Facile synthesis of a nickel sulfide (NiS) hierarchical flower for the electrochemical oxidation of H2O2 and the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR).

The synthesis of a novel hierarchical flower-like NiS via a solvothermal method for the electrochemcial oxidation of H2O2 on a carbon paste electrode with high catalytic activity for the (MOR) in an alkaline medium has been reported. Novel nickel sulfide (NiS) hierarchical flower-like structures were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, and transmission electron microscopy. A carbon paste electrode was modified with the as-prepared hierarchical flower-like NiS, resulting in a high electrocatalytic activity toward the oxidation of H2O2. The NiS-modified electrode was used for H2O2 sensing, which was achieved over a wide linear range from 0.5 μMto1.37mM(I/μA =-0.19025 + 0.06094 C/mM) with a low limit of detection (LOD) of 0.3 μM and a limit of quantitation (LOQ) of 0.8 μM. The hierarchical flower-like NiS also exhibited a high electrocatalytic activity for the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) in an alkaline medium with a high tolerance toward the catalyst-poisoning species generated during the MOR. The MOR proceeded via the direct electrooxidation of methanol on the oxidized NiS surface layer because the oxidation peak potential of the MOR was more positive than that of the oxidation of NiS

Association analysis of dopaminergic degeneration and the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in Parkinson’s disease

IntroductionPeripheral inflammatory responses are suggested to play a major role in the pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease (PD). The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), a new recognized biomarker, can reflect peripheral inflammation in PD. However, the association between the NLR and dopaminergic degeneration in PD remains unclear.MethodsIn this retrospective study, 101 enrolled PD patients were categorized into early-stage and advanced-stage PD based on the Hoehn and Yahr (HY) scale. We evaluated the clinical characteristics, peripheral immune profile, and 11C-CFT striatal dopamine transporter (DAT) binding levels. Linear regression analyses were employed to assess the associations between NLR and striatal DAT levels at different stages in PD patients.ResultsCovariate-controlled regression analysis revealed that higher NLR was significantly associated with lower DAT levels in the caudate (β = −0.27, p = 0.003) and the putamen (β = −0.27, p = 0.011). Moreover, in the early-stage PD subgroup, a similar association was observed (caudate: β = −0.37, p = 0.013; putamen: β = −0.45, p = 0.005). The lymphocytes count was correlated positively with the striatal DAT levels in the Spearman correlation analysis whether in total patients (caudate: ρ = 0.25, p = 0.013; putamen: ρ = 0.22, p = 0.026) or in the early-stage subgroup (caudate: ρ = 0.31, p = 0.023, putamen: ρ = 0.34, p = 0.011).ConclusionDopaminergic degeneration is associated with peripheral inflammation in PD. The NLR, a widely used inflammatory marker, may have the potential to reflect the degree of dopaminergic degeneration in individuals with early-stage PD

The Chinese Open Science Network (COSN): Building an Open Science Community From Scratch

Open Science is becoming a mainstream scientific ideology in psychology and related fields. However, researchers, especially early-career researchers (ECRs) in developing countries, are facing significant hurdles in engaging in Open Science and moving it forward. In China, various societal and cultural factors discourage ECRs from participating in Open Science, such as the lack of dedicated communication channels and the norm of modesty. To make the voice of Open Science heard by Chinese-speaking ECRs and scholars at large, the Chinese Open Science Network (COSN) was initiated in 2016. With its core values being grassroots-oriented, diversity, and inclusivity, COSN has grown from a small Open Science interest group to a recognized network both in the Chinese-speaking research community and the international Open Science community. So far, COSN has organized three in-person workshops, 12 tutorials, 48 talks, and 55 journal club sessions and translated 15 Open Science-related articles and blogs from English to Chinese. Currently, the main social media account of COSN (i.e., the WeChat Official Account) has more than 23,000 subscribers, and more than 1,000 researchers/students actively participate in the discussions on Open Science. In this article, we share our experience in building such a network to encourage ECRs in developing countries to start their own Open Science initiatives and engage in the global Open Science movement. We foresee great collaborative efforts of COSN together with all other local and international networks to further accelerate the Open Science movement

Fungi and bacteria trade-off mediates drought-induced reduction in wood decomposition

