To improve the stability of Cs2SnCl6 under aqueous/moisture environments, we applied a concept of artificial passivation by depositing a protective TiO2 coating of 10 nm on the surface of Cs2SnCl6. Static leaching experiments results indicate that the initial release rates of Cs+ and Cl− are decreased by 20–30 times with TiO2 coating, suggesting its possibility to improve the short-term water/environmental stability of Cs2SnCl6. An amorphous-to-crystalline phase transition in TiO2 film was observed, possibly resulting in degradation of Cs2SnCl6. However, the crystalline TiO2 film still remains after 21 days water exposure and can still act as an effective passivation layer to reduce the release rates of Cs+ and Cl- by as much as about 17 and 7 times, respectively, relative to static leaching without artificial coatings. Therefore, the water/environmental stability of metal halide perovskite Cs2SnCl6, which is a highly soluble molecular salt, can be enhanced by the nanoscale TiO2 coating as an artificial passivation film.

Using frequency-modulated continuous wave radar data from the 32nd Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition in 2015/16, subsurface profiles were obtained along an East Antarctic inland traverse from Zhongshan station to Dome A, and four distinct regions were selected to analyze the spatiotemporal variability in historical surface mass balance (SMB). Based on depth, density, and age data from ice cores along the traverse, the radar data were calibrated to yield average SMB data. The zone 49–195 km from the coast has the highest SMB (235 kg m−2 a−1). The 780–892 km zone was most affected by the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and the SMB during ad 1454–1836 (71 kg m−2 a−1) was only one-quarter of that in the 20th century. The SMB in the 1080–1157 km zone fluctuates the most, possibly due to erosion or irregular deposition of snow by katabatic winds in low SMB areas with surface elevation fluctuations. Dome A (1157–1236 km) has the lowest SMB (29 kg m−2 a−1) and did not decrease during Little Ice Age. Understanding the spatiotemporal variability of SMB in a larger space can help us understand the complex climate history of Antarctica.

Echinococcus granulosus sensu stricto (s.s.), Echinococcus multilocularis and Echinococcus canadensis are the common causes of human echinococcosis in China. An accurate species identification tool for human echinococcosis is needed as the treatments and prognosis are different among species. The present work demonstrates a method for the simultaneous detection of these three Echinococcus species based on multiplex polymerase chain reaction (mPCR). Specific primers of this mPCR were designed based on the mitochondrial genes and determined by extensive tests. The method can successfully detect either separated or mixed target species, and generate expected amplicons of distinct size for each species. Sensitivity of the method was tested by serially diluted DNA, showing a detection threshold as less as 0.32 pg for both E. granulosus s.s. and E. canadensis, and 1.6 pg for E. multilocularis. Specificity assessed against 18 other parasites was found to be 100% except weakly cross-react with E. shiquicus. The assay was additionally applied to 69 echinococcosis patients and 38 healthy persons, confirming the high reliability of the method. Thus, the mPCR described here has high application potential for clinical identification purposes, and can further provide a useful tool for evaluation of serology and imaging method.

Existing data on folate status and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) prognosis are scarce. We prospectively examined whether serum folate concentrations at diagnosis were associated with liver cancer-specific survival (LCSS) and overall survival (OS) among 982 patients with newly diagnosed, previously untreated HCC, who were enrolled in the Guangdong Liver Cancer Cohort (GLCC) study between September 2013 and February 2017. Serum folate concentrations were measured using chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay. Cox proportional hazards models were performed to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and 95 % CI by sex-specific quartile of serum folate. Compared with patients in the third quartile of serum folate, patients in the lowest quartile had significantly inferior LCSS (HR = 1·48; 95 % CI 1·05, 2·09) and OS (HR = 1·43; 95 % CI 1·03, 1·99) after adjustment for non-clinical and clinical prognostic factors. The associations were not significantly modified by sex, age at diagnosis, alcohol drinking status and Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage. However, there were statistically significant interactions on both multiplicative and additive scale between serum folate and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels or smoking status and the associations of lower serum folate with worse LCSS and OS were only evident among patients with CRP > 3·0 mg/l or current smokers. An inverse association with LCSS were also observed among patients with liver damage score ≥3. These results suggest that lower serum folate concentrations at diagnosis are independently associated with worse HCC survival, most prominently among patients with systemic inflammation and current smokers. A future trial of folate supplementation seems to be promising in HCC patients with lower folate status.

