Membrane technology is believed as a cost-effective approach for solving the water issues, where as it suffers from serious membrane fouling. Surface grafting and surface coating have been proved to ...be effective in abating the membrane fouling; however, these processes always need additional procedures and compromise the initial permeance of the membranes. Herein, we developed a kind of highly permeable polyacrylonitrile (PAN) membranes with excellent anti-fouling performance through one-step phase inversion of the PAN casting solution containing water-soluble active additives. During the process, the water-soluble active additives could segregate towards the membrane surface and pore walls; thereby finely tailoring the pore structures of the PAN-based membranes. Moreover, the active additives could react with each other to form crosslinked networks containing multi-hydrophilic functional groups including CH2–O–CH2, –OH or -Si-OH. Consequently, the PAN-based membranes exhibited surprising superhydrophilicity with water contact angle below 10° even after soaking in water for one week and the anti-fouling permeance of the membranes increased significantly with permeance recovery rate above 93%. Interestingly, the modified membranes also demonstrated both high permeances and high separation efficiency, thereby showing strong promise in water environmental remediation including wastewater treatment and oil/water emulsion separation.
Superhydrophilic PAN based membranes with assistance of multi-hydrophilic networks were well designed for water environmental remediation. With finely tailored pore structures and surface hydrophilicity, the membranes exhibit highly efficient separation performance and anti-fouling performance. The membranes show strong promise in treating both oily wastewater and protein containing wastewater. Display omitted
•Superhydrophilic PAN based membrane was well designed for water remediation.•The addition of the active additives finely tailored the membranes' pore structure.•Multi-hydrophilic functional networks greatly enhance the membranes' hydrophilicity.•The membranes show excellent separation performance and anti-fouling performance.
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•S-scheme Cu@CN/TiOx heterojunction was engineered.•Efficient charge separation in Cu@CN/TiOx leads to 99.5% NO3– removal efficiency.•Advanced characterizations and theoretical ...validate S-scheme heterojunction design.•A novel sequential NO3– to NO2– to N2 pathway was discussed.•The tandem catalyst drives 95.5% N2 selectivity in PCDN.
The persistent challenge of nitrate (NO3–) pollution in water systems, profoundly impacting ecosystems and human health, demands effective remediation strategies. Here, we present an innovative S-scheme Cu@CN/TiOx heterojunction for high-efficiency photocatalytic denitrification (PCDN). Evaluation of its performance demonstrates exceptional NO3– removal efficiency (99.5%) and remarkable N2 selectivity (95.5%), with 13.7 and 4.1 times higher rate constants of NO3– removal than the individual Cu@CN and TiOx components. Notably, this catalyst exhibits impressive stability across multiple cycles, maintaining consistent high conversion rates and selectivity. Mechanistic insights unveiled a tandem reaction pathway where Cu@CN selectively reduced NO3– to NO2–, followed by the TiOx-mediated CO2•– generation, enabling highly selective NO2– to N2 conversion. This unique catalytic system, featuring spatially separated redox-active sites, presents a promising avenue for efficient, selective, and stable denitrification processes, offering significant potential in addressing water pollution challenges and advancing tandem catalytic systems.
Immune cells, such as macrophages, B cells, neutrophils and T cell subsets, have been implicated in the context of obesity. However, the specific role of Th2 cells in adipose tissue function has ...remained elusive. Eight-week-old male CD3ε
mice were randomly divided into two groups (≥ 5 mice per group): one received intravenous injection of Th2 cells isolated from LAT
mice, while the other receiving PBS as a control. Both of groups were subjected to a high-fat diet (HFD). The adoptive transfer of polarized Th2 cells led to a significant reduction in obesity following a HFD. This reduction was accompanied by improvements in hepatic steatosis, glucose intolerance, and insulin resistance. Mechanistically, Th2 cell treatment promoted oxidative phosphorylation of adipocytes, thereby contributing to a reduction of lipid droplet accumulation. These findings suggest that Th2 cell therapy represents a novel approach for treating diet-induced obesity and other diseases involving lipid droplet accumulation disorders.
