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Flexible solar cells have a lot of market potential for application in photovoltaics integrated into buildings and wearable electronics because they are lightweight, shockproof and self-powered. Silicon solar cells have been successfully used in large power plants. However, despite the efforts made for more than 50 years, there has been no notable progress in the development of flexible silicon solar cells because of their rigidity1–4. Here we provide a strategy for fabricating large-scale, foldable silicon wafers and manufacturing flexible solar cells. A textured crystalline silicon wafer always starts to crack at the sharp channels between surface pyramids in the marginal region of the wafer. This fact enabled us to improve the flexibility of silicon wafers by blunting the pyramidal structure in the marginal regions. This edge-blunting technique enables commercial production of large-scale (>240 cm2), high-efficiency (>24%) silicon solar cells that can be rolled similarly to a sheet of paper. The cells retain 100% of their power conversion efficiency after 1,000 side-to-side bending cycles. After being assembled into large (>10,000 cm2) flexible modules, these cells retain 99.62% of their power after thermal cycling between −70 °C and 85 °C for 120 h. Furthermore, they retain 96.03% of their power after 20 min of exposure to air flow when attached to a soft gasbag, which models wind blowing during a violent storm.

Objective: This study aims to provide an overview of meta-analyses and systematic reviews on the effectiveness and safety of immunosuppressive drug therapy for neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders (NMOSD) by evaluating the methodological quality and reporting quality of reviews. Methods: The Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), WanFang Data, China Science and Technology Journal Database, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, PubMed, and Embase databases were searched to collect systematic reviews or meta-analyses on the effectiveness and safety of immunosuppressive therapy for NMOSD from inception to December 2, 2021. Two researchers independently screened reviews and extracted data. Any differences in the procession of review assessment between the two researchers were re-evaluated, and the disagreement was resolved by discussion with other researchers. The following data were extracted: author, year of publication, the country where the study was conducted, study type, the number of included studies, sample size, risk bias tools, medication of immunosuppressive therapy, and main outcomes. Then, the AMSTAR-2, which is a critical appraisal tool for systematic reviews (2nd edition), and Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) were used to evaluate the methodological quality and reporting quality of evidence. A comprehensive analysis was conducted on the outcomes for all included reviews. Results: A total of 15 reviews were included. Of the included reviews, 3 were systematic reviews, 7 were meta-analyses, and 5 were systematic reviews and meta-analyses. According to the AMSTAR-2 criteria, 6 studies had high quality, 1 study had moderate quality, 4 studies had low quality, and 4 studies had critically low quality. Based on the GRADE, neither evidence quality for effectiveness nor safety was high. Conclusions: Immunosuppressive drug therapy is effective for patients with NMOSD, but its safety is controversial. Due to the poor quality of evidence, reliability needs to be considered. Thus, large sample, multi-center, double-blind, randomized controlled studies are still needed in the future.

To improve the surface micropores and high-temperature oxidation resistance of micro-arc oxidation (MAO) coatings on TC4 titanium alloy, cerium dioxide (CeO2) particles were introduced into the electrolyte to prepare MAO composite coatings with different cerium dioxide contents. An X-ray diffractometer, a scanning electron microscope and a multifunctional material surface performance tester were used to analyze the phase composition, surface morphology and bonding force of the samples, respectively. The TC4 substrate, undoped MAO sample and optimally doped MAO sample were oxidized at 650, 750 and 850°C, respectively. The results show that the best-doped MAO samples show excellent high-temperature oxidation resistance at the three temperatures. Compared with the maximum oxidation weight gain per unit area of the undoped MAO sample, that of the optimally doped MAO sample decreased by 10.8, 19.6 and 22.1%, respectively. This is mainly because the thickness, hardness and adhesion of MAO coatings are all increased by doping cerium dioxide particles, and a dense protective layer can also be formed on the surface of the TC4 substrate. The invasion of the oxygen medium is effectively prevented. In this research work, the optimal addition amount of cerium dioxide is 6 g/l.

We found that forskolin-induced swelling in G550X-CFTR patient-derived intestinal organoids (PDOs) was significantly higher than in G542X-CFTR PDOs after treatment with ELX-02. Tryptophan (W) was the sole amino acid inserted in the G550X position after readthrough. Resulting G550W-CFTR protein exhibited supernormal CFTR activity, PKA sensitivity, and open probability. These results show that aminoglycoside-induced readthrough of G550X produces greater CFTR function because of the gain-of-function properties of the CFTR readthrough product.

Background: Cantharidin (CTD) is a highly toxic substance which can be used to treat a variety of cancers. However, the clinical application of CTD is restricted due to the serious side effects. In recent years, screening its analogues, exploring the mechanism of action and using combinatory therapy with certain substances are considered to be feasible methods which can reduce side effects and improve the therapeutic activity of CTD. This review aims to describe SAR (structure-activity relationship) of CTD analogues, CTD induction mechanisms, and combinatory therapy exploration. Methods: We searched for research about CTD by entering the database. Important information was screened and extracted purposefully, including SAR, mechanisms, methods, etc. Finally, these contents were unified into a framework to form a review. Results: Some CTD analogues with imidazolium salt or double bonds at C-5 and C-6 positions demonstrate good anticancer activity. Through introducing methyl and acetoxy groups at the C-1 or C-4 position, the inhibitory effect of PP was weakened or even inactivated. Removing the two methyl groups of C-2 and C-3 can reduce side effects and improve efficacy. Replacing methyl with fluorine can also improve the activity and reduce toxicity. Water solubility and bioavailability could be improved by opening the five fivemembered anhydride ring to form carboxylic acid, salt, amide, and ester derivatives. The anticancer mechanism can be divided into the following aspects, including inhibiting cell invasion and metastasis, inducing apoptosis, regulating cell cycle and enhancing immunity. The proper formulation of CTD and its analogues (liposomes, nanoparticles and micelles) can improve the targeting of liver cancer and reduce toxic and side effects. CTD combined with anti-angiogenic therapeutics (Ginsenoside Rg3, Bevacizumab, Apatinib and Endostar) showed additive anti-pancreatic cancer effects. Conclusion: It was found that the potential mechanism was closely related to multi-channel and multi-target interactions, which provided a guiding direction for the later exploration of new clinical therapeutic applications. However, some detailed mechanisms are still unclear, and more evidence is required to verify. In addition, the new methods to improve the therapeutic potential of CTD and its analogues still need more clinical trials to be tested in the future. This prospect is very broad and worthy of further study.

This study found that collaborative group testing is helpful for teachers to grasp students’ knowledge gaps more easily and the teacher feedback after the collaborative group testing can effectively make up for the knowledge gaps of students.

Objective: Based on the six-step curriculum development process proposed by Professor Schneiderhan et al., the course needs, the cognition, and course summative assessment results, combined with the career preferences and work value orientation of clinical medical students undertaking the course “Introduction to General Medicine” were surveyed. Methods: A self-designed questionnaire was used to collect information on the course cognition, course summative evaluation, and professional inclination of 233 junior medical students majoring in clinical medicine undertaking the course “Introduction to General Practice.” An analysis was conducted to provide a basis for curriculum revision in accordance with the structured composition of the curriculum development process. Results: (i) In terms of course cognition, before the course, 67.0% of students were unaware of general medicine and general practitioners, 73.0% of students had never participated in practical activities (including volunteer work), and 53.6% of students expressed interest in the course; there were significant differences in the growth environment, the frequency of participation in club activities, the cognition of general medicine/general practitioners before the course, participation in practical activities (including volunteer work), attentiveness to the current situation of medical treatment, and the interest toward the course (P < 0.05); multi-factor logistics analysis showed that the factors influencing the interest toward the course include growth environment, frequency of participation in club activities, course cognition, participation in practical activities, and attentiveness to the current status of development of medical treatment. (ii) The course summative assessment results showed that 91.8% of students felt that it is necessary to learn this course, 33.9% of students felt that the most important thing in the course is to learn the theoretical knowledge of general medicine and related diagnosis and treatment skills, 53.2% of students felt that the most unfavorable factor affecting the learning of this course is the lack of interest in general medicine, and 64.4% of students hoped for more clinical practice to understand and participate in the work of general practitioners; paired t-test revealed differences in career preferences before and after the course (P < 0.05); after the course, more students thought that general practitioner is an ideal career option. (iii) The results showed that 58.8% of students had considered their future specialty but did not have specific goals or plans, while 21.9% had considered their future specialty and had clear goals; there was a significant difference in professional inclination between genders as well as those who were attentive to the current state and development of medical treatment in our country and those who were not (P < 0.05); with regard to the scores of importance in terms of the influencing factors of professional inclination, interest and possibility of professional development scored 3.92, ranking first, followed by income, which scored 3.91, and career prestige, which scored the lowest (3.62). Conclusion: Based on the needs assessment of clinical medical students, it is important to focus on improving students’ interest in general medicine, especially their cognition and professional understanding of the course before the course itself, in addition to the development of relevant practical activities, and their attentiveness to the current state and development of medical treatment. The summative assessment results suggest that the implementation of this course has a positive influence on the career preferences of clinical medical students to a certain extent. Therefore, it is necessary to combine the course content with the development of general medicine, so as to stimulate students’ interest in self-driven learning and in general medicine. This will attract more students whose work value orientation is influenced by interest and possibility of professional development to choose general practitioner as their future professional inclination.

