Shandong University of Technology

Nanocrystalline infrared-to-visible up-conversion phosphors, ytterbium and erbium co-doped sodium yttrium fluoride, were synthesized. Spherical particles with narrow size distribution were prepared by a co-precipitation method in the presence of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA). Particles of controlled size in the range of 37 to 166 nm diameter were obtained by adjusting the molar ratio of EDTA to total lanthanides. Although the as-prepared nanoparticles emit very weak up-conversion fluorescence when excited by infrared light, the emission was enhanced by up to 40-fold after they were annealed at temperatures between 400 and 600 °C. By comparison with the bulk phosphor, the luminescence efficiency of the nanoparticle was estimated to be 1%. Factors affecting the particle size and their up-conversion fluorescence intensity were investigated by various microscopic and spectroscopic techniques. Preliminary results demonstrated the nanoparticles as promising up-converting fluorescence labels in the detection of biological interactions.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been widely used to fabricate functional metal parts in automobile, aerospace, energy, and medical device industries due to its flexible process capacity including complex geometry, functional graded materials, and free usage of tool. For the two major categories of metal additive manufacturing processes include powder bed fusion (PBF) and directed energy deposition (DED), parts are fabricated through melting of feed stock materials in the form of either powders or wires directly from a CAD model. The unique thermal cycle of metal additive manufacturing is characterized by: (1) rapid heating rate due to high energy intensity with steep temperature gradients; (2) rapid solidification with high cooling rates due to the small volume of melt pool; and (3) melt-back involving simultaneous melting of the top powder layer and re-melting of underlying previously solidified layers. Residual stress caused by the unique thermal cycle in AM is the critical issue for the fabricated metal parts since the steep residual stress gradients generate part distortion which dramatically deteriorate functionality of the end-use parts. This paper comprehensively assessed the current research status on residual stress sources, characteristics, and mitigation. First, the relationship between residual stress and microstructure is highlighted in AM metal parts. Then, the measurement methods and characteristics of residual stress in both as-build metal parts and post-processed ones were summarized. Third, residual stress mitigation and control methods including in-situ and post-process control methods were thoroughly discussed. Furthermore, future work directions are provided in this work.

Crystalline porous materials are currently a hot research topic in the field of proton-conducting materials. Crystalline porous materials include metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), coordination polymers (CPs), polyoxometalates (POMs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). The designable structures and high surface areas of these materials provide great opportunities to orderly accommodate proton carriers and to systemically modify the concentration and mobility of proton carriers in available spaces. Based on the understanding of the relationship between the structure and proton conductivity, controllable synthesis of porous materials with high proton conductivity will gradually be achieved. This review summarizes the emerging studies of these materials and their unique proton conductivities.

The therapeutic use of natural herbs is an ancient human civilization act and the numbers of people have reliance on their pharmacological properties and preferred to use the natural herbs. People also use to consume these herbs as supplements to energize, bolster, and eventually enhance sexual ability. Polyherbal formulation (PHF) is one of these herbal amalgams that can be used to treat sexual dysfunction including erectile dysfunction, impotence, ejaculation dysfunction, and hypogonadism. The pilot study was aimed at evaluating the capacity of PHF in enhancing the spermatogenic potential of oligospermic patients. Thirty-six male patients with oligospermia were enrolled and randomized either to treatment (n = 23) with PHF (750 mg/d in three doses for 90 days) or to placebo (n = 13) in the same protocol. The preintervention semen analysis was compared with posttreatment semen analysis. Based on the postintervention semen analysis, patients were advised to undergo either in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to assess their fertility status. After polyherbal treatment, there was a 256% increase in sperm concentration (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">9.59</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">4.37</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">106</mml:mn></mml:math>/mL to<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2"><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">25.61</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">8.6</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">10</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">6</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:math>/mL; P ≤0.001), 154% increase in semen volume (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M3"><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">1.7</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">0.14</mml:mn></mml:math> mL to<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M4"><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">4.32</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">0.38</mml:mn></mml:math> mL; P ≤0.001), and 215% increase in sperm motility (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M5"><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">15.43</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">2.40</mml:mn></mml:math>% to<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M6"><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">48.65</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn fontstyle="italic">5.10</mml:mn></mml:math>%; P ≤ 0.001) on day 90 from baseline. Furthermore, a significant improvement and regulation were also observed in serum hormone levels with PHF treatment as compared to the placebo group. The present study demonstrated the evidence on synergistic spermatogenic effect of PHF as attributed in ayurveda for the treatment of oligospermia leading to infertility.

MXene, an important and increasingly popular category of postgraphene 2D nanomaterials, has been rigorously investigated since early 2011 because of advantages including flexible tunability in element composition, hydrophobicity, metallic nature, unique in-plane anisotropic structure, high charge-carrier mobility, tunable band gap, and favorable optical and mechanical properties. To fully exploit these potentials and further expand beyond the existing boundaries, novel functional nanostructures spanning monolayer, multilayer, nanoparticles, and composites have been developed by means of intercalation, delamination, functionalization, hybridization, among others. Undeniably, the cutting-edge developments and applications of clay-inspired 2D MXene platform as electrochemical electrode or photo-electrocatalyst have conferred superior performance and have made significant impact in the field of energy and advanced catalysis. This review provides an overview of the fundamental properties and synthesis routes of pure MXene, functionalized MXene and their hybrids, highlights the state-of-the-art progresses of MXene-based applications with respect to supercapacitors, batteries, electrocatalysis and photocatalysis, and presents the challenges and prospects in the burgeoning field.

The introduction of sulfur atoms onto target molecules is an important area in organic synthesis, in particular in the synthesis of pharmaceutical compounds, and a wide variety of sulfuration agents have been developed for thionation reactions over the past few decades. In this Focus Review, we collect and summarize the C-S bond-formation reactions that have been used to construct C-S bonds in natural products and pharmaceutical compounds.

Bacteria mediated infections may cause various acute or chronic illnesses and antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria has become a serious health problem around the world due to their excessive use or misuse. Replacement of existing antibacterial agents with a novel and efficient alternative is the immediate demand to alleviate this problem. Graphene-based materials have been exquisitely studied because of their remarkable bactericidal activity on a wide range of bacteria. Graphene-based materials provide advantages of easy preparation, renewable, unique catalytic properties, and exceptional physical properties such as a large specific surface area and mechanical strength. However, several queries related to the mechanism of action, significance of size and composition toward bacterial activity, toxicity criteria, and other issues are needed to be addressed. This review summarizes the recent efforts that have been made so far toward the development of graphene-based antibacterial materials to face current challenges to combat against the bacterial targets. This review describes the inherent antibacterial activity of graphene-family and recent advances that have been made on graphene-based antibacterial materials covering the functionalization with silver nanoparticles, other metal ions/oxides nanoparticles, polymers, antibiotics, and enzymes along with their multicomponent functionalization. Furthermore, the review describes the biosafety of the graphene-based antibacterial materials. It is hoped that this review will provide valuable current insight and excite new ideas for the further development of safe and efficient graphene-based antibacterial materials.

Self-powered devices and micro-sensors are in high demand for intelligent electronics and flexible wearables for applications in medical healthcare and human–computer interactive robotics. Flexible, stretchable, wearable and breathable high-sensitivity sensors that monitor signals from subtle changes in the environment provide solutions for personalized medical healthcare. In this article, we review the fundamental mechanisms, theoretical research, sensor fabrication methodologies, and applications of flexible piezoelectric materials. We focus on the flexibility and stretchability of inorganic, polymer, and bio-piezoelectric materials, explain their properties for physiological signal monitoring, motion detection, and force sensing. We provide an overview of the latest progress in piezoelectronics and piezoelectric photonics, the structures of devices, and self-powering technologies. We compared 10 types of polymers and composites with human skin in terms of elastic modulus and found that PLLA/PDMS, electro-spun PVDF, and ZnO/PVDF possess higher elastic modulus (50, 500, and 27900 MPa respectively) than human skin (18.8 MPa), thus being more suitable for wearable devices. In terms of electrical outputs of piezoelectric materials, polarized cast film has stronger piezoelectric property with output of 14–45.6 V than electro-spun filaments material (output 0.4–9 V). Future research and development should focus on increasing electrical performance while maintaining the required flexibility and durability.

Here we show that the introduction of N into a carbon surface facilitates the hydrogen-bonding interactions between the carbon surface and CO2 molecules, which accounts for the superior CO2 uptake of the N-doped activated carbons. This new finding challenges the long-held viewpoint that acid–base interactions between N-containing basic functional groups and acidic CO2 gas are responsible for the enhanced CO2 capture capacity of N-doped carbons.

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVReviewNEXTSmall-Molecule Fluorescent Probes for Imaging and Detection of Reactive Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Sulfur Species in Biological SystemsXiaoyun Jiao†, Yong Li†, Jinye Niu†‡, Xilei Xie†, Xu Wang*†, and Bo Tang*†View Author Information† College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Collaborative Innovation Center of Functionalized Probes for Chemical Imaging in Universities of Shandong, Key Laboratory of Molecular and Nano Probes, Ministry of Education, Institute of Molecular and Nano Science, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, P. R. China‡ School of Chemical Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255049, P. R. China*Fax: +86-531-86180017. E-mail: [email protected]*E-mail: [email protected]Cite this: Anal. Chem. 2018, 90, 1, 533–555Publication Date (Web):October 23, 2017Publication History Published online7 November 2017Published inissue 2 January 2018https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.analchem.7b04234https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.7b04234review-articleACS PublicationsCopyright © 2017 American Chemical SocietyRequest reuse permissionsArticle Views12804Altmetric-Citations408LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail Other access optionsGet e-Alertsclose SUBJECTS:Analytical apparatus,Fluorescence,Monomers,Peptides and proteins,Probes Get e-Alerts

Observations on the applicability of the ABTS(*+) assay to define structure-activity relationships (SARs) among phenols (AH) were based on experimental data and theoretical calculations. All AH examined (hydroxycinnamic derivatives, simple polyphenols, polyhydroxybenzoates, and flavonoids) were found to be active toward ABTS(*+). Moreover, known weak radical scavengers (i.e., coumaric and isoferulic acids) were found to be efficient or comparatively active to caffeic or rosmarinic acids in contradiction to the AH classification based on 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) data or the bond dissociation enthalpy values. This behavior was observed both in ethanol and in buffered (pH 7.4) environment. Resorcinol and phloroglucin were found to be more active than catechol and hydroquinone, whereas, among polyhydroxybenzoates, 2,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid was the least active, in line with the DPPH and theoretical data. Therefore, it can be argued that the ABTS(*+) assay may give an indication for the presence of antioxidants in a certain system but SARs cannot be readily inferred.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is considered the most common liver disease. Dietary supplementation has become a promising strategy for managing NAFLD. Hesperetin, a citrus flavonoid, is mainly found in citrus fruits (oranges, grapefruit, and lemons) and possesses multiple pharmacological properties, including anti-cancer, anti-Alzheimer and anti-diabetic effects. However, the anti-NAFLD effect and mechanisms of hesperetin remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the therapeutic effect of hesperetin against NAFLD and the underlying mechanism in vitro and in vivo. In oleic acid (OA)-induced HepG2 cells, hesperetin upregulated antioxidant levels (SOD/GPx/GR/GCLC/HO-1) by triggering the PI3 K/AKT-Nrf2 pathway, alleviating OA-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) overproduction and hepatotoxicity. Furthermore, hesperetin suppressed NF-κB activation and reduced inflammatory cytokine secretion (TNF-α and IL-6). More importantly, we revealed that this anti-inflammatory effect is attributed to reduced ROS overproduction by the Nrf2 pathway, as pre-treatment with Nrf2 siRNA or an inhibitor of superoxide dismutase (SOD) or/and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) abolished hesperetin-induced NF-κB inactivation and reductions in inflammatory cytokine secretion. In a rat model of high-fat diet (HFD)-induced NAFLD, we confirmed that hesperetin relieved hepatic steatosis, oxidative stress, inflammatory cell infiltration and fibrosis. Moreover, hesperetin activated the PI3 K/AKT-Nrf2 pathway in the liver, increasing antioxidant expression and inhibiting NF-κB activation and inflammatory cytokine secretion. In summary, our results demonstrate that hesperetin ameliorates hepatic oxidative stress through the PI3 K/AKT-Nrf2 pathway and that this antioxidative effect further suppresses NF-κB-mediated inflammation during NAFLD progression. Thus, our study suggests that hesperetin may be an effective dietary supplement for improving NAFLD by suppressing hepatic oxidative stress and inflammation.

Abstract Countries enact environmental regulations to achieve sustainable development and ecological sustainability. However, environmental regulations do not guarantee environmental sustainability unless implemented efficiently. Furthermore, political institutions play a key role in the formulation and management of environmental regulations. This research examines the relationship between democracy, environmental regulations, economic growth, and ecological footprint (EF) in the panel of G7 nations from 1985 to 2017. Second generation econometric techniques are used to analyze the data. The empirical evidence indicates that economic growth enhances EF while democracy and environmental regulations positively contribute to ecological sustainability by reducing EF. The causal outcomes reveal that democracy Granger causes EF and renewable energy indicating that democracy curbs environmental degradation and stimulates the share of renewables. Further, democracy and environmental regulations Granger cause each other. Lastly, the implication of these findings for sustainable development and ecological sustainability are discussed.

) and how the thermoresponsive behavior of surfactants, and the dynamic transition of the aggregate, controls the aggregate transition and gel formation and tunes the properties of air/water interfaces (Langmuir monolayer and interfacial free energy). Recent progress of the ion specific effect in bulk phase and at interfaces in amphiphilic systems and gels is summarized. Applications and a molecular level theoretical explanation of HS are discussed comprehensively. This review is aimed to supply a fresh and comprehensive understanding of Hofmiester phenomena in surfactants, polymers, colloids, and interface science and to provide a guideline to design the microstructures and templates for preparation of nanomaterials.

Continuous decline of earth’s natural resources and increased use of hazardous chemical fertilizers pose a great concern for the future of agriculture. Biofertilizers are a promising alternative to hazardous chemical fertilizers and are gaining importance for attaining sustainable agriculture. Biofertilizers play a key role in increasing crop yield and maintaining long-term soil fertility, which is essential for meeting global food demand. Microbes can interact with the crop plants and enhance their immunity, growth, and development. Nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, zinc, and silica are the essential nutrients required for the proper growth of crops, but these nutrients are naturally present in insolubilized or complex forms. Certain microorganisms render them soluble and make them available to the plants. The potential microbes, their mode of action, along with their effect on crops, are discussed in this review. Biofertilizers, being cost effective, non-toxic, and eco-friendly, serve as a good substitute for expensive and harmful chemical fertilizers. The knowledge gained from this review can help us to understand the importance of microbes in agriculture and the ways to formulate these microbes as biofertilizers for sustainable crop production.

The outbreak of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a grave global public health emergency. Nowadays, social media has become the main channel through which the public can obtain information and express their opinions and feelings. This study explored public opinion in the early stages of COVID-19 in China by analyzing Sina-Weibo (a Twitter-like microblogging system in China) texts in terms of space, time, and content. Temporal changes within one-hour intervals and the spatial distribution of COVID-19-related Weibo texts were analyzed. Based on the latent Dirichlet allocation model and the random forest algorithm, a topic extraction and classification model was developed to hierarchically identify seven COVID-19-relevant topics and 13 sub-topics from Weibo texts. The results indicate that the number of Weibo texts varied over time for different topics and sub-topics corresponding with the different developmental stages of the event. The spatial distribution of COVID-19-relevant Weibo was mainly concentrated in Wuhan, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration. There is a synchronization between frequent daily discussions on Weibo and the trend of the COVID-19 outbreak in the real world. Public response is very sensitive to the epidemic and significant social events, especially in urban agglomerations with convenient transportation and a large population. The timely dissemination and updating of epidemic-related information and the popularization of such information by the government can contribute to stabilizing public sentiments. However, the surge of public demand and the hysteresis of social support demonstrated that the allocation of medical resources was under enormous pressure in the early stage of the epidemic. It is suggested that the government should strengthen the response in terms of public opinion and epidemic prevention and exert control in key epidemic areas, urban agglomerations, and transboundary areas at the province level. In controlling the crisis, accurate response countermeasures should be formulated following public help demands. The findings can help government and emergency agencies to better understand the public opinion and sentiments towards COVID-19, to accelerate emergency responses, and to support post-disaster management.

In this study, a kind of graphene oxide-cuprous oxide (GO-Cu 2 O) nanocomposites was fabricated with different morphologies to serve as a photocatalytic material for the degradation of organic/inorganic dyes under visible light and the bactericidal effect against pathogenic bacteria. The GO-Cu 2 O was prepared with solid cube and hollow dodecahedra morphologies through in-situ synthesis, and characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman, Ultraviolet and visible spectrophotometry (UV/vis), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. In comparison with cubic GO-Cu 2 O, the absorption and degradation efficiency of the GO-Cu 2 O dodecahedra (GCD) composite in Methyl orange (MO), Rhodamine B (RhB), and phenol was higher owning to the more active sites for the simultaneous dye and light absorption of hollow structure. The antibacterial effect of the GO-Cu2O dodecahedra was examined by the flat colony counting method with an excellent bactericidal effect against pathogenic bacteria. The possible mechanism for the preparation of GCD possessing the enhancement of the visible-light photocatalytic and antibacterial efficiencies were also investigated.

Depression is a major contributor to the overall global burden of diseases. Traditionally, doctors diagnose depressed people face to face via referring to clinical depression criteria. However, more than 70% of the patients would not consult doctors at early stages of depression, which leads to further deterioration of their conditions. Meanwhile, people are increasingly relying on social media to disclose emotions and sharing their daily lives, thus social media have successfully been leveraged for helping detect physical and mental diseases. Inspired by these, our work aims to make timely depression detection via harvesting social media data. We construct well-labeled depression and non-depression dataset on Twitter, and extract six depression-related feature groups covering not only the clinical depression criteria, but also online behaviors on social media. With these feature groups, we propose a multimodal depressive dictionary learning model to detect the depressed users on Twitter. A series of experiments are conducted to validate this model, which outperforms (+3% to +10%) several baselines. Finally, we analyze a large-scale dataset on Twitter to reveal the underlying online behaviors between depressed and non-depressed users.

Abstract The development of effective approaches for the preparation of 0D quantum dots (QDs)/2D nanosheets (NSs) heterostructures, which have been proven to be favorable for heterogeneous catalysis, is highly desirable but remains a great challenge. Herein, 0D metal oxide nanocrystals–2D ultrathin g‐C 3 N 4 nanosheets (Co 3 O 4 /CNNS) heterostructures are synthesized via a facile chemical reaction, followed by annealing in air. Ultrafine Co 3 O 4 QDs (≈2.2–3.2 nm) are uniformly and tightly attached on the surface of g‐C 3 N 4 nanosheets. Detailed characterization reveals that the specially designed unique 0D/2D structure is critical to the high photocatalytic performance for the degradation of tetracycline (TC) via peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation. The optimal catalyst, namely, Co 3 O 4 /CNNS‐1100, exhibits excellent performance and ≈98.7% TC can be degraded under visible light irradiation. Moreover, TC degradation is almost completely insusceptible to several real water samples. Meanwhile, other dye pollutants can also be efficiently degraded by the Co 3 O 4 /CNNS‐1100/PMS/vis system. The quenching tests display that that the h + , ∙OH, O 2 ∙− , and SO 4 ∙− are responsible for TC removal. The improved photocatalytic performance can be attributed to the synergistic effect of the photocatalytic‐ and chemical‐processes in the PMS activation. This work gives an insight into the development of multifunctional 0D/2D nanocomposites for further potential applications which are not limited to environmental purification.

Image segmentation, which has become a research hotspot in the field of image processing and computer vision, refers to the process of dividing an image into meaningful and non-overlapping regions, and it is an essential step in natural scene understanding. Despite decades of effort and many achievements, there are still challenges in feature extraction and model design. In this paper, we review the advancement in image segmentation methods systematically. According to the segmentation principles and image data characteristics, three important stages of image segmentation are mainly reviewed, which are classic segmentation, collaborative segmentation, and semantic segmentation based on deep learning. We elaborate on the main algorithms and key techniques in each stage, compare, and summarize the advantages and defects of different segmentation models, and discuss their applicability. Finally, we analyze the main challenges and development trends of image segmentation techniques.