Search Results (41)

Tungsten-doped vanadium dioxide (W-VO₂) shows semiconductor-to-metal phase transition properties at room temperature, which is an ideal thermo-chromic smart window material. However, low visual transmittance and solar modulation limit its application in building energy saving. In this paper, a W-VO_2−x@AA core-shell nanoparticle is proposed to improve the thermo-chromic performance of W-VO₂. Oxygen vacancies were used to promote the connection of W-VO_2−x nanoparticles with L-ascorbic acid (AA) molecules. Oxygen vacancies were tuned in W-VO₂ nanoparticles by thermal annealing temperatures in vacuum, and W-VO_2−x@AA nanoparticles were synthesized by the hydrothermal method. A smart window was formed by dispersing W-VO_2−x@AA core-shell nanoparticles into PVP evenly and spin-coating them on the surface of glass. The visual transmittance of this smart window reaches up to 67%, and the solar modulation reaches up to 12.1%. This enhanced thermo-chromic performance is related to the electron density enhanced by the AA surface molecular coordination effect through W dopant and oxygen vacancies. This work provides a new strategy to enhance the thermo-chromic performance of W-VO₂ and its application in the building energy-saving field. Full article

Objectives: To investigate the clinical diagnostic and prognostic value of extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA) in breast cancer, eccDNA profiles were constructed for 81 breast cancer tumor tissues and 33 adjacent non-tumor tissues. Methods: The distribution characteristics of eccDNA across functional genomic elements and repetitive sequences were systematically analyzed. Furthermore, a diagnostic model for differentiating malignant and normal breast tissues, as well as a prognostic prediction model, was developed using a random forest algorithm. Results: EccDNA in breast cancer tissues harbor a higher proportion of functional elements and repetitive sequences, with their annotated genes significantly enriched in tumor- and immune-related pathways. However, no significant differences in eccDNA features were observed across breast cancer subtypes or pathological stages. In the validation cohort, the eccDNA-based diagnostic model achieved an AUC of 0.83, with repetitive elements and enhancer-associated features contributing the most to diagnostic performance. The prognostic model achieved an AUC of 0.78, with repetitive element annotations also showing strong prognostic relevance. Conclusions: These findings highlight the promising potential of eccDNA in the development of precision diagnostics and prognostic systems for breast cancer. Full article

Thorough investigation into dune morphology is pivotal for grasping the intricacies of constructing and operating power transmission lines in desert terrains. However, there remains a notable gap in the quantitative analysis and assessment of how dune dynamics evolve under the influence of transmission infrastructure. In this study, the Real-Space Cellular Automaton Laboratory is deployed to explore how transverse dunes evolve around transmission towers under diverse wind velocities and varying dune dimensions. The results reveal that, beyond the immediate vicinity of the transmission tower, the height of the transverse dune remains largely stable across broad spatial scales, unaffected by the transmission line. As wind velocities wane, the structural integrity of the transverse dunes is compromised, leading to an expansion in the size of the trail structures. Initially, the height of the dune surges, only to decline progressively over time, with the maximum fluctuation reaching nearly $1\mathrm{m}$. The height of larger dunes escalates gradually at first, peaks, and then subsides, with the pinnacle height nearing $6.5\mathrm{m}$. As a critical metric for safety evaluation, the height of the transmission line above ground initially plummets, then gradually rebounds, and shifts backward over time after hitting its nadir. Full article

2-Methyl-2-cyclopentenone (MCP) is the main by-product of the newly developed heterogeneous catalysis process for producing crotonaldehyde, which serves as an important intermediate for drug synthesis. However, how to recover and purify MCP from the product mixture is not known. To decipher this, a computer-aided process based on the measured phase-equilibrium data was developed. The improved Rose–Williams equilibrium kettle was used to measure the vapor–liquid equilibrium data for MCP–crotonaldehyde and MCP–water. Surprisingly, MCP and water formed a minimum azeotrope, which aided its own recovery from its dilute solution. The mole fraction of MCP in the azeotrope was 9.1%, the mole fraction of water was 90.9%, and the azeotropic temperature was 96.8 °C. Equilibrium data from the two binary systems were correlated using the Wilson and NRTL activity coefficient models. The NRTL-RK model was selected to simulate the process for recovering and purifying MCP. A two-column process was developed and optimized in this study, and the aim of effectively utilizing the by-product MCP was achieved with this process. Full article

