Search

Potassium-ion batteries are among the most promising candidates to satisfy the large-scale energy storage systems due to their low-cost and abundant potassium sources. However, it is highly desired to seek suitable cathode materials with high capacity and voltage platform, long cycling stability and durability. Transitional metal layered oxides as the most important cathode materials have been widely investigated in lithium-ion batteries and sodium-ion batteries. Recently, transitional metal layered oxides for potassium-ion batteries have aroused huge attention owing to their special structures and potential in applications. Although most transitional metal layered oxides exhibit tolerable capacities, the relationship between structure and electrochemical performance needs further investigation in detail. Herein, the research status and development of transitional metal layered oxides for potassium-ion batteries are summarized in this review. To solve the existing problems of transitional metal layered oxides in potassium-ion batteries, the improvement of air stability and electrochemical performance are also thoroughly discussed. Based on the achievements in recent years, a prospect on the further development of transitional metal layered oxides for potassium-ion batteries is also provided.

End of life vehicle (ELV) is a significant renewable resource with enormous economic value and environmental value. New regulation promulgated by the State Council of PRC has been implemented since June 2019, allows main assemblies of ELV can be sold to remanufacture enterprises, which dramatically prompts more enterprises to invest in the recycling industry. According to the technological recovery characteristics of ELV, the system layout design (SLP) method is briefly applied to arrange the plant facility layout of ELV recycling and disassembly enterprise. The relationship between logistics and non-logistics was firstly analyzed, and the operating unit correlation diagram of location and area were presented correspondingly. Then, through further modification and adjustment, the feasible layout scheme was obtained, and the reasonable general layout of the plant area was determined by using the weighted factor method. As a critical functional unit of the factory area, the detailed planning and design of the disassembly and shredding workshop were further presented. A detailed facility layout and logistics route of the disassembly and shredding workshop are finally proposed according to the obtained correlation diagram of the operating unit area based SLP, which has been implemented in a recycling company in Changsha, a typical case in China. Combined with the theoretical techniques of statistics, intelligent algorithms, and logistics analysis under the background of modern green production and sustainable manufacturing, this work can provide a new approach for plant layout design and optimization for ELV recycling and disassembly industry.

Solid polymer electrolytes have been considered as the promising candidates to improve the safety and stability of high-energy lithium metal batteries. However, the practical applications of solid polymer electrolytes are still limited by the low ionic conductivity, poor interfacial contact with electrodes, narrow electrochemical window and weak mechanical strength. Here, a series of novel block copolymer electrolytes with three-dimensional networks are designed by cross-linked copolymerization of the polyethylene glycol soft segments and hexamethylene diisocyanate trimer hard segments. Their ionic migration performances and interface compatibilities with Li metal anode have been optimized delicately by tailoring the ratio of these functional units. The optimized block copolymer electrolyte has shown an amorphous crystalline structure, a high ionic conductivity of ~5.7 × 10−4 S cm−1, high lithium ion transference number (~0.49), wide electrochemical window up to ~4.65 V (vs. Li+/Li) and favorable mechanical strength at 55 °C. Furthermore, the enhanced interface compatibility can well support the normal operations of lithium metal batteries using both LiFePO4 and LiNi0.8Co0.15Al0.05O2 cathodes. This study not only paves a new way to develop solid polymer electrolyte with optimizing functional units, but also provides a polymer electrolyte design strategy for the application demand of lithium metal battery.

Aluminium–sulfur (Al–S) batteries possess high research merits and application prospects owing to their high theoretical energy density, high safety and low cost. However, the deficiency of outstanding cathodes severely limits their electrochemical performance. Herein, a N-doped hierarchical porous carbon material with a surface area of 2513 m2 g−1 has been developed by a soft-template method. The hierarchical pores can provide effective electrolyte transport channels and stably accommodate S nanoparticles, while the N-doped carbon can facilitate charge transfer and anchor aluminium sulfides to improve the electrochemical stability of the cathode. Coupling the S composite cathode with a low-cost AlCl3/acetamide electrolyte, the Al–S battery can deliver a capacity above 1027 mA h g−1 at 0.2 A g−1 for 50 cycles and an excellent cyclability above 483/405 mA h g−1 at 1 A g−1 for 500/700 cycles. In situ Raman spectroscopy and ex situ solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance have been used to monitor the reversible reactions of S and identify the configuration of sulfides, showing that α-type Al2S3 with a tetra-coordinated configuration is the dominant final discharge product. This work sheds light on the design of S composite cathodes and understanding of reaction mechanisms for the fabrication of high-reversibility, high-capacity and low-cost Al–S batteries.

