sj-docx-1-arp-10.1177_02750740231185849 - Supplemental material for In the Shadow of Administrative Decentralization: The Impact of Devolution on Subnational Service Provision

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-arp-10.1177_02750740231185849 for In the Shadow of Administrative Decentralization: The Impact of Devolution on Subnational Service Provision by Yiran Li, Shuo Chen and Yaohui Peng in The American Review of Public Administration</p

Measuring size distributions of atmospheric aerosols using natural air ions

Electrical mobility size spectrometers are widely used to measure ambient aerosol number size distributions. A key component of these mobility systems is the charge conditioner, or neutralizer, which is used to place a stationary charge distribution on the aerosols prior to mobility analysis. Yet, there are natural air ions in the atmosphere which are constantly conditioning the charge state of atmospheric aerosols. In this study, we demonstrate that this natural charging process can be utilized by these spectrometers to measure size distributions of atmospheric aerosols without using a conventional neutralizer. This is achieved by measuring charged particles of both polarities, in contrast to only one polarity as conventionally done. The bipolar data is used to retrieve air ion properties from which the aerosol charge fractions are calculated. We deployed this new method in urban Beijing to measure atmospheric aerosols over a period of two years and verified that size distributions can be effectively measured using natural air ions. There is good agreement in aerosol size distributions when comparing this new method to a conventional spectrometer, and good agreement in total particle number concentrations measured by a condensation particle counter. Additionally, measuring charged particles of both polarities makes the uncertainties due to aerosol charging now traceable. We show that during two years of measurement in urban Beijing, the properties of ions produced by conventional neutralizers drifted due to the aging of ion sources, while the properties of natural atmospheric ions remained stable over time, despite occasional short-period fluctuations. Copyright © 2022 American Association for Aerosol Research</p

Superconducting magnetic separation of phosphate using freshly formed hydrous ferric oxide sols

<p>Paramagnetic materials, such as ferric hydroxides, which are cost-effective and highly-efficient, have been little studied in relation to the magnetic separation process. In this study, freshly formed hydrous ferric oxide (HFO) sols were used to remove aqueous phosphate, followed by superconducting magnetic separation. The magnetization of HFO was determined to be 5.7 emu/g in 5.0 T. The particle size distributions ranged from 1 to 80 μm. Ferrihydrite was the primary mineral phase according to XRD analysis. Dissolved P (DP) was first adsorbed on HFO, and second, the P-containing HFO were separated by high gradient superconducting magnetic separation (HGSMS) to remove the Total P (TP). To obtain a P concentration of <0.05 mg/l in the effluent, 0.3, 1.0 and 1.3 g/l HFO were added to 2.5, 5 and 10 mg/l P solutions. The capacity of the HGSMS canister for capturing P-adsorbed HFO depends on the magnetic intensity and flow rate. In the 5.0 T HGSMS at a 1.0 cm/s flow rate, there were 75 column volumes in a single HGSMS cycle. The P concentration increased by 37.5 times after regeneration. Approximately 170 mg/l TP was measured in the backwash water.</p

MOESM1 of POLE mutations improve the prognosis of endometrial cancer via regulating cellular metabolism through AMF/AMFR signal transduction

Additional file 1: Table S1. The number of mutation classification and type in 530 endometrial cancer patients. Table S2. The mutation frequency of top 124 mutated genes in 530 endometrial cancer patients. Table S3. The relationship between POLE mutations and four clinical characteristics by chi-square test. Figure S1. SNP and mutation istatistics in 530 endometrial cancer patients. Figure S2. Kaplan-Meier curve and Log-rank test for endometrial cancer patients based on POLE mutational status classification when excluded hypermutated phenotypes (more than 500 mutations per sample), N = 387. Figure S3. (A-B) GSEA of genes between mutant and wild type POLE endometrial cancer samples. Figure S4. (A) Kaplan-Meier curve and Log-rank test for endometrial cancer patients based on expression level of AMF/GPI classification. (B) Kaplan-Meier curve and Log-rank test for endometrial cancer patients based on expression level of AMFR/gp78 classification

DataSheet1_To Identify Adenomatous Polyposis Coli Gene Mutation as a Predictive Marker of Endometrial Cancer Immunotherapy.PDF

The adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene is the chromatin-remodeling-related gene and a typical tumor suppressor. Patients with a high expression of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) or a high level of tumor mutational burden (TMB) may benefit from immunotherapy in endometrial cancer (EC). This study aimed to demonstrate the role of APC in the diagnosis and immunotherapy treatment of EC. We performed an integrative analysis of a commercial panel including 520 cancer-related genes on 99 tumors from an endometrial cancer cohort in China and DNA-seq data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to identify new gene mutations as endometrial cancer immunotherapy markers. We found that the significant mutant genes that correlated with the PD-L1 expression and TMB were related to the chromatin state and generated a discovery set having 12 mutated genes, including the APC gene, which was identified as a new marker for immunotherapy. Further analysis revealed that tumors with the APC mutation had high TMB, increased expression of PD-L1, and increased lymphocytic infiltration. Next, we verified that APC has an inactive mutation in EC, which may affect the immune response, including PD-L1 expression, microsatellite instability, and lymphocytic infiltrate. Furthermore, patients with the APC mutation had longer overall survival. Our study demonstrates that APC could play an important role in enhancing the response to endometrial cancer treatment, particularly immunotherapy.</p

Criteria of Distribution Transitions in Dispersed Multiphase Systems Based on an Extended Lattice Model

