Bionic Structural Coloration of Textiles Using the Synthetically Prepared Liquid Photonic Crystals.

The structural coloration of textiles with bionic photonic crystals (PCs) is expected to become a critical approach to the ecological coloration of textiles. Rapid and large-area preparation of PC structurally colored textiles can be achieved via self-assembly of high mass fractions of liquid photonic crystals (LPCs). However, the rapid and large-scale manufacturing of LPCs remains a challenge. In this work, the pH regulator is added in the process of emulsion polymerization to solve the problem of phase transformation caused by the thermal decomposition of the initiator to produce H+ , directly achieving 40 wt.% PS nanospheres in the dispersion. Then oligomers and small-molecule salts are removed from the system via dialysis, and the pre-crystallized LPC system is efficiently prepared. Adjusting the particle size and the mass fraction of nanospheres is shown to be an efficient way to control the optical properties of LPCs. The rapid and large-area preparation of PC structural color fabric and the patterned PC structural color fabric with an iridescent effect is implemented by using LPCs as the assembly intermediate. By constructing the encapsulation layer on the surface of the PC structural color fabric, the consistency of high structural stability and high color saturation of the PC is realized.

Preparation of Patterned Photonic Crystals with High Fastness and Iridescence Effect via Resist-Screen Printing.

Patterned photonic crystals (PCs) have great application potential in the textile field owing to their attractive high-saturation iridescent effect. Herein, based on the idea of resist printing, a novel approach to constructing patterned photonic crystals via screen printing was designed and achieved. A colorless pattern with hydrophilic and hydrophobic difference was firstly prepared by screen printing using a hydrophilic polymer paste printed on a hydrophobic fabric, and then the PC structurally colored pattern was obtained through scrapping liquid photonic crystals (LPCs) on the fabric because the LPCs were spread and assembled in the hydrophilic pattern but resisted in the hydrophobic areas, so that to realize the rapid preparation of patterned PCs on the fabric surface. Once the contact angle difference (ΔCA) between the hydrophilic and hydrophobic areas exceeded 80, the "color paste" (that is, LPCs) did not stain the hydrophobic area at all after scrapping, and the assembled PCs pattern showed good contour sharpness and high-saturation iridescence effect. The complex multistructural color patterns on the fabrics were achieved by adjusting the size of nanospheres and using multistep printing and scrapping. The preparation of the protective layer on the PC surface effectively improved the structural stability of the patterned PCs while retaining the optical properties of the pattern. This patterned PCs preparation method was combined with a conventional responsive substance (rhodamine B) to obtain double anti-counterfeiting patterned PCs with the iridescence effect. The results suggested a promising future in both the highly efficient preparation of patterned PCs and the application of PCs in the anti-counterfeiting field.

Fabrication of Anatase TiO2/PVDF Composite Membrane for Oil-in-Water Emulsion Separation and Dye Photocatalytic Degradation.

At present, the types of pollutants in wastewater are more and more complicated, however, the multifunctional membrane materials are in short supply. To prepare a membrane with both high efficient oil-in-water emulsion separation performance and photocatalytic degradation performance of organic dyes, the bifunctional separation membrane was successfully prepared by electrostatic spinning technology of PVDF/PEMA and in situ deposition of anatase TiO2 nanoparticles containing Ti3+ and oxygen vacancies (Ov). The prepared composite membrane has excellent hydrophilic properties (WCA = 15.65), underwater oleophobic properties (UOCA = 156.69), and photocatalytic performance. These composite membranes have high separation efficiency and outstanding anti-fouling performance, the oil removal efficiency reaches 98.95%, and the flux recovery rate (FRR) reaches 99.19% for soybean oil-in-water emulsion. In addition, the composite membrane has outstanding photocatalytic degradation performance, with 97% and 90.2% degradation of RhB and AG-25 under UV conditions, respectively. Several oil-in-water separation and dye degradation experiments show that the PVDF composite membrane has excellent reuse performance. Based on these results, this study opens new avenues for the preparation of multifunctional reusable membranes for the water treatment field.

Fabrication of photo-Fenton self-cleaning PVDF composite membrane for highly efficient oil-in-water emulsion separation.

The anti-fouling performance of membranes is an important performance in the separation of oil/water. However, the membrane with anti-fouling performance will also have surface scaling phenomenon when it runs for a long time. Therefore, there is still a great demand for stain-resistant membranes with good self-cleaning ability and high flux recovery rate. Based on this, this paper firstly prepared a hydrophilic membrane with carboxyl group and carboxyl ion by blending poly(ethylene-alt-maleic anhydride) (PEMA) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), and then prepared a self-cleaning composite membrane by in situ mineralization of ß-FeOOH particles on the surface of the membrane for efficient oil-in-water emulsion separation. A large number of -COOH/COO- and ß-FeOOH particles on the membrane surface make the composite membrane have strong hydrophilic properties (WCA = 20.34°) and underwater superoleophobicity (UOCA = 155.10°). These composite membranes have high separation efficiency (98.8%) and high flux (694.56 L m-2 h-1 bar-1) for soybean oil-in-water emulsion. Importantly, the as-prepared membrane shows excellent flux recovery rate (over 99.93%) attributed to the robust photo-Fenton catalytic activity of ß-FeOOH, and the ß-FeOOH is chemically bonded to the as-prepared membrane, which makes the as-prepared membrane have good reusability. This work provides hope for the application of self-cleaning membranes in the construction of anti-fouling membranes for wastewater remediation.

Preparation of Acrylic Yarns with Durable Structural Colors Based on Stable Photonic Crystals.

Structural coloration of photonic crystals (PCs) is considered an ecological and environmental way to achieve colorful textiles. However, constructing PCs with obvious structural colors on traditional flexible yarns is still a great challenge. As a secondary structure that forms textiles, compared with fibers and fabrics, the yarns are rougher, hindering the construction of regular PCs. In this work, the flexible acrylic yarns with vivid structural colors, named PC-based structural color yarns, were prepared by constructing regular PCs via assembling poly(styrene-butyl acrylate-methacrylate) (P(St-BA-MAA)) colloidal microspheres on yarns. Specifically, the properties of P(St-BA-MAA) colloidal microspheres were investigated. The PCs with better structural stability and obvious structural colors were prepared by presetting the acrylic adhesive layer on yarns. Moreover, the color durability and color regulation methods of prepared PC-based structural color yarns were evaluated and discussed. The results showed that the P(St-BA-MAA) colloidal microspheres exhibited even particle sizes, excellent monodispersity, and a typical hard core-soft shell structure. And the glass-transition temperature (T g) of the microspheres was tested to be about 65.6 °C. The cationic acrylate regarded as a pretreatment agent could not only improve the combination between the PC layers and the yarns by acting as a "bridge" but also enhance the structural color effect by smoothing the yarn surface. The results showed that when the mass fraction of cationic acrylate was 3 wt %, the microspheres were beneficial to access regular PCs with obvious structural colors. The PCs with bright structural colors could be constructed on black acrylic yarns, and the colors of yarns were still bright after rubbing and washing tests, indicating that the prepared PC-based structural color yarns have good color fastness. Moreover, the color hue of PC-based structural color yarns could be regulated by adjusting the particle sizes and viewing angles. This study provides strategic support for the structural coloration of flexible materials.

Collaborative Task Offloading and Service Caching Strategy for Mobile Edge Computing.

Mobile edge computing (MEC), which sinks the functions of cloud servers, has become an emerging paradigm to solve the contradiction between delay-sensitive tasks and resource-constrained terminals. Task offloading assisted by service caching in a collaborative manner can reduce delay and balance the edge load in MEC. Due to the limited storage resources of edge servers, it is a significant issue to develop a dynamical service caching strategy according to the actual variable user demands in task offloading. Therefore, this paper investigates the collaborative task offloading problem assisted by a dynamical caching strategy in MEC. Furthermore, a two-level computing strategy called joint task offloading and service caching (JTOSC) is proposed to solve the optimized problem. The outer layer in JTOSC iteratively updates the service caching decisions based on the Gibbs sampling. The inner layer in JTOSC adopts the fairness-aware allocation algorithm and the offloading revenue preference-based bilateral matching algorithm to get a great computing resource allocation and task offloading scheme. The simulation results indicate that the proposed strategy outperforms the other four comparison strategies in terms of maximum offloading delay, service cache hit rate, and edge load balance.

Modal gain characteristics of a two-section InGaAs/GaAs double quantum well passively mode-locked laser with asymmetric waveguide.

Monolithic two-section InGaAs/GaAs double quantum well (DQW) passively mode-locked lasers (MLLs) with asymmetric waveguide, consisting of the layers of p-doped AlGaAs waveguide and no-doped InGaAsP waveguide, emitting at ~ 1.06 µm, with a fundamental repetition rate at ~ 19.56 GHz have been demonstrated. Modal gain characteristics, such as a gain bandwidth and a gain peak wavelength of the MLL, as a function of the saturable absorber (SA) bias voltage (Va) as well as the injection current of gain section (Ig), were investigated by the Hakki-Paoli method. With the increase of Va, the lasing wavelength and net modal gain peak of the MLL both exhibited red-shifts to longer wavelength significantly, while the modal gain bandwidth was narrowed. Both the net modal gain bandwidth and gain peak of the MLL followed a polynomial distribution versus the reverse bias at the absorber section. In addition, for the first time, it was found that Va had an obvious effect on the modal gain characteristics of the MLL.

High Structural Stability of Photonic Crystals on Textile Substrates, Prepared via a Surface-Supported Curing Strategy.

Over the past years, photonic crystals (PCs) with a periodically ordered nanostructure have attracted great attention due to their potential as advanced optical materials for structural coloration of textiles. However, the weak structural stability of PCs on flexible textile substrates makes them vulnerable to strong external forces, hampering their large-scale application. In this work, a waterborne polyurethane (wPU) is chosen for enhancing the structural stability of PCs. The composite PCs (PCs/wPU) show both brilliant structural colors and significantly improved structural stability. The structural color produced by the encapsulated PCs is found to depend on the properties of encapsulating agents. The wPU with high surface tension solidifies mainly on the PC surface in the form of a transparent film, protecting the overall structure of PCs. Meanwhile, a small amount of wPU, infiltrating into the interior of PCs, provides strong adhesion and ensures stability among nanospheres. In turn, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with low surface tension is easy to infiltrate into the interior of PCs, forming fully encapsulated PCs. This reduces the brightness of structural color produced by the final PCs/PDMS composite over the original PCs, due to the replacement of air by PDMS, and thus the decrease in the refractive index contrast of PCs. The supported curing strategy using the encapsulating agent with high surface tension is shown to not only improve the structural stability of PCs but also exert almost no influence on the optical properties of PCs, facilitating the practice application of structural coloration in the textile industry.

Formation and characterization of polytetrafluoroethylene nanofiber membranes for high-efficiency fine particulate filtration.

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) porous membranes are widely used for high-temperature filtration. The polytetrafluoroethylene nanofiber membranes for fine particulate filtration were prepared by sintering the precursor electrospun polytetrafluoroethylene/polyvinyl/boric acid alcohol composite membranes. The effects of PTFE/PVA mass ratio and sintering temperature on the morphology and properties of the prepared membranes were investigated to obtain the PTFE nanofibers with different diameters, and the film has been characterized by SEM, TG, XRD, FT-IR, and EDS, and the mechanical and hydrophobic properties of the membranes were also investigated. The PTFE nanofiber membranes after sintering had nanofiber and nanowire structures. Moreover, the membranes were tested in air filtration. The filtration efficiency and pressure drop were tested to evaluate the membrane permeability and separation properties. The results showed a high filtration efficiency (98%) and a low pressure drop (90 Pa) for 300 nm sodium chloride aerosol particles at a 30 L min-1 airflow velocity and the hydrophobic membranes showed durable self-cleaning properties, which suggested that the PTFE nanofiber membranes were a promising candidate for high temperature filtration applications.

Robust suppression of nonstationary power-line interference in electrocardiogram signals.

It is a challenge to suppress time-varying power-line interference (PLI) with various levels in electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. Most previous attempts of tracking and suppressing the nonstationary PLI signal are based on the least-squares (LS) algorithm. This makes these methods susceptible to QRS complex in suppressing a low-level PLI signal which is frequently coupled in battery-operated ECG equipment. To address the limitation of LS-based methods, this study presents a robust PLI suppression system based on a robust extension of the Kalman filter. In addition, we used an improved version of empirical mode decomposition to further attenuate the QRS complex. Experiments show that our system could effectively suppress the PLI while preserving meaningful ECG components at various interference levels.

Nerves of the mediastinum.

Knowledge of the anatomy of the mediastinal nerves is essential for the evaluation and surgical treatment of most thoracic neoplasms. Thorough knowledge of the normal anatomy of the mediastinal nerves and of their variants cannot be overestimated because nerve trauma during nerve anatomy is also important because mediastinal or lung tumors can locally infiltrate those nerves either directly or through nodal metastases, making them generally unresectable.

Overexpression of high-mobility group box 1 correlates with tumor progression and poor prognosis in human colorectal carcinoma.

PURPOSE: High-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) has been implicated in a variety of biologically important processes, including transcription, DNA repair, V(D)J recombination, differentiation, development, and extracellular signaling. The increased expression of HMGB1 has been described in colorectal cancer (CRC). However, there is no report about the correlation of HMGB1 with clinicopathologic features, including the survival of patients with CRC. METHODS: In present study, we investigated HMGB1 expression and its prognostic significance in CRC by performing immunohistochemical analysis, using a total of 192 paraffin-embedded archival CRC samples. Moreover, disruption of endogenous HMGB1 protein through a siRNA knockdown technique was performed to investigate the possible role of HMGB1 in the process of tumor invasion and metastasis. RESULTS: Overexpression of HMGB1 was shown in 55.7% cases. Statistical analysis showed that HMGB1 expression was positively correlated with tumor invasion (P = 0.048), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.011), distant metastasis (P = 0.031), and Duke's stage (P = 0.029) of CRC patients. Patients with higher HMGB1 expression had shorter overall survival time, whereas patients with lower level of HMGB1 had better survival. Multivariate analysis suggested that HMGB1 expression might be an independent prognostic indicator for the survival of patients with CRC. Disruption of endogenous HMGB1 protein through a siRNA knockdown technique was shown to suppress substantially the invasion ability of SW620 cells. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that HMGB1 protein is a valuable marker for progression of CRC patients. High HMGB1 expression is associated with poor overall survival in patients with CRC.

Immunocytochemical localization of sex steroid hormone receptors in normal human mammary gland.

The sex steroids, estrogens, progesterone, and androgens, all play a role in mammary development and function. To precisely identify the sites of action of these steroids, we studied the localization of the estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha) and ERbeta, the progesterone receptor A (PRA) and PRB, and androgen receptors (AR) in the normal human mammary gland. Immunocytochemical localization of ERalpha, ERbeta, PRA, PRB, and AR was performed with reduction mammoplasty specimens from premenopausal women. ERalpha, PRA, PRB, and AR were localized mostly to the inner layer of epithelial cells lining acini and intralobular ducts, as well as to myoepithelial cells scattered in the external layer of interlobular ducts. AR was also found in some stromal cells. ERbeta staining was more widespread, resulting in epithelial and myoepithelial cells being labeled in acini and ducts as well as stromal cells. These results suggest that all sex steroids can directly act on epithelial cells to modulate development and function of the human mammary gland. Estrogens and androgens can also indirectly influence epithelial cell activity by an action on stromal cells.

Myasthenia gravis in pediatric and elderly patients.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether the clinical and pathologic characteristics and prognoses of myasthenia gravis (MG) patients below 15 years differ from those patients over 50 years after thymectomy. METHODS: We reviewed the registry material of 30 pediatric and 32 elderly MG patients after thymectomy, including their age, sex, clinical classification, pathological types, and prognoses. The Chi-square test or Wilcoxon's rank-sum test was used to determine the statistical differences between the children and elderly groups. RESULTS: No significant difference was seen in sex distribution between the two groups. (Chi-square test, P=0.625), but there were differences in clinical classification: more type I was observed in the pediatric group than in the elderly group, but more type II or III was seen in the elderly group (Wilcoxon's rank-sum test, P<0.001). As to pathological types, the pediatric group was also significantly different from the elderly group (Chi-square test, P<0.01). All of the patients (100%) in the pediatric group had thymus hyperplasia, but in the elderly group more than half (56.26%) were found to have thymoma (benign or malignant). The prognoses after thymectomy were better in the pediatric group than in the elderly group (Wilcoxon's rank-sum test, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Because the prognoses are generally better than those of the elderly patients, we should be careful when operating on pediatric patients of ocular type. The elderly patients tend to receive more aggressive treatment because of more severe generalized types often associated with thymoma and poor prognoses. Both pediatric and elderly patients are seldom associated with other autoimmune disease.

[Hemocoagulase in abdominal operation and its effect on hemoagglutination].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the hemostatic role of hemocoagulase in abdominal operation and its effects on coagulation. METHODS: 180 patients receiving abdominal operation were studied prospectively by randomized, double-blind controlled and multicenter design. They were divided into Hemocoagulase group (60 patients), lizhixue group (60), and manitol hexanitrate group (60). The groups were, observed in terms of the effects on hemostatic time, hemorrhagic volume, hemorrhagic volume per square unit, and body coagulation (BT, CT, PT, APTT and PLT) parameters. RESULTS: The groups received different drugs. The average hemostatic time in the hemocoagulase group was 121.6 s, hemorrhagic volume was 9.6 g, and hemorrhagic volume per square unit was 0.2 g. The similar results were observed in the lizhixue group (P > 0.05), but they were significantly different (P < 0.05) from those of the manitol hexanitrate group (159.2 s, 12.49 g, 0.3 g). In the hemocoagulase and lizhixue groups hemorrhagic and hemoagglution time decreased 30 minutes and 1 day after operation. This finding was significantly differenct from that in the manitol hexanitrate group (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Hemocoagulase plays a good hemostatic role in the hemorrhagic capillary at abdominal incision.