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Biomolecular condensates are dynamic liquid droplets through intracellular liquid–liquid phase separation that function as membraneless organelles, which are highly involved in various complex cellular processes and functions. Artificial analogs formed via similar pathways that can be integrated with biological complexity and advanced functions have received tremendous research interest in the field of synthetic biology. The coacervate droplet-based compartments can partition and concentrate a wide range of solutes, which are regarded as attractive candidates for mimicking phase-separation behaviors and biophysical features of biomolecular condensates. The use of peptide-based materials as phase-separating components has advantages such as the diversity of amino acid residues and customized sequence design, which allows for programming their phase-separation behaviors and the physicochemical properties of the resulting compartments. In this Perspective, we highlight the recent advancements in the design and construction of biomimicry condensates from synthetic peptides relevant to intracellular phase-separating protein, with specific reference to their molecular design, self-assembly via phase separation, and biorelated applications, to envisage the use of peptide-based droplets as emerging biomedical delivery vehicles.

Polyamide, as a polar polymer, possesses a large intrinsic dipole moment and excellent mechanical properties, making it a highly promising dielectric material. Nevertheless, the dipoles in traditional polyamides are constrained by hydrogen bonding, resulting in a diminished capacity for dielectric polarization and significant dielectric losses. In this study, traditional diamine was replaced with piperazine to fabricate a hydrogen-bond-free polyamide by employing structural design, which alleviated the limitation of hydrogen bonding on dipole polarization and considerably reduced the dielectric loss of the polyamide. The results demonstrated that the piperazine-12 polyamide prepared with piperazine and adipic acid exhibited a low dielectric loss of 0.0027 at 103Hz, a dielectric constant of 4.38 at 103Hz, and a breakdown strength exceeding 149 MV/m. The approach outlined in this paper offers an effective method for designing and improving the dielectric performance of polyamides. This piperazine polyamide is expected to be an emerging organic dielectric material for applications in thin-film capacitor volumes.

The morbidity and mortality of lung cancer are still the highest among all malignant tumors. Radiotherapy plays an important role in clinical treatment of lung cancer. However, the effect of radiotherapy is not ideal due to the radiation resistance of tumor tissues. Abnormalities in tumor vascular structure and function affect blood perfusion, and oxygen transport is impeded, making tumor microenvironment hypoxic. Tumor hypoxia is the major cause of radiotherapy resistance. By promoting tumor vessel normalization and enhancing vascular transport function, tumor hypoxia can be relieved to reduce radiotherapy resistance and increase tumor radiotherapy sensitivity. In our previous study, a pericytes-targeted tumor necrosis factor alpha (named Z-TNFα) was first constructed and produced by genetically fusing the platelet-derived growth factor receptor β (PDGFRβ)-antagonistic affibody (ZPDGFRβ) to the TNFα, and the Z-TNFα induced normalization of tumor vessels and improved the delivery of doxorubicin, enhancing tumor chemotherapy. In this study, the tumor vessel normalization effect of Z-TNFα in lung cancer was further clarified. Moreover, the tumor hypoxia improvement and radiosensitizing effect of Z-TNFα were emphatically explored in vivo. Inspiringly, Z-TNFα specifically accumulated in Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC) tumor graft and relieved tumor hypoxia as well as inhibited HIF-1α expression. As expected, Z-TNFα significantly increased the effect of radiotherapy in mice bearing LLC tumor graft. In conclusion, these results demonstrated that Z-TNFα is also a promising radiosensitizer for lung cancer radiotherapy.

Nowadays and in the future, environment and energy are important issues that people have to consider. In order to achieve energy sustainability and minimize the increase in environmental pressure, researchers have begun to gradually develop new ways of energy access. Biomass resource is a sustainable and efficient mode of energy supply, which has little impact on the environment. Among them, lignin is a rich organic compound in natural plants and is a promising biomass source. According to different forms of energy, different lignin catalytic cracking reactions can be used. This paper systematically summarizes the research progress of lignin catalytic cracking under different energy effects and focuses on the opportunities of lignin catalytic cracking at this stage. The challenges and future research directions of lignin catalytic cracking and directional conversion composite catalytic system are summarized and discussed. On this basis, a critical perspective based on experiment is proposed. It provides a richer catalytic model for the efficient conversion of lignin into fuel and high-value chemicals in the future. In conclusion, this Review offers insights into future directions for catalytic cracking of lignin through synergistic utilization of multiple energy sources.

Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (Her2) is abundantly expressed in various solid tumors. The Her2-specific Affibody (ZHer2:2891) has been clinically tested in patients with Her2-positive breast cancer and is regarded as an ideal drug carrier for tumor diagnosis and targeted treatment. Indocyanine green (ICG) can be used as a photosensitizer for photothermal therapy (PTT), in addition to fluorescent dyes for tumor imaging. In this study, a dimeric Her2-specific Affibody (ZHer2) based on ZHer2:2891was prepared using the E. coliexpression system and then coupled to ICG through an N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) ester reactive group to construct a novel bifunctional protein drug (named ICG-ZHer2) for tumor diagnosis and PTT. In vitro, ICG-ZHer2-mediated PTT selectively and efficiently killed Her2-positive BT-474 and SKOV-3 tumor cells rather than Her2-negative HeLa tumor cells. In vivo, ICG-ZHer2specifically accumulated in Her2-positive SKOV-3 tumor grafts rather than Her2-negative HeLa tumor grafts; high-contrast tumor optical images were obtained. However, Her2-negative HeLa tumor grafts were not detected. More importantly, ICG-ZHer2-mediated PTT exhibited a significantly enhanced antitumor effect in mice bearing SKOV-3 tumor grafts owing to the good photothermal properties of ICG-ZHer2. Of note, ICG-ZHer2did not exhibit acute toxicity in mice during short-term treatment. Overall, our findings indicate that ICG-ZHer2is a promising bifunctional drug for Her2-positive tumor diagnosis and PTT.

Flexible multidirectional strain sensors capable of simultaneously detecting strain amplitudes and directions have attracted tremendous interest. Herein, we propose a flexible multidirectional strain sensor based on a newly designed single-layer hierarchical aligned micro-/nanowire (HAMN) network. The HAMN network is efficiently fabricated using a one-step femtosecond laser patterning technology based on a modulated line-shaped beam. The anisotropic performance is attributed to the significantly different morphological changes caused by an inhomogeneous strain redistribution among the HAMN network. The fabricated strain sensor exhibits high sensitivity (gauge factor of 65 under 2.5% strain and 462 under larger strains), low response/recovery time (140 and 322 ms), and good stability (over 1000 cycles). Moreover, this single-layer strain sensor with high selectivity (gauge factor differences of ∼73 between orthogonal strains) is capable of distinguishing multidimensional strains and exhibits decoupled responses under low strains (<1%). Therefore, the strain sensors enable the precise monitoring of subtle movements, including radial pulses and wrist bending, and the rectification of pen-holding posture. Benefitting from these remarkable performances, the HAMN-based strain sensors show potential applications, including healthcare and complex human motion monitoring.

• A dual-functional nanofibrous membrane material was prepared for wastewater remediation. • The adsorption facilitated and accelerated the photocatalytic degradation reaction. • The photocatalysis regenerated the adsorption active site and realized green recycle. • The synergistic effect of adsorption and photocatalysis was investigated systematically. • The synergy produced a "1+1>2" effect for highly efficient removal of pollutants. Adsorption and photocatalysis are regarded as two desirable technologies for wastewater remediation, but are still unsatisfactory in removal effect, eco-friendly regeneration and facile reusability. In this study, we developed a composite nanofibrous membrane material with excellent removal performance for organic pollutants based on synergistic adsorption and photocatalysis. A novel boron-doped, nitrogen-deficient graphitic carbon nitride (B-C 3 N 4) photocatalyst as well as an amphiphilic copolymer of methyl methacrylate and acrylic acid (p(MMA-AA)) were synthesized respectively, and then used to modify polyethersulfone for the fabrication of composite nanofibrous membrane with improved hydrophilicity, negatively-charge property and enhanced visible light response simultaneously. Subsequently, the synergistic effect of adsorption and photocatalytic degradation for organic pollutants were identified especially and resulted in an excellent removal efficiency even superior to the combination of adsorption and photocatalytic degradation, which could be called a "1+1>2" effect. In addition, the regeneration and reusability, the purification ability for multicomponent wastewater, and the photocatalytic mechanism, were investigated and discussed systematically. In this work, we not only prepared the nanofibrous membrane with synergistic effect of adsorption and photocatalysis, but also provided a versatile approach to design dual-functional support material to ensure the practical applications of powdery photocatalyst in wastewater treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a one-step maskless 2D nanopatterning approach named self-aligned plasmonic lithography (SPL) by line-shaped ultrafast laser ablation under atmospheric conditions for the first time. Through a theoretical calculation of electric field and experimental verification, we proved that homogeneous interference of laser-excited surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be achieved and used to generate long-range ordered 2D nanostructures in a self-aligned way over a wafer-sized area within several minutes. Moreover, the self-aligned nanostructures can be freely transferred between embossed nanopillars and engraved nanoholes by modulating the excitation intensity of SPPs interference through altering the incident laser energy. The SPL technique exhibits further controllability in the shape, orientation, and period of achievable nanopatterns on a wide range of semiconductors and metals by tuning processing parameters. Nanopatterned films can further act as masks to transfer structures into other bulk materials, as demonstrated in silica.

Purpose: Programmed death-1 antibody plus chemotherapy has gained approval for the treatment for (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 negative locally advanced or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer. This study aims to analyze the efficacy and safety of anti-programmed death-1 antibody combined with chemo- or anti-angiogenesis therapy in Chinese patients with advanced or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer in a real-world setting.Methods: In total, 122 patients treated with anti-programmed death-1 antibody-based combination therapy between April 2019 and December 2021 were encompassed. Clinical outcomes and safety profile were measured and analyzed.Results: In the whole cohort, median overall survival was 17.2 months, median progression-free survival was 10.9 months, and median duration of response was 9.4 months. Notably, in the first-line patients, the median overall survival was not reached, median progression-free survival was 14.8 months, objective response rate was 68.4%. In the second-line group, median overall survival, median progression-free survival, median duration of response, and objective response rate were 10.9 months, 5.9 months, 4.5 months, and 41.5%, respectively. Treatment-related adverse events of any grade were observed in 28.2% of the overall cohort, primarily affecting the hematological and liver function. Grade 3 or 4 adverse events were mainly characterized by increased levels of aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, along with decreased lymphocyte and white blood cells, as well as anemia.Conclusions: Patients in our cohort experienced a clinical benefit from anti-programmed death-1 antibody-combined treatment in first-line treatment settings, with acceptable treatment-related adverse events. The benefit of anti-programmed death-1 antibody combined with chemo- or anti-angiogenesis treatment to the second-line patients should be further confirmed by large multi-center randomized, controlled clinical trials.

The scarcity of clean water has become a global environmental problem which constrains the development of public health, economy, and sustainability. In recent years, natural polyphenols have drawn increasing interests as promising platforms towards diverse water remediation composites and devices, owing to their abundant and renewable resource in nature, highly active surface chemistry, and multifunctionality. This review aims to summarize the most recent advances and highlights of natural polyphenol-based composite materials (e.g., nanofibers, membranes, particles, and hydrogels) for water remediation, by focusing on their structural and functional features, as well as their diversified applications including membrane filtration, solar distillation, adsorption, advanced oxidation processes, and disinfection. Finally, the future challenges in this field are also prospected. It is anticipated that this review will provide new opportunities towards the future development of natural polyphenols and other kinds of naturally occurring molecules in water purification applications.

Background Sex determining region Y-box 2 (SOX2) has been reported as a potential therapeutic target for cancer. However, the role of SOX2 in cervical cancer remains largely undetermined. This study was performed to evaluate the correlation of SOX2 with clinical characteristics and prognosis in cervical cancer.Methods Multiple databases were systematically searched for eligible publications. The combined odds ratios (ORs) or hazard ratios (HRs) with the corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to assess the effect sizes.Results A total of 17 studies with 1906 participants were identified. SOX2 expression was higher in cervical cancer than in the normal control group (OR = 10.83, 95% CI = 6.64–17.67, P< 0.001), while no significant difference was observed between cervical cancer and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. SOX2 expression was not associated with age, tumor stage, and lymph node metastasis, but was correlated with tumor grade (grade 2–3 vs. grade 1: OR = 4.59, 95% CI = 2.76–7.62, P< 0.001) and tumor size (≥4 cm vs. ≤4 cm: OR = 1.66, 95% CI = 1.05–2.60, P= 0.028). Based on multivariate Cox analysis, SOX2 expression was not correlated with overall survival, but was closely associated with poor recurrence-free survival (HR = 5.83, 95% CI = 1.35–25.16, P= 0.018) and progress-free survival HR = 2.29, 95% CI = 1.01–5.19, P= 0.046).Conclusion SOX2 may serve as a novel prognostic factor and a promising molecular target for cervical cancer.

An efficient divergent approach of Pd-catalyzed C–H oxygenation of polyaromatic rings is described. Reversible directing groups enable regiospecific peri-and ortho-oxygenation to readily access a wide array of polyaromatic phenols without pre- and postmanipulation of directing groups. The systematic mechanistic investigation, including deuterium-labeling experiments, palladacycle trapping, and DFT calculations, reveals that the tunable ligand-assisted C–H bond cleavage played a crucial role during the reaction process.

Recently, several practical attacks raised serious concerns over the security of searchable encryption. The attacks have brought emphasis on forward privacy, which is the key concept behind solutions to the adaptive leakage-exploiting attacks, and will very likely to become a must-have property of all new searchable encryption schemes. For a long time, forward privacy implies inefficiency and thus most existing searchable encryption schemes do not support it. Very recently, Bost (CCS 2016) showed that forward privacy can be obtained without inducing a large communication overhead. However, Bost's scheme is constructed with a relatively inefficient public key cryptographic primitive, and has poor I/O performance. Both of the deficiencies significantly hinder the practical efficiency of the scheme, and prevent it from scaling to large data settings. To address the problems, we first present FAST, which achieves forward privacy and the same communication efficiency as Bost's scheme, but uses only symmetric cryptographic primitives. We then present FASTIO, which retains all good properties of FAST, and further improves I/O efficiency. We implemented the two schemes and compared their performance with Bost's scheme. The experiment results show that both our schemes are highly efficient.

The C–H annulation of the five-position of quinolines and acrylates to afford heterocycles is an active field of research in organic synthesis. Herein the annulation of 4-aminoquinolines with acrylates through two consecutive C–H activations catalyzed by Rh(III) is described. The reaction proceeds with high atom efficiency under mild reaction conditions, and this protocol will provide appealing strategies for the synthesis of fused quinoline heterocycles.

Conventional cancer combination therapy usually involves systemic delivery of anticancer drugs which may lead to the destruction of normal cells and physiological toxicity due to the lack of targeting ability and toxicity of drug carriers. In the present study, a triple combination nanosystem of gene therapy, chemotherapy and phototherapy delivered by multifunctional RNA nanohydrogels (RNA NHs) was established. By taking the advantages of DNA nanotechnology and rolling circle transcription (RCT), three lung cancer inhibitor microRNA (let-7a, microRNA 34a, microRNA 145) hairpins were integrated in one RNA NH nanoparticle, leading to the simultaneous silencing of three targeted mRNAs. Meanwhile, RNA NH carried doxorubicin (DOX, a chemotherapy drug) as well as 5,10,15,20-tetrakis (1-methylpyridinium-4-yl) porphyrin (TMPyP4, a photosensitizer) and delivered these drugs to cancer cells. It was demonstrated that lung cancer inhibitor microRNAs integrated in RNA NHs, DOX and TMPyP4 could play a synergistic anti-cancer role in multi-drug resistance cancer cells. Under the action of aptamer sequence S6 that was modified with cholesterol, the resulting RNA NHs were condensed to feasible size without the assistance of polyelectrolyte condensation reagents and showed cancer-specific cellular targeting. Subsequently, thousands of copies of miRNA together with chemotherapy drug as well as photosensitizer were delivered to cancer cells specifically, and an ideal synergistic treatment effect was achieved in vivo, thus playing a combined role of gene therapy, chemotherapy and phototherapy. Through this study, it can be concluded that the triple combination therapy nanosystem can overcome the multidrug resistance caused by the malfunction of genes in chemotherapy and shows a great potential in the field of multifunctional synergistic cancer treatment.

Given the global greenhouse effect caused by excessive CO2emissions and fossil energy exploitation, cleaner energy sources are crucial for modern developments. Lignin present in biomass is being considered to replace petroleum due to its abundance and reproducibility. Although the depolymerization of lignin to produce high-value chemicals has gained attention, it encounters significant challenges. Lignin possesses a high molecular weight, and the structural changes during separation often diminish its potential for producing value-added chemicals. This study reviews the recent research on lignin depolymerization using three traditional methods, including hydrolysis, pyrolysis, and hydrogenolysis. First, the lignin hydrolysis is presented, where its properties and mechanisms under various conditions are detailed. Subsequently, the pyrolysis mechanism, products, and pyrolysis methods (catalytic pyrolysis, microwave pyrolysis, molten salt pyrolysis) are discussed in detail. In addition, this study provides a comprehensive summary of hydrogenolysis in terms of both solvent selection and catalytic system. Finally, it addresses challenges and proposes solutions for future lignin value-added research.

Stimuli-responsive materials have garnered substantial interest in recent years, particularly liquid crystal networks (LCNs) with sophisticatedly designed structures and morphing capabilities. Extensive efforts have been devoted to LCN structural designs spanning from two-dimensional (2D) to three-dimensional (3D) configurations and their intricate morphing behaviors through designed alignment. However, achieving microscale structures and large-area preparation necessitates the development of novel techniques capable of facilely fabricating LCN microstructures with precise control over both overall shape and alignment, enabling a 3D-to-3D shape change. Herein, a simple and cost-effective in-cell soft lithography (ICSL) technique is proposed to create LCN microstructures with customized shapes and predesigned morphing. The ICSL technique involves two sequential steps: fabricating the desired microstructure as the template by using the photopolymerization-induced phase separation (PIPS) method and reproducing the LCN microstructures through templating. Meanwhile, surface anchoring is employed to design and achieve molecular alignment, accommodating different deformation modes. With the proposed ICSL technique, cylindrical and spherical microlens arrays (CMLAs and SMLAs) have been successfully fabricated with stimulus-driven polarization-dependent focusing effects. This technique offers distinct advantages including high customizability, large-area production, and cost-effectiveness, which pave a new avenue for extensive applications in different fields, exemplified by adaptive soft micro-optics and photonics.

LaTi0.2Fe0.8O3(LTF) was prepared by the sol-gel method, and the effects of calcination temperature on the structure and properties were investigated. A new method of preparing aryl oxygen-containing compounds from bagasse lignin (BL) by the catalytic pyrolysis over LTF was proposed. The results show that LTF has cubic crystal phase and porous structure and its optimal calcination temperature is 800 °C (LTF-800). In the test for catalytic pyrolysis of BL, with the addition of LTF-800, the yield of liquid product reaches the maximum; the contents of phenolics, guaiacols, syringols, phenylates and furans increase obviously, while those of benzenes, esters and carboxylic acid decrease. The total content of aryl oxygen-compounds (including phenolics, guaiacols, syringols and phenylates) in liquid product is more than 74 wt% with the addition of LTF-800, larger than that obtained by single BL pyrolysis (62 wt%). LTF could avoid oxygen-containing functional groups from being excessively destroyed. It has nice regeneration performance by controlled combustion of char even after 5 cycles.

