Highly uniform distribution of Pt nanoparticles on N-doped hollow carbon spheres with enhanced durability for oxygen reduction reaction

Carbon-supported Pt nanostructures currently exhibit great potential in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells.</p

Highly uniform distribution of Pt nanoparticles on N-doped hollow carbon spheres with enhanced durability for oxygen reduction reaction

Carbon-supported Pt nanostructures currently exhibit great potential in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. Nitrogen-doped hollow carbon spheres (NHCSs) with extra low density and high specific surface area are a promising carbon support for loading Pt NPs. The doped heteroatom of nitrogen not only contributes to the active activity for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), but also shows a strong interaction with Pt NPs for entrapping them to prevent dissolution/migration. This synergetic effect/interaction resulted in the uniform dispersion and strong combination of the Pt NPs on the carbon support and thus plays a significant role in hindering the degradation of the catalytic activities of Pt NPs. As expected, the asobtained Pt/NHCSs displayed improved catalytic activity and superior durability toward the ORR

Velocity- and pressure-based metrics for estimating strike injuries during fish passage through hydro turbines

•Two novel metrics were developed to quantify biological impacts of fish collisions.•The validated metrics accurately estimated the survival rate of turbine-passed fish.•Our framework can significantly reduce costs and time for fish passage evaluations. Hydropower is a crucial source of clean and reliable energy worldwide, and its importance will continue to grow. To enhance the environmental sustainability of hydropower development and operations, it is essential to predict the strike injury rates of fish passing through turbines accurately and cost-effectively. However, conventional experiments involving a large number of live fish are still commonly conducted in practice, and previous attempts mainly focused on the dose-response relationships at an individual level or relative comparisons of biological characterization between different conditions. Thus, this study proposes two novel strike metrics based on velocity and pressure (MV and MP) measured by the cutting-edge Sensor Fish (SF) technology, designed to quantify the biological effects of strikes and collisions between fish and rigid hydraulic structures. SF measurements and 48-hour survival rates of live fish from a study conducted at the Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River were used to establish thresholds for the two proposed metrics. These metrics and thresholds were then applied to three additional SF studies conducted at hydropower facilities featuring Kaplan turbines within the Columbia River basin. Results from the application of the strike metrics indicate that the estimated survival rates derived from both metrics agree well with previously reported live fish survival rates. Furthermore, the study identified specific passage regions with elevated risks of fish mortality due to strikes and collisions. Overall, the proposed strike metrics present a reliable and cost-effective approach to reducing reliance on live fish and lowering costs in fish passage studies

Decomprolute is a benchmarking platform designed for multiomics-based tumor deconvolution

Tumor deconvolution enables the identification of diverse cell types that comprise solid tumors. To date, however, both the algorithms developed to deconvolve tumor samples, and the gold-standard datasets used to assess the algorithms are geared toward the analysis of gene expression (e.g., RNA sequencing) rather than protein levels. Despite the popularity of gene expression datasets, protein levels often provide a more accurate view of rare cell types. To facilitate the use, development, and reproducibility of multiomic deconvolution algorithms, we introduce Decomprolute, a Common Workflow Language framework that leverages containerization to compare tumor deconvolution algorithms across multiomic datasets. Decomprolute incorporates the large-scale multiomic datasets produced by the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC), which include matched mRNA expression and proteomic data from thousands of tumors across multiple cancer types to build a fully open-source, containerized proteogenomic tumor deconvolution benchmarking platform. http://pnnl-compbio.github.io/decomprolute [Display omitted] •Decomprolute enables benchmarking of proteomic deconvolution algorithms•Framework incorporates proteogenomic tumor data from over 1,000 patient samples•Common Workflow Language (CWL) automates multiple tests across deconvolution algorithms•Extendable framework is designed to incorporate additional algorithm development Our goal is to provide a comprehensive platform for algorithm developers and researchers to benchmark and run tumor deconvolution algorithms on multiomic data. We designed Decomprolute to be a modular tool that can be used to evaluate a selection of existing deconvolution algorithms on a cancer dataset of interest and to assess the quality of any new methods that may be developed. Feng et al. describe Decomprolute, a framework to benchmark algorithms that deconvolve bulk gene and protein expression measurements using cell-specific markers. Decomprolute uses the Common Workflow Language to automate a series of benchmarks that assess the performance of algorithms on proteomic data from over 1,000 cancer samples

Metal-organic framework derived hierarchically porous nitrogen-doped carbon nanostructures as novel electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction

The hierarchically porous nitrogen-doped carbon materials, derived from nitrogen-containing isoreticular metal-organic framework-3 (IRMOF-3) through direct carbonization, exhibited excellent electrocatalytic activity in alkaline solution for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). This high activity is attributed to the presence of high percentage of quaternary and pyridinic nitrogen, the high surface area as well as good conductivity. When IRMOF-3 was carbonized at 950 degrees C (CIRMOF-3-950), it showed four-electron reduction pathway for ORR and exhibited better stability (about 78.5% current density was maintained) than platinum/carbon (Pt/C) in the current durability test. In addition, CIRMOF-3-950 presented high selectivity to cathode reactions compared to commercial Pt/C. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved