Antiperovskite Li3OCl Superionic Conductor Films for Solid-State Li-Ion Batteries.

Antiperovskite Li3OCl superionic conductor films are prepared via pulsed laser deposition using a composite target. A significantly enhanced ionic conductivity of 2.0 × 10-4 S cm-1 at room temperature is achieved, and this value is more than two orders of magnitude higher than that of its bulk counterpart. The applicability of Li3OCl as a solid electrolyte for Li-ion batteries is demonstrated

The role of Th17 cells and regulatory T cells in Coxsackievirus B3-induced myocarditis

AbstractIL-17-producing (Th17) and regulatory T (Treg) cells have been well established in the pathogenesis of many inflammatory diseases. To assess whether Th17 and Treg were altered in acute virus-induced myocarditis (AVMC) mice, we assessed Th17/Treg functions on different levels in AVMC. It was shown that the expression of splenic Th17 cells and Th17-related cytokines (IL-17A, IL-21) markedly increased. Interestingly, the expression of splenic Treg cells and Treg-related cytokines (TGF-β, IL-10) also significantly increased. Using neutralization of IL-17 in the AVMC, we found that Treg cells roughly decreased compared with isotype control mice. However, T cells and perforin dramatically increased, followed by a marked reduction in CVB3 replication. The results suggested that Th17 cells possibly contributed to viral replication through the action of Treg cells in mediating T cells and perforin response in AVMC

Association of gestational age at birth with subsequent suspected Developmental Coordination Disorder in early childhood

Importance. It remains unknown whether children born at different degrees of prematurity, early-term and post-term might have a higher risk of developing Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) compared to completely full-term children (39-40 gestational weeks). Objective. To differentiate between suspected DCD in children with different gestational ages based on a national representative sample in China. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS We conducted a retrospective cohort study in China from 2018 to 2019. A total of 152,433 children from 2,403 public kindergartens in 551 cities of China aged 3-5 years old were included in the final analysis. The association between gestational age and motor performance was investigated. A multi-level regression model was developed to determine the strength of association for different gestational ages associated with suspected DCD when considering kindergartens as clusters. Main outcomes and measures. Children’s motor performance was assessed using the Little Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (LDCDQ), completed by parents. Gestational age was determined according to the mother’s medical records. Results. Of the 152,433 children aged 3-5 years old, 80,370 (52.7%) were male, and 72,063 (47.3%) were female. There were 45,052 children aged 3 years old (29.6%), 59,796 aged 4 years old(39.2%), and 47,585 children aged 5 years old (31.2%). The LDCDQ total scores for very-preterm (β=-1.74, 95%CI: -1.98, 1.50; p<0.001), moderately-preterm (β=-1.24, 95%CI: -1.60, -0.89; p<0.001), late-preterm (β=-0.92, 95%CI: -1.08, -0.76; p<0.001), early-term (β=-0.36, 95%CI: -0.46, -0.25; p<0.001) and post-term children (β=-0.47, 95%CI: -0.67, -0.26; p<0.001) were significantly lower than full-term children when adjusting for child, family and maternal health characteristics. The very-preterm (OR=1.35, 95%CI: 1.23,1.48; p<0.001), moderately-preterm (OR=1.18, 95%CI: 1.02, 1.36; p<0.001), late-preterm (OR =1.24, 95%CI: 1.16,1.32; p<0.001), early-term (OR =1.11, 95%CI: 1.06,1.16; p<0.001) and post-term children (OR =1.167, 95%CI: 1.07, 1.27; p<0.001) were more likely to fall in the suspected Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) category on the LDCDQ compared with completely full-term children after adjusting for the same characteristics. The associations between different gestational ages and suspected DCD were stronger in boys and older (5 year old) children (each p<0.05). Conclusions and relevance. We found significant associations between every degree of prematurity at birth, early-term and post-term birth with suspected DCD when compared with full-term birth. Our findings have important implications for understanding motor development in children born at different gestational ages. Long-term follow-up and rehabilitation interventions should be considered for early- and post-term born children

Efficacy and safety of low-dose IL-2 in the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Objectives Open-labelled clinical trials suggested that low-dose IL-2 might be effective in treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). A double-blind and placebocontrolled trial is required to formally evaluate the safety and efficacy of low-dose IL-2 therapy. Methods A randomised, double-blind and placebocontrolled clinical trial was designed to treat 60 patients with active SLE. These patients received either IL-2 (n=30) or placebo (n=30) with standard treatment for 12 weeks, and were followed up for additional 12 weeks. IL-2 at a dose of 1 million IU or placebo was administered subcutaneously every other day for 2 weeks and followed by a 2-week break as one treatment cycle. The primary endpoint was the SLE Responder Index-4 (SRI-4) at week 12. The secondary endpoints were other clinical responses, safety and dynamics of immune cell subsets. Results At week 12, the SRI-4 response rates were 55.17% and 30.00% for IL-2 and placebo, respectively (p=0.052). At week 24, the SRI-4 response rate of IL-2 group was 65.52%, compared with 36.67% of the placebo group (p=0.027). The primary endpoint was not met at week 12. Low-dose IL-2 treatment resulted in 53.85% (7/13) complete remission in patients with lupus nephritis, compared with 16.67% (2/12) in the placebo group (p=0.036). No serious infection was observed in the IL-2 group, but two in placebo group. Besides expansion of regulatory T cells, low-dose IL-2 may also sustain cellular immunity with enhanced natural killer cells. Conclusions Low-dose IL-2 might be effective and tolerated in treatment of SThe work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31530020,31570880,81471601,81601417 and 81701598), Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences to ZG LI, Beijing Sci-Tech Committee Z171100000417007,Clinical Medicine Plus X-Young Scholars Project of Peking University (PKU2019LCXQ013) supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Beijing Nova Program Z171100001117025, National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC0909003 to DY), BellberryViertel Senior Medical Research Fellowship to DY and Beijing SL PHARM

Resource Allocation Schemes Based on Intelligent Optimization Algorithms for D2D Communications Underlaying Cellular Networks

In this paper, the resource allocation problem for device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaying cellular networks is formulated and analyzed. In our scenario, we consider that the number of D2D user equipment (DUE) pairs is far larger than that of cellular user equipments (CUEs). Meanwhile, the resource blocks are divided into two types: resource blocks for CUEs and the ones for CUEs and DUEs. Firstly, the system model is presented, and the resource allocation problem is formulated. Then, a resource allocation scheme based on the genetic algorithm is proposed. To overcome the problem that the dedicated resource is not fully shared in the genetic algorithm, an improved harmony search algorithm is proposed for resource allocation. Finally, the analysis and simulation results show that the performances of the proposed genetic algorithm and the improved harmony search algorithm outperform than that of the random algorithm and are very close to that of the exhaustive algorithm. This result can provide an effective optimization for resource allocation of D2D communications

Investigation of 1.3 μm emission in Nd3+-doped bismuth-based oxide glasses

International audienceNd2O3-doped 43Bi2O3-xB2O3-(57−x)SiO2-1.0Nd2O3 (x=57, 47, 39, 28.5, 19.5, 10, 0 mol%) bismuth glasses were prepared by the conventional melt-quenching method, and the Nd3+: 4F3/2→4I13/2 fluorescence properties had been studied in an oxide system Bi2O3-B2O3-SiO2. The Judd-Ofelt analysis for Nd3+ ions in bismuth boron silicate glasses was also performed on the basis of absorption spectrum, and the transition probabilities, excited-state lifetimes, the fluorescence branching ratios, quantum efficiency and the stimulated emission cross-sections of 4F3/2→4I13/2 transition were calculated and discussed. The stimulated emission cross-sections of 1.3 μm were quite large due to a large refractive index of the host. Although the effective bandwidths decreased with increasing SiO2 content, quantum efficiencies and stimulated emission cross-sections enhanced largely with increasing SiO2 content

Removal of V(V) From Solution Using a Silica-Supported Primary Amine Resin: Batch Studies, Experimental Analysis, and Mathematical Modeling

Every year, a large quantity of vanadium-containing wastewater is discharged from industrial factories, resulting in severe environmental problems. In particular, V(V) is recognized as a potentially hazardous contaminant due to its high mobility and toxicity, and it has received considerable attention. In this study, a silica-supported primary amine resin (SiPAR) was prepared by in-situ polymerization, and the V(V) adsorption from the solution was examined. The as-prepared resin exhibited fast adsorption kinetics, and it could attain an equilibrium within 90 min for the V(V) solution concentration of 100 mg/L at an optimum pH of 4, whereas the commercial D302 resin required a treatment time of more than 3 h under the same conditions. Furthermore, the maximum adsorption capacity of the resin under optimum conditions for V(V) was calculated to be 70.57 mg/g. In addition, the kinetics and isotherm data were satisfactorily elucidated with the pseudo-second-order kinetics and Redlich&ndash;Peterson models, respectively. The silica-based resin exhibited an excellent selectivity for V(V), and the removal efficiency exceeded 97% in the presence of competitive anions at 100 mmol/L concentrations. The film mass-transfer coefficient (kf) and V(V) pore diffusivity (Dp) onto the resins were estimated by mathematical modeling. In summary, this study provided a potential adsorbent for the efficient removal of V(V) from wastewater

An Improved Bacterial-Foraging Optimization-Based Machine Learning Framework for Predicting the Severity of Somatization Disorder

It is of great clinical significance to establish an accurate intelligent model to diagnose the somatization disorder of community correctional personnel. In this study, a novel machine learning framework is proposed to predict the severity of somatization disorder in community correction personnel. The core of this framework is to adopt the improved bacterial foraging optimization (IBFO) to optimize two key parameters (penalty coefficient and the kernel width) of a kernel extreme learning machine (KELM) and build an IBFO-based KELM (IBFO-KELM) for the diagnosis of somatization disorder patients. The main innovation point of the IBFO-KELM model is the introduction of opposition-based learning strategies in traditional bacteria foraging optimization, which increases the diversity of bacterial species, keeps a uniform distribution of individuals of initial population, and improves the convergence rate of the BFO optimization process as well as the probability of escaping from the local optimal solution. In order to verify the effectiveness of the method proposed in this study, a 10-fold cross-validation method based on data from a symptom self-assessment scale (SCL-90) is used to make comparison among IBFO-KELM, BFO-KELM (model based on the original bacterial foraging optimization model), GA-KELM (model based on genetic algorithm), PSO-KELM (model based on particle swarm optimization algorithm) and Grid-KELM (model based on grid search method). The experimental results show that the proposed IBFO-KELM prediction model has better performance than other methods in terms of classification accuracy, Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC), sensitivity and specificity. It can distinguish very well between severe somatization disorder and mild somatization and assist the psychological doctor with clinical diagnosis

Removal of the Homolog Tellurium of Polonium by SiO₂ Nanofiber Filter for Lead Alloy-Cooled Reactors

The lead–bismuth eutectic (LBE) can be easily activated by neutron radiation to produce the radionuclide 210Po. It is therefore necessary to establish an effective method to remove vaporized polonium in the cover gas to prevent its release into the air in scenarios of reactor maintenance and coolant leakage accidents. This paper presents a SiO2 nanofiber membrane prepared based on the electrostatic spinning and calcination process. The SiO2 nanofiber membrane had the advantages of good flexibility, high-temperature resistance, and corrosion resistance. In the trapping experiments, the SiO2 nanofiber membrane filters showed excellent filtration performance at 300~400 °C, and the filtration efficiencies for Te, Pb, and Bi could reach 99%, 99%, and 98%, respectively. Proper filtration temperature and gas flow rate are important to maintain high filtration efficiency. After five cycles, the SiO2 nanofiber membrane filter still exhibited excellent cycle-use performance. In the density functional theory (DFT) calculations, PbPo and PbTe had strong interactions with amorphous SiO2, having adhesion energies of −2.96 to −2.83 eV/molecule

D-Xylose Blocks the Broad Negative Regulation of XylR on Lipid Metabolism and Affects Multiple Physiological Characteristics in Mycobacteria

D-xylose is the most abundant fermentable pentose, which usually represents an architectural component of the bacterial cell wall. However, its regulatory function and the involved signaling pathway in bacteria remain largely unclear. Here, we show that D-xylose can act as a signaling molecule to regulate the lipid metabolism and affect multiple physiological characteristics in mycobacteria. D-xylose directly interacts with XylR and inhibits its DNA-binding ability, thus blocking XylR-mediated repression. The xylose inhibitor, XylR, plays a global regulatory role and affects the expression of 166 mycobacterial genes that are involved in lipid synthesis and metabolism. Furthermore, we show that the xylose-dependent gene regulation of XylR affects the multiple physiological characteristics of Mycobacterium smegmatis, including bacterial size, colony phenotype, biofilm formation, cell aggregation, and antibiotic resistance. Finally, we found that XylR inhibited the survival of Mycobacterium bovis BCG in the host. Our findings provide novel insights into the molecular mechanism of lipid metabolism regulation and its correlation with bacterial physiological phenotypes