Cross sections of the 144

Cross sections of the 144Sm(n,α)141Nd and 66Zn(n,α)63Ni reactions were measured at En = 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 MeV performed at the 4.5-MV Van de Graaff Accelerator of Peking University, China. A double-section gridded ionization chamber was used to detect the alpha particles. The foil samples of 144Sm2O3 and enriched 66Zn were placed at the common cathode plate of the chamber. Monoenergetic neutrons were produced by a deuterium gas target through the 2H(d,n)3He reaction. The neutron flux was monitored by a BF3 long counter. Cross sections of the 238U(n,f) reaction were used as the standard to perform the (n,α) reaction measurement. Present results are compared with existing measurements and evaluations. They are generally in agreement with TALYS-1.6 code calculations. For the 144Sm(n,α)141Nd reaction our measurements support the data of JEF-2.2. For the 66Zn(n,α)63Ni reaction present results support the data of EAF-2010 and TENDL-2015 data

Neutron Energy Spectrum Measurements with a Compact Liquid Scintillation Detector on EAST

A neutron detector based on EJ301 liquid scintillator has been employed at EAST to measure the neutron energy spectrum for D-D fusion plasma. The detector was carefully characterized in different quasi-monoenergetic neutron fields generated by a 4.5 MV Van de Graaff accelerator. In recent experimental campaigns, due to the low neutron yield at EAST, a new shielding device was designed and located as close as possible to the tokamak to enhance the count rate of the spectrometer. The fluence of neutrons and gamma-rays was measured with the liquid neutron spectrometer and was consistent with 3He proportional counter and NaI (Tl) gamma-ray spectrometer measurements. Plasma ion temperature values were deduced from the neutron spectrum in discharges with lower hybrid wave injection and ion cyclotron resonance heating. Scattered neutron spectra were simulated by the Monte Carlo transport Code, and they were well verified by the pulse height measurements at low energies.Comment: 19 pages,10 figures, 1 tabl

Design of a core-shell catalyst : an effective strategy for suppressing side reactions in syngas for direct selective conversion to light olefins

An elegant catalyst is designedviathe encapsulation of metallic oxide Zn-Cr inside of zeolite SAPO34 as a core-shell structure (Zn-Cr@SAPO) to realize the coupling of methanol-synthesis and methanol-to-olefin reactions. It can not only break through the limitation of the Anderson-Schulz-Flory distribution but can also overcome the disadvantages of physical mixture catalysts, such as excessive CO2formation. The confinement effect, hierarchical structure and extremely short distance between the two active components result in the Zn-Cr@SAPO capsule catalyst having better mass transfer and diffusion with a boosted synergistic effect. Due to the difference between the adsorption energies of the Zn-Cr metallic oxide/SAPO zeolite physical mixture and capsule catalysts, the produced water and light olefins are easily removed from the Zn-Cr@SAPO capsule catalyst after formation, suppressing the side reactions. The light olefin space time yield (STY) of the capsule catalyst is more than twice that of the typical physical mixture catalyst. The designed capsule catalyst has superior potential for scale-up in industrial applications while simultaneously extending the capabilities of hybrid catalysts for other tandem catalysis reactions through this strategy. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020

Integrating 3D City Data through Knowledge Graphs

CityGML is a widely adopted standard by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for representing and exchanging 3D city models. The representation of semantic and topological properties in CityGML makes it possible to query such 3D city data to perform analysis in various applications, e.g., security management and emergency response, energy consumption and estimation, and occupancy measurement. However, the potential of querying CityGML data has not been fully exploited. The official GML/XML encoding of CityGML is only intended as an exchange format but is not suitable for query answering. The most common way of dealing with CityGML data is to store them in the 3DCityDB system as relational tables and then query them with the standard SQL query language. Nevertheless, for end users, it remains a challenging task to formulate queries over 3DCityDB directly for their ad-hoc analytical tasks, because there is a gap between the conceptual semantics of CityGML and the relational schema adopted in 3DCityDB. In fact, the semantics of CityGML itself can be modeled as a suitable ontology. The technology of Knowledge Graphs (KGs), where an ontology is at the core, is a good solution to bridge such a gap. Moreover, embracing KGs makes it easier to integrate with other spatial data sources, e.g., OpenStreetMap and existing (Geo)KGs (e.g., Wikidata, DBPedia, and GeoNames), and to perform queries combining information from multiple data sources. In this work, we describe a CityGML KG framework to populate the concepts in the CityGML ontology using declarative mappings to 3DCityDB, thus exposing the CityGML data therein as a KG. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we use CityGML data from the city of Munich as test data and integrate OpenStreeMap data in the same area

Comprehensive bulk and single-cell transcriptome profiling give useful insights into the characteristics of osteoarthritis associated synovial macrophages

