In this paper, I examine a Chinese family’s oral history, which revolves around their tumultuous life transformations under the impact of China’s communist movement between 1940 and 1977. Using ...interviews with four siblings who have distinctive personalities and life narratives, I focus on how they apply fatalistic thinking—a phenomenon popular among ordinary Chinese but is rarely analyzed by scholars—to make sense of the vicissitudes of the fates of the family members. I position the Chinese family’s oral history in macro and micro contexts. In the macro context, since the land reform in 1940s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had attempted to replace peasants’ fatalistic thinking with class analysis to explain the roots of hardships in their lives. As the communist movement and class struggle receded, fatalistic thinking—which has never been eradicated—revived. In the micro context, fatalistic thinking is expressed through distinctive memories and narratives, which are linked to personalities and identities. I argue that fatalistic thinking is a mean of self-construction that people consciously or unconsciously resort to when facing absurdity. By using fatalistic thinking, people develop narratives about the self and create a sense of mental balance.
Pure nickel and four binary Ni–Cr (5, 10, 20 and 30 wt%) alloys were exposed to Ar–20O
2
, Ar–20O
2
–20H
2
O and Ar–20H
2
O (vol.%) at 700°C. In dry and wet O
2
, three Ni–Cr alloys (5, 10 and 20 ...wt%) formed a three-layered structure: an external NiO layer, an inner oxide layer of NiO + Cr
2
O
3
and an internal oxidation zone (IOZ) with Cr
2
O
3
dispersed. The Ni–30Cr alloy formed a continuous chromia layer, with locally outer NiO islands. In pure water vapor, all alloys underwent internal oxidation, nickel metal expulsion and NiO formation. Compared with the results at 650°C, increasing the temperature to 700°C did not alter the morphology of the oxide scale, but enhanced the scale growth kinetics. A significant difference between these two temperatures was that the strong retarding effect of water vapor on NiO formation in oxygen at 650°C became insignificant at 700°C. However, in water vapor only condition, NiO formation remained much slower at both temperatures. The effects of water vapor and oxygen partial pressure on NiO formation of different alloys and the effect of temperature on scale growth kinetics and morphology were discussed.
The optical properties of stoichiometric copper chalcogenide nanocrystals (NCs) are characterized by strong interband transitions in the blue part of the spectral range and a weaker absorption onset ...up to ∼1000 nm, with negligible absorption in the near-infrared (NIR). Oxygen exposure leads to a gradual transformation of stoichiometric copper chalcogenide NCs (namely, Cu2–x S and Cu2–x Se, x = 0) into their nonstoichiometric counterparts (Cu2–x S and Cu2–x Se, x > 0), entailing the appearance and evolution of an intense localized surface plasmon (LSP) band in the NIR. We also show that well-defined copper telluride NCs (Cu2–x Te, x > 0) display a NIR LSP, in analogy to nonstoichiometric copper sulfide and selenide NCs. The LSP band in copper chalcogenide NCs can be tuned by actively controlling their degree of copper deficiency via oxidation and reduction experiments. We show that this controlled LSP tuning affects the excitonic transitions in the NCs, resulting in photoluminescence (PL) quenching upon oxidation and PL recovery upon subsequent reduction. Time-resolved PL spectroscopy reveals a decrease in exciton lifetime correlated to the PL quenching upon LSP evolution. Finally, we report on the dynamics of LSPs in nonstoichiometric copper chalcogenide NCs. Through pump–probe experiments, we determined the time constants for carrier-phonon scattering involved in LSP cooling. Our results demonstrate that copper chalcogenide NCs offer the unique property of holding excitons and highly tunable LSPs on demand, and hence they are envisaged as a unique platform for the evaluation of exciton/LSP interactions.
Objective
Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is an endocrine-related disease with an increasing incidence worldwide. Male sexual dysfunction is common in diabetic patients. Therefore, we designed a ...Mendelian randomization (MR) study to investigate the association of type 2 diabetes and 3 glycemic traits with testosterone levels.
Methods
Uncorrelated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with T2DM (N = 228), fasting insulin (N = 38), fasting glucose (N = 71), and HbA1c (N = 75) at the genome-wide significance were selected as instrument variables. Genetic associations with testosterone levels (total testosterone, TT, bioavailable testosterone, BT, and sex hormone-binding globulin, SHBG) were obtained from the UK Biobank studies and other large consortia. Two-sample MR analysis was used to minimize the bias caused by confounding factors and response causality. Multivariable MR analysis was performed using Body mass index (BMI), Triglycerides (TG), LDL cholesterol (LDL), and adiponectin to adjust for the effects of potential confounders.
Results
Type 2 diabetes mellitus was associated with the decrease of total testosterone (β: -0.021,95%CI: -0.032, -0.010, p<0.001) and sex hormone binding globulin (β: -0.048,95%CI: -0.065, -0.031, p<0.001). In males, total testosterone (β: 0.058, 95% CI: 0.088, 0.028, p < 0.001) decreased. In females, it was associated with an increase in bioavailable testosterone (β: 0.077,95%CI: 0.058,0.096, p<0.001). Each unit (pmol/L) increase in fasting insulin was associated with 0.283nmol/L decrease in sex hormone-binding globulin (95%CI: -0.464, -0.102, p=0.002) and 0.260nmol/L increase in bioavailable testosterone (95%CI: -0.464, -0.102, p= 0.002). In males, sex hormone binding globulin decreased by 0.507nmol/L (95%CI: -0.960, -0.054, p= 0.028) and bioavailable testosterone increased by 0.216nmol/L (95%CI: 0.087,0.344, p= 0.001). In females, sex hormone binding globulin decreased by 0.714 nmol/L (95%CI: -1.093, -0.335, p<0.001) and bioavailable testosterone increased by 0.467nmol/L (95%CI: 0.286,0.648, p<0.001). Each unit (%) increase in HbA1c was associated with 0.060nmol/L decrease in sex hormone-binding globulin (95%CI: -0.113, -0.007, p= 0.026). In males, total testosterone decreased by 0.171nmol/L (95%CI: -0.288, -0.053, p=0.005) and sex hormone binding globulin decreased by 0.206nmol/L (95%CI: -0.340, -0.072, p=0.003). Total testosterone increased by 0.122nmol/L (95%CI: 0.012,0.233, p=0.029) and bioavailable testosterone increased by 0.163nmol/L (95%CI: 0.042,0.285, p=0.008) in females.
Conclusions
Using MR Analysis, we found independent effects of type 2 diabetes, fasting insulin, and HbA1c on total testosterone and sex hormone-binding globulin after maximum exclusion of the effects of obesity, BMI, TG, LDL and Adiponectin.
Rheological behaviors of the aqueous solution of N-benzylacrylamide-modified partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide in the presence of various surfactants are compared in this study. In addition to the ...electrostatic contribution, the steric factor of the surfactant molecules is found to play an important role in tuning the rheology of polymer solution presumably through diverse kinetics of mixed micelles composed of both surfactants and polymers. Specifically, it is speculated that faster micellar kinetics typical of smaller surfactant molecules allows the restructuring of micelles from intrapolymeric liaisons to interpolymeric ones when shear rate increases, giving rise to the unusual Newtonian and dilatant characteristics, while the impact of larger surfactant molecules is largely independent of the shear rate due to slower micellar kinetics. The possibility of the same polymer manifesting diverse rheological behaviors through fine-tuning added surfactants and associated micellar kinetics can be of great interests in applications such as enhanced oil recovery and painting formulation.
