Construction of dual sulfur sites in metal-organic framework for enhanced mercury(II) removal.

Highly efficient removal of mercury ion (Hg) from aqueous solution is a serious concern. Herein, a novel metal-organic framework (MOF) containing dual sulfur sites was successfully constructed via an in-situ method. Different with previous reports, thiophene and thiol sites were simultaneously introduced via organic linker and inorganic cluster, resulting in high-density sulfur sites.

High-Precision ADC Spectrum Testing under Non-Coherent Sampling Conditions.

Realizing coherent sampling is one of the major bottlenecks in high-precision ADC spectrum testing. In spectrum analysis, if coherent sampling is not implemented, spectral leakage will result, which in turn leads to inaccurate test results. In this paper, a combined four-parameter sine-curve-fitting algorithm is proposed incorporating non-coherent sampling, with the amplitude, initial phase, and frequency parameters of the sine wave being obtained by fitting.

Influence Mechanism of Ageing Parameters of Cu-Cr-Zr Alloy on Its Structure and Properties.

The Cu-1.0% Cr-0.1% Zr alloy in a solid solution state was investigated by ageing treatments at different temperatures and holding times.

Supplier concentration and corporate innovation input.

This paper studies the relationship between supplier concentration and corporate innovation input. The results show that a firm with a higher supplier concentration tends to have lower R&D investments and invention patents. Considering endogenous problems, this negative relationship is still robust by using the instrumental variable regression and propensity score matching method.

Modification of Activated Carbon and Its Application in Selective Hydrogenation of Naphthalene.

The MoS/ACx catalyst for hydrogenation of naphthalene to tetralin was prepared with untreated and modified activated carbon (ACx) as support and characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller, scanning electron microscopy, temperature-programmed desorption of ammonia, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and scaning transmission electron microscopy. The results show that the modification of activated carbon by HNO changes the physical and chemical properties of activated carbon (AC), which mainly increases the micropore surface area of AC from 1091 to 1209 m/g, increases the micropore volume of AC from 0.444 to 0.

Atomic-level flatness on oxygen-free copper surface in lapping and chemical mechanical polishing.

Oxygen-free copper (OFC) serves as a core component of high-end manufacturing, and requires high surface quality. It is always a significant challenge to manufacture high-quality atomic-level surfaces. In this study, SiO nanospheres with good dispersibility were prepared and a late-model environmentally friendly chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) slurry was developed.

Synergistic Effects of Diatoms on Intumescent Flame Retardant High Impact Polystyrene System.

In this work, aiming to improve the flame retardancy performance of high impact polystyrene (HIPS), HIPS compounds were synthesized with the addition of intumescent flame retardant (IFR: mass ratio of APP and PER was 3:1) and diatoms into HIPS matrix by melt blending method. It was found the IFR/diatoms system exhibited high flame retardant efficiency and catalytic carbonization effect to HIPS matrix in the burning process. The LOI value of HIPS-2 compound with the addition of 28 wt% IFR and 2 wt% diatoms was increased to 29.

Method for persistent topological features extraction of schizophrenia patients' electroencephalography signal based on persistent homology.

With the development of network science and graph theory, brain network research has unique advantages in explaining those mental diseases, the neural mechanism of which is unclear. Additionally, it can provide a new perspective in revealing the pathophysiological mechanism of brain diseases from the system level. The selection of threshold plays an important role in brain networks construction.

Analysis of energy recovery and microbial community in an amalgamated CSTR-UASBs reactor for a three-stage anaerobic fermentation process of cornstalks.

In this study, a continuous stirred-tank reactor (CSTR) coupled with up-flow anaerobic sludge beds (UASBs) reactor was successfully developed for enhancing methane production and carbon recovery rate from cornstalks. Acetic acid production was higher in regions A than in B and C. The methane percentage achieved at 75.

An Ab Initio Investigation on Relevant Oligomerization Reactions of Toluene Diisocyanate (TDI).

2,4- and 2,6-isomers of toluene diisocyanates (2,4-TDI and 2,6-TDI) are important raw materials in the polyurethane industry. These reactive compounds associate even under ambient conditions to form oligomers, changing the physicochemical properties of the raw material. Kinetically and thermodynamically relevant dimerization reactions were selected based on G3MP2B3 calculations from all possible dimers of phenyl isocyanate using these isocyanates as proxies.

Chemically Induced Compatible Interface in Pyrolyzed Bacterial Cellulose/Graphene Sandwich for Electrochemical Energy Storage.

Herein, a three-step approach toward a multi-layered porous PBC/graphene sandwich has been developed, in which the chemical bonding interactions have been successfully enhanced via esterification between the layers of pyrolyzed bacterial cellulose (PBC) and graphene. Such a chemically induced compatible interface has been demonstrated to contribute significantly to the mass transfer efficiency when the PBC/graphene sandwich is deployed as electrode material for both supercapacitors and lithium-sulfur batteries. The high specific capacitance of the supercapacitors has been increased by three times, to 393 F g at 0.

Spatial Distribution, Potential Sources, and Health Risk of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the Surface Soils under Different Land-Use Covers of Shanxi Province, North China.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are widespread in the environment and pose a serious threat to the soil ecosystem. In order to better understand the health risks for residents exposed to PAH-contaminated soil, 173 surface soil samples were collected in Shanxi Province, China, to detect the levels of 16 priority PAHs. The spatial distribution patterns of PAHs were explored using interpolation and spatial clustering analysis, and the probable sources of soil PAHs were identified for different land-use covers.

Resonant photoacoustic spectrometer enhanced by multipass absorption for detecting atmospheric CH at the ppb-level.

A resonant photoacoustic spectrometer (PAS) was developed for detecting trace atmospheric CH. The sensitivity of the PAS was significantly increased a Herriott-type multipass cell with a beam pattern concentrated in the cavity. The effective optical pathlength of the PAS can be optimized to 6.

Positive and negative effects of nanoscale zero-valent iron-enriched biochar on sulfamethoxazole remediation in contaminated soil.

This study prepared surface-modified biochar, including acid washing biochar (HBC) and biochar supported with nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI-HBC). The surface-modified biochar was added to sulfamethoxazole (SMX)-contaminated soil with and without earthworms to examine the effects of surface-modified biochar and/or earthworms (Eisenia fetida) on the levels of SMX and its relevant genes (sul1, sul2, and intI1) in the soil. Additionally, the joint toxicity of these exogenous substances on earthworms was investigated.

Magnetically Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance of TiNiSb+ mol % Fe ( = 0-5) Nanocomposites.

TiNiSb is a half-Heusler compound with low lattice thermal conductivity due to a large number of cation vacancies. However, the higher carrier concentration limits the improvement of its thermoelectric performance. In this paper, magnetic Fe nanoparticles with a size of 30 nm are composited into TiNiSb in the form of the second phase.

Attapulgite Structure Reset to Accelerate the Crystal Transformation of Isotactic Polybutene.

Isotactic polybutene (iPB) has a wide application in the water pipe field. However, the most valuable form I, needs 7 days to complete the transformation. In this study, the attapulgite (ATP), which produces lattice matching of the iPB form I, was selected to prepare an iPB/ATP composite.

The Influence of Metal Lithium and Alkyl Chain in the Nucleating Agent Lauroyloxy-Substituted Aryl Aluminum Phosphate on the Crystallization and Optical Properties for iPP.

