Decomposition

N-Heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligands have been self-assembled on various metal and semimetal surfaces, creating a covalent bond with surface metal atoms that led to high thermal and chemical stability of the self-assembled monolayer. This study explores the self-assembly of NHCs on metal-oxide films (CuO x , FeO x , and TiO x ) and reveals that the properties of these metal-oxide substrates play a pivotal role in dictating the adsorption behavior of NHCs, influencing the decomposition route of the monolayer and its impact on work function values...

BACKGROUND: Loneliness, dementia, and mortality are interconnected. OBJECTIVE: We aimed at understanding mediating pathways and interactions between loneliness and dementia in relation to mortality risk. METHODS: The study tested bi-directional relationships between dementia, loneliness, and mortality, by examining both interactions and mediating effects in a large sample of older US adults participating in the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study...

The spatial characteristics of element flow and its spillover are important topics in economics, sociology, and geography, and significant to the promotion of the coordinated development of urban agglomerations. To study element flow in the Lanxi urban agglomeration and its effect to economic development, the spatial network characteristics and economic spillover effect were studied using the methods of spatial network analysis, the spatial Durbin model, and spatial effect decomposition. The results showed that (1) the scale of element flow in the Lanxi urban agglomeration is in an unbalanced distribution state, the scale of element flow in Lanzhou and Xining is higher than that in surrounding cities, and the connection between surrounding cities is also higher than that between other cities; (2) the network structure of element flow in the Lanxi urban agglomeration is relatively intensive, with Lanzhou and Xining as the center of element concentration, which indicates an obvious 'center periphery' structure, and gradually spreads from the core area to the surrounding areas; and (3) the element concentration level of the Lanxi urban agglomeration has a significant positive spillover effect, which plays a significant role in driving the development of surrounding cities...

The crystal structures of three mixed-valence copper cyanide alkanolamine polymers are presented, together with thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and electron spin resonance (ESR) data. In all three structures, a CuII moiety on a crystallographic center of symmetry is coordinated by two alkanolamines and links two CuI CN chains via cyanide bridging groups to form diperiodic sheets. The sheets are linked together by cuprophilic CuI -CuI interactions to form a three-dimensional network. In poly[bis(μ-3-aminopropanolato)tetra-μ-cyanido-dicopper(I)dicopper(II)], [Cu4 (CN)4 (C3 H8 NO)2 ]n , 1, propanolamine bases have lost their hydroxyl H atoms and coordinate as chelates to two CuII atoms to form a dimeric CuII moiety bridged by the O atoms of the bases with CuII atoms in square-planar coordination...

Despite the importance of wood-inhabiting fungi on nutrient cycling and ecosystem functions, their ecology, especially related to their community assembly, is still highly unexplored. In this study, we analyzed the wood-inhabiting fungal richness, community composition, and phylogenetics using PacBio sequencing. Opposite to what has been expected that deterministic processes especially environmental filtering through wood-physicochemical properties controls the community assembly of wood-inhabiting fungal communities, here we showed that both deterministic and stochastic processes can highly contribute to the community assembly processes of wood-inhabiting fungi in this tropical forest...

Solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) crucially affects the rate performance and cycling lifespan, yet to date more extensive research is still needed in potassium-ion batteries. We report an ultra-thin and KF-enriched SEI triggered by tuned fluorinated surface design in electrode. Our results reveal that fluorination engineering alters the interfacial chemical environment to facilitate inherited electronic conductivity, enhance adsorption ability of potassium, induce localized surface polarization to guide electrolyte decomposition behavior for SEI formation, and especially, enrich the KF crystals in SEI by self-sacrifice from C-F bond cleavage...

Thermal decomposition of NH3 BH3 and Li(BH3 NH2 BH2 NH2 BH3 ) was investigated at temperatures up to 1000 °C under various conditions with an inert atmosphere. It was found that complete dehydrogenation of ammonia borane towards amorphous boron nitride (a-BN) occurs at 850 °C when using monel reactors or at 1000 °C with the hot isostatic pressing method (HIP), which is significantly lower than was earlier reported. Li(BH3 NH2 BH2 NH2 BH3 ) was found to decompose towards hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) at 1000 °C with the HIP method but at 850 °C in monel reactors towards a mixture of a-BN and h-BN...

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a mental disorder that causes lifelong disorders based on delusions, cognitive deficits, and hallucinations. By visual assessment, SZ diagnosis is time-consuming and complicated, because brain states are more effectively revealed by electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, which are effectively used in SZ diagnosis. The application of existing deep learning methods in SZ detection is effective in the classification of 2-dimensional images, and these methods require more computational resources...

BACKGROUND: Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are inevitably contaminated with various kinds of noises during acquisition and transmission. The presence of noises may produce the inappropriate information on cardiac health, thereby preventing specialists from making correct analysis. METHODS: In this paper, an efficient strategy is proposed to denoise ECG signals, which employs a time-frequency framework based on S-transform (ST) and combines bi-dimensional empirical mode decomposition (BEMD) and non-local means (NLM)...

Control of foot placement is an essential strategy for maintaining balance during walking. During unperturbed, steady-state walking, foot placement can be accurately described as a linear function of the body's centre of mass (CoM) state at midstance. However, it is uncertain if this mapping from CoM state to foot placement generalizes to larger perturbations that could potentially cause falls. Recovery from these perturbations may require reactive control strategies not observed during unperturbed walking...