Graphical abstract
Blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization and immutability, and has received widespread attention in recent years. Data can not be tampered, which will cause a series of problems such ...that malicious transactions can not be eradicated and wrong transactions can not be modified. The existing related researches can modify specific block data, or add new transactions to achieve logical editing. The former will cause the editing record can not be verified, the latter can keep the wrong data storage, but lack of secure access mechanism. In addition, the existing relevant studies have not fully considered the characteristics of the data to be edited, resulting in subsequent transactions affected and ineffective. Therefore, an editable blockchain model is proposed. Firstly, taking deposit data as an example, the underlying data structure of blockchain is redesigned, time-series attributes are added, and the index is built. Then it proposes new submission, editing and query algorithms, and realizes the lo
A bacterial strain JI39 that had plant growth-promoting traits was isolated from the rhizosphere soil of
. It had the ability to produce high indole-3-acetic acid (13.1 μg/ml), phosphate ...solubilization (164.2 μg/ml), potassium solubilization (16.1 μg/ml), and nitrogen fixation. The strain JI39 was identified to be
based on morphological, physiological, and biochemical traits and through 16S rDNA sequence analysis. The optimal culture environment for strain growth was 1.0% NaCl, 30°C, pH 6.0, and without UV irradiation. The strain can produce cellulase and protease. The strain JI39 can significantly promote the growth of ginseng. After ginseng seeds were treated with 3 × 10
CFU/ml of JI39 bacterial suspension, the shoot's length was significantly increased by 64.61% after 15 days. Meanwhile, the fresh weight of 2-year-old ginseng roots was significantly increased by 24.70% with a treatment by the 10
CFU/ml bacterial suspension after 150 days in the field. The gene expression of phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL), β-1.3 glucanase (β
), chitinase (CHI), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and peroxidase (POD) of ginseng was upregulated, and it also can improve the soil urease, phosphatase, invertase, and catalase activity. In conclusion, the bacterial strain JI39 could efficiently promote the growth of ginseng and has the potential to be a good microbial fertilizer for ginseng.
Multi-object detection is one of essential prerequisites for autonomous driving under complicated traffic environments. Specially, for the cases of nighttime driving, the accuracy of object detector ...for those images captured by infrared cameras is inevitably affected by several unanticipated issues (such as dim and unexpected light sources), which may significantly degrade the performance of detecting multiple objects (e.g., pedestrians and vehicles). To address such problem, we propose a Light-Weighted Multi-Object Detection Scheme for Infrared Images ( LW-MODS-IRI ). First, we select an effective super-resolution (SR) method to enhance and repair those infrared images, which can facilitate restoring the details of images for better detection accuracy. Next, those enhanced images are trained by our LW-MODS-IRI scheme. In contrast with previous methods, we develop an adaptive computing policy for anchor clustering that aims at locating the bound of targets in a reasonable manner for higher detection precision. Moreover, a modified attention mechanism is exploited to enlarge the receptive fields for promoting the detection performance of those large objects. Furthermore, we propose an improved channel-level pruning technique to generate both compact and accurate model after the training with sparsity. Finally, the extensive experiment results on Teledyne FLIR ADAS dataset (FLIR) demonstrate that the LW-MODS-IRI scheme can have both higher inference accuracy (e.g., 10.7% more) and higher detection efficiency (e.g., 4.13 times faster) compared to the existing object detectors, which typically reveals its practical viability when it is applied to in-vehicle systems.
We study the formation of Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) films from various liquid-phase precursors. Our experimental data point to the significant role that reactivities of precursor components play in the ...quality of the final material. Although reactive molecular precursors favor formation of CZTS under milder conditions, the formation of large crystalline domains requires using less reactive nanostructured precursors. We explain this effect using kinetics of nucleation and growth. We have also demonstrated a strategy to effectively enhance grain growth of CZTS using solid-state phase transition as the driving force for nanocrystal sintering. We hope this contribution will provide a useful guide toward the rational design of liquid-phase precursors for inorganic semiconductors for electronic and optoelectronic applications.
Tensile behavior of Pt-aluminide (PtAl) coating with and without a middle NiRe layer on a Ni3Al-based single crystal superalloy after different oxidation times were investigated at room temperature ...(RT) and 1100 °C. The results revealed that the existence of the NiRe layer not only improved the oxidation resistance of the coating, but also performed a significant inhibition of crack propagation, contributing to a superior ductility of the oxidized Re modified PtAl (PtReAl) coated specimen. The tensile and cracking behaviors of the coated specimens at RT and 1100 °C were discussed in detail.
