/3DOM-WO3 photocatalyst is proposed and discussed. The present approach provides unique insights into the rational development of high-performance photochemical systems for efficient CO2 reduction into valuable carbon-containing chemicals and energy fuels.
The Z-scheme heterojunction of g-C3N4/3DOM-WO3 catalyst improves the visible light adsorption efficiency and the separation efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, which results in the enhancing activity for CO2 photoreduction into CO. Display omitted
The factors regulating the heterogeneity of interleukin-17A (IL-17A)-expressing CD4
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T cells in inflammatory bowel diseases remain unclear. In the current study, we characterised the expression and ...function of zinc finger protein 189 (ZFP189) in a murine colitis model. Mice were given dextran sulphate sodium to induce acute colitis. Flow cytometry was applied to recognise and enrich Th17 and Th17.1 cells based on the expression of IL-17A, interferon-γ (IFN-γ), C-X-C motif chemokine receptor 3 (CXCR3), and C-C motif chemokine receptor 4 (CCR4). The expression of ZFP189 in Th17 and Th17.1 cells was determined by Immunoblotting. Lentivirus-mediated ZFP189 knockdown was conducted to evaluate the effect of ZFP189 on the differentiation of Th17 and Th17.1 cells. The adoptive transfer was performed to analyse the pathogenicity of Th17.1 cells in vivo. We found that ZFP189 was mildly up-regulated in IL-17A-expressing CD4
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T cells in colonic lamina propria. Lamina propria Th17.1 cells expressed higher ZFP189 than Th17 cells. In vitro ZFP189 knockdown in CD4
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T cells did not impact Th17 cell differentiation but suppressed Th17.1 cell differentiation, as evidenced by lower T-box expressed in T cells (T-bet) and IFN-γ. When adoptively transferred into mice, ZFP189-deficient Th17.1 cells produced fewer IFN-γ, tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) than ZFP189-expressing Th17.1 cells. Moreover, ZFP189-deficient Th17.1 cells induced less severe colitis than ZFP189-expressing Th17.1 cells, as evidenced by less body weight loss, a lower disease activity index, and a lower colon histological score. In summary, ZFP189 acts as a positive regulator of the differentiation and pathogenicity of lamina propria Th17.1 cells in colitis.
"Preparedness for teaching" refers to the degree of confidence preservice teachers have, and reflects their ability. Developing preparedness for teaching is an important part of preservice teachers' ...professionalization. A substantial body of literature has documented the critical influence of the motivation to teach on preparedness; however, how this relation is impacted by mediating and moderating mechanisms remains unclear. To respond to this gap in knowledge, the present study constructed a mediated moderation model through structural equation modeling and multigroup tests using 383 questionnaires completed by preservice teachers in China. The findings indicate that the preservice teachers' genders, entry path, and levels of certainty about their future teaching career choices all influence their preparedness for teaching. Specifically, preservice teachers who believe that they will choose a teaching career in the future have more intrinsic motivation, stronger constructivist teaching beliefs, and a higher levels of teaching preparedness. Moreover, preservice teachers' motivations to teach can positively predict their constructivist teaching beliefs and preparedness for teaching, but their constructivist teaching beliefs alone do not have a mediating effect on the relationship between motivation to teach and preparedness for teaching. However, the findings reveal that the constructivist teaching beliefs of highly conscientiousness group can partially mediate the relationship between the motivation to teach and the preparedness for teaching. Additionally, conscientiousness moderates the influence of constructivist teaching beliefs on preparedness for teaching. The study provides meaningful insights into the within-personal traits of how and when motivation to teach affects preparedness for teaching, which may be useful for the motivation best practices for preservice teacher recruitment, training, and support to create high-quality teachers.
In data analysis and signal processing, the recovery of structured functions from the given sampling values is a fundamental problem. Many methods generalized from the Prony method have been ...developed to solve this problem; however, the current research mainly deals with the functions represented in sparse expansions using a single generating function. In this paper, we generalize the Prony method to solve the sparse expansion problem for two generating functions, so that more types of functions can be recovered by Prony-type methods. The two-generator sparse expansion problem has some special properties. For example, the two sets of frequencies need to be separated from the zeros of the Prony polynomial. We propose a two-stage least-square detection method to solve this problem effectively.
The Z-scheme heterojunction of SnS2-decorated 3DOM-SrTiO3 improves the light adsorption efficiency and the separation efficiency of photoinduced electron-hole pairs, which results in the enhancing ...selectively photocatalytic CO2 reduction into CH4.
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The rapid recombination of photoinduced electron-hole pairs as well as the deficiency of high-energy carriers restricted the redox ability and products selectivity. Herein, the heterojunction of SnS2-decorated three-dimensional ordered macropores (3DOM)-SrTiO3 catalysts were in-situ constructed to provide transmit channel for high-energy electron transmission. The suitable band edges of SnS2 and SrTiO3 contribute to the Z-scheme transfer of photogenerated carrier. The 3DOM structure of SrTiO3-based catalyst possesses the slow light effect for enhancing light adsorption efficiency, and the surface alkalis strontium is benefit to the boosting adsorption for CO2. The in-situ introduced SnS2 decorated on the macroporous wall surface of 3DOM-SrTiO3 altered the primary product from CO to CH4. The Z-scheme electron transfer from SnS2 combining with the holes in SrTiO3 occurred under full spectrum photoexcitation, which improved the excitation and utilization of photogenerated electrons for CO2 multi-electrons reduction. As a result, (SnS2)3/3DOM-SrTiO3 catalyst exhibits higher activity for photocatalytic CO2 reduction to CH4 compared with single SnS2 or 3DOM-SrTiO3, i.e., its yield and selectivity of CH4 are 12.5μmolg-1 h-1 and 74.9%, respectively. The present work proposed the theoretical foundation of Z-scheme heterojunction construction for enhancing photocatalytic activity and selectivity for CO2 conversion.
Soil particle size fractions (PSFs) are important properties for understanding the physical and chemical processes in soil systems. Knowledge about the distribution of soil PSFs is critical for ...sustainable soil management. Although log-ratio transformations have been widely applied to soil PSFs prediction, the statistical distribution of original data and the transformed data given by log-ratio transformations is different, resulting in biased estimates of soil PSFs. Therefore, multivariate random forest (MRF) was utilized for the simultaneous prediction of soil PSFs, as it is able to capture dependencies and internal relations among the three components. Specifically, 243 soil samples collected across the Loess Plateau were used. Meanwhile, Landsat data, terrain attributes, and climatic variables were employed as environmental variables for spatial prediction of soil PSFs. The results depicted that MRF gave satisfactory soil PSF prediction performance, where the R2 values were 0.62, 0.53, and 0.73 for sand, silt, and clay, respectively. Among the environmental variables, nighttime land surface temperature (LST_N) presented the highest importance in predicting soil PSFs in the Loess Plateau, China. Maps of soil PSFs and texture were generated at a 30 m resolution, which can be utilized as alternative data for soil erosion management and ecosystem conservation.