Systematic Modulation of Thiol Functionalities in Inexpensive Porous Polymers for Effective Mercury Removal

Through accumulation, mercury contamination in aquatic systems still poses serious health risks despite the strict regulations on drinking water and industrial discharge. One effective strategy against this is adsorptive removal, in which a suitably functionalized porous material is added to water treatment protocols. Thiol (SH) group-grafted structures perform commendably; however, insufficient attention is paid to the cost, scalability, and reusability or how the arrangement of sulfur atoms could affect the Hg^II binding strength. We used an inexpensive and scalable porous covalent organic polymer (COP-130) to systematically introduce thiol functional groups with precise chain lengths and sulfur content. Thiol-functionalized COP-130 demonstrates enhanced wettability and excellent Hg^II uptake of up to 936 mg g⁻¹, with fast kinetics and exceptionally high selectivity. These Hg adsorbents are easily regenerated with HCl and can be used at least six times without loss of capacity even after treatment with strong acid, a rare performance in the domain of Hg-removal research.     

Solidifying framework nucleic acids

正Living organisms have developed their unique strategies during the natural evolution for building hard tissues with minerals, including silica, calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, and ferric oxide [1]. Such biomineralized materials generally have complex hierarchical structures with excellent mechanical properties. Although bioinspired approaches have led to the creation of well-defined synthetic structural materials ranging from micro to macro scales, the rational design of discrete biomimetic structures at the nanoscale remains a grand challenge.     

Effects of multiple delays on dynamics of a five-neuron network model

A five-neuron network model with multiple delays is proposed. This paper presents the combined effect of different delays on the dynamics of the proposed network. Pitchfork bifurcation is discussed in detail with the variation of the value of coupled weight or attenuation rate of internal neurons. By analyzing the corresponding characteristic equation, some stable criteria on delay-dependence and delay-independence are derived including multiple delays and coupled weights and the periodic oscillation arises bifurcated from the trivial equilibrium after the network loses its stability. Stable regions on delay-dependence are displayed in the two delayed parameter plane. It is shown that multiple delays can produce stability switching between resting state and periodic activity. Finally, theoretical results are justified by providing two illustrative examples.     

Infinitely many reducts of homogeneous structures

It is shown that the countably infinite dimensional pointed vector space (the vector space equipped with a constant) over a finite field has infinitely many first order definable reducts. This implies that the countable homogeneous Boolean-algebra has infinitely many reducts.     

Simplified global fault accommodation control design of uncertain nonlinear systems with unknown time-varying powers

This paper addresses the problem of global robust fault accommodation tracking for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with unknown powers and actuator faults. It is assumed that the powers of the concerned system are unknown time-varying functions, all system nonlinearities are unknown, and unknown actuator faults depend on the time-varying power of a control input. A fault accommodation state-feedback controller is explicitly constructed based on the nonlinear error transformation technique using time-varying performance functions. Global tracking with the preselected performance bounds is established in the presence of unknown time-varying powers and unexpected actuator faults. Different from the previous results dealing with the problem of unknown time-varying powers, the proposed tracking strategy does not require the knowledge of the bounds of the time-varying powers and the nonlinear bounding functions of system nonlinearities. An underactuated mechanical system is simulated to validate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical approach.     

The Jordan property of Cremona groups and essential dimension

We use a recent advance in birational geometry to prove new lower bounds on the essential dimension of some finite groups.