Facile Synthesis of SiO2@C Nanoparticles Anchored on MWNT as High-Performance Anode Materials for Li-ion Batteries

Carbon-coated silica nanoparticles anchored on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (SiO2@C/MWNT composite) were synthesized via a simple and facile sol-gel method followed by heat treatment. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM) studies confirmed densely anchoring the carbon-coated SiO2 nanoparticles onto a flexible MWNT conductive network, which facilitated fast electron and lithium-ion transport and improved structural stability of the composite. As prepared, ternary composite anode showed superior cyclability and rate capability compared to a carbon-coated silica counterpart without MWNT (SiO2@C). The SiO2@C/MWNT composite exhibited a high reversible discharge capacity of 744 mAh g−1 at the second discharge cycle conducted at a current density of 100 mA g−1 as well as an excellent rate capability, delivering a capacity of 475 mAh g−1 even at 1000 mA g−1. This enhanced electrochemical performance of SiO2@C/MWNT ternary composite anode was associated with its unique core-shell and networking structure and a strong mutual synergistic effect among the individual components

Prevalence of syphilis infection in different tiers of female sex workers in China: implications for surveillance and interventions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Syphilis has made a dramatic resurgence in China during the past two decades and become the third most prevalent notifiable infectious disease in China. Female sex workers (FSWs) have become one of key populations for the epidemic. In order to investigate syphilis infection among different tiers of FSWs, a cross-sectional study was conducted in 8 sites in China.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Serum specimens (n = 7,118) were collected to test for syphilis and questionnaire interviews were conducted to obtain socio-demographic and behavioral information among FSWs recruited from different types of venues. FSWs were categorized into three tiers (high-, middle- and low-tier FSWs) based on the venues where they solicited clients. Serum specimens were screened with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for treponemal antibody followed by confirmation with non-treponemal toluidine red unheated serum test (TRUST) for positive ELISA specimens to determine syphilis infection. A logistic regression model was used to determine factors associated with syphilis infection.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Overall syphilis prevalence was 5.0% (95%CI, 4.5-5.5%). Low-tier FSWs had the highest prevalence (9.7%; 95%CI, 8.3-11.1%), followed by middle-tier (4.3%; 95%CI, 3.6-5.0%, <it>P </it>< 0.001) and high-tier FSWs (2.2%; 95%CI, 1.6-2.9%, <it>P </it>< 0.001). Factors independently associated with syphilis infection included older age, lower education level, geographic location, lower tier of typology, and injection drug use.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This multi-site survey showed a high prevalence of syphilis infection among FSWs and substantial disparities in syphilis prevalence by the tier of FSWs. The difference in syphilis prevalence is substantial between different tiers of FSWs, with the highest rate among low-tier FSWs. Thus, current surveillance and intervention activities, which have low coverage in low-tier FSWs in China, should be further examined.</p

Identification of SLC3A2 as a Potential Therapeutic Target of Osteoarthritis Involved in Ferroptosis by Integrating Bioinformatics, Clinical Factors and Experiments

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a type of arthritis that causes joint pain and limited mobility. In recent years, some studies have shown that the pathological process of OA chondrocytes is related to ferroptosis. Our study aims to identify and validate differentially expressed ferroptosis-related genes (DEFRGs) in OA chondrocytes and to investigate the potential molecular mechanisms. RNA-sequencing and microarray datasets were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) data repository. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened by four methods: limma-voom, edgeR, DESeq2, and Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA), protein-protein interactions (PPI), and cytoHubba of Cytoscape were applied to identify hub genes. Clinical OA cartilage specimens were collected for quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis, western blotting (WB), histological staining, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and transfection. Sankey diagram was used to visualize the relationships between the expression level of SLC3A2 in the damaged area and clinical factors. Based on bioinformatics analysis, clinical factors, and experiment validation, SLC3A2 was identified as a hub gene. It was down-regulated in OA cartilage compared to normal cartilage (p 0.05). Functional enrichment analysis revealed that SLC3A2 was associated with ferroptosis-related functions. Spearman correlation analysis showed that the expression level of SLC3A2 in the OA cartilage-damaged area was closely related to BMI, obesity grade, and Kellgren-Lawrence grade. Furthermore, in vitro experiments validated that SLC3A2 inhibited ferroptosis and suppressed cartilage degeneration in OA. In summary, we demonstrated that SLC3A2 inhibited ferroptosis and suppressed cartilage degeneration in OA. These findings provide a new idea for the study of the pathogenesis of OA, thus providing new means for the clinical diagnosis and targeted therapy of OA

Studying and understanding characteristics of post-syncing practice and goal in social network sites

