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Background Standard chemotherapy with taxanes, such as paclitaxel (PTX), remains the mainstay of systemic treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. Nanotechnology-based formulations have gradually replaced PTX injection and are widely used in China. However, no studies have compared the colloidal stability, antitumor efficacy, and safety of commercial PTX nanoformulations. Additionally, the desire to evaluate preclinical antitumor efficacy in human-derived tumor cells led to the widespread application of immunodeficient mouse models that likely contributed to the neglect of nanomedicines-immune system interactions. The present study investigated the colloidal stability, antitumor efficacy and safety, and nanomedicines-host immune system interactions of PTX nanoformulations. A further comparative analysis was performed to evaluate the clinical potential. Results Compared with liposome, PTX emulsion and PTX nanoparticle exhibited favorable colloidal stability. PTX emulsion was superior in inducing apoptosis and had a more pronounced inhibitory effect on 4T1-tumor spheroids compared with PTX liposome and PTX nanoparticle. Although PTX emulsion exhibited superior in vitro antitumor effect, no significant differences in the in vivo antitumor efficacy were found among the three types of PTX nanoformulations in an immunocompetent orthotopic 4T1 murine triple-negative breast cancer model. All PTX nanoformulations at maximum tolerated dose (MTD) induced lymphopenia and immunosuppression, as evidenced by the reduction of T cell subpopulations and inhibition of the dendritic cells maturation. Conclusions The MTD PTX nanomedicines-induced lymphopenia and immunosuppression may weaken the lymphocyte-mediated antitumor cellular immune response and partly account for the lack of differences in the in vivo antitumor outcomes of PTX nanoformulations. Understanding of what impacts PTX nanomedicines has on the immune system may be critical to improve the design and conduct of translational research of PTX nanomedicines in monotherapy or combination therapy with immunotherapy. Graphic abstract

Since the energy and environment issues, a renewable and sustainable solar adsorption cooling technology has attracted extensive attention. In order to improve the energy conversion efficiency in the solar adsorption cooling technology, a novel reduced graphene oxide (rGO) @copper foam cured MIL-101 (CFCM) composite with direct illumination property was explored in this paper. The preparation process and photothermal desorption performance of rGO@CFCM were studied. A solar adsorption cooling system with rGO@CFCM-water working pair was designed and constructed. Temperature characteristic curve of rGO@CFCM adsorber, the specific cooling power (SCP) and solar coefficient of performance (SCOP) of rGO@CFCM-water working pair were investigated. The results show that the rGO@CFCM with the carbon/oxygen ratio of 5.43, amount of rGO of 1.6 g m−2, thickness of copper foam of 10 mm owns great photothermal heating rate and desorption performance for water. The heating rate of rGO@CFCM is 0.90 ℃ min−1 with desorption percentage of water of 84.36% and energy conversing efficiency of 0.7573 under the irradiation intensity of 2 kW m−2 within 60 min. The light-to-heat conversion performance of rGO@CFCM composite is significantly improved through the addition of rGO. Even if 20 sets of adsorption/photothermal desorption, the adsorption capacity of rGO@CFCM for water still keep stable. SCP and SCOP of the rGO@CFCM-water adsorption cooling system is 85.38 W kg−1 and 0.163 at evaporation temperature of 17 ℃, respectively. It provides basic data for solar adsorption cooling technology.

We present an illumination-preserving embroidery simulation method for Non-photorealistic Rendering (NPR). Our method turns an image into the embroidery style with its illumination preserved by intrinsic decomposition. This illumination-preserving feature makes our method distinctive from the previous papers, eliminating their problem of inconsistent illumination. In our method a two-dimensional stitch model is developed with some most commonly used stitch patterns, and the input image is intrinsically decomposed into a reflectance image and its corresponding shading image. The Chan-Vese active contour is adopted to segment the input image into regions, from which parameters are derived for stitch patterns. Appropriate stitch patterns are applied back onto the base material region-by-region and rendered with the intrinsic shading of the input image. Experimental results show that our method is capable of performing fine embroidery simulations, preserving the illumination of the input image.

Qiqi Shen outlines the major shifts in population policy in China particularly since the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development and its acceptance of a reproductive rights health agenda. Development (2003) 46, 80–84. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1110451