11 páginas.. 7 figuras.- 2 tablas.- referencias.- Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2024.108169Climate change has significantly increased the frequency and intensity of drought events in recent decades, which may affect the decomposition of organic matter such as deadwood. Previous studies have examined the impacts of microclimate and wood traits on deadwood decomposition, but how wood microbes regulate effects of drought intensity on deadwood decomposition remains unclear. In this study, a field drought experiment was conducted with three throughfall exclusion levels (i.e., control, −35% and −70% rainfall treatments) in a subtropical forest to probe relative importance of microclimate, wood traits, and microbial biomass on wood decomposition. Our results showed that the −35% and −70% rainfall treatments significantly decreased wood CO2 efflux by 28.27% and 47.49%, respectively. Drought-induced decreases in wood CO2 efflux were mainly mediated by wood microbial biomass, particularly wood fungi biomass. The structural equation modelling indicated a shift in the dominant wood microbial communities in regulating wood CO2 efflux from bacteria to fungi as drought intensities increased. Our findings highlight the crucial role of wood microbial community with the trade-off between fungi and bacteria on deadwood decomposition under drought, which should be taken into account to decode forest carbon cycle − climate feedback in the future research.We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. This study was supported jointly by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31930072, 31901200, 32001135, 32071593), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (21ZR1419200), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central UniversitiesPeer reviewe

Potential of Core-Collapse Supernova Neutrino Detection at JUNO

JUNO is an underground neutrino observatory under construction in Jiangmen, China. It uses 20kton liquid scintillator as target, which enables it to detect supernova burst neutrinos of a large statistics for the next galactic core-collapse supernova (CCSN) and also pre-supernova neutrinos from the nearby CCSN progenitors. All flavors of supernova burst neutrinos can be detected by JUNO via several interaction channels, including inverse beta decay, elastic scattering on electron and proton, interactions on C12 nuclei, etc. This retains the possibility for JUNO to reconstruct the energy spectra of supernova burst neutrinos of all flavors. The real time monitoring systems based on FPGA and DAQ are under development in JUNO, which allow prompt alert and trigger-less data acquisition of CCSN events. The alert performances of both monitoring systems have been thoroughly studied using simulations. Moreover, once a CCSN is tagged, the system can give fast characterizations, such as directionality and light curve

Detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with JUNO

As an underground multi-purpose neutrino detector with 20 kton liquid scintillator, Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is competitive with and complementary to the water-Cherenkov detectors on the search for the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB). Typical supernova models predict 2-4 events per year within the optimal observation window in the JUNO detector. The dominant background is from the neutral-current (NC) interaction of atmospheric neutrinos with 12C nuclei, which surpasses the DSNB by more than one order of magnitude. We evaluated the systematic uncertainty of NC background from the spread of a variety of data-driven models and further developed a method to determine NC background within 15\% with {\it{in}} {\it{situ}} measurements after ten years of running. Besides, the NC-like backgrounds can be effectively suppressed by the intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capabilities of liquid scintillators. In this talk, I will present in detail the improvements on NC background uncertainty evaluation, PSD discriminator development, and finally, the potential of DSNB sensitivity in JUNO

Real-time Monitoring for the Next Core-Collapse Supernova in JUNO

Core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is one of the most energetic astrophysical events in the Universe. The early and prompt detection of neutrinos before (pre-SN) and during the SN burst is a unique opportunity to realize the multi-messenger observation of the CCSN events. In this work, we describe the monitoring concept and present the sensitivity of the system to the pre-SN and SN neutrinos at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), which is a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector under construction in South China. The real-time monitoring system is designed with both the prompt monitors on the electronic board and online monitors at the data acquisition stage, in order to ensure both the alert speed and alert coverage of progenitor stars. By assuming a false alert rate of 1 per year, this monitoring system can be sensitive to the pre-SN neutrinos up to the distance of about 1.6 (0.9) kpc and SN neutrinos up to about 370 (360) kpc for a progenitor mass of 30$M_{\odot}$ for the case of normal (inverted) mass ordering. The pointing ability of the CCSN is evaluated by using the accumulated event anisotropy of the inverse beta decay interactions from pre-SN or SN neutrinos, which, along with the early alert, can play important roles for the followup multi-messenger observations of the next Galactic or nearby extragalactic CCSN.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Trust in government regarding COVID-19 and its associations with preventive health behaviour and prosocial behaviour during the pandemic: a cross-sectional and longitudinal study