Many popular social network sites (SNSs) provide the post-syncing functionality, which allows users to synchronize posts automatically among different SNSs. Nowadays there exists divergence on this functionality from the view of sink SNS. The key to solving this problem is to understand the characteristics of users’ post-syncing practice and goals and evaluate whether they are consistent with an SNS’s norms, cultures, and goals. However, studying and understanding the characteristics of post-syncing practice and goal are challenging tasks as a result of the difficulty of data sampling and the complexity of post-syncing behavior. In this article, we focus on investigating this question by quantitative analysis in combination with qualitative analysis. In the quantitative study, by utilizing 211,233 synced-posts sampled from Weibo, we aim to investigate characteristics of post-syncing from three perspectives: user, content, and goal. The results suggest that post-syncing plays an important role in exhibiting one’s current activities, creations, and skills as well as advertisements but involves a risk of exhibiting personal sensitive profiles. To understand the results, we present an interview-based qualitative study based on thematic analysis. It indicates that the publicity, urgency, and remarkableness of contents and differences of social affordances and social circles between sink SNS and source SNS as well as the one-time consent of post-syncing authentication jointly account for the major role of post-syncing. Based on these results, we propose insights for post-syncing functionality’s adoption, design, and promotion

Warm Rolled Temperature Effect on Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of 18Mn/40Si2CrMo Multilayer Composite Steel

In order to obtain a good strength-plastic/toughness match relationship, 18Mn/40Si2CrMo multilayer composite steels were successfully fabricated by a vacuum hot rolling and warm rolling process in this paper. The effects of different warm rolling temperatures (400–600 °C) on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the multilayer composite steel were systematically investigated. The result shows that the warm rolling process reduces thickness of the interfacial diffusion layer, which improves the interfacial bonding strength of multilayer composite steel. With the increase of warm rolling temperature, the total elongation (TEL) increases but ultimate tensile strength (UTS) decreases. The multilayer composite steel with a warm temperature of 500 °C achieves the balance of strength and plastic of which the UTS and TEL are 1.7 GPa and 12.5%, respectively. This is due to the high work-hardening ability of deformation twins of the 18Mn layer and the precipitates nanoscale carbides of the 40Si2CrMo layer to obscure the dislocation movement

Solidification structure and high temperature oxidation resistance of nano titanium dioxide TiO2 added Inconel 718 deposits by arc melt

In order to refine the microstructure of Inconel 718 and achieve high performance, nanometer TiO _2 particles (nano-TiO _2 ) were adopted to modify the solidification structure. After pretreating nano-TiO _2 , oxide added 718 nickel alloy were prepared by using arc melting technology, and the microstructure and oxidation behavior were investigated in detail. The results show that the microstructures of Inconel 718 alloys with different content of nano-TiO _2 are all dendritic-like, and the size of dendrite gradually decreases and the shape tends to become equiaxed grain with the increase of TiO _2 content. The grain refinement effect is best for 0.6%TiO _2 added alloy. The precipitated phases become finer and more uniform due to grain refinement. The high temperature oxidation experiments of Inconel 718 alloy with different volume fractions of TiO _2 show that the main oxides are Cr _2 O _3 , accompanying with some Nb-Fe oxides. With the decrease of grain size, the size of oxides gradually decreases, and the oxidation layers are more and more compact, which effectively improves the oxidation resistance

Transformation Induced Plasticity Effects of a Non-Equal Molar Co-Cr-Fe-Ni High Entropy Alloy System

Abstract: Metastability-engineering strategy is an important topic for high entropy alloys (HEAs), owing to the transformation-induced plasticity effect (TRIP). In this work, TRIP effects of Co-Cr-Fe-Ni HEAs are investigated. Results indicate the tensile deformation-induced martensitic transformation occurs in Co35Cr25Fe40−xNix (x = 0–15 at %) HEAs. The excellent combination of tensile strength (760 MPa–1000 MPa) and elongation (65–35%) owe to solid solution strengthening of Co and Cr, and the TRIP effect. In non-equal molar Co-Cr-Fe-Ni systems, with the decrease of Ni content, the values of stacking fault energy (SFE) decrease; thus, TRIP phenomena occurs. Based on the experimental investigation in three different regions of the Co-Cr-Fe-Ni multicomponent phase diagram, the face-centered cubic structured Co-Cr-Fe-Ni HEAs with VEC of ~8.0 is more metastable, and TRIP phenomena are more likely to occur

Building user-oriented personalized machine translator based on user-generated textual content

Machine Translation (MT) has been a very useful tool to assist multilingual communication and collaboration. In recent years, by taking advantage of the exciting developments of neural networks and deep learning, the accuracy and speed of machine translation have been continuously improved. However, most machine translation methods and systems are data-driven. They tend to select a consensus response represented in training data, while a user's preferred linguistic style, which is important for translation comprehension and user experience, is ignored. For this problem, we aim to build a user-oriented personalized machine translation model in this paper. The model aims to learn each user's linguistic style from the textual content that is generated by her/him (User-Generated Textual Content, UGTC) in social media context and generate personalized translation results utilizing several state-of-the-art deep learning techniques like Transformer and pre-training. We also implemented a user-oriented personalized machine translator using Weibo as a case of the source of UGTC to provide a systematical implementation scheme of a user-oriented personalized machine translation system based on our model. The translator was evaluated by automatic evaluation in combination with human evaluation. The results suggest that our model can generate more personalized, natural and lively translation results and enhance the comprehensibility of translation results, which makes its generations more preferred by users versus general translation results