Huanghuai University

The strain Lsc-8 can produce a current density of 33.08 µA cm⁻² using carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) as a carbon source in a three-electrode configuration. A co-culture system of strain Lsc-8 and Geobacter sulfurreducens PCA was used to efficiently convert cellulose into electricity to improve the electricity generation capability of microbial fuel cells (MFCs). The maximum current density achieved by the co-culture with CMC was 559 μA cm⁻², which was much higher than that of strain Lsc-8 using CMC as the carbon source. The maximum power density reached 492.05 ± 52.63 mW cm⁻², which is much higher than that previously reported. Interaction mechanism studies showed that strain Lsc-8 had the ability to secrete riboflavin and convert cellulose into acetic acid, which might be the reason for the high electrical production performance of the co-culture system. In addition, to the best of our knowledge, a co-culture or single bacteria system using agricultural straw as the carbon source to generate electricity has not been reported. In this study, the maximum current density of the three-electrode system inoculated with strain Lsc-8 was 14.56 μA cm⁻² with raw corn stover as the sole carbon source. Raw corn stover as a carbon source was also investigated for use in a co-culture system. The maximum current density achieved by the co-culture was 592 μA cm⁻². The co-culture system showed a similar electricity generation capability when using raw corn stover and when using CMC. This research shows for the first time that a co-culture or single bacteria system can realize both waste biomass treatment and waste power generation.

Depression has severely impaired the health of the people all over the world. Cognitive dysfunction due to depression has exerted serious economic burden to family and society induced by the...

Objective: To analyze the regulatory effects and key targets of the fat-soluble components of ginseng in lung cancer. Methods: Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and the Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform were used to analyze and identify the fat-soluble components of ginseng. Network pharmacology was used to analyze the therapeutic targets of the fat-soluble components of ginseng in lung cancer and screen key proteins. In vitro assays were conducted to verify the effects of the active fat-soluble components of ginseng on proliferation and apoptosis in lung cancer cells and to verify the regulation of key proteins. Results: Ten active fat-soluble components of ginseng were screened for follow-up. Network pharmacology showed 33 overlapping targets between the active fat-soluble components of ginseng and lung cancer, and functional enrichment of the targets showed involvement of response to nitrogen, hormone response, membrane raft, and positive regulation of external stimulus. Pathway enrichment analysis showed vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) signaling, adipocyte lipolysis regulation, chronic myelogenous leukemia, endocrine resistance, and NSCLC-related pathways. A protein-protein interaction network was constructed, and the top 10 targets were selected in accordance with their scores. Ultimately, five target genes (EGFR, KDR, MAPK3, PTPN11, and CTNNB1) were selected in combination with literature mining for subsequent experimental verification. Proliferation assays showed that the growth of lung cancer cells was significantly decreased in a concentration-dependent manner in the fat-soluble components of ginseng intervention group compared with controls. Flow cytometry showed that active fat-soluble components of ginseng promoted apoptosis in a concentration-dependent manner in lung cancer cells. Western blot and quantitative real-time PCR showed that levels of the five key proteins and mRNAs were significantly decreased in the intervention group; furthermore, histone protein and mRNA levels were significantly higher in the high-concentration intervention group compared with the low-concentration group. Conclusion: The active fat-soluble components of ginseng inhibited the growth of lung cancer cells and promoted apoptosis. The underlying regulatory mechanisms may be related to signaling pathways involving EGFR, KDR, MAPK3, PTPN11, and CTNNB1.

An electrical stimulator transmitting information into selected neural circuits is a promising approach for neural prostheses or animal robots. However, traditional stimulators are based on rigid printed circuit board (PCB) technology; technological limitations hindered the development of stimulators, especially for experiments involving free-moving subjects. Here we described a small (1.6 × 1.8 × 1.6 cm), lightweight (4 g, including a 100 mA h lithium battery) and multi-channel (eight unipolar or four bipolar biphasic channels) cubic wireless electrical stimulator exploiting flexible PCB technology. In comparison with the traditional stimulator, an appliance of both flexible PCB and cube structure makes it smaller and lighter, and enhances its stability. Stimulation sequences can be constructed with 100 selectable current levels, 40 selectable frequency levels and 20 selectable pulse-width-ratio levels. Moreover, the distance of wireless communication can reach approximately 150 m. Both in vitro and in vivo results have demonstrated functionality of the stimulator. The feasibility of remote pigeon's navigation using the proposed stimulator was successfully verified.