Background. The effective implementation of government policies and measures for controlling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic requires compliance from the public. This study aimed to examine cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of trust ingovernment regarding COVID-19 control with the adoption of recommended health behaviours and prosocial behaviours, and potential determinants of trust in government duringthe pandemic.Methods. This study analysed data from the PsyCorona Survey, an international project onCOVID-19 that included 23 733 participants from 23 countries (representative in age andgender distributions by country) at baseline survey and 7785 participants who also completedfollow-up surveys. Specification curve analysis was used to examine concurrent associationsbetween trust in government and self-reported behaviours. We further used structural equation model to explore potential determinants of trust in government. Multilevel linear regressions were used to examine associations between baseline trust and longitudinal behavioural changes.Results. Higher trust in government regarding COVID-19 control was significantly associatedwith higher adoption of health behaviours (handwashing, avoiding crowded space, self-quarantine) and prosocial behaviours in specification curve analyses (median standardised β =0.173 and 0.229, p < 0.001). Government perceived as well organised, disseminating clear messages and knowledge on COVID-19, and perceived fairness were positively associated withtrust in government (standardised β = 0.358, 0.230, 0.056, and 0.249, p < 0.01). Higher trustat baseline survey was significantly associated with lower rate of decline in health behavioursover time ( p for interaction = 0.001).Conclusions. These results highlighted the importance of trust in government in the control of Covid-19

Abundance, biomass and composition of spring ice algal and phytoplankton communities of the Laptev Sea (Arctic)

Abundance, biomass and composition of the ice algal and phytoplankton communities were investigated in the southeastern Laptev Sea in spring 1999. Diatoms dominated the algal communities and pennate diatoms dominated the diatom population. 12 dominant algal species occurred within sea ice and underlying water column, including Fragilariopsis oceanica, F. cylindrus, Nitzschia frigida, N. promare, Achnanthes taeniata, Nitzschia neofrigida, Navicula pelagica, N. vanhoeffenii, N. septentrionalis, Melosira arctica, Clindrotheca closterium and Pyramimonas sp. The algal abundance of bottom 10cm sea ice varied between 14.6 and 1562.2 x 10(4) cells 1(-1) with an average of 639.0 x 10(4) cells 1(-1), and the algal biomass ranged from 7.89 to 2093.5 µg Cl(-1) with an average of 886.9 µg Cl(-1), which were generally one order of magnitude higher than those of sub-bottom ice and two orders of magnitude higher than those of underlying surface water. The integrated algal abundance and biomass of lowermost 20 cm ice column were averagely 7.7 and 12.2 times as those of upper 20 m water column, respectively, suggesting that the ice algae might play an important role in maintaining the coastal marine ecosystem before the thawing of sea ice. Ice algae influenced the phytoplankton community of the underlying water column. However, the "seeding" of ice algae for phytoplankton bloom was negligible because of the low phytoplankton biomass within the underlying water column

Heat shock effects and population survival in the polar dinoflagellate Polarella glacialis

China Scholarship CouncilThe rare bipolar dinoflagellate Polarella glacialis forms blooms in the Antarctic sea ice and the Arctic water column every year. Recently, P. glacialis-like genotypes were found in temperate waters. Here, we investigated how P. glacialis would respond if it were transported from polar to temperate waters by shifting cultures of P. glacialis (strain CCMP2088) from 4 degrees C to 10 degrees and 15 degrees C. After a 4-day lag phase, the cultures remaining at 4 degrees C grew exponentially at 0.10 +/- 0.17 d(-1) for 22 days before entering early stationary phase. Consistent to this growth pattern, flow cytometric analysis on samples collected at the same time showed higher percentages of S-cells on day 9 and day 12 than day 33 and day 37. Western blot analysis of the CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco(1) (typically 55 kDa) and the cell cycle-related protein PCNA(2) (typically 36 kDa) revealed active expression of both proteins, and higher expression in exponential growth than in early stationary phase. In comparison, cultures shifted to 10 degrees and 15 degrees C first experienced a 4-day lag phase plus a 13-15 day declining phase (growth rates were -0.21 +/- 0.10 d(-1) and -0.23 +/- 0.08 d(-1) respectively), then a steady cell density period (growth rates were 0.05 +/- 0.12 d(-1) and 0.01 +/- 0.15 d(-1) respectively). Strikingly, the percentages of the G(2)/M phase (%G(2)M) in the 10 degrees C-cultures remained at high levels and G(1) population at a low level, suggesting that a subpopulation of the cells might still be actively dividing. %G(2)M of the 15 degrees C-culture remained to be the lowest among the three temperature treatments (P<0.05), indicative of least active cell division. Molecular apparatus of photosynthesis and cell division cycle appeared to be substantially damaged as the culture stayed longer at the elevated temperatures, as evidenced by the progressive degradation of Rubisco and aggregation of PCNA. Our results show that although extreme heat shock as exerted by the temperature rise from 4 degrees C to 10 degrees or 15 degrees C caused impairment of molecular engines of photosynthesis and cell division cycle and extensive population decline in P. glacialis, this polar dinoflagellate seems to be able to survive the extreme temperature insults and potentially can be spread by humans to temperate regions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved