Radioactive wastewater containing high concentration of radionuclides poses severe threats to ecosystem and human health, so efficient removal of these toxic heavy metals is urgently needed. Titanate nanomaterials have been demonstrated good adsorbents for heavy metals due to ion exchange property. In this study, titanate nanorings (TNRs) were synthesized using the facile hydrothermal-cooling method. The TNRs were composed of sodium trititanate, with a chemical formula of Na0.66H1.34Ti3O7•0.27H2O and a Na content of 2.38 mmol/g. The TNRs demonstrated sufficient adsorption performance to radionuclides europium (Eu) and uranium (U) ions. Specifically, even at a high initial concentration of 50 mg/L, 86.5% and 92.6% of the two metal ions can be rapidly adsorbed by the TNRs within 5 min, and equilibrium was reached within 60 min at pH 5. The maximum adsorption capacity (Qmax) obtained by the Langmuir isotherm model was 115.3 mg/g for Eu(III) and 282.5 mg/g for uranium U(VI) at pH 5, respectively. The adsorption capacities of the two metals under various water chemical conditions were highly related to their species. Ion exchange between metal cations and Na+ in the TNR interlayers was the dominant adsorption mechanism, and adsorption of U(VI) was more complicated because of the co-existence of various uranyl (UO22+) and uranyl-hydroxyl species. The spent TNRs were effectively regenerated through an acid-base or ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) treatment and reused. Considering the large adsorption capacity and quick kinetic, TNRs are promising materials to remove radionuclides in environmental purification applications, especially emergent treatment of leaked radionuclides.
Cs(2)AgBiBr(6 )having a double perovskite structure is expected to be used in nonlead and stable optoelectronic devices and has received wide attention recently. At this stage, structures of optoelectronic devices using double perovskite and hybrid perovskite are the same. And the energy band structures of double perovskite and hybrid perovskite are different, which will cause energy-level mismatch in the device with double perovskite, which in turn will seriously restrict further improvement of the device performance. A strategy to solve this problem by constructing energy-level gradients with poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT)/MoO3/poly[bis(4-phenyl)(2,4,6-trimethylphenyo-amine] (PTAA) was reported for the first time. The construction of energy-level gradient is mainly achieved by P3HT and PTAA. MoO3 plays a role in protecting the substrate (P3HT) and does not hinder hole transport because it is itself a p-type semiconductor. The champion power conversion efficiency of devices with P3HT/MoO3/PTAA is improved by more than a quarter compared to the standard devices. Moreover, in the champion device, the power conversion efficiency achieved 1.94% with a short-circuit current of 2.80 mA/cm(2).
Conventional ultrafiltration (UF) technology suffers from membrane fouling and limited separation performance. This work demonstrates a novel electrical tuning strategy to improve the separation efficiency of the UF process. An electrically enhanced UF (EUF) system with two sets of oppositely placed membrane–electrode modules was set up. A series of multicycle treatment experiments were conducted to reveal the performance and tuning mechanism of the EUF system. The applied electrical tuning operation brought about an up to 68% reduction of average transmembrane pressure increasing rate (Rp), indicating a strong capability in inhibiting membrane fouling. This fouling reduction can be mainly ascribed to the applied electrophoretic force, changes in solution chemistry, and generation of peroxide, which repulses foulants away from the membrane, hampers foulant adsorption owing to enhanced electrostatic repulsion, and degrades foulants, respectively. The 1.2 V voltage was identified as an effective voltage for stably inhibiting membrane fouling. Besides, the electrical tuning operation led to an up to ∼32% increase in foulant retention rate (φ) owing to both non-Faradaic effects (including electrosorption and electrophoretic repulsion) and Faradaic oxidative degradation. Moreover, the electrical tuning operation allowed a remarkable desalination capability with a significantly higher desalination rate and an up to ∼43% greater salt adsorption capacity as compared with a conventional capacitive deionization process. Additionally, the EUF system achieved a good performance in removing heavy metals (Ag, Cu, Pb, Se, and Sb). The overall enhanced EUF performance suggests promising prospects for practical applications.
