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The Great Whirl (GW) is an anticyclonic mesoscale eddy, forming periodically in the tropical western Indian Ocean. The lifespan of the GW exhibits a marked interannual variability, which has a late generation time and short lifetime due to the abnormal local wind field in a strong positive IOD year. The anomalous northeasterly wind inputs positive wind stress curl into the ocean, which is not conducive to establishing a stable anticyclonic circulation at the early stage of GW formation. In addition, oceanic Rossby waves exert impacts on the GW generation. The abnormal Rossby waves account for the earlier generation time of the GW in 2019 despite the unfavorable local wind field. This study identifies the atypical lifespan of the GW associated with a positive IOD event and reveals the contribution of local Ekman pumping and Rossby wave propagation. • Great Whirl showed a late generation time in strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) years. • The abnormal wind related to strong positive IOD events is key to the unstable gyre early in the Great Whirl formation. • The Great Whirl in 2019 (a prolonged IOD year) is an exception due to abnormal Rossby waves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ignition behaviors of an annular combustor consisting of 16 centrally staged swirling burners are experimentally investigated in this work. This research is mainly focused on the light-round mechanism of burner-burner flame propagation. The swirling flow structure of the staged burner and the flow interaction between multiple burners in the annular combustor are well measured via the particle image velocimetry method. Two high speed cameras are applied to analyze the light-round process from the side view and the top view. The light-round time, ignition and extinction limits, flame propagating pattern, and dynamics of flame leading point are analyzed. Increasing the equivalence ratio, the light-round time decreases gradually. A more complicated "sawtooth" pattern of flame propagation is discovered during the burner to burner flame propagation, compared to that with non-staged burners. The trajectories of the flame leading points are moving in a "zigzag" pattern during the light-round process. The trajectories of the anti-clockwise leading point are near the inside wall, while the trajectories of the clockwise one are closer to the outside wall. For various equivalence ratios and airflow rates, the circumferential flame speeds of the clockwise flame front are constantly faster than the anti-clockwise one. In addition, the two flame speeds and their differences increase with larger equivalence ratio. These characteristics are very different from those in an annular combustor with non-staged burners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To rapidly realize the identification of fresh milk for water adulteration and to predict the amount of water adulteration, this study adopts a coaxial probe and a vector network analyzer to analyze the variation laws of dielectric constant ε', dielectric loss factor ε'' and dielectric loss angle tangent tanδ in the range of 2–20 GHz under 100 frequency points. Soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA), Naive Bayes (NB), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), and support vector machine (SVM) models were built based on full dielectric spectra for qualitative testing of adulteration levels in milk. Feature variables of FDS were extracted by using the successive projections algorithm (SPA) and uninformative variables elimination (UVE). Partial least squares regression (PLSR), support vector regression (SVR), and particle swarm optimization least square support vector regression (PSO-LSSVR) models were built for quantitative testing of adulteration levels in milk. The results demonstrate an increasing trend of ε'' and tanδ with increasing frequency and a decreasing trend of ε'. The ε'-SIMCA model achieves the best effect in distinguishing water adulteration in milk, showing accuracy (ACC) of 1, Sensitivity (SNS) of 1, Specificity (SPC) precision (PRE) of 1, and an F 1 -score (F 1) of 1. The tanδ-SPA-PSO-LSSVR model optimally predicts the optimal prediction effect of moisture content of milk, showing an R P 2 of 0.994 and an RMSEP of 0.016 %. This study is conducive to building a more comprehensive knowledge system of water adulteration in fresh milk. Its results can provide a theoretical reference in the development of non-destructive detection instruments for natural milk. • Non-destructive detection of water adulteration in milk realized. • Models were built based on full dielectric spectra for qualitative testing of adulteration levels in milk. • Models were built to predict the level of milk adulteration based on extracted features from the full dielectric spectra. • Qualitative discriminative modeling accuracy up to 0.981, quantitative prediction modeling accuracy up to 0.994. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phytochemical investigation on the stems of Alstonia scholaris (L.) R. Br. led to the isolation and identification of 30 natural products, including sixteen alkaloids (1 – 16), nine triterpenoids (17 – 25), two phenols (26 – 27), and three lignans (28 – 30). Their structures were established by comprehensive spectroscopic analyses together with the comparison with reported data. Compound 1 was a new indole alkaloid. Compound 24 was firstly isolated from Apocynaceae family, compounds 22 – 23 and 26 – 30 were obtained from the genus Alstonia for the first time, and this is the first report of the presence of 11 and 16 in A. scholaris. The chemotaxonomic significance of these isolated compounds was also discussed. [Display omitted] • One new indole alkaloid and 29 known natural products were isolated from Alstonia scholaris. • Compound 24 was firstly isolated from Apocynaceae family. • Compounds 22 , 23 , and 26 – 30 were obtained from the genus Alstonia for the first time. • This is the first report of the presence of 11 and 16 in A. scholaris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, local flame and flow properties of propagating premixed turbulent propane/air flames were derived by two-dimensional time-resolved Mie scattering and PIV methodology in a MICCA-type annular combustor. The curvature of flame front, local flame speed and the evolution of leading points during the light-round process were analyzed in detail. All experiments were performed under a constant equivalence ratio of 0.67, with the bulk flow velocity set from 1.95 to 5.85 m/s in five cases to achieve different turbulent intensities. The instantaneous flame fronts and velocity fields of unburned gases were measured to investigate the flame-flow interactions corresponding to four regions of the annular combustor. The results indicate that the slight asymmetry of the propagation in two flame branches is mainly due to the competition between the local swirling injection and the overall circumferential flow along the inner or outer parts of the combustor. Based on the statistical analysis of the local radius of flame curvature, the whole flame front tends to be convex to the unburned mixture. As a characteristic length scale, the inner-cutoff scale ε i of the flame front is about 2–3 times the flame thickness δ L , which decreases with the increase of turbulent intensity. The value of fractal dimension increases with the increase of turbulence intensity, and its value is about 2.15–2.25 for all cases. Besides, in order to analyze the flame properties during the ignition process, the local flame speed w n was calculated using statistical method as well as the velocity of unburned mixture gas. Moreover, the experimental results (U b =3.90 m/s) of the leading points' trajectory were consistent with the large-eddy simulations at the height of h =25 mm, and the leading points of the flame fronts were generally concentrated near (about 5 mm away) the inner tube for both flame branches. The researches of ignition mechanisms in annular combustors have been carried out for almost ten years, but the quantitative measurements of flow and flame fronts are barely reported. Motivated by this, it will provide new insights into the ignition process in annular combustors from this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) has been proposed as an adjunctive therapy for sepsis. Related systematic reviews and meta-analyses of IVIG in sepsis indicate that IVIG can reduce the mortality of sepsis in adults. However, the effective dose of IVIG has not been clearly determined to date. We aimed to conduct an updated meta-analysis and use a network meta-analysis to elucidate the efficacy of IVIG dosing regimens in sepsis treatment. We searched PubMed, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and EMBASE for articles published on or before February 14, 2019. We performed a direct meta-analysis to update a previous meta-analysis of the effects of IVIG therapy on mortality in adult patients with septic shock and a network meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy of IVIG dosing regimens in sepsis treatment. Compared with the control treatment, the IVIG treatment reduced the all-cause mortality of patients with sepsis (odds ratio = 0.61; 95% CI, 0.41–0.92; P = 0.018), but significant heterogeneity was found across the studies (I 2 = 45.0%; P = 0.04). Regarding the IVIG dosage regimens, the highest total dose range (1.5–2 g/kg) was the optimal dose of administration (surface under the cumulative ranking curve = 84.7%). On the basis of the available data, IVIG treatment is likely to reduce the all-cause mortality of patients with sepsis, and the highest total dose range (1.5–2 g/kg) is likely the optimal dose of administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cushing's syndrome is caused by an elevation of endogenous or pharmacologically administered glucocorticoids. Acyl coenzyme A binding protein (ACBP, encoded by the gene diazepam binding inhibitor, Dbi) stimulates food intake and lipo-anabolic reactions. Here we found that plasma ACBP/DBI concentrations were elevated in patients and mice with Cushing's syndrome. We used several methods for ACBP/DBI inhibition in mice, namely, (1) induction of ACBP/DBI autoantibodies, (2) injection of a neutralizing monoclonal antibody, (3) body-wide or hepatocyte-specific knockout of the Dbi gene, (4) mutation of the ACBP/DBI receptor Gabrg2 and (5) injections of triiodothyronine or (6) the thyroid hormone receptor-β agonist resmetirom to block Dbi transcription. These six approaches abolished manifestations of Cushing's syndrome such as increased food intake, weight gain, excessive adiposity, liver damage, hypertriglyceridaemia and type 2 diabetes. In conclusion, it appears that ACBP/DBI constitutes an actionable target that is causally involved in the development of Cushing's syndrome., Competing Interests: Competing interests: O.K. is a scientific co-founder of Samsara Therapeutics. I.M. consults for Osasuna Therapeutics. G.K. has been holding research contracts with Daiichi Sankyo, Eleor, Kaleido, Lytix Pharma, PharmaMar, Osasuna Therapeutics, Samsara Therapeutics, Sanofi, Sutro, Tollys and Vascage. G.K. is on the Board of Directors of the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation France. G.K. is a scientific co-founder of everImmune, Osasuna Therapeutics, Samsara Therapeutics and Therafast Bio; is in the scientific advisory boards of Hevolution, Institut Servier, Longevity Vision Funds and Rejuveron Life Sciences; and is the inventor of patents covering therapeutic targeting of ageing, cancer, cystic fibrosis and metabolic disorders. Among these patents, one, ‘Methods for weight reduction’ (US11905330B1), is relevant to this study. G.K.’s brother, Romano Kroemer, was an employee of Sanofi and now consults for Boehringer-Ingelheim. G.K.’s wife, Laurence Zitvogel, has held research contracts with GSK, Incyte, Lytix, Kaleido, Innovate Pharma, Daiichi Sankyo, Pilege, Merus, Transgene, 9m, Tusk and Roche, was on the on the Board of Directors of Transgene, is a co-founder of everImmune and holds patents covering the treatment of cancer and the therapeutic manipulation of the microbiota. The funders had no role in the design of the study, in the writing of the manuscript or in the decision to publish the results. The other authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Quality control and grading of Korla fragrant pears significantly impact their commercial value. Rapid and non-destructive detection of soluble solids content (SSC) and firmness is crucial to improving this. This study proposes a method combining near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) with machine learning for the rapid, non-destructive detection of SSC and firmness in Korla pears. By analyzing absorbance in the 900-1800 nm range, six preprocessing methods-Savitzky-Golay derivative (SGD), standard normal variate (SNV), multiplicative scatter correction (MSC), Savitzky-Golay smoothing (SGS), vector normalization (VN), and min-max normalization (MMN)-were applied to the raw spectral data. uninformative variable elimination (UVE) and successive projections algorithm (SPA) were then used to extract effective wavelengths. Partial least squares regression (PLSR) models were developed for SSC and firmness based on the extracted data. The results showed that all preprocessing and wavelength-extraction methods improved model accuracy. The optimal SSC prediction model was MSC-SPA-PLSR (R = 0.93, RMSE = 0.195), and the best hardness prediction model was MSC-UVE-PLSR (R = 0.83, RMSE = 0.249). This research aids in establishing a non-destructive testing system, offering producers a rapid and accurate quality assessment tool, and provides the food industry with better production control measures to enhance standardization and market competitiveness of Korla pears.

Alkaline ion-solvating membranes derived from a tetrazole functionalized poly(arylene alkylene) are prepared, characterized and evaluated as electrode separators in alkaline water electrolysis. The base polymer, poly[[1,1'-biphenyl]-4,4'-diyl(1,1,1-trifluoropropan-2-yl)], is synthesized by superacid catalyzed polyhydroxyalkylation and subsequently functionalized with tetrazole pendants. After equilibration in aqueous KOH, the relatively acidic tetrazole pendants are deprotonated to form the corresponding potassium tetrazolides. The room temperature ion conductivity is found to peak at 19 mS cm -1 in 5 wt. % KOH, and slightly declines with increasing KOH concentration to 13 mS cm -1 in 30 wt. % KOH. Based on an overall assessment of the mechanical properties, conductivity and electrode activity, 30 wt. % KOH is applied for alkaline electrolysis cell tests. Current densities of up to 1000 mA cm -2 were reached with uncatalyzed Ni-foam electrodes at a cell voltage of less than 2.6 V, with improved gas barrier characteristics compared to that of the several times thicker Zirfon separator., (© 2024 The Authors. ChemSusChem published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

MRI image segmentation is widely used in clinical practice as a prerequisite and a key for diagnosing brain tumors. The quest for an accurate automated segmentation method for brain tumor images, aiming to ease clinical doctors' workload, has gained significant attention as a research focal point. Despite the success of fully supervised methods in brain tumor segmentation, challenges remain. Due to the high cost involved in annotating medical images, the dataset available for training fully supervised methods is very limited. Additionally, medical images are prone to noise and motion artifacts, negatively impacting quality. In this work, we propose MAPSS, a motion-artifact-augmented pseudo-label network for semi-supervised segmentation. Our method combines motion artifact data augmentation with the pseudo-label semi-supervised training framework. We conduct several experiments under different semi-supervised settings on a publicly available dataset BraTS2020 for brain tumor segmentation. The experimental results show that MAPSS achieves accurate brain tumor segmentation with only a small amount of labeled data and maintains robustness in motion-artifact-influenced images. We also assess the generalization performance of MAPSS using the Left Atrium dataset. Our algorithm is of great significance for assisting doctors in formulating treatment plans and improving treatment quality., (© 2024 Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.)

The advent of Internet of Things and artificial intelligence era necessitates the advancement of self-powered electronics. However, prevalent multifunctional electronics still face great challenges in rigid electrodes, stacked layers, and external power sources to restrict the development in flexible electronics. Here, a transparent, self-healing, anti-freezing (TSA) ionogel composed of fluorine-rich ionic liquid and fluorocarbon elastomer, which is engineered for monolayered triboelectric nanogenerators (M-TENG) and electromagnetic energy-based touch panels is developed. Notably, the TSA-ionogel exhibits remarkable features including outstanding transparency (90%), anti-freezing robustness (253 K), impressive stretchability (600%), and repetitive self-healing capacity. The resultant M-TENG achieves a significant output power density (200 mW m -2 ) and sustains operational stability beyond 1 year. Leveraging this remarkable performance, the M-TENG is adeptly harnessed for biomechanical energy harvesting, self-powered control interface, electroluminescent devices, and enabling wireless control over electrical appliances. Furthermore, harnessing Faraday's induction law and exploiting human body's intrinsic antenna properties, the TSA-ionogel seamlessly transforms into an autonomous multifunctional epidermal touch panel. This touch panel offers impeccable input capabilities through word inscription and participation in the Chinese game of Go. Consequently, the TSA-ionogel's innovation holds the potential to reshape the trajectory of next-generation electronics and profoundly revolutionize the paradigm of human-machine interaction., (© 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Facial palsy evaluation (FPE) aims to assess facial palsy severity of patients, which plays a vital role in facial functional treatment and rehabilitation. The traditional manners of FPE are based on subjective judgment by clinicians, which may ultimately depend on individual experience. Compared with subjective and manual evaluation, objective and automated evaluation using artificial intelligence (AI) has shown great promise in improving traditional manners and recently received significant attention. The motivation of this survey paper is mainly to provide a systemic review that would guide researchers in conducting their future research work and thus make automatic FPE applicable in real-life situations. In this survey, we comprehensively review the state-of-the-art development of AI-based FPE. First, we summarize the general pipeline of FPE systems with the related background introduction. Following this pipeline, we introduce the existing public databases and give the widely used objective evaluation metrics of FPE. In addition, the preprocessing methods in FPE are described. Then, we provide an overview of selected key publications from 2008 and summarize the state-of-the-art methods of FPE that are designed based on AI techniques. Finally, we extensively discuss the current research challenges faced by FPE and provide insights about potential future directions for advancing state-of-the-art research in this field.

This study conducted a meta-analysis to analyze the efficacy and safety of osteoporosis medications in kidney transplant recipients and patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials were searched from the date of their inception through October 21, 2022. We performed a meta-analysis of the efficacy and safety of osteoporosis medications in adult patients with stage 3-5 CKD or kidney transplant recipients enrolled in randomized clinical trials (RCTs). We calculated the standard mean deviations with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for bone mineral density (BMD) and T scores after 6 and 12 months treatment, pooled odds ratio and 95% CI for fracture risk, and summarized adverse events. The inclusion criteria were met by 27 studies. Out of this, 19 studies were included for the meta-analysis. In stage 3-4 CKD patients, alendronate increased lumbar spine BMD. In patients at stage 5 CKD and undergoing hemodialysis, alendronate and raloxifene increased lumbar spine BMD. After 6 months, the BMD of kidney transplant recipients was seen to be significantly increased; however, there was no difference after 12 months, and the risk of fracture did not reduce. Thus, there is no evidence that these medications reduce the risk of fracture, and their effect on BMD and fracture remains unproven. These medications may increase the incidence of adverse events and their safety needs to be further evaluated. Therefore, we cannot draw a definitive conclusion about the efficacy and safety of osteoporosis medications in the above group of patients., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Memristor with digital and analog bipolar bimodal resistive switching offers a promising opportunity for the information-processing component. However, it still remains a huge challenge that the memristor enables bimodal digital and analog types and fabrication of artificial sensory neural network system. Here, a proposed CsPbBr 3 -based memristor demonstrates a high ON/OFF ratio (>10 3 ), long retention (>10 4 s), stable endurance (100 cycles), and multilevel resistance memory, which acts as an artificial synapse to realize fundamental biological synaptic functions and neuromorphic computing based on controllable resistance modulation. Moreover, a 5 × 5 spinosum-structured piezoresistive sensor array (sensitivity of 22.4 kPa -1 , durability of 1.5 × 10 4 cycles, and fast response time of 2.43 ms) is constructed as a tactile sensory receptor to transform mechanical stimuli into electrical signals, which can be further processed by the CsPbBr 3 -based memristor with synaptic plasticity. More importantly, this artificial sensory neural network system combined the artificial synapse with 5 × 5 tactile sensing array based on piezoresistive sensors can recognize the handwritten patterns of different letters with high accuracy of 94.44% under assistance of supervised learning. Consequently, the digital-analog bimodal memristor would demonstrate potential application in human-machine interaction, prosthetics, and artificial intelligence., (© 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Electronic skin (E-skin) with multimodal sensing ability demonstrates huge prospects in object classification by intelligent robots. However, realizing the object classification capability of E-skin faces severe challenges in multiple types of output signals. Herein, a hierarchical pressure-temperature bimodal sensing E-skin based on all resistive output signals is developed for accurate object classification, which consists of laser-induced graphene/silicone rubber (LIG/SR) pressure sensing layer and NiO temperature sensing layer. The highly conductive LIG is employed as pressure-sensitive material as well as the interdigital electrode. Benefiting from high conductivity of LIG, pressure perception exhibits an excellent sensitivity of -34.15 kPa -1 . Meanwhile, a high temperature coefficient of resistance of -3.84%°C -1 is obtained in the range of 24-40 °C. More importantly, based on only electrical resistance as the output signal, the bimodal sensing E-skin with negligible crosstalk can simultaneously achieve pressure and temperature perception. Furthermore, a smart glove based on this E-skin enables classifying various objects with different shapes, sizes, and surface temperatures, which achieves over 92% accuracy under assistance of deep learning. Consequently, the hierarchical pressure-temperature bimodal sensing E-skin demonstrates potential application in human-machine interfaces, intelligent robots, and smart prosthetics., (© 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Herein, a multi-bioresponsive self-assembled nano-drug delivery system (HSSG) was constructed by conjugating the anticancer drug Geraniol (GER) to hyaluronic acid (HA) via a disulfide bond. The HSSG NPs displayed a uniform spherical shape with an average diameter of ∼110 nm, maintained high stability, and realized controlled drug release in the tumor microenvironment (pH/glutathione/hyaluronidase). Results of fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry verified that HSSG NPs were selectively uptaken by human hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines HepG2 and Huh7 via CD44 receptor-mediated internalization. Studies on H22 tumor-bearing mice demonstrate that HSSG NPs could effectively accumulate at the tumor site for a long period. In vitro and in vivo studies show that HSSG NPs significantly promoted the death of cancer cells while reducing the toxicity as compared to GER. Therefore, the HSSG NPs have great potential in the treatment of tumors., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Background: At least 