Spectral-computed tomography (CT) has been demonstrating its great advantages in lesion detection, tissue characterization, and material decomposition. However, the quality of images is often significantly corrupted with various noises, which brings a great challenge for its applications. Because the channel-wise images from different energy interval share similar structure and physical message, the spatial sparsity, global correlation across the spectrum (GCS), and nonlocal self-similarity (NSS) as three important characteristics are employed to spectral CT reconstruction. In this study, we propose a spectral-image decomposition with energy-fusion sensing (SIDES) reconstruction method, which encourages to obtain better quality spectral images and material decomposition results by establishing a unified tensor decomposition model. First, considering the noise distribution in channel-wise and the difference of linear attenuation coefficients within channel-cross, an adaptive weighted full-spectrum prior image as additional supervised information is incorporated to formulate a new weighted prior image-based tensor. Cooperating with original image tensor, they fully explore the spatial sparsity, GCS, and NSS properties. Then, we formulate nonlocal similar patch-based tensor groups to encode the NSS property from image-domain and residual-image-domain (which is expanded by prior-image and image-self). Next, low-rank regularized Tucker tensor decomposition is employed to fully explore the intrinsic knowledge with the help of prior-image supervision. Finally, the relaxed convex optimization model is optimized by dividing reconstruction model into several subproblem using split-Bregman method. Numerical simulations and real experiments are designed to validate and evaluate the SIDES method and the results demonstrate that the SIDES reconstruction outperforms the state-of-the-art.

The scalable production of flexible integrated micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) with high performance and low cost is urgently required. Printing is a promising strategy to build MSCs with designable shapes. Here, one kind of cost-effective and universal conductive ink derived from the porous activated biochar has been introduced, which is used for the scalable fabrication of carbon-based planar MSCs on various flexible substrates by the simple fabrication process of screen printing and program-controlled writing methods. The MSCs using the screen printing method have exhibited a favorable areal capacitance of 116 mF cm−2 and a high areal energy density of 9.26 μW h cm−2, and the integrated MSCs connected seven cells in series can also output a voltage of 5.6 V. In addition, the MSC arrays in this work have also been used for storing unstable external energy from a hand dynamo. This study provides significant guidance to construct metal-free integrated MSCs and facilitates the progress towards self-sustainable energy in the future.

A thin free-standing composite solid electrolyte film (CSE, ∼15 μm) is prepared by a tape casting and solution infusion method, which owns a high ionic conductivity (2.76 × 10

The metallothionein 1 (MT1) family was previously shown to be involved in metal ion homeostasis, DNA damage, oxidative stress, and carcinogenesis. Our team’s previous study showed that MT1X is most closely associated with ccRCC. However, its role in clear cell RCC (ccRCC) remains unclear. The present study aimed to demonstrate MT1X’s prognostic value, potential biologic function, impact on the immune system, and influence on cell growth, the cell cycle, apoptosis, and migration in the setting of ccRCC. The relationship between clinical pathologic features and MT1X was analyzed using bioinformatics. We knocked down MT1X in the ccRCC cell line 786O with si-MT1X to verify the results of the bioinformatic analysis at the cytological level. Apoptosis assay, cell cycle assay, wound-healing assay, colony formation assay, and RT-qPCR were performed. MT1X is correlated with the stage (T and M) and grade and is able to be an independent prognostic factor for ccRCC. The TISIDB database analysis showed a significant correlation between MT1X and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes such as central memory CD8+ T cells and γΔT cells. MT1X was also positively related to immunomodulators such as TGFB1 and CXCR4. We also found that MT1X knockdown inhibits cell growth, induces apoptosis, arrests cells in the S cell cycle, and inhibits the wound healing proportion in ccRCC. Gene set enrichment analysis and quantitative PCR (q-PCR) analysis found that down-regulation of MT1X reduced the accumulation of hypoxia-associated factors. Bioinformatic analysis associated increased MT1X expression with a worse prognosis. Laboratory experiments confirmed bioinformatic findings. MT1X was also found to be an independent prognostic biomarker for ccRCC and is involved in immune system regulation.

Packaging multiple drugs into a nanocarrier with rational design to achieve synergistic cancer therapy remains a challenge due to the intrinsically varied pharmacodynamics of therapeutic agents. Especially difficult is combining small-molecule drugs and macromolecular biologics. Here, we successfully graft pheophorbide A (PPA) photosensitizers on DNA backbone at predesigned phosphorothioate modification sites. The synthesized four PPA-grafted DNAs are assembled into a tetrahedron framework, which further associates with a programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) small interfering RNA (siRNA) linker through supramolecular self-assembly to form an siRNA and PPA copackaged nanogel. With dual therapeutic agents inside, the nanogel can photodynamically kill tumor cells and induce remarkable immunogenic cell death. Also, it simultaneously silences the PD-L1 expression of the tumor cells, which substantially promotes the antitumor immune response and leads to an enhanced antitumor efficacy in a synergistic fashion.

