The tempo-spatial characteristics and forming mechanism of Lithium-rich brines in China

With the technological development of exploitation and separation,the primary source of lithium has gradually changed from ore to brine,which has become the main raw material,accounting for more than 80% of the total production.Resources of lithium-bearing brine are abundant in China.This paper has summarized the spatial and temporal distribution,characteristics,and formation mechanism of the lithium-rich brine in China,aiming to provide a comprehensive set of guidelines for future lithium exploitation from brines.Lithium brines usually exist in modem saline lakes and deep underground sedimentary rocks as subsurface brines.The metallogenic epoch of China's lithium-rich brine spans from the Triassic to the Quaternary,and these brines exhibit obvious regional distribution characteristics.Modem lithium-rich saline lakes are predominately located in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.In comparison,the subsurface lithium-rich brines are mainly distributed in the sedimentary basins of Sichuan,Hubei,Jiangxi,and the western part of the Qaidam Basin.Lithium-rich saline lakes are chloride-enriched,sulfate-enriched,and carbonateenriched,while the deep lithium-rich brines are mainly chloride-enriched.On the whole,the value of Mg/Li in deep brine is generally lower than that of brine in saline lakes.The genesis of lithium-rich brines in China is not uniform,generally there are two processes,which are respectively suitable for salt lakes and deep brine.

Palynology and stratigraphy of the thick evaporate-bearing Shashi Formation in Jiangling Depression,Jianghan Basin of South China,and its paleoclimate change

In the greater inland Jianghan Basin of South China,three salt depressions are lacking accurate geological times,of which Jiangling Depression is the largest.Evaporites are important records of paleoclimate,however,the geological ages of evaporates are very difficult to be determined because often evaporates have scare macrofossils and microfossils.Nonmarine Cretaceous to Tertiary halite deposits interbedded with mudstones are widely distributed in China.Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum had very high temperatures and attracted strong interests of geologists because these times can be compared with future climate change because of global warming.However,previous studies focused on marine sediments found that during the Paleocene-Early Eocene,massive evaporate deposits formed in Jiangling depression of the Jianghan Basin.In this paper,the authors show that the Shashi Formation halite deposits formed in the Paleocene according to palynology.Most of these palynology fossils are arid types,so the massive evaporites in the Jiangling depression could be closely related to the hot Paleocene climate.High temperatures during the Paleocene contributed to the formation of the massive evaporates in the Jiangling Depression,until sylvite was the result.

Discovery of the Ca-Cl type brine in deep aquifers and implications for the shallow giant glauberite deposits in the Lop Nur playa, Tarim Basin, NW China

1.Objective Lop Nur is currently one of the world’s largest playa and located in the easternmost of the Tarim Basin,northwestern China.It developed unique giant glauberite deposits during the Quaternary,of which analogue with such a scale deposit is rarely seen around the world.Moreover,potassium-rich brine hosted in these glauberite intercrystalline contains a resource of KCl up to 0.25×10^(9) t.

Antigen-induced chimeric antigen receptor multimerization amplifies on-tumor cytotoxicity

Ligand-induced receptor dimerization or oligomerization is a widespread mechanism for ensuring communication specificity,safeguarding receptor activation,and facilitating amplification of signal transduction across the cellular membrane.However,cell-surface antigeninduced multimerization(dubbed AIM herein)has not yet been consciously leveraged in chimeric antigen receptor(CAR)engineering for enriching T cell-based therapies.We co-developed ciltacabtagene autoleucel(cilta-cel),whose CAR incorporates two B-cell maturation antigen(BCMA)-targeted nanobodies in tandem,for treating multiple myeloma.Here we elucidated a structural and functional model in which BCMA-induced cilta-cel CAR multimerization amplifies myeloma-targeted T cell-mediated cytotoxicity.Crystallographic analysis of BCMA–nanobody complexes revealed atomic details of antigen–antibody hetero-multimerization whilst analytical ultracentrifugation and small-angle X-ray scattering characterized interdependent BCMA apposition and CAR juxtaposition in solution.BCMA-induced nanobody CAR multimerization enhanced cytotoxicity,alongside elevated immune synapse formation and cytotoxicity-mediating cytokine release,towards myeloma-derived cells.Our results provide a framework for contemplating the AIM approach in designing next-generation CARs.

Evidence for the Late Pliocene Aridification in the Eastern Tarim Basin,Northwest China

INTRODUCTION The vast arid regions in mid-latitude Asia(MLA)are among the most prominent landscapes on Earth’s surface and have been thought to provide a key source of global atmospheric dust(Hovan et al.,1989).Over the past decades,research on aridification of MLA have made tremendous progress and pointed large-scale aridity has prevailed in this region since the Late Pliocene despite long-term stepwise drying(Fang et al.,2020;Liu et al.,2014).However,direct sedimentary records for the late Pliocene aridification is still lack,hindering our understanding of regional comparison and the behind drive mechanism.The Tarim Basin in northwest China is one of the driest and largest inland basins and is considered as an ideal candidate for aridity records of MLA(Sun et al.,2013).Although considerable studies of environmental variations have been conducted(Liu et al.,2020;Zheng et al.,2015),a comprehensive picture of climatic change of the basin during the Late Pliocene is still unavailable,due to fragmentary sedimentary records,especially in the eastern Tarim Basin.In this contribution,we report the Late Pliocene lacustrine sediments found in Lop Nur of the east of Tarim Basin.The occurrence of abundant magnesite,their related crystal morphology and C-O isotopic signature suggested a typical brackish or even saline lake environment and arid climatic condition in eastern Tarim Basin during this interval.

Consensus Problem of Heterogeneous Multi-agent Systems with Time Delay under Fixed and Switching Topologies

Consensus problem is investigated for heterogeneous multi-agent systems composed of first-order agents and second-order agents in this paper. Leader-following consensus protocol is adopted to solve consensus problem of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with time-varying communication and input delays. By constructing Lyapunov-Krasovkii functional, sufficient consensus conditions in linear matrix inequality(LMI) form are obtained for the system under fixed interconnection topology. Moreover, consensus conditions are also obtained for the heterogeneous systems under switching topologies with time delays. Simulation examples are given to illustrate effectiveness of the results.