Hidden Markov models (HMMs) underpin the solution to many problems in computational neuroscience. However, it is still unclear how to implement inference of HMMs with a network of neurons in the brain. The existing methods suffer from the problem of being nonspiking and inaccurate. Here, we build a precise equivalence between the inference equation of HMMs with time-invariant hidden variables and the dynamics of spiking winner-take-all (WTA) neural networks. We show that the membrane potential of each spiking neuron in the WTA circuit encodes the logarithm of the posterior probability of the hidden variable in each state, and the firing rate of each neuron is proportional to the posterior probability of the HMMs. We prove that the time course of the neural firing rate can implement posterior inference of HMMs. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed WTA circuit can get accurate inference results of HMMs.
This article presents an energy-efficient comparator design. The pre-amplifier adopts an inverter-based input pair powered by a floating reservoir capacitor; it realizes both current reuse and dynamic bias, thereby significantly boosting gm/ID and reducing noise. Moreover, it greatly reduces the influence of the process corner and the input common-mode voltage on the comparator performance, including noise, offset, and delay. A prototype comparator in 180 nm achieves 46-μV input-referred noise while consuming only 1 pJ per comparison under a 1.2-V supply. This represents greater than seven-time energy efficiency boost compared with a strong-arm (SA) latch. It achieves the highest reported comparator energy efficiency to the best of our knowledge.
This article presents an incremental two-step capacitance-to-digital converter (CDC) with a time-domain ΔΣ modulator (TDΔΣM). Unlike the classic two-step CDCs, this work replaces the operational transconductance amplifier (OTA)-based active-RC integrator by a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO)-based integrator, which is mostly digital and low-power. Featuring the infinite dc gain and intrinsic quantization in phase domain, this TDΔΣM enables a CDC design achieving 76-dB SNDR while requiring only a first-order loop, and a low oversampling ratio (OSR) of 15. Fabricated in 40-nm CMOS technology, the prototype CDC achieves a resolution of 0.29 fF while dissipating only 0.083 nJ/conversion, which improves the energy efficiency by over two times comparing to the similar performance designs.
It is quite important and challenging for efficient activating the molecular oxygen (O2) to reactive oxygen species (ROS), especially in environmental remediation. Herein, the CuS4 atomic clusters are constructed on the surface of ZnInS4 nanosheet (CuS4-ZIS), which shows much better ability for activating O2 to ROS than pristine ZnInS4 nanosheet (ZIS) and the CuS3.6 atomic clusters counterpart (CuS3.6-ZIS). Results display that CuS4-ZIS can energetic favorably adsorb the O2 and more electrons could transfer from the CuS4-ZIS to O2 than ZIS and CuS3.6-ZIS. Besides, a better charge separation and transfer is observed on CuS4-ZIS. Thus, higher concentration of superoxide radicals (·O2−, partially transformed into ·OH) can be generated over Cu-S4 atomic clusters under light illumination. Therefore, CuS4-ZIS exhibits higher degradation efficiency of tetracycline (TC) than pristine ZIS and CuS3.6-ZIS. Moreover, the degradation pathway of TC is proposed based on the results of HPLC-MS and the theoretical calculations.
In the present study, simultaneous nitrification and denitrification of sewage treatment plant effluent was evaluated using an up-flow fixed-bed system packed with poly (3-hydroxybutyrate-hydroxyvalerate)/polylactide (PHBV/PLA) blends used in a dual role as carbon source and biofilms carrier. 98.1 +/- 2.9% and 87.2 +/- 6.8% of influent NH4+-N and NO3–N was removed from the synthetic wastewater. TN removal efficiency was 89.3 +/- 6.3% with the average effluent TN concentration of 1.6 +/- 0.9 mg/L during the stable period indicating that simultaneous nitrification and denitrification occurred. An initial high release of DOC in the effluent eventually stabilized at average of 9.0 +/- 3.4 mg/L. Simultaneous nitrification and denitrification occurred in the first 5 cm, and denitrification only in higher column sections. The PHBV/PLA supported system is a promising technology which could be applied for post-treatment of wastewater with low C/N ratios.
