Enhancement in Interfacial Adhesion of Ti/Polyetheretherketone by Electrophoretic Deposition of Graphene Oxide

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Pan, L., Lv, Y., Nipon, R., Wang, Y., Duan, L., Hu, J., ... & Shi, Y. (2019). Enhancement in Interfacial Adhesion of Ti/Polyetheretherketone by Electrophoretic Deposition of Graphene Oxide. Polymer Composites, 40(S2), E1243-E1251, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/pc.24955. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.This article discusses about the significance of graphene oxide (GO) deposition on the surface of a titanium plate by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) method to improve the adhesive strength of Ti/polyetheretherketone (PEEK) interfacial adhesive. Firstly, the anodic EPD method was applied to a water dispersion solution of GO, and then the morphology and the properties of titanium plate surface were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and contact angle measurements before and after GO deposition. Furthermore, the changes in the properties of GO after heating at 390°C were characterized by Raman and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopies. According to the results of single lap tensile shear test, the adhesion strength of Ti/PEEK interface after the anodization and deposition of GO was 34.94 MPa, an increase of 29.2% compared with 27.04 MPa of sample with only anodization. Also, the adhesion strengths were 58.1 and 76.5% higher compared with the samples of only GO deposited (22.1 MPa) and pure titanium (19.8 MPa), respectively

Synthesis and Characterization of the Optical Properties of Pt-TiO 2

Composite Pt-doped TiO2 nanotubes (Pt-TNTs) were synthesized via alkaline fusion-hydrothermal method (AFHM) under ambient atmosphere pressure. Further systematic characterization of Pt-TNTs was performed by using XPS, surface photovoltage spectroscopy (SPS), electric field-induced surface photovoltage spectroscopy (FISPS), UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry (UV-Vis), TEM, and XRD. XPS spectrum showed double peaks which accounted for the presence of platinum dioxide and platinum oxide (PtO2 and PtO, PtOxδ+). Composition analysis showed that the particulate matters on surface of Pt-TNTs were composed of PtOxδ+ and TiO2. The results of SPS and FISPS demonstrated that the bound exciton showed sub-band gap transition characteristics with the asymmetric changes of photoelectric property corresponding to changes in polarity and strength of the external electric field. Furthermore, the influence of the changed microstructure morphology of Pt-doped TNTs on both the photovoltage spectroscopy and the lifetime of photogenerated carriers which occurred at the interfaces of Pt-TNTs was observed. Result of XRD indicated that a mixture of anatase and rutile phases prevailed in Pt-TNTs. Contact potential barriers consisting of PtOxδ+, anatase, rutile, and PtOxδ+ are presumed to form upon PtOxδ+ particle that deposited on the surface of Pt-TNTs

H1DBi-R Net: Hybrid 1D Bidirectional RNN for Efficient Diabetic Retinopathy Detection and Classification

Nowadays the eye disease that widely affects the visual impairment of humans is Diabetes Retinopathy (DR). The advanced stage of the disorder leads to cause complete vision loss and creates complex situations for treatment. So it is significant to treat prolonged diabetes at an initial stage. Therefore, the main reason for DR is the uncontrolled growth of blood glucose levels in the eye. If it reaches the severity level the bleeding is caused in the eye. However, the lesions generated due to DR are medicated based on fundus images. The significant purpose of affecting DR is the presence of high sugar in the blood and this damages the retina. Therefore proper screening of DR is essential to prevent it from affecting the blood vessels all over the body. Also, it unblocks blood vessels paves the way to function the new blood vessels grown in the eye. Therefore a novel hybrid oppositional fire-fly modified 1D bidirectional recurrent (HOF-M1DBR) method is proposed to detect the DR through fundus images accurately. The datasets Messidor-1 and APTOS-2019 are applied for performing the initial process of fundus images such as denoising, smoothing, cropping, and resizing. The M1DBR is used to validate the accuracy and optimize the weight function using the Opposition-Based Learning-FireFly (OBL-FF) algorithm. Thus prediction and classification of f DR from the fundus images are detected accurately and distinguished the four levels from the extracted features. The validation of the proposed method is performed based on accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. The experimental results revealed that the proposed HOF-M1DBR attained an accuracy of 98.9% for the Messidor-1 and APTOS-2019 dataset, thus improving the performance. However, the existing DCNN-PCA-FF, DNN-MSO, SI-GWO, and DCNN-EMF methods diminished the performance by 79.9%, 87%, 83%, and 89.1% respectively

The complete chloroplast genome sequence of Ficus beipeiensis (Moraceae), an endemic and endangered plant in China