The paper proposed a novel framework for efficient simulation of crack propagation in brittle materials. In the present work, the phase field represents the sharp crack surface with a diffuse fracture zone and captures the crack path implicitly. The partial differential equations of the phase field models are solved with physics informed neural networks (PINN) by minimizing the variational energy. We introduce to the PINN-based phase field model the degradation function that decouples the phase-field and physical length scales, whereby reducing the mesh density for resolving diffuse fracture zones. The numerical results demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

Objective The problem of adolescents' self-injury has gradually attracted social attention, however, a lack of research exists on the internal mechanism between social anxiety and self-injury. This study explored the relationship between social anxiety and self-injury in Chinese junior high school students.Method An adolescent self-injury questionnaire, social anxiety scale, intolerance of uncertainty questionnaire and self-injury questionnaire were used to survey 614 junior high school students.ResultsThe results showed that: (1) social anxiety had a significant positive predictive effect on self-injury; (2) intolerance of uncertainty had a significant mediating effect between social anxiety and self-injury; and (3) self-esteem had a significant moderating effect on the mediating effect of intolerance of uncertainty.Conclusion The study suggested that social anxiety in junior high school students has an impact on self-injury through mediation of intolerance of uncertainty and modulation of self-esteem.

This study aimed to investigate the teaching effect of the blended BOPPPS based on an online and offline mixed teaching model ("B + BOPPPS") in the course of fermentation engineering in applied universities. The participants were 142 undergraduates majoring from the course of fermentation engineering in Food Science and Engineering in 2019 and 2020 in Huanghuai University, Zhumadian city, Henan province, China. The students in the control group (68 students) were taught in 2019, and the students in the experimental group (74 students) were taught in 2020. The traditional teaching method and "B + BOPPPS" were implemented, respectively. The teaching effect was evaluated using the questionnaire survey of course satisfaction and theoretical knowledge test. The results showed that the scores of the theoretical knowledge test in the experimental group adopting "B + BOPPPS" were significantly higher than those in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (p < 0.01). The students had a good evaluation of the "B + BOPPPS" in many aspects, which included achieving learning goals, providing in-depth understanding of knowledge points, stimulating interest in learning, training in the ability to analyze and think about problems, and so on. The results suggested that "B + BOPPPS" could stimulate students' interest in learning and improve their subjective initiative. They could also improve students' ability to master and apply knowledge, which was conducive to improving the theoretical teaching quality of the course of fermentation engineering.

The paper proposes a method for analyzing the mechanical properties of flexoelectric materials based on the isogeometric finite element method (IGA-FEM) and polynomial chaos expansion (PCE). The method discretizes the flexoelectric governing equations utilizing the B-spline shape functions that satisfy the continuity requirement to obtain the mechanical properties (electric potential) of the material. To obtain a mechanical property with different input parameters, we choose the truncated pyramid model as the object of study, and use IGA-FEM and PCE to solve different single uncertain parameters, including independent Young’s modulus and uniformly distributed force, and two kinds of flexoelectric constants, respectively. Numerical examples are presented to bear out the accuracy and viability of the proposed methodology.

P-sets (P stands for Packet), a set pair with dynamic and law characteristics, are made up of an internal and an outer P-set, which is obtained by introducing dynamic characteristics into the Cantor set and improving the Cantor set. The concepts of αF-sub-information, αF¯-sub-information, and (αF,αF¯)-sub-information are presented in this paper based on P-sets, and it is then suggested that the relationship between the generation of sub-information and its attribute, the process of attribute reasoning, reasoning structure, and sub-information intelligent separation-acquisition be explored. These findings were used to design a sub-information intelligent separation-identification algorithm. By using these results, the application of intelligent separation and the identification of case information are given.

In this work, we report an atomistic understanding of the hydrogenation behavior of a highly twinned ZnSe nanorod (T-ZnSe) with a large density of surface atomic steps and the activation of N2 molecules adsorbed on its surface. Theoretical calculations suggest that the atomic steps are essential for the hydrogenation of T-ZnSe, which greatly enhances its catalytic activity. As a result, the T-ZnSe nanorods exhibit a significantly enhanced NH3 production rate of 13.3 μg h-1 mg-1 and faradaic efficiency of 5.83% towards the NRR compared with the pristine ZnSe nanorods. This report offers an important pathway for the development of efficient catalysts for the NRR, and a versatile anion-exchange strategy for efficiently manipulating materials' functionalities.

This paper proposes a novel generalized nth-order perturbation isogeometric finite-element method (GNP-IGA-FEM) for uncertainty quantification of mechanical properties of piezoelectric materials. In this method, the IGA-FEM is used to simulate the linear piezoelectric problem. The statistical characteristics (expected value and standard deviation) of the mechanical property (electric potential) of piezoelectric materials are obtained by Taylor series expansion considering the tiny disturbance parameters ε\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\varepsilon$$\end{document}. The two various uncertainty quantification techniques are used to characterize the statistical characteristics of natural frequencies in the dynamics of piezoelectric structures. Numerical examples verify the proposed GNP-IGA-FEM is suitable for low-dimensional random variable problems with small disturbances.

The porosity of porous media is a key factor affecting cement slurry diffusion. In this paper, a theoretical model of cement slurry diffusion in porous media considering the variation of porosity is proposed. The model is validated through comparison with the experimental results in the literature. The influence of injection parameters (i.e., the water–cement ratio and the pore fractal dimension) on the porosity and strength of porous media is analyzed. The results indicate that: under the same pore fractal dimension, the porosity of the specimen increases gradually with the increase in diffusion distance, and the rate increases rapidly in the later stage. However, when the fractal dimension of porosity increases to 2.1, the porosity of the consolidated body after grouting does not change with the diffusion distance. The water–cement ratio also affects the porosity of the sample. At a distance below 1.0 m, the sample porosity is larger at a larger water–cement ratio of 1.5. When the distance is more than 1.0 m, the smaller the porosity decreases with increasing water–cement ratios. With the increase in distance, the compressive strength of the specimen first decreases slowly, and then rapidly from 90 kPa to 0 kPa. This is further verified by the pore variation law obtained by SEM. The model is applied to selecting grouting parameter design in road maintenance. The pavement deflection after grouting is effectively reduced, verifying the theoretical model’s applicability.

This paper proposes a novel generalized n-th order perturbation isogeometric fast multipole boundary element method for time harmonic wave propagation in infinite domains. The non-uniform rational B-splines are employed to construct structural geometries and discretize the boundary integral equations which are formed from Helmholtz equations. The randomness of wave number for incident plane wave is considered as the source of system uncertainty. The generalized n-th order perturbation method is employed to model the field depending on the input random variable. The n-th order derivative of field functions included in the governing equations is derived by a generalized n-th order Taylor series expansion with a small perturbation parameter. The subtraction of singularity technique is used to evaluate the singular integrals and the fast multipole method is applied to accelerate the solution. The Monte Carlo simulations are conducted in numerical examples to demonstrate the validity and correctness of the proposed algorithm.

This paper investigates the orbital stability of periodic standing waves for the following coupled Klein-Gordon-Zakharov equations \begin{document} $ \begin{equation*} \left\{ \begin{aligned} &u_{tt}-u_{xx}+u+\alpha uv+\beta|u|^{2}u = 0, \ &v_{tt}-v_{xx} = (|u|^{2})_{xx}, \end{aligned} \right. \end{equation*} $ \end{document} where $\alpha>0$ and $\beta$ are two real numbers and $\alpha>\beta$. Under some suitable conditions, we show the existence of a smooth curve positive standing wave solutions of dnoidal type with a fixed fundamental period L for the above equations. Further, we obtain the stability of the dnoidal waves for the coupled Klein-Gordon-Zakharov equations by applying the abstract stability theory and combining the detailed spectral analysis given by using Lam\'{e} equation and Floquet theory. When period $L\rightarrow\infty$, dnoidal type will turn into sech-type in the sense of limit. In such case, we can obtain stability of sech-type standing waves. In particular, $\beta = 0$ is advisable, we still can show the the stability of the dnoidal type and sech-type standing waves for the classical Klein-Gordon-Zakharov equations.