An operationally simple and highly selective Au/Ag bimetallic-catalyzed cross-dehydrogenative biaryl coupling between pyrazoles and fluoroarenes has been developed. With this reaction, a wide range of biheteroaryl products can be obtained in moderate to good yields with excellent functional group compatibility. The exact role of silver salts, previously overlooked in most gold-catalyzed transformations, has been carefully investigated in this biaryl coupling. Insightful experimental and theoretical studies indicate that silver acetate is the actual catalyst for C–H activation of electron-poor arenes, rather than the previously reported gold(I)-catalyzed process. An unprecedented Au/Ag dual catalysis is proposed, in which silver(I) is responsible for the activation of electron-poor fluoroarenes via a concerted metalation–deprotonation pathway, and gold(III) is responsible for the activation of electron-rich pyrazoles via an electrophilic aromatic substitution process. Kinetic studies reveal that ArFnAu(III)-mediated C–H activation of pyrazoles is most likely the rate-limiting step.

Due to the difficult task of demulsification of ultrastable oil-water emulsions during the middle and later stages of oil production, many technologies have been developed for the realization of this goal. An alternative and facile strategy of efficient oil/water separation, namely, the ClO2-oxidative demulsification, had emerged and been piloted for the treatment of ultrastable oil-water emulsified layers in Chinese oil fields. For an in-depth understanding of the mechanistic chemistry of the ClO2- oxidative demulsification and enhancement of the technical route, the chemistry and mechanism were studied in this paper. We started with an analysis of the pilot technical route and formation/structure of oil-water emulsifying layer stabilized by specific interfacial-active substances, exemplified by the ultrastable oil-water separation/demulsification in the settling tank of the oil field. Experimental tests were employed for proving the technical pathway and chemistry of the ClO2demulsification, including the oxidation reaction and thermodynamics, as well as kinetics and process conditions. Combining the theoretical and experimental results, the pathways and mechanisms were schematically presented to provide insight into the ClO2-oxidative demulsification. The obvious chemistry totally provided a valuable knowledge of its reactivity for insight into the demulsification of ClO2oxidation. The data can be recognized for understanding and instructing the pilot operation of the ClO2oxidative demulsification in oil fields.

A radiologist must read hundreds of slices to recognize a malignant or benign lung tumor in computed tomography (CT) volume data. To reduce the burden of the radiologist, some proposals have been applied with the ground-glass opacity (GGO) nodules. However, the GGO nodules need be detected and labeled by a radiologist manually. Some slices with the GGO nodule can be missed because there are many slices in several volume data. Although some papers have proposed a semi-supervised learning method to find the slices with GGO nodules, the was no discussion on the impact of parameters in the proposed semi-supervised learning. This article also explains and analyzes the label propagation algorithm which is one of the semi-supervised learning methods to detect the slices including the GGO nodules based on the parameters. Experimental results show that the proposal can detect the slices including the GGO nodules effectively.

Background: High-grade serious ovarian carcinoma (HGSOC) is a subtype of ovarian cancer with a different prognosis attributable to genetic heterogeneity. The prognosis of patients with advanced HGSOC requires prediction by genetic markers. This study systematically analyzed gene expression profile data to establish a genetic marker for predicting HGSOC prognosis. Methods: The RNA-seq data set and information on clinical follow-up of HGSOC were retrieved from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, and the data were standardized by DESeq2 as a training set. On the other hand, HGSOC RNA sequence data and information on clinical follow-up were retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) as a test set. Additionally, ovarian cancer microarray data set was obtained from GEO as the external validation set. Prognostic genes were screened from the training set, and characteristic selection was performed using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) with 80% re-sampling for 5000 times. Genes with a frequency of more than 2000 were selected as robust biomarkers. Finally, a gene-related prognostic model was validated in both the test and GEO validation sets. Results: A total of 148 genes were found to be significantly correlated with HGSOC prognosis. The expression profile of these genes could stratify HGSOC prognosis and they were enriched to multiple tumor-related regulatory pathways such as tyrosine metabolism and AMPK signaling pathway. AKR1B10 and ANGPT4 were obtained after 5000-time re-sampling by LASSO regression. AKR1B10 was associated with the metastasis and progression of several tumors. In this study, Cox regression analysis was performed to create a 2-gene signature as an independent prognostic factor for HGSOC, which has the ability to stratify risk samples in all three data sets (p&lt; 0.05). The Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) discovered abnormally active REGULATION_OF_AUTOPHAGY and OLFACTORY_TRANSDUCTION pathways in the high-risk group samples. Conclusion: This study resulted in the creation of a 2-gene molecular prognostic classifier that distinguished clinical features and was a promising novel prognostic tool for assessing the prognosis of HGSOC. RiskScore was a novel prognostic model which might be effective in guiding accurate prognosis of HGSOC.

