A fine tuning of the Brønsted acidity of the hydrotreatment catalyst (by boron addition) leads to progressive changes of the electronic properties of the Mo and Co–Mo sulfided phases. This change ...markedly improved the hydrogenation activity in HDN test as well as in HDS of refractory molecules for Mo catalysts.
•Support Brønsted acidity monitoring.•Control of the sulfide site electronic properties.•Fit of the hydrogenation activity.
Aluminas with different boron loadings were prepared by impregnation with H3BO3 solutions and then used to prepare pure Mo and CoMo catalysts. According to infrared (IR) spectroscopy of 2,6-dimethylpyridine, the acid properties of the alumina have been finely tuned by boron addition. The effect of alumina acidity change on the properties of sulfided Mo and CoMo has been characterized using transmission electron microscope, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and IR spectroscopy of CO-adsorption as well as model compound reactions as thiophene hydrodesulfurization (HDS), 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (4,6-DMDBT) HDS and 2,6-dimethylaniline (DMA) hydrodenitrogenation (HDN). The acidity change of alumina has a direct influence on the electronic properties of MoS2 and CoMoS sites but not substantially modifies the morphology and dispersion of the sulfide phase. The results point out a relationship between the Brønsted acidity of the support and the electronic properties of the MoS2 and CoMoS phase. The change of the electronic properties of the active sites has a marked positive influence on the hydrogenation activity of the active phase. The performances of the Mo and CoMo catalysts in the reactions of HDS of thiophene and 4,6-DMDBT and HDN of DMA have been related to the variations of the structural and electronic properties resulted from boron addition.
Physical activity (PA) is known to improve physical functioning and mental health and to reduce the incidence of dementia. However, studies of the effects of non-recreational PA on the incidence of ...dementia, especially in East Asian populations, remain limited. In this study, we evaluate the association of doing housework with the risk of dementia among participants in the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS).
The analysis was conducted with data from 7,237 CLHLS participants age over 65 obtained in 2008/2009, 2011/2012, 2014, and 2018. The frequency of housework performance was classified into four groups. A Cox proportional-hazards model was used to examine the association of the baseline housework frequency with the incidence of dementia, with adjustment for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and lifestyle and health conditions.
The adjusted multivariate model showed that the incidence of dementia was lower among participants who did housework almost every day than among those who rarely or never did housework (hazard ratio = 0.49; 95% confidence interval, 0.39-0.61). The subgroup and sensitivity analyses yielded similar results.
A high frequency of housework performance was associated with a reduced incidence of dementia among older Chinese adults, especially those who did not exercise regularly. The encouragement of engagement in housework would be a cost-effective measure promoting healthy aging in the Chinese population.
In this work, a new hardening model is proposed for the depth-dependent hardness of ion-irradiated polycrystals with obvious grain size effect. Dominant hardening mechanisms are addressed in the ...model, including the contribution of dislocations, irradiation-induced defects and grain boundaries. Two versions of the hardening model are compared, including the linear and square superposition models. A succinct parameter calibration method is modified to parametrize the models based on experimentally obtained hardness vs. indentation depth curves. It is noticed that both models can well characterize the experimental data of unirradiated polycrystals; whereas, the square superposition model performs better for ion-irradiated materials, therefore, the square superposition model is recommended. In addition, the new model separates the grain size effect from the dislocation hardening contribution, which makes the physical meaning of fitted parameters more rational when compared with existing hardness analysis models.
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•The fatigue crack initiation mechanism in a SMC is revealed by in-situ SEM.•Fatigue micro-crack induced by interfacial debonding of the SMC does not occur.•Fatigue micro-cracks are ...induced by the brittle fracture of eutectic particles.
The initiation of fatigue cracks in a TiB2-reinforced high-modulus, low-density steel was revealed by in-situ scanning electron microscopy for the first time. The results show that the superior interfacial strength between the TiB2particles and the matrix prevents the initiation of micro-cracks at the interfaces. Fatigue micro-cracks are mainly induced by the brittle fracture of small eutectic TiB2 particles, while the coalescence of these micro-cracks plays the major role in the fatigue failure. This failure mechanism is essentially different from the static tensile failure mode in which the large primary TiB2 particles are the main source of fracture failure.
Abstract
The X-ray pulsar 1A 0535+262 exhibited a giant outburst in 2020, offering us a unique opportunity for X-ray polarimetry of an accreting pulsar in the supercritical state. Measurement with ...PolarLight yielded a nondetection in 3–8 keV; the 99% upper limit of the polarization fraction (PF) is found to be 0.34 averaged over spin phases, or 0.51 based on the rotating vector model. No useful constraint can be placed with phase-resolved polarimetry. These upper limits are lower than a previous theoretical prediction of 0.6–0.8, but consistent with those found in other accreting pulsars, like Her X-1, Cen X-3, 4U 1626−67, and GRO J1008−57, which were in the subcritical state, or at least not confidently in the supercritical state, during the polarization measurements. Our results suggest that the relatively low PF seen in accreting pulsars cannot be attributed to the source not being in the supercritical state, but could be a general feature.
