Experimental Evaluation of Anticorrosion of a Standard 20# Gathering Pipeline by Injecting Oxygen-Reduced Air into Simulated In-Service Wells.

Oxygen-reduced air flooding (ORAF) can effectively improve oil recovery in low-permeability reservoirs, but oxygen corrosion and CO2 corrosion in downstream gathering pipelines are inevitable due to the existence of oxygen, which limits the popularization and application of ORAF. In this paper, research on the corrosion inhibitor is carried out for the gathering pipeline of an oilfield with ORAF in China. Under the conditions of a simulated onsite gathering pipeline, 6 kinds of anti-CO2 corrosion inhibitors and 6 kinds of antioxygen corrosion inhibitors were selected to evaluate and screen the effects of 20# steel by the dynamic weight loss method. Two antioxygen corrosion inhibitors KY-12 and KY-17 and one anti-CO2 corrosion inhibitor A were selected for the experiment. The corrosion inhibition rates of the three inhibitors reached 83.67, 91.49, and 78.44%, respectively, at a temperature of 40 °C and an inhibitor concentration of 1000 mg/L. Through the experimental evaluation of three primary corrosion inhibitors at different temperatures (25, 40, and 55 °C) and different concentrations (400, 500, 800, 1000, and 2000 mg/L), the KY-17 corrosion inhibitor with the best stability at different temperatures was selected, and the corrosion inhibition effect was the best at different concentrations, with the highest slow release rate reaching 92.7%. This conclusion has a good reference significance for the selection and dosage of corrosion inhibitors for downstream gathering pipelines of the ORAF oilfield.

Tumor-infiltrating platelets promote the growth of lung adenocarcinoma.

PURPOSE: Platelets could promote tumor growth and metastasis. However, the role of platelets in different subtypes of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and platelet infiltration in local tumor tissue remain unclear. METHODS: Initially, platelet infiltration in lung adenocarcinoma (ADC) and lung squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) was estimated by CD41 expression using immunohistochemistry. Subsequently, co-incubation of NSCLC cell lines and platelets was performed to compare the ability of binding platelets. Subcutaneous tumor models were established to assess the ability of platelets to promote tumor growth. Then, RNA-seq data of NSCLC was used to identify differentially expressed genes and enriched pathways. Lastly, a clinical cohort comprising of ADC and SCC patients as well as meta-analysis was analyzed to compare the difference of coagulation associated clinical parameters. RESULTS: We found high platelet infiltration in ADC, especially of advanced disease and metastases, whereas few platelets were observed in SCC. Moreover, ADC cell lines exhibited strong ability of binding platelets compared with SCC cell lines. Platelets could also promote the growth of ADC cell lines in vivo. Furthermore, coagulation cascades and fibrinogen were upregulated in ADC. And chemical inhibition of GPIIb/IIIa-fibrinogen axis reduced the binding of ADC cells and platelets. ADC patients were also in a hypercoagulable state characterized by higher d-dimer level and shorter clotting time. Finally, meta-analysis identified a higher risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in ADC patients and low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) treatment was effective at reducing this risk. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified the differences of platelet infiltration and coagulation between ADC and SCC patients, which may inform the development of anticoagulation therapies for NSCLC.

Circular economy strategies for mitigating metals shortages in electric vehicle batteries under China's carbon-neutral target.

Concerns over supply risks of critical metals used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries are frequently underscored as impediments to the widespread development of EVs. With the progress to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 for China, projecting the critical metals demand for EV batteries and formulating strategies, especially circular economy strategies, to mitigate the risks of demand-supply imbalance in response to potential obstacles are necessary. However, the development scale of EVs in the transport sector to achieve China's carbon neutrality is unclear, and it remains uncertain to what extent circular economy strategies might contribute to the reduction of primary raw materials extraction. Consequently, we explore the future quantity of EVs in China required to achieve carbon neutrality and quantify the primary supply security levels of critical metals with the effort of battery cascade utilization, technology substitutions, recycling efficiency improvement, and novel business models, by integrating dynamic material flow analysis and national energy technology model. This study reveals that although 18%-30% of lithium and 20%-41% of cobalt, nickel, and manganese can be supplied to EVs through the reuse and recycling of end-of-life batteries, sustainable circular economy strategies alone are insufficient to obviate critical metals shortages for China's EV development. However, the supplementary capacity offered by second-life EV batteries, which refers to the use of batteries after they have reached the end of their first intended life, may prove adequate for China's prospective novel energy storage applications. The cumulative primary demand for lithium, cobalt, and nickel from 2021 to 2060 would reach 5-7 times, 23-114 times, and 4-19 times the corresponding mineral reserves in China. Substantial reduction of metals supply risks apart from lithium can be achieved by the cobalt-free battery technology developments combined with efficient recycling systems, where secondary supply can satisfy the demand as early as 2054.