Immunotherapy has been a new standard for recurrent/metastatic head and neck cancers (R/M HNC). One of the prominent characteristics of cancer immunotherapy is the induction of immune memory followed by endured treatment response. However, whether and how a treatment delay would impact on the efficacy of immunotherapy has not been well determined. During the outbreak of COVID-19, a number of cancer patients in Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic in China, had experienced long-lasting city lockdown and delay of immunotherapies. Here, we retrospectively analyzed 24 HNC patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors in our cancer institute prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 who were re-evaluated after the restoration of regular medical care. Of these 24 patients, 10 patients had achieved complete response (CR) or partial response (PR), 12 patients had achieved stable disease (SD), and 2 patients had received just one cycle treatment without efficacy evaluation before treatment delay. The median delay was 3.75 months (range 1.73–8.17 months). Re-evaluation after treatment delay revealed that ten patients (10/10) who achieved CR or PR, two patients (2/2) who received just one cycle treatment without efficacy evaluation and seven patients (7/12) who achieved SD before outbreak of COVID-19 maintained tumor response after treatment delay. Among the rest five patients who had achieved SD, four patients were re-evaluated as progressive disease (PD) due to treatment delay and one patient died after treatment interruption without re-evaluation. Our results from a small cohort of R/M HNC patients showed that treatment delay of three to four months might have mild, if any, impact on the efficacy of immunotherapy for patients with controlled disease.

The optimization of anode materials such as Sn, P and Sn4P3 in terms of capacity and cyclability is crucial to improve the overall performance of sodium-ion batteries. However, the delicate fabrication of these materials, including the balanced crystalline/amorphous domains, reasonable particle size and distribution, complementary components exhibiting synergetic reactions, among others, still greatly retards the realization of maximum performance. Herein, a series of Sn/P-based composite materials with a plum pudding configuration were fabricated to achieve controlled crystalline/amorphous structures as well as optimized size and distribution in a carbon framework. By using a facile and low-cost ball milling method, the structural transformation of Sn4P3 into phase-separated crystalline Sn and amorphous P in a carbonaceous framework can be finely controlled, producing a series of binary (Sn4P3/C), quaternary (Sn4P3/Sn/P/C) and ternary (Sn/P/C) composites. Due to the complementary components, crystalline/amorphous adjustment, crystallite sizes and well-integrated interfaces, the quaternary Sn4P3/Sn/P/C composite showed the best electrochemical performance, with a noticeable long-cycle performance of 382 mA h g−1 and 86% capacity retention for nearly 300 cycles. Different from binary and ternary composites, the discharge of quaternary composite generates no noticeable signals of Na15Sn4 and Na3P in the ex-situ X-ray diffraction patterns, suggesting the crystallite growth of sodiation products can be depressed. Moreover, Sn4P3 in the quaternary composite can be partially regenerated in the desodiation reaction, implying the significant short-range interaction and thus better synergetic reactions between Sn and P components. The results demonstrate that the design and organization of crystalline/amorphous structures can serve as an efficient strategy to develop novel electrode materials for sodium ion batteries.

Machine learning-based data-driven models have achieved great success since their invention. Nowadays, the artificial neural network (ANN)-based machine learning methods have made great progress than ever before, such as the deep learning and reinforcement learning, etc. In this study, we coupled the ANN with the K-nearest neighbor method to propose a novel hybrid machine learning (HML) hydrological model for flood forecast purpose. The advantage of the proposed model over traditional neural network models is that it can predict discharge continuously without accuracy loss owed to its specially designed model structure. In order to overcome the local minimum issue of the traditional neural network training, a genetic algorithm and Levenberg–Marquardt-based multi-objective training method was also proposed. Real-world applications of the HML hydrological model indicated its satisfactory performance and reliable stability, which enlightened the possibility of further applications of the HML hydrological model in flood forecast problems.

Mesocrystals, the non-classical crystals with highly ordered nanoparticle superstructures, have shown great potential in many applications because of their newly collective properties. However, there is still a lack of a facile and general synthesis strategy to organize and integrate distinct components into complex mesocrystals, and of reported application for them in industrial catalytic reactions. Herein we report a general bottom-up synthesis of CuO-based trimetallic oxide mesocrystals (denoted as CuO-M1Ox-M2Oy, where M1 and M2 = Zn, In, Fe, Ni, Mn, and Co) using a simple precipitation method followed by a hydrothermal treatment and a topotactic transformation via calcination. When these mesocrystals were used as the catalyst to produce trichlorosilane (TCS) via Si hydrochlorination reaction, they exhibited excellent catalytic performance with much increased Si conversion and TCS selectivity. In particular, the TCS yield was increased 19-fold than that of the catalyst-free process. The latter is the current industrial process. The efficiently catalytic property of these mesocrystals is attributed to the formation of well-defined nanoscale heterointerfaces that can effectively facilitate the charge transfer, and the generation of the compressive and tensile strain on CuO near the interfaces among different metal oxides. The synthetic approach developed here could be applicable to fabricate versatile complicated metal oxide mesocrystals as novel catalysts for various industrial chemical reactions.

The Li-O2 battery based on the polymer electrolyte has been considered as the feasible solution to the safety issue derived from the liquid electrolyte. However, the practical application of the polymer electrolyte-based Li-O2 battery is impeded by the poor cyclability and unsatisfactory energy efficiency caused by the structure of the porous cathode. Herein, an architecture of a composite cathode with improved oxidation kinetics of discharge products was designed by an in situ method through the polymerization of the electrolyte precursor for the polymer-based Li-O2 battery. The composite cathode can provide sufficient gas diffusion channels, abundant reaction active sites, and continuous pathways for ion diffusion and electron transport. Furthermore, the oxidation kinetics of nanosized discharge products formed in the composite cathode can be improved by hexamethylphosphoramide during the recharge process. The polymer-based Li-O2 batteries with the composite cathode demonstrate highly reversible capacity when fully charged and a long cycle lifetime under a fixed capacity with low overpotentials. Moreover, the interface contact between hexamethylphosphoramide and the Li metal can be stabilized simultaneously. Therefore, the composite cathode architecture designed in this work shows a promising application in high-performance polymer-based Li-O2 batteries.

Flooding is a major natural disaster that has brought tremendous losses to mankind throughout the ages. Even so, floods can be controlled by appropriate measures to minimize loss and damage. Flood risk assessment is an essential analytic step in preventing floods and reducing losses. Identifying previous flood risk and predicting future features are conducive to understanding the changing patterns and laws of flood risk. Taking the Dongjiang River basin as a study case, we assessed and regionalized flood risk in 1990, 2000, and 2010 from the past perspective and explored dynamic expansion during 1990-2010. Then, we projected land-use type, population, and gross domestic product in 2030 and 2050 and finally assessed and regionalized the risk from a future perspective. Results show that areas with very high risk accounted for 14.98-18.08% during 1990-2010; approximately 13.90% areas of the basin transformed from lower-level risk to higher-level risk whereas 9.07% fell from a higher level to a lower level during the period. For the future scenario, areas with very high and high risk in 2030 and 2050 are expected to account for 21.55% and 24.84%, respectively. Generally, our study can better identify changes in flood risk at a spatial scale and reveal the dynamic evolution rule, which provides a synthetical means of flood prevention and reduction, flood insurance, urban planning, and water resource management in the future under global climate change, especially for developing or high-speed urbanization regions.

Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy has gained increasing attention due to its remarkable therapeutic performance. However, its therapeutic performance was highly impaired by the low immunogenicity of the tumors, insufficient intratumoral infiltration of the T lymphocytes, and the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. To address the challenge of current ICB therapy, nanosized drug delivery systems have been extensively exploited to deliver various immune modulators (e.g., chemotherapeutics, photosensitizers, and immune checkpoint inhibitors) for improved ICB therapy. In this review, we provide a brief overview of the recent advance of nanosized drug delivery systems for combination ICB immunotherapy. We also discuss the challenges and provide perspectives for the clinical translation of nanosized drug delivery systems for cancer immunotherapy.

The production of large single-crystal metal foils with various facet indices has long been a pursuit in materials science owing to their potential applications in crystal epitaxy, catalysis, electronics and thermal engineering1–5. For a given metal, there are only three sets of low-index facets ({100}, {110} and {111}). In comparison, high-index facets are in principle infinite and could afford richer surface structures and properties. However, the controlled preparation of single-crystal foils with high-index facets is challenging, because they are neither thermodynamically6,7 nor kinetically3 favourable compared to low-index facets6–18. Here we report a seeded growth technique for building a library of single-crystal copper foils with sizes of about 30 × 20 square centimetres and more than 30 kinds of facet. A mild pre-oxidation of polycrystalline copper foils, followed by annealing in a reducing atmosphere, leads to the growth of high-index copper facets that cover almost the entire foil and have the potential of growing to lengths of several metres. The creation of oxide surface layers on our foils means that surface energy minimization is not a key determinant of facet selection for growth, as is usually the case. Instead, facet selection is dictated randomly by the facet of the largest grain (irrespective of its surface energy), which consumes smaller grains and eliminates grain boundaries. Our high-index foils can be used as seeds for the growth of other Cu foils along either the in-plane or the out-of-plane direction. We show that this technique is also applicable to the growth of high-index single-crystal nickel foils, and we explore the possibility of using our high-index copper foils as substrates for the epitaxial growth of two-dimensional materials. Other applications are expected in selective catalysis, low-impedance electrical conduction and heat dissipation. Large-area single-crystal high-index copper and nickel foils with several types of facet are fabricated using mild pre-oxidation of the metal foil surface followed by annealing in a reducing atmosphere.

