During the detection of industrial hazardous gases, like formaldehyde (HCHO), the selectivity is still a challenging issue. Herein, an alternative HCHO chemosensor that based on the tin oxide nanoparticles is proposed, which was obtained through a facile hydrothermal method. Gas sensing performances showed that the optimal working temperature located at only 180 °C, the response value of 79 via 50 ppm HCHO was much higher than that of 35 at 230 °C. However, the compromised test temperature was selected as 230 °C, taking into account the faster response/recovery speeds than 180 °C, named 20/23versus 53/60 s, respectively. The response (35) of the SnO2 nanoparticles-based sensor to 50 ppm of HCHO is about 400% higher than that of bulk SnO2 sensor (9), especially when the gas concentration is 1 ppm, SnO2 nanoparticles also has a higher sensitivity which may possibly result from more exposed active sites and small size effect for nanoparticles than for bulk ones. The gas sensor based on SnO2 nanoparticles can be utilized as a promising candidate for practical low-temperature detectors of HCHO due to its higher gas response, excellent response–recovery properties, and perfect selectivity.

To reduce the seed length while maintaining the advantages of the cuboid KDP-type crystal, a long-seed KDP crystal with size $471~\text{mm}\times 480~\text{mm}\times 400~\text{mm}$ is rapidly grown. With almost the same high cutting efficiency to obtain third harmonic generation oriented samples, this long-seed KDP-type crystal can be grown with a shorter seed than that of the cuboid KDP-type crystal. The full width at half maximum of the high-resolution X-ray diffraction of the (200) crystalline face is 28.8 arc seconds, indicating that the long-seed KDP crystal has good crystalline quality. In the wavelength range of 377–1022 nm, the transmittance of the long-seed KDP crystal is higher than 90%. The fluence for the 50% probability of laser-induced damage (LID) is $18.5~\text{J}/\text{cm}^{2}$ (3 ns, 355 nm). Several test points survive when the laser fluence exceeds $30~\text{J}/\text{cm}^{2}$ (3 ns, 355 nm), indicating the good LID performance of the long-seed KDP crystal. At present, the growth of a long-seed DKDP crystal is under way.

NASA's Operation IceBridge mission flew over the Ross Sea, Antarctica (20 and 27 November 2013) and collected data with Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) and Digital Mapping System (DMS). Using the DMS and reflectivity of ATM L1B, leads are detected to define local sea level height. The total freeboard is then obtained and converted to ice thickness. The estimated mean sea-ice thickness values are found to be in the 0.48–0.99 m range. Along the N-S track, sea ice was thinner southward rather than northward of the fluxgate, resulting in two peaks of modal thickness: 0.35 m (south) and 0.7 m (north). This supports that new ice produced in coastal polynyas is transported northward by katabatic winds off the ice-shelf. The lowest (2%) elevation method used for freeboard retrieval for ICESat is also tested for ATM data. It is found that the lowest elevation method tends to overestimate freeboard, but mean values are less affected than mode values. Using mean thickness values of ICESat and ATM along the ‘fluxgate’, separating the shelf from the deep ocean, the exported ice volume at this ‘fluxgate’ is found to be higher during the ICESat years (2003–2008) than during the IceBridge year (2013).

In inertial confinement fusion experiments that involve short-laser pulses such as fast ignition (FI), diagnosis of neutrons is usually very challenging because high-intensity γ rays generated by short-laser pulses would mask the much weaker neutron signal. In this paper, fast-response scintillators with low afterglow and gated microchannel plate photomultiplier tubes are combined to build neutron time-of-flight (nTOF) spectrometers for such experiments. Direct-drive implosion experiments of deuterium-gas-filled capsules were performed at the Shenguang-II Upgrade (SG-II-UP) laser facility to study the compressed fuel areal density (〈ρR〉) and evaluate the performance of such nTOF diagnostics. Two newly developed quenched liquid scintillator detectors and a gated ultrafast plastic scintillator detector were used to measure the secondary DT neutrons and primary DD neutrons, respectively. The secondary neutron signals were clearly discriminated from the γ rays from (n, γ) reactions, and the compressed fuel areal density obtained with the yield-ratio method agrees well with the simulations. Additionally, a small scintillator decay tail and a clear DD neutron signal were observed in an integrated FI experiment as a result of the low afterglow of the oxygen-quenched liquid scintillator.

The ZnO/g-C3N4 binary heterostructures were formed by two steps, then the firm connection between ZnO NRs and lamellar g-C3N4 was characterized through powder XRD, FESEM with EDS, TEM, XPS, and Thermogravimetric analysis. Then the gas sensing performances of ZnO/g-C3N4 nanoheterostructures were analyzed systematically by using ethanol as a molecular probe. The results revealed that the fabricated compositive sensor not only exhibited quick response/recovery characteristics in the whole operating temperature (OT) range of 200–300 °C but also got a maximum response of 14.29 toward 100 ppm of ethanol at the optimal OT of only 260 °C. Moreover, such heterostructures also demonstrated good selectivity and superb reproducibility to acetone among all the tested toxic gases, especially higher response and faster response–recovery speeds than the pristine ZnO sensor. The above ZnO/g-C3N4 heterostructures may also supply other novel applications in the aspects of lithium-ion batteries, photocatalysis, optical devices, and so on.

