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Liver fibrosis is a chronic pathological condition lacking specific clinical treatments. Stem cells, with notable potential in regenerative medicine, offer promise in treating liver fibrosis. However, stem cell therapy is hindered by potential immunological rejection, carcinogenesis risk, efficacy variation, and high cost. Stem cell secretome‐based cell‐free therapy offers potential solutions to address these challenges, but it is limited by low delivery efficiency and rapid clearance. Herein, an innovative approach for in situ implantation of smart microneedle (MN) arrays enabling precisely controlled delivery of multiple therapeutic agents directly into fibrotic liver tissues is developed. By integrating cell‐free and platinum‐based nanocatalytic combination therapy, the MN arrays can deactivate hepatic stellate cells. Moreover, they promote excessive extracellular matrix degradation by more than 75%, approaching normal levels. Additionally, the smart MN arrays can provide hepatocyte protection while reducing inflammation levels by ≈70–90%. They can also exhibit remarkable capability in scavenging almost 100% of reactive oxygen species and alleviating hypoxia. Ultimately, this treatment strategy can effectively restrain fibrosis progression. The comprehensive in vitro and in vivo experiments, supplemented by proteome and transcriptome analyses, substantiate the effectiveness of the approach in treating liver fibrosis, holding immense promise for clinical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fueled by renewable energy, the paradigm of "green hydrogen" production via water electrolysis stands as an imperative pathway toward the evolution of novel energy frameworks. Proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) emerges as a pivotal route for sustainable power generation, offering substantial advantages. However, the quest to enhance the efficiency of proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) encounters formidable obstacles, prominently centered on attaining a delicate equilibrium between heightened activity and prolonged stability of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts. The pursuit of OER electrocatalysts that epitomize efficiency, longevity, and cost-effectiveness under high operating potential and corrosive acidic conditions assumes paramount importance in propelling the frontiers of electrochemical water splitting. This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent advancements in both noble and non-noble metal oxides utilized for acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). It underscores the significance of analyzing the instability of catalysts based on the OER mechanism, while delving into effective strategies aimed at bolstering the activity and stability of IrO2, RuO2, and transition metal (TM) oxide electrocatalysts. Finally, some insights are provided into the indirect challenges confronting current anode catalysts employed in proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzes, along with perspectives on future research avenues and potential directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Escherichia coli is known to easily contaminate noodles and form biofilms during noodle processing. Sheeting was a key step in the processing. The objective of our study was to investigate the influence of sheeting pressure on the viability of E. coli. Our findings revealed a significant reduction in the E. coli count (by 1.46 log CFU g−1), as well as their swimming diameter (by 46.7%) and biofilm formation (by 25.7%) following an additional 20 sheeting treatments. The expression of genes (flhC, flhD, rpoS, csgD and adrA) validated the weakening of E. coli survival due to sheeting pressure. Moreover, the alterations in dough texture properties had adverse effects on the survival of E. coli. These results highlight that sheeting pressure can effectively reduce E. coli viability in dough. The implications of our findings provide valuable insights for minimising microbial contamination in noodle production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of optimization, most of the current mainstream remote sensing data fusion methods are based on traditional mathematical optimization or single objective optimization. The former requires manual parameter tuning and easily falls into local optimum. Although the latter can overcome the shortcomings of traditional methods, the single optimization objective makes it unable to combine the advantages of multiple models, which may lead to distortion of the fused image. To address the problems of missing multi-model combination and parameters needing to be set manually in the existing methods, a pansharpening method based on multi-model collaboration and multi-objective optimization is proposed, called MMCMOO. In the proposed new method, the multi-spectral image fusion problem is transformed into a multi-objective optimization problem. Different evolutionary strategies are used to design a variety of population generation mechanisms, and a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to optimize the two proposed target models, so as to obtain the best pansharpening quality. The experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to the traditional methods and single objective methods in terms of visual comparison and quantitative analysis on our datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few methods have been used to characterize repeatedly measured biomarkers of chemical mixtures. We applied latent profile analysis (LPA) to serum concentrations of 4 perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) measured at 4 time points from gestation to age 12 years. We evaluated the relationships between profiles and z scores of height, body mass index, fat mass index, and lean body mass index at age 12 years (n  = 218). We compared LPA findings with an alternative approach for cumulative PFAS mixtures using g-computation to estimate the effect of simultaneously increasing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for all PFAS. We identified 2 profiles: a higher PFAS profile (35% of sample) and a lower PFAS profile (relative to each other), based on their average PFAS concentrations at all time points. The higher PFAS profile had generally lower z scores for all outcomes, with somewhat larger effects for males, though all 95% CIs crossed the null. For example, the higher PFAS profile was associated with a 0.50-unit lower (β = −0.50; 95% CI, −1.07 to 0.08) BMI z score among males but not among females (β = 0.04; 95% CI, −0.45 to 0.54). We observed similar patterns with AUCs. We found that a higher childhood PFAS profile and higher cumulative PFAS mixtures may be associated with altered growth in early adolescence. This article is part of a Special Collection on Environmental Epidemiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have demonstrated the improved performance of oxygen evolution reactions (OER) using Au/nickel phosphide (Ni12P5) core/shell nanoparticles (NPs) under basic conditions. NPs with a Ni12P5 shell and a Au core, both of which have well-defined crystal structures, have been prepared using solution-based synthetic routes. Compared with pure Ni12P5 NPs and Au-Ni12P5 oligomer-like NPs, the core/shell crystalline structure with Au shows an improved OER activity. It affords a current density of 10 mA/cm2 at a small overpotential of 0.34 V, in 1 M KOH aqueous solution at room temperature. This enhanced OER activity may relate to the strong structural and effective electronic coupling between the single-crystal core and the shell. [Figure not available: see fulltext.].