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Transition‐metal‐catalyzed enantioselective transformations of aryl/aryl carbene are inherently challenging due to the difficulty in distinguishing between two arene rings in the reaction process thus remain largely less explored. The few successful examples reported so far, without exception, have all been catalyzed by Rh(II)‐complexes. Herein, we describe our successful development of a novel cationic Rh(I)/chiral diene catalytic system capable of efficient enantioselective B−H and O−H insertions with diaryl diazomethanes, allowing the access to a broad range of gem‐diarylmethine boranes and gem‐diarylmethine ethers in good yields with high enantioselectivities. Notably, previously unattainable asymmetric diarylcarbene insertion into the O−H bond was achieved for the first time. A remarkable feature of this newly designed Rh(I)/diene catalyst bearing two ortho‐amidophenyl substitutents is that it can distinguish between two arene rings of the diaryl carbene through a stereochemically selective control of π–π stacking interactions. DFT calculations indicate that the rotation‐restricted conformation of Rh(I)/diene complex played an important role in the highly enantioselective carbene transformations. This work provides an interesting and unprecedented stereocontrol mode in diaryl metal carbene transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A catalyst‐ and light‐free S−H insertion of phosphorodithioic acids with diazo compounds has been developed, in which phosphorodithioic acid acts not only as an acid promoter but also as a nucleophile. This protocol features fast reaction rate, broad substrate scope, mild conditions, and simple operation, providing a cost‐effective and general approach to diverse phosphorodithioates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homogeneous Catalysis. In their Research Article (e202412193) Ming‐Hua Xu et al. report the rational design of a novel cationic rhodium(I)/chiral diene catalyst to achieve the challenging enantioselective B‐H and O‐H bond insertion of diarylcarbenes...By Weici Xu; Takeshi Yamakawa; Meiling Huang; Peilin Tian; Zhigen Jiang and Ming‐Hua XuReported by Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author [Extracted from the article]

The effective separation of carriers with prolonged lifetime is important to improve the activity of photocatalytic water splitting hydrogen production. In this work, the separation of electron‐hole pairs is achieved by ZnS@ZnO twin‐junction with isoelectronic traps, with which the corresponding doubled fluorescence lifetime is achieved. The existence of isoelectronic traps is further confirmed by the first principles calculations that prove the coincidence between impurity level position and Fermi level. The all‐important role of isoelectronic traps has almost never been mentioned and demonstrated in photocatalysis so far. Moreover, it is favorable for photocatalysis that the migration direction of carriers in II‐type ZnS@ZnO is consistent with the trapped behavior under the effect of isoelectronic traps, which shows a leading H2 production activity of 1628 µmol h‐1 g‐1 under simulated sunlight. What's more, the impurity levels formed by sulfur in the middle part ZnO1‐xSx enable visible light to be absorbed, neither ZnS nor ZnO would otherwise absorb visible light, and the H2 production activity reaches 380 µmol h‐1 g‐1. This will provide guidance to construct composite structure for wide bandgap semiconductors in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. Handgrip strength (HS) is a risk factor of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular diseases. However, the influencing factors and mechanisms contributing to this correlation remain unclear. Therefore, we aimed to explore factors related to HS and investigated the mechanism underlying its risk predictive value. Methods. This was a prospective, cross-sectional study. One hundred forty-five participants were recruited from December 2019 to November 2020. HS was measured using a hydraulic hand dynamometer and adjusted for body mass index (HSBMI) and body surface area (HSBSA). Body composition was assessed via bioimpedance spectroscopy. Physical fitness was measured using a cardiopulmonary exercise test system. Univariate, multiple linear regression analyses and receiver operator characteristic curve (ROC) were conducted to evaluate the associations between various participant characteristics and HS. Results. The average participant age was 21.68 ± 2.61 years (42.8% were male). We found positive correlations between HSBMI/HSBSA and VO2max, VEmax, Loadmax, and METmax in both sexes (p < 0.05). Lean-tissue, protein, total water, and inorganic salt percentages were positively correlated, and fat percentage was negatively correlated with HSBMI in men and with HSBMI and HSBSA in women (p < 0.05). Multiple regression revealed that VO2max was independently associated with