Rapid development of checkpoint inhibitors has provided significant breakthroughs for cancer stem cell (CSC) therapy, while the therapeutic efficacy is restricted by hypoxia-mediated tumor immune evasion, especially hypoxia-induced CD47 overexpression in CSCs. Herein, we developed a genetically engineered CSC membrane-coated hollow manganese dioxide (hMnO2 @gCMs) to elicit robust antitumor immunity by blocking CD47 and alleviating hypoxia to ultimately achieve the eradication of CSCs. The hMnO2 core effectively alleviated tumor hypoxia by inducing decomposition of tumor endogenous H2 O2 , thus suppressing the CSCs and reducing the expression of CD47...

Soil carbon loss is likely to increase due to climate warming, but microbiomes and microenvironments may dampen this effect. In a 30-year warming experiment, physical protection within soil aggregates affected the thermal responses of soil microbiomes and carbon dynamics. In this study, we combined metagenomic analysis with physical characterization of soil aggregates to explore mechanisms by which microbial communities respond to climate warming across different soil microenvironments. Long-term warming decreased the relative abundances of genes involved in degrading labile compounds (e...

Regular blood glucose monitoring and control is necessary for people with type 1 or advanced type 2 diabetes, yet diagnosing and treating patients with diabetes in an accurate, sustained and patient-friendly manner remains limited. Here, a glucose-responsive bifunctional nanosystem (PGOxMns) is constructed via one-pot biomineralisation of manganese dioxide with glucose oxidase and ε-poly-L-lysine. Under hyperglycaemic conditions, the cascade reactions that occur when glucose interacts with PGOxMns can trigger the production of Mn(II), which enhances the magnetic resonance imaging signal...

The widespread presence of fluoride in water, food, and the environment continues to exacerbate the impact of fluoride on the male reproductive health. However, as a critical component of the male reproductive system, the intrinsic mechanism of fluoride-induced cauda epididymis damage and the role of miRNAs in this process are still unclear. This study established a mouse fluorosis model and employed miRNA and mRNA sequencing; Evans blue staining, Oil Red O staining, TEM, immunofluorescence, western blotting, and other technologies to investigate the mechanism of miRNA in fluoride-induced cauda epididymal damage...

The production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) is constrained by substrate availability and the increased fractional pressure of H2 emitted by acidogenic/fermentative bacteria during anaerobic fermentation of waste activated sludge (WAS). This study introduced a novel approach employing zero-valent iron (ZVI)-activated sulfite pretreatment combined with H2 -consuming sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) mediation to improve SCFAs, especially acetate production from WAS fermentation. Experimental results showed that the combined ZVI-activated sulfite and incomplete-oxidative SRB (io-SRB) process achieved a peak SCFAs production of 868...

Typhoons and rainstorms (>250 mm/day) are extreme weather events changing hydrological characteristics and thus nitrogen (N) cycle in coastal waters. However, responses of N cycle to rainstorms and typhoons and their underlying mechanisms need to be elucidated. In this study, we conducted an analysis of a comparative dataset encompassing concentrations of nitrate (NO3 - ), ammonium (NH4 + ), dissolved oxygen (DO), chlorophyll a (Chl a), hydrological parameters, dual isotopic composition of NO3 - (δ15 N-NO3 - and δ18 O-NO3 - ) in Zhanjiang Bay during three distinct periods: the normal wet season, rainstorm, and typhoon periods...

Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6 ), recognized as a potent greenhouse gas with significant contributions to climate change, presents challenges in understanding its degradation processes. Molecular dynamics simulations are valuable tools for understanding modes of decomposition while the traditional approaches face limitations in time scale and require unrealistically high temperatures. The collective variable-driven hyperdynamics (CVHD) approach has been introduced to directly depict the pyrolysis process for SF6 gas at practical application temperatures, as low as 1600 K for the first time...

The effect of peach shell biochar (PSB) amendment on sheep manure (SM) composting was investigated. Five different ratios of PSB were applied (0%, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, and 10% PSB), and named T1 to T5, and run 50 days of composting experiment. It was found that PSB (especially 7.5% and 10%) could improve the compost environment, regulate the activity of microorganisms and related enzymes, and promote the decomposition of compost. 7.5% and 10% PSB advanced the heap into the thermophilic stage and increased the maximum temperature, while also increasing the germination index by 1...

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) produces clinical useful visualization of the distribution of ventilation inside the lungs. The accuracy of EIT-derived parameters can be compromised by the cardiovascular signal. Removal of these artefacts is challenging due to spectral overlapping of the ventilatory and cardiovascular signal components and their time-varying frequencies. We designed and evaluated advanced filtering techniques and hypothesized that these would outperform traditional low-pass filters. 
Approach: Three filter techniques were developed and compared against traditional low-pass filtering: multiple digital notch filtering (MDN), empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and the maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT)...

Layered oxides of sodium-ion batteries suffer from severe side reactions on the electrode/electrolyte interface, leading to fast capacity degradation. Although surface reconstruction strategies are widely used to solve the above issues, the utilization of the low-cost wet chemical method is extremely challenging for moisture-sensitive Na-based oxide materials. Here, the solvation tuning strategy is proposed to overcome the deterioration of NaNi1/3 Mn1/3 Fe1/3 O2 in water-based solution and conduct the surface reconstruction...