Polymannuronic acid (PM), one of numerous alginates isolated from brown seaweeds, is known to possess antioxidant activities. In this study, we examined its potential role in reducing body weight gain and attenuating inflammation induced by a high-fat and high-sucrose diet (HFD) as well as its effect on modulating the gut microbiome in mice. A 30-d PM treatment significantly reduced the diet-induced body weight gain and blood TAG levels (P<0·05) and improved glucose tolerance in male C57BL/6J mice. PM decreased lipopolysaccharides in blood and ameliorated local inflammation in the colon and the epididymal adipose tissue. Compared with low-fat and low-sucrose diet (LFD), HFD significantly reduced the mean number of species-level operational taxonomic units (OTU) per sample as well as species richness (P<0·05) but did not appear to affect other microbial diversity indices. Moreover, compared with LFD, HFD altered the abundance of approximately 23 % of the OTU detected (log10 linear discriminant analysis (LDA) score>2·0). PM also had a profound impact on the microbial composition in the gut microbiome and resulted in a distinct microbiome structure. For example, PM significantly increased the abundance of a probiotic bacterium, Lactobacillus reuteri (log10 LDA score>2·0). Together, our results suggest that PM may exert its immunoregulatory effects by enhancing proliferation of several species with probiotic activities while repressing the abundance of the microbial taxa that harbor potential pathogens. Our findings should facilitate mechanistic studies on PM as a potential bioactive compound to alleviate obesity and the metabolic syndrome.

Rapid growth processing of KDP crystals was improved by employing continuous filtration to eliminate bulk defects. The performances of the KDP crystals, including scattering defects, laser damage resistance and transmittance, were measured and analyzed. Compared with rapid-grown KDP without continuous filtration, the transmittance in the near-infrared was increased by at least 2%, almost all of ‘micron size’ defects were eliminated and ‘sub-micron size’ defects were decreased by approximately 90%. Laser damage testing revealed that the laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDTs), as well as the consistency of the LIDTs from sample to sample, were improved greatly. Moreover, it identified that ‘micron size’ defects were the precursors which initiated laser damage at relative lower laser fluence (4–6 J cm−2), and there was a lower correlation between smaller size scattering defects and laser damage initiation. The improved consistency in the LIDTs, attributed to elimination of ‘micron size’ defects, and LIDT enhancement originated from the decreased absorption of the KDP crystals.

In fast ignition of inertial confinement fusion, hot electron beam is considered to be an appropriate energy source for ignition. However, hot electrons are divergent as they are transporting in over-dense plasma. So collimating the hot electrons becomes one of the most important issues in fast ignition. A method to collimate hot electron beam by external magnetic field is proposed in this paper. The external field can be generated by compressing a seed magnetic field at the stage of laser-driven implosion. This method is confirmed by particle-in-cell simulations. The results show that hot electrons are well collimated by external magnetic field from magnetic-flux compression.

The Fengxi site is near the Feng River in Shaanxi Province, China. Feng City was the capital of the vassal state of Zhou, and the Zhou people lived in this area until the end of the Western Zhou. Serial samples of charcoal, bone, and charred millet were collected from the site and dated by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). A sequence model with 6 phases of the Western Zhou dynasty was constructed and the 14C ages were calibrated with OxCal v 3.9. The results showed that the site was used from 1170–1070 BC until 825–755 BC, and the Conquest of Shang by King Wu most probably occurred during 1060–1000 BC.

It has been known for almost a decade and a half that in trypanosomes all mRNAs are trans-spliced by addition to the 5′ end of the spliced leader (SL) sequence. During the same time period the conviction developed that classical cis-splicing introns are not present in the trypanosome genome and that the trypanosome gene arrangement is highly compact with small intergenic regions separating one gene from the next. We have now discovered that these tenets are no longer true. Poly(A) polymerase (PAP) genes in Trypanosoma brucei and Trypanosoma cruzi are split by intervening sequences of 653 and 302 nt, respectively. The intervening sequences occur at identical positions in both organisms and obey the GT/AG rule of cis-splicing introns. PAP mRNAs are trans-spliced at the very 5′ end as well as internally at the 3′ splice site of the intervening sequence. Interestingly, 11 nucleotide positions past the actual 5′ splice site are conserved between the T. brucei and T. cruzi introns. Point mutations in these conserved positions, as well as in the AG dinucleotide of the 3′ splice site, abolish intron removal in vivo. Our results, together with the recent discovery of cis-splicing introns in Euglena gracilis, suggest that both trans- and cis-splicing are ancient acquisitions of the eukaryotic cell.