Explore the vast range of titles available.

This article collected samples of incineration bottom ash from landfill areas, storage yards, and areas weathered for 2 months. These samples represent bottom ash conditions immediately after removal from the incinerator, which were stored for 1-2 weeks and experienced extended weathering. Particle size analysis revealed significant disintegration of the bottom ash during weathering. After two months of weathering, the proportion of particles larger than 4 mm (grades 7–8) decreased by 14.8%, while the proportion of particles in the 0.3–2 mm range (grades 3–5) increased by 15%. The weakening of particle size correlations after weathering signals that disintegration has produced a more stable bottom ash structure. Analysis of sample moisture content showed that the weathered fine-grained fraction exhibited relatively high moisture content.

This paper aimed to study the calcium ion selective electrode, based on using PVC as the electrode carrier and didecyl calcium phosphate which was synthesized from decanol, phosphorus oxytrichloride, pyridine and calcium chloride as the electroactive substance. This paper mainly focused on the study and the fabrication process of both the electrode diaphragm and electrode, with conducting the performance test of the newly developed electrode. The results showed that the response time of the developed water hardness sensor was 2-5 s, which had good response characteristics and was suitable for fast and portable testing of water hardness in environmental testing. There was no significant difference between this water hardness sensor method and the national standard method. When the water temperature varies between 10 and 60 Centigrade, the influence of temperature on the data of the water hardness sensor was very small, and the water hardness sensor had good stability to test the temperature change.

Abstract Sighthounds, a distinctive group of hounds comprising numerous breeds, have their origins rooted in ancient artificial selection of dogs. In this study, we performed genome sequencing for 123 sighthounds, including one breed from Africa, six breeds from Europe, two breeds from Russia, and four breeds and 12 village dogs from the Middle East. We gathered public genome data of five sighthounds and 98 other dogs as well as 31 gray wolves to pinpoint the origin and genes influencing the morphology of the sighthound genome. Population genomic analysis suggested that sighthounds originated from native dogs independently and were comprehensively admixed among breeds, supporting the multiple origins hypothesis of sighthounds. An additional 67 published ancient wolf genomes were added for gene flow detection. Results showed dramatic admixture of ancient wolves in African sighthounds, even more than with modern wolves. Whole-genome scan analysis identified 17 positively selected genes (PSGs) in the African population, 27 PSGs in the European population, and 54 PSGs in the Middle Eastern population. None of the PSGs overlapped in the three populations. Pooled PSGs of the three populations were significantly enriched in “regulation of release of sequestered calcium ion into cytosol” (gene ontology: 0051279), which is related to blood circulation and heart contraction. In addition, ESR1, JAK2, ADRB1, PRKCE, and CAMK2D were under positive selection in all three selected groups. This suggests that different PSGs in the same pathway contributed to the similar phenotype of sighthounds. We identified an ESR1 mutation (chr1: g.42,177,149 T > C) in the transcription factor (TF) binding site of Stat5a and a JAK2 mutation (chr1: g.93,277,007 T > A) in the TF binding site of Sox5. Functional experiments confirmed that the ESR1 and JAK2 mutation reduced their expression. Our results provide new insights into the domestication history and genomic basis of sighthounds.

Algae organic matter (AOM) has always been a threat to the effective operation of water treatment processes. Coagulation is the most effective way to control the contamination. In this study, AlCl3, PAC and HPAC were investigated as the coagulants. The removal performances were considered by detecting TOC, turbidity, apparent molecular weight (AMW) and fluorescence excitation-emission matrix (FEEM). The turbidity and TOC removal rate can reach 95% when the optimal dosage of PAC and HPAC was 0.04 mol⋅L−1, respectively. For AlCl3, higher dosage is needed. HPAC has a good efficiency on small molecular weight compounds removal. Because there are active adsorption groups and the cationic groups in HPAC. These groups can make the make the AOM lose stability and flocculation through neutralization and adsorption bridging.

Direct Contact Membrane Distillation(DCMD) device with PVDF as the core was introduced to treat concentrated Reverse-Osmosis(RO) wastewater on water reclamation. Effects of feed temperature, feed flow rate and permeate flow rate on flux were investigated. Furthermore, variation low of permeate flux and the main water quality during long-term membrane distillation(MD) performance were discussed. It can be concluded from the result that the permeate flux were increased with the feed temperature. When the temperature difference between hot-side and cool-side reached 35°C, the permeate flux was 7.15 kg/(m2*h), and then the growth trend of flux slowed down. The permeate flux were increased with the increase of feed flow rate and permeate flow rate, and the peak reached 8.2 kg/(m2*h) in the whole process. The permeate flux stabilized at 7.1～8.36 kg/(m2*h) during 16 hours long term experiment performance and the permeate water quality were kept steadily.

The primary objective of this study is to use OD interventions to improve higher vocational students' academic self-efficacy, perceived teacher support, and peer relationship to improve their academic performance, with learning engagement as the mediating variable. The study was conducted on sixty first-year Beijing Polytechnic Bioengineering Department students using qualitative and quantitative research methods. Before implementing the OD intervention, the researcher collected data on academic self-efficacy, perceived teacher support, peer relationship, learning engagement, and academic performance through questionnaires and interviews. The OD interventions included goal setting, feedback, coaching, team building, appreciative inquiry, and team activities. After the intervention, the same questionnaires and interviews were used to gather data, and the changes were compared to evaluate the effectiveness of the ODI. The data collected before and after the ODI were analyzed, and it was found that the data were not normally distributed. The researcher used unary linear regression, linear regression, and Wilcoxon signed rank to validate the hypotheses. The results indicated that the students' academic self-efficacy, perceived teacher support, peer relationship, learning engagement, and academic performance had significantly improved after the ODI. In conclusion, this study suggests that goal setting, feedback, coaching, team building, appreciative inquiry, and team activities are effective ODI for enhancing academic self-efficacy, perceived teacher support, and peer relationships. Furthermore, the study found that academic self-efficacy, perceived teacher support, peer relationship, and learning engagement positively correlate with academic performance.

Slow slip events (SSEs) release tectonic strain without causing sudden ground shaking. SSEs have been observed at many subduction zones, some dynamically triggered by stress changes due to the passage of seismic waves. However, there are limited observations of SSEs induced by post‐seismic deformation. Here, we report a significant increase in the recurrence rate of SSEs in the shallow portion of the Nicoya megathrust following the 2012 Mw 7.6 earthquake. These shallow SSEs occurred immediately updip of the large afterslip zone and their recurrence rate returned to pre‐earthquake level 1.5 years after the earthquake. In contrast, deeper SSE recurrence rate remained unchanged. Coulomb Failure Stress modeling indicates the shallow SSE area experienced substantial stress perturbation during afterslip, while the deeper megathrust did not. We interpret this temporarily increased shallow SSE recurrence rate to be driven by static stress loading from large afterslip.

Visual positioning plays a pivotal role in enabling robotic disc cutter replacement for the shield machine. However, underground operational challenges—including low illumination, high dust concentrations, and irregular sand deposition on the surface of the disc cutter and its holder—severely compromise recognition accuracy. To address this, we propose a multi-mechanism enhanced UNet model for robust segmentation of the disc cutter holder under heterogeneous surface conditions. Experimental comparisons with mainstream semantic segmentation models demonstrate that the Res-UNet achieves superior training efficiency and segmentation accuracy. Ablation studies further reveal optimal performance when utilizing a hybrid loss function (dice loss + cross-entropy loss) paired with the Adam optimizer. By integrating attention mechanisms, we develop the Res-UNet-CA architecture, which achieves state-of-the-art metrics on independent test sets: accuracy (99.45%), precision (98.9%), recall (99.11%), F1-score (99%), and mIoU (98.63%). The Res-UNet-CA model significantly outperforms other semantic segmentation models in prediction quality, offering an innovative solution for shield machine disc cutter holder detection.

Background Nicotinamide N -methyltransferase (NNMT) is overexpressed in various human tumors and involved in the development and progression of several carcinomas. In breast cancer, NNMT was found to be overexpressed in several cell lines. However, the clinical relevance of NNMT in breast cancer is not yet clear. Methods NNMT expression in breast carcinoma was examined by immunohistochemistry, and then, its relationship with patient clinicopathological characteristics was analyzed. The effects of NNMT on chemoresistance in breast cancer cells were assessed by cell viability, colony formation, and apoptosis assay. The NNMT, SIRT1, p53, and acetyl-p53 proteins, which are involved in NNMT-related chemoresistance, were examined by Western blotting. The SIRT1 mRNA was examined by real-time PCR, and its activity was measured by using the SIRT1 deacetylase fluorometric reagent kit. Results NNMT expression was significantly higher (53.9%) in breast carcinoma than in paracancerous tissues (10.0%) and breast hyperplasia (13.3%). A high level of NNMT expression correlated with poor survival and chemotherapy response in breast cancer patients who received chemotherapy. Ectopic overexpression of NNMT significantly inhibited the apoptotic cell death and suppression of colony formation induced by adriamycin and paclitaxel. Mechanistic studies revealed that NNMT overexpression increased SIRT1 expression and promoted its activity. Either inhibition of SIRT1 by EX527 or knockdown of SIRT1 by siRNA could reverse NNMT-mediated resistance to adriamycin and paclitaxel, which suggests that SIRT1 plays a critical role in NNMT-related chemoresistance in breast cancer. Conclusions The results of this study demonstrate a novel correlation between the NNMT expression level and patient survival, suggesting that NNMT has the potential to become a new prognostic biomarker to predict the treatment outcomes of the clinical chemotherapy in breast cancer. Moreover, targeting NNMT or downstream SIRT1 may represent a new therapeutic approach to improve the efficacy of breast cancer chemotherapy.

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors hold great promises for ultra-scaled transistors. In particular, the gate length of MoS 2 transistor has been scaled to 1 nm and 0.3 nm using single wall carbon nanotube and graphene, respectively. However, simultaneously scaling the channel length of these short-gate transistor is still challenging, and could be largely attributed to the processing difficulties to precisely align source-drain contact with gate electrode. Here, we report a self-alignment process for realizing ultra-scaled 2D transistors. By mechanically folding a graphene/BN/MoS 2 heterostructure, source-drain metals could be precisely aligned around the folded edge, and the channel length is only dictated by heterostructure thickness. Together, we could realize sub-1 nm gate length and sub-50 nm channel length for vertical MoS 2 transistor simultaneously. The self-aligned device exhibits on-off ratio over 10 5 and on-state current of 250 μA/μm at 4 V bias, which is over 40 times higher compared to control sample without self-alignment process. The simultaneous scaling down of the channel length and gate length of 2D transistors remains challenging. Here, the authors report a self-alignment process to fabricate vertical MoS 2 transistors with sub-1 nm gate length and sub−50 nm channel length, exhibiting on-off ratios over 10 5 and on-state currents of 250 μA/μm at 4 V bias.