Early lineage restriction in temporally distinct populations of Mesp1 progenitors during mammalian heart development.

Cardiac development arises from two sources of mesoderm progenitors, the first heart field (FHF) and the second (SHF). Mesp1 has been proposed to mark the most primitive multipotent cardiac progenitors common for both heart fields. Here, using clonal analysis of the earliest prospective cardiovascular progenitors in a temporally controlled manner during early gastrulation, we found that Mesp1 progenitors consist of two temporally distinct pools of progenitors restricted to either the FHF or the SHF. FHF progenitors were unipotent, whereas SHF progenitors were either unipotent or bipotent. Microarray and single-cell PCR with reverse transcription analysis of Mesp1 progenitors revealed the existence of molecularly distinct populations of Mesp1 progenitors, consistent with their lineage and regional contribution. Together, these results provide evidence that heart development arises from distinct populations of unipotent and bipotent cardiac progenitors that independently express Mesp1 at different time points during their specification, revealing that the regional segregation and lineage restriction of cardiac progenitors occur very early during gastrulation.This is the author's accepted manuscript and will be under embargo until the 24th of February 2015. The final version is published by NPG in Nature Cell Biology here: http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v16/n9/full/ncb3024.html

Absorption of Sulfur Dioxide by Tetraglyme–Sodium Salt Ionic Liquid

A series of tetraglyme⁻sodium salt ionic liquids have been prepared and found to be promising solvents to absorb SO2. The experiments here show that [Na⁻tetraglyme][SCN] ionic liquid has excellent thermal stability and a 30% increase in SO2 absorption capacity compared to other sodium salt ionic liquids and the previously studied lithium salt ionic liquids in terms of molar absorption capacity. The interaction between SO2 and the ionic liquid was concluded to be physical absorption by IR and NMR

Research on exhaust emission characteristics and technical route under CLTC cycle

In this paper, the light duty that meets the China 6 emission standard is selected to study the emission characteristics of different emission control technology routes under China light-duty vehicle test cycle (CLTC). The results show that the cold start stage of CLTC cycle is still the stage with the most pollutant emissions. The THC, CO and NOx emissions of vehicles on the supercharged direct injection technology are higher than those on the naturally aspirated port fuel injection technology. In terms of reducing the exhaust emission, PHEV technology route is the best, followed by naturally aspirated PFI technology route, and then turbocharged direct injection with GPF route

Direct promotion effect of Fe on no reduction by activated carbon loaded with Fe species

Activated carbon materials loaded with Fe species were prepared via an impregnation method and studied. Various analyses showed good dispersion of Fe species on the activated carbon surface when the loading amount did not exceed 2 g of iron(III) nitrate nonahydrate on 10 g of activated carbon. Additionally, the simultaneously existing forms of Fe species on the activated samples were found to be Fe3O4, FeO, and elemental Fe(0). NO reduction experiments under anaerobic conditions showed that the loading of Fe species enhanced the NO reducing ability from an NO conversion of (28 to 86)% at 850 degrees C, which is a more remarkable influence on NO reduction than that of the well-known C-O complexes. Thermodynamic analysis and detailed experimental results led to a new mechanism with two independent routes, both of which require Fe participation and proceed at temperatures below and above 800 degrees C, respectively, and generate different COx products. Furthermore, one of the routes was more efficient in reducing NO than the other. This mechanism explained the experiments much better than the existing C-O theory of complexes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Modeling and prediction of copper removal from aqueous solutions by nZVI/rGO magnetic nanocomposites using ANN-GA and ANN-PSO

Abstract Reduced graphene oxide-supported nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI/rGO) magnetic nanocomposites were prepared and then applied in the Cu(II) removal from aqueous solutions. Scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and superconduction quantum interference device magnetometer were performed to characterize the nZVI/rGO nanocomposites. In order to reduce the number of experiments and the economic cost, response surface methodology (RSM) combined with artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as artificial neural network (ANN), genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), has been utilized as a major tool that can model and optimize the removal processes, because a tremendous advance has recently been made on AI that may result in extensive applications. Based on RSM, ANN-GA and ANN-PSO were employed to model the Cu(II) removal process and optimize the operating parameters, e.g., operating temperature, initial pH, initial concentration and contact time. The ANN-PSO model was proven to be an effective tool for modeling and optimizing the Cu(II) removal with a low absolute error and a high removal efficiency. Furthermore, the isotherm, kinetic, thermodynamic studies and the XPS analysis were performed to explore the mechanisms of Cu(II) removal process

Excited States and Photodebromination of Selected Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers: Computational and Quantitative Structure—Property Relationship Studies

This paper presents a density functional theory (DFT)/time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) study on the lowest lying singlet and triplet excited states of 20 selected polybrominateddiphenyl ether (PBDE) congeners, with the solvation effect included in the calculations using the polarized continuum model (PCM). The results obtained showed that for most of the brominated diphenyl ether (BDE) congeners, the lowest singlet excited state was initiated by the electron transfer from HOMO to LUMO, involving a π–σ* excitation. In triplet excited states, structure of the BDE congeners differed notably from that of the BDE ground states with one of the specific C–Br bonds bending off the aromatic plane. In addition, the partial least squares regression (PLSR), principal component analysis-multiple linear regression analysis (PCA-MLR), and back propagation artificial neural network (BP-ANN) approaches were employed for a quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) study. Based on the previously reported kinetic data for the debromination by ultraviolet (UV) and sunlight, obtained QSPR models exhibited a reasonable evaluation of the photodebromination reactivity even when the BDE congeners had same degree of bromination, albeit different patterns of bromination