Lightning in a Forest (Wild) Fire: Mechanism at the Molecular Level

The mechanism of lightning that ignites a forest fire and the lightning that occurs above a forest fire are explained at the molecular level. It is based on two phenomena, namely, internal charge separation inside the atmospheric cloud particles and the existence of a layer of positively charged hydrogen atoms sticking out of the surface of the liquid layer of water on the surface of rimers. Strong turbulence-driven collisions of the ice particles and water droplets with the rimers give rise to breakups of the ice particles and water droplets into positively and negatively charged fragments leading to charge separation. Hot weather in a forest contributes to the updraft of hot and humid air, which follows the same physical/chemical processes of normal lightning proposed and explained recently[1]. Lightning would have a high probability of lighting up and burning the dry biological materials in the ground of the forest, leading to a forest (wild) fire. The burning of trees and other plants would release a lot of heat and moisture together with a lot of smoke particles (aerosols) becoming a strong updraft. The condition for creating lightning is again satisfied which would result in further lightning high above the forest wild fire.

医联体模式对基层医生幽门螺杆菌感染规范化诊治的干预效果研究

背景幽门螺杆菌(Helicobacter pylori,H.pylori)与慢性胃炎、消化性溃疡和胃癌关系密切.多数H.pylori感染者首诊于社区卫生服务中心等基层医疗卫生机构,而当前基层医生在H.pylori感染诊治过程中存在一些不规范之处.本研究通过医共体模式对基层医生进行规范化管理和培训,提高了基层医生H.pylori规范化诊疗水平.目的观察医联体模式对基层医生H.pylori感染规范化诊治的干预效果.方法选取我院所辖5家社区服务中心的基层医生112人,在6 mo内分批对其进行为期3 d的H.pylori感染规范化诊治轮训,比较轮训前后基层医生对《第五次全国幽门螺杆菌感染处理共识》的掌握情况.结果共有106名基层医生完成模块化培训及问卷调查.培训前,基层医生对《第五次共识》的了解较为薄弱,在诊治工作中没有完全应用《第五次共识》;培训后,基层医生对《第五次共识》的知晓和接受程度较培训前明显提高(P<0.01,P<0.05).其中,88.24%的学员认为培训非常有必要,87.25%的学员认为培训效果非常好,95.10%的学员认同该培训模式.结论基层医生对《第五次共识》的依从性低,H.pylori感染诊治欠规范,医联体模式可明显提高基层医生对《第五次共识》的知晓、接受程度,较好的提高了H.pylori诊疗知识水平.

Surface structure modification of ReSe2 nanosheets via carbon ion irradiation

The effects of C ion irradiation on multilayer ReSe2flakes are studied by utilizing different kinds of technologies. The domain sizes, thickness, morphologies of the multilayer ReSe2flakes on the Al2O3substrates before and after 1.0-MeV C ion irradiation with different fluence rates are studied by atomic force microscope and scanning electron microscopy. The atomic vibrational spectra of multilayer ReSe2flakes are detected by micro-Raman spectra. The redshifts of the Raman modes after 1.0-MeV C ion irradiation are observed from the micro-Raman spectra. The elemental compositions and bonding configurations of the multilayer ReSe2samples before and after irradiation processes are characterized by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The structural properties are also investigated by x-ray diffraction, and it is concluded that after 1.0-MeV C ion irradiation process, multilayer ReSe2samples continue to grow on Al2O3substrates, the increase of crystallite size also reveals that the crystallinity is improved with the increase of the layer number after 1.0-MeV C ion irradiation.

Effects of microtubule-associated protein tau expression on neural stem cell migration after spinal cord injury

Our preliminary proteomics analysis suggested that expression of microtubule-associated protein tau is elevated in the spinal cord after injury. Therefore, the first aim of the present study was to examine tau expression in the injured spinal cord. The second aim was to determine whether tau can regulate neural stem cell migration, a critical factor in the successful treatment of spinal cord injury. We established rat models of spinal cord injury and injected them with mouse hippocampal neural stem cells through the tail vein. We used immunohistochemistry to show that the expression of tau protein and the number of migrated neural stem cells were markedly increased in the injured spinal cord. Furthermore, using a Transwell assay, we showed that neural stem cell migration was not affected by an elevated tau concentration in the outer chamber, but it was decreased by changes in intracellular tau phosphorylation state. These results demonstrate that neural stem cells have targeted migration capability at the site of injury, and that although tau is not a chemokine for targeted migration of neural stem cells, intracellular tau phosphorylation/dephosphorylation can inhibit cell migration.

Sorbitol Hydrogenolysis to Glycols over Baisic Additive Promoted Ni-based Catalysts

A series of Ni based catalysts with different supports and basic additives were prepared by sequential impregnation method. The catalysts were characterized by XRD, BET, H2-TPR and CO2-TPD techniques. It was found that the introduction of basic additives enhanced the basicities of catalyats and promoted the dispersities of Ni particles by strong interaction between Ni2＋ and basic additives. Among the Ni based catalysts, 10%Ni/10%La203/ZrO2 showed the superior performance in sorbitol hydrogenolysis. The synergistic effect of Ni and La203 was proven to play an essential role in selective synthesis of EG and 1,2-PG. In the optimal reaction condition, the catalyst presented 100% sorbitol conversion and over 48% glycols （EG and 1,2-PG） yield. The kinetics study of polyols （sorbitol, xylitol and glycerol） hydrogenolysis showed that polyols with more hydroxyl number have higher activity and products distribution was final results of kinetic balance, which could give us some inspiration abeut how to change the products selectivity.

Status quo and prospect of the development for underground coal mine refuge chamber

As one form of the energy resources, coal is becoming more and more important. Due to the particularity in coal mine production, mine accidents some time occur in countries all over the world, which result in large casualties and economic losses. As equipment that can provides the miners with an emergency shelter when the coal mine accidents occur, the under ground coal mine refuge chamber is paid more and more attention by coal mine enterprises, and the application of the refuge chamber is increasingly widespread. The general functions, the classification, and the successful applications of the underground coal mine refuge chamber are illustrated first, and the research significance on the tmderground coal mine refuge chamber is stated. Following, the development status quo at home and abroad for the refuge chamber is introduced. Then, the implementation methods for the key functions of the underground coal mine refuge chamber are demonstrated. Finally, the prospect for the development of the underground coal mine refuge chamber is stated.

Cascade Enzymatic Hydrolysis Coupling with Ultrafine Grinding Pretreatment for Sugarcane Bagasse Saccharification

The biorefinery process for sugarcane bagasse saccharification generally requires signifcant accessibility of cellulose. We reported a novel method of cascade cellulase enzymatic hydrol- ysis coupling with ultrafine grinding pretreatment for sugarcane bagasse saccharification. Three enzymatic hydrolysis modes including single cellulase enzymatic hydrolysis, mixed cellulase enzymatic hydrolysis, and cascade cellulase enzymatic hydrolysis were compared. The changes on the functional group and surface morphology of bagasse during cascade cellulase enzymatic hydrolysis were also examined by FT-IR and SEM respectively. The results showed that cascade enzymatic hydrolysis was the most efficient way to enhance the sugarcane bagasse saccharification. More than 65% of reducing sugar yield with 90.1% of glucose selectivity was achieved at 50 ℃, pH=4.8 for 72 h （1200 r/min） with cellulase I of 7.5 FPU/g substrate and cellulase II of 5 FPU/g substrate.

Transformation of Biomass into Aromatics with Zeolite Catalysts

Biomass is a nature renewable resource which can be used for the production of high value chemicals and bio-fuels. In the present work, the transformation of sawdust into aromat- ics such as benzene, toluene and xylenes was investigated over a series of zeolite catalysts （NaZSM-5, HZSM-5, ReY and HY catalysts）. Among the tested catalysts, the HZSM-5 catalyst shows the highest activity for the production of aromatics. The yield and carbon selectivity of aromatics reached about 26.5% and 62.5C-mo1%, respectively over the HZSM-5 catalyst under the optimal condition of T=450 ℃, f（N2）=300 cm^3/min, and catalyst/lignin ratio of 2. The effects of the reaction conditions including temperature, gas flow rate, and catalyst/sawdust ratio on the production of aromatics were investigated in detail and the formation of aromatics from lignocellulosic biomass was also addressed.

Facile Green Synthesis of Magnetic Fe3C@C Nanocomposite using Natural Magnetite

One simple and environmental friendly synthesis strategy for preparing low-cost magnetic Fe3C@C materials has been facilely developed using a modified sol-gel approach,wherein natural magnetite acted as the iron source.A chelating polycarboxylic acid such as citric acid(CA)was employed as the carbon source,and it dissolved Fe very effectively,Fe3O4 and natural magnetite to composite an iron-citrate complex with the assistance of ammonium hydroxide.The core-shell structure of the as-prepared nanocomposites was formed directly by high-temperature pyrolysis.The Fe3C@C materials exhibited superparamagnetic properties(38.09 emu/mg),suggesting potential applications in biomedicine,environment,absorption,catalysis,etc.

