It is very challenging to achieve efficient and deep desulfurization, especially in flue gases with an extremely low SO 2 concentration. Herein, we report a microporous metal−organic framework (ELM-12) with specific polar sites and proper pore size for the highly efficient SO 2 removal from flue gas and other SO 2 -containing gases. A high SO 2 capacity of 61.2 cm 3 •g −1 combined with exceptionally outstanding selectivity of SO 2 /CO 2 (30), SO 2 /CH 4 (871), and SO 2 /N 2 (4064) under ambient conditions (i.e., 10:90 mixture at 298 K and 1 bar) was achieved. Notably, the SO 2 /N 2 selectivity is unprecedented among ever reported values of porous materials. Moreover, the dispersion-corrected density functional theory calculations illustrated the superior SO 2 capture ability and selectivity arise from the high-density SO 2 binding sites of the CF 3 SO 3 − group in the pore cavity (S δ+ •••O δ− interactions) and aromatic linkers in the pore walls (H δ+ •••O δ− interactions). Dynamic breakthrough experiments confirm the regeneration stability and excellent separation performance. Furthermore, ELM-12 is also stable after exposure to SO 2 , water vapor, and organic solvents.

Background: Retinopathy of pre-maturity (ROP) is a disorder of the retinal blood vessels in pre-term infants with low birth weight. It is a leading cause of blindness in children. During ROP screening, the use of mydriatic drops and eyelid openers causes pain and discomfort. Pain management strategies include medications and behavioral interventions. The objectives of this study was to investigate the effects of Gentle Human Touch on pain in pre-term infants undergoing screening for ROP.Methods: In this randomized controlled trial, 82 infants in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University who met the ROP screening criteria were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups using the random number table. The infants in the experimental group continuously received Gentle Human Touch during screening, while those in the control group were screened according to the routine procedure. All neonates were administered local eye anesthesia before the screening. The degree of pain was assessed using the Pre-mature Infant Pain Profile score. A double-channel near-infrared spectroscopy device was used to monitor regional cerebral oxygen saturation (rScO2), while oxygen saturation (SaO2) and heart rate were measured using pulse oximetry. The Pre-mature Infant Pain Profile score was the primary outcome, while heart rate, SaO2, and rScO2 were the secondary outcomes.Results: The gestational age, corrected gestational age, birth weight, and Apgar score at examination and the basal heart rate, SaO2, and rScO2 showed no significant intergroup differences (P > 0.05 for all). Both groups demonstrated significant decreases in SaO2 and rScO2 in response to the examination (P < 0.05 for all). During the examination, the Pre-mature Infant Pain Profile score (14.82 ± 3.22 vs. 9.29 ± 2.89, respectively; P < 0.05) was significantly higher in the control group than in the experimental group, while rScO2 (57.61 ± 3.51 vs. 54.76 ± 4.54%, respectively; P < 0.05) and SaO2 (91.89 ± 6.43 vs. 85.68 ± 8.31%; P < 0.05) were significantly higher in the experimental group than in the control group. There was no significant difference in heart rate changes between the two groups before and after the examination (182.60 ± 3.50 vs. 170.80 ± 3.50 time/min; P > 0.05).Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest that Gentle Human Touch can effectively alleviate pain during ROP screening in pre-mature infants.Clinical Trial Registration: ISRCTN10976481, Registered 06 March 2020, Retrospectively registered.

Detecting user intents from utterances is the basis of natural language understanding (NLU) task. To understand the meaning of utterances, some work focuses on fully representing utterances via semantic parsing in which annotation cost is labor-intentsive. While some researchers simply view this as intent classification or frequently asked questions (FAQs) retrieval, they do not leverage the shared utterances among different intents. We propose a simple and novel multi-point semantic representation framework with relatively low annotation cost to leverage the fine-grained factor information, decomposing queries into four factors, i.e., topic, predicate, object/condition, query type. Besides, we propose a compositional intent bi-attention model under multi-task learning with three kinds of attention mechanisms among queries, labels and factors, which jointly combines coarse-grained intent and fine-grained factor information. Extensive experiments show that our framework and model significantly outperform several state-of-the-art approaches with an improvement of 1.35%-2.47% in terms of accuracy.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a degenerative disease characterized by fibrosis. Cell therapy has been considered within the therapeutic options for IPF. In this study, we explored the potential benefits of human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cell (HUC-MSC) intravenous infusion in the management of IPF. We describe a case of a 56-year-old man with IPF who was receiving long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT). The patient underwent HUC-MSC intravenous infusion and was followed up for 12 months. Clinical and motor tests, as well as questionnaires assessing quality of life, were performed prior to and following the transplantation. At the end of 12 months, a relevant reduction of LTOT requirement was registered; improvements in terms of physical performance, quality of life, and respiratory parameters were observed in our patient. In conclusion, a program of HUC-MSC intravenous infusion appears to be beneficial to patients with IPF and may be considered as an additional therapeutic option.

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The efficient elimination of SO2 from flue gases and natural gases is critical for energy utilization and environmental protection. However, selecting or preparing an efficient adsorbent with a high SO2 capacity, good selectivity, and excellent recyclability is very challenging, and the adsorption mechanism at an atomic level is still controversial. We report a facile one-step method for the synthesis of biomass-derived porous carbons with high specific surface areas (1195–1449 m2 g–1), mesoporous pore size (4–6 nm), and good SO2 adsorption properties. Our carbon adsorbents exhibited an outstanding SO2 adsorption capacity of 10.7 mmol g–1 at 298 K and 1.0 bar, which is more than twice the SO2 capacity of benchmark carbon material cs1000a (approximately 5.0 mmol g–1) and commercial ordered mesoporous carbon CKM-3 (5.1 mmol g–1). The new carbon adsorbents also showed unprecedented SO2/CO2, SO2/CH4, and SO2/N2 separation selectivities of 32, 127, and 2349, respectively, which are comparable with the best performance MOF adsorbents. Dynamic breakthrough experiments confirmed the feasibility of efficient removal of SO2 from flue gas in an adsorbent column. Even with the presence of water vapor, clear and efficient separation of SO2 could also be achieved with excellent recycling stability. In addition, a density function theory simulation further illustrates that −NO x and −OH groups in the carbon frameworks provide strong interactions with SO2 molecules. The carbon adsorbents synthesized in this work are promising for flue gas desulfurization and natural gas purification applications.

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