Seeking to minimize degradation of NADPH during storage, reagent preparation, and assays, we investigated the effects of pH, temperature, and ionic strength as well as the effects of phosphate and acetate. NADH was also included for comparison. Our results indicate that the rate of degradation of NADPH is proportional most importantly to temperature and concentrations of hydronium ion, but also to concentrations of phosphate and acetate. The degradation rate decreased with increasing ionic strength at neutral pH, but increased slightly at lower pH. NADPH generally is less stable than NADH under the same conditions. The reaction orders with respect to hydronium ion and anions were near 1 for NADH degradation reactions, about 0.5 for NADPH. Rate constants for NADH and NADPH differed more at higher pH and lower phosphate and acetate concentrations.

Reductions in H content and particle recycling are important for the improvement of ion cyclotron range of frequency (ICRF) minority heating efficiency and the enhancement of plasma performance of the EAST superconducting tokamak. During recent years several techniques of surface conditioning such as baking, glow discharge cleaning/ICRF discharge cleaning, surface coatings, such as boronization, siliconization and lithium coating, have all been attempted in order to reduce the H/(H+D) ratio and particle recycling in EAST. Even though boronization and siliconization were both reasonably effective methods to improve plasma performance, lithium coatings were observed to reduce the H content and particle recycling to levels low enough to allow the attainment of enhanced plasma parameters and operating modes on EAST. For example, by accomplishing lithium coating using either vacuum evaporation or the real-time injection of fine lithium powder, the H/(H+D) ratio could be routinely decreased to about 5%, which significantly improved ICRF minority heating efficiency during the autumn campaign of 2010. Due to the reduced H/(H+D) ratio and lower particle recycling, and a reduced H-mode power threshold, improved plasma confinement and the first EAST H-mode plasma were obtained. Furthermore, with increasing accumulation of deposited lithium, several new milestones of EAST performance, such as a 6.4 s-long H-mode, a 100 s-long plasma duration and a 1 MA plasma current, were achieved in the 2010 autumn campaign.

To achieve desirable plasma density control, a supersonic molecular beam injection (SMBI) feedback control system has been developed recently for the EAST tokamak. The performance of the SMBI and gas puffing (GP) feedback systems were used and compared. The performance of pulse width mode is better than that of pulse amplitude mode when GP was used for density feedback control. During one-day experiments, the variation of gas input and wall retention can be clarified into two stages. In the first stage the retention ratio is as high as 80-90%, and the gas input is about an order of 10 22 D 2 . However, in the second stage, the retention ratio is at a range of 50-70%. The gas input of a single discharge is small and the net wall retention grows slowly. The results of the SMBI feedback control experiment was analyzed. The shorter delay time of SMBI makes it faster at feeding back control the plasma density. The result showed that, compared with GP, the gas input of SMBI was decreased ∼30% and the wall retention was reduced ∼40%. This shows SMBI's advantage for the long pulse high density discharges in EAST.

2′-fucosyllactose (2′-FL), one of the simplest but most abundant oligosaccharides in human milk, has been demonstrated to have many positive benefits for the healthy development of newborns. However, the high-cost production and limited availability restrict its widespread use in infant nutrition and further research on its potential functions. In this study, on the basis of previous achievements, we developed a powerful cell factory by using a lacZ-mutant Escherichia coli C41 (DE3)ΔZ to ulteriorly increase 2′-FL production by feeding inexpensive glycerol. Initially, we co-expressed the genes for GDP-L-fucose biosynthesis and heterologous α-1,2-fucosyltransferase in C41(DE3)ΔZ through different plasmid-based expression combinations, functionally constructing a preferred route for 2′-FL biosynthesis. To further boost the carbon flux from GDP-L-fucose toward 2′-FL synthesis, deletion of chromosomal genes (wcaJ, nudD, and nudK) involved in the degradation of the precursors GDP-L-fucose and GDP-mannose were performed. Notably, the co-introduction of two heterologous positive regulators, RcsA and RcsB, was confirmed to be more conducive to GDP-L-fucose formation and thus 2′-FL production. Further a genomic integration of an individual copy of α-1,2-fucosyltransferase gene, as well as the preliminary optimization of fermentation conditions enabled the resulting engineered strain to achieve a high titer and yield. By collectively taking into account the intracellular lactose utilization, GDP-L-fucose availability, and fucosylation activity for 2′-FL production, ultimately a highest titer of 2′-FL in our optimized conditions reached 6.86 g/L with a yield of 0.92 mol/mol from lactose in the batch fermentation. Moreover, the feasibility of mass production was demonstrated in a 50-L fed-batch fermentation system in which a maximum titer of 66.80 g/L 2′-FL was achieved with a yield of 0.89 mol 2′-FL/mol lactose and a productivity of approximately 0.95 g/L/h 2′-FL. As a proof of concept, our preliminary 2′-FL production demonstrated a superior production performance, which will provide a promising candidate process for further industrial production.