Added value of systemic inflammation markers for monitoring response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients

BACKGROUND Complete response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy(r NACT) elevates the surgical outcomes of patients with breast cancer, however, non-r NACT have a higher risk of death and recurrence.AIM To establish novel machine learning(ML)-based predictive models for predicting probability of r NACT in breast cancer patients who intends to receive NACT.METHODS A retrospective analysis of 487 breast cancer patients who underwent mastectomy or breast-conserving surgery and axillary lymph node dissection following neoadjuvant chemotherapy at the Hubei Cancer Hospital between January 1, 2013, and October 1, 2021. The study cohort was divided into internal training and testing datasets in a 70:30 ratio for further analysis. A total of twenty-four variables were included to develop predictive models for r NACT by multiple MLbased algorithms. A feature selection approach was used to identify optimal predictive factors. These models were evaluated by the receiver operating characteristic(ROC) curve for predictive performance.RESULTS Analysis identified several significant differences between the r NACT and nonr NACT groups, including total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein, neutrophilto-lymphocyte ratio, body mass index, platelet count, albumin-to-globulin ratio, platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio, and lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio. The areas under the curve of the six models ranged from 0.81 to 0.96. Some ML-based models performed better than models using conventional statistical methods in both ROC curves. The support vector machine(SVM) model with twelve variables introduced was identified as the best predictive model.CONCLUSION By incorporating retreatment serum lipids and serum inflammation markers, it is feasible to develop ML-based models for the preoperative prediction of r NACT and therefore facilitate the choice of treatment, particularly the SVM, which can improve the prediction of r NACT in patients with breast cancer.

Stable,intense supercontinuum light generation at 1 kHz by electric field assisted femtosecond laser filamentation in air

Supercontinuum(SC)light source has advanced ultrafast laser spectroscopy in condensed matter science,biology,physics,and chemistry.Compared to the frequently used photonic crystal fibers and bulk materials,femtosecond laser filamentation in gases is damage-immune for supercontinuum generation.A bottleneck problem is the strong jitters from filament induced self-heating at kHz repetition rate level.We demonstrated stable kHz supercontinuum generation directly in air with multiple mJ level pulse energy.This was achieved by applying an external DC electric field to the air plasma filament.Beam pointing jitters of the 1 kHz air filament induced SC light were reduced by more than 2 fold.The stabilized high repetition rate laser filament offers the opportunity for stable intense SC generation and its applications in air.

Pulse repetition rate effect on the plasma inside femtosecond laser filament in air

The characteristics of plasmas play an important role in femtosecond laser filament-based applications.Spectroscopic analysis is used to experimentally investigate the plasma density and its temperature of the air filament under different pulse repetition rates.In our experiments,the measured average plasma density of the filament is 1.54×10^(17)cm^(-3)and the temperature of the plasma is about 5100 K under 100 Hz pulse repetition rate.The plasma density decreases to1.43×10^(17)cm^(-3)and the temperature increases to 6230 K as the pulse repetition rate increases to 1000 Hz.The experimental observation agrees with the numerical simulation by solving the nonlinear Schr?dinger equations with repetition rate related“low density hole”correction.

Demonstration of controlled high-dimensional quantum teleportation

Controlled quantum teleportation(CQT), which is regarded as the prelude and backbone for a genuine quantum internet, reveals the cooperation, supervision, and control relationship among the sender, receiver, and controller in the quantum network within the simplest unit. Compared with low-dimensional counterparts, high-dimensional CQT can exhibit larger information transmission capacity and higher superiority of the controller's authority. In this article, we report a proof-of-principle experimental realization of three-dimensional(3D) CQT with a fidelity of 97.4% ± 0.2%. To reduce the complexity of the circuit, we simulate a standard 4-qutrit CQT protocol in a 9×9-dimensional two-photon system with high-quality operations. The corresponding control powers are 48.1% ± 0.2% for teleporting a qutrit and 52.8% ± 0.3% for teleporting a qubit in the experiment, which are both higher than the theoretical value of control power in 2-dimensional CQT protocol(33%). The results fully demonstrate the advantages of high-dimensional multi-partite entangled networks and provide new avenues for constructing complex quantum networks.

Dynamic Sulfur-Rich Polymers from Elemental Sulfur and Epoxides

Sulfur-containing dynamic polymers had attracted significant attention due to their unique chemical structures with high reversibility.Utilizating sulfur, an inexpensive industrial waste product, to synthesize dynamic polysulfide polymers through reverse vulcanization has been a notable approach. However, this method required high temperatures and resulted in the release of unpleasant oders. In this study, we presented a robust method for the preparation of sulfur-rich polymers with dynamic polysulfide bonds from elemental sulfur and inexpensive epoxide monomers via a one-pot strategy at the mild room temperature. Different types of polysulfide molecules and polymers were synthesized by reacting various epoxide compounds with sulfur, along with the investigation of their structures and dynamic behaviors. It was noteworthy that the obatined polymers prepared from m-(2,3-epoxypropoxy)-N,N-bis(2,3-epoxypropyl)aniline and elemental sulfur exhibit multiple dynamic behaviors, including polysulfide metathesis and polysulfide-thiol exchange, enabling their rapid stress relaxation, self-healing, reprocessing and degradable properties of the cross-linked polymer. More importantly, the hydroxyl groups at the side chains from epoxide ring opening exhibited potential transesterification. This work provided a facile strategy for designing dynamic sulfur-rich polymers via a mild synthesis route.

Pulse repetition-rate effect on the intensity inside a femtosecond laser filament in air

As intense,ultrashort,kHz-repetition-rate laser systems become commercially available,pulse cumulative effects are critical for laser filament-based applications.In this work,the pulse repetition-rate effect on femtosecond laser filamentation in air was investigated both numerically and experimentally.The pulse repetition-rate effect has negligible influence at the leading edge of the filament.Clear intensity enhancement from a high-repetition pulse is observed at the peak and tailing edge of the laser filament.As the repetition rate of the laser pulses increases from 100 to 1000 Hz,the length of the filament extends and the intensity inside the filament increases.A physical picture based on the pulse repetition-rate dependent‘low-density hole’effect on filamentation is proposed to explain the obtained results well.

Spinning microresonator-induced chiral optical transmission

Chiral quantum optics is a new research area in light-matter interaction that depends on the direction of light propagation and offers a new path for the quantum regulation of light-matter interactions.In this paper,we study a spinning Kerr-type microresonator coupled withΛ-type atom ensembles,which are driven in opposite directions to generate asymmetric photon statistics.We find that a photon blockade can only be generated by driving the spinning resonator on right side without driving the spinning microresonator from the left side,resulting in chirality.The coupling strength between system modes can be precisely controlled by adjusting the detuning amount of the atomic pump field.Because of the splitting of the resonant frequency generated by the Fizeau drag,the destructive quantum interference generated in right side drive prevents the nonresonant transition path of state|1,0⟩to state|2,0⟩.This direction-dependent chiral quantum optics is expected to be applied to chiral optical devices,single-photon sources and nonreciprocal quantum communications.

Asymmetrical Bell state analysis for photon-atoms hybrid system

Bell-state analysis(BSA) has great application in the quantum communication. To our best knowledge, the current works are devoted to the physical realization of symmetrical 2×2-dimensional or 2^N× 2^N-dimensional 2-qudit BSA, and there is no work focused on the physical realization of the asymmetrical high-dimensional(for example 3×4-dimensional 2-qudit) Bell-states complete analysis. In this paper, by using the nonlinear interaction between the atoms and photons, we propose a scheme to completely distinguish the asymmetrical 3×4-dimensional 2-qudit Bell states of a hybrid system. We use the quantum information splitting, which is exploited to resolve the degree-mismatch issue in the quantum state sharing schemes, as an example to show the application of the asymmetrical BSA. Finally, we discuss its possible realization with current experimental techniques. Our asymmetrical high-dimensional BSA protocol may pave a new way for high-capacity long-distance quantum communication.

Polarization dependent clamping intensity inside a femtosecond filament in air

Laser polarization and its intensity inside a filament core play an important role in filament-based applications.However,polarization dependent clamping intensity inside filaments has been overlooked to interpret the polarization-related filamentation phenomena.Here,we report on experimental and numerical investigations of polarization dependent clamping intensity inside a femtosecond filament in air.By adjusting the initial polarization from linear to circular,the clamping intensity is increased by 1.36 times when using a 30 cm focal length lens for filamentation.The results indicate that clamping intensity inside the filament is sensitive to laser polarization,which has to be considered to fully understand polarizationrelated phenomena.

Spectroscopic analysis of high electric field enhanced ionization in laser filaments in air for corona guiding

We report on a systematic experimental study on the fluorescence spectra produced from a femtosecond laser filament in air under a high electric field. The electric field alone was strong enough to create corona discharge(CD). Fluorescence spectra from neutral and ionic air molecules were measured and compared with pure high-voltage CD and pure laser filamentation(FIL). Among them, high electric field assisted laser FIL produced nitrogen fluorescence more efficiently than either pure CD or pure FIL processes. The nonlinear enhancement of fluorescence from the interaction of the laser filament and corona discharging electric field resulted in a more efficient ionization along the laser filament zone, which was confirmed by the spectroscopic measurement of both ionization-induced fluorescence and plasma-scattered 800 nm laser pulses. This is believed to be the key precursor process for filament-guided discharge.