A new anion exchange purification method for Cu stable isotopes in blood samples.

The isotopic composition of iron, zinc, copper, and cadmium (δFe, δZn, δCu, and δCd) are novel and promising tools to study the metabolism and homeostasis of trace metals in the human body. Serum δCu has been proposed as a potential tool for diagnosis of cancer in liquid biopsy, and other metals may have similar utility. However, accurate analysis of trace metal isotopes is challenging because of the difficulties in purifying the metals from biological samples.

Multi-proxy evidence for decreased terrestrial contribution to sedimentary organic matter in coastal areas of the East China Sea during the past 100years.

Little is known about temporal changes in sedimentary organic matter (OM) in the East China Sea (ECS) due to the lack of continuous high-resolution records. In this study, we used a multi-proxy approach to reconstruct sedimentary OM variations over the past 100years from three sediment cores collected from the coastal areas of the ECS. For the three cores, total organic carbon (TOC) normalized concentrations of phytoplankton biomarkers (brassicasterol+dinosterol+alkenones) and a marine archaea biomarker (crenarchaeol) showed gradual increases over the past 100years with a greater increase after the 1980s.

Site-controlled self-assembled InAs quantum dots grown on GaAs substrates.

Atomically-flat surfaces are obtained after thin GaAsSb buffer layer growth on GaAs substrates with regular-distributed nano-holes formed after oxide desorption of the local atomic-force-microscopy anode oxidation. Different from the samples with GaAsSb buffer layers, increasing surface root-mean-square roughness is observed for the GaAs-buffered samples with increasing GaAs buffer layer thickness. The phenomenon is attributed to the enhanced adatom migration resulting from the incorporation of Sb atoms.