Aqueous zinc ion batteries (AZIBs) are promising electrochemical energy storage devices due to their high theoretical specific capacity, low cost, and environmental friendliness. However, ...uncontrolled dendrite growth poses a serious threat to the reversibility of Zn plating/stripping, which impacts the stability of batteries. Therefore, controlling the disordered dendrite growth remains a considerable challenge in the development of AZIBs. Herein, a ZIF-8-derived ZnO/C/N composite (ZOCC) interface layer was constructed on the surface of the Zn anode. The homogeneous distribution of zincophilic ZnO and the N element in the ZOCC facilitates directional Zn deposition on the (002) crystal plane. Moreover, the conductive skeleton with a microporous structure accelerates Zn
transport kinetics, resulting in a reduction in polarization. As a result, the stability and electrochemical properties of AZIBs are improved. Specifically, the ZOCC@Zn symmetric cell sustains over 1150 h at 0.5 mA cm
with 0.25 mA h cm
, while the ZOCC@Zn half-cell achieves an outstanding Coulombic efficiency of 99.79% over 2000 cycles. This work provides a simple and effective strategy for improving the lifespan of AZIBs.
Natural polychromatic biomaterials (like carminic acid and gardenia yellow) possess coloring merits and functionality, but are instable under light and heat. Self-assembly of gelatin and ...polychromatic materials could be induced by carnosic acid inclusions, illustrating great potential in food application. Antioxidant properties, pigment retention rates, UV irradiation stability, rheological properties, and physical resistances (oil, ethanol, heat and microwave) of samples were improved by carnosic acid inclusions, owing to the newly formed hydrogen bonding and electrostatic interactions (UV spectrum, particle size, zeta potential, FTIR, XPS and SEM). The improved properties contributed to the 2D printed pattern stability and the applicability for producing specialized products with high printability and fastness. On the basis of Subtractive Color-Mixing Principle, further three-dimensional dyeing microgel systems were built and modulated; it could functionalize bean paste/carboxymethyl-cellulose food systems, maintain the excellent self-supporting ability & mechanical strength, and promote single/dual-nozzle 3D printing application. Therefore, the self-assembled gelatin/polychromatic materials/carnosic acid microgel samples could not only achieve outstanding 2D printed pattern stability, and could be also promisingly applied in single/dual-nozzle 3D printing for modern innovative, creative food fields.
Time-varying group formation tracking control problems for second-order multi-agent systems with communication delays and multiple leaders are addressed in this paper. The followers are divided into ...multiple subgroups, and each subgroup is driven to complete the time-varying sub-formation and to track the average state of entire leaders simultaneously. A distributed protocol that considers communication delays and uses only local interaction information is presented. According to Lyapunov-like stability approach, sufficient conditions for the multi-agent systems to realize time-varying group formation tracking with multiple leaders are given. A variable-substitution based method is developed to get the unknown feedback matrix of the protocol and an algorithm is given to summarize the steps to construct the protocol. The theoretical results can be used in the problem of multiple targets enclosed by several subgroups of unmanned aerial vehicles. Finally, numerical examples are applied to verify the feasibility of the proposed results.
Enzyme preparation is one of the widely used additives in ruminant production. However, a suitable method of adding compound enzyme preparation (CEP) to the feeds is still lacking. This study ...investigated the effect of adding CEP on the diet of goats. Twenty 4-month-old Boer goats were randomly assigned to four groups. The dietary treatments contained different CEPs (
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
cells, cellulase, xylanase, β-glucanase amylase, and protease) at the concentrations of 0, 0.25, 0.50, and 0.75 g/kg of feed provided for a period of 56 days. Adding CEP in goat feed significantly increased average daily gain (ADG) during the entire test period. The oxidative indices, hormones, and immune cells did not differ significantly among the different groups. CEP significantly increased the content of total volatile fatty acids measured at the end of the experiment on day 56 of the final normal feeding phase. 16S rDNA sequencing revealed that CEP increased the abundance of
Ruminococcaceae
in the rumen and
g__norank_f__Eubacterium_coprostanoligenes_group
,
Oscillibacter g__unclassified_f__Ruminococcaceae
, and
g__unclassified_o__Oscillospirales
in fecal matter collected on day 56 of the final normal feeding phase. However, CEP decreased the abundance of
unclassified_f__Lachnospiraceae
, n
orank_f__UCG-010
,
Butyrivibrio
, and
Saccharofermentans
in the rumen. The abundance of
Ruminococcaceae
in the rumen and propionic acid was positively correlated with ADG. Function prediction showed that carbon fixation, carbohydrate digestion and absorption pathways were significantly enriched in rumen microbiota in the treatment group. The findings indicated that supplementation with 0.5 g CEP/kg of feed for 56 days significantly improves the production performance of goats without adverse health effects.