A 4.6 GHz lower-hybrid current drive (LHCD) system has been firstly commissioned in EAST in the 2014 campaign. The first LHCD results with 4.6 GHz show that LHW can be coupled to plasma with a low reflection coefficient, drive plasma current and plasma rotation, modify the plasma current profile, and heat plasma effectively. By means of configuration optimization and local gas puffing near the LHW antenna, good LHW-plasma coupling with a reflection coefficient less than 5% is obtained. The maximum LHW power coupled to plasma is up to 3.5 MW. The current drive (CD) efficiency is up to 1.1 × 10 19 A m −2 W −1 and the central electron temperature is above 4 keV, suggesting that LH power could be mainly deposited in the core region, which is in agreement with code simulation. Experiments show that the current profile is effectively modified and toroidal rotation in the co-current direction is driven by the LHCD. Also, the CD efficiency and current profile depend on the launched wave spectrum, suggesting the possibility of controlling the current profile by changing the phase difference. Repeatable H-mode plasma is obtained by either the 4.6 GHz LHCD system alone, or together with a 2.45 GHz LHCD system, the NBI (neutral beam injection) system. The different ELM features of H-mode between the different heating methods are under investigation.

The general temporal-spatial consistency for the formation of adakitic rocks and lithospheric thinning in northern China provide a window to examine the processes and mechanism for the destruction of the North China Craton. With experimental petrology data, this paper demonstrates that the adakitic rocks in northern China are the products of partial melting of middle-to high-potassic metabasalts at the base of the lower continent crust. Based on the TiO 2 solubility model, many adakitic rocks in Dabie, Jiaodong and the northern part of the craton appear to have been saturated with TiO 2 . This indicates the presence of a Ti-rich accessory phase in their source regions. This phase must be rutile based on the decreasing Nb/La with increasing La/Yb in the adakitic rocks. The adakitic magmas were, thus, derived from a depth of more than 50 km, based on pressures (higher than 1.5 GPa) for the stability of rutile in a metabasalt system. Because present-day crustal thickness is generally only 35 km, we suggest that the destruction of the North China Craton may have led to at least 15 km of thinning or delamination of the crust.

The active feedback control of radiated power to prevent divertor target plates overheating during long-pulse operation has been developed and implemented on EAST. The radiation control algorithm, with impurity seeding via a supersonic molecular beam injection (SMBI) system, has shown great success in both reliability and stability. By seeding a sequence of short neon (Ne) impurity pulses with the SMBI from the outer mid-plane, the radiated power of the bulk plasma can be well controlled, and the duration of radiative control (feedforward and feedback) is 4.5 s during a discharge of 10 s. Reliable control of the total radiated power of bulk plasma has been successfully achieved in long-pulse upper single null (USN) discharges with a tungsten divertor. The achieved control range of is 20%–30% in L-mode regimes and 18%–36% in H-mode regimes. The temperature of the divertor target plates was maintained at a low level during the radiative control phase. The peak particle flux on the divertor target was decreased by feedforward Ne injection in the L-mode discharges, while the Ne pulses from the SMBI had no influence on the peak particle flux because of the very small injecting volume. It is shown that although the radiated power increased, no serious reduction of plasma-stored energy or confinement was observed during the control phase. The success of the radiation control algorithm and current experiments in radiated power control represents a significant advance for steady-state divertor radiation and heat flux control on EAST for near-future long-pulse operation.

Lacto-N-neotetraose (LNnT) and lacto-N-tetraose (LNT) are important oligosaccharides found in breast milk and are commonly used as nutritional supplements in infant formula. We used metabolic engineering techniques to optimize the modified Escherichia coli BL21 star (DE3) strain for efficient synthesis of LNnT and LNT using β-1,4-galactosyltransferase (HpgalT) from Helicobacter pylori and β-1,3-galactosyltransferase (SewbdO) from Salmonella enterica subsp. salamae serovar, respectively. Further, we optimized the expression of three key genes, lgtA, galE, and HpgalT (SewbdO), to synthesize LNnT or LNT and deleted several genes (ugd, ushA, agp, wcaJ, otsA, and wcaC) to block competition in the UDP-galactose synthesis pathway. The optimized strain produced LNnT or LNT with a titer of 22.07 or 48.41 g/L, respectively, in a supplemented batch culture, producing 0.41 or 0.73 g/L/h, respectively. The strategies used in this study contribute to the development of cell factories for high-level LNnT and LNT and their derivatives.