Continuous fabrication of calcium sulfate whiskers with adjustable aspect ratio in microdroplets

Hemi-hydrate and anhydrous CaSO₄ whiskers with adjustable aspect ratio were continuously synthesized by the reactive crystallization of CaCl₂ to K₂ S₂ O₈ in microdroplets. The effects of solvent and reactive temperature were examined, with SEM and XRD characterizations. Hemi-hydrate and anhydrous CaSO₄ whiskers can be, respectively, obtained in aqueous and N,N-dimethylformamide solutions at 90 °C in 180 s. The addition of ethylene glycol or glycerol as well as increasing temperature could lead to the increase in length and aspect ratio of the whiskers. Thus this preparation technique provides a simple continuous route to synthesize CaSO₄ whiskers with two kinds of crystal structures in a short time, and adjustable lengths and aspect ratios

Feuille de route de l’indépendance tibétaine

Wang Lixiong publie « Feuille de route de l’indépendance tibétaine » sur la Toile en novembre 2008, après une accalmie relative des tensions de la révolte tibétaine du printemps 2008, et une fois les jeux Olympiques terminés(1). Il expose sa nouvelle interprétation de la question tibétaine, une approche analytique, inédite chez lui auparavant, mûrie à la lueur des événements récents. Il propose une vision novatrice de la crise tibétaine, de ses origines profondes et, finalement, de son évolution vers l’indépendance tibétaine. « Feuille de route » se compose de trois parties : 1) Ligne de démarcation : les événements de mars, 2) Le dilemme du régime impérial, 3) Comment le Tibet se dirige vers l’indépendance. La première partie a été traduite en anglais par Lingxi Kong, et largement diffusée sur le net(2). C’est pourquoi il a été décidé de traduire en français la deuxième partie qui est sans doute la plus pertinente pour comprendre la réflexion de l’auteur. Il élabore une analyse de la nature des institutions bureaucratiques et montre les apories du système. Afin de donner une vue d’ensemble de son long texte, un court résumé de la première partie précèdera la traduction. La troisième partie, non traduite ici, présente la vision de l’auteur des différents scénarios pour aboutir à l’indépendance qui selon lui ne pourra se faire qu’au prix d’une grande violence et d’effusions de sang. Au moment où cette traduction est achevée, le 13 juin 2009, TibetInfoNet annonce l’arrivée de Wang Lixiong à Dharamsala pour une visite de deux mois organisée par l’Association des écrivains tibétains(3). Note de la traductrice

The effect of calcium nitrate on the hydration of calcium aluminate cement at different curing temperatures

Phase conversion in calcium aluminate cements (CAC) induces significant volumetric instability; it would result in an increase in porosity and decrease in strength in CAC. In this study, calcium nitrate (CN) as a phase conversion inhibitor, the effect of CN on the hydration of CAC at different curing temperatures was studied. Xray diffraction, thermal analysis, SEM, isothermal calorimetry and the compressive strength were conducted on the CAC dosages of 0%, 5%, 10% and 15%CN cured at 20�, 30�, 40� and 50�. The results show CN can retard CAC hydration, alter the characters of the hydrates of CAC systems and avoid the conversion process. With increasing dosage of CN and curing temperature, the hydration products formed is different.in CAC systems with CN, NO3-AFm and NO3-AFt are more preferred than CAH10 and C2AH8 and are more thermostable than those typically hydrates. In the presence of CN, The phase conversion to a large extent can be avoided and the compressive strength is significantly improved. The CN dosage has a very important effect on CAC systems with CN. In this study, the optimum dosage for CN is 10 percent. This study may provide a new insight into avoiding the unstable phase conversion in calcium aluminate cements

Effect of quercetin on bone metabolism and serum osteocalcin in osteoporotic rats