Key points
• Feeding with compound enzyme preparation for 56 days significantly improved the productive performance but did not affect the antioxidative capacity and immunity of goats.
• Supplementing compound enzyme preparation in diet could increase the relative abundance of Ruminococcus to increase the levels of short-chain fatty acids produced.
• The most appropriate supplemental amount of compound enzyme preparation per kilogram of the diet was 0.5 g.
•This paper investigated the size effect of silicon-based AlGaInP red micro-LEDs.•Smaller micro-LEDs can alleviate the high-current efficiency droop.•Sidewall passivation can suppress the size effect ...of the micro-LED.•This research provides important data for designing and fabricating red micro-LEDs.
To study the size effect of AlGaInP red micro-LEDs on the silicon substrate, we fabricated five AlGaInP red micro-LEDs with different pixel sizes (160 × 160, 80 × 80, 40 × 40, 20 × 20, and 10 × 10 µm2) and studied their electrical and optical properties. Smaller micro-LEDs have smaller leakage current and larger series resistance and can withstand higher current density without the current crowding effect. Due to the larger perimeter-to-area ratio of small-sized micro-LEDs, non-radiative recombination increases, which leads to a lower EQE. But smaller micro-LEDs can alleviate the problem of the high-current efficiency droop. In addition, because of a better heat dissipation under a high injection current, smaller micro-LEDs (>80 µm) have a smaller center wavelength shift. These experimental results provide important data for designing and fabricating red micro-LEDs with different pixel sizes for diverse future applications.
Abstract
Based on a 6 cm-long two-segment hybrid capillary discharge waveguide, a multi-GeV electron beam with energy up to 3.2 GeV and 9.7% rms energy spread was achieved in a cascaded laser ...wakefield acceleration scheme, powered by an on-target 210 TW laser pulse. The electron beam was trapped in the first segment via ionization-induced injection, and then seeded into the second segment for further acceleration. The long-distance stable guiding of the laser pulse and suppression of the dark current inside the second-segment capillary played an important role in the generation of high-energy electron beams, as demonstrated by quasi-three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations.
FeCrAlSi coatings were prepared using laser cladding technology and subjected to a continuous hot corrosion test in a eutectic 75 wt% Na2SO4 + 25 wt% K2SO4 salt at 800 °C in air. The FeCrAlSi coating ...consists of mainly the FeCr solid solution, AlFe intermetallic compound and little FeAl2 phase, and the microhardness and tribological properties improved over those of the untreated substrate. In the earliest stage of hot corrosion, a protective Al2O3 film is formed. During the subsequent hot corrosion process, the O2− concentration gradually increases. The alkalinity of the molten salt/coating interface then increases to the level at which it reacts with Al2O3, and the newly formed porous Al2O3 film is less protective. In the mid-stage of hot corrosion, Cr continues to diffuse upward through the porous Al2O3 film, and petal-like Cr2O3 forms on the pores, gradually forming a continuous Cr2O3 film. In the subsequent hot corrosion process, the internal oxidation of the Al intensifies, and the phenomenon of Al2O3 phase diffusing into the interior is more obvious. In the last stage of hot corrosion, the SiO2 film exists in the internal corrosion layer, which is passivated in the molten sulphate. Additionally, Al2O3 no longer penetrates the coating, thus forming a protective oxidation film with the (Cr, Fe)2O3 + Al2O3 in the external corrosion layer, which effectively slows oxidation and sulphuration reactions.
•The hot corrosion behaviour of an FeCrAlSi coating at 800 °C in a molten salt environment was studied.•The average thickness of the corrosion front gradually increased with increasing corrosion time.•The corrosion front mainly consisted of Al2O3, Cr2O3, SiO2, (Cr, Fe) 2O3, and Fe-Cr.•Compared to the untreated substrate, the FeCrAlSi coating showed good hot corrosion resistance.
