Allometry and growth: A unified view

Allometry is crucial in biology; scaling relations are implied in laws of growth of living systems. The self similarity of Gompertzian growths of biological organisms plays a key role, in this regard, in biological similitude. The origin of allometric relationships and values of the scaling exponents is a source of debate, as well as the origin of the range of biological scales. But, besides biology, scaling and growth characterize many different complex systems. Encompassing these aspects in a unified view is an interesting target. In this paper we propose a coarse but significant model that is applied to astrophysical structures and biological organisms. The inclusion of such different systems suggests applications to fields where allometry is emerging, such as economics, urban planning and the social sciences.     

中原经济区背景下旅游产业集群发展对策研究

在中原经济区背景下,旅游产业集群发展不仅能提升旅游产业的竞争力区域提升旅游品牌,同时也是广大中小旅游企业的要求。文章提出了构建旅游产业集群发展的软环境,培育旅游产业价值链节点,并不断延伸价值链是旅游产业实现集聚的必要措施。     

Morphology and Growth Process of Bat-like ZnO Crystals by Thermal Evaporation

A novel bat-like ZnO nanostructure was synthesized on the silicon substrate by simple ther-mal evaporation of zinc powders without any catalyst. Each bat-like nanorod ("nanobat") is composed of a hexagonal head, a continuous neck and a thin handle. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy and selected area electron di raction results reveal the single-crystalline feature and the growing direction along [0001] of the nanobat. The vapor-solid mechanism was found suitable to explain the growth process of the nanobat and a schematic model was proposed in detail based on the experimental results.     

Design,synthesis and evaluation of novel dehydroabietic acid-dithiocarbamate hybrids as potential multi-targeted compounds for tumor cytotoxicity

In the present study, novel representatives of the important group of biologically-active, dehydroabietic acid-bearing dithiocarbamate moiety, were synthesized and characterized by ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, HR-MS. The in vitro antiproliferative activity evaluation (MTT) indicated that these compounds exhibited potent inhibitory activities in various cancer cell lines (HepG-2, MCF-7, HeLa, T-24, MGC-803). Particularly, compound III-b possessed extraordinary cytotoxicity with low micromolar IC₅₀ values ranging from 4.07 to 38.84 µM against tested cancer cell lines, while displayed weak cytotoxicity on two normal cell lines (LO-2 and HEK 293 T). Subsequently, the potential mechanisms of representative compound III-b were elementarily investigated by Transwell experiment, which showed III-b can inhibit cancer cells migration. Annexin-V/PI dual staining showed that the compound can induce HepG-2 cells apoptosis in a dose-dependent manner. Meanwhile this apoptosis may be related to the upregulated protein expression of cleaved-caspase 3, cleaved-caspase 9, Bax and downregulated of Bcl-2 indicated by Western Blot. Later study further confirmed that ROS levels in HepG-2 cells increased significantly with the rise of concentrations. In addition, through the network pharmacology data analyzing, the core targets and signaling pathways of compound III-b for treatment of liver neoplasms were forecasted. Molecular docking model showed that compound III-b had high affinity with hub targets (CASP3, EGFR, HSP90AA1, MAPK1, ERBB2, MDM2), suggesting that compound III-b might target the hub protein to modulate signaling activity. Taken together, these data indicated that dehydroabietic acid structural modification following the “Molecular hybridization” principle is a feasible way to discover the potential multi-targeted antitumor compounds.     

大蒜对硒的吸收及硒对大蒜生长的影响

在培养液中添加不同浓度的Ｎａ２ＳｅＯ３研究大蒜对硒的吸收以及吸收的硒对大蒜生长的影响。结果表明，大蒜对硒具有很强的生物富集作用，总硒含量为对照的６２２倍，当添加１ｍｍｏｌ／ＬＮａ２ＳｅＯ３时，有机化程度最主达７８．２４％，另外吸收的硒影响大蒜的生长，低浓度硒促进大蒜生长，１ｍｍｏｌ／ＬＮａ２ＳｅＯ为最适的促进生长浓度，并能提高大蒜中的蛋白质，可溶性糖，ＤＮＡ，ＲＮＡ含量，大蒜可作为补硒和高营养价值     

Atomic structure of InAs quantum dots on GaAs

In recent years, the self-assembled growth of semiconductor nanostructures, that show quantum size effects, has been of considerable interest. Laser devices operating with self-assembled InAs quantum dots (QDs) embedded in GaAs have been demonstrated. Here, we report on the InAs/GaAs system and raise the question of how the shape of the QDs changes with the orientation of the GaAs substrate. The growth of the InAs QDs is understood in terms of the Stranski–Krastanow growth mode. For modeling the growth process, the shape and atomic structure of the QDs have to be known. This is a difficult task for such embedded entities.