Neoantigen-based cancer vaccines are promising for boosting cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses. However, the therapeutic effect of cancer vaccines is severely blunted by functional suppression of the dendritic cells (DCs). Herein, we demonstrated an acid-responsive polymeric nanovaccine for activating the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway and improving cancer immunotherapy. The nanovaccines were fabricated by integrating an acid-activatable polymeric conjugate of the STING agonist and neoantigen into one single nanoplatform. The nanovaccines efficiently accumulated at the lymph nodes for promoting DC uptake and facilitating cytosol release of the neoantigens. Meanwhile, the STING agonist activated the STING pathway in the DCs to elicit interferon-β secretion and to boost T-cell priming with the neoantigen. The nanovaccine dramatically inhibited tumor growth and occurrence of B16-OVA melanoma and 4T1 breast tumors in immunocompetent mouse models. Combination immunotherapy with the nanovaccines and anti-PD-L1 antibody demonstrated further improved antitumor efficacy in a 4T1 breast tumor model.

The sphene-type solid electrolyte with high ionic conductivity has been designed for solid-state lithium metal battery. However, the practical applications of solid electrolytes are still suffered by the low relative density and long sintering time of tens of hours with large energy consumption. Here, we introduced the spark plasma sintering technology for fabricating the sphene-type Li1.125Ta0.875Zr0.125SiO5 solid electrolyte. The dense electrolyte pellet with high relative density of ca. 97.4% and ionic conductivity of ca. 1.44× 10−5 S/cm at 30 °C can be obtained by spark plasma sintering process within the extremely short time of only ca. 0.1 h. Also the solid electrolyte provides stable electrochemical window of ca. 6.0 V(vs. Li+/Li) and high electrochemical interface stability toward Li metal anode. With the enhanced interfacial contacts between electrodes and electrolyte pellet by the in-situ formed polymer electrolyte, the solid-state lithium metal battery with LiFePO4 cathode can deliver the initial discharge capacity of ca. 154 mAh/g at 0.1 C and the reversible capacity of ca. 132 mAh/g after 70 cycles with high Coulombic efficiency of 99.5% at 55 °C. Therefore, this study demonstrates a rapid and energy efficient sintering strategy for fabricating the solid electrolyte with dense structure and high ionic conductivity that can be practically applied in solid-state lithium metal batteries with high energy densities and safeties.

Drug delivery systems (DDSs) are of paramount importance to deliver drugs at the intended targets, e.g., tumor cells or tissue by prolonging blood circulation and optimizing the pharmaceutical profiles. However, the therapeutic efficacy of DDSs is severely impaired by insufficient or non-specific drug release. Dynamic chemical bonds having stimuli-liable properties are therefore introduced into DDSs for regulating the drug release kinetics. This review summarizes the recent advances of dynamic covalent chemistry in the DDSs for improving cancer therapy. The review discusses the constitutions of the major classes of dynamic covalent bonds, and the respective applications in the tumor-targeted DDSs which are based on the different responsive mechanisms, including acid-activatable and reduction-activatable. Furthermore, the review also discusses combination strategies of dual dynamic covalent bonds which can response to the complex tumor microenvironment much more accurately, and then summarizes and analyzes the prospects for the application of dynamic covalent chemistry in DDSs.

Lithium-rich layered oxides (LLOs) are one of the attractive cathodes for high-energy lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, their rate performance and cycling stability, especially at high tempera...

Different from the grain boundary diffusion process (GBDP), which is suitable for modifying thin magnet, a green-pressing agents permeation process (GAPP) that uses low melting point alloys was applied to the Nd-Fe-B green compact with a thickness over 15 mm to reconstruct the boundary microstructure of a sintered Nd-Fe-B magnet. The coercivity increases from 12.3 kOe for the sample free of Pr80Al20 to 16.8 kOe for the sample with 2 wt% Pr80Al20. By further increasing the Pr80Al20 content to 3 wt%, the coercivity increases slightly, but the remanence and Hk/Hcj deteriorate obviously. The optimal comprehensive properties of Hcj = 16.8 kOe, Br = 13.4 kG and Hk/Hcj = 0.975 are obtained at 2 wt% Pr80Al20, since matrix phase grains are separated by relatively continuous thin grain boundary layers, which weaken the magnetic coupling between adjacent grains. The coercivities of the samples from the GAPP that use 2 wt% Pr80Al20, Pr70Cu30 and Pr60Tb20Al20 alloys, respectively, can be enhanced to a large extent. However, the coercivity of the magnet reconstructed with Pr80Al20 is lower than that of the sample with Pr60Tb20Al20 but is higher than that of the sample reconstructed with Pr70Cu30 alloy. Moreover, the coercivity of the sample from the GAPP using 2 wt% Pr80Al20 is much higher than that of the sample from the GBDP, which is due to a nearly uniform boundary microstructure from the surface to the interior of the thick magnet from the GAPP, thus providing new insights into the fabrication of thick and bulky permanent magnets with high coercivity.

Current cancer immunotherapy has limited response rates in a large variety of solid tumors partly due to the low immunogenicity of the tumor cells and the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (ITM). A number of clinical cancer treatment modalities, including radiotherapy, chemotherapy, photothermal and photodynamic therapy, have been shown to elicit immunogenicity by inducing immunogenic cell death (ICD). However, ICD-based immunotherapy is restricted by the ITM limiting its efficacy in eliciting a long-term antitumor immune response, and by severe systemic toxicity. To address these challenges, nanomedicine-based drug delivery strategies have been exploited for improving cancer immunotherapy by boosting ICD of the tumor cells. Nanosized drug delivery systems are promising for increasing drug accumulation at the tumor site and codelivering ICD inducers and immune inhibitors to simultaneously elicit the immune response and relieve the ITM. This review highlights the recent advances in nanomedicine-based immunotherapy utilizing ICD-based approaches. A perspective on the clinical translation of nanomedicine-based cancer immunotherapy is also provided.

Traditional technologies for the recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) mainly focus on reductive leaching, which often leads to total leaching rather than selective leaching of metals. As...

The importance of the immune system in cancer therapy has been reaffirmed by the success of the immune checkpoint blockade. The complex tumor microenvironment and its interaction with the immune system, however, remain mysteries. Molecular imaging may shed light on fundamental aspects of the immune response to elucidate the mechanism of cancer immunotherapy. In this review, we discuss various imaging approaches that offer in-depth insight into the tumor microenvironment, checkpoint blockade therapy, and T cell-mediated antitumor immune responses. Recent advances in the molecular imaging modalities, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron electron tomography (PET), and optical imaging (e.g., fluorescence and intravital imaging) for in situ tracking of the immune response, are discussed. It is envisaged that the integration of imaging with immunotherapy may broaden our understanding to predict a particular antitumor immune response.

Titanium-based layered oxides (TLOs) are one of the most promising electrode material families for sodium-ion batteries (NIBs) due to their smooth charge/discharge profiles and excellent cycle performance. However, the reaction mechanism of these materials, especially the reason for the disappearance of multiple voltage plateaus, is still not clear. Herein, two representative TLOs (Na2/3Ni1/3Ti2/3O2 and Na2/3Co1/3Ti2/3O2) with the same P2 crystal structure have been studied to scrutinize those unexplained issues. In situ synchrotron high-energy X-ray diffraction revealed a solid solution reaction mechanism for both, suggesting the absence of rigid phase transitions upon electrochemical cycling. An interesting “spring effect” of the TiO6 octahedron, i.e., the reversible vibration of the central Ti atom inside the local octahedron upon electrochemical redox, was demonstrated by advanced X-ray absorption spectroscopy and theoretical calculations. Such an effect could suppress the rigid phase transitions, and result in smooth charge/discharge profiles and enhanced cycle stability. This work not only accounts for the disappearance of multiple voltage plateaus of TLOs for NIBs, but also provides an effective local-structure viewpoint to increase the cycle stability of electrode materials for other advanced battery systems.

This paper focuses on the principal problems in the actual transaction of decommissioned power batteries such as the asymmetry of information, huge risk and difficult is sues such as recovery and trace. And constructed a new energy vehicle decommissioned power battery recycling platform based on the big data technology. Integrated characteristics of big data information, this paper analyzes the operating mechanism of the Big-Data-Based power battery recovery platform. The functional module on this platform is designed and investigated for the functional requirements of users and shared in formation based on big data. Based on the analysis of traffic big data, a traction battery dangerous goods transportation optimization system is established by using Baidu map application program interface (API). The improved ant algorithm was used to obtain the shortest path model and decrease the transportation costs and risks, besides, it boosts the value of information resources maximum and gives impetus to the power battery recycling industrial transformation and upgrading.

As a new generation computed tomography (CT) technology, spectral CT has great potential in many aspects, especially in the identification and decomposition of materials. To achieve higher accuracy of materials decomposition, we propose a multi-constraint based nonlocal total variation (NLTV) method, named as MCNLTV. Because image-domain based material decomposition belongs to the two-step material decomposition method, the Filter Back-Projection (FBP) algorithm or SART algorithm is used to reconstruct spectral CT images in the first step. Then the material attenuation coefficient matrix is obtained from the reconstruction results. In the second step, MCNLTV regularization is utilized to obtain the material decomposition image. Both simulation experiments and real data experiments are carried out. Experiment results show that the proposed method can obtain higher accuracy of material decomposition than traditional total variation based material decomposition (TVMD), ROF-LLT regularization and direct inverse transformation (DI) for spectral CT.

