The presence of water in wax deposition from water-in-oil emulsion for petroleum transportation in pipelines has received much attention in recent years. This study investigated the formation of wax ...deposition with water droplets, considering interfacial adsorption by wax crystals. The prepared 20 vol % water-in-oil emulsion was used for the wax deposition experiment with an analysis of deposition mass/thickness and water volume fraction in deposition, determining that the water content in deposition during the whole deposition duration was constant and equaled to the water content in emulsion. Moreover, a polarizing microscope was employed to observe the microstructure of wax deposition, revealing that some water droplets were covered with wax crystals due to interfacial adsorption, while some droplets were enclosed by the network of wax crystals. Depending on these findings, two kinds of entrapment of water droplets in deposition were proposed. One contained the formation and growth of a crystal network accompanied with these wax-covered water droplets themselves; another one indicated that water droplets were surrounded by a crystal network, resulting in the movement of these droplets being limited and therefore the droplets settling in deposition. Furthermore, a comparison of the distribution of water droplets in deposition using a microscope and that in emulsion by focused-beam reflectance measurement was presented. It was observed that these small droplets were more likely to be incorporated into deposition in contrast with these large ones. The largest size measured for an entrapped water droplet was 115 μm, which was in accordance with the previous research claiming that the general diameter of water droplets incorporated into deposition was no more than ∼100 μm. Interfacial adsorption of wax crystals provides an additional insight to investigate water droplets in wax deposition.
By allowing individuals to engage in remote relationships with foreign employers, online labor markets have the potential to mitigate the inefficiency costs due to the legal barriers and other ...frictions deterring international physical migration. This study investigates how the supply of foreign labor in digital and physical markets responds differently to monetary incentives. We use a unique data set containing information on digital labor flows from a major global online labor platform in conjunction with data on physical labor flows. We exploit short-term fluctuations in the exchange rate as a source of econometric identification: a depreciation of a country's currency against the U.S. dollar increases the incentives of its workers to seek digital and physical employment from employers based in the United States. Using a panel count data model, we find that monetary incentives induced by depreciations of foreign currencies against the U.S. dollar are positively associated with the supply of foreign labor in digital markets, as expected from the frictionless nature of electronic markets. However, we fail to find a positive relationship between monetary incentives and the supply of foreign labor in physical markets, which might be expected due to the substantial bureaucratic restrictions and transaction costs associated with physical migration. We further examine how countries' income and information and communications technologies development levels moderate the positive relationship between monetary incentives and digital labor flows. Our findings are useful for gauging the extent to which digital labor flows can alleviate the economic inefficiencies from the restrictions on physical migration.
•A demand-side analysis-based gas supply reliability evaluation method is proposed.•The fluctuation characteristics and the effect of user importance is considered.•The method is applied to a real ...natural gas pipeline network located in China.•The significance of the demand side in the gas supply reliability is elaborated.
The fluctuation characteristics of the gas demand and the effect of the user importance are usually ignored in previous gas supply reliability research. With the intent of overcoming these deficiencies, an integrated method based on the demand-side analysis is proposed in this study to assess the gas supply reliability of the large-scale and complex natural gas pipeline network. The method is composed of the establishment of the indicator system, the demand-side analysis, the estimation of the unit failure probability, and the calculation of the gas supply. Among them, the demand-side analysis focuses on the market demand forecasting and user importance research. Moreover, the coupling effect of the user importance, the hydraulic and pressure constraints, and the unit failure on the gas supply calculation is considered. Furthermore, a real natural gas pipeline network located in China is applied to confirm the feasibility of the method. According to the evaluation results of the gas supply reliability, the weakest nodes and key links of the natural gas pipeline network are identified, and the suggestions to improve the gas supply reliability are proposed as well. At last, the significance of the demand side in the gas supply reliability is elaborated and validated.
Hydrate formation and slurry flow experiments were conducted in w/o emulsion systems using a high-pressure flow loop to investigate the effect of hydrate agglomeration and deposition on hydrate ...slurry viscosity. Hydrate agglomeration process was recorded by a particle video measurement probe and the wetted agglomeration between hydrate particles and water drops was observed. Results showed that due to the effect of the water drops, it formed complicated hydrate agglomerates that could encapsulate water phase inside. Therefore, the unconverted water phase must be considered and a modified fractal dimension is required when estimating the hydrate effective volume fraction. The required fractal dimension for the agglomeration stage was larger than that for the stabilization stage by about 0.25. Hydrate deposition could affect the slurry viscosity by lowering the hydrate effective concentration and decreasing the flow diameter, while it had little effect on the required fractal dimension. Effect of water cut and shear rate were analysed. The slurry viscosity increased with the increase of the water cut and decreased with the increase of the shear rate, demonstrating the hydrate slurry was shear thinning. The best-fit fractal dimension was larger in higher water cut conditions and increased with the increasing shear rate. According to the experiment results, evolution of the head loss and slurry viscosity in a real long-distance transportation pipeline was divided into 5 stages.
The timely identification of both malignant and nonmalignant pancreatic lesions has the potential to significantly enhance prognosis and implement risk management strategies across various levels. ...microRNAs (miRs) and their corresponding targets play a crucial role in the development of pancreatic lesions and can serve as valuable diagnostic and therapeutic targets. The objective of our study was to investigate potential diagnostic markers that can effectively differentiate between malignant and nonmalignant pancreatic lesions.
Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database with GSE24279 dataset was utilized to screen differentially expressed miRNAs (DEMs). We utilized the TargetScanHuman database to predict the target genes associated with hsa-miR-150-3p, hsa-miR-150-5p, and hsa-miR-214-3p. Furthermore, a cohort comprising healthy individuals (n = 52), chronic pancreatitis (CP; n = 34), and pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD; n = 53) patients was recruited to ascertain the levels of plasma markers.
We identified 3 miRNAs (hsa-miR-150-3p, hsa-miR-150-5p, and hsa-miR-214-3p) and 2 proteins (PCDH1 and AMN) as potential diagnostic markers for distinguishing between CP and PAAD. The area under the curve (AUC) values for all markers exceeded .800. Notably, a combination of plasma PCDH1 and AMN demonstrated excellent diagnostic performance (AUC = .921; 95% CI: .866-.977; sensitivity = .792; specificity = .941) in discriminating between CP and PAAD. In addition, the model of hsa-miR-150-3p, hsa-miR-150-5p, and hsa-miR-214-3p yielded an AUC of .928, sensitivity of .830, and specificity of .912, respectively.
Plasma levels of miRNAs (hsa-miR-150-3p, hsa-miR-150-5p, and hsa-miR-214-3p) and their corresponding targets (PCDH1 and AMN) hold promise as potential biomarkers for predicting PAAD in patients with CP.
Mg-doped Li2ZnTi3O8/C samples have been studied as anode substances for lithium-ion batteries have been organized by means of a simple sol-gel technique and calcined with the aid of a microwave tube ...sintering furnace. The binding energy and lattice change of Li2ZnTi3O8 are minimized when Mg replaces Zn (Zn↔Mg) is known by DFT calculations, so Mg2+ is doped in the Li2ZnTi3O8 lattice by replacing Zn2+, which can be demonstrated by XRD, TEM, and XPS spectroscopy in addition. CV and EIS show that the doping of Mg2+ provides a stable and fast transport channel for Li+ and in this way improves the ionic and electronic conductivity of Li2ZnTi3O8/C and further reduces the polarization. The Mg-doped Li2ZnTi3O8/C exhibits excellent cycling and rate performance, exhibiting high charge/discharge capacity of 307.6/306.5 mAh g−1 after 900 cycles at a current density of 0.2 A g−1.
•Microwave sintering makes the structure of Li2ZnTi3O8 more stable.•Mg-doped Li2ZnTi3O8/C can greatly improve its cycling and rate performance.•The formation energy of Mg substitution for Zn is minimized by DFT calculation.•Li2Zn0.9Mg0.1Ti3O8/C has excellent discharge capacity and long cycle performance.
•Radiomics models based on patients with rectal cancer receiving surgery alone for tumour-stroma ratio evaluation can be applied in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer treated with ...neoadjuvant therapy, which always damages the tumor microenvironment, resulting in a incapableness of accurate tumour-stroma ratio evaluation.•Radiomics model based on high-resolution T2WI and clinical-radiomics model for tumour-stroma ratio evaluation can predict DFS and OS in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer treated with neoadjuvant therapy.
To develop and validate a radiomics model based on high-resolution T2WI and a clinical-radiomics model for tumour-stroma ratio (TSR) evaluation with a gold standard of TSR evaluated by rectal specimens without therapeutic interference and further apply them in prognosis prediction of locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) patients who received neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.
A total of 178 patients (mean age: 59.35, range 20–85 years; 65 women and 113 men) with rectal cancer who received surgery alone from January 2016 to October 2020 were enrolled and randomly separated at a ratio of 7:3 into training and validation sets. A senior radiologist reviewed after 2 readers manually delineated the whole tumour in consensus on preoperative high-resolution T2WI in the training set. A total of 1046 features were then extracted, and recursive feature elimination embedded with leave-one-out cross validation was applied to select features, with which an MR-TSR evaluation model was built containing 6 filtered features via a support vector machine classifier trained by comparing patients’ pathological TSR. Stepwise logistic regression was employed to integrate clinical factors with the radiomics model (Fusion-TSR) in the training set. Later, the MR-TSR and Fusion-TSR models were replicated in the validation set for diagnostic effectiveness evaluation. Subsequently, 243 patients (mean age: 53.74, range 23–74 years; 63 women and 180 men) with LARC from October 2012 to September 2017 who were treated with NCRT prior to surgery and underwent standard pretreatment rectal MR examination were enrolled. The MR-TSR and Fusion-TSR were applied, and the Kaplan–Meier method and log-rank test were used to compare the survival of patients with different MR-TSR and Fusion-TSR. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to calculate the hazard ratio (HR).
Both the MR-TSR and Fusion-TSR models were validated with favourable diagnostic power: the AUC of the MR-TSR was 0.77 (p = 0.01; accuracy = 69.8 %, sensitivity = 88.9 %, specificity = 65.9 %, PPV = 34.8 %, NPV = 96.7 %), while the AUC of the Fusion-TSR was 0.76 (p = 0.014; accuracy = 67.9 %, sensitivity = 88.9 %, specificity = 63.6 %, PPV = 33.3 %, NPV = 96.6 %), outperforming their effectiveness in the training set: the AUC of the MR-TSR was 0.65 (p = 0.035; accuracy = 66.4 %, sensitivity = 61.9 %, specificity = 67.3 %, PPV = 27.7 %, NPV = 90.0 %), while the AUC of the Fusion-TSR was 0.73 (p = 0.001; accuracy = 73.6 %, sensitivity = 71.4 %, specificity = 74.0 %, PPV = 35.73 %, NPV = 92.8 %). With further prognostic analysis, the MR-TSR was validated as a significant prognostic factor for DFS in LARC patients treated with NCRT (p = 0.020, HR = 1.662, 95 % CI = 1.077–2.565), while the Fusion-TSR was a significant prognostic factor for OS (p = 0.005, HR = 2.373, 95 % CI = 1.281–4.396).
We developed and validated a radiomics TSR and a clinical-radiomics TSR model and successfully applied them to better risk stratification for LARC patients receiving NCRT and for better decision making.
Computational DNA Droplets
In article number 2202322, Masahiro Takinoue and co‐workers develop a computational DNA droplet using programmable phase‐separated droplets consisting of DNA ...nanostructures. They demonstrate that the computational DNA droplet can recognize a specific combination of tumor marker microRNAs as molecular inputs and output results of DNA logic operations through DNA droplet division, achieving the fusion of biosensing and molecular computation in DNA droplets.
RNA has the intrinsic propensity to form base pairs, leading to complex intramolecular and intermolecular helices. Direct measurement of base pairing interactions in living cells is critical to ...solving transcriptome structure and interactions, and investigating their functions (Lu and Chang, Curr Opin Struct Biol 36:142-148, 2016). Toward this goal, we developed an experimental method, PARIS (Psoralen Analysis of RNA Interactions and Structures), to directly determine transcriptome-wide base pairing interactions (Lu et al., Cell 165(5):1267-1279, 2016). PARIS combines four critical steps, in vivo cross-linking, 2D gel purification, proximity ligation, and high-throughput sequencing to achieve high-throughput and near-base pair resolution determination of the RNA structurome and interactome in living cells. In this chapter, we aim to provide a comprehensive discussion on the principles behind the experimental and computational strategies, and a step-by-step description of the experiment and analysis.
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