Inland water is very susceptible to the input of pollutants. However, little is known about the occurrence of antibiotics in inland lakes. In this study, a total of 83 target antibiotics were quantified in water and sediment samples collected from the Qinghai Lake, the largest inland lake of China located on the northeast of Qinghai-Tibet plateau, and its inflowing rivers. The results showed that 27 and 25 antibiotics were detected in water and sediments, respectively, with the summed concentrations (SUM) of 1.14-17.3 ng/L and 0.72-8.31 ng/g. Compared with the input rivers, significantly higher levels of sulfonamides (SAs), quinolones (QNs), polyethers (PEs), and SUM in water samples were observed in Qinghai Lake water. The average proportions of SAs (50.9-52.7%) and QNs (22.0-28.3%) in Qinghai Lake water nearly doubled compared to those in input rivers. An enrichment factor (EF) was proposed to reveal the enrichment degree of antibiotics in Qinghai Lake compared to its input river water. Sulfaguanidine (SGD), flumequine (FLU), and nalidixic acid (NDA) were enriched in Qinghai Lake up to several ten times based on the calculated EF values, due to their persistence in such a cold saline lake. Risk assessment showed that most antibiotics except anhydrochlortetracycline (ACTC) had insignificant risks to aquatic organisms and antibiotic resistance selection in Qinghai Lake water. This study was the first to reveal the enrichment of antibiotics in Qinghai Lake water, and suggests the urgent need to investigate the possible long-term enrichment and environmental risks of antibiotics in inland lakes.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the role of epigenetics in statins' diabetogenic effect comparing DNA methylation (DNAm) between statin users and nonusers in an epigenome-wide association study in blood. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Five cohort studies' participants (n = 8,270) were classified as statin users when they were on statin therapy at the time of DNAm assessment with Illumina 450K or EPIC array or noncurrent users otherwise. Associations of DNAm with various outcomes like incident type 2 diabetes, plasma glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance (HOMA of insulin resistance [HOMA-IR]) as well as with gene expression were investigated. RESULTS: Discovery (n = 6,820) and replication (n = 1,450) phases associated five DNAm sites with statin use: cg17901584 (1.12 x 10(-25) [DHCR24]), cg10177197 (3.94 x 10(-08) [DHCR24]), cg06500161 (2.67 x 10(-23) [ABCG1]), cg27243685 (6.01 x 10(-09) [ABCG1]), and cg05119988 (7.26 x 10(-12) [SC4MOL]). Two sites were associated with at least one glycemic trait or type 2 diabetes. Higher cg06500161 methylation was associated with higher fasting glucose, insulin, HOMA-IR, and type 2 diabetes (odds ratio 1.34 [95% CI 1.22, 1.47]). Mediation analyses suggested that ABCG1 methylation partially mediates the effect of statins on high insulin and HOMA-IR. Gene expression analyses showed that statin exposure and ABCG1 methylation were associated with ABCG1 downregulation, suggesting epigenetic regulation of ABCG1 expression. Further, outcomes insulin and HOMA-IR were significantly associated with ABCG1 expression. CONCLUSIONS: This study sheds light on potential mechanisms linking statins with type 2 diabetes risk, providing evidence on DNAm partially mediating statins' effects on insulin traits. Further efforts shall disentangle the molecular mechanisms through which statins may induce DNAm changes, potentially leading to ABCG1 epigenetic regulation.
In this study, an apatite reference material (RM), Eppawala-AP, was obtained and calibrated from a mega-crystal of Eppawala carbonatite (collected in northwestern region of Sri Lanka) to standardize chlorine isotope analysis. A homogeneity test and chlorine isotope composition measurement of the RM were performed using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and continuous gas flow isotope ratio mass spectrometry (CF-IRMS), respectively. The RM, with a recommended delta Cl-37 value of -0.74 +/- 0.15 parts per thousand, can be utilized as a matrix-matched N standard (similar to 1.55 wt. % Cl) to correct the instrumental mass fractionation (IMF) during in situ analysis, or as a quality control material for both in situ and bulk analysis, to facilitate high quality measurement and inter-laboratory data comparison. This RM is available to the scientific community by contacting the corresponding author. Our homogeneity test indicates an absence of orientation effect during SIMS analysis for the specific apatite grain investigated here, and suggests a repeatability of 0.13 parts per thousand for SIMS apatite chlorine isotope analysis. The matrix effect of minerals with complex chemistry predicts that the chlorine content is a controlling factor of IMF during in situ apatite chlorine isotope analysis; hence, additional RMs with variable concentrations of chlorine are required for routine delta Cl-37 measurement.