Publications by authors named "Wenkai Liang"

Background: Iatrogenic nerve injury is a consequential complication during surgery. Thus, real-time imaging of peripheral nerve (PN) possesses significant clinical implications. In recent years, the rapid advancements in optical molecular imaging (OMI) technology have provided essential technical foundations for the implementation of PN fluorescence imaging.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this work, effects of ozone (O) addition on ethylene-oxygen (CH-O) mixtures are computationally studied through the explosion limit profiles. The results show that the addition of minute quantities of ozone (with a mole fraction of 0.06% in the oxidizer) shifts the explosion limit of the CH-O-O mixtures to the low-temperature regime.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Utilizing hot carriers for efficient plasmon-mediated chemical reactions (PMCRs) to convert solar energy into secondary energy is one of the most feasible solutions to the global environmental and energy crisis. Finding a plasmonic heterogeneous nanostructure with a more efficient and reasonable hot carrier transport path without affecting the intrinsic plasmonic properties is still a major challenge that urgently needs to be solved in this field. Herein, the mechanism by which plasmon-promoted interatomic hot electron redistribution on the surface of AuCu alloy nanoparticles promotes the electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (ENRR) is successfully clarified.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Plasmons have facilitated diverse analytical applications due to the boosting signal detectability by hot spots. In practical applications, it is crucial to fabricate straightforward, large-scale, and reproducible plasmonic substrates. Dewetting treatment, applying direct thermal annealing of metal films, has been used as a straightforward method in the fabrication of such plasmonic nanostructures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The stink bug Arma custos is a predatory insect used in biocontrol to combat harmful invasive pests, specifically lepidopteran and coleopteran species.
  • - A comprehensive genome assembly for A. custos was created using advanced sequencing and scaffolding methods, resulting in a genome size of 969.02 Mb with high completeness and a significant number of protein-coding genes.
  • - This high-quality genomic resource will assist future research on the biology, genetics, and functions of predatory bugs like A. custos.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * The findings reveal that real gas behavior shortens the ignition delay time (IDT) under low temperatures, especially relating to phenomena like negative temperature coefficient (NTC) effects, with a greater reliance on molecular volume than attractive potential.
  • * Additionally, the study indicates that high pressure enhances low-temperature reaction pathways, leading to increased formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which contributes to higher soot generation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Iatrogenic nerve injury during surgery is a major concern that can greatly affect a patient's quality of life, with current imaging methods lacking real-time precision.
  • Advances in optical molecular imaging technology have introduced new surgical concepts that allow for direct visualization of nerves during surgery, improving real-time identification.
  • Despite promising experimental support for optical molecular imaging, there is limited documentation regarding its clinical use, which the paper addresses, along with ongoing challenges and future possibilities in neural visualization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Current 3D printed electrodes have slow ion transport speeds, hindering their electrochemical performance, but a new bioinspired hierarchical fast transport network (HFTN) in 3D printed reduced graphene oxide/carbon nanotube (3DP GC) electrodes shows significant improvements.
  • - The HFTN enhances ion transport rates by over 50 times compared to bulk graphene electrodes and 36 times compared to traditional 3D printed ones, leading to better surface area utilization and more effective catalysts for electrocatalytic reactions.