Underground Nuclear Astrophysics in China (JUNA) will take the advantage of the ultra-low background in Jinping underground lab. High current accelerator with an ECR source and detectors were commissioned. JUNA plans to study directly a number of nuclear reactions important to hydrostatic stellar evolution at their relevant stellar energies. At the first period, JUNA aims at the direct measurements of 25Mg(p,γ)26 Al, 19F(p,α) 16 O, 13C(α, n) 16O and 12C(α,γ) 16O near the Gamow window. The current progress of JUNA will be given.

The fundamental cause for the statically indeterminate problem in the force analysis of overconstrained parallel mechanisms (PMs) is found to be the presence of the linearly dependent overconstrained wrenches. Based on the fundamental cause, a unified expression of the solution for the magnitudes of the constraint wrenches of both the limb stiffness decoupled and limb stiffness coupled overconstrained PMs is derived. When the weight of each link is considered, depending on whether additional component forces are generated along the axes of the overconstrained wrenches, two different situations should be considered. One situation is that no additional component force is generated along the axes of the overconstrained wrenches under the weight of the links in the corresponding limb. In this case, the added constraint wrenches at the limb’s end can be calculated directly, and used as a part of the generalized external wrench. The other situation is that additional component forces are generated. In this case, the elastic deformations in the axes of the overconstrained wrenches generated by those component forces should be considered, and the deformation compatibility equations between the overconstrained wrenches are reformulated.

Graphene (G) has attracted great interest because of its excellent chemical and electrical properties. However, the aggregation of graphene restricts its application. Herein, linoleic acid sodium salt (LASS), a low-cost and environmentally friendly material, was used to improve the dispersion of graphene through covalent interaction. Then, the mixture (G@LASS) was integrated with acrylic resin matrix via hydrogen bond between the carboxyl and ester groups. The excellent interfacial compatibility between G@LASS and acrylic matrix, as well as good dispersibility of G@LASS, was demonstrated by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Raman, and scanning electron microscopy tests. Compared with acrylic matrix, the surface hydrophobicity of G@LASS@Acrylic increased considerably because of its compact structure. G@LASS@Acrylic composites meet the requirement of antistatic materials when the content of G was only about 0.5 wt%. The results showed that conductive pathways were established successfully through this method.

Starch digestion in the small intestines of the dairy cow is low, to a large extent, due to a shortage of syntheses of α-amylase. One strategy to improve the situation is to enhance the synthesis of α-amylase. The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signalling pathway, which acts as a central regulator of protein synthesis, can be activated by leucine. Our objectives were to investigate the effects of leucine on the mTOR signalling pathway and to define the associations between these signalling activities and the synthesis of pancreatic enzymes using an in vitro model of cultured Holstein dairy calf pancreatic tissue. The pancreatic tissue was incubated in culture medium containing l-leucine for 3 h, and samples were collected hourly, with the control being included but not containing l-leucine. The leucine supplementation increased α-amylase and trypsin activities and the messenger RNA expression of their coding genes (P <0.05), and it enhanced the mTOR synthesis and the phosphorylation of mTOR, ribosomal protein S6 kinase 1 and eukaryotic initiation factor 4E-binding protein 1 (P <0.05). In addition, rapamycin inhibited the mTOR signal pathway factors during leucine treatment. In sum, the leucine regulates α-amylase and trypsin synthesis in dairy calves through the regulation of the mTOR signal pathways.

