Substantial transition to clean household energy mix in rural China

The household energy mix has significant impacts on human health and climate, as it contributes greatly to many health- and climate-relevant air pollutants. Compared to the well-established urban energy statistical system, the rural household energy statistical system is incomplete and is often associated with high biases. Via a nationwide investigation, this study revealed high contributions to energy supply from coal and biomass fuels in the rural household energy sector, while electricity comprised ∼20%. Stacking (the use of multiple sources of energy) is significant, and the average number of energy types was 2.8 per household. Compared to 2012, the consumption of biomass and coals in 2017 decreased by 45% and 12%, respectively, while the gas consumption amount increased by 204%. Increased gas and decreased coal consumptions were mainly in cooking, while decreased biomass was in both cooking (41%) and heating (59%). The time-sharing fraction of electricity and gases (E&G) for daily cooking grew, reaching 69% in 2017, but for space heating, traditional solid fuels were still dominant, with the national average shared fraction of E&G being only 20%. The non-uniform spatial distribution and the non-linear increase in the fraction of E&G indicated challenges to achieving universal access to modern cooking energy by 2030, particularly in less-developed rural and mountainous areas. In some non-typical heating zones, the increased share of E&G for heating was significant and largely driven by income growth, but in typical heating zones, the time-sharing fraction was <5% and was not significantly increased, except in areas with policy intervention. The intervention policy not only led to dramatic increases in the clean energy fraction for heating but also accelerated the clean cooking transition. Higher income, higher education, younger age, less energy/stove stacking and smaller family size positively impacted the clean energy transition

Expression Characterization of AtPDI11 and Functional Analysis of AtPDI11 D Domain in Oxidative Protein Folding

The formation and isomerization of disulfide bonds mediated by protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is of fundamental importance in eukaryotes. Canonical PDI structure comprises four domains with the order of a-b-b&prime;-a&prime;. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the PDI-S subgroup contains only one member, AtPDI11, with an a-a&prime;-D organization, which has no orthologs in mammals or yeast. However, the expression pattern of AtPDI11 and the functioning mechanism of AtPDI11 D domain are currently unclear. In this work, we found that PDI-S is evolutionarily conserved between land plants and algal organisms. AtPDI11 is expressed in various tissues and its induction by ER stress is disrupted in bzip28/60 and ire1a/b mutants that are null mutants of key components in the unfolded protein response (UPR) signal transduction pathway, suggesting that the induction of AtPDI11 by ER stress is mediated by the UPR signaling pathway. Furthermore, enzymatic activity assays and genetic evidence showed that the D domain is crucially important for the activities of AtPDI11. Overall, this work will help to further understand the working mechanism of AtPDI11 in catalyzing disulfide formation in plants

The heterogeneous microstructure of laser welded joint and its effect on mechanical properties for dissimilar 9Cr steel and alloy 617

The Fe-rich heterogeneous microstructures were observed in the weld metal (WM) of laser welding on dissimilar metals between 9Cr steel and alloy 617, manifesting as vortex-like and lamellar-like structures. They displayed a face-centered cubic structure and consisted of cellular and columnar dendrites. The vortex-like structure was distributed on the upper side of the WM and exhibited the solidification grain boundary. Due to the higher liquid temperature and insufficient mixing, the vortex-like structure exhibited preferential nucleation during the solidification process. On the other hand, the lamellar-like structure was situated on the lower side of the WM and had a thickness of 50 μm. The lamellar-like structure and WM solidified simultaneously with the rapid solidification rate, resulting in noticeable intergranular chemical segregation. During the tensile test, deformation twins formed in the heterogeneous microstructure, due to the lower stacking fault energy and fine particles. Numerous deformation twins played a crucial role in inhibiting crack initiation, which performed the same orientation. Furthermore, the heterogeneous microstructure generated 89.8% of twin boundaries during the crack propagation, while the WM had 30.4%. This phenomenon facilitated plastic energy absorption and deflected the crack propagation path. Thus, the heterogeneous microstructures contributed to the enhancement of mechanical toughness at room temperature