Ficus beipeiensis S.S.Chang is an evergreen plant of Ficus from the family Moraceae. This is an endangered species endemic to China. In terms of economic value, F. beipeiensis are used as a native plant resource of urban landscaping in Chongqing, China. Here, we sequenced, assembled and annotated the chloroplast (cp) genome of F. beipeiensis, and aim to provide genetic resources for this endangered species. The length of cp genome was 160,595 bp, with a large single-copy region (LSC) of 88,683 bp and a small single-copy region (SSC) of 20,160 bp separated by a pair of inverted repeats (IRs) of 25,876 bp. It encodes 110 unique genes, including 76 protein-coding genes, 30 transfer RNA genes, and 4 ribosomal RNA genes. Besides, we reconstructed the phylogeny of Moraceae based on the whole cp genome sequences data set. Phylogenetic analysis shows that all analyzed Ficus species are clustered and form a monophyletic group. Antiaris is a sister group to Ficus. In our maximum likelihood (ML) tree, F. beipeiensis is closely related to F. racemose

Shikimate Kinase Plays Important Roles in Anthocyanin Synthesis in Petunia

In plants, the shikimate pathway is responsible for the production of aromatic amino acids L-tryptophan, L-phenylalanine, and L-tyrosine. L-Phenylalanine is the upstream substrate of flavonoid and anthocyanin synthesis. Shikimate kinase (SK) catalyzes the phosphorylation of the C3 hydroxyl group of shikimate to produce 3-phosphate shikimate (S3P), the fifth step of the shikimate pathway. However, whether SK participates in flavonoid and anthocyanin synthesis is unknown. This study characterized the single-copy PhSK gene in the petunia (Petunia hybrida) genome. PhSK was localized in chloroplasts. PhSK showed a high transcription level in corollas, especially in the coloring stage of flower buds. Suppression of PhSK changed flower color and shape, reduced the content of anthocyanins, and changed the flavonoid metabolome profile in petunia. Surprisingly, PhSK silencing caused a reduction in the shikimate, a substrate of PhSK. Further qPCR analysis showed that PhSK silencing resulted in a reduction in the mRNA level of PhDHQ/SDH, which encodes the protein catalyzing the third and fourth steps of the shikimate pathway, showing a feedback regulation mechanism of gene expression in the shikimate pathway

Assembly of the Complete Mitochondrial Genome of Chinese Plum (Prunus salicina): Characterization of Genome Recombination and RNA Editing Sites

Despite the significant progress that has been made in the genome sequencing of Prunus, this area of research has been lacking a systematic description of the mitochondrial genome of this genus for a long time. In this study, we assembled the mitochondrial genome of the Chinese plum (Prunus salicina) using Illumina and Oxford Nanopore sequencing data. The mitochondrial genome size of P. salicina was found to be 508,035 base pair (bp), which is the largest reported in the Rosaceae family to date, and P. salicina was shown to be 63,453 bp longer than sweet cherry (P. avium). The P. salicina mitochondrial genome contained 37 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 3 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, and 16 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes. Two plastid-derived tRNA were identified. We also found two short repeats that captured the nad3 and nad6 genes and resulted in two copies. In addition, nine pairs of repeat sequences were identified as being involved in the mediation of genome recombination. This is crucial for the formation of subgenomic configurations. To characterize RNA editing sites, transcriptome data were used, and we identified 480 RNA editing sites in protein-coding sequences. Among them, the initiation codon of the nad1 gene confirmed that an RNA editing event occurred, and the genomic encoded ACG was edited as AUG in the transcript. Combined with previous reports on the chloroplast genome, our data complemented our understanding of the last part of the organelle genome of plum, which will facilitate our understanding of the evolution of organelle genomes

Intraspecific variations among the chloroplast genomes of Artemisia scoparia (asteraceae) from Pakistan and China

Artemisia scoparia Waldst. et Kitam. is an important medicinal plant of Asteraceae. Inconsistent pharmacological activities have been reported for A. scoparia from China and South Asia. As the first step to understand the underlying genetic basis, we sequences the chloroplast genome for A. scoparia collected from China and compared with one collected from Pakistan. The circular chloroplast genome of A. scoparia is 151,008 bp long, which is slightly shorter than that of A. scoparia-Pakistan. It encodes 87 protein-coding genes, 8 ribosomal RNA genes, and 37 transfer RNAs. The overall GC content of the genome is 37.47%. Comparing with A. scoparia from China and Pakistan identified the inversion of the SSC region. Besides, a total of 79 single nucleotide polymorphisms and 39 insertions and deletions were identified. The results can be used to develop molecular markers to distinguish A. scoparia from different geographical areas that might have variable bioactivities