Cortical pattern generation during dexterous movement is input-driven.

The motor cortex controls skilled arm movement by sending temporal patterns of activity to lower motor centres1. Local cortical dynamics are thought to shape these patterns throughout movement execution2-4. External inputs have been implicated in setting the initial state of the motor cortex5,6, but they may also have a pattern-generating role. Here we dissect the contribution of local dynamics and inputs to cortical pattern generation during a prehension task in mice. Perturbing cortex to an aberrant state prevented movement initiation, but after the perturbation was released, cortex either bypassed the normal initial state and immediately generated the pattern that controls reaching or failed to generate this pattern. The difference in these two outcomes was probably a result of external inputs. We directly investigated the role of inputs by inactivating the thalamus; this perturbed cortical activity and disrupted limb kinematics at any stage of the movement. Activation of thalamocortical axon terminals at different frequencies disrupted cortical activity and arm movement in a graded manner. Simultaneous recordings revealed that both thalamic activity and the current state of cortex predicted changes in cortical activity. Thus, the pattern generator for dexterous arm movement is distributed across multiple, strongly interacting brain regions.

Photocatalytic Degradation of Tetracycline Hydrochloride Based on the Structure-Property Exploration of BiOCl.

The correlation between structure and properties in the photodegradation reaction of bismuth oxychloride (BiOCl) was explored in this work. Three BiOCl samples with different sizes, morphological structures, and defects were prepared through a hydrothermal method with experimental manipulation. Their structural properties were comprehensively characterized using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, electron spin resonance, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, and photoluminescence. Taking the photodegradation of tetracycline hydrochloride (TC-HCl) as the probe reaction, we found that high activity could be achieved by decreasing their crystal size and thickness, introducing proper defects in the structure, and assembling the nanosheets to get microball structure. Combined with radical-scavenge experiments and electron spin resonance (ESR) spin-trap spectra, we conclude that ̇O2- was the dominant reactive oxygen species for the degradation reaction. The degradation detailed pathway of TC-HCl was further analyzed using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. This work explores the structure-property correlation of BiOCl and provides strategies for the rational design of active photocatalysts for water remediation.

Optimization on artifacts in photoacoustic images based on spectrum analyses and signal extraction.

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is a promising technology for functional imaging of biological tissues, offering optical contrast and acoustic penetration depth. However, the presence of signal aliasing from multiple PA sources within the same imaging object can introduce artifacts and significantly impact the quality of the PA tomographic images. In this study, an optimized method is proposed to suppress these artifacts and enhance image quality effectively. By leveraging signal time-frequency spectrum, signals from each PA source can be extracted. Subsequently, the images are reconstructed using these extracted signals and fused together to obtain an optimized image. To verify this proposed method, PA imaging experiments were conducted on two phantoms and two in vitro samples and the distribution relative error and root mean square error of the images obtained through conventional and optimized methods were calculated. The results demonstrate that the proposed method successfully suppresses the artifacts and substantially improves the image quality.

Automatic Quantitative Assessment of Muscle Strength Based on Deep Learning and Ultrasound.

Skeletal muscle is a vital organ that promotes human movement and maintains posture. Accurate assessment of muscle strength is helpful to provide valuable insights for athletes' rehabilitation and strength training. However, traditional techniques rely heavily on the operator's expertise, which may affect the accuracy of the results. In this study, we propose an automated method to evaluate muscle strength using ultrasound and deep learning techniques. B-mode ultrasound data of biceps brachii of multiple athletes at different strength levels were collected and then used to train our deep learning model. To evaluate the effectiveness of this method, this study tested the contraction of the biceps brachii under different force levels. The classification accuracy of this method for grade 4 and grade 6 muscle strength reached 98% and 96%, respectively, and the overall average accuracy was 93% and 87%, respectively. The experimental results confirm that the innovative methods in this paper can accurately and effectively evaluate and classify muscle strength.

Benefit of aerosol reduction to winter wheat during China's clean air action: A case study of Henan Province.

A strongly declining aerosol radiative effect has been observed in China since 2013 after implementing the clean air action, yet its impact on wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) production remains unclear. We use satellite measures and a biophysical crop model to assess the impact of aerosol-induced radiative perturbations on winter wheat production in the agricultural belt of Henan province from 2013 to 2018. After calibrating parameters with the extended Fourier Amplitude Sensitivity Test (EFAST) and the generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) method, the DSSAT CERES-Wheat model was able to simulate crop biomass and yield more accurately. We found that the aerosol negatively impacted wheat biomass by 21.87% and yield by 22.48% from 2006 to 2018, and the biomass effects from planting to anthesis were more significant compared to anthesis to maturity. Due to the strict clean air action, under all-sky conditions, the surface solar shortwave radiation (SSR) in 2018 increased by about 7.08% over 2006-2013 during the wheat growing seasons. As a result of the improvement of crop photosynthesis, winter wheat biomass and yield increased by an average of 5.46% and 2.9%, respectively. Our findings show that crop carbon uptake and yield will benefit from the clean air action in China, helping to ensure national food and health security.

Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound enhances the positive effects of high-intensity treadmill exercise on bone in rats.

INTRODUCTION: Moderate exercise benefits bone health, but excessive loading leads to bone fatigue and a decline in mechanical properties. Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) can stimulate bone formation. The purpose of this study was to explore whether LIPUS could augment the skeletal benefits of high-intensity exercise. MATERIALS AND METHODS: MC3T3-E1 osteoblasts were treated with LIPUS at 80 mW/cm2 or 30 mW/cm2 for 20 min/day. Forty rats were divided into sham treatment normal control (Sham-NC), sham treatment high-intensity exercise (Sham-HIE), 80 mW/cm2 LIPUS (LIPUS80), and high-intensity exercise combined with 80 mW/cm2 LIPUS (LIPUS80-HIE). The rats in HIE group were subjected to 30 m/min slope treadmill exercise for 90 min/day, 6 days/week for 12 weeks. The LIPUS80-HIE rats were irradiated with LIPUS (1 MHz, 80 mW/cm2) for 20 min/day at bilateral hind limb after exercise. RESULTS: LIPUS significantly accelerated the proliferation, differentiation, mineralization, and migration of MC3T3-E1 cells. Compared to 30 mW/cm2 LIPUS, 80 mW/cm2 LIPUS got better promotion effect. 12 weeks of high-intensity exercise significantly reduced the muscle force, which was significantly reversed by LIPUS. Compared with the Sham-NC group, Sham-HIE group significantly optimized bone microstructure and enhanced mechanical properties of femur, and LIPUS80-HIE further enhanced the improvement effect on bone. The mechanisms may be related to activate Wnt/ß-catenin signal pathway and then up-regulate the protein expression of Runx2 and VEGF, the key factors of osteogenesis and angiogenesis. CONCLUSION: LIPUS could augment the skeletal benefits of high-intensity exercise through Wnt/ß-catenin signal pathway.

MF-Net: Automated Muscle Fiber Segmentation From Immunofluorescence Images Using a Local-Global Feature Fusion Network.

Histological assessment of skeletal muscle slices is very important for the accurate evaluation of weightless muscle atrophy. The accurate identification and segmentation of muscle fiber boundary is an important prerequisite for the evaluation of skeletal muscle fiber atrophy. However, there are many challenges to segment muscle fiber from immunofluorescence images, including the presence of low contrast in fiber boundaries in immunofluorescence images and the influence of background noise. Due to the limitations of traditional convolutional neural network-based segmentation methods in capturing global information, they cannot achieve ideal segmentation results. In this paper, we propose a muscle fiber segmentation network (MF-Net) method for effective segmentation of macaque muscle fibers in immunofluorescence images. The network adopts a dual encoder branch composed of convolutional neural networks and transformer to effectively capture local and global feature information in the immunofluorescence image, highlight foreground features, and suppress irrelevant background noise. In addition, a low-level feature decoder module is proposed to capture more global context information by combining different image scales to supplement the missing detail pixels. In this study, a comprehensive experiment was carried out on the immunofluorescence datasets of six macaques' weightlessness models and compared with the state-of-the-art deep learning model. It is proved from five segmentation indices that the proposed automatic segmentation method can be accurately and effectively applied to muscle fiber segmentation in shank immunofluorescence images.

Optimized Reconstruction Procedure of Photoacoustic Imaging for Reflection Artifacts Reduction.

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging technology is of some value in medical diagnoses such as breast cancer detection, vasculature imaging, and surgery navigating. While as most imaging objects are bounded, the received RF signals consist of the direct-arrived signals (DAS) from the PA sources and the boundary-reflected signals (BRS). The undesired BRS will severely impair the quality during the image reconstruction. They will bring in many artifacts and confuse the actual shape and location of the PA sources. We improved the reconstruction procedure by removing the BRS before the regular reconstruction process to suppress those artifacts. To verify our proposed method, we compared the results of the conventional and optimized procedures experimentally. In terms of qualitative observation, the reconstructed images by the optimized procedure illustrate fewer artifacts and more accurate shapes of the PA sources. To quantitatively evaluate the traditional and the optimized imaging procedure, we calculated the Distribution Relative Error (DRE) between each experiment result and its standard drawing of the phantoms. For both phantoms and the ex-vivo sample, the DREs of reconstruction result by the optimized reconstruction procedure decrease significantly. The results suggest that the optimized reconstruction process can effectively suppress the reflection artifacts and improve the shape accuracy of the PA sources.

Low CP Overhead Waveform Design for Multi-Path Channels with Timing Synchronization Error.

In classical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, inserting the cyclic prefix (CP) is necessary before each symbol to overcome the multi-path effect, which, however, occupies numerous time-frequency radio resources, resulting in hampered spectrum efficiency. To address this issue, in this paper, symbol repetition aware OFDM (SR-OFDM) is developed to lower the overhead of CP. In the proposed SR-OFDM, multiple symbols share the same CP with which we examine that the multi-path channels can also be overcome by a simple single-tap equalization without causing any interference. Moreover, after the discrete Fourier transform at the receiver, different symbols are proved to be separated in the time domain, which is beneficial for lowering the demodulation complexity. Furthermore, it is revealed that the above conclusions still hold even under timing synchronization errors, which makes the proposed SR-OFDM favorable in real systems. Extensive simulations validate the efficacy of our proposed SR-OFDM system under the multi-path channels with or without timing synchronization errors.

Integrated Application of Low-Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound in Diagnosis and Treatment of Atrophied Skeletal Muscle Induced in Tail-Suspended Rats.

Long-term exposure to microgravity leads to muscle atrophy, which is primarily characterized by a loss of muscle mass and strength and reduces one's functional capability. A weightlessness-induced muscle atrophy model was established using the tail suspension test to evaluate the intervention or therapeutic effect of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) on muscle atrophy. The rats were divided into five groups at random: the model group (B), the normal control group (NC), the sham-ultrasound control group (SUC), the LIPUS of 50 mW/cm2 radiation group (50 UR), and the LIPUS of 150 mW/cm2 radiation group (150 UR). Body weight, gastrocnemius weight, muscle force, and B-ultrasound images were used to evaluate muscle atrophy status. Results showed that the body weight, gastrocnemius weight, and image entropy of the tail suspension group were significantly lower than those of the control group (p < 0.01), confirming the presence of muscle atrophy. Although the results show that the muscle force and two weights of the rats stimulated by LIPUS are still much smaller than those of the NC group, they are significantly different from those of the pure tail suspension B group (p < 0.01). On day 14, the gastrocnemius forces of the rats exposed to 50 mW/cm2 and 150 mW/cm2 LIPUS were 150% and 165% of those in the B group. The gastrocnemius weights were both 135% of those in the B group. This suggests that ultrasound can, to a certain extent, prevent muscular atrophy.

Network pharmacology-based study on the mechanism of scutellarin against zearalenone-induced ovarian granulosa cell injury.

Zearalenone(ZEA) is a kind of mycotoxin widely existing in nature, its toxic effects can lead to the reproductive disorders in humans and animals. The aim of this study was to investigate the mechanism of scutellarin against ovarian granulosa cell(GCs) injury induced by ZEA based on network pharmacology, molecular docking method. The results show that 293 drug targets of scutellarin were found from PhamMapper database, and 583 disease targets were selected from Genecards database. Finally, 57 scutellarin targets were obtained for the repair of GCs injury with gene intersection. The protein-protein interaction(PPI), gene ontology(GO) and kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes(KEGG) analysis indicated that MAPK signaling pathway was most likely activated by scutellarin. Scutellarin with JNK or Caspase-3 had minimal and negative free binding energy in molecular docking analysis, indicating that they might be the acting targets of scutellarin. Cell viability was significantly decreased in ZEA treated cells. However, GCs viability, the level of estradiol(E2) and progesterone(P4) were significantly increased with addition of scutellarin to ZEA treated cells. Western blot analysis showed that scutellarin significantly reduced the expression of JNK, c-jun and Cleaved-caspasee-3 in GCs compared with ZEA treatment. In conclusion, scutellarin could alleviate the ovarian GCs injury by down-regulating the expression of JNK, c-jun and Cleaved-caspase-3 through the activation of MAPK/JNK signaling pathway. Our results will provide a theoretical foundation for the treatment of reproductive disorders with scutellarin.

Molecular and Metabolic Mechanism of Low-Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound Improving Muscle Atrophy in Hindlimb Unloading Rats.

Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) has been proved to promote the proliferation of myoblast C2C12. However, whether LIPUS can effectively prevent muscle atrophy has not been clarified, and if so, what is the possible mechanism. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of LIPUS on muscle atrophy in hindlimb unloading rats, and explore the mechanisms. The rats were randomly divided into four groups: normal control group (NC), hindlimb unloading group (UL), hindlimb unloading plus 30 mW/cm2 LIPUS irradiation group (UL + 30 mW/cm2), hindlimb unloading plus 80 mW/cm2 LIPUS irradiation group (UL + 80 mW/cm2). The tails of rats in hindlimb unloading group were suspended for 28 days. The rats in the LIPUS treated group were simultaneously irradiated with LIPUS on gastrocnemius muscle in both lower legs at the sound intensity of 30 mW/cm2 or 80 mW/cm2 for 20 min/d for 28 days. C2C12 cells were exposed to LIPUS at 30 or 80 mW/cm2 for 5 days. The results showed that LIPUS significantly promoted the proliferation and differentiation of myoblast C2C12, and prevented the decrease of cross-sectional area of muscle fiber and gastrocnemius mass in hindlimb unloading rats. LIPUS also significantly down regulated the expression of MSTN and its receptors ActRIIB, and up-regulated the expression of Akt and mTOR in gastrocnemius muscle of hindlimb unloading rats. In addition, three metabolic pathways (phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan biosynthesis; alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism; glycine, serine and threonine metabolism) were selected as important metabolic pathways for hindlimb unloading effect. However, LIPUS promoted the stability of alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism pathway. These results suggest that the key mechanism of LIPUS in preventing muscle atrophy induced by hindlimb unloading may be related to promoting protein synthesis through MSTN/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway and stabilizing alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism.

Inhibition of MSTN signal pathway may participate in LIPUS preventing bone loss in ovariectomized rats.

INTRODUCTION: Menopause can lead to osteoporosis, which is characterized by destruction of bone microstructure, poor mechanical properties, and prone to fracture. LIPUS can effectively promote bone formation and fracture healing. MSTN is a transforming growth factor-ß family member that acts as a negative regulator of skeletal muscle growth. A MSTN deficiency also has a positive effect on bone formation. However, whether LIPUS could inhibit bone loss and promote healing of bone injury of menopause through the inhibition of the MSTN signaling pathway has not been previously investigated. We herein investigated the effects of LIPUS on bone architecture, mechanical properties, the healing of bone defects, and its potential molecular mechanisms in ovariectomized rats. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The rats were randomly divided into three groups: sham ovariectomized group (Sham), ovariectomized model group (OVX), ovariectomized model with LIPUS therapy group (OVX + LIPUS). The OVX + LIPUS rats were treated with LIPUS (1.5 MHz, 30 mW/cm2) on the femur for 20 min/day that lasted for 19 days. RESULTS: LIPUS effectively improved the bone microstructure, increased mechanical properties and promoted the healing of bone defects in ovariectomized rats. Moreover, LIPUS effectively decreased the MSTN content in serum and quadriceps muscle in ovariectomized rats, and inhibited the expression of MSTN downstream signaling molecules and activated the Wnt signaling pathway in the femur. CONCLUSIONS: The present study shows that LIPUS improved osteoporosis and promoted bone defect healing in the ovariectomized rats may through the inhibition of the MSTN signal pathway.

Skeletal Muscle Fatigue State Evaluation with Ultrasound Image Entropy.

Muscle fatigue often occurs over a long period of exercise, and it can increase the risk of muscle injury. Evaluating the state of muscle fatigue can avoid unnecessary overtraining and injury of the muscle. Ultrasound imaging can non-invasively visualize muscle tissue in real-time. Image entropy is commonly used to characterize the texture of an image. In this study, we evaluated changes in the ultrasound image entropy (USIE) during the fatigue process. Twelve volunteers performed static sustained contractions of biceps brachii at four different intensities (20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% of maximal voluntary contraction torque). The ultrasound images and surface electromyography (sEMG) signals were acquired during exercise to fatigue. We found that (1) the root-mean-square of the sEMG signal increased, the USIE decreased significantly with time during the sustained contractions; (2) the maximum endurance time (MET) and the decline percentage of USIE were significantly different (p < .05) among the four contraction intensities; (3) the decline slope of USIE of the same volunteer was basically the same at different contraction intensities. The USIE could be a new method for the evaluation of skeletal muscle fatigue state.

Multi-mode coupled vibration analysis and radiation sound field investigation of a novel multidirectional piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer.

Nowadays, expanding the operating range and realizing multifrequency operation have emerged as focal and imperative objectives in the design of ultrasonic transducers. Due to the limitations of structure and radial sizes, conventional Langevin transducers encounter challenges in meeting the increasingly stringent requirements across diverse ultrasonic applications. Hence, this paper proposes a multidirectional piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer (MPUT) consisting of a large-dimension sandwich piezoelectric transducer (LSPT) and a metal tube in mutli-mode coupled vibration, capable of achieving wide-ranging and multifrequency acoustic radiation. Based on the analytical method, a two-dimensional electromechanical equivalent circuit model (2D-EECM) of the MPUT is established, and its frequency calculation results are validated through the finite element method (FEM) and impedance analysis experiment. The vibration testing results indicate that adjusting the radial size can control the coupled vibration intensity of the MPUT and achieve dual-frequency and multidirectional uniform radiation. The radiation sound field testing results confirm the MPUT's satisfactory three-dimensional radiation capability in water and significant improvement in acoustics operating range.

Reconstructing bifurcation diagrams of chaotic circuits with reservoir computing.

Model-free reconstruction of bifurcation diagrams of Chua's circuits using the technique of parameter-aware reservoir computing is investigated. We demonstrate that (1) reservoir computer can be utilized as a noise filter to restore the system dynamics from noisy signals; (2) for a single Chua circuit, a machine trained by the noisy time series measured at several sampling states is capable of reconstructing the whole bifurcation diagram of the circuit with a high precision; and (3) for two coupled chaotic Chua circuits with mismatched parameters, the machine trained by the noisy time series measured at several coupling strengths is able to anticipate the variation of the synchronization degree of the coupled circuits with respect to the coupling strength over a wide range. Our studies verify the capability of the technique of parameter-aware reservoir computing in learning the dynamics of chaotic circuits from noisy signals, signifying the potential application of this technique in reconstructing the bifurcation diagram of real-world chaotic systems.

Acoustic black hole ultrasonic scalpel.

Ultrasonic scalpels (USs), as the preferred energy instruments, are facing a growing need to exhibit enhanced performance with the diversification of modern surgical challenges. Hence, we proposed an acoustic black hole ultrasonic scalpel (ABHUS) in longitudinal-bending coupled vibration for efficient surgical cutting. By incorporating an acoustic black hole profile, the local bending wave velocity is reduced and the amplitude is amplified cumulatively, thus creating a high-energy region near the blade tip to enhance the cutting performance of the ABHUS. The precise physical analysis model is established for systematic design of the ABHUS and quick estimation of its frequency characteristics. The vibration simulation and experiments demonstrate that compared with the conventional ultrasonic scalpel (CUS), the output amplitude of the ABHUS significantly increases, particularly a 425% increase in bending vibration displacement. The in-vitro cutting experiment confirms that ABHUS exhibits superior cutting performance. Our design presents vast possibilities and potential for the development of high-performance ultrasonic surgical instruments, serving as an innovative supplement with extraordinary significance for application of acoustic black holes.

Frame composite imaging method based on time-sharing latency excitation for ultrasound shear wave elastography.

Ultrasound shear wave elastography is an imaging modality that noninvasively assesses mechanical properties of tissues. The results of elastic imaging are obtained by accurately estimating the propagation velocity of shear wave fronts. However, the acquisition rate of the shear wave acquisition device is limited by the hardware of the system. Therefore, increasing the collection rate of shear waves can directly improve the quality of shear wave velocity images. In addition, the problem of velocity reconstruction with relatively small elastic inclusions has always been a challenge in elastic imaging and a very important and urgent issue in early disease diagnosis. For the problem of elastography detection of the shape and boundary of inclusions in tissues, Time-sharing latency excitation frame composite imaging (TS-FCI) method is proposed for tissue elasticity measurement. The method fuses the shear wave motion data generated by time sharing and latency excitation to obtain a set of composite shear wave motion data. Based on the shear wave motion data, the local shear wave velocity image is reconstructed in the frequency domain to obtain the elastic information of the tissue. The experimental results show that the TS-FCI method has a velocity estimation error of 11 % and a contrast to noise ratio (CNR) of 3.81 when estimating inclusions with smaller dimensions (2.53 mm). Furthermore, when dealing with inclusions with small elastic changes (10 kPa), the velocity estimation error is 3 % and the CNR is 3.21. Compared to conventional time-domain and frequency-domain analysis methods, the proposed method has advantages. Results and analysis have shown that this method has potential promotional value in the quantitative evaluation of organizational elasticity.

Contrastive Disentanglement for Quantitative Ultrasound Muscle Atrophy Evaluation.

OBJECTIVE: Muscleatrophy reduces the quality of life and increases morbidity and mortality from other diseases. The development of non-invasive muscle atrophy evaluation method is of great practical value. The lack of gold standard for pathological grading usually allows only the duration of weightlessness as a criterion for the degree of atrophy. However, the adaptive reductive remodeling of muscle physiology and structure shows a trend of nonlinear changes in time. Consequently, using weightlessness time as a benchmark for the degree of atrophy is inaccurate. METHODS: This paper proposes a new ultrasound imaging-based method for quantifying muscle atrophy that utilizes weakly supervised information between multiple data partitions with controlled variance components, overcoming the limitations of using the weightlessness time as a criterion. We introduce a group-supervised contrastive disentanglement network (GCDNet) to disentangle the individual variances, muscle growth and atrophy components of ultrasound images, and quantify the degree of atrophy using the disentangled atrophy component. RESULTS: The feasibility of GCDNet is validated by the separability, independence, and representativeness of the disentangled components. To simplify the application of GCDNet, a muscle atrophy scoring network requiring no reference images is developed by distilling the GCDNet's knowledge of muscle atrophy quantization. The strength of the proposed methodology allows us, for the first time to our knowledge, to study the muscle growth attribute during hind-limb unloading and the spatial distribution of muscle atrophy.

Effect of oxygen-containing functional group contents on sorption of lead ions by acrylate-functionalized hydrochar.

The surface functional groups of hydrochar are crucial to its surface properties, and their contents are strongly positively correlated with the adsorption performance. In this study, acrylate-functionalized hydrochar (AHC) with varying contents of O-containing functional groups (OFGs) was synthesized via hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of bamboo, acrylic acid and an initiator, and then deprotonated with NaOH. The AHCs were analyzed by various characterization techniques. During HTC, the higher amount of acrylic acid added led to higher carbon, oxygen and carboxyl contents, and to the larger specific surface area and pore volume of AHC. The adsorption kinetics, isotherms, thermodynamic, ionic strength and pH effects of Pb(II) on AHC were studied. Adsorption isotherms and kinetics obeyed Langmuir and pseudo-second-order models, respectively, indicating adsorption is monolayer chemical process. The adsorptive ability was well linearly related to the OFG contents of AHC. When acrylic acid was added to 25 mL during HTC, the adsorbing ability of AHC over Pb(II) reached 193.90 mg g-1. Hence, direct HTC of acrylic acid, biomass and an initiator can prepare hydrochar with controllable OFG contents, which is a prospective adsorbent for treating metal cations.