1 billion people are affected by blindness or vision impairment worldwide, and in China, the proportion of myopia among college students is even higher. Anxiety and self-harm are becoming more and more common among college students, which indicates the importance of paying attention to their mental health. Previous studies have demonstrated that vision impairment has a negative impact on the mental health of adults. However, few studies have focused on the effects of myopia on college freshmen's mental health, and the association between the two factors in college students remained elusive., Methods: This is a large cross-sectional study. A total of 5,519 college freshman would be assessed for the eligibility of the present study, and the inclusion criteria of this study were as follows: (I) first-year college student; (II) diagnosed as myopia and emmetropia through vision test; (III) gave informed consent. Five questionnaires were utilized to collect anxiety data, which include the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire-25 (NEI-VFQ-25), the Self Esteem Scale (SES), the Self Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), the Self Rating Depression Scale (SDS), and the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SAD), for data collection. In addition, a socio-demographic questionnaire was designed and utilized to collect corresponding information. All enrollees were required to complete the all the above questionnaires., Results: In total 4,984 college students were enrolled. The proportion of males is 60.43%, and the mean age was 19.8 years old. Both right and left vision had a statistically significant association with NEI-VFQ-25 score (P=0.006, r=0.070; and P=0.021, r=0.060, respectively; Pearson correlation analysis) and SAS score (P=0.003, r=0.075 and P=0.004, r=0.075, respectively; Pearson correlation analysis). However, the correlation coefficient was very low (all less than 0.1). No significant correlation was observed between eye vision and other questionnaire scores., Conclusions: Our data suggested that there is week correlation between myopia and anxiety. However, since this is a single-center study, the observed weak correlation may be caused by selection bias. Therefore, our results still need to be validated in further studies with a larger sample size., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://atm.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/atm-23-743/coif). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (2023 Annals of Translational Medicine. All rights reserved.)

Conductive hydrogels as promising candidates of wearable electronics have attracted considerable interest in health monitoring, multifunctional electronic skins, and human-machine interfaces. However, to simultaneously achieve excellent electrical properties, superior stretchability, and a low detection threshold of conductive hydrogels remains an extreme challenge. Herein, an ultrastretchable high-conductivity MXene-based organohydrogel (M-OH) is developed for human health monitoring and machine-learning-assisted object recognition, which is fabricated based on a Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene/lithium salt (LS)/poly(acrylamide) (PAM)/poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogel through a facile immersion strategy in a glycerol/water binary solvent. The fabricated M-OH demonstrates remarkable stretchability (2000%) and high conductivity (4.5 S/m) due to the strong interaction between MXene and the dual-network PVA/PAM hydrogel matrix and the incorporation between MXene and LS, respectively. Meanwhile, M-OH as a wearable sensor enables human health monitoring with high sensitivity and a low detection limit (12 Pa). Furthermore, based on pressure mapping image recognition technology, an 8 × 8 pixelated M-OH-based sensing array can accurately identify different objects with a high accuracy of 97.54% under the assistance of a deep learning neural network (DNN). This work demonstrates excellent comprehensive performances of the ultrastretchable high-conductive M-OH in health monitoring and object recognition, which would further explore extensive potential application prospects in personal healthcare, human-machine interfaces, and artificial intelligence.

Multi-gigawatt-scale hydrogen production by water electrolysis is central in the green transition when it comes to storage of energy and forming the basis for sustainable fuels and materials. Alkaline water electrolysis plays a key role in this context, as the scale of implementation is not limited by the availability of scarce and expensive raw materials. Even though it is a mature technology, the new technological context of the renewable energy system demands more from the systems in terms of higher energy efficiency, enhanced rate capability, as well as dynamic, part-load, and differential pressure operation capability. New electrode separators that can support high currents at small ohmic losses, while effectively suppressing gas crossover, are essential to achieving this. This Focus Review compares the three main development paths that are currently being pursued in the field with the aim to identify the advantages and drawbacks of the different approaches in order to illuminate rational ways forward., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