Lactobacillus acidophilus GIM1.208(LA) can greatly improve the volatile flavor and sensory scores of Rosa roxburghii Tratt(RRT), while its effects on nonvolatile flavor and active compounds remains uncertain. Therefore, this study used widely targeted metabolomics to comprehensively analyze the effects of LA on flavor and activity of RRT. After being fermented by LA, the total phenolics and flavonoids content of RRT increased, while the total triterpenoids content slightly decreased. The total antioxidant activity rose by 35.23%, and hypoglycemic activity expressed through α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities increased by 51.66% and 24.95%, respectively. A total of 1635 metabolites were identified, including amino acids, phenolic acids, flavonoids, and triterpenes, and 205 different metabolites were screened. The analysis of potential taste-related metabolites among differential metabolites revealed a reduction in amino acid content, while the majority of organic acids and sugars exhibited an increase. The electronic-tongue and electronic-nose showed that LA reduces bitterness and astringency while enhancing the aroma of RRT, indicating changes in flavor compounds lead to improved flavor quality. Additionally, LA can hydrolyze glycoside compounds in RRT and release glycosides with higher activity, which contributes to its increased antioxidant and hypoglycemic effects. In summary, LA induced alterations in the flavor compounds and glycosides of RRT, thereby improved its flavor and activity. This study can serve as a reference for future research on the flavor and activity of RRT, as well as for production quality control.

The protocol of molten salts electrolysis provides a feasible close-loop solution to yield CO2 reduction and mitigate global climate change. In the present study, a typical Li2CO3-Na2CO3-K2CO3 eutectic is employed as the electrolyte and the electrolysis is performed in a two-electrode system. Three metallic materials of galvanized iron, nickel and copper are utilized as the counter electrode and assembled with the working electrode of galvanized iron in the molten salts electrolyzer to prepare electrolytic carbons. It is verified here that the hybrid carbonates electrolysis prefers the production of amorphous carbons with varying carbon structures. In particular, the electrochemical performance of the carbon products is studied in aqueous H2SO4 solution, and the carbon materials formed in Ni anode electrolyzer exhibit an ultrahigh specific capacity of 336 F/g at the charge/discharge current density of 1000 mA/g. Besides, current efficiency, reaction kinetics and electricity consumption for per kilogram carbon production are evaluated. The results demonstrate that the Ni anode electrolyzer provides the lowest voltage and electricity consumption, and simultaneously the maximum carbon deposition rate and current efficiency during the galvanostatic electrolysis process.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are a major cause of tumor metastasis and resistance to anticancer therapies. To date, no effective low-toxicity chemotherapeutic agents or antibodies have exhibited significant clinical activity against CTCs. Macrophages are important mediators of antitumor immunity. Tuftsin (TF), a tetrapeptide located at residues 289–292 of the CH2 domain of the Fc region of the IgG heavy chain, binds to Nrp-1, a receptor on the surface of macrophages that promotes phagocytosis and induces nonspecific activation of the immune system against tumors. Lidamycin (LDM) is an antitumor chemotherapy agent that is strongly cytotoxic to tumors and can dissociate into an apoprotein (LDP) and active enediyne (AE) in vitro. We previously constructed the fusion protein LDP-TF through genetic engineering and inserted the chromophore AE to produce LDM-TF, which can target macrophages to promote their phagocytic and cytotoxic activity against tumor cells. Preliminary experiments confirmed the anti-tumor activity of LDM-TFs. In this study, we found that LDM-TF effectively inhibited the growth of CTCs of gastric cancer origin and enhanced macrophage phagocytosis both in vivoand in vitro. Tumor cell expression of CD47, which helps to evade phagocytosis by macrophages, was substantially downregulated by LDM-TF. Notably, our in vitroexperiments demonstrated that the combination of LDM-TF and anti-CD47 antibodies promoted phagocytosis more than either component alone. Our findings demonstrate the significant inhibitory effect of LDM-TF on the growth of CTCs of gastric cancer origin and suggest that the combination of LDM-TF and anti-CD47 antibodies may exhibit synergistic effects, thereby providing a new option for the clinical treatment of patients with advanced tumors that have metastasized.

The generalized energy-based fragmentation (GEBF) method has been applied to investigate relative energies of large water clusters (H2O)n(n= 32, 64) with the coupled-cluster singles and doubles with noniterative triple excitations (CCSD(T)) and second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) at the complete basis set (CBS) limit. Here large water clusters are chosen to be representative structures sampled from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of liquid water. Our calculations show that the GEBF method is capable of providing highly accurate relative energies for these water clusters in a cost-effective way. We demonstrate that the relative energies from GEBF-MP2/CBS are in excellent agreement with those from GEBF-CCSD(T)/CBS for these water clusters. With the GEBF-CCSD(T)/CBS relative energies as the benchmark results, we have assessed the performance of several theoretical methods widely used for ab initioMD simulations of liquids and aqueous solutions. These methods include density functional theory (DFT) with a number of different functionals, MP2, and density functional tight-binding (the third generation, DFTB3 in short). We find that MP2/aug-cc-pVDZ and several DFT methods (such as LC-ωPBE-D3 and ωB97XD) with the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set can provide satisfactory descriptions for these water clusters. Some widely used functionals (such as B3LYP, PBE0) and DFTB3 are not accurate enough for describing the relative energies of large water clusters. Although the basis set dependence of DFT is less than that of ab initioelectron correlation methods, we recommend the combination of a few best functionals and large basis sets (at least aug-cc-pVTZ) in theoretical studies on water clusters or aqueous solutions.