  • - The 3DP GC/Ni-NiO||3DP GC/NiS cell achieves a low voltage of 1.42 V to reach 10 mA cm, with
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Anisotropic 3D nanostructures exhibit excellent electrocatalytic activity and stability due to their heterogeneous elemental distribution and unsymmetrical configuration. However, it is still a huge challenge to combine anisotropically distributed elements and anisotropic morphologies within one 3D nanostructure. Herein, 3D Au@Pt-Pd hemispherical nanostructures (Au@Pt-Pd H-Ss) are fabricated as highly efficient electrocatalysts for oxidation reaction, which present heterogenous element distribution and anisotropic morphology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recognizing that low-temperature ignition of alkanes is usually associated with one heat release peak, we report herein that, for iso-octane under certain ranges of initial temperatures and pressures, two separate heat release peaks were observed through computational simulations using several kinetic mechanisms. The inherent chemical reason for this phenomenon is discussed using reaction channel analysis and is identified to result from the competition between R + O → RO and the β scission reactions. By further utilizing sensitivity and path flux analyses, an isomeric effect is identified in that the different isomeric structures produced through the H-abstraction reactions can lead to differences in the subsequent low-temperature reaction pathways.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) provides a facile and sustainable strategy to produce ammonia (NH) at ambient conditions. However, the low NH yield and Faradaic efficiency (FE) are still the main challenges due to the competitive hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, a three-phase electrocatalyst through in situ fabrication of Au nanoparticles (NPs) located on hydrophobic carbon fiber paper (Au/o-CFP) is designed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Plasmonic metal nanostructures offer the unique ability to effectively enhance sunlight harvesting by localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), which can induce direct photocatalytic reactions. However, only metal nanoparticles with a relatively low magnitude of electromagnetic field enhancement usually require a high illumination intensity to ensure the catalytic performance, which greatly limits the solar photocatalytic efficiency. Herein, we designed plasmonic Au nanoparticle film with high electromagnetic field enhancement to achieve high-efficiency catalytic activity under low-power NIR light illumination.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Plasmonic nanomaterials are excellent and promising building blocks for information encoding and decoding. However, the positioning of multiplexed nanomaterials into recognizable structures remains a major challenge in nanotechnology. Herein, we developed a novel method for fabricating diversified nanostructures through surface charge inversion from amino-modified substrates to carboxyl-modified ones, as well as the corresponding electrostatic-induced assembly of metal nanoparticles.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Low solar light absorption and high electron-hole pair recombination are still the main challenges for solar energy conversion. Here, we design a plasmonic nanoparticle (NP)-film with a unique structure combining the advantages of a Au NP and film, which exhibits strong broadband absorption from the visible to near-infrared (NIR) wavelength range. In addition, the high density of sub-1 nm inter-particle gaps in the Au NP-film supports electromagnetic field enhancement of several orders of magnitude that greatly promotes the generation and separation of electron-hole pairs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Genotyping of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is crucial for determining the most efficient anti-viral therapy. The clinical sensitivity and specificity of the IntelliPlex HCV Genotyping Kit was determined by comparing the assay results of 307 specimens with the results obtained by Sanger sequencing. Out of 202 HCV-positive specimens tested, 8 samples yielded discrepant results between the IntelliPlex HCV Genotyping Kit and Sanger sequencing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This article reviews recent theoretical developments on incipient ignition induced by radical runaway in systems described by detailed chemistry. Employing eigenvalue analysis, we first analyze the canonical explosion limits of mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen, yielding explicit criteria that well reproduce their characteristic Z-shaped response in the pressure-temperature plot. Subsequently, we evaluate the role of hydrogen addition to the explosion limits of mixtures of oxygen with either carbon monoxide or methane, demonstrating and quantifying its strong catalytic effect, especially for the carbon monoxide cases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - In an isothermal environment, the study analyzes the ignition boundaries of hydrogen/oxygen mixtures, revealing a Z-shaped curve indicating three distinct explosion limits influenced by various reaction types.
  • - The analysis distinguishes between linear chain reactions, nonlinear chain reactions, and zeroth-order reactions, finding that linear-nonlinear coupling plays a significant role at high pressures, while nonlinear-nonlinear interactions are minor.
  • - At low pressures, linear reactions dictate the first two limits due to lower radical concentrations, but at higher pressures, the presence of HO radicals provides critical insights into the third explosion limit, emphasizing the importance of both linear and nonlinear reactions in this context.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Culex flavivirus (CxFV) is an insect-specific virus of the genus Flavivirus. CxFV strains have been isolated from Cx. pipiens, Cx.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although the polymorphisms of PTPN22 and the variants of CTLA-4 have been reported to be the susceptibility genes, which increased risk of latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA), the results remained inconclusive. The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the association between the polymorphisms of two genes and LADA. We performed a systematic review by identifying relevant studies and applied meta-analysis to pool gene effects.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF