Developing and sustainably utilize the coastal mudflat areas in China

Coastalmudflat areas are regarded as the important reserve land resource in China. Rational exploitation and development of the mudflat areas can relieve the stress of inadequate land resources. Probing into the developing models of resource exploitation of coastal tidal mudflats is one of the important components of achieving the sustainable development in the coastal areas. Therefore, the development history of coastal mudflats after 1950s in China is briefly introduced in this paper. Then, the status in quo of the modes of development and utilization of coastal mudflat in China the paper is reviewed with a special attention payed to the agricultural use of coastal resource, especially halophytes and improved salt-tolerant varieties planting, agricultural dyke pond and coastal saline-alkali soil remediation. Based on related research frontier, sustainable developmental prospects of these coastal areas are presented as well. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V

Hierarchical CO2-protective shell for highly efficient oxygen reduction reaction

The widespread application of intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells is mainly being hurdled by the cathode's low efficiency on oxygen reduction reaction and poor resistance to carbon dioxide impurity. Here we report the fabrication of a hierarchical shell-covered porous cathode through infiltration followed by microwave plasma treatment. The hierarchical shell consists of a dense thin-film substrate with cones on the top of the substrate, leading to a three-dimensional (3D) heterostructured electrode. The shell allows the cathode working stably in CO2-containing air, and significantly improving the cathode's oxygen reduction reactivity with an area specific resistance of ∼0.13 Ωcm2 at 575°C. The method is also suitable for fabricating functional shell on the irregularly shaped substrate in various applications

Heterostructured electrode with concentration gradient shell for highly efficient oxygen reduction at low temperature

Heterostructures of oxides have been widely investigated in optical, catalytic and electrochemical applications, because the heterostructured interfaces exhibit pronouncedly different transport, charge, and reactivity characteristics compared to the bulk of the oxides. Here we fabricated a three-dimensional (3D) heterostructured electrode with a concentration gradient shell. The concentration gradient shell with the composition of Ba0.5-xSr0.5-yCo0.8Fe0.2O3-δ (BSCF-D) was prepared by simply treating porous Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3-δ (BSCF) backbone with microwave-plasma. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy reveals that the oxygen surface exchange rate of the BSCF-D is enhanced by ~250% that of the pristine BSCF due to the appearance of the shell. The heterostructured electrode shows an interfacial resistance as low as 0.148 Ω cm2 at 550°C and an unchanged electrochemical performance after heating treatment for 200 h. This method offers potential to prepare heterostructured oxides not only for electrochemical devices but also for many other applications that use ceramic materials

A family of oxide ion conductors based on the ferroelectric perovskite Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3

Oxide ion conductors find important technical applications in electrochemical devices such as solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), oxygen separation membranes and sensors1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3 (NBT) is a well-known lead-free piezoelectric material; however, it is often reported to possess high leakage conductivity that is problematic for its piezo- and ferroelectric applications10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Here we report this high leakage to be oxide ion conduction due to Bi-deficiency and oxygen vacancies induced during materials processing. Mg-doping on the Ti-site increases the ionic conductivity to ~0.01 S cm−1 at 600 °C, improves the electrolyte stability in reducing atmospheres and lowers the sintering temperature. This study not only demonstrates how to adjust the nominal NBT composition for dielectric-based applications, but also, more importantly, gives NBT-based materials an unexpected role as a completely new family of oxide ion conductors with potential applications in intermediate-temperature SOFCs and opens up a new direction to design oxide ion conductors in perovskite oxides

Observation of a ppb mass threshoud enhancement in \psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p}) decay

The decay channel $\psi^\prime\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi(J/\psi\to\gamma p\bar{p})$ is studied using a sample of $1.06\times 10^8$ $\psi^\prime$ events collected by the BESIII experiment at BEPCII. A strong enhancement at threshold is observed in the $p\bar{p}$ invariant mass spectrum. The enhancement can be fit with an $S$-wave Breit-Wigner resonance function with a resulting peak mass of $M=1861^{+6}_{-13} {\rm (stat)}^{+7}_{-26} {\rm (syst)} {\rm MeV/}c^2$ and a narrow width that is $\Gamma<38 {\rm MeV/}c^2$ at the 90% confidence level. These results are consistent with published BESII results. These mass and width values do not match with those of any known meson resonance.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Chinese Physics

IGFBP3 mRNA expression in benign and malignant breast tumors

INTRODUCTION: Most previous studies have focused on evaluating the association between circulating insulin-like growth factor binding protein 3 (IGFBP-3) levels and breast cancer risk. Emerging evidence over the past few years suggests that IGFBP-3 may act directly on mammary epithelial cells. METHODS: To understand the role of IGFBP-3 in breast tumorigenesis, we investigated IGFBP3 mRNA expression levels in benign and malignant breast tumors and their adjacent normal tissues using real-time quantitative PCR. RESULTS: Cancer tissues had significantly lower IGFBP3 expression than benign tumor tissues (p < 0.001). IGFBP3 expressions in both tumor and adjacent tissues were higher in patients who had proliferative benign tumors than in those who had non-proliferative benign tumors. Among patients with benign breast disease, IGFBP3 expression in the tumor was significantly higher than that in their adjacent normal tissue. There were no apparent associations of IGFBP3 expression in cancer tissues with either overall survival or disease-free survival in a cohort of 521 patients with breast cancer. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the expression level of IGFBP3 in breast tissues may be involved in breast tumorigenesis

Low-Temperature Preparation of Superparamagnetic CoFe2O4 Microspheres with High Saturation Magnetization

Based on a low-temperature route, monodispersed CoFe2O4 microspheres (MSs) were fabricated through aggregation of primary nanoparticles. The microstructural and magnetic characteristics of the as-prepared MSs were characterized by X-ray diffraction/photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning/transmitting electron microscopy, and vibrating sample magnetometer. The results indicate that the diameters of CoFe2O4 MSs with narrow size distribution can be tuned from over 200 to ~330 nm. Magnetic measurements reveal these MSs exhibit superparamagnetic behavior at room temperature with high saturation magnetization. Furthermore, the mechanism of formation of the monodispersed CoFe2O4 MSs was discussed on the basis of time-dependent experiments, in which hydrophilic PVP plays a crucial role

Azimuthal anisotropy and correlations at large transverse momenta in p+pp+p and Au+Au collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}= 200 GeV

Results on high transverse momentum charged particle emission with respect to the reaction plane are presented for Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}$= 200 GeV. Two- and four-particle correlations results are presented as well as a comparison of azimuthal correlations in Au+Au collisions to those in $p+p$ at the same energy. Elliptic anisotropy, $v_2$, is found to reach its maximum at $p_t \sim 3$ GeV/c, then decrease slowly and remain significant up to $p_t\approx 7$ -- 10 GeV/c. Stronger suppression is found in the back-to-back high-$p_t$ particle correlations for particles emitted out-of-plane compared to those emitted in-plane. The centrality dependence of $v_2$ at intermediate $p_t$ is compared to simple models based on jet quenching.Comment: 4 figures. Published version as PRL 93, 252301 (2004