Sampling flower-visiting insects in agricultural fields at large spatial and temporal scales is significant for understanding local insect pollinator communities. The most commonly used method, pan trap, has been criticized due to its attractant bias. A window trap (also referred to as the flight-intercept trap) is a non-attractant sampling method, which has been applied in forests and grasslands, but rarely in agricultural fields. We aim to test whether we can replace pan traps with window traps in agricultural fields by comparing species richness and species composition between the two methods, and to show whether flower-visiting insects collected in both traps can reflect flower-visiting activity recorded by camera observation. We conducted a 2-year study to compare the performance of these sampling methods in an oilseed rape field. Results showed that the relative abundance of dominant flower-visiting species was highly correlated between the window trap and the pan trap samples, while window traps caught more individuals and higher (rarefied) species richness than pan traps. The species composition of window traps was more similar to each other than that of pan traps. The proportion of honey bees (Apis spp.) collected in both traps underestimated their flower-visiting activity recorded by camera observations, while sweat bees (Halictidae) and butterflies (Lepidoptera) were overestimated. Our study suggests that the window trap has the potential to serve as an alternative sampling method of flower-visiting insects to the pan trap. However, we need to be cautious when using specimens caught in both traps as a proxy of their flower-visiting activity.

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular protozoan parasite, which can infect almost all warm-blooded animals, including humans, leading to toxoplasmosis. Currently, the effective treatment for human toxoplasmosis is the combination of sulphadiazine and pyrimethamine. However, both drugs have serious side-effects and toxicity in the host. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the discovery of new anti-T. gondii drugs with high potency and less or no side-effects. Our findings suggest that lumefantrine exerts activity against T. gondii by inhibiting its proliferation in Vero cells in vitro without being toxic to Vero cells (P ≤ 0.01). Lumefantrine prolonged mice infected with T. gondii from death for 3 days at the concentration of 50 μg L−1 than negative control (phosphate-buffered saline treated only), and reduced the parasite burden in mouse tissues in vivo (P ≤ 0.01; P ≤ 0.05). In addition, a significant increase in interferon gamma (IFN-γ) production was observed in high-dose lumefantrine-treated mice (P ≤ 0.01), whereas interleukin 10 (IL-10) and IL-4 levels increased in low-dose lumefantrine-treated mice (P ≤ 0.01). The results demonstrated that lumefantrine may be a promising agent to treat toxoplasmosis, and more experiments on the protective mechanism of lumefantrine should be undertaken in further studies.

Clay often has severe detrimental impacts on cement-based materials. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the mechanism causing the deterioration to improve the service life of cement-based materials. Based on accurate dimensional analysis, a mechanism that influences clay is proposed: the intercalation of the side chains of superplasticizer molecules in the interlayer space of the clay. To lessen this harmful effect, a new clay-resistant admixture (CRA) possessing cationic groups of small molecular size was synthesized through a novel dimensional design. The length and width of the side chains of this superplasticizer molecule were 9.50–17.50 and 0.25–0.40 nm, respectively, with a radius of ~3.74 nm in solvent, which is larger than the interlayer spacing of montmorillonite (i.e. 1.09–2.14 nm). The longitudinal and latitudinal lengths of the CRA molecule were 0.468 and 9.456 nm, respectively, ensuring intercalation in the interlayer of montmorillonite. The increase in interlayer spacing of the clay was 0.364 nm following addition of polycarboxylate superplasticizer (PCE) plus CRA and 0.632 nm following addition of PCE, which suggests that the CRA plays the role of a ‘sacrificial agent’ that is preferentially intercalated into the interlayer space of clay to further prevent the side chains of the superplasticizer molecules from entering the interlayer. The aim of this study was to propose a suitable means of synthesizing a new CRA to address the impact of clay through dimensional design and mechanism analysis, which contributes to the theoretical study and technological improvement of cement-based materials.

The effect of A-site vacancy order-disorder states on diffuse phase transition (DPT) of tungsten bronze Pb1−xBaxNb2O6 (PBN) ferroelectrics has been investigated. The A-site vacancy disordered PBN ceramics exhibit notable variations of the Curie temperatures (i.e., the temperatures at the dielectric maximum permittivities) up to 12 °C in response to frequency changed from 0.1 KHz to 100 KHz. The largest frequency dispersion occurred at the morphotropic phase boundary of 1 − X = 0.63, along with the lowest Curie point. In contrast, the A-site vacancy ordered PBN ceramics present little frequency dispersion in the range of 2 °C from 0.1 KHz to 100 KHz. Dielectric constants of the disordered PBN ceramics were generally higher than those of the ordered ones. In comparison with the ordered PBN ceramics, the Curie points of the disordered ceramics were shifted from lower to higher temperature as the Pb2+ cation percentage was decreased; i.e., the Curie temperatures of the disordered PBN ceramics were lower than those of the ordered ones when 1 − X ≥ 0.70, but higher when 1 − X ≤ 0.65. These differences are suggested to inherently result from the A-site vacancy order-disorder states. The relationship between the A-site vacancy order-disorder states and the dielectric properties has also been confirmed with studies of thermal hysteresis.

The order-disorder states of the A-site vacancy of PBN solid solution affected by different thermal treatments were studied with the aid of High Resolution Electron Microscopy (HREM). PBN ceramics around the morphotropic phase boundary were prepared through two routes to control ordering degree of the A-site vacancy: (1) samples through quenching processes resulted in chaotic states of the A-site vacancies and misfit anti-phase boundary; (2) samples through slow cooling led to an ordered structure of the vacancies in the A1-site. The ordered A1-site vacancies were modulated by interchanges of the sublattices of the ordered vacancies and the Pb2+ cations in the A1-sites along both and orientations, forming a narrow discommensurate wall between two anti-phase domains. The anti-phase domains were observed as a regular belt structure with dimensions of about 45 nm × (≥120) nm. The belt nano-domain structures were a result of quasi-equilibrium thermodynamic processes.

Two reaction routes have been tried for the synthesis of magncsium sulfide by applying microwave irradiation. In the first trial, finely ground Mg and S were mixed thoroughly and heated in a microwave oven for various lengths of time (5 + 5 + 8 + 10 and 12 + 12 + 35 + 45 min) in a sealed quartz tube. In the second trial, the pro-heating medium (PHM) of graphite was introduced into the mixture of Mg and S and microwaved for only 1 min. Results of x-ray diffraction analyses of the reaction products indicated that MgS polycrystallites (cubic, a0 = 5.201 ± 0.001) had formed in the second trial, and that the MgS yield was greater than 98%. Data of EDAX and EPMA gave a formula of MgS with atomic ratio of Mg:S = 1.0:1.0. In contrast, MgS could not be identified in the reaction mixtures in the first trial. Obviously, graphite, as a PHM, played a key role in the dramatic enhancement of the rate of the reaction between Mg and S powders. Furthermore, the effect of different molar ratios of graphite to Mg on the rate of microwave synthesis was investigated.