While a large diameter is critical for maintaining water delivery efficiency in prestressed concrete cylinder pipes (PCCPs), excessive weight fundamentally limits their practical application. This study proposes a weight reduction strategy through material optimization and structural redesign. A full-scale experimental model of 2.8 m inner diameter PCCP was used to validate the finite element analysis method. Comparative numerical models were established to analyze strain/stress distribution in mortar coatings when using ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) versus conventional concrete cores. The key findings reveal that UHPC implementation reduces maximum coating strain by 20–30% compared to its conventional concrete counterparts. Multivariate linear regression analysis yielded a predictive formula that explicitly correlates the elastic modulus of the concrete core, core thickness, and mortar stress. This relationship permits the direct optimization of core thickness reductions according to the elastic modulus characteristics of UHPC materials. Verification through two case studies demonstrated a 25–35% core thickness reduction compared to the Chinese standard specifications while maintaining structural integrity, corresponding to an 18–22% total weight reduction. The proposed methodology successfully resolves the inherent weight limitation of conventional PCCPs while achieving equivalent hydraulic capacity, providing an effective pathway for sustainable infrastructure development through material-efficient design. Full article

The conversion of abandoned butted well salt cavities into underground storage facilities holds immense significance for safeguarding energy security and improving the ecological environment. A significant barrier to the reconstruction of these old cavities is the limited comprehension of their complete morphology, caused by residue coverage. The three-dimensional seismic techniques excel in identifying complex geological structures but have a limited understanding of underground old salt cavity morphology, thus the seismic forward simulation method is utilized to study their seismic response patterns. Based on 3D seismic data, well logging data, and measured cavity shape parameters from the Yexian salt mine region in Henan Province, China, a geological model and observation system were established. The seismic response characteristics of the butted well salt cavern model, encompassing five distinct morphological attributes such as cavity spacing, cavity diameter, cavity height, sediment height, and horizontal connection channel height, were thoroughly investigated. The findings show that the cavity roof exhibits a distinctive “two peaks sandwiching a strong valley” feature, with the positions of the valley and roof remaining aligned and serving as a reliable indicator for identifying the cavity’s top surface. The width of the roof waveform exhibits an exponential amplification effect relative to the cavern width. The residue’s top surface presents an “upward-opening arc” wave peak with a downward shift that diminishes as the residue’s height increases. This peak forms a circular feature with the cavity roof reflection waveform, and the residue’s top surface is always located in the upper half of this circular waveform. The horizontal connection channel’s top and bottom surfaces exhibit contrasting reflection patterns, with the top position aligning with the reflection trough and the bottom reflection waveform shifting downward as the channel height increases. The brine cavern, residue, and bottom of the salt cavern mainly exhibit chaotic reflections. There are distinct identification characteristics on the cavity top, residue top, and connecting channel top in forward simulation. The research findings provide valuable guidance for identifying the morphology of the underground real butted well salt cavity based on 3D seismic data and accelerating the construction of underground energy storage facilities. Full article

The Xiaonanshan–Tunaobao Cu-Ni-PGE deposit is located in the northern margin of the North China Craton (N-NCC) in central Inner Mongolia. However, the age, magma source, petrogenesis, and sulfide mineralization mechanism of the ore-related Xiaonanshan-Tunaobao pluton remain unclear. Zircon U-Pb dating indicates the Tunaobao pluton formed at 275.9 ± 2.8 Ma (Early Permian), similar to the Xiaonanshan pluton (272.7 ± 2.9 Ma). The ore-related gabbro is enriched in LREE and LILE (e.g., Rb) and depleted in HREE and HFSE (e.g., Nb and Ti). It likely originated from enriched mantle metasomatized by subduction fluids, supported by enriched Hf-Nd isotopes (–34.34 to –6.16 for zircon ε_Hf(t) and –7.24 to –5.92 for whole-rock ε_Nd(t) values) and high Ba/La but low Rb/Y ratios. The δ³⁴S values of the Xiaonanshan sulfides range from 4.5‰ to 11.4‰, indicating a mantle origin with contribution from surrounding rocks. Combining previous recognition with this study, we propose that the Xiaonanshan–Tunaobao pluton formed in a post-collision extensional setting. Full article

