Carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composites have been intensively used for many applications due to their attractive properties. The increasing demand of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composites is driving novel manufacturing processes to be in short manufacturing cycle time and low production cost, which is difficult to realize during carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composites fabrication in common molding processes. Fused deposition modeling, as one of the additive manufacturing techniques, has been reported for fabricating carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composites. The process parameters used in fused deposition modeling of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composites follow those in fused deposition modeling of pure plastic materials. After adding fiber reinforcements, it is crucial to investigate proper fused deposition modeling process parameters to ensure the quality of the carbon fiber-reinforced plastic parts fabricated by fused deposition modeling. However, there are no reported investigations on the effects of fused deposition modeling process parameters on the mechanical properties of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composites. In the experimental investigations of this paper, carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composite parts are fabricated using a fused deposition modeling machine. Tensile tests are conducted to obtain the tensile properties. The effects of fused deposition modeling process parameters on the tensile properties of fused deposition modeling-fabricated carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composite parts are investigated. The fracture interfaces of the parts after tensile testing are observed by a scanning electron microscope to explain material failure modes and reasons.

Carbon dots (CDs) have a wide range of applications in chemical, physical and biomedical research fields. We are particularly interested in the use of CDs as fluorescence nanomaterials for targeted tumor cell imaging. One of the important aspects of success is to enhance the fluorescence quantum yields (QY) of CDs as well as increase their targetability to tumor cells. However, most of the reported CDs are limited by relative low QY. In the current study, for the first time, one-step synthesis of highly luminescent CDs by using folic acid (FA) as single precursor was obtained in natural water through hydrothermal method. The as-prepared CDs exhibited QY as high as 94.5% in water, which is even higher than most of organic fluorescent dyes. The obtained CDs showed excellent photoluminescent activity, high photostability and favorable biocompatibility. The FA residuals in CDs led to extraordinary targetability to cancer cells and promoted folate receptor-mediated cellular uptake successfully, which holds a great potential in biological and bioimaging studies.

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Our findings indicated that up-regulation of DDR1 induced by miR-199a-5p down-regulation may contribute to the development and progression of CRC, and this effect may be associated with increased invasiveness, at least in part, via activating the EMT-related signaling.

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