Since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreaks, the utilization of medical masks plays a critical role in reducing the infected risk. However, constructing multifunctional masks to achieve simultaneously self-sterilization, reusability, and respiratory monitoring capability remains still a huge challenge. Herein, a reusable Ag micro-mesh film-based mask is proposed, which enables the capabilities of electrothermal sterilization and self-powered real-time respiratory monitoring. Highly conductive Ag micro-mesh films prepared by continuous draw spinning method demonstrate excellent electrothermal performances for thermal sterilization and serve as working electrode to fabricate triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) for real-time respiratory monitoring, respectively. Under a low driving voltage of 3.0 V, the surface temperature of Ag micro-mesh film enables a quick increase to over 60 °C within 30 s, which endows thermal sterilization against S. aureus with antibacterial efficiency of 95.58 % within 20 min to achieve the self-sterilization of medical masks. Furthermore, a self-powered alarm system based on the fabricated TENG as respiratory monitor is developed for real-time respiratory monitoring to render a timely treatment for patients in danger of tachypnea and apnea. Consequently, this work has paved a new and practical avenue to achieve reusable multifunctional masks with capabilities of electrothermal sterilization and real-time respiratory monitoring in clinical medicine., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Benefiting from the associative exchange reaction, vitrimers could be deformed to various shapes while maintaining the integrity of the network, thus being regarded as promising candidates for shape memory polymers. However, it is still a challenge to design the highly desired smart electronic devices with triple and multishape memory performances through a facile method. Here, a novel dual-cross-linked poly(acrylonitrile- co -butyl acrylate- co -hydroxyethyl methacrylate- co -zinc methacrylate) (Zn-PABHM) copolymer was developed via a facile and one-pot free radical polymerization strategy. Ionic cross-linking, the transcarbamoylation reaction, and glass transition were used to fix the permanent shape and two temporary shapes of the obtained ionomer vitrimer, respectively. The thermomechanical and stress relaxation performances of Zn-PABHM vitrimer can be customized by tuning the proportion of the chemical cross-linking and physical cross-linking knots. Furthermore, the Zn-PABHM was employed to construct a shape memory triboelectric nanogenerator, which demonstrates distinctive performance and tunable electrical outputs (37.4-96.0 V) due to variable contact areas enabled by triple shape memory effects. Consequently, the triple-shape memory ionomer vitrimer obtained via a facile and one-pot synthetic strategy has great potential in smart multifunctional electronic devices.

tDCS has been used to treat various brain disorders and its mechanism of action (MoA) was found to be neuronal polarization. Since the blood-brain barrier (BBB) tightly regulates the neuronal microenvironment, we hypothesized that another MoA of tDCS is direct vascular activation by modulating the BBB structures to increase its permeability (P). To test this hypothesis, we used high resolution multiphoton microscopy to determine P of the cerebral microvessels in rat brain. We found that 20 min 0.1-1 mA tDCS transiently increases P to a small solute, sodium fluorescein (MW 376) and to a large solute, Dextran-70k, with a much higher increase in P to the large solute. By pretreating the vessel with a nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, we revealed that the tDCS-induced increase in P is NO dependent. A transport model for the BBB was further employed to predict the structural changes by the tDCS. Comparing model predictions with the measured data suggests that tDCS increases P by temporarily disrupting the structural components forming the paracellular pathway of the BBB. That the transient and reversible increase in the BBB permeability also suggests new applications of tDCS such as a non-invasive approach for brain drug delivery through the BBB.

On the luminal surface of our blood vessels, there is a thin layer called endothelial surface glycocalyx (ESG) which consists of proteoglycans, glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), and glycoproteins. The GAGs in the ESG are heparan sulfate (HS), hyaluronic acid (HA), chondroitin sulfate (CS), and sialic acid (SA). In order to play important roles in regulating vascular functions, such as being a mechanosensor and transducer for the endothelial cells (ECs) to sense the blood flow, a molecular sieve to maintain normal microvessel permeability and a barrier between the circulating cells and endothelial cells forming the vessel wall, the ESG should have an organized structure at the molecular level. Due to the limitations of conventional optical and electrical microscopy, the ultrastructure of ESG, in the order of 10 to 100 nanometers, has not been revealed until recent development of a super resolution fluorescence optical microscope, Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscope (STORM), which is one type of single molecule localization microscopy. This short review describes how the STORM can overcome the diffraction barrier in the conventional fluorescence microscopy to identify the chemical components of the ESG at a high spatial resolution. Examples of the organized ultrastructure of the ESG on the in vitro EC monolayer revealed by the Nikon-STORM system are given as well as how its components get lost during the onset of sepsis, a systemic inflammatory syndrome induced by bacterial infection, which demonstrate that this new technique can be applied to discover the structural and molecular mechanisms at nanometer scales in the native cellular environment for the cellular functions under normal and disease conditions.