As Hollywood relies heavily on global markets, it is particularly important for studios to understand how their decisions, including on casts, may affect their movies’ box-office in foreign markets. Anecdotal evidence shows that casting actors with similar facial features may be problematic in foreign markets, often disorienting international audiences.

Cracks are an inevitable problem during the use of materials, and flexible sensors with self-healing capability are of great importance for applications in wearable devices and skin-like electronic devices. This paper prepared self-healing flexible strain sensors by compounding self-healing polyurethane with carbon nanotubes. First, by changing the ratio of disulfide bonds, a good balance between mechanical properties and self-healing efficiency was achieved in the prepared self-healing polyurethane. The most balanced sample reached 12.28 MPa in tensile strength, after 24 h of self-repair at 30 °C, the tensile strength was 7.75 MPa, and the self-repair efficiency was 63.11%; after 24 h of self-repair at 80 °C, the tensile strength was 11.64 MPa, and the self-repair efficiency reached 94.79%. Then the sensors prepared by compounding with carbon nanotubes showed a good electrochemical response, and both slow and fast repeated bending of the finger wearing the sensors yielded significantly different electrical signal changes, and the sensors were cut off and still had the same function after self-repair at 30 °C, demonstrating their excellent potential for applications in soft robots, wearable devices, etc.

This study investigated the arsenide removal by using mesoporous CoFe2O4/ graphene oxide nanocomposites based on batch experiments optimized by artificial intelligence tools. These nanocomposites were prepared by immobilizing cobalt ferrite on graphene oxide and then characterized using various techniques, including small angle X-ray diffraction, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Artificial intelligence tools associated with response surface methodology were employed to optimize the conditions of the arsenide removal process. The results showed that back propagation neural network combined with genetic algorithm was suitable for the arsenide removal from aqueous solutions by the nanocomposites based on the minimum average values of absolute errors and the value of R2. The optimal values of the four variables (operating temperature, initial pH, initial arsenide concentration, and contact time) were found to be 25.66 °C, 7.58, 10.78 mg/L and 46.41 min, and the predicted arsenide removal percentage was 84.78%. The verification experiment showed that the arsenide removal percentage was 86.62%, which was close to the predicted value. Three evaluation methods (gradient boosted regression trees, Garson method and analysis of variance) all demonstrated that the temperature was the most important explanatory variable for the arsenide removal. In addition, the arsenide removal process can be depicted with pseudo-second-order kinetics model and Langmuir isotherm, respectively. The thermodynamics investigation disclosed that the adsorption process was of a spontaneously endothermic nature. In summary, this study showed that ANN-GA was an efficient and feasible method in determining the optimum conditions for arsenic removal by CoFe2O4/ graphene oxide nanocomposites.

The oxygen-rich activated carbon (AC) was facilely developed using petroleum coke as a raw material by KOH activation under the rapid heating rate. The porosity and surface chemistry of ACs prepared under different heating rates were characterized and their adsorption properties for methylene blue (MB) were investigated. The results showed that the AC5 prepared under the heating rate of 5 °C min−1 had the highest surface area compared with the AC10, AC15 or AC20, while the AC20 prepared under the heating rate of 20 °C min−1 consisted of the highest oxygen content and most –OH functional group compares with the other ACs. These indicated that rapid heating rate was against the formation of more developed porosity, however, it was beneficial to producing more oxygen functional groups. As to MB adsorption, AC15 exhibited the maximum adsorption capacity for MB of 884 mg g−1 due to high surface area of 2803 m2 g−1 and high oxygen content of 23.27%. Moreover, despite the fact that AC20 had much lower surface area than the AC5, the AC20 showed higher MB adsorption capacity than the AC5. This was because the AC20 has the highest content of –OH, which was a positive impetus for MB adsorption. Therefore, rapid heating rate was an effective and simple approach to preparing the oxygen-rich ACs for improving the adsorption capacity of MB.

The study proposed a dual-path model to examine the relationship between customer perceived hotel innovativeness and customers’ interactivity, building the signaling theory. The model was tested with hotel customers from China. The findings suggest that customers’ perceived hotel innovativeness not only has a positive and direct impact on their interactivity, it also indirectly contributes to customers’ interactivity via two indirect paths, one featuring a cognitive-economic motivation pathway and the other featuring an affective-motivation pathway.

Isotropic pitch-based carbon fiber was successfully prepared from tetrahydrofuran-soluble fraction of coal tar pitch cocarbonization with petrolatum by air-blowing. The effects of reaction temperature and time, amount of petrolatum added on the composition and spinning properties of resultant pitches were investigated. It indicated that petrolatum could effectively improve the softening point, aromaticity, hydrogen content and molecular weight of the resultant pitches by promoting cross-linking and dehydrogenation polymerization reactions at low air-blowing temperature. Moreover, more aliphatic and naphthenic structures had been introduced into resultant pitches as addition of petrolatum and also inhibited the generation of quinoline-insoluble particles. The obtained green fibers were facile to be stabilized and carbonized and the resultant carbon fibers showed fully isotropic and finer, uniform diameter with smooth surface and higher tensile strength of up to 0.92 GPa. It provided a facile chemical modification method for isotropic pitch-based carbon fiber production.

Soybean has been cultivated in China for 5,000 years. The soybean cyst neamtode (SCN), Heterodra glycines, was recongnized in Northeastern China in 1899. Currently, it is known to occur in 12 provinces. The biology of SCN was investigated in several provinces. Six races of SCN were identified (race 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7). About f10,000 soybean germplasm lines were evaluated for their resistance to race 1, 3, 4 and 5 of SCN. At least two black-seeded cultivars are resistant to all four races. Several tolerant soybean cultivars with yellow seed coat were released and are in production. Additional resistant cultivars are being developed. Nematicides were not applied in production Potential biocontrol agents and related aspects are being investigated.

Although the overall structure of the chloroplast genome is generally conserved, a number of sequence variations have been identified, which are valuable for plant population and evolutionary studies. Here, we constructed a chloroplast variation map of 30 landrace rice strains of Korean origin, using the Oryza rufipogon chloroplast genome (Genbank: NC_017835) as a reference. Differential distribution of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and indels across the rice chloroplast genome is suggestive of a region-specific variation. Population structure clustering revealed the existence of two clear subgroups (indica and japonica) and an admixture group (aus). Phylogenetic analysis of the 30 landrace rice strains and six rice chloroplast references suggested and supported independent evolution of O. sativa indica and japonica. Interestingly, two “aus” type accessions, which were thought to be indica type, shared a closer relationship with the japonica type. One hypothesis is that “Korean aus” was intentionally introduced and may have obtained japonica chloroplasts during cultivation. We also calculated the nucleotide diversity of 30 accessions and compared to six rice chloroplast references, which shown a higher diversity in the indica and aus groups than in the japonica group in lower level substitution diversity.