New particle formation (NPF) studies have been conducted in China since 2004. Formation of new atmospheric aerosol particles has been observed to take place in diverse environments, even under the circumstances of high pre-existing particle loading, challenging the traditional and present understanding of the physicochemical nucleation mechanisms, which have been proposed based on the investigations in clean environments and under laboratory experimental conditions. This paper summarizes the present status and gaps in understanding NPF in China and discusses the main directions opening for future research. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The direct growth of high-quality, large-area, uniform, vertically stacked Gr/h-BN heterostructures is of vital importance for applications in electronics and optoelectronics. However, the main challenge lies in the catalytically inert nature of the hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) substrates, which usually afford a rather low decomposition rate of carbon precursors, and thus relatively low growth rate of graphene. Herein, a nickelocene-precursor-facilitated route is developed for the fast growth of Gr/h-BN vertical heterostructures on Cu foils, which shows much improved synthesis efficiency (8?10 times faster) and crystalline quality of graphene (large single-crystalline domain up to ≈20 µm). The key advantage of our synthetic route is the utilization of nickel atoms that are decomposed from nickelocene molecules as the gaseous catalyst, which can decrease the energy barrier for graphene growth and facilitate the decomposition of carbon sources, according to our density functional theory calculations. The high-quality Gr/h-BN stacks are proved to be perfect anode/protecting layers for high-performance organic light-emitting diode devices. In this regard, this work offers a brand-new route for the fast growth of Gr/h-BN heterostructures with practical scalability and high crystalline quality, thus should propel its wide applications in transparent electrodes, high-performance electronic devices, and energy harvesting/transition directions.
The eigenvectors for graph 1-Laplacian possess some sort of localization property: On one hand, the characteristic function on any nodal domain of an eigenvector is again an eigenvector with the same eigenvalue; on the other hand, one can pack up an eigenvector for a new graph by several fundamental eigencomponents and modules with the same eigenvalue via few special techniques. The Courant nodal domain theorem for graphs is extended to graph 1-Laplacian for strong nodal domains, but for weak nodal domains it is false. The notion of algebraic multiplicity is introduced in order to provide a more precise estimate of the number of independent eigenvectors. A positive answer is given to a question raised in Chang (2016) [3], to confirm that the critical values obtained by the minimax principle may not cover all eigenvalues of graph 1-Laplacian.
We consider the nonlinear Dirac equation in 1 + 1 dimension with scalar–scalar self-interaction in the presence of external forces as well as damping of the form ${{\gamma}^{0}}f(x,t)-\text{i}\mu {{\gamma}^{0}} \Psi $ , where both $f,\left\{\,{{f}_{j}}={{r}_{j}}{{\text{e}}^{\text{i}{{K}_{j}}x}}\right\}$ and $ \Psi $ are two-component spinors. We develop an approximate variational approach using collective coordinates for studying the time dependent response of the solitary waves to these external forces. In our previous paper we assumed Kj = K, j = 1, 2 which allowed a transformation to a simplifying coordinate system, and we also assumed the 'small' component of the external force was zero. Here we include the effects of the small component and also the case ${{K}_{1}}\ne {{K}_{2}}$ which dramatically modifies the behavior of the solitary wave in the presence of these external forces.
Objectives: We aimed to study the dynamic changes of hepatitis B virus (HBV) core promoter/precore (CP/preC) sequences during antiviral treatment and their associations with virological responses.
Materials and methods: The baseline and 12-week CP/preC sequences (nts 1655-2014) were obtained from 52 chronic hepatitis B patients with positive hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg), who received a 104-week lamivudine and adefovir dipivoxil combination therapy. The mutations within the CP/preC were analyzed against genotype specific reference sequences. The nucleotide change rates in individuals during therapy were analyzed in a pairwise comparison manner.
Results: There was no significant difference of the mutation rate at each nucleotide site between baseline and week 12 of treatment (P>0.05). The mutation rates of A1762T/G1764A and G1896A were found to decrease from 46.2% (24/52) at baseline to 36.5% (19/52) at week 12 (P=0.426) and from 28.8% (15/52) to 21.2% (11/52) (P=0.497), respectively. The nucleotide change rates varied from 0.0% - 7.8% in individuals [0.0% in Group 1 (N=26); 0.3% - 7.8% in Group 2 (N=26)] during the first 12-week treatment. HBV DNA levels in Group 2 were significantly lower than those in Group 1 throughout therapy (P<0.01) (e.g., 1.5±1.3log10 IU/ml vs. 2.6±1.0log10 IU/ml at week 104, P=0.001). At week 104 the rates of HBV DNA undetectable and HBeAg loss in Group 2 were significantly higher than those in Group 1 (P<0.05). Along with the increased nucleotide change rates, the rate of HBV DNA undetectable at week 104 tended to increase (odds ratio=0.323, 95% confidence interval=0.138-0.758, P<0.001).
Conclusion: Our findings suggested that the nucleotide changes within HBV CP/preC region during the first 12-week treatment might be associated with a better virological response.
Keywords: Antiviral response; Core promoter; Hepatitis B virus; Mutation; Nucleotide change; Precore.