A series of Y zeolites with different pore properties was prepared as a support for hydrocracking catalysts for the production of BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethyl-benzene, and xylene) from tetralin. ...Some important characterizations, including N2 adsorption–desorption, NH3-TPD, Py-IR, and HRTEM, were applied to obtain the properties of different catalysts. Meanwhile, the tetralin hydrocracking performances of those catalysts were investigated on a high-pressure fixed-bed microreactor. The results showed that Si/Al ratio is the core property of zeolites and that the increase in the Vmicro/Vmeso of zeolites could facilitate the formation of BTEX products by hydrocracking tetralin. The method of hydrocracking tetralin was proposed. It was also found that the hydrogenation–cracking path was controlled by aromatic saturation thermodynamics, and strong acidity aided the backward shift of equilibrium temperature.
Traditional reliability analysis requires probability distributions of all the uncertain parameters. However, in many practical applications, the variation bounds can be only determined for the ...parameters with limited information. A complex hybrid reliability problem then will be caused when the random and interval variables coexist in a same structure. In this paper, by introducing the response surface technique, we develop a new hybrid reliability method to efficiently compute the interval of the failure probability of the structure due to the probability-interval hybrid uncertainty. The present method consists of a sequence of iterations. At each step, a response surface model is constructed for the limit-state function by using a quadratic polynomial and a modified axial experimental design method. An approximate hybrid reliability problem is created based on the response surface model, which is subsequently solved by an efficient decoupling approach. An updating strategy is suggested to improve the quality of the response surface and whereby ensure the reliability analysis precision. A computational procedure is then summarized for the whole iterations. Four numerical examples and also a practical application are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the present method.
By combining regional homogeneity (ReHo) and functional connectivity (FC) analyses, this study aimed to explore brain functional alterations in Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome (APS), which could ...provide complementary information for the neurophysiological indicators for schizophrenia (SZ) associated brain dysfunction.
Twenty-one APS subjects and twenty healthy controls were enrolled in the data acquisition of demographics and clinical characteristics as well as structural and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). ReHo analysis was conducted to determine the peak coordinate of the abnormal regional brain activity. Then, identified brain regions were considered as seed regions and were used to calculate FC between reginal brain voxels and whole brain voxels. Finally, potential correlations between imaging indices and clinical data were also explored.
Four APS and two HC subjects were excluded because the largest dynamic translation or rotation had exceeded 2 mm / 2°. Compared with healthy controls (HCs), APS subjects exhibited higher ReHo values in the right middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and lower ReHo values in the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), left superior frontal gyrus (SFG), left postcentral gyrus (PoCG), and left superior frontal gyrus, medial (SFGmed). Considered these areas as seed regions, the APS subjects showed abnormal enhancement in functional brain connections, predominantly in the frontal and temporal lobes.
We concluded that the APS subjects had spatially regional dysfunction and remoted synchronous dysfunction in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, and changes in ReHo and FC patterns may reveal the mechanism of brain dysfunctions and may serve as an imaging biomarker for the diagnosis and evaluation of SZ.
To investigate a 3-stage screening procedure and explore the clinical features of subjects at Clinical High Risk (CHR) for psychosis in a representative sample of Chinese college students.
An ...epidemiological survey of the prevalence of the CHR syndrome in Chinese college students that was selected by stratified random sampling from Shanghai, Nanjing and Nanchang cities was done following a 3-stage procedure. Participants were initially screened with the Prodromal Questionnaire-brief version (PQ-B), and whose distress score of PQ-B exceeded 24 would be invited to a telephone assessment using the subscale for positive symptoms of the Scale of Prodromal Symptoms (SOPS)/Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes (SIPS). Lastly, participants who scored 3 or higher in any item of the subscale would be administered with the SIPS interview conducted by trained researchers to confirm the diagnosis of CHR syndrome.
Twenty-three thousand sixty-three college students completed the survey during September 2017 to October 2018. Seventy-two students were diagnosed as CHR subjects, and the detection rate in the total sample was 0.3%. The peak age range for the first diagnosis of CHR was 17 to 20 years. Thirteen and forty-six were set as the cutoff points of PQ-B total score and distress score to balance the greatest sensitivity and specificity. Binary logistic regression revealed that 8 items in PQ-B showed significant distinction for detecting CHR subjects.
The 3-stage screening method can be utilized in the detection of CHR subjects for psychosis in the general population, during which delusional ideas, perceptual abnormalities and suspiciousness deserve great attention.