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Hierarchical porous carbon materials with high surface area are facilely prepared by directly carbonizing carex meyeriana without any extra activation procedure. The as-prepared porous carbon samples possess high Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface areas (in the ~ 518–742 m2 g−1 range) and unique hierarchical porous structure containing macropore channels and mesopores and micropores developed in the wall of macropores. These intriguing characteristics make the as-prepared hierarchical porous carbon samples a promising electrode material for supercapacitors. The capacitive performance was measured in the three-electrode system with 6 M KOH electrolyte. The hierarchical porous carbon prepared at the carbonization temperature of 1000 °C presents a high specific capacitance of 178.6 F g−1 at a current density of 0.5 A g−1, a good rate performance ( about 65.2% retention ratio at the current density of 20 A g−1), and an excellent cycling stability (no obvious performance fading after 10,000 cycles). In addition, the fabricated two-electrode device achieves an energy density of 4.33 Wh kg−1 at a high power density of 5 kW kg−1. These results provide a green and facile method to synthesize the electrode material from biomass for high-performance supercapacitors.

To explore the water resistance properties of lime soil ground, the physical and mechanical properties of lime soil with 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% lime content after long-term water immersion were studied by conducting unconfined compressive tests, density tests and water absorption tests. The results show that the stress–strain relationship curves of the lime soil during immersion are of the strain-softening type. The curves are multistage and nonlinear with evident peak values, and the lime soil achieves ductility and toughness with an increase in immersion time. The failure modes of the lime soil samples mainly include single slope shear failures, brittle splitting failures and conjugate shear failures, which are mainly affected by the lime content and immersion time. The strength of the lime soil decreases sharply in a short time while interacting with water. The strength slowly increases to 50.07–69.15% of the initial strength after immersion for a long time, i.e., still far less than the initial strength without immersion. Under long-term immersion, the water absorption of the lime soil increases gradually at the initial stage of immersion and then increases to a stable value of 16.76–21.67%. The change law of the wet density is essentially controlled by the water absorption. The strength of lime soil decreases significantly, and the water resistance capacity is poor after soaking; lime soil with 15% lime content has better engineering properties. It is recommended to apply lime soil with 15% lime content in practical engineering with a volume ratio of lime to soil of 3:7 and to avoid using lime soil materials in immersed or other dry-humid environments.

To meet the increased performance and cost requirements of commercial supercapacitor, a N and O self-doped hierarchical porous carbon is fabricated via a green and simple self-activation route utilizing leaves of wild hollyhock as raw materials. Comparing to commercial activated carbon, the reported material exhibits some marked merits, such as simple and green fabrication process, low cost, and superior capacitance performance. The specific surface area of the obtained N and O co-doped hierarchical porous carbon arrives 954 m2 g−1, and the content of the self-doped nitrogen and oxygen reaches 2.64 at.% and 7.38 at.%, respectively. The specific capacitance of the obtained material reaches 226 F g−1 while the specific capacitance of the symmetric supercapacitor arrives 47.3 F g−1. Meanwhile, more than 90.3% of initial specific capacitance is kept under a current density of 20 A g−1, and no arresting degradation is observed for capacitance after 5000 times cycle, perfectly demonstrating the excellent cycle and rate capability of the obtained material. The obtained N and O co-doped hierarchical porous carbon are expected to be an ideal substitution for commercial activated carbon.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), accounting for about 31% of the newly diagnosed NHL worldwide. Although approximately 60% of patients who initially received a standard R-CHOP treatment likely have a 3-year event-free survival, many patients become refractory or relapsed due to the genetic heterogeneity of this malignancy. Hence, new treatment strategies are urgently needed. MEF2C, a member of the MEF2 transcription factor family gene, plays great important roles involved in the development of various tissues and the pathogenesis of lymphoma. However, the exact functions and molecular mechanisms of MEF2C in DLBCL are not fully investigated. By Sanger sequencing, we identified a novel point mutation of MEF2C at the p.N389 site in DLBCL patient, which was further validated by several DLBCL cell lines. Intriguingly, we found that the p.N389S mutation did not influence MEF2C expression, protein stability, and subcellular distribution, but enhanced its transcriptional activity. Furthermore, we demonstrated that MEF2C p.N389S mutation promotes DLBCL cell proliferation, cellular adhesion, and tumor formation in nude mice. On mechanism, our data revealed that MEF2C p.N389S mutation increases c-JUN expression, and c-JUN regulation mediated the oncogenic function of MEF2C p.N389S mutation on DLBCL cells. Our finding may provide a significant insight into the DLBCL and a compelling therapy target for this disease treatment.

Acute myeloid leukemia is an aggressive myeloid malignancy, characterized by rapid cellular proliferation and generally high mortality. Due to the lack of a complete understanding of AML, its clinical outcomes are still not satisfactory. In this study, we examined the function of the long non-coding RNA-HLA complex P5 (HCP5) on AML by analyzing the clinical samples, TCGA data, and by shRNA-mediated HCP5 deficiency in vitro. Our results showed that HCP5 is highly expressed in AML and is positive associated with poor prognosis, and HCP5 knockdown was significantly suppressing AML cell line proliferation and inducing G1/S arrest in vitro. In mechanism, the proteasome subunit beta type 8 (PSMB8) expression was dramatically inhibited in HCP5 knockdown cells while increased in HCP5 overexpression cells. PSMB8 was also highly expressed in AML and with poor prognosis. Furthermore, HCP5 regulates PI3K/AKT pathway activation depending on PSMB8. Our results showed a promoting function of HCP5 on AML and may provide a compelling biomarker and therapy target for AML.

The contamination of chronic wound with bacteria especially methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is considered as the major factor interferencing normal wound healing. There still remain great challenges in developing safe and effective wound dressings with wide-spectrum antibacterial functions. Alginate hydrogel is a common dressing for wound treatment. Copper is one of the trace elements in human body with inherent antibacterial activity. Traditional methods for preparing a structure-controlled copper-alginate antibacterial matrix are difficult however, due to the fast and uncontrolled gelation between alginate and metal ions. In this work, we report an electrodeposition method for rapid fabrication of copper cross-linked alginate antibacterial films (Cu2+-Alg) with controlled structure and copper content, which is relied on an electrical signal controlled release of copper ions from the reaction of insoluble salt Cu2(OH)2CO3 and the generated protons via water electrolysis on anode. The results prove that the physical structure and chemical composition of the electrodeposited Cu2+-Alg films can be continuously modulated by the imposed charges during electrodeposition. In vitro tests demonstrate the film has Cu2+ content-dependent bactericidal activities. Film’s cytocompatibility is well controlled by the imposed charges for Cu2+-Alg fabrication. The MRSA infected wound model in vivo also indicates that Cu2+-Alg film can effectively eliminate bacterial infection and suppress host inflammatory responses. We believe this study demonstrates a convenient and controllable strategy to fabricate alginate antibacterial dressings with potential applications for infected wound treatment. More broadly, our work reveals electrodeposition is a general and simple platform to design alginate films with versatile functions.

Low-cost radio-frequency identification tags are confronted with various security and privacy issues due to their limits in computational and storage capabilities. Many lightweight authentication protocols have been proposed so far to resist all possible attacks and threats. A revised Tree-LSHB+ protocol was recently proposed by Qian et al. [Wirel Pers Commun 77(4):3125–3141. doi: 10.1007/s11277-014-1699-x , 2014] after a security analysis on the original Tree-LSHB+ protocol proposed by Deng et al. [Wirel Pers Commun 72(1):159–174. doi: 10.1007/s11277-013-1006-2 , 2013]. And it claimed to be secure against secret information disclosure attack. In this paper, we present an active attack against it in a general man-in-the-middle attack where an adversary is capable of eavesdropping, intercepting, manipulating, and blocking the messages transmitted between a legitimate reader and a legitimate tag. The attack is proved to be efficient to disclose all the authentication keys shared between a reader and a tag. Additionally, we introduce another possible active attack which can even retrieve all the secrets in the tree-traversal stage.

Photothermal therapy (PTT) that utilizes phSUPPotothermal conversion agents (PTC) to ablate tumor under NIR light irradiation has attracted increasing attention due to its excellent therapeutic efficacy and improved target selectivity. Herein, a novel core-shell nanoparticle based on disulfide-crosslinked poly(methacrylic acid) (PMAA) layer coated polydopamine (PDA) particle has been successfully synthesized by precipitation polymerization. For these PDA@PMAA composite nanoparticles, PDA core exhibits high photothermal efficacy, meanwhile, the redox-labile PMAA shell serves as carriers to encapsulate anticancer drugs and selectively release them. Due to the characteristic of the disulfide bond, PMAA shell occurs at selective degradation as well as controlled drug release upon entering cancer cells. Moreover, the DOX-loaded PDA@PMAA nanoparticles demonstrated a synergistic effect, which shows a significantly improved inhibition effect against cancer cells by the combination of photothermal therapy and traditional chemotherapy with low drug dosage and short laser irradiation in an in vitro study. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s11671-019-3027-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.