The influence of Cr addition on the microstructure and tensile properties of Fe-25Mn-10Al-1.2C lightweight steel was investigated. The characteristics of the microstructures and deformation behavior were carried out through X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), and room temperature tensile testing. Fe-20Mn-12Al-1.5C steel without Cr exhibited a fully austenitic single phase. With the addition of Cr, the volume fraction of ferrite continuously increased. When the content of Cr exceeded 5 wt%, the precipitation of Cr₇C₃ carbides was observed. In the steel with 5 wt% Cr, the quantity of κ carbides remarkably decreased, indicating that the addition of 5 wt% Cr significantly inhibited the nucleation of κ-carbides. As the Cr content increases from 0 wt% to 5 wt%, the austenite grain sizes were 8.8 μm and 2.5 μm, respectively, demonstrating that Cr alloying is an effective method of grain refinement. Tensile strength increased slightly while elongation decreased with increasing Cr content. As the Cr content exceeded 5 wt%, the yield strength increased but the elongation drastically decreased. The steel with 2.5 wt% Cr achieved a synergistic improvement in strength and ductility, exhibiting the best tensile performance. Full article

In gene quantification and expression analysis, issues with sample selection and processing can be serious, as they can easily introduce irrelevant variables and lead to ambiguous results. This study aims to investigate the extent and mechanism of the impact of sample selection and processing on ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequencing. RNA from PBMCs and blood samples was investigated in this study. The integrity of this RNA was measured under different storage times. All the samples underwent high-throughput sequencing for comprehensive evaluation. The differentially expressed genes and their potential functions were analyzed after the samples were placed at room temperature for 0h, 4h and 8h, and different feature changes in these samples were also revealed. The sequencing results showed that the differences in gene expression were higher with an increased storage time, while the total number of genes detected did not change significantly. There were five genes showing gradient patterns over different storage times, all of which were protein-coding genes that had not been mentioned in previous studies. The effect of different storage times on seemingly the same samples was analyzed in this present study. This research, therefore, provides a theoretical basis for the long-term consideration of whether sample processing should be adequately addressed. Full article

Unsupervised Domain Adaptative Object Detection (UDAOD) aims to alleviate the gap between the source domain and the target domain. Previous methods sought to plainly align global and local features across domains but adapted numerous pooled features and overlooked contextual information, which caused incorrect perceptions of foreground information. To tackle these problems, we propose Diverse Feature-level Guidance Adjustments (DFGAs) for two-stage object detection frameworks, including Pixel-wise Multi-scale Alignment (PMA) and Adaptative Threshold Confidence Adjustment (ATCA). Specifically, PMA adapts features within diverse hierarchical levels to capture sufficient contextual information. Through a customized PMA loss, features from different stages of a network facilitate information interaction across domains. Training with this loss function contributes to the generation of more domain-agnostic features. To better recognize foreground and background samples, ATCA employs adaptative thresholds to divide the foreground and background samples. This strategy flexibly instructs the classifier to perceive the significance of box candidates. Comprehensive experiments are conducted on Cityscapes, Foggy Cityscapes, KITTI, and Sim10k datasets to further demonstrate the superior performance of our method compared to the baseline method. Full article

Smithsonite, dolomite, and calcite are carbonate minerals. The crystal structures and spatial distribution characteristics of their common surface metal sites are similar, leading to difficulty in the flotation separation of smithsonite from these carbonate gangues. In this paper, the floatability of smithsonite, dolomite, and calcite in sodium oleate, salicylhydroxamic acid, and their combined-collector system were systematically studied through single-mineral flotation tests, respectively. The results showed that it was difficult to obtain a noticeable recovery difference between smithsonite–calcite and smithsonite–dolomite in a single-collector system of sodium oleate and salicylhydroxamic acid, both at the same time. In the combined-collector system of salicylhydroxamic acid and sodium oleate with total dosage of 6 × 10⁻⁴ mol/L, molar ratio of 3:1, and pH of 8.0, the recovery difference of smithsonite–calcite and smithsonite–dolomite could reach the highest values of 38.46% and 37.98%, respectively, while obtaining the highest smithsonite recovery of 88.19%. The adsorption mechanism of the combined collectors was investigated via Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, a collector adsorption test, and zeta potential measurements, respectively. Full article

A simplified analysis method based on three-dimensional finite element analysis is proposed for the dynamic response of pile foundations under the action of vertically propagating SV waves. This method considers the impact of upper structure inertia force and free field deformation on the internal force of the pile separately. The former is considered using the Equivalent Base Shear Method, while the latter is analyzed using a finite element response acceleration method for underground structures. This study selected three seismic waves and their average values as loads to calculate the dynamic response of pile raft foundations. Through trial calculations, the seismic effect reduction coefficient range (0.35–0.4) of the representative values of the horizontal seismic inertia force corresponding to the upper structure was obtained. The error between the peak shear stress of the pile top obtained by the quasi-static method and the time history analysis results was less than 10%. The research results indicate that the proposed simplified analysis method can accurately obtain the peak shear stress and its distribution pattern of the pile body under horizontal seismic action while significantly improving the analysis efficiency. This method has high accuracy and efficiency in conducting seismic design comparison and analysis of multiple foundation schemes. Full article