Dispersed multiphase systems are ubiquitous in biological systems, energy industries, and medical science. The distribution transition of the dispersed phase is critical to the properties and functions of the multiphase systems, among which the agglomeration, adsorption, and extraction processes are of most significance due to their impact on the colloidal stability, interface modification, and particle synthesis. To reveal fundamental correlations between the macroscopic particle distributions and the microscopic interactions, general thermodynamic models of the dispersed multiphase systems are needed. Here, based on Meyer’s model, which is restricted to binary isotropic mixtures, we propose a novel extended lattice model that can be applied to multicomponent anisotropic mixtures with interfaces considered. For agglomeration, adsorption, and extraction processes, the approximate free energy differences between the initial distribution and the final distribution are obtained. Based on the minimum free energy principle, the above free energy differences are used to derive three criteria for the prediction of the preferable distribution of the system with given interparticle interaction potentials. While the quasi-uniform number density assumption is still required for all the previous lattice models, the long-range interactions neglected by previous lattice models are incorporated. The validity of our model and criteria is verified by many-body dissipative particle dynamics (mDPD) simulations. By tuning the interaction coefficients between mDPD particles, the simulated distribution transitions for all the agglomeration, adsorption, and extraction cases perfectly match the predictions from the three criteria. The good agreement between the theoretical predictions and the mDPD simulation results shows the great potential of our model for applications in various dispersed multiphase systems

Design and preparation of a novel fluorescent naphthalimide derivative supramolecular self-assembly system and its bioimaging application

A novel fluorescent naphthalimide derivative gelator (N-18) was designed and characterised which could form a stable gel in 1,4-dioxane/H2O (2/1, v/v), methyl sulfoxide (DMSO), ethanol/H2O (4/1, v/v), acetone/H2O (2/1, v/v) and methanol. The self-assembly process of molecule N-18 in the five solvents was carefully investigated by the field emission scanning electron microscope, UV-vis absorption spectra, fluorescence emission spectra, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and water contact angle experiments. Different structures from microbelts to helical nanofibers were formed in the self-assembly process. Hydrogen bonding and π–π stacking interaction were the mainly driving forces for the formation of gel. At the same time, the hydrophobic surface with the contact angles of 133°–142° was observed on the xerogel films N-18 from the above five solvents. Interestingly, molecule N-18 could be applied in bioimaging in a living cell.</p

Single Molecule Evidence for the Adaptive Binding of DOPA to Different Wet Surfaces

3,4-Dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) is the noncanonical amino acid widely found in mussel holdfast proteins, which is proposed to be responsible for their strong wet adhesion. This feature has also inspired the successful development of a range of DOPA-containing synthetic polymers for wet adhesions and surface coating. Despite the increasing applications of DOPA in material science, the underlying mechanism of DOPA–wet surface interactions remains unclear. In this work, we studied DOPA–surface interactions one bond at a time using atomic force microscope (AFM) based single molecule force spectroscopy. With our recently developed “multiple fishhook” protocol, we were able to perform high-throughput quantification of the binding strength of DOPA to various types of surfaces for the first time. We found that the dissociation forces between DOPA and nine different types of organic and inorganic surfaces are all in the range of 60–90 pN at a pulling speed of 1000 nm s^–1, suggesting the strong and versatile binding capability of DOPA to different types of surfaces. Moreover, by constructing the free energy landscape for the rupture events, we revealed several distinct binding modes between DOPA and different surfaces, which are directly related to the chemistry nature of the surfaces. These results explain the molecular origin of the versatile binding ability of DOPA. Moreover, we could quantitatively predict the relationship between DOPA contents and the binding strength based on the measured rupture kinetics. These serve as the bases for the quantitative prediction of the relationship between DOPA contents and adhesion strength to different wet surfaces, which is important for the design of novel DOPA based materials

High-Speed Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscopy Using Inertia-Free AOD Scanning

High-throughput stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy is highly desired for large tissue imaging with chemical specificity. However, the mapping speed remains as the major short board of conventional SRS, primarily owing to the mechanical inertia existing in galvanometers or other laser scanning alternatives. Here, we developed inertia-free acousto-optic deflector (AOD)-based high-speed large-field stimulated Raman scattering microscopy, in which both the speed and integration time are ensured by immune of the mechanical response time. To avoid laser beam distortion induced by the intrinsic spatial dispersion of AODs, two spectral compression systems are implemented to compress the broad-band femtosecond pulse to picosecond laser. We achieved an SRS imaging of a 12 × 8 mm2 mouse brain slice in only 8 min at an image resolution of approximately 1 μm and 32 slices from a whole brain in 12 h. The AOD-based inertia-free SRS mapping can be much faster after further upgrading and allow broad-spectrum applications of chemical imaging in the future

Direct Counting and Imaging Chain Lengths of Lipids by Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscopy

Direct counting and mapping the chain lengths of fatty acids on a microscopic scale are of particular importance but remain an unsolvable challenge. Although the current hyperspectral stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy has gained exceptional capability in chemical imaging of the degree of desaturation, the complete lipid characterization, including the carbon chain length quantification, is awaiting a major breakthrough. Here, we pushed the spectral resolution limit of hyperspectral SRS microscopy to 5.4 cm–1 by employing a highly efficient spectral compressor, which achieved spectral narrowing of the fs laser without much energy loss. The SRS imaging with such high spectral resolution enabled us to differ eight types of saturated lipids with carbon chain lengths from C8:0 to C22:0 by interrogating their subtly red-shifting Raman bands of alkyl C–C gauche stretches between 1070 and 1110 cm–1. The SRS microscopy with superior spectral resolution will pave the way for comprehensive lipid characterization and contribute to uncovering the abnormal pathways of lipid metabolism in cancer