HSBSA in both sexes (β = 0.215 , 0.173; 95 % confidence interval CI = 0.032 − 0.398 , 0.026-0.321; p = 0.022 , 0.022, respectively) and independently associated with HSBMI in women (β = 0.016 , 95 % CI = 0.004 − 0.029 , p = 0.011). ROC analysis showed that HSBMI and HSBSA can moderately identify normal VO2max in men (area under curve AUC = 0.754 , 0.769; p = 0.002 , 0.001, respectively) and marginally identify normal VO2max in women (AUC = 0.643 , 0.635; p = 0.029 , 0.042, respectively). Conclusions. BMI- and BSA-adjusted HS could serve as indicators of physical health, and HSBSA may moderately reflect cardiorespiratory fitness levels in healthy young adults, particularly in males. Clinical trials registry site and number: China Clinical Trial Center (ChiCTR1900028228). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The solid solution semiconductor Zn1−xCdxS is suitable for the study of improving hydrogen production on the basis of energy band engineering. Herein, the most suitable bandgap and conduction/valence band position for hydrogen production are confirmed by balancing the relationship between light absorption capacity and redox reaction. Furthermore, it is verified that hydrogen production activity could also be greatly enhanced by improving the oxidation capacity while keeping the reduction capacity based on the principle of mutual promotion of the two half‐reactions in the water‐splitting process. First‐principles calculations are performed using density functional theory (DFT) methods to confirm the band structure composition of Zn1−xCdxS. The optimal hydrogen production activity is 15.58 mmol h−1 g−1. It provides a new idea for the solution of oxygen production and even overall water splitting with photocatalysis, although herein only the best conditions for hydrogen production are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the mechanisms of how urbanization influences the evolution of native species is vital for urban wildlife ecology and conservation in the Anthropocene. With thousands of years of agriculture‐dominated historical urbanization followed by 40 years of intensive and rapid urbanization, Shanghai provides an ideal environment to study how the two‐stage urbanization process influences the evolution of indigenous wildlife, especially of anuran species. Therefore, in this study, we used mitochondrial Cyt‐b gene, microsatellite (SSR), and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data to evaluate the demographic history and genetic structure of the eastern golden frog (Pelophylax plancyi), by sampling 407 individuals from 15 local populations across Shanghai, China. All local populations experienced bottlenecks during historical urbanization, while the local populations in urban areas maintained comparable contemporary effective population sizes (Ne) and genetic diversity with suburban and rural populations. Nevertheless, the rapid modern urbanization has already imposed significant negative effects to the integrity of populations. The 15 local populations were differentiated into eight genetic clusters, showing a spatial distribution pattern consistent with the current urbanization gradient and island–mainland geography. Although moderate gene flow still occurred from the rural peripheral cluster to urban and suburban clusters, population fragmentation was more serious in the urban and suburban populations, where higher urbanization levels within 2‐km radius areas showed significant negative relationships to the Ne and genetic diversity of local populations. Therefore, to protect urban wildlife with limited dispersal ability, improving conditions in fragmented habitat remnants might be most essential for local populations living in more urbanized areas. Meanwhile, we highlight the need to preserve large unfragmented rural habitats and to construct corridor networks to connect discrete urban habitat remnants for the long‐term wildlife conservation in intensively urbanizing environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithium metal anodes are a key component of high‐energy‐density lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries. However, the issues associated with lithium anodes remain unsolved owing to the immature lithium anode construction and protection technology, which leads to internal short circuits, poor capacity retention, and low coulombic efficiency for high‐sulfur‐loading Li–S batteries. Herein, a highly stable 3D lithium carbon fiber composite (3D LiCF) anode for high‐sulfur‐loading Li–S batteries was demonstrated, in which a self‐formed hybrid solid‐electrolyte protection layer was constructed on a lithium metal surface through codeposition of thiophenolate ions and inorganic lithium salts by using diphenyl disulfide as a co‐additive in the electrolyte. The aromatic components from thiophenolate could improve the stability of the protection layer, and the 3D structure of the carbon fiber could effectively buffer the volume effect during lithium cycling. A Li–S battery based on a 3D LiCF anode exhibited excellent cycling stability with an energy efficiency of 89.2 % for 100 cycles in terms of a high energy density of 22.3 mWh cm−2 (10 mAh cm−2 area capacity of lithium cycling). This contribution demonstrates versatile and ingenious strategies for the construction of a 3D lithium anode structure and protection layer, providing an effective solution for practical stable Li–S batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The specific clinical features of thyroid cancer patients in northwest China are unclear; therefore, we analyzed the clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of this population. Methods: Clinical characteristics including age, gender, blood type, histological type, and BRAFV600E gene mutation; and incidence; risk factors; surgical treatment; and prognosis were recorded. Results: A total of 2490 thyroid cancer patients were included; 98% were diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC). Weight, blood type, histological type, and BRAFV600E gene mutation rates were significantly different. Pediatric thyroid cancer patients had higher lymph node metastasis, lower BRAFV600E mutation, and 6.2–9.2% greater recurrence rates than adult patients. PTC and papillary thyroid microcarcinoma displayed similar features, while in other types, such as follicular and medullary thyroid cancer, there were variations. Multiple logistic analyses showed that age (odds ratio [OR] 0.957, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.944–0.970; P < 0.001), focal status (OR 16.174, 95% CI 9.257–28.262; P < 0.001), pathology (OR 0.642, 95% CI 0.473–0.871; P = 0.004) and lymph node metastasis (OR 0.059, 95% CI 0.033–0.107; P < 0.001) were independent factors for BRAFV600E mutation. Conclusion: Most real world clinicopathological features, treatment, and prognosis of thyroid cancer are similar to reported data, such as the higher incidence of disease in women and the larger proportion of PTC. However, the results in pediatric patients and those with BRAF gene mutations are controversial and require more clinical incidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To further assess the efficacy and safety of recombinant human endostatin (rh‐endostatin), a Phase III, multicenter, prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trial was conducted. Patients to be treated with neoadjuvant docetaxel and epirubicin (DE) or DE plus rh‐endostatin (DEE) were eligible for this trial. The primary endpoint was clinical/pathological response. Secondary endpoints included adverse events and quality of life (QOL). Finally, 803 patients were enrolled and randomly assigned to receive DE (n = 402) or DEE (n = 401) regimen. After three cycles of neoadjuvant therapy, “complete response” achieved in 14.2% of patients in DEE group versus 6.7% in DE group, “partial response” achieved in 76.8% versus 71.1%, while “stable disease” in 6.0% versus 18.9%, “progressive disease” in 3.0% versus 3.2% of patients. The rate of objective response in DEE and DE group was 91.0% and 77.9%, respectively (p < 0.001). In spite of a relatively higher pathological complete response achieved following the combination therapy, no significant difference was found between two arms. Adverse events were mostly of Grades 1–2. No significant difference in adverse event and QOL was found between the two arms. In conclusion, the combination of chemotherapy and rh‐endostatin achieved better outcomes than chemotherapy alone, and thus can be considered as a promising therapeutic strategy for breast cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Front Cover: Catalyst- and Light-free S-H Insertion between Phosphorodithioic Acids and Diazo Compounds: Rapid Access to Dialkylphosphorodithioates (Asian J. Org. Keywords: diazo compound; pesticide; phosphorodithioate; phosphorodithioic acid; S-H insertion EN diazo compound pesticide phosphorodithioate phosphorodithioic acid S-H insertion 1 1 1 07/27/23 20230701 NES 230701 B C-S bond formation b has attracted considerable interest for a long time. The cover picture shows a straightforward and efficient C-S bond formation reaction via S-H insertion of phosphorodithioic acids with diazo compounds under catalyst-, and light-free conditions. [Extracted from the article]

For the seed-assisted casting process for silicon ingots, different partition blocks were designed in the directional solidification (DS) furnaces to preserve the seed crystals and optimize the thermal field in the hot-zone. A transient global model was established to investigate the effects of different partition blocks during the solidification process. The simulation results showed that the partition blocks can significantly influence the temperature distributions and the melt flow fields. From the designed partition blocks, the movable partition block was more favorable for the seed-assisted DS process. A suitable temperature gradient and a flat seed-melt (s-m) interface were obtained, which facilitated the preservation of seed crystals effectively, and an optimized crystal-melt (c-m) interface was achieved as well. One of the designs of the movable partition blocks was implemented in quasi-mono crystalline silicon casting experiments and it has been confirmed that the designed movable partition block was helpful for the improvement of the single crystal area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. To explore the feasibility of automatically detecting the degree of meniscus injury by radiomics fusion of dual-mode magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features of sagittal and coronal planes of the knee joint. Methods. This retrospective study included 164 arthroscopically confirmed meniscus injuries in 152 patients admitted to the Department of Orthopaedics of our hospital from July 2018 to March 2021. A total of 1316-dimensional radiomics signatures were extracted from single-mode sagittal and coronal plane images of menisci, respectively. Then, the sagittal and coronal plane features were fused to form a dual-mode joint feature group with a total of 2632-dimensional radiomics signatures. The minimum redundancy maximum relevance (mRMR) algorithm and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression were used to select features and generate optimal radiomics signatures. The single-mode sagittal plane feature model (Model 1), single-mode coronal plane feature model (Model 2), and the combined sagittal and coronal plane feature model (Model 3) performance were tested by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and Delong test. The calibration curve test was used to verify the reliability of radiomics signatures of the three models. Results. The average intra- and interobserver intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) of the most significant 8-dimensional radiomics signatures of Model 1 and Model 2 were 0.935 (range 0.832-0.998) and 0.928 (range 0.845-0.998), respectively. All the three models had good detection performance; Model 3 had the most significant performance (the areas under the curve (AUCs) of training, and validation sets were 0.947 and 0.923, respectively), which was superior to Model 1 (AUCs of training set and validation set were 0.889 and 0.876, respectively) and Model 2 (AUCs of training set and validation set were 0.831 and 0.851, respectively). The detection probability of training and validation sets in the three models was highly consistent with the actual clinical probability. Conclusions. It is feasible to establish a model for automatic detection of meniscus damage by means of radiomics. The detection performance of the dual-mode knee MRI model is better than that of any single-mode model, showing potent feature analysis ability and outstanding detection performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Neuroinflammatory responses are closely associated with poststroke prognosis severity. This study aimed to develop a predictive model, combining inflammation-derived markers and clinical indicators, for distinguishing functional outcomes in patients with subacute ischemic stroke., Methods and Results: Based on activities of daily living assessments, ischemic stroke participants were categorized into groups with little effective (LE) recovery and obvious effective (OE) recovery. Initial biocandidates were identified by overlapping differentially expressed proteins from proteomics of clinical serum samples (5 LE, 5 OE, and 6 healthy controls) and differentially expressed genes from an RNA sequence of the ischemic cortex in middle cerebral artery occlusion mice (n=3). Multidimensional validations were conducted in ischemia-reperfusion models and a clinical cohort (15 LE, 11 OE, and 18 healthy controls). Models of robust biocandidates combined with clinical indicators were developed with machine learning in the training data set and prediction in another test data set (15 LE and 11 OE). We identified 194 differentially expressed proteins (LE versus healthy controls) and 174 differentially expressed proteins (OE versus healthy controls) in human serum, and 5121 differentially expressed genes (day 3) and 5906 differentially expressed genes (day 7) in middle cerebral artery occlusion mice cortex. Inflammation-derived biomarkers TIMP1 (tissue inhibitor metalloproteinase-1) and galactosidase-binding protein LGLAS3 (galectin-3) exhibited robust increases under ischemic injury in mice and humans. TIMP1 and LGALS3 coupled with clinical indicators (hemoglobin, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and uric acid) were developed into a combined model for differentiating functional outcome with high accuracy (area under the curve, 0.8)., Conclusions: The combined model is a valuable tool for evaluating prognostic outcomes, and the predictive factors can facilitate development of better treatment strategies.