In our approach, InAs is grown by molecular beam epitaxy on GaAs until self-assembled QDs are formed. At this point the growth is interrupted and atomically resolved scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) images are acquired. We used preparation parameters known from the numerous publications on InAs/GaAs. In order to learn more about the self-assemblage process we studied QD formation on different GaAs(0 0 1), (1 1 3)A, and ( )B substrates. From the atomically resolved STM images we could determine the shape of the QDs. The quantum “dots” are generally rather flat entities better characterized as “lenses”. In order to achieve this flatness, the QDs are terminated by high-index bounding facets on low-index substrates and vice versa. Our results will be summarized in comparison with the existing literature.     

Wrinkling and Growth Mechanism of CuO Nanowires in Thermal Oxidation of Copper Foil

We report a systematic study on wrinkling and CuO nanowires （NWs） growth in the thermal oxidation of copper foil. Copper foils with thickness of 0.5 mm were thermally oxidized in air at 500℃ for 0.5-10 h. It is found that all the samples have wrinkles and the size of the wrinkles increases with the oxidation time increasing. CuO NWs can grow on both the sidehill and hilltop of wrinkle. The CuO NWs on sidehill are longer and denser than those on hilltop. The growth direction of the CuO NWs on sidehill is not vertical to the substrate but vertical to their growth surfaces. The process of wrinkling and CuO NWs growth can be divided into three stages： undulating, voiding, and cracking. The CuO NWs on both sidehill and hilltop grow at the undulating stage. However, only the CuO NWs on sidehill grow and those on hilltop stop growing at the voiding and cracking stages because of the void in hilltop. The local electric field in a wrinkle at undulating stage was calculated, and it is found that the difference of local electric field strengths between hilltop and sidehill is small, which indicates that the predominant driving force for the diffusion of Cu ion during CuO NWs growth is internal stress.     

Discovering the Intrinsic Causes of Dendrite Formation in Zinc Metal Anodes: Lattice Defects and Residual Stress

Developing a highly stable and dendrite-free zinc anode is essential to the commercial application of zinc metal batteries. However, the understanding of zinc dendrites formation mechanism is still insufficient. Herein, for the first time, we discover that the interfacial heterogeneous deposition induced by lattice defects and epitaxial growth limited by residual stress are intrinsic and critical causes for zinc dendrite formation. Therefore, an annealing reconstruction strategy was proposed to eliminate lattice defects and stresses in zinc crystals, which achieve dense epitaxial electrodeposition of zinc anode. The as-prepared annealed zinc anodes exhibit dendrite-free morphology and enhanced electrochemical cycling stability. This work first proves that lattice defects and residual stresses are also very important factors for epitaxial electrodeposition of zinc in addition to crystal orientation, which can provide a new mechanism for future researches on zinc anode modification.     

Bulk-like Pt(100)-oriented Ultrathin Surface: Combining the Merits of Single Crystals and Nanoparticles to Boost Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Single crystal surfaces with highly coordinated sites very often hold high specific activities toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and others. Transposing their high specific activity to practical high-surface-area electrocatalysts remains challenging. Here, ultrathin Pt(100) alloy surface is constructed via epitaxial growth. The surface shows 3.1–6.9 % compressive strain and bulk-like characteristics as demonstrated by site-probe reactions and different spectroscopies. Its ORR activity exceeds that of bulk Pt₃Ni(100) and Pt(111) and presents a 19-fold increase in specific activity and a 13-fold increase in mass activity relative to commercial Pt/C. Moreover, the electrochemically active surface area (ECSA) is increased by 4-fold compared to traditional thin films (e.g. NSTF), which makes the catalyst more tolerant to voltage loss at high current densities under fuel cell operation. This work broadens the family of extended surface catalysts and highlights the knowledge-driven approach in the development of advanced electrocatalysts.     

Glass fabrics self-cracking catalytic growth of boron nitride nanotubes

Glass fabrics were used to fabricate boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) with a broad diameter range through a combined chemical vapor deposition and self-propagation high-temperature synthesis (CVD-SHS) method at different holding times (0min, 30min, 90min, 180min and 360min). SEM characterization has been employed to investigate the macro and micro structure/morphology changes of the glass fabrics and BNNTs in detail. SEM image analysis has provided direct experimental evidences for the rationality of the optimized self-cracking catalyst VLS growth mechanism, including the transformation situations of the glass fabrics and the BNNTs growth processes respectively. This paper was the further research and compensation for the theory and experiment deficiencies in the new preparation method of BNNTs reported in our previous work. In addition, it is likely that the distinctive self-cracking catalyst VLS growth mechanism could provide a new idea to preparation of other inorganic functional nano-materials using similar one-dimensional raw materials as growth templates and catalysts.