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Since the first commercialization of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in the early 1990s, previous research has been extensive on electrode material development. Due to its high volumetric energy and power densities and its low cost, the LIBs have aided in the widespread adoption of advanced mobile electronic devices, slowly spurred the market penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) globally and been incorporated in household energy storage systems to promote efficient use of renewable energy1,2. Unfortunately, after rapid improvements in LIB technology, the present progress in increasing energy density and reducing the costs of LIBs has been slow. To overcome the performance limitations on the material side, increasing the nickel (Ni) content of layered lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA) and lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NCM) cathode materials and blending silicon with graphite anode materials have shown promise3,4,5. On the manufacturing side, there is a push to use thicker and denser electrodes and increase areal capacity loadings from 3-4 mAh/cm2 to 5-7 mAh/cm2 to reduce the mass and volume fraction of inactive materials and thus reduce costs and improve the energy density and specific energy of LIB cells beyond about 700 Wh/L and 250 Wh/kg, respectively6.-8 . Unfortunately, the characteristic Li+ ion diffusion time is proportional to the square of the average diffusion path through the electrode, which depends on both the electrode thickness and the tortuosity. As a result, the charging time and power performance characteristics in high-loading, dense electrodes may become undesirably poor. Herein, we report on several manufacturing pathways to create straight channel pores within electrodes to accelerate electrolyte wetting and facilitate rapid ion transport to overcome these rate limitations. References: Armand, M. & Tarascon, J.-M. Building Better Batteries. Nature 451, 652–657 (2008). Larcher, D. & Tarascon, J.-M. Towards greener and more sustainable batteries for Electrical Energy Storage. Nature Chemistry 7, 19–29 (2014). Manthiram, A., Knight, J. C., Myung, S.-T., Oh, S.-M. & Sun, Y.-K. Nickel-rich and lithium-rich layered oxide cathodes: Progress and perspectives. Advanced Energy Materials 6, 1501010 (2015). Liu, W. et al. Nickel-rich layered lithium transition-metal oxide for high-energy lithium-ion batteries. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 54, 4440–4457 (2015). Eshetu, G. G. et al. Production of high-energy Li-ion batteries comprising silicon-containing anodes and insertion-type cathodes. Nature Communications 12, (2021). Kuang, Y., Chen, C., Kirsch, D. & Hu, L. Thick electrode batteries: Principles, opportunities, and challenges. Advanced Energy Materials 9, 1901457 (2019). Patry, G., Romagny, A., Martinet, S. & Froelich, D. Cost modeling of lithium‐ion battery cells for Automotive Applications. Energy Science & Engineering 3, 71–82 (2014). Turcheniuk, K., Bondarev, D., Amatucci, G. G. & Yushin, G. Battery materials for low- cost electric transportation. Materials Today 42, 57–72 (2021).

Kokumi taste substances exemplified by g-glutamyl peptides and Maillard Peptides modulate salt and umami tastes. However, the underlying mechanism for their action has not been delineated. Here, we investigated the effects of a kokumi taste active and inactive peptide fraction (500-10,000 Da) isolated from mature (FIIm) and immature (FIIim) Ganjang, a typical Korean soy sauce, on salt and umami taste responses in humans and rodents. Only FIIm (0.1&ndash, 1.0%) produced a biphasic effect in rat chorda tympani (CT) taste nerve responses to lingual stimulation with 100 mM NaCl + 5 mM benzamil, a specific epithelial Na+ channel blocker. Both elevated temperature (42 &deg, C) and FIIm produced synergistic effects on the NaCl + benzamil CT response. At 0.5% FIIm produced the maximum increase in rat CT response to NaCl + benzamil, and enhanced salt taste intensity in human subjects. At 2.5% FIIm enhanced rat CT response to glutamate that was equivalent to the enhancement observed with 1 mM IMP. In human subjects, 0.3% FIIm produced enhancement of umami taste. These results suggest that FIIm modulates amiloride-insensitive salt taste and umami taste at different concentration ranges in rats and humans.

Natural killer (NK) cells are key effectors in cancer immunosurveillance and can be used as a prognostic biomarker in diverse cancers. Nonetheless, the role of NK cells in pancreatic cancer (PC) remains elusive, given conflicting data on their association with disease prognosis. In this study, using conventional K562 target cells and complementary engineered target cells providing defined and synergistic stimulation for NK cell activation, a correlation between impaired NK cell cytotoxic degranulation and PC progression was determined. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 31 patients with newly diagnosed PC, 24 patients with non-malignant tumors, and 37 healthy controls were analyzed by flow cytometry. The frequency, phenotype, and effector functions of the NK cells were evaluated, and correlations between NK cell functions and disease stage and prognosis were analyzed. The results demonstrated that effector functions, but not frequency, of NK cells was progressively decreased on a per-cell basis during PC progression. Impaired cytotoxic degranulation, but not IFN-γ production, was associated with clinical features indicating disease progression, such as high serum CA19-9 and high-grade tumors. Significantly, this impairment correlated with cancer recurrence and mortality in a prospective analysis. Furthermore, the impaired cytotoxic degranulation was unrelated to NKG2D downregulation but was associated with increased circulating and tumor-associated TGF-β1 expression. Thus, NK cell cytotoxic activity was associated with PC progression and may be a favorable biomarker with predictive and prognostic value in PC.

Effects of lemongrass oil (LO) droplet size in the LO/chitosan emulsion on the emulsion's coating effectiveness in improving microbiological safety and preserving grape berries ( Vitis vinifera L. × V. labruscana Bailey) were investigated. LO was homogenized with a chitosan solution (1 g/100 g) and Tween 20 (0.25 g/100 g) by high shear mixing (HSM; 10,000 rpm, 1 min) or dynamic high pressure processing (DHP; 103–172 MPa, 1–3 passes), forming LO coating emulsions. The particle sizes of the HSM and DHP emulsions were 461.9–632.6 nm and 204.2–378.8 nm, respectively. DHP emulsions were more stable than HSM emulsions. Compared with the HSM emulsion, the DHP emulsion coating resulted in higher initial inhibition of Salmonella typhimurium ; greater growth inhibition of total mesophilic aerobes, yeasts, and molds; and retention of color, total soluble solid content, and antioxidant activity during storage at 25 °C ( P Salmonella and preserving grape berries, compared with the coating with larger droplets.

This paper describes the synthesis and magnetic properties of multifunctional Fe3O4-AuPt core-shell nanoparticles. The Fe3O4-AuPt core-shell nanoparticles were synthesized by a one-pot polyol process in two consecutive steps from Fe, Au, and Pt precursors. The structural characterization and property analysis proves the formation of the core-shell nanostructure fusing the multifunctionality in a single entity. The TEM observation shows that the Fe3O4-AuPt core-shell nanoparticles are highly crystalline and uniform in size distribution, with an averaged particle size of ~12.5 nm in diameter, whereas the X-ray diffraction patterns provide further substantiation. The surface plasmon resonance arising from the AuPt nano-shell was revealed by UV-vis spectroscopy, while the magnetic measurements by VSM and PPMS demonstrate the well-defined superparamagnetic and/or soft-ferromagnetic behavior of the Fe3O4-AuPt core-shell nanoparticles.