This paper presents new water-soluble bio-polyelectrolyte-based nanoparticles, formed from lanthanide-induced polysaccharide aggregates (LIPAs). These new nano-aggregates are formed by coordinating a photoluminescent lanthanide–ligand complex to a single polyelectrolyte [i.e. polyanionic hyaluronic acid (HA)] or to two oppositely charged polyelectrolytes [i.e. HA and polycationic chitosan (CHI)]. We demonstrate that photoluminescent Eu3+–ligand complexes, which are dispersed homogeneously in aqueous solution by the association with water-soluble HA. The polysaccharide supermolecular assembly can be tuned to obtain nanoparticles of different sizes and surface charges. The preparation of stable and water-soluble lanthanide complexes via Eu3+–LIPAs opens opportunities for use of luminescent lanthanides in aqueous environments, for biosensing and bioimaging applications.

The high-temperature flow behavior and flow stress sensitivity of BT25y alloy were investigated. Results show that hot deformation is accompanied by the dynamic competition between work hardening and flow softening. The strain rate sensitivity exponent m tends to decrease with the strain rate after a first rise, and reaches the maximum at strain rate of 0.1 s−1. There is a large temperature range exhibiting m values above 0.2 at strain rates of 0.01–0.1 s−1. The temperature sensitivity exponent s shows an overall dropping trend with elevated temperature. The strain hardening exponent n first decreases and then increases with the strain at strain rate of 0.01 s−1. Large positive n values lie in areas with high strain rate, and small negative n values are located in areas with lower temperature and small strain rate. Secondary lamellar α appears near the phase transition temperature. The microstructure presents elongated characteristics at high strain rate.

We develop a numerical method to simulate a two-phase compressible flow with sharp phase interface on Eulerian grids. The scheme makes use of a levelset to depict the phase interface numerically. The overall scheme is basically a finite volume scheme. By approximately solving a two-phase Riemann problem on the phase interface, the normal phase interface velocity and the pressure are obtained, which is used to update the phase interface and calculate the numerical flux between the flows of two different phases. We adopt an aggregation algorithm to build cell patches around the phase interface to remove the numerical instability due to the breakdown of the CFL constraint by the cell fragments given by the phase interface depicted using the levelset function. The proposed scheme can handle problems with tangential sliping on the phase interface, topological change of the phase interface and extreme contrast in material parameters in a natural way. Though the perfect conservation of the mass, momentum and energy in global is not achieved, it can be quantitatively identified in what extent the global conservation is spoiled. Some numerical examples are presented to validate the numerical method developed.

Facilitated by recent establishment of terrestrial networks and satellite constellations of Automatic Identification System (AIS) receivers, ship trajectories are becoming increasingly available and the size of recorded trajectories is getting larger. Large sets of trajectories create problems of storing, transmitting and processing data. Using appropriate methods, an accurate representation of the original trajectories can be obtained by compressing redundant information, while maintaining the main characteristic elements. In this paper, a new scheme and the implementation of the Douglas-Peucker (DP) algorithm are presented, which can simplify AIS trajectories by extracting characteristic points. As for the simplification threshold, the solo parameter of the DP algorithm, a new AIS-based minimum ship domain evaluation method is proposed and acts as criteria for simplification threshold determination. Finally, a validation is made to examine the effectiveness of the DP simplification algorithm and the rationality of the simplification threshold. The result indicates that the DP algorithm can simplify AIS trajectories effectively; the simplification threshold is scientific and reasonable.

The second Chinese glacier inventory was compiled based on 218 Landsat TM/ETM+ scenes acquired mainly during 2006–10. The widely used band ratio segmentation method was applied as the first step in delineating glacier outlines, and then intensive manual improvements were performed. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission digital elevation model was used to derive altitudinal attributes of glaciers. The boundaries of some glaciers measured by real-time kinematic differential GPS or digitized from high-resolution images were used as references to validate the accuracy of the methods used to delineate glaciers, which resulted in positioning errors of ±10 m for manually improved clean-ice outlines and ±30 m for manually digitized outlines of debris-covered parts. The glacier area error of the compiled inventory, evaluated using these two positioning accuracies, was ±3.2%. The compiled parts of the new inventory have a total area of 43 087 km2, in which 1723 glaciers were covered by debris, with a total debris-covered area of 1494 km2. The area of uncompiled glaciers from the digitized first Chinese glacier inventory is ∼8753 km2, mainly distributed in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, where no images of acceptable quality for glacier outline delineation can be found during 2006–10.