In this work, a kind of aryl phosphate salt nucleating agent (APAl-12C) was synthesized, which was replaced in the hydroxyl group on the aluminum hydroxy bis [2,2'-methylene-bis(4,6-di-tert-butylphenyl) phosphate] (APAl-OH) by lauroyloxy, which could improve the dispersion between the nucleating agent and the iPP matrix and reduce the migration potential of the nucleating agent in the iPP matrix by increasing the molecular weight. The structure of the nucleating agent APAl-12C was analyzed by fourier infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR ) and H NMR. The differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) results indicated that the addition of APAl-OH or APAl-12C alone was inferior to the commercial nucleating agent NA-21 (compounds of APAl-OH and Lithium laurate) in terms of the crystallization behavior, which may be due to the importance of metal Li in the crystallization property.

Distributed robust group output synchronization control for heterogeneous uncertain linear multi-agent systems.

This paper investigates the distributed robust group output synchronization problem of heterogeneous uncertain linear leader-follower multi-agent systems (MASs), whose followers have nonidentical and parameter uncertain dynamics. To achieve cooperative tracking with multiple targets, a new group synchronization framework based upon the output regulation technique is established. In the underlying directed communication topology, all nonidentical followers are divided into several subgroups.

Dealloying-Derived Porous Spinel Oxide for Bifunctional Oxygen Electrocatalysis and Rechargeable Zinc-Air Batteries: Promotion of Activity Via Hereditary Al-Doping.

The large-scale fabrication of highly efficient and low-cost bifunctional catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is critical to the development of rechargeable zinc-air batteries (ZABs). Herein, a scalable dealloying strategy was proposed to obtain hierarchically porous spinel-type oxide with minor hereditary Al doping. Benefiting from the well-structured porosity and native dopant, O-np-Ni Co (Al), namely Al-NiCo O , exhibited excellent electrocatalytic ORR and OER activities, giving a small potential gap of 0.

Linear Chain Conditional Random Field for Operating Mode Identification and Multimode Process Monitoring.

As a supervised machine learning algorithm, conditional random fields are mainly used for fault classification, which cannot detect new unknown faults. In addition, faulty variable location based on them has not been studied. In this paper, conditional random fields with a linear chain structure are utilized for modeling multimode processes with transitions.

Deposition potential of 0.003-10 µm ambient particles in the humidified human respiratory tract: Contribution of new particle formation events in Beijing.

Ultrafine particles (UFPs) usually explosive growth during new particle formation (NPF) events. However, the risk of exposure to UFPs on NPF days has been ignored due to the prevalence of mass-based air quality standards. In this study, the daily deposited doses, i.

Effect of Annealing Temperature on Microstructure and Properties of Al/Mg Magnetic Pulse Welding Joints.

In this investigation, 1060Al/AZ31B welded joints were obtained by magnetic pulse welding technique. In order to test the microstructure and mechanical properties of the joints, the welded joints were annealed at different temperatures and then examined by optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy spectrum analysis (EDS) and mechanical properties testing. The testing results of the welded joints annealed at different temperatures showed that the Al-Mg MPW welded joints were well bonded.

Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance of GeTe-Based Composites Incorporated with Fe Nanoparticles.

Incorporated nanoscale phases in thermoelectric (TE) materials can optimize the electronic and thermal transport properties to obtain high-performance TE materials. The rapid spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique is adopted to synthesize GeBiTe composites incorporated with soft magnetic Fe nanoparticles (nano-Fe) and their thermoelectric performance is researched in this study. With the phase transition of the GeBiTe matrix from the low-temperature rhombohedral phase to the high-temperature cubic one, the interface contact between GeBiTe and nano-Fe is transformed from Schottky contact to Ohmic one, which improves its electronic transport performance at high temperatures.

Trapping Hydrogen Atoms in Vacancies of LiTiO Crystal: A First-Principles Study.

The hydrogen atom capacity in the vacancies of the LiTiO crystal is systematically studied by the first-principles method to evaluate its tritium release performance as a solid breeder material in nuclear fusion reactors. The adsorption process of adding hydrogen atoms one by one in the vacancy are investigated to find the possible adsorption sites of the hydrogen atoms in the vacancy. The charge transfer and density of states analysis are performed to reveal the form of a hydrogen-hydrogen dimer in the vacancy.