The rapid development of flexible electronics greatly promotes personalized health monitoring and thereupon spawns diverse wearable electronic devices. As a key functional component of flexible electronics, flexible strain sensor receives tremendous research effort, and is widely applied to various areas such as electronic skin, human–machine interaction, and structural health monitoring. Carbon‐based materials including carbon nanotubes (CNTs), carbon black, and graphene are employed as functional materials in this paper to be mixed with the elastic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix via the solution blending method. A bridge‐island structure is designed due to its unique structure and dispersion ability, enabling the derived sensor with both good stretchability of 100% and sensitivity of 8.99. The results offer a potential strategy for addressing the difficulties of sensitivity‐stretchability tradeoff originating from the flexible strain sensors prepared with single carbon‐based filler material and other similar strain sensors. Moreover, the realization of an intercommunication system between the flexible strain sensor and a mobile phone via NRF52805 Bluetooth communication chips can monitor various body motions in real time, demonstrating a promising prospect for building remote health monitoring and management systems. A carbon‐based flexible strain sensor is fabricated with an improved method. Carbon‐based materials including carbon nanotubes (CNTs), carbon black, and graphene are adopted as functional materials to be mixed with the elastic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix via a solution blending method and the sensor shows both good stretchability of 100% and sensitivity of 8.99.

Surfactant flooding aims at lowering the interfacial tensions between the oil and water phases to improve the displacement efficiency during oil recovery. However, ionic surfactants will lose their property in high temperature and high salt reservoirs. This investigation considers the cardanolbetaine surfactants as candidates for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) application in high temperature and high salt reservoirs. According to the experimental results, these surfactants can be effective in lowering interfacial tension (IFT) at dilute concentration, without requiring an alkaline or co-surfactants. In addition, these surfactants exhibit a low IFT at high salinity, high temperature and high concentration of divalent condition, the best surfactant concentration is 0.3 g L-1. The temperature resistance results show that it also has an excellent interfacial property at a wide range temperature from 35.0°C to 85.0°C, and remains its ultralow IFT (= 10-3mN m-1) during 60 days at 85.0°C. The optimal concentration of salt tolerance is 50 g L-1to 100 g L-1of NaCl, 100 mg L-1to 300 mg L-1of Ca2+respectively.

An efficient implementation of the local excitation approximation (LEA) of time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) or time-dependent Hartree–Fock, (TDHF) (or configuration interaction singles, CIS) method has been developed in this work. The LEA-TDDFT, -TDHF, and -CIS methods have been applied to investigate the solvatochromic shift of the n→ π* vertical excitation energy of acetone in aqueous solution. The main idea of the LEA scheme is that only local electron excitations within a certain active region (called as chromophore) are treated to obtain the excitation energies for locally excited electronic states. We have proposed an efficient localization procedure to obtain regional localized molecular orbitals (RLMOs) localized on the chromophore subunit. To ensure the accuracy of the TDDFT, TDHF, and CIS schemes for the studied system, we choose one acetone and six nearest-neighboring waters as the active region for each acetone–water cluster. For acetone in aqueous solution, the LEA-TDDFT calculations on 600 acetone–water configurations (generated from molecular dynamics simulation) suggest that the blueshift in the n→ π* vertical electronic excitation energy is 1621 ± 52 cm–1, which is in good agreement with the available experimental blue shift of 1500–1700 cm–1.

We describe an implementation of the cluster-in-molecule (CIM) resolution of the identity (RI) approximation second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (CIM-RI-MP2), with the purpose of extending RI-MP2 calculations to very large systems. For typical conformers of several large polypeptides, we calculated their conformational energy differences with the CIM-RI-MP2 and the generalized energy-based fragmentation MP2 (GEBF-MP2) methods, and compared these results with the density functional theory (DFT) results obtained with several popular functionals. Our calculations show that the conformational energy differences obtained with CIM-RI-MP2 and GEBF-MP2 are very close to each other. In comparison with the GEBF-MP2 and CIM-RI-MP2 relative energies, we found that the DFT functionals (CAM-B3LYP-D3, LC-ωPBE-D3, M05-2X, M06-2X and ωB97XD) can give quite accurate conformational energy differences for structurally similar conformers, but provide less-accurate results for structurally very different conformers.

Molecular dynamic simulations are performed to study the nanoscratching behavior of polymers. The effects of scratching depth, scratching velocity and indenter/polymer interaction strength are investigated. It is found that polymer material in the scratching zone around the indenter can be removed in a ductile manner as the local temperature in the scratching zone exceeds glass transition temperature Tg. The recovery of polymer can be more significant when the temperature approaches or exceeds Tg. The tangential force, normal force and friction coefficient increase as the scratching depth increases. A larger scratching velocity leads to more material deformation and higher pile-up. The tangential force and normal force are larger for a larger scratching velocity whereas the friction coefficient is almost independent of the scratching velocities studied. It is also found that stronger indenter/polymer interaction strength results in a larger tangential force and friction coefficient.