Purpose: To determine the effect of quercetin on bone metabolism and serum osteocalcin in osteoporotic rats. Methods: Sixty specific pathogen-free rats were randomly divided into control group, model group; high, medium and low dose quercetin groups, and diethylstilbestrol group, with 10 rats in each group. The high, middle and low dose quercetin groups were given quercetin suspension at doses of 200, 100, 50 mg/kg/day, respectively; the ethylene estradiol group was given ethylene estradiol (1.0 mg/kg/week), while control rats received ethylene estradiol at doses of 200, 100, 50 mg/kg/day. Rats in the model group were given saline. Samples were taken after 6 weeks of administration. The levels of serum bone-derived alkaline phosphatase (BALP), estradiol (E2) and serum osteocalcin (BGP) in femur tissue were measured using ELISA kits. Bone mineral density (BMD) was determined using BMD tester. Results: Relative to normal rats, BALP and BGP levels in the model rats were markedly increased, while E2 was significantly lower (p < 0.5). Quercetin treatment led to significant increases in BALP and E2 levels in the middle and high dose groups, relative to the model group, while BGP levels in all quercetin treatment groups decreased significantly, when compared to model rats (p < 0.05). There were higher BMD values in quercetin and diethylstilbestrol groups than in model (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Quercetin enhances bone formation and BMD, but decreases osteocalcin levels and maintains bone biomechanics in ovariectomized rats. Thus, it may find therapeutic application in maintaining bone health. Keywords: Quercetin, Osteoporosis, Bone metabolism, Osteocalci

SwinFace: A Multi-task Transformer for Face Recognition, Expression Recognition, Age Estimation and Attribute Estimation

In recent years, vision transformers have been introduced into face recognition and analysis and have achieved performance breakthroughs. However, most previous methods generally train a single model or an ensemble of models to perform the desired task, which ignores the synergy among different tasks and fails to achieve improved prediction accuracy, increased data efficiency, and reduced training time. This paper presents a multi-purpose algorithm for simultaneous face recognition, facial expression recognition, age estimation, and face attribute estimation (40 attributes including gender) based on a single Swin Transformer. Our design, the SwinFace, consists of a single shared backbone together with a subnet for each set of related tasks. To address the conflicts among multiple tasks and meet the different demands of tasks, a Multi-Level Channel Attention (MLCA) module is integrated into each task-specific analysis subnet, which can adaptively select the features from optimal levels and channels to perform the desired tasks. Extensive experiments show that the proposed model has a better understanding of the face and achieves excellent performance for all tasks. Especially, it achieves 90.97% accuracy on RAF-DB and 0.22 $\epsilon$-error on CLAP2015, which are state-of-the-art results on facial expression recognition and age estimation respectively. The code and models will be made publicly available at https://github.com/lxq1000/SwinFace

Complex emulsions for shape control based on mass transfer and phase separation

Complex emulsions are used to fabricate new morphologies of multiple Janus droplets, evolving from non-engulfing to complete engulfing core/shell configuration. The produced droplets contain an aqueous phase of dextran (DEX) solution and an oil phase, which is mixed with ethoxylated trimethylolpropane triacrylate (ETPTA) and poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA). The PEGDA in the oil phase is transferred into the aqueous phase to form complex morphologies due to the phase separation of PEGDA and DEX. The effects are investigated including the ratio of oil to aqueous phase, the content of initial PEGDA, DEX and surfactants, and the type of surfactants. DEX/PEGDA-ETPTA core/shell-single phase Janus droplets are formed with an increasing engulfed oil droplet into the aqueous droplet while the ratio of oil to aqueous phase increases or the initial PEGDA content increases. The high DEX content leads to the DEX-PEGDA-ETPTA doublet Janus. The use of surfactants polyglycerol polyricinoleate (PGPR) and Span 80 results in the formation of DEX/PEGDA/ETPTA single core/double shell and DEX/PEGDA-ETPTA core/shell-single phase Janus droplets, respectively. These complex emulsions are utilized to fabricate solid particles of complex shapes. This method contributes to new material design underpinned by mass transfer and phase separation, which can be extended to other complex emulsion systems

CEEMDAN-CatBoost-SATCN-based short-term load forecasting model considering time series decomposition and feature selection

The rapidly increasing randomness and volatility of electrical power loads urge computationally efficient and accurate short-term load forecasting methods for ensuring the operational efficiency and reliability of the power system. Focusing on the non-stationary and non-linear characteristics of load curves that could easily compromise the forecasting accuracy, this paper proposes a complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise–CatBoost–self-attention mechanism-integrated temporal convolutional network (CEEMDAN-CatBoost-SATCN)-based short-term load forecasting method, integrating time series decomposition and feature selection. CEEMDAN decomposes the original load into some periodically fluctuating components with different frequencies. With their fluctuation patterns being evaluated with permutation entropy, these components with close fluctuation patterns are further merged to improve computational efficiency. Thereafter, a CatBoost-based recursive feature elimination algorithm is applied to obtain the optimal feature subsets to the merged components based on feature importance, which can effectively reduce the dimension of input variables. On this basis, SATCN which consists of a convolutional neural network and self-attention mechanism is proposed. The case study shows that time series decomposition and feature selection have a positive effect on improving forecasting accuracy. Compared with other forecasting methods and evaluated with a mean absolute percentage error and root mean square error, the proposed method outperforms in forecasting accuracy

Protective effects of resveratrol on the inhibition of hippocampal neurogenesis induced by ethanol during early postnatal life

AbstractEthanol (EtOH) exposure during early postnatal life triggers obvious neurotoxic effects on the developing hippocampus and results in long-term effects on hippocampal neurogenesis. Resveratrol (RSV) has been demonstrated to exert potential neuroprotective effects by promoting hippocampal neurogenesis. However, the effects of RSV on the EtOH-mediated impairment of hippocampal neurogenesis remain undetermined. Thus, mice were pretreated with RSV and were later exposed to EtOH to evaluate its protective effects on EtOH-mediated toxicity during hippocampal development. The results indicated that a brief exposure of EtOH on postnatal day 7 resulted in a significant impairment in hippocampal neurogenesis and a depletion of hippocampal neural precursor cells (NPCs). This effect was attenuated by pretreatment with RSV. Furthermore, EtOH exposure resulted in a reduction in spine density on the granular neurons of the dentate gyrus (DG), and the spines exhibited a less mature morphological phenotype characterized by a higher proportion of stubby spines and a lower proportion of mushroom spines. However, RSV treatment effectively reversed these responses. We further confirmed that RSV treatment reversed the EtOH-induced down-regulation of hippocampal pERK and Hes1 protein levels, which may be related to the proliferation and maintenance of NPCs. Furthermore, EtOH exposure in the C17.2 NPCs also diminished cell proliferation and activated apoptosis, which could be reversed by pretreatment of RSV. Overall, our results suggest that RSV pretreatment protects against EtOH-induced defects in neurogenesis in postnatal mice and may thus play a critical role in preventing EtOH-mediated toxicity in the developing hippocampus

Chronic Microcystin-LR Exposure Induces Hepatocarcinogenesis via Increased Gankyrin in Vitro and in Vivo

Background/Aims: Our recent study indicated that the serum microcystin-LR (MC-LR) level is positively linked to the risk of human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Gankyrin is over-expressed in cancers and mediates oncogenesis; however, whether MC-LR induces tumor formation and the role of gankyrin in this process is unclear. Methods: We induced malignant transformation of L02 liver cells via 35 passages with exposure to 1, 10, or 100 nM MC-LR. Wound healing, plate and soft agar colony counts, and nude mice tumor formation were used to evaluate the tumorigenic phenotype of MC-LR-treated cells. Silencing gankyrin was used to confirm its function. We established a 35-week MC-LR exposure rat model by twice weekly intraperitoneal injection with 10 μg/kg body weight. In addition, 96 HCC patients were tested for tumor tissue gankyrin expression and serum MC-LR levels. Results: Chronic low-dose MC-LR exposure increased proliferation, mobility, clone and tumor formation abilities of L02 cells as a result of gankyrin activation, while silencing gankyrin inhibited the carcinogenic phenotype of MC-LR-treated cells. MC-LR also induced neoplastic liver lesions in Sprague-Dawley rats due to up-regulated gankyrin. Furthermore, a trend of increased gankyrin was observed in humans exposed to MC-LR. Conclusion: These results suggest that MC-LR induces hepatocarcinogenesis in vitro and in vivo by increasing gankyrin levels, providing new insight into MC-LR carcinogenicity studies