Loco-regional recurrence of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) after radiation therapy is one of the main types of treatment failure. This study is aimed to explore the possible causes of inside-field recurrence of NPC patients in order to develop effective treatment methods. Our study indicated that CD44 and autophagy proteins in tumor tissues of patients with recurrent NPC are higher than that of the relapse free patients. The in vitro experiments further confirmed that cancer stem cells (CSCs) were more radioresistant with enhanced autophagy activity. Treatment with clioquinol (CQ) combined with zinc could obviously enhance the radiosensitivity of CNE-2s cells through autophagy inhibition, activation of the caspase system and impairment of DNA damage repair. The in vivo experiments have further consolidated our findings. Our results suggest that CSCs and enhanced autophagy activity may be involved in the inside-field recurrence of NPC, and CQ combined with zinc could be an important therapeutic approach for recurrent NPC.

Zinc pyrithione (ZPT) is widely used as an antimicrobial. Zinc is a necessary trace element of the human whose homeostasis associated with several cancers. However, the anticancer effect of increased Zinc in ovarian cancer is still unclear. This study focussed on the anti-tumour effects of ZPT combined with Zinc in SKOV3 and SKOV3/DDP cells. The cell viability, apoptosis, migration, and invasion assays were detected by CCK-8, flow cytometry, wound healing and transwell assay, respectively. The distribution of Zinc in cells was monitored by staining of Zinc fluorescent dye and lysosome tracker. The changes in lysosomal membrane stability were reflected by acridine orange fluorescence and cathepsin D reposition. Expression of the proteins about invasion and apoptosis was evaluated by western blot. The results indicated that ZPT combined with Zinc could notably reduce cell viability, inhibit migration and invasion in SKOV3 and SKOV3/DDP cells. Besides, ZPT performed as a Zinc carrier targeted lysosomes, caused the increase of its membrane permeability and the release of cathepsin D accompanied by mitochondrial apoptosis in SKOV3/DDP cells. In conclusion, our work suggests that ZPT combined with Zinc could inhibit proliferation, migration, invasion, and promote apoptosis by trigger the lysosome-mitochondrial apoptosis pathway in ovarian carcinoma.

Although considerable effort has been devoted to purifying nitrogen oxides (NOx), it is still challenging to effectively reduce NOx at room temperature and ambient pressure without catalysts. In this study, as a proof-of-concept, we have for the first time demonstrated the room-temperature reduction of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) using a rechargeable lithium-nitrogen dioxide (Li-NO2) battery. The battery shows a capacity of 884 mAh g−1 at 50 mA g−1 (an actual energy density of 666 Wh kg−1) and a promising electrochemical Faraday efficiency (FE) of 67%. The unique properties of Li-NO2 rechargeable batteries not only provide a way to reduce and recycle NO2 but also highlight the potential of oxidative air pollutants as energy sources for next-generation electrochemical energy storage (EES) systems.

PROteolysis TArgeting Chimeras (PROTACs) have been extensively explored for targeted protein degradation and cancer therapy. However, clinic translation of the conventional small molecular PROTACs is challenged by their unfavorable pharmacokinetic profiles and the systemic toxicity due to on-target but off-tumor protein degradation. Herein we presented a tumor microenvironment-activatable polymeric PROTAC (namely POLYTAC) nanoplatform for tumor-specific PROTAC delivery and combinatory cancer therapy. The POLYTAC nanoparticles were engineered by integrating metalloproteinase-liable poly(ethylene glycol) shell, intracellular acidity-responsive hydrophobic core and reduction-activatable PROTACs into one nanoplatform. The resultant POLYTAC nanoparticles can specifically accumulate at the tumor site and release the PROTACs inside the tumor cells for protein degradation. The POLYTAC nanoparticles can be further engineered for bioorthogonal click reaction-enforced tumor-specific delivery of the PROTACs. In combination with photodynamic therapy, we demonstrated that the bioorthogonal POLYTAC nanoparticles remarkably suppressed tumor growth by synergistically inducing cellular apoptosis of the tumor cells in mouse model of MDA-MB-231 breast cancer. The POLYTAC approach might pave the way for tumor-targeted protein degradation and translation of PROTAC-based cancer therapy.

Titanium-based anode materials have achieved much progress with the wide studies in lithium-ion batteries. However, these known materials usually possess high discharge voltage platforms and limited energy densities. Herein, a titanium-based oxide of Na

The critical challenge for cancer vaccine-induced T-cell immunity is the sustained activation of antigen cross-presentation in antigen-presenting cells (APCs) with innate immune stimulation. In this study, we first discover that the clinically used magnetic contrast agents, iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs), markedly augment the type-I interferon (IFN-I) production profile of the STING agonist MSA-2, and achieve a 16-fold dosage-sparing effect in the human STING haplotype. We next co-assembled acid-ionizable copolymers with IONPs and MSA-2 into iron nanoadjuvants to concentrate STING activation in the draining lymph nodes. The top candidate iron nanoadjuvant (PEIM) efficiently delivers the model antigen ovalbumin (OVA) to CD169+ APCs and facilitates antigen cross-presentation to elicit a 55-fold greater frequency of antigen-specific CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocyte response than soluble antigen. PEIM@OVA nanovaccine immunization induces potent and durable antitumor immunity to prevent tumor lung metastasis and eliminate established tumors. Moreover, PEIM nanoadjuvant is applicable to deliver autologous tumor antigen and synergizes with immune checkpoint blockade therapy for prevention of postoperative tumor recurrence and distant metastasis in B16-OVA melanoma and MC38 colorectal tumor models. The acid-ionizable iron nanoadjuvant offers a generalizable and readily translatable strategy to augment STING cascade activation and antigen cross-presentation for personalized cancer vaccination immunotherapy. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