Solid-solid phase change materials (SSPCMs) with small volume change and leak-proof characteristic during the whole process of phase change play a vital role in development of PCM for thermal energy storage (TES). However, the non-recyclability of the materials due to their permanent cross-linking networks limited their practical application. Herein, a dynamic urethane bond cross linked SSPCM with PEG as phase change functional segments was successfully fabricated which was in solid state even at 130°C.Meantime, it exhibited excellent solid-state plasticity, resulting from dynamic urethane bond exchange. Moreover, the dynamic behavior of urethane bond in SSPCMs was firstly investigated. The topology freezing transition temperature (Tv) is about 113°C and the relaxation activation energy of SSPCM is calculated to be about 90 kJ/mol. The crystalline PEG endows SSPCM with high enthalpy value (reached up to 85 J/g), meantime, the cross-linked structure endows SSPCMs with remarkable mechanical flexibility (possess ultra-stretchability of 600%), thermal reliability and chemical stability. The combined thermal storage ability, appealing recyclability and flexibility endow the SSPCM promising application in the field of TES.

A series of APTMS ((3-aminopropyl)trimethoxysilane)-modified silicate MCM-41 adsorbents (x-APTMS/MCM-41, xis the volume of APTMS per 1 g of silicate MCM-41) with different APTMS contents was prepared, and the effects of APTMS content on the desulfurization performance of the APTMS/MCM-41 adsorbents were studied in a fixed adsorption bed using H2S and N2mixture as a model gas. The as-prepared adsorbents were characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis, N2adsorption–desorption, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and energy-dispersive spectroscopy. The results showed that all the APTMS-modified x-APTMS/MCM-41 adsorbents retained the mesoporous silica structure of MCM-41. The Brunauer–Emmett–Teller-specific surface area of x-APTMS/MCM-41 increased slightly with increasing xat first and then decreased with further increasing APTMS content. The H2S removal performances of x-APTMS/MCM-41 adsorbents decreased in the order 0.6-APTMS/MCM-41 > 0.7-APTMS/MCM-41 > 0.5-APTMS/MCM-41 > 0.4-APTMS/MCM-41 > 0.8-APTMS/MCM-41. At x= 0.6, the maximum H2S removal rate of 54.2% and H2S saturated capacity of 134.4 mg g−1were observed. The regeneration experiment of 0.6-APTMS/MCM-41 adsorbent after three times regeneration at 423 K for 3 h in nitrogen confirmed that it possessed a good regenerability.

Separation of oil and water is well known as a key process in the oil industry. For the purpose of improving the efficiency of the oil-water separation, a novel ClO2-oxidation-based demulsification method for the treatment of oil-water transition layer in oil settling tanks was proposed and studied in the present paper. A series of lab experiments were performed to investigate the techniques and conditions of the ClO2-oxidation-based demulsification, including the reaction temperature, time, concentration, etc. It was observed that a high dehydration rate of 86.11 % was achieved under an optimal reaction condition of 50oC, 4 hours, 3.5‰ ClO2concentration and 0.5 % acid by volume. Tests concerning the corrosion to the steel tank illustrated that the corrosion rate of water layer after treated by ClO2was lowered to 0.151 mm/a, which was below the national standard. Based on the theoretical analysis and experimental results, a mechanism was presented for understanding the ClO2demulsification. The developed ClO2-oxidation-based demulsification technology can be practically applied to the pilot operations in oilfields.

Researchers from Nanjing Medical University in Jiangsu, China, conducted a study on the relationship between cardiac CT-based left atrial structure and epicardial adipose tissue (LA-EAT) and postablation atrial fibrillation (AF) recurrence within 2 years. They analyzed contrast-enhanced cardiac CT images of 286 AF patients and found that LA-EAT volume, left atrial appendage size, and female sex were independent predictors for AF recurrence. The study concluded that LA-EATVI and LAAVI(max) could provide complementary value for assessing AF recurrence risk. The research was published in the Journal of Thoracic Imaging and has been peer-reviewed. [Extracted from the article]

A recent study conducted at the First Affiliated Hospital in Harbin, China, explores the relationship between N6-methyladenosine (m6A) and non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in diabetes complications. The study highlights the impact of m6A dysregulation on the expression and function of ncRNAs, which play a role in key pathways related to diabetes complications such as cell apoptosis, oxidative stress, and inflammation. The researchers suggest that understanding this mechanism could lead to new therapeutic interventions for diabetes complications. The study was published in Frontiers in Endocrinology and more information can be obtained from the authors. [Extracted from the article]

A study conducted by researchers at Henan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China explored the role of Biliverdin Reductase A (BLVRA) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells. The study found that high expression of BLVRA in HCC tissues was associated with worse prognosis for patients. Knocking down BLVRA in HCC cell lines resulted in reduced proliferation, invasion, and migration, as well as increased apoptosis. The study also revealed that BLVRA affects the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway, and blocking this pathway inhibited the proliferation of HCC cells. [Extracted from the article]

2024 JUL 13 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week -- New study results on endocrinology have been published. According to news reporting [...]

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The following IMA members became a CMA between September 1, 2016, and September 30, 2016. Hassan Abd Al Moniem Abd Allah I Salma J. Abdalmenem Ahmed Saad Abdelaal Ira A. [...]