To overcome the ever-growing organic pollutions in the water system,abundant efforts have been dedicated to fabricating efficient Fenton-like carbon catalysts.However,the rational design of carbon catalysts with high ...To overcome the ever-growing organic pollutions in the water system,abundant efforts have been dedicated to fabricating efficient Fenton-like carbon catalysts.However,the rational design of carbon catalysts with high intrinsic activity remains a long-term goal.Herein,we report a new N-molecule-assisted self-catalytic carbonization process in augmenting the intrinsic Fenton-like activity of metal-organic-framework-derived carbon hybrids.During carbonization,the N-molecules provide alkane/ammonia gases and the formed iron nanocrystals act as the in situ catalysts,which result in the elaborated formation of carbon nanotubes(in situ chemical vapor deposition from alkane/iron catalysts)and micro-/meso-porous structures(ammonia gas etching).The obtained catalysts exhibited with abundant Fe/Fe-Nx/pyridinic-N active species,micro-/meso-porous structures,and conductive carbon nanotubes.Consequently,the catalysts exhibit high efficiency toward the degradation of different organic pollutions,such as bisphenol A,methylene blue,and tetracycline.This study not only creates a new pathway for achieving highly active Fenton-like carbon catalysts but also takes a step toward the customized production of advanced carbon hybrids for diverse energy and environmental applications.展开更多
Litchi downy blight,caused by the plant pathogenic oomycete Peronophythora litchii,is one of the most devastating diseases on litchi and resulted in huge economic losses.Autophagy plays an essential role in the develo...Litchi downy blight,caused by the plant pathogenic oomycete Peronophythora litchii,is one of the most devastating diseases on litchi and resulted in huge economic losses.Autophagy plays an essential role in the development and pathogenicity of the filamentous fungi.However,the function of autophagy in oomycetes remain elusive.Here,an autophagy-related protein Atg3 homolog PlAtg3 was identified and characterized in P.litchii.The absence of PlATG3 through the CRISPR/Cas9 gene replacement strategy compromised vegetative growth and sexual/asexual development.Cytological analyses revealed that the deletion of PlATG3 impaired autophagosome formation with monodansylcadaverine(MDC)staining and significantly disrupted zoospore release due to defects of sporangial cleavage with FM4-64 staining.Atg8 is considered to be an autophagy marker protein in various species.Western blot analysis indicated that PlAtg3 is involved in degradation of PlAtg8-PE.Interestingly,PlAtg3 was unable to interact with PlAtg8 in yeast two hybrid(Y2H)assays,possibly due to the absence of the Atg8 family interacting motif(AIM)in PlAtg3.Furthermore,pathogenicity assays revealed that the deletion of PlATG3 considerably reduced the virulence of P.litchii.Taken together,our data reveal that PlAtg3 plays an important role in radial growth,asexual/sexual development,sporangial cleavage and zoospore release,autophagosome formation,and pathogenicity in P.litchii.This study contributes to a better understanding of the pathogenicity mechanisms of P.litchii and provides insights for the development of more effective strategies to control oomycete diseases.展开更多
In intelligent perception and diagnosis of medical equipment,the visual and morphological changes in retinal vessels are closely related to the severity of cardiovascular diseases(e.g.,diabetes and hypertension).Intel...In intelligent perception and diagnosis of medical equipment,the visual and morphological changes in retinal vessels are closely related to the severity of cardiovascular diseases(e.g.,diabetes and hypertension).Intelligent auxiliary diagnosis of these diseases depends on the accuracy of the retinal vascular segmentation results.To address this challenge,we design a Dual-Branch-UNet framework,which comprises a Dual-Branch encoder structure for feature extraction based on the traditional U-Net model for medical image segmentation.To be more explicit,we utilize a novel parallel encoder made up of various convolutional modules to enhance the encoder portion of the original U-Net.Then,image features are combined at each layer to produce richer semantic data and the model’s capacity is adjusted to various input images.Meanwhile,in the lower sampling section,we give up pooling and conduct the lower sampling by convolution operation to control step size for information fusion.We also employ an attentionmodule in the decoder stage to filter the image noises so as to lessen the response of irrelevant features.Experiments are verified and compared on the DRIVE and ARIA datasets for retinal vessels segmentation.The proposed Dual-Branch-UNet has proved to be superior to other five typical state-of-the-art methods.展开更多
Neuromorphic applications have shown great promise not only for efficient parallel computing mode to hold certain computational tasks,such as perception and recognition,but also as key biomimetic elements for th intel...Neuromorphic applications have shown great promise not only for efficient parallel computing mode to hold certain computational tasks,such as perception and recognition,but also as key biomimetic elements for th intelligent sensory system of next-generation robotics.However,achieving such a biomimetic nociceptor tha can adaptively switch operation mode with a stimulation threshold remains a challenge.Through rational design of material properties and device structures,we realized an easily-fabricated,low-energy,and reconfigurable no ciceptor.It is capable of threshold-triggered adaptive bi-mode jump that resembles the biological alarm system With a tunnel silicon nitride(Si_(3)N_(4))we mimicked the intensity-and rehearsal-triggered jump by means of th tunneling mode transition of Si_(3)N_(4)dielectric.Under threshold signals the device can also express some common synaptic functions with an extremely low energy density of 33.5 f J∕μm^(2).In addition,through the modulation o Si_(3)N_(4)thickness it is relatively easy to fabricate the device with differing pain degree.Our nociceptor analog based on a tunneling layer provides an opportunity for the analog pain alarm system and opens up a new path toward threshold-related novel applications.展开更多
基金supported by the National Key R&D Program of China(2019YFA0110600 and 2019YFA0110601)National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.51603134,51903178,51803134,and 51703141)+1 种基金Sichuan Province’s Science and Technology Planning Project(No.2016GZ0350)the Postgraduate Course Construction Project of Sichuan University(No.2017KCSJ036)and for their financial support.
文摘To overcome the ever-growing organic pollutions in the water system,abundant efforts have been dedicated to fabricating efficient Fenton-like carbon catalysts.However,the rational design of carbon catalysts with high intrinsic activity remains a long-term goal.Herein,we report a new N-molecule-assisted self-catalytic carbonization process in augmenting the intrinsic Fenton-like activity of metal-organic-framework-derived carbon hybrids.During carbonization,the N-molecules provide alkane/ammonia gases and the formed iron nanocrystals act as the in situ catalysts,which result in the elaborated formation of carbon nanotubes(in situ chemical vapor deposition from alkane/iron catalysts)and micro-/meso-porous structures(ammonia gas etching).The obtained catalysts exhibited with abundant Fe/Fe-Nx/pyridinic-N active species,micro-/meso-porous structures,and conductive carbon nanotubes.Consequently,the catalysts exhibit high efficiency toward the degradation of different organic pollutions,such as bisphenol A,methylene blue,and tetracycline.This study not only creates a new pathway for achieving highly active Fenton-like carbon catalysts but also takes a step toward the customized production of advanced carbon hybrids for diverse energy and environmental applications.
基金supported by the grants from the Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation,China(321QN190 and 321CXTD437)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(32202246 and 32160614)+1 种基金the Open Project Program of Fujian Key Laboratory for Monitoring and Integrated Management of Crop Pests,China(MIMCP-202102)the Scientific Research Foundation of Hainan University,China(KYQD(ZR)-21042 and KYQD(ZR)-20080)。
文摘Litchi downy blight,caused by the plant pathogenic oomycete Peronophythora litchii,is one of the most devastating diseases on litchi and resulted in huge economic losses.Autophagy plays an essential role in the development and pathogenicity of the filamentous fungi.However,the function of autophagy in oomycetes remain elusive.Here,an autophagy-related protein Atg3 homolog PlAtg3 was identified and characterized in P.litchii.The absence of PlATG3 through the CRISPR/Cas9 gene replacement strategy compromised vegetative growth and sexual/asexual development.Cytological analyses revealed that the deletion of PlATG3 impaired autophagosome formation with monodansylcadaverine(MDC)staining and significantly disrupted zoospore release due to defects of sporangial cleavage with FM4-64 staining.Atg8 is considered to be an autophagy marker protein in various species.Western blot analysis indicated that PlAtg3 is involved in degradation of PlAtg8-PE.Interestingly,PlAtg3 was unable to interact with PlAtg8 in yeast two hybrid(Y2H)assays,possibly due to the absence of the Atg8 family interacting motif(AIM)in PlAtg3.Furthermore,pathogenicity assays revealed that the deletion of PlATG3 considerably reduced the virulence of P.litchii.Taken together,our data reveal that PlAtg3 plays an important role in radial growth,asexual/sexual development,sporangial cleavage and zoospore release,autophagosome formation,and pathogenicity in P.litchii.This study contributes to a better understanding of the pathogenicity mechanisms of P.litchii and provides insights for the development of more effective strategies to control oomycete diseases.
基金supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC)(61976123,62072213)Taishan Young Scholars Program of Shandong Provinceand Key Development Program for Basic Research of Shandong Province(ZR2020ZD44).
文摘In intelligent perception and diagnosis of medical equipment,the visual and morphological changes in retinal vessels are closely related to the severity of cardiovascular diseases(e.g.,diabetes and hypertension).Intelligent auxiliary diagnosis of these diseases depends on the accuracy of the retinal vascular segmentation results.To address this challenge,we design a Dual-Branch-UNet framework,which comprises a Dual-Branch encoder structure for feature extraction based on the traditional U-Net model for medical image segmentation.To be more explicit,we utilize a novel parallel encoder made up of various convolutional modules to enhance the encoder portion of the original U-Net.Then,image features are combined at each layer to produce richer semantic data and the model’s capacity is adjusted to various input images.Meanwhile,in the lower sampling section,we give up pooling and conduct the lower sampling by convolution operation to control step size for information fusion.We also employ an attentionmodule in the decoder stage to filter the image noises so as to lessen the response of irrelevant features.Experiments are verified and compared on the DRIVE and ARIA datasets for retinal vessels segmentation.The proposed Dual-Branch-UNet has proved to be superior to other five typical state-of-the-art methods.
基金National Natural Science Youth Foundation(62106111)Wuxi"Taihu Light"Science and Technology Research Plan(K20231001)Wuxi University Research Start-up Fund for Introduced Talents(2021r011,2021r012)。
文摘Neuromorphic applications have shown great promise not only for efficient parallel computing mode to hold certain computational tasks,such as perception and recognition,but also as key biomimetic elements for th intelligent sensory system of next-generation robotics.However,achieving such a biomimetic nociceptor tha can adaptively switch operation mode with a stimulation threshold remains a challenge.Through rational design of material properties and device structures,we realized an easily-fabricated,low-energy,and reconfigurable no ciceptor.It is capable of threshold-triggered adaptive bi-mode jump that resembles the biological alarm system With a tunnel silicon nitride(Si_(3)N_(4))we mimicked the intensity-and rehearsal-triggered jump by means of th tunneling mode transition of Si_(3)N_(4)dielectric.Under threshold signals the device can also express some common synaptic functions with an extremely low energy density of 33.5 f J∕μm^(2).In addition,through the modulation o Si_(3)N_(4)thickness it is relatively easy to fabricate the device with differing pain degree.Our nociceptor analog based on a tunneling layer provides an opportunity for the analog pain alarm system and opens up a new path toward threshold-related novel applications.