The transient receptor potential mucolipin (TRPML) subfamily in mammalian has three members, namely TRPML1, TRPML2, and TRPML3, who play key roles in regulating intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis, endosomal pH, membrane trafficking and autophagy. Previous studies had shown that three TRPMLs are closely related to the occurrence of pathogen invasion and immune regulation in some immune tissues or cells, but the relationship between TRPMLs expression and pathogen invasion in lung tissue or cell remains elusive. Here, we investigated the expression distribution of three TRPML channels in mouse different tissues by qRT-PCR, and then found that all three TRPMLs were highly expressed in the mouse lung tissue, as well as mouse spleen and kidney tissues. The expression of TRPML1 or TRPML3 in all three mouse tissues had a significant down-regulation after the treatment of Salmonella or LPS, but TRPML2 expression showed a remarkable increase. Consistently, TRPML1 or TRPML3 but not TRPML2 in A549 cells also displayed a decreased expression induced by LPS stimulation, which shared a similar regulation pattern in the mouse lung tissue. Furthermore, the treatment of the TRPML1 or TRPML3 specific activator induced a dose-dependent up-regulation of inflammatory factors IL-1β, IL-6 and TNFα, suggesting that TRPML1 and TRPML3 are likely to play an important role in immune and inflammatory regulation. Together, our study identified the gene expression of TRPMLs induced by pathogen stimulation in vivo and in vitro, which may provide novel targets for innate immunity or pathogen regulation.

This study investigates the method and application of single-channel, three-component microtremor signal co-directional Rayleigh surface-wave extraction. The research focuses on filtering linear polarization waves using polarizability wave and phase-difference filtering, which were analyzed based on both simulated data and real microtremor signals. Additionally, the study examines the use of time-frequency analysis to analyze microtremor signals and identify Rayleigh wave propagation direction. The combination of these methods leads to a set of procedures for extracting high-SNR co-directional Rayleigh surface waves from microtremor signals, which was applied to the elliptical polarizability imaging method. Results indicate that the proposed data processing process effectively filters linear polarization waves and accurately determines the propagation direction of the Rayleigh wave, leading to significant improvement in the accuracy of elliptical polarizability exploration results. This provides a reference for obtaining high signal-to-noise ratio data in microtremor Rayleigh wave seismic exploration.

Electrochemical reduction reaction of nitrogen (NRR) offers a promising pathway to produce ammonia (NH3) from renewable energy. However, the development of such process has been hindered by the chemical inertness of N2. It is recently proposed that hydrogen species formed on the surface of electrocatalysts can greatly enhance NRR. However, there is still a lack of atomic-level connection between the hydrogenation behavior of electrocatalysts and their NRR performance. Here, we report an atomistic understanding of the hydrogenation behavior of a highly twinned ZnSe (T-ZnSe) nanorod with a large density of surface atomic steps and the activation of N2 molecules adsorbed on its surface. Our theoretical calculations and in situ infrared spectroscopic characterizations suggest that the atomic steps are essential for the hydrogenation of T-ZnSe, which greatly reduces its work function and efficiently activates adsorbed N2 molecules. Moreover, the liquid-like and free water over T-ZnSe promotes its hydrogenation. As a result, T-ZnSe nanorods exhibit significantly enhanced Faradaic efficiency and NH3 production rate compared with the pristine ZnSe nanorod. This work paves a promising way for engineering electrocatalysts for green and sustainable NH3 production.

The reduction of CO2 to chemical fuel driven by solar energy can not only meet the growing demand for renewable energy, but also balance the carbon cycle in nature. However, the current photocatalysts have low CO2 conversion due to their poor light capture ability, narrow light response range and high recombination probability of photogenerated carriers. Herein, a heterogeneous photocatalyst of hollow structured ZnO/ZnS decorated with Pt nanoparticles was synthesized through hydrothermal process and photo‐deposition method, showing excellent photocatalytic activity for CO2 reduction in long‐time stability and ∽100% CO selectivity, which could be mainly contributed to the natural enhanced light capture ability of hollow confined space owing to multiple reflection and scattering of light in the cavity; the improving separation efficiency of photo‐generated charge carriers due to the type‐II junction constructed between ZnO and ZnS and the additional reaction active sites after decorating Pt nanoparticles in surface of hollow structure. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The influence of microstructures (bimodal and basketweave) on the tensile properties and deformation mechanism of Ti-5Al-1V-1Sn-1Zr-0.8Mo alloy was investigated via an in situ tensile test monitored by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD)-assisted slip trace analysis. The bimodal structure exhibited good plasticity, but its tensile strength was lower than that of the basketweave structure. These variations could be attributed to the larger α colony structure in the basketweave structure. In situ tensile testing showed that the α colony in the basketweave structure can promote the formation of shear bands, leading to decreased plasticity. The activation of numerous slip systems in αp of the bimodal structure ensured good plasticity. Meanwhile, deformation twins were occasionally observed in the bimodal structure. However, dislocation slip and deformation twins were observed inside the large-sized grain boundary α (αGB) phase in the basketweave structure. The results of this study can extend the potential application of Ti alloys.