Battery energy storage has become a critical component of civil and military operations because of the rapidly growing demands in consumer electronics, electric vehicles and the power-consuming systems carried by soldiers on the battlefield. Currently utilized batteries are flammable and suffer from an insufficient high specific energy, which poses major safety issues creating a tactical burden for the soldiers. The use of solid state batteries may offer enhanced safety and increased energy density. Previous modeling studies of the superionic lithium-rich anti-perovskites conductors focused on Li3OX (X = Cl, Br) structures and reported a variety of the charge transport mechanisms ranging from the low-barrier three-atom hop mechanism involving vacancies, Li hops to the nearest neighbor, Li interstitial dumbbells, and diffusion of the Li+ interstitials in LiCl-deficient Li3OCl that outnumber vacancies by 2–3 orders of magnitude as predicted by the shell model. It is, however, quite challenging to completely remove protons from these anti-perovskite conductors during synthesis, highlighting the importance of understanding the influence of protons on conductivity and electrochemical properties for these superionic lithium-rich anti-perovskite conductors.(1, 2) Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BOMD) simulations of Li2+xOH1-xCl (0≤x≤1) solid electrolytes were performed in order to gain insights into the mechanism of lithium transport and the influence of H concentration, complementing previous modeling studies of H-free antiperovskites. The simulation cell was comprised of 320 atoms. Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations were performed with the QUICKSTEP module of the CP2K code, which implements the dual Gaussian and Plane Waves (GPW) method. The gamma point supercell approach was used in combination with 3-dimensioanl Periodic Boundary Conditions (PBC). Calculations were performed using the spin-polarized Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) exchange correlation functional with Grimme’s D3 dispersion correction. BOMD simulations predicted a significant enhancement of the lithium diffusion with the increased fraction of protons in agreement with experimental data. The lithium transport mechanism was found to be closely coupled with the rotation of a relatively short OH-group within the protonated electrolytes. Moreover, lithium jump events were found to be highly-correlated. Figure 1a shows a snapshot of the simulation box. In order to gain further insight into the transport mechanics, the motion of the fastest lithium cations in Li2.5OH0.5Cl solid electrolyte are highlighted with different colors. Overlap between trajectories of the fastest lithium cations shown by red arrows is indicative of the highly-correlated fashion of the lithium jumps.(2) We will also discuss changes of band gaps and band alignments that were calculated using DFT hybrid functionals as markers for electrochemical stability. We anticipate that our findings will reduce the existing confusions and show new avenues for tuning solid electrolyte compositions for further improved Li-ion conductivities. Different aspects of this work were supported by NASA Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP; NASA grant NNX15AP44A and interagency agreement NND16AA29I with ARL for modeling) and ARPA-E (grant DE-AR0000779). References 1. Y. Li, W. Zhou, S. Xin, S. Li, J. Zhu, X. Lü, Z. Cui, Q. Jia, J. Zhou, Y. Zhao and J. B. Goodenough, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 55, 9965 (2016). 2. A.-Y. Song, Y. Xiao, K. Turcheniuk, A. Ramanujapuram, J. Benson, A. Magasinski, M. Oguin, L. Meda, O. Borodin and G. Yushin, (submitted)(2017). Figure 1. A snapshot from MD simulations of Li2.5(OH)0.5Cl (a). Trajectories of the fastest Li+ cations during 10 ps BOMD run of Li2.5OH0.5Cl SSE using different colors to denote distinct Li+ (b). Red arrows show overlap between the Li+ trajectories that is indicative of the Li+ correlated motion for the fastest moving Li+. Figure 1

Even though a number of studies have evaluated postural adjustments based on kinematic changes in subjects with low back pain (LBP), kinematic stability has not been examined for abnormal postural responses during the one leg standing test. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative kinematic stability of the lower extremities and standing duration in subjects with and without chronic LBP. In total, 54 subjects enrolled in the study, including 28 subjects without LBP and 26 subjects with LBP. The average age of the subjects was 37.8 ± 12.6 years and ranged from 19 to 63 years. The outcome measures included normalized holding duration and relative kinematic stability. All participants were asked to maintain the test position without visual input (standing on one leg with his/her eyes closed and with the contra lateral hip flexed 90°) for 25 s. The age variable was used as a covariate to control confounding effects for the data analyses. The control group demonstrated significantly longer holding duration times (T = −2.78, p = 0.007) than the LBP group (24.6 ± 4.2 s vs. 20.5 ± 6.7 s). For the relative kinematic stability, there was a difference in dominance side (F = 9.91, p = 0.003). There was a group interaction between side and lower extremities (F = 11.79, p = 0.001) as well as an interaction between age and dominance side (F = 7.91, p = 0.007). The relative kinematic stability had a moderate negative relationship with age (r = −0.60, p = 0.007) in subjects without LBP. Clinicians need to understand the effects of age and relative stability, which decreased significantly in the single leg holding test, in subjects with LBP in order to develop effective rehabilitation strategies.