In nature, self-healing can be induced by sunlight for damage and wound repair, and this phenomenon is very important to living species for prolonging their lives. This self-repairing feature is ...obviously highly desirable for non-biological materials and manmade systems. In this paper, we demonstrate, for the first time, that battery electrodes can be self-repaired when exposed to sunlight. Here, we show that the optical, and photoelectrochemical (PEC) properties can be controlled by varying structural and compositional parameters of copper selenide nanocrystals (NCs). Cation to anion ratio in copper selenide (Cu2±xSe) NCs can be controlled over a wide range of 1.3–2.7 by simply changing the reaction temperature and impurity. Light-induced self-repairable behavior is demonstrated with electrochemical (EC) and PEC performances of electrodes made with stoichiometric copper selenide NCs. This nature-inspired, self-repairing behavior can be applied to batteries, supercapacitors, and photo-electrochemical fuel generators.
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•The first demonstration of light-induced self-reparability in battery electrodes.•Demonstration of a scalable method for copper selenide nanocrystals.•Temperature and impurity are keys to control structural and compositional properties.•Tunability in localized Surface Plasmon Resonance and free carrier density.
This paper reports on ectoparasitic chigger mites found on small mammals in Yunnan Province, southwest China. Data were accumulated from 19 investigation sites (counties) between 2001 and 2009. A ...total of 10 222 small mammal hosts were captured and identified; these represented 62 species, 34 genera and 11 families in five orders. From the body surfaces of these 10 222 hosts, a total of 92 990 chigger mites were collected and identified microscopically. These represented 224 species, 22 genera and three subfamilies in the family Trombiculidae (Trombidiformes). Small mammals were commonly found to be infested by chigger mites and most host species harboured several species of mite. The species diversity of chigger mites in Yunnan was much higher than diversities reported previously in other provinces of China and in other countries. A single species of rodent, Eothenomys miletus (Rodentia: Cricetidae), carried 111 species of chigger mite, thus demonstrating the highest species diversity and heaviest mite infestation of all recorded hosts. This diversity is exceptional compared with that of other ectoparasites. Of the total 224 mite species, 21 species accounted for 82.2% of all mites counted. Two species acting as major vectors for scrub typhus (tsutsugamushi disease), Leptotrombidium scutellare and Leptotrombidium deliense, were identified as the dominant mite species in this sample. In addition to these two major vectors, 12 potential or suspected vector species were found. Most species of chigger mite had a wide range of hosts and low host specificity. For example, L. scutellare parasitized 30 species of host. The low host specificity of chigger mites may increase their probability of encountering humans, as well as their transmission of scrub typhus among different hosts. Hierarchical clustering analysis showed that similarities between different chigger mite communities on the 18 main species of small mammal host did not accord with the taxonomic affinity of the hosts. This suggests that the distribution of chigger mites may be strongly influenced by the environment in which hosts live.
To investigate whether magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) radiomics features of brain metastases (BMs) can predict epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation status in lung adenocarcinoma.
...Between June 2014 and December 2022, 58 histopathologically confirmed lung adenocarcinoma patients (27 with EGFR wild-type, 31 with EGFR mutation) who underwent gadobenate dimeglumine-enhanced brain MRI were recruited retrospectively. A total of 123 metastatic brain lesions were allocated randomly into the training cohort (n=86) and test cohort (n=37) at a ratio of 7:3. Radiomics models based on multi-sequence MRI images in different regions such as volume of interest (VOI)
, VOI
, VOI
, VOI
, and VOI
were built. The optimal radiomics model was integrated into the clinical or radiological indicators to construct a fusion model through multivariable logistic regression analysis.
The optimal radiomics model based on the VOI
, a combination of nine features selected from the fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) sequence, yielded areas under the curves (AUCs) of >0.75 in the training and test cohorts. The prediction of the fusion model with integration of clinical factors (age) and radiomics score (the optimal radiomics model) was not better than that of the optimal radiomics model alone in the test cohort (AUC: 0.808 and 0.785, respectively, p=0.525).
The FLAIR radiomics model based on VOI
as an effective biomarker helps predict EGFR mutation status in lung adenocarcinoma patients with BMs and then assists clinicians in selecting optimal treatment strategies.
Cyclic plasticity and viscoplasticity of a new nickel-based superalloy have been studied using the Chaboche unified constitutive equations. The material parameters in the Chaboche model were ...evaluated by deriving the response sensitivities for typical load paths. This has facilitated the design of an efficient test matrix and the development of a gradient-driven, non-linear optimisation algorithm. Experiments were carried out to obtain cyclic stress–strain curves at three strain-rates, multiple hardening and stress relaxation curves, as well as cyclic tests with strain hold periods introduced at maximum and minimum strains. The latter served as bench tests to evaluate the model capacity in the prediction of creep–fatigue interaction. Simulations of cyclic stress–strain, stress hardening and relaxation behaviour were compared favourably with the experimental results, although the prediction of cyclic stress relaxation was less satisfactory, a subject to be explored in Part II of this paper.
Reservoirs play a pertinent role in providing potable water to humans and aquatic animals. Exposure to trace metal pollution in water may threaten aquatic ecosystem and human health. In this study, ...total and dissolved trace metals pollution and health risk they posed to humans in water sampled from the Barekese reservoir in Kumasi were investigated. Levels of Hg, As, Ni, and Cr in the water exceeded the WHO and USEPA stipulated limits. Arsenic and Cd recorded the highest non-carcinogenic health risk to humans. Hazard quotients (HQs) ≫1 were recorded for an adult (HQ = 9.05) and a child (HQ = 21.11) via oral exposure to dissolved As in water samples. High HQ values of 40.10 and 17.20 for a child and an adult respectively were recorded through oral exposure for As. HQ of 1.41 was estimated for a child's risk via dermal exposure to total Cd in water from the reservoir. Cancer risks of 1.63 × 10
−5
and 2.33 × 10
−6
were respectively recorded for a child and an adult oral exposure to dissolved As, suggesting possible adverse effects. The study concludes that anthropogenic activities within the Barekese catchment are deteriorating its water quality.
Pixel-wise land cover classification is a fundamental task in remote sensing image interpretation, aiming to identify planimetric features (e.g., trees, waters, buildings etc.) from earth's surface. ...Recently, deep learning methods based on fully convolutional neural networks (FCN) become the mainstream approach for land cover classification, thanks to their superior performance in the image context perception and features learning. However, for high-resolution remote sensing images with huge quantity of object details, some deep learning based methods often ignore many important details by nature, specially, in the procedure of pooling operation and stacking convolutions in conventional FCN, it can leads to ambiguous classification of adjacent objects. To refine lost details caused by the stacking convolutions, we propose a position-sensitive attention (PSA) based on skip connections for land cover classification with high-resolution remote sensing images, which designs to deliver a weight that is sensitive to the spatial details in remote sensing images, the PSA module is able to improve pixel-level details scattered across spatial positions. Experimental results demonstrate that our method can be feasible to existing FCN-based models, 1% improvement in F1-score is obtained on 2021 "Shengteng Cup" competition dataset after using PSA, when comparing to several state-of-the-art methods, similar or even better performance is achieved on the ISPRS Vaihingen 2D dataset, but with less parameters.
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