Evaluating rare-earth constraints on wind power development under China's carbon-neutral target.

China proposed a target to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Wind power is crucial for mitigating climate change and achieving carbon neutrality. However, its development depends on the potential constraints of rare-earth elements. Therefore, first projecting the rare-earth demand for wind power equipment in the context of achieving carbon neutrality and identifying potential obstacles are necessary. However, the carbon-neutral pathway for China's power sector is unclear, let alone the corresponding rare-earth demand. Consequently, this study explores a potential cost-effective carbon-neutral pathway for China's power sector and quantifies the demand for rare-earth elements used for producing wind power equipment under different pathways, by integrating dynamic material flow analysis and a national energy technology model. The results showed that the rare-earth supply may be inadequate for wind power development in terms of achieving carbon neutrality in China, especially for dysprosium and terbium. To neutralise the carbon emissions of China's power sector, the cumulative rare-earth demand during 2021-2060 would be 222-434 kt, of which at most 1/3 could potentially be obtained by circular usage from end-of-life wind turbines. However, the existing low secondary recovery rate of rare-earth elements makes the available circular amounts very small. Shifting to a wind power market dominated by direct-drive turbines may increase the cumulative rare-earth demand by up to 34 %. Without material intensity reduction for the wind power technologies, an additional 38 % demand for rare-earth elements will occur, exacerbating the risk of shortage.

Infrared and Visible Image Fusion via Attention-Based Adaptive Feature Fusion.

Infrared and visible image fusion methods based on feature decomposition are able to generate good fused images. However, most of them employ manually designed simple feature fusion strategies in the reconstruction stage, such as addition or concatenation fusion strategies. These strategies do not pay attention to the relative importance between different features and thus may suffer from issues such as low-contrast, blurring results or information loss. To address this problem, we designed an adaptive fusion network to synthesize decoupled common structural features and distinct modal features under an attention-based adaptive fusion (AAF) strategy. The AAF module adaptively computes different weights assigned to different features according to their relative importance. Moreover, the structural features from different sources are also synthesized under the AAF strategy before reconstruction, to provide a more entire structure information. More important features are thus paid more attention to automatically and advantageous information contained in these features manifests itself more reasonably in the final fused images. Experiments on several datasets demonstrated an obvious improvement of image fusion quality using our method.

Light and scanning electron microscopy observations on morphological diversity of Rosaceae stigma and its taxonomic significance.

The stigma morphology can provide a reference for exploring plant systematics and pollination biology. In this study, we observed the stigma morphological characteristics of Rosaceae in Beijing urban area in detail using light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The stigma of Rosaceae is entire or bilobed and mostly baculate, crateriform, cristate, discoid, or flattened. The stigma surface may have irregular, strongly raised ridges; or flat without papillae; or composed of densely or loosely arranged papillary cells. Surface ornamentation includes fossulate, psilate, psilate-striate, rugulate, scabrate, striate, and striate-rugulate. There are similarities in stigma morphology among genera and differences in stigma morphology among species within genera. The stigma shape supports the view of molecular systematic classification, that is, the former subfamilies Maloideae, Prunoideae, and Spiraeoideae are grouped into subfamily Amygdaloideae. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to provide high-quality figures for observing stigma morphology. The data on the morphological diversity of stigma were provided to further explore the systematics and pollination biology of Rosaceae.

CD158a+ /CD158b+ NK cell imbalance correlates with hypertension in patients with pre-eclampsia.

PROBLEM: Preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication with hypertension and proteinuria, seriously threats the health and lives of the mother and the baby. The pathogenesis of pre-eclampsia remains incompletely understood. The role of peripheral natural killer cells (NK cells) in the pre-eclampsia is unclear. METHOD OF STUDY: Flow cytometry was performed to detect the expression of CD158a (KIR2DL1) and CD158b (KIR2DL2/3) in peripheral NK cells of healthy pregnant women (HP) and patients with pre-eclampsia (PE). Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in CD158a+ and CD158b+ NK cells were identified by RNA-sequencing and real-time PCR. Protein array analysis was used to identify altered protein levels in the serum of study participants. RESULTS: CD158a+ NK cell numbers were increased in the peripheral blood of patients while the number of CD158b+ NK cells was reduced. In addition, the percentage of CD158a+ NK cells within the peripheral NK subset was positively correlated with systolic blood pressure while the percentage of CD158b+ NK cells was negatively correlated with systolic blood pressure. RNA-seq and real-time PCR showed that the expression of ERAP2 and GCH1, the genes that regulate blood pressure and angiogenesis, was decreased in CD158a+ compared to CD158b+ NK cells. Consistently, the level of proteins involved in angiogenesis was altered in the serum of pre-eclampsia patients compared to healthy individuals. CONCLUSIONS: CD158a+ NK cells increased while CD158b+ NK cells decreased in the peripheral blood of patients with pre-eclampsia compared to healthy individuals. The change in the frequency of CD158a+ /CD158b+ NK cells is related to the increase in blood pressure.

The morphology of stigma of Asteraceae observed by scanning electron microscopy.

The morphology of stigma has taxonomic values. To further explore the taxonomy of family Asteraceae, the morphological characteristics of stigma of 28 genera, 32 species, and two varieties in the family were observed using scanning electron microscopy. The results indicated that the stigma morphology of these Asteraceae plants could be divided into 10 types, of which eight are reported for the first time. The morphological characteristics of stigma support the close relationship between genera Aster and Erigeron and among genera Sonchus, Taraxacum, and Youngia. Our results enriched the stigma type diversity data and provided a morphological basis for the study of the phylogenetic evolution of Asteraceae.

Immunogenic senescence sensitizes lung cancer to LUNX-targeting therapy.

The higher immunogenicity of tumors usually predicts favorable therapeutic responses. Tumor antigens dominate the immunogenic character within tumors. We investigated if there was a targetable tumor antigen during immunogenic chemotherapy within lung cancer. Chemotherapy-induced immunogenic senescence was demonstrated using a multi-marker, three-step workflow, and RNA-sequencing data. The ability of anti-lung-specific X protein (LUNX) antibody to suppress the survival of senescent lung cancer cells was evaluated in vitro and in vivo using real-time cytotoxicity analysis and xenograft mouse models, respectively. The induction of cellular senescence by immunogenic chemotherapy boosted cell-surface shuttling of LUNX and enhanced the immunogenic features of senescent tumor cells, which sensitized lung cancer cells to anti-LUNX antibody-mediated therapy and contributed to tumor suppression. The immunogenic senescence-mediated anti-tumor response was triggered by the direct action of antibody on tumor cells, strengthened by natural-killer cells through an antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity response, and ultimately, led to tumor control. Our findings suggest that LUNX is a lung cancer targetable-immunogenic antigen. The proportion of lung cancers responding to LUNX-targeting therapy could be expanded substantially by immunogenic chemotherapy that induces senescence-associated translocation of LUNX to the plasma membrane.

The Adverse Impact of Tumor Microenvironment on NK-Cell.

NK cells are considered an important component of innate immunity, which is the first line of defensing against tumors and viral infections in the absence of prior sensitization. NK cells express an array of germline-encoded receptors, which allow them to eliminate abnormal cells and were previously considered a homogenous population of innate lymphocytes, with limited phenotypic and functional diversity. Although their characteristics are related to their developmental origins, other factors, such as tumors and viral infections, can influence their phenotype. Here, we provide an overview of NK cells in the context of the tumor microenvironment, with a primary focus on their phenotypes, functions, and roles in tumor micro-environment. A comprehensive understanding of NK cells in the tumor microenvironment will provide a theoretical basis for the development of NK cell immunotherapy.

LunX-CAR T Cells as a Targeted Therapy for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) carries a high mortality, and efficacious therapy is lacking. Therapy using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells has been used efficaciously against hematologic malignancies, but the curative effect against solid tumors is not satisfactory. A lack of antigen targets is one of the main reasons for this limited efficacy. Previously, we showed that lung-specific X (LUNX; also known as BPIFA1, PLUNC, and SPLUNC1) is overexpressed in lung cancer cells. Here, we constructed a CAR-T-cell-based strategy to target LunX (CARLunX T cells). CAR T cells were developed so that, upon specific recognition of LunX, they secreted cytokines and killed LunX-positive NSCLC cells. In vitro, CARLunX T cells displayed enhanced toxicity toward NSCLC lines and production of cytokines and showed specific LunX-dependent recognition of NSCLC cells. Adoptive transfer of CARLunX T cells induced regression of established metastatic lung cancer xenografts and prolonged survival. CARLunX T cells could infiltrate into the tumor. Also, we constructed a patient-derived xenograft model of lung cancer. After therapy with CARLunX T cells, tumor growth was suppressed, and survival was prolonged significantly. Together, our findings offer preclinical evidence of the immunotherapeutic targeting of LunX as a strategy to treat NSCLC.

Taxonomic importance of pollen morphology in Veratrum L. (Melanthiaceae) using microscopic techniques.

Previous studies reported that intrageneric relationships of genus Veratrum of family Melanthiaceae are controversial and hard to delimit. Therefore, we observed the pollen morphological features of six species in the genus Veratrum in detail using both light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy and investigated their significance for Veratrum taxonomy. Among them, five were studied for the first time. The results demonstrated that pollen grains of Veratrum are medium in size with P/E being 0.31-0.60. Three types of shape in polar view have been observed elliptic, long-elliptic, or wide-elliptic with blunt or rounded at both ends. Two types of width of colpus reported narrow or wide, two types of depth of colpus reported deep or flat, and two types of length of colpus reported extend almost or do not extend to the ends, whereas two types of colpus membranes reported absent or obvious. One type of surface ornamentation was noted as reticulate. These results support species Veratrum album and Veratrum lobelianum as well as Veratrum grandiflorum and Veratrum oxysepalum as two independent species, respectively, rather than classifying Veratrum into two sections. Overall, we demonstrated that the ratio of polar axis length to equatorial axial length, pollen characteristics at the polar view, the colpus morphology, and the surface ornamentation of pollen grains of genus Veratrum have important systematic significance in identification and delimitation of species.

Pollen morphology of Chinese Pseudostellaria (Caryophyllaceae) and its systematic significance.

Using light and scanning electron microscopy, we studied the pollen morphology of six species (one of which are endemic) of Chinese Pseudostellaria. All species were studied for the first time. Results of this study indicated that pollen grains of Pseudostellaria are spheroidal or spheroidal-polyhedral in shape and small or medium in size and pantoporate. Each pollen grain has 12-16 round pores. These pores are apart from each other by 5.77-7.73 µm and each has 7-13 granules in the operculum region. These features have important taxonomic significance. In addition, their pollen grains have thin exine with microechinate-punctate-perforate surface ornamentation. Pollen features do not support the traditional infrageneric classification of Pseudostellaria into two sections, but support that Pseudostellaria is closely related to other species of the Odontostemma clade.

Enhancement of CO2 transfer and microalgae growth by perforated inverted arc trough internals in a flat-plate photobioreactor.

Flat-plate photobioreactor (PBR) with perforated inverted arc trough (PIAT) internals was proposed to promote CO2 bio-fixation by microalgae. The PIAT internals can enhance CO2 transfer from gas to culture medium by prolonging CO2 gas-liquid contact time and generate periodic aeration in the suspension upper side the PIAT providing suspension mixing. Experimental results showed gas-liquid contact time was prolonged from 0.448 s to 256 s and the CO2 partial pressure inside the PIAT internals was about 15.5 kPa during microalgae cultivation. Consequently, the dissolved CO2 concentration in the microalgae suspension of the proposed PBR was increased by 26.0% compared to that in the PBR without PIAT internals when 15% CO2 (v/v) was aerated at a rate of 15 mL min-1. The elevated CO2 transfer contributed to a 20.9% increment in biomass concentration (3.35 g L-1) and a 26.2% increment in CO2 fixation rate (36.6 mg L-1 h-1).