Sustainable leaching process of phosphates from animal bones to alleviate the world phosphate crisis

Lack of available phosphorus (P) minerals and their very localized regional distribution threatens world food production. Traditional farming methods that recycle various biological wastes and manure for localized fertilization of farmland are our role model, but come with risks such as hygiene, water toxification and passed-on diseases. Here, we present a bran-new hydrothermal process which turns animal bones of kitchen wastes into secondary P sources for fertilization, showing that this hydrothermal humification (HTH) process under 200 °C for 24 h completely disintegrates chemical structure of the biomass, while the simultaneously in-situ prepared artificial humic acid (A-HA) etches even macroscopic bones. Notably, A-HA can solubilize the insoluble P existing in animal bones partly as directly dissolved phosphorus (DP), accounting for 6.36 % of total phosphorus (TP) in the bone wastes. Characterization methods indicate that oxygen-containing functional groups (i.e., -COOH and phenolic-OH) of A-HA can help to corrode bones, causing Ca5(PO4)3(OH) to be decomposed into a large number of more active P minerals, furthermore, leading to high DP (96.79 mg/L) content and the formation of new P-based species. Pot planting experiments show that the resulting liquids were applied as a fertilizer and lead to a significant promotion of the growth of seedlings

Magnetodielectric effect of Bi6Fe2Ti3O18 film under an ultra-low magnetic field

Good quality and fine grain Bi6Fe2Ti3O18 magnetic ferroelectric films with single-phase layered perovskite structure have been successfully prepared via metal organic decomposition (MOD) method. Results of low-temperature magnetocapacitance measurements reveal that an ultra-low magnetic field of 10 Oe can produce a nontrivial magnetodielectric (MD) response in zero-field-cooling condition, and the relative variation of dielectric constants in magnetic field is positive, i.e., MD=0.05, when T<55K, but negative with a maximum of MD=-0.14 when 55K<T<190K. The magnetodielectric effect appears a sign change at 55K, which is due to transition from antiferromagnetic to weak ferromagnetic; and vanishes abruptly around 190K, which is thought to be associated with order-disorder transition of iron ion at B site of perovskite structures. The ultra-low-field magnetodielectric behaviour of Bi6Fe2Ti3O18 film has been discussed in the light of quasi-two-dimension unique nature of local spin order in ferroelectric film. Our results allow expectation on low-cost applications of detectors and switches for extremely weak magnetic fields in a wide temperature range 55K-190K.Comment: 10 pages 4 figures, planned to submit to J. Phys.: Condensed Matte

Photonic quasicrystal nanopatterned silicon thin film for photovoltaic applications

In this paper, the authors numerically studied the optical properties of a silicon photonic quasicrystal (PQC) nanohole array for photovoltaic applications. With the same active layer thickness, the ultimate efficiency of a solar cell integrated with an optimized PQC nanohole array can be enhanced by 9.01% and 1.40% compared to that with an ordered square lattice of a nanohole array and a random nanohole array, respectively. The absorptance enhancement is mainly due to the higher-order rotational symmetry in PQC structures, which leads to the presence of additional resonant modes, the broadening of existing modes and the reduction of surface reflectance. The angular response for both transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic modes are also analyzed in detail

Characterization of Zika virus endocytic pathways in human glioblastoma cells

Zika virus (ZIKV) infections can cause microcephaly and neurological disorders. However, the early infection events of ZIKV in neural cells remain to be characterized. Here, by using a combination of pharmacological and molecular approaches and the human glioblastoma cell T98G as a model, we first observed that ZIKV infection was inhibited by chloroquine and NH4Cl, indicating a requirement of low intracellular pH. We further showed that dynamin is required as the ZIKV entry was affected by the specific inhibitor dynasore, small interfering RNA (siRNA) knockdown of dynamin, or by expressing the dominant-negative K44A mutant. Moreover, the ZIKV entry was significantly inhibited by chlorpromazine, pitstop2, or siRNA knockdown of clathrin heavy chain, indicating an involvement of clathrin-mediated endocytosis. In addition, genistein treatment, siRNA knockdown of caveolin-1, or overexpression of a dominant-negative caveolin mutant impacted the ZIKV entry, with ZIKV particles being observed to colocalize with caveolin-1, implying that caveola endocytosis can also be involved. Furthermore, we found that the endocytosis of ZIKV is dependent on membrane cholesterol, microtubules, and actin cytoskeleton. Importantly, ZIKV infection was inhibited by silencing of Rab5 and Rab7, while confocal microscopy showed that ZIKV particles localized in Rab5- and Rab7-postive endosomes. These results indicated that, after internalization, ZIKV likely moves to Rab5-positive early endosome and Rab7-positive late endosomes before delivering its RNA into the cytoplasm. Taken together, our study, for the first time, described the early infection events of ZIKV in human glioblastoma cell T98G

Performance, microbial community and fluorescent characteristic of microbial products in a solid-phase denitrification biofilm reactor for WWTP effluent treatment

© 2018 Microbial products, i.e. extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) and soluble microbial product (SMP), have a significant correlation with microbial activity of biologically based systems. In present study, the spectral characteristics of two kinds of microbial products were comprehensively evaluated in a solid-phase denitrification biofilm reactor for WWTP effluent treatment by using poly (butylene succinate) (PBS) as carbon source. After the achievement of PBS-biofilm, nitrate and total nitrogen removal efficiencies were high of 97.39 ± 1.24% and 96.38 ± 1.1%, respectively. The contents of protein and polysaccharide were changed different degrees in both LB-EPS and TB-EPS. Excitation-emission matrix (EEM) implied that protein-like substances played a significant role in the formation of PBS-biofilm. High-throughput sequencing result implied that the proportion of denitrifying bacteria, including Simplicispira, Dechloromonas, Diaphorobacter, Desulfovibrio, increased to 9.2%, 7.4%, 4.8% and 3.6% in PBS-biofilm system, respectively. According to EEM-PARAFAC, two components were identified from SMP samples, including protein-like substances for component 1 and humic-like and fulvic acid-like substances for component 2, respectively. Moreover, the fluorescent scores of two components expressed significant different trends to reaction time. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) implied that some new organic matters were produced in the effluent of SP-DBR due to biopolymer degradation and denitrification processes. The results could provide a new insight about the formation and stability of solid-phase denitrification PBS-biofilm via the point of microbial products

The vortex dynamics of a Ginzburg-Landau system under pinning effect

It is proved that the vortices are attracted by impurities or inhomogeities in the superconducting materials. The strong H^1-convergence for the corresponding Ginzburg-Landau system is also proved.Comment: 23page