A statistical damage model (SDM) of fully-graded concrete was created using statistical damage theory, based on the mechanical properties of axial tension and axial compression of the material. The SDM considers two damage modes, fracture and yield, and explains the intrinsic connection between the mesoscopic damage evolution mechanism and the macroscopic nonlinear mechanical behavior of fully-graded concrete. The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm was used to obtain the optimal parameter combination through an intelligent search of parameters ${\epsilon }_a$, ${\epsilon }_h$, ${\epsilon }_b$ and $H$ in the constitutive model by taking the test data as the target value, and the sum of the squares of the differences between the target value and the predicted value as the objective function. The SDM numerical simulation model of fully-graded concrete is proposed by compiling subroutines in FORTRAN by constructing two modules of data model and damage analysis. The numerical results under uniaxial and biaxial forces are in agreement with the experimental results, which verifies the accuracy of the program. The model also analyzes the characteristics of mesoscopic damage evolution and predicts the mechanical properties under triaxial forces. The results show that the proposed numerical simulation model can reflect the salient features for fully-graded concrete under uniaxial, biaxial and triaxial loading conditions, and the evolution law of mesoscopic parameters. Therefore, the proposed model serves as a basis for the refined finite element analysis of hydraulic fully-graded concrete structures and reveals the mesoscopic damage mechanism of concrete under different load environments. Full article

The Baode Block in the Ordos Basin is currently one of the most successfully developed and largest gas field of low–medium rank coal in China. However, the production of coal fine has affected the continuous and stable drainage and efficient development of this area. The special response and mechanism of differential fluid action during the drainage process is one of the scientific issues that must be faced to solve this production problem. In view of this, the evolution laws of a reservoir’s macro–micro physical characteristics under different fluid conditions (fluid pressure, salinity) have been revealed, and the response mechanism of coal fine migration-induced reservoir damage has been elucidated through a nuclear magnetic resonance online displacement system. The results indicated that pores at different scales exhibited varying patterns with increasing displacement pressure. The proportion of the mesopore and transition pore is not affected by salinity and is positively correlated with displacement pressure. When the salinity is between 3000 mg/L and 8000 mg/L, the proportion of macropore and micropore showed parabolic changes with increasing displacement pressure, and there was a lowest point. The evolution law of pore fractal dimension and permeability change rate under the action of different fluids jointly showed that there was an optimal salinity for the strongest reservoir sensitivity enhancement effect. The mechanical and chemical effects of fluid together determined the damage degree of coal reservoir induced by coal fine migration. Full article

The hippocampus is an important part of the limbic system in the human brain that has essential roles in spatial navigation and cognitive functions. It is still unknown how gene expression changes in single-cell in different spatial locations of the hippocampus of Parkinson’s disease. The purpose of this study was to analyze the gene expression features of single cells in different spatial locations of mouse hippocampus, and to explore the effects of gene expression regulation on learning and memory mechanisms. Here, we obtained 74 single-cell samples from different spatial locations in a mouse hippocampus through microdissection technology, and used single-cell RNA-sequencing and spatial transcriptome sequencing to visualize and quantify the single-cell transcriptome features of tissue sections. The results of differential expression analysis showed that the expression of Sv2b, Neurod6, Grp and Stk32b genes in a hippocampus single cell at different locations was significantly different, and the marker genes of CA1, CA3 and DG subregions were identified. The results of gene function enrichment analysis showed that the up-regulated differentially expressed genes Tubb2a, Eno1, Atp2b1, Plk2, Map4, Pex5l, Fibcd1 and Pdzd2 were mainly involved in neuron to neuron synapse, vesicle-mediated transport in synapse, calcium signaling pathway and neurodegenerative disease pathways, thus affecting learning and memory function. It revealed the transcriptome profile and heterogeneity of spatially located cells in the hippocampus of PD for the first time, and demonstrated that the impaired learning and memory ability of PD was affected by the synergistic effect of CA1 and CA3 subregions neuron genes. These results are crucial for understanding the pathological mechanism of the Parkinson’s disease and making precise treatment plans. Full article