Industrial elevator systems are commonly used software systems in our daily lives, which operate in uncertain environments such as unpredictable passenger traffic, uncertain passenger attributes and behaviors, and hardware delays. Understanding and assessing the robustness of such systems under various uncertainties enable system designers to reason about uncertainties, especially those leading to low system robustness, and consequently improve their designs and implementations in terms of handling uncertainties. To this end, we present a comprehensive empirical study conducted with industrial elevator systems provided by our industrial partner Orona, which focuses on assessing the robustness of a dispatcher—that is, a software component responsible for elevators’ optimal scheduling. In total, we studied 90 industrial dispatchers in our empirical study. Based on the experience gained from the study, we derived an uncertainty-aware robustness assessment method (named UncerRobua ) comprising a set of guidelines on how to conduct the robustness assessment and a newly proposed ranking algorithm, for supporting the robustness assessment of industrial elevator systems against uncertainties.

Taxi sharing is a promising method to save resource consumption and alleviate traffic congestion while satisfying people’s commuting needs. Existing research methods include taxi dispatching methods based on intelligent algorithms, single vehicle route recommendation algorithms, and route recommendation algorithms based on vehicle traffic history. However, these studies either focus on how to efficiently dispatch satisfactory vehicles for passengers, ignoring the effect of efficient routes on vehicle travel efficiency, or let vehicles follow the shortest detour distance recommended by the system, ignoring the traffic congestion caused by the influx of vehicles into the same road. To address the abovementioned problems, a noncooperative game for a taxi sharing model (NCG-TSM) in urban road networks is proposed in this paper combined with the traffic conditions of the optional routes, and a distribution estimation algorithm for the shared taxi game is designed to make multivehicle route selections reach Nash equilibrium. The effectiveness of NCG-TSM is verified through simulation experiments. When the number of vehicles reaches the congestion capacity of the road segment, compared to the three common frameworks, the travel time cost and fuel consumption cost can be reduced by 5.8% to 9.1% and 3.5% to 8.9%, respectively. Besides, the occupancy rate has been improved, especially compared to the BMP framework, by 5.5% to 40%.

Lung metastatic breast cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death in women and difficult to treat due to non-specific drug delivery. Herein a sequential targeting dual-responsive magnetic nanoparticle was fabricated, where Fe3O4 nanoparticle was used as magnetic core, then sequentially coated with tetraethyl orthosilicate, bis[3-(triethoxy-silyl)propyl] tetrasulfide, and 3-(trimethoxysilyl) propylmethacrylate to afford -C = C- on the surface for further polymerisation with acrylic acid, acryloyl-6-ethylenediamine-6-deoxy-β-cyclodextrin using N, N-bisacryloylcy- stamine as cross-linker, obtaining pH/redox dual-responsive magnetic nanoparticle (MNPs-CD) to delivery doxorubicin (DOX) for suppressing lung metastatic breast cancer. Our results suggested DOX-loaded nanoparticle could target the lung metastases site by sequential targeting, in which they first be delivered to the lung and even the metastatic nodules through size-driven, electrical interaction, and magnetic field-guided mechanisms, then be effectively internalised into the cancer cells followed by intelligently triggering DOX release. MTT analysis demonstrated DOX-loaded nanoparticle exhibited high anti-tumour activity against 4T1 and A549 cells. 4T1 tumour-bearing mice were employed to confirm the higher specific accumulation in lung and improved anti-metastatic therapy efficiency of DOX by focussing an extracorporeal magnetic field on the biological target. Our findings suggested the as-proposed dual-responsive magnetic nanoparticle offered a prerequisite to inhibit lung metastasis of breast cancer tumours.

Classification of galaxy morphology is a hot issue in astronomical research. Although significant progress has been made in the last decade in classifying galaxy morphology using deep learning technology, there are still some deficiencies in spatial feature representation and classification accuracy. In this study, we present a multiscale convolutional capsule network (MSCCN) model for the classification of galaxy morphology. First, this model improves the convolutional layers using a multibranch structure to extract the multiscale hidden features of galaxy images. In order to further explore the hidden information in the features, the multiscale features are encapsulated and fed into the capsule layer. Second, we use a sigmoid function to replace the softmax function in dynamic routing, which can enhance the robustness of MSCCN. Finally, the classification model achieves 97 per cent accuracy, 96 per cent precision, 98 per cent recall, and 97 per cent F1-score under macroscopic averaging. In addition, a more comprehensive model evaluation was accomplished in this study. We visualized the morphological features for the part of sample set that used the t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding (t-SNE) algorithm. The results show that the model has a better generalization ability and robustness, and it can be effectively used in the galaxy morphological classification.