BackgroundOsteoarthritis (OA) is a common chronic joint disease, but the association between molecular and cellular events and the pathogenic process of OA remains unclear.ObjectiveThe study aimed to identify key molecular and cellular events in the processes of immune infiltration of the synovium in OA and to provide potential diagnostic and therapeutic targets.MethodsTo identify the common differential expression genes and function analysis in OA, we compared the expression between normal and OA samples and analyzed the protein–protein interaction (PPI). Additionally, immune infiltration analysis was used to explore the differences in common immune cell types, and Gene Set Variation Analysis (GSVA) analysis was applied to analyze the status of pathways between OA and normal groups. Furthermore, the optimal diagnostic biomarkers for OA were identified by least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) models. Finally, the key role of biomarkers in OA synovitis microenvironment was discussed through single cell and Scissor analysis.ResultsA total of 172 DEGs (differentially expressed genes) associated with osteoarticular synovitis were identified, and these genes mainly enriched eight functional categories. In addition, immune infiltration analysis found that four immune cell types, including Macrophage, B cell memory, B cell, and Mast cell were significantly correlated with OA, and LASSO analysis showed that Macrophage were the best diagnostic biomarkers of immune infiltration in OA. Furthermore, using scRNA-seq dataset, we also analyzed the cell communication patterns of Macrophage in the OA synovial inflammatory microenvironment and found that CCL, MIF, and TNF signaling pathways were the mainly cellular communication pathways. Finally, Scissor analysis identified a population of M2-like Macrophages with high expression of CD163 and LYVE1, which has strong anti-inflammatory ability and showed that the TNF gene may play an important role in the synovial microenvironment of OA.ConclusionOverall, Macrophage is the best diagnostic marker of immune infiltration in osteoarticular synovitis, and it can communicate with other cells mainly through CCL, TNF, and MIF signaling pathways in microenvironment. In addition, TNF gene may play an important role in the development of synovitis

Development of an ELISA-array for simultaneous detection of five encephalitis viruses

Japanese encephalitis virus(JEV), tick-borne encephalitis virus(TBEV), and eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) can cause symptoms of encephalitis. Establishment of accurate and easy methods by which to detect these viruses is essential for the prevention and treatment of associated infectious diseases. Currently, there are still no multiple antigen detection methods available clinically. An ELISA-array, which detects multiple antigens, is easy to handle, and inexpensive, has enormous potential in pathogen detection. An ELISA-array method for the simultaneous detection of five encephalitis viruses was developed in this study. Seven monoclonal antibodies against five encephalitis-associated viruses were prepared and used for development of the ELISA-array. The ELISA-array assay is based on a "sandwich" ELISA format and consists of viral antibodies printed directly on 96-well microtiter plates, allowing for direct detection of 5 viruses. The developed ELISA-array proved to have similar specificity and higher sensitivity compared with the conventional ELISAs. This method was validated by different viral cultures and three chicken eggs inoculated with infected patient serum. The results demonstrated that the developed ELISA-array is sensitive and easy to use, which would have potential for clinical use

The dynamic trends of HIV prevalence, risks, and prevention among men who have sex with men in

Objective. This study was to characterize the continuously changing trends of HIV prevalence, risks, sexual behaviors, and testing behaviors among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Chongqing, China. Methods. Five consecutive cross-sectional surveys were conducted among MSM in 2006MSM in , 2008MSM in , 2010MSM in , 2012MSM in , and 2013. Testing for HIV and syphilis was performed, and HIV risks, sexual behavior, prevention, and HIV testing behavior were collected using the same questionnaire. Results. HIV prevalence increased from 13.0% to 19.7% from 2006 to 2013 ( = 0.004), with an increase of 1.0% per year. Syphilis prevalence peaked in 2008 with a positive rate of 11.6% and then experienced a sharp drop to 2.8% in 2012 and 2.9% in 2013. Percentage of those who ever received HIV testing in the last year increased from 17.0% to 43.3% ( < 0.001); condom use at the last anal intercourse and reported consistent condom use in the last 6 months increased from 51.8% to 71.0% ( < 0.001) and from 24.7% to 47.9% ( < 0.001), respectively. Conclusions. HIV continued to spread among MSM in Chongqing even when a decline in prevalence of syphilis and increase in awareness rate, condom use, and HIV testing seeking behaviors seemed to occur

Transcriptome Profiling to Identify Genes Involved in Mesosulfuron-Methyl Resistance in Alopecurus aequalis

Non-target-site resistance (NTSR) to herbicides is a worldwide concern for weed control. However, as the dominant NTSR mechanism in weeds, metabolic resistance is not yet well-characterized at the genetic level. For this study, we have identified a shortawn foxtail (Alopecurus aequalis Sobol.) population displaying both TSR and NTSR to mesosulfuron-methyl and fenoxaprop-P-ethyl, yet the molecular basis for this NTSR remains unclear. To investigate the mechanisms of metabolic resistance, an RNA-Seq transcriptome analysis was used to find candidate genes that may confer metabolic resistance to the herbicide mesosulfuron-methyl in this plant population. The RNA-Seq libraries generated 831,846,736 clean reads. The de novo transcriptome assembly yielded 95,479 unigenes (averaging 944 bp in length) that were assigned putative annotations. Among these, a total of 29,889 unigenes were assigned to 67 GO terms that contained three main categories, and 14,246 unigenes assigned to 32 predicted KEGG metabolic pathways. Global gene expression was measured using the reads generated from the untreated control (CK), water-only control (WCK), and mesosulfuron-methyl treatment (T) of R and susceptible (S). Contigs that showed expression differences between mesosulfuron-methyl-treated R and S biotypes, and between mesosulfuron-methyl-treated, water-treated and untreated R plants were selected for further quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) validation analyses. Seventeen contigs were consistently highly expressed in the resistant A. aequalis plants, including four cytochrome P450 monooxygenase (CytP450) genes, two glutathione S-transferase (GST) genes, two glucosyltransferase (GT) genes, two ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter genes, and seven additional contigs with functional annotations related to oxidation, hydrolysis, and plant stress physiology. These 17 contigs could serve as major candidate genes for contributing to metabolic mesosulfuron-methyl resistance; hence they deserve further functional study. This is the first large-scale transcriptome-sequencing study to identify NTSR genes in A. aequalis that uses the Illumina platform. This work demonstrates that NTSR is likely driven by the differences in the expression patterns of a set of genes. The assembled transcriptome data presented here provide a valuable resource for A. aequalis biology, and should facilitate the study of herbicide resistance at the molecular level in this and other weed species