With the development of computed tomography (CT) imaging technology, it is possible to acquire multi-energy data by spectral CT. Being different from conventional CT, the X-ray energy spectrum of spectral CT is cutting into several narrow bins which leads to the result that only a part of photon can be collected in each individual energy channel, which cause the image qualities to be severely degraded by noise and artifacts. To address this problem, we propose a spectral CT reconstruction algorithm based on low-rank representation and structure preserving regularization in this paper. To make full use of the prior knowledge about both the inter-channel correlation and the sparsity in gradient domain of inner-channel data, this paper combines a low-rank correlation descriptor with a structure extraction operator as priori regularization terms for spectral CT reconstruction. Furthermore, a split-Bregman based iterative algorithm is developed to solve the reconstruction model. Finally, we propose a multi-channel adaptive parameters generation strategy according to CT values of each individual energy channel. Experimental results on numerical simulations and real mouse data indicate that the proposed algorithm achieves higher accuracy on both reconstruction and material decomposition than the methods based on simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SART), total variation minimization (TVM), total variation with low-rank (LRTV), and spatial-spectral cube matching frame (SSCMF). Compared with SART, our algorithm improves the feature similarity (FSIM) by 40.4% on average for numerical simulation reconstruction, whereas TVM, LRTV, and SSCMF correspond to 26.1%, 28.2%, and 29.5%, respectively., Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures

Nonylphenol (NP) is a typical environmental endocrine disruptor with low concentration and high toxicity, μg/L level of NP is enough to interfere with the sex differentiation of many aquatic organisms and affect the population dynamic balance. The mechanism and pathway of NP degradation in aqueous solution by strong ionization dielectric barrier discharge were studied. The results showed that the degradation rate of NP can reach 95.2% in 60 min when the flow rate of O3 is 5 L/min and the input voltage is 3.8 kV. Based on the electron spin resonance (ESR) results and the detection of O3, a large amount of hydroxyl radical (·OH) and O3 were verified. In addition, the ability of DBD method to degrade NP was also tested. The intermediate products were analyzed by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), and the degradation pathway was speculated.

Nonylphenol (NP), as a typical environmental endocrine disruptor, exists widely in the natural environment. It has a high toxicity with a low concentration. NP at the level of μg/L is enough to interfere with the sex differentiation of many aquatic organisms. The effects of degradation of NP in waste water by strong ionization (SID) and its degradation products on sex differentiation in zebrafish was studied in this paper. The NP solution of 5mg/L was degraded by SID device, and the 20d zebrafish were exposed to NP wastewater of different concentrations before and after degradation until their sexual maturity. The body length, body weight and sex differentiation ratio of zebrafish were recorded, and the sex hormone levels of zebrafish were extracted and detected. The gonadal glands of zebrafish were slices and analysed. This study found that the effects of nonylphenol on male zebrafish were much greater than that of female, and there was no significant positive correlation between toxicity and dose. In addition, the effects of 5mg/L NP wastewater degraded by SID for 60min were not significantly different from those of the control group, indicating that SID could effectively degrade NP and alleviate its biological toxicity.

The accurate evaluation method of LID toward the attenuation of urban flood is still a hot issue. This paper focuses on a coupled 1D and 2D hydrodynamic model, investigating the model parameters set in a collapsible loess area, and the changes in the surface runoff, waterlogged area, and drainage network indicators under different rainfall patterns. The results show that the coupled model can effectively simulate the effect of LID facilities under unaltered and retrofitted conditions. It is found that the infiltration parameters in a collapsible loess area are higher than in other eastern cities by calibration and validation. After implementing the LID facilities, the total runoff, peak flood flow, waterlogged area, runoff coefficient, and drainage pressure under different rainfall patterns have all been reduced. With the increases in the rainfall return period, the waterlogging reduction effect of LID facilities would gradually weaken. The rainfall return period has a great impact on the indicators of surface runoff, waterlogged area, and drainage capacity. The coefficient of rainfall peak has a relatively big impact on indicators of pipelines, such as the proportion of overflow nodes, the proportion of fully loaded pipelines, and the average full-load duration. The rainfall duration has a major impact on the total runoff quantity, runoff coefficient, and average full-load duration.