Zinc battery goes to anode-free

The zinc (Zn) batteries have challenges include uncontrollable dendritic growth, unreasonable negative to positive ratio and limited areal capacity. This highlight presents the latest development to resolve the uncontrollable Zn dendrite formation at high areal capacities of 200 mAh·cm–2 through a two-dimensional metal/metal-Zn alloy heterostructured interface. The anode-free Zn batteries with an attractive and practical pouch cell energy density of 62 Wh·kg–1 enlighten an arena towards their commercialization

Quantum Image Processing and Its Application to Edge Detection: Theory and Experiment

Processing of digital images is continuously gaining in volume and relevance, with concomitant demands on data storage, transmission and processing power. Encoding the image information in quantum-mechanical systems instead of classical ones and replacing classical with quantum information processing may alleviate some of these challenges. By encoding and processing the image information in quantum-mechanical systems, we here demonstrate the framework of quantum image processing, where a pure quantum state encodes the image information: we encode the pixel values in the probability amplitudes and the pixel positions in the computational basis states. Our quantum image representation reduces the required number of qubits compared to existing implementations, and we present image processing algorithms that provide exponential speed-up over their classical counterparts. For the commonly used task of detecting the edge of an image, we propose and implement a quantum algorithm that completes the task with only one single-qubit operation, independent of the size of the image. This demonstrates the potential of quantum image processing for highly efficient image and video processing in the big data era.Comment: 13 pages, including 9 figures and 5 appendixe

Intestinal microflora promotes Th2-mediated immunity through NLRP3 in damp and heat environments

BackgroundWith the worsening of the greenhouse effect, the correlation between the damp-heat environment (DH) and the incidence of various diseases has gained increasing attention. Previous studies have demonstrated that DH can lead to intestinal disorders, enteritis, and an up-regulation of NOD-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3). However, the mechanism of NLRP3 in this process remains unclear.MethodsWe established a DH animal model to observe the impact of a high temperature and humidity environment on the mice. We sequenced the 16S rRNA of mouse feces, and the RNA transcriptome of intestinal tissue, as well as the levels of cytokines including interferon (IFN)-γ and interleukin (IL)-4 in serum.ResultsOur results indicate that the intestinal macrophage infiltration and the expression of inflammatory genes were increased in mice challenged with DH for 14 days, while the M2 macrophages were decreased in Nlrp3-/- mice. The alpha diversity of intestinal bacteria in Nlrp3-/- mice was significantly higher than that in control mice, including an up-regulation of the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio. Transcriptomic analysis revealed 307 differentially expressed genes were decreased in Nlrp3-/- mice compared with control mice, which was related to humoral immune response, complement activation, phagocytic recognition, malaria and inflammatory bowel disease. The ratio of IFN-γ/IL-4 was decreased in control mice but increased in Nlrp3-/- mice.ConclusionsOur study found that the inflammation induced by DH promotes Th2-mediated immunity via NLRP3, which is closely related to the disruption of intestinal flora

Pretreating poplar cuttings with low nitrogen ameliorates salt stress responses by increasing stored carbohydrates and priming stress signaling pathways

Soil salinity is a widespread stress in semi-arid forests worldwide, but how to manage nitrogen (N) nutrition to improve plant saline tolerance remains unclear. Here, the cuttings of a widely distributed poplar from central Asia, Populus russikki Jabl., were exposed to either normal or low nitrogen (LN) concentrations for two weeks in semi-controlled greenhouse, and then they were added with moderate salt solution or not for another two weeks to evaluate their physiological, biochemical, metabolites and transcriptomic profile changes. LN-pretreating alleviated the toxicity caused by the subsequent salt stress in the poplar plants, demonstrated by a significant reduction in the influx of Na+ and Cl- and improvement of the K+/Na+ ratio. The other salt-stressed traits were also ameliarated, indicated by the variations of chlorophyll content, PSII photochemical activity and lipid peroxidation. Stress alleviation resulted from two different processes. First, LN pretreatment caused a significant increase of non-structural carbohydrates (NSC), allowed for an increased production of osmolytes and a higher potential fueling ion transport under subsequent salt condition, along with increased transcript levels of the cation/H+ ATPase. Second, LN pretreatment enhanced the transcript levels of stress signaling components and phytohormones pathway as well as antioxidant enzyme activities. The results indicate that early restrictions of N supply could enhance posterior survival under saline stress in poplar plants, which is important for plantation programs and restoration activities in semi-arid areas.This research was supported by Natural Science Foundation of China ( 31770644 and 31270660 ), Project of Innovation research team in Sichuan Education Administration in China (No. 13TD0023 )