Understanding the sources of mercury release from coal: A combined experimental and molecular simulation study.

Understanding the occurrence modes of mercury in coal is important as its release poses long-term adverse effects on the environment and human health during coal production and utilization. However, the matter still remains a subject of controversy due to differing results from direct and indirect analyses, which suggest various possible modes of occurrence for mercury in coal. Additionally, the experimental measurement of Hg concentration presents challenges, further contributing to the complexity of the issue.

Sustainable treatment of sewage sludge via plasma-electrolytic liquefaction for bio-friendly production of polyurethane foam.

Safe and green disposal or utilization of sewage sludge (SS) has attracted significant attention as SS is increasingly produced worldwide and emerges as an environmental burden if without proper treatment. In this study, efficient and sustainable treatment of SS was achieved using plasma-electrolytic liquefaction (PEL) with alkaline catalysts including sodium hydroxide (NaOH), sodium carbonate (NaCO), and sodium acetate (NaAc) and renewable solvents including polyethylene glycol (PEG) 200 and glycerol. Furthermore, the obtained bio-oil with abundant hydroxyl groups could partially replace polyols derived from fossil energy to synthesize bio-based polyurethane foams (BPUFs) for oil adsorption.

Cardiac Segmentation Method Based on Domain Knowledge.

Echocardiography plays an important role in the clinical diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. Cardiac function assessment by echocardiography is a crucial process in daily cardiology. However, cardiac segmentation in echocardiography is a challenging task due to shadows and speckle noise.

AI-assisted Method for Efficiently Generating Breast Ultrasound Screening Reports.

Background: Ultrasound is one of the preferred choices for early screening of dense breast cancer. Clinically, doctors have to manually write the screening report, which is time-consuming and laborious, and it is easy to miss and miswrite.

Aim: We proposed a new pipeline to automatically generate AI breast ultrasound screening reports based on ultrasound images, aiming to assist doctors in improving the efficiency of clinical screening and reducing repetitive report writing.

Cadmium chloride enhances cisplatin sensitivity in osteosarcoma cells by reducing FOXM1 expression.

Osteosarcoma is a highly malignant disease and is associated with a poor patient prognosis and a high mortality rate. Disease prognosis significantly correlates with chemotherapeutic responses. Cadmium is a heavy metal with specific effects on bone, but its benefits for osteosarcoma treatment have not been characterized.

Introducing Porphyrin Units by Random Copolymerization Into NDI-Based Acceptor for All Polymer Solar Cells.

Naphthalene diimide (NDI)-based polymer N2200 is a promising organic polymer acceptor for all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs), but its inherent shortcomings like poor extinction coefficient and strong aggregation limit further performance optimization of all-PSCs. Here, a series of random copolymers, PNDI-Px, were designed and synthesized by introducing porphyrin unit into NDI-based polymer as acceptors for all-PSCs. These random copolymers show a higher absorption coefficient and raised the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels compared to N2200.

NADH protect against radiation enteritis by enhancing autophagy and inhibiting inflammation through PI3K/AKT pathway.

Radiotherapy is an important method for cancer treatment but it has serious side-effects at high doses. One of the greatest challenges in radiotherapy is that radiation affects both healthy tissue and cancer tissues. For abdominal or pelvic lesions, the bowel is the most easily injured by irradiation.