Visual Detection of Adenosine Triphosphate by Taylor Rising: A Simple Point-of-Care Testing Method Based on Rolling Circle Amplification

Rapid and sensitive point-of-care testing (POCT) is an extremely critical mission in practical applications, especially for rigorous military medicine, home health care, and in the third world. Here, we report a visual POCT method for adenosine triphosphate (ATP) detection based on Taylor rising in the corner of quadratic geometries between two rod surfaces. We discuss the principle of Taylor rising, demonstrating that it is significantly influenced by contact angle, surface tension, and density of the sample, which are controlled by ATP-dependent rolling circle amplification (RCA). In the presence of ATP, RCA reaction effectively suppresses Taylor-rising behavior, due to the increased contact angle, density, and decreased surface tension. Without addition of ATP, untriggered RCA reaction is favorable for Taylor rising, resulting in a significant height. With this proposed method, visual sensitive detection of ATP without the aid of other instruments is realized with only a 5 μL droplet, which has good selectivity and a low detection limit (17 nM). Importantly, this visual method provides a promising POCT tool for user-friendly molecular diagnostics.     

Study of MW-scale biogas-fed SOFC-WGS-TSA-PEMFC hybrid power technology as distributed energy system: Thermodynamic,exergetic and thermo-economic evaluation

Advanced biogas power generation technology has been attracting attentions, which contributes to the waste disposal and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. This work proposes and models a novel biogas-fed hybrid power generation system consisting of solid oxide fuel cell, water gas shift reaction, thermal swing adsorption and proton exchange membrane fuel cell (SOFC-WGS-TSA-PEMFC). The thermodynamic, exergetic, and thermo-economic analyses of this hybrid system for power generation were conducted to comprehensively evaluate its performance. It was found that the novel biogas-fed hybrid system has a gross energy conversion efficiency of 68.63% and exergy efficiency of 65.36%, indicating high efficiency for this kind of hybrid power technology. The market sensitivity analysis showed that the hybrid system also has a low sensitivity to market price fluctuation. Under the current subsidy level for the distributed biogas power plant, the levelized cost of energy can be lowered to 0.02942 $/kWh for a 1 MW scale system. Accordingly, the payback period and annual return on investment can reach 1.4 year and about 20%, respectively. These results reveal that the proposed hybrid system is promising and economically feasible as a distributed power plant, especially for the small power scale (no more than 2 MW).     

Design and optimization of ceramic membrane structure: From the perspective of flux matching between support and membrane

The support flux was first investigated as a separate influencing factor for its effect on performances of ceramic filtration membranes. Three pre-membranes were prepared by tape-casting and then transfer-coated to supports to form dual-layer ceramic membranes after sintering. Experiments demonstrated that membrane layers with almost the same properties were obtained despite the huge difference in support flux. When the support flux increases from 3.120 to 97.53 m³m^?2h^?1, the flux of these three membrane series have increased by 75%, 186% and 228%, respectively. Experimental rules can provide structural design and evaluation from the perspective of permeability. The limit membrane flux of a certain system was derived according to the resistance distribution law of internal membrane structure and the Darcy's theorem. On this basis, a method for designing support flux was proposed. Furthermore, we present a criterion to quickly and easily evaluate the match between the support and the top layer, which is the ratio of membrane resistance to total resistance. Finally, the filtration resistance of penetration caused by suction of membrane particles into the support was measured for the first time, taking the advantage of the transfer-coating method that inherently free of penetration. Our works are expected to deepen the understanding of the ceramic membrane structure and provided guidance for its rational design and optimization.     

Study on the Height of the Mining-Induced Water-Conducting Fracture Zone Under the Q 2l Loess Cover of the Jurassic Coal Seam in Northern Shaanxi,China

A method to calculate the height of a water-conducting fractured zone (HWCFZ) was developed based on the plate and shell theory, and the development of the HWCFZ in bedrock and Q2l loess strata is discussed in detail. First, the subsidence-deflection curve equation of the overlying stratum is theoretically derived, and then the ultimate deflection and free space height of rock strata are calculated. Moreover, the strata tensile strain is calculated by using integral calculus. In addition, the failure state of the rock is analyzed by comparing the theoretically calculated tensile strain with the experimentally measured yield tensile strain, allowing one to attain the maximum value of HWCFZ. This approach was tested at the Jinjitan coal mine; the theoretically predicted, experimentally measured, and numerically computed maximum HWCFZ values were 189.5, 187.3, and 188.5 m, respectively, demonstrating the accuracy of the proposed method. These results are highly significant for safe and environment-friendly coal mining in northwest Shaanxi, China.     

Semantic word shifts in a scientific domain

Understanding semantic word shifts in scientific domains is essential for facilitating interdisciplinary communication. Using a data set of published papers in the field of information retrieval (IR), this paper studies the semantic shifts of words in IR based on mining per-word topic distribution over time. We propose that semantic word shifts not only occur over time, but also over topics. The shifts are examined from two perspectives, the topic-level and the context-level. According to the over-time word-topic distribution, stable words and unstable words are recognized. The diverging and converging trends in the unstable type reveal characteristics of the topic evolution process. The context-level shifts are further detected by similarities between word vectors. Our work associates semantic word shifts with the evolving of topics, which facilitates a better understanding of semantic word shifts from both topics and contexts.     

太赫兹波计算鬼成像:原理和展望

本文立足于太赫兹波成像领域近年来备受关注的研究热点—太赫兹波计算鬼成像,首先回顾了鬼成像从量子到经典再到计算的历史过程,然后阐述了计算鬼成像的数学原理,随后综述了计算鬼成像在太赫兹波段的发展历程,及其在超衍射分辨成像、石墨烯光电导成像、太赫兹光谱成像等方面的应用,并在最后展望了太赫兹波计算鬼成像的发展前景:计算鬼成像作为一种成像手段,可以绕开在太赫兹频段缺乏经济高效的焦面阵列式探测器的难题,但目前的成像帧率还难以满足快速成像的应用需求,相信在未来随着器件性能的提升和成像算法的优化,其成像帧率可以得到大幅提升。     

Headspace fingerprinting approach to identify the major pathway influencing volatile patterns of vinasse-cured duck processed by high pressure,as well as its impact on physicochemical and sensory attributes

As a decisive attribute, flavour could be influenced by HP treatments through multiple physical and chemical pathways within the high pressure (HP)-assisted meat curing process. This investigation aimed to identify the major pathway influencing volatile flavour patterns of two representative vinasse-cured duck (VCD) products with HP treatments (150–300 MPa/15 min), including wet and dry types, by employing headspace fingerprinting as an untargeted approach. Results suggested that HP treatments greatly lowered moisture contents and increased Warner-Bratzler shear force and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances of the cured samples. According to multivariate models, the volatile flavour patterns of the HP-processed VCD could be clearly separated from the unprocessed samples, but the VCD pressurised at different intensities represented similar volatile fingerprinting, which was validated by e-nose analysis. The discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) model outlined vinasse-derived ethanol, acetic acid, 3-methyl-1-butanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol, phenethyl alcohol and 2-methyl-3-octanone as the major discriminant aromas across the unpressurised and pressurised samples.