Influence of pressure and temperature on key physicochemical properties of corn stover-derived biochar

This study focuses on analyzing the effect of both the peak temperature and pressure on the properties of biochar produced through slow pyrolysis of corn stover, which is a common agricultural waste that currently has little or no value. The pyrolysis experiments were carried out in a fixed-bed reactor at different peak temperatures (400, 525 and 650 °C) and absolute pressures (0.1, 0.85 and 1.6 MPa). The inert mass flow rate (at NTP conditions) was adjusted in each test to keep the gas residence time constant within the reactor. The as-received corn stover was pyrolyzed into a biochar without any physical pre-treatment as a way to reduce the operating costs. The properties of biochars showed that high peak temperature led to high fixed-carbon contents, high aromaticity and low molar H:C and O:C ratios; whereas a high pressure only resulted in a further decrease in the O:C ratio and a further increase in the fixed-carbon content. Increasing the operating pressure also resulted in a higher production of pyrolysis gas at the expense of water formation

Iminium Salts of ω-Dithiafulvenylpolyenals: An Easy Entry to the Corresponding Aldehydes and Doubly Proaromatic Nonlinear Optic-phores

A short, high-yielding route to ω-dithiafulvenylpolyenals (1) via the corresponding iminium salts (2) and starting from trimethyl-1,3-dithiolium tetrafluoroborate is reported. The Knoevenagel reactions of either 1 or 2 with isoxazolone-containing acceptors afford merocyanines 7 and 9, in a process that is often accompanied by a vinylene-shortening side reaction. Experimental and theoretical studies reveal that compounds 7 and 9, featuring two proaromatic end groups, are strongly polarized and show good second-order nonlinear optical responses

Balanced Hermitian metrics from SU(2)-structures

We study the intrinsic geometrical structure of hypersurfaces in 6-manifolds carrying a balanced Hermitian SU(3)-structure, which we call {\em balanced} SU(2)-{\em structures}. We provide conditions which imply that such a 5-manifold can be isometrically embedded as a hypersurface in a manifold with a balanced SU(3)-structure. We show that any 5-dimensional compact nilmanifold has an invariant balanced SU(2)-structure as well as new examples of balanced Hermitian SU(3)-metrics constructed from balanced SU(2)-structures. Moreover, for $n=3,4$, we present examples of compact manifolds, endowed with a balanced SU(n)-structure, such that the corresponding Bismut connection has holonomy equal to SU(n)

Relative contribution of clinicopathological variables, genomic markers, transcriptomic subtyping and microenvironment features for outcome prediction in stage II/III colorectal cancer

Background: It remains unknown to what extent consensus molecular subtype (CMS) groups and immune-stromal infiltration patterns improve our ability to predict outcomes over tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging and microsatellite instability (MSI) status in early-stage colorectal cancer (CRC). Patients and methods: We carried out a comprehensive retrospective biomarker analysis of prognostic markers in adjuvant chemotherapy-untreated (N = 1656) and treated (N = 980), stage II (N = 1799) and III (N = 837) CRCs. We defined CMS scores and estimated CD8+ cytotoxic lymphocytes (CytoLym) and cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF) infiltration scores from bulk tumor tissue transcriptomes (CMSclassifier and MCPcounter R packages); constructed a stratified multivariable Cox model for disease-free survival (DFS); and calculated the relative proportion of explained variation by each marker (clinicopathological [ClinPath], genomics [Gen: MSI, BRAF and KRAS mutations], CMS scores [CMS] and microenvironment cells [MicroCells: CytoLym+CAF]). Results: In multivariable models, only ClinPath and MicroCells remained significant prognostic factors, with both CytoLym and CAF infiltration scores improving survival prediction beyond other markers. The explained variation for DFS models of ClinPath, MicroCells, Gen markers and CMS4 scores was 77%, 14%, 5.3% and 3.7%, respectively, in stage II; and 55.9%, 35.1%, 4.1% and 0.9%, respectively, in stage III. Patients whose tumors were CytoLym high/CAF low had better DFS than other strata [HR=0.71 (0.6-0.9); P = 0.004]. Microsatellite stable tumors had the strongest signal for improved outcomes with CytoLym high scores (interaction P = 0.04) and the poor prognosis linked to high CAF scores was limited to stage III disease (interaction P = 0.04). Conclusions: Our results confirm that tumor microenvironment infiltration patterns represent potent determinants of the risk for distant dissemination in early-stage CRC. Multivariable models suggest that the prognostic value of MSI and CMS groups is largely explained by CytoLym and CAF infiltration patterns

Long-term immune response accompanies clinical outcomes in severe asthmatics treated with anti-IL-5/IL-5R biologics

This work was supported by ISCIII - Instituto de Salud Carlos III, FIS (Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria - Spanish Health Research Fund) grants PI21/00896 and FI19/00067; Ciber de Enfermedades Respiratorias (CIBERES); SEAIC grants 22A07; BASEAS STUDY (Basophils in EosinophilicAsthma) Study Code ESR-20-20764 AstraZeneca International; Comunidad de Madrid grant PEJ2021-AI_BMD-22320 and FEDER funds (Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regiona

New one- and two-dimensional 4H-pyranylidene NLO-phores

Dipolar, V-shaped compounds derived from 4H-pyranylidene-linked acceptors have been synthesized, and their linear and nonlinear optical properties (displaying μβ values up to 3000 × 10−48 esu) have been compared to those of analogous one-dimensional derivatives. The pyranylidene ring behaves strictly as a spacer, and not as a donor group

Numerical Model for Describing the Segregation Phenomenon in Lightweight Concrete Using Density Sections

In this work, numerical models were obtained for describing the segregation phenomenon in lightweight aggregate concrete. To that end, a numerical methodology based on the generation of geometric models of finite elements has been applied, selecting those that describe better this phenomenon. The use of lightweight aggregate concretes (LWC) allows greater design flexibility and substantial cost savings. It is also well known that it contributes to a positive impact on the energy consumption of a building due to the high-thermal resistance values. However, lightweight concretes are susceptible to present aggregate segregation due to density differences between its components during concrete vibration. Segregation in concrete may strongly affect the concrete global properties. This fact justifies the needs for the identification and quantification of this phenomenon, in order to estimate the concrete segregation experimentally, a LWC was mixed in laboratory conditions. Controlled segregation was caused applying different times of internal vibration in a cylinder specimen. The specimens were horizontally sectioned in order to obtain the density in each section because the segregation index can be estimated obtaining a relation by comparing the densities of the upper and lower parts. Firstly, ANOVA test was performed to determine the statistical significance (p<0.05) of the differences in the density of the different sections, differences in the aggregate type and differences in the time of concrete vibration. Results show that there is a significant difference of each section and there is no significant difference of each lightweight aggregate used to mix the concrete in spite of their different density. In order to model the segregation in the LWC, at first, linear models were considered and rejected because for not explaining the phenomenon. However, the application of numerical models shows good results to describe the phenomenon of segregation in LWC.This research was funded by the University of Alicante (GRE13-03) and (VIGROB-256)

4H-Pyran-4-ylidenes: Strong Proaromatic Donors for Organic Nonlinear Optical Chromophores

Merocyanines where a polyenic spacer separates a 4H-pyran-4-ylidene moiety and different strong organic acceptors have been synthesized. According to NMR studies and X-ray diffraction data, these compounds have weakly alternated structures and remarkably zwitterionic ground states, with a partial aromatic character that is compared to those of other pyran derivatives. The proaromaticity of the 4H-pyran-4-ylidene donor lies behind the cyanine-like behavior and low (positive or negative) second-order optical nonlinearities of the shorter derivatives. On the other hand, lengthening the π-spacer gives rise to rapidly increasing μβ1907 values up to 17,400 × 10−48 esu

Investigating the Concordance in molecular subtypes of primary colorectal tumors and their matched synchronous liver metastasis

To date, no systematic analyses are available assessing concordance of molecular classifications between primary tumors (PT) and matched liver metastases (LM) of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). We investigated concordance between PT and LM for four clinically relevant CRC gene signatures. Twenty-seven fresh and 55 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded pairs of PT and synchronous LM of untreated mCRC patients were retrospectively collected and classified according to the MSI-like, BRAF-like, TGFB activated-like and the Consensus Molecular Subtypes (CMS) classification. We investigated classification concordance between PT and LM and association of TGFBa-like and CMS classification with overall survival. Fifty-one successfully profiled matched pairs were used for analyses. PT and matched LM were highly concordant in terms of BRAF-like and MSI-like signatures, (90.2% and 98% concordance, respectively). In contrast, 40% to 70% of PT that were classified as mesenchymal-like, based on the CMS and the TGFBa-like signature, respectively, lost this phenotype in their matched LM (60.8% and 76.5% concordance, respectively). This molecular switch was independent of the microenvironment composition. In addition, the significant change in subtypes was observed also by using methods developed to detect cancer cell-intrinsic subtypes. More importantly, the molecular switch did not influence the survival. PT classified as mesenchymal had worse survival as compared to nonmesenchymal PT (CMS4 vs CMS2, hazard ratio [HR] = 5.2, 95% CI = 1.5-18.5, P = .0048; TGFBa-like vs TGFBi-like, HR = 2.5, 95% CI = 1.1-5.6, P = .028). The same was not true for LM. Our study highlights that the origin of the tissue may have major consequences for precision medicine in mCRC

Non-Kaehler Heterotic String Compactifications with non-zero fluxes and constant dilaton

We construct new explicit compact supersymmetric valid solutions with non-zero field strength, non-flat instanton and constant dilaton to the heterotic equations of motion in dimension six. We present balanced Hermitian structures on compact nilmanifolds in dimension six satisfying the heterotic supersymmetry equations with non-zero flux, non-flat instanton and constant dilaton which obey the three-form Bianchi identity with curvature term taken with respect to either the Levi-Civita, the (+)-connection or the Chern connection. Among them, all our solutions with respect to the (+)-connection on the compact nilmanifold $M_3$ satisfy the heterotic equations of motion.Comment: LaTeX